Red
Isabel had never received a reply to her letter asking the Sentinels of Vernay to weigh in on the conundrum of the broken spirit of Mikhail Ranseberg—or, maybe, an answer was waiting for her at the temple, never to be reclaimed. She wasn’t going to risk the high priest’s wrath by setting foot in there now. She’d answered her own questions in the weeks that followed, anyway, and now here she was, with the thing that had torn Mikhail’s soul apart grasping at her through the gaps in a wall of bone.
Still, she’d like to see something familiar. If she had a home, it would be Vernay, in the church where she’d spent her childhood sweeping between the headstones and her adolescence poring over dusty tomes in the library. She’d been trying to return there ever since arriving in Mondirra, the city’s bustle and noise straining her faculties even when she had time to eat and sleep, which hasn’t been often, of late. Vernay is quiet, as a rule, and the dead do not wake there. The turning of its ancient mill has continued uninterrupted since the time of the Inquisition. It’s hard to imagine the cataclysmic changes that have come to Mondirra visiting Vernay’s ancient, packed-earth streets.
The dying red sun refuses to set as the evening grows late, and long after nightfall should have arrived, it burns like a stubborn ember on the horizon. Perhaps, Isabel muses as she strains her eyes over the as-yet-untouched West Gate district, the light there isn’t the sun at all, but rather some alien fire that was transferred here from the nether when the world was torn apart and stitched back together.
She knows, logically, that she had no hand in the state of things. A journeyman Sentinel, lacking even the connection to her god that had allowed her to quiet the dead, could not possess the power to disintegrate the veil and rearrange the earth. She couldn’t even command the ghosts animating the corpses in the hospital—or the ghosts that surrounded her and Risoven in the nether world, for that matter. She isn’t responsible for any of this.
No matter how many times she repeats it, she still doesn’t believe it. No matter what ritual she tries, or where she goes, the chaos worsens with every action she takes.
Maybe it’s for the best that she leaves the city.
Berend stares at the cluster of ghosts, the muscles in his jaw clenching under several days’ worth of stubble. His clothes—Emryn Marner’s clothes—are streaked with black. It takes Isabel several minutes to realize that he’s covered in soot.
What happened? When was there a fire?
“Are you all right?” she asks, knowing full well what a pointless question it is. When he doesn’t answer and doesn’t move, she adds, “Mr. Horst?”
He blinks, shakes his head, and turns to her, putting his hands in his pockets like a teenage boy trying to look suave. “After everything, and considering the end of the world, you might as well call me Berend.”
Isabel takes this into consideration and decides that she won’t. “Are you all right?” she says again.
“No, I don’t think so,” he says, his cheerful pitch at odds with his words. “But there’s nothing for it. I’ll be much closer to all right after a bath and a good night’s sleep. Where do you think one can find that, given the circumstances?”
Isabel doesn’t know what to tell him. The temple isn’t an option, and she doesn’t have any money. Everything she owns in the world is either in the University District or the chapel on the blue field—Risoven’s chapel.
Why am I here, and Risoven isn’t? she asks herself again, and again, she doesn’t have an answer. Risoven has become a stone keeping the thing beyond the wall away from what’s left of Mondirra, and she’s here on her own two feet wondering what she’s supposed to do.
“We’ll have to get ready to travel,” she says. And fast, she adds to herself. The city could turn upside-down in the next few minutes, or cease to exist entirely. She tries not to worry about it.
Berend nods, rubbing at his eyes. “Right. I want my sword, and we’ll need some food and shelter for the road, if we’re walking. If we can get our hands on some horses, all the better. And then—”
He yawns so widely his jaw pops and his eyes water. “On second thought, maybe we rest first.” He drags a hand over his face. “The university apartments are currently on a cliffside overlooking the rest of the district, and I don’t think making the climb is strictly safe at present.”
“Oh.” It shouldn’t be surprising, not with everything else that’s happened, but Isabel thinks about Emryn Marner’s lumpy couch—the last relatively safe place she’s visited—her eyes burn with tears. She might feel better if Berend had told her that the university was on the other side of the vertical forest, completely unreachable, rather than forcing her to think of all the obstacles between there and herself.
She closes her eyes and turns away. Rest might be good. She’s a mess.
“City center, then?” Berend says, his forced cheerfulness a little more artificial. “I promised the nurses I’d find the watch, as well. I’m assuming that’s where they’ll be.”
“If there are any of them left,” Isabel says, and regrets it the moment she says it. The watch has to exist, and the city council, and the priesthood. Father Pereth had insisted he was going to maintain order. He hasn’t left the temple yet, as far as Isabel can tell, but she has to trust that he’s doing something, and the secular government is doing something.
Her heart pounds against her chest like it’s trying to escape. She’s losing her mind. It feels like sand running through her fingers, or maybe out her ears. It itches.
Berend gives her a look that makes her bring her hands to her ears, to check if there really is sand coming out of them. She doesn’t feel anything.
“Let’s go, before I fall asleep on my feet,” Berend says.
With one last look at the wall of bone, Isabel follows him to the street. The doors to the temple of Ondir are shut again, keeping the priests inside and Isabel out.
The road up the hill looks like a river of blood, but it’s solid under her feet. With the burning sun at her back, she casts a long, thin shadow; the remnants of the barricade dress the cobbles in a lattice of delicate lines. She and Berend pass the temples of Mella and Numit, Galaser and Aleta, all quiet with their windows dark. At the top, the twin temples of Alcos and Isra sit tall and proud, white marble all turned red, their doors open like dark, toothless mouths.
Human figures, alive and moving, pass in and out of those doors. Two men carry a third on a stretcher into Isra’s temple, while a nun in a green dress ushers a group of bedraggled young women in after them. On the other side of the street, a red-robed priest comforts an elderly couple, while a novice writes down the names of their sons, all members of the Temple District watch. In between lines of scrawled text, the novice glances up at the forest overhead, his eyes wide.
Isabel wants, more than anything she’s ever wanted in her life, to lie down on one of the cots she can just see crowding the entry of Isra’s temple. She can almost smell the clean, starched linen. All things considered, she’s healthy enough, and she won’t take a bed from someone who needs it more, but the thought of it nearly makes her cry again.
If Berend notices, he doesn’t say anything.
The first uniformed watchmen appear at the edge of the district. They’re putting up another barricade, with layers of spiked wood facing outward toward the temples. One stands at the narrow central opening in the middle of the street, squinting into the scarlet light. His companion nudges one of the wooden stands with his foot, six inches to the left, and then four inches to the right, as though the exact, correct placement of one barrier will restore order to the world, if only he could find it.
He looks up as Berend and Isabel approach, standing at attention and crossing his spear with the other watchman’s, barring their way.
“Evening, gentlemen,” Berend says. His cheery tone is fading fast, and his flat, empty smile drops when the guards fail to move out of his way. “Is there a problem?”
“Go back to the temple district if you need assistance,” the first guard, the one who was moving the barricade, says. “The council has ordered the city center to be closed off.”
Isabel can only stare at him. Maybe she really is losing her mind, because she can’t conceive of a reason why anywhere in the city that the changing landscape hasn’t blocked off would be barricaded by choice. The dead are quiet, there’s no fire, and there are hardly any people about.
Berend replaces his smile. “We’re just looking for a place to stay. I promise we won’t be any trouble.”
“Council’s orders,” the guard says. “No exceptions.”
“What do you mean? There are people who need your help, and you’re holing up here and not letting them in?” Berend demands. “The council can’t be that stupid. The dead tore apart the university hospital. You should be down there, not here.”
The watchman narrows his eyes. “If you need help, the temples are open.”
Isabel can’t stand here arguing with them. She pokes at Berend’s sleeve with two fingers. “Let’s go.”
He doesn’t have the strength to fight the guards, either, so he lets her lead him back down the hill to the temple of Isra. The Mother’s sanctuary reeks of smoke and incense, and the air inside is thick, obscuring the paintings of full-figured women and baskets of fruit on the inside of the huge, resplendent dome. A nun looks them both up and down, determines they’re not in immediate danger, and directs them to a bare patch of floor close to the altar. They’ve removed all the pews and replaced them with beds, eight rows of twelve, with more lining the pair of hallways leading out from either side of the dome. The four beds nearest to Berend and Isabel’s landing place are occupied by Temple District watchmen. One is missing a hand, the bandaged stump ragged and uneven—Isabel has to guess that it was torn off by a living corpse in its mindless drive to destroy. The man is blessedly unconscious, though a grimace of pain still troubles his face.
Much like the smoke, a haze of sound fills the space, dull and quiet. Once, a cry of pain stabs through it from somewhere on the other side of the room, and then it fades into the din.
Isabel curls up on the floor beside Berend, trying not to think about the composition of the dirt scratching her exposed skin. The Temple of Isra is the last place she wanted to end up, but here she is anyway, a refugee instead of a sanitarium patient. She’d like to say it could be worse, but she can’t imagine how. If she could come up with something, some new way in which the world could change for the worse, it might just happen.
Or the walls could break and the thing could devour this entire district.
For the moment, Isabel can’t bring herself to care. Either she’ll wake, or she won’t. Despite the hard floor and the noise around her, she falls asleep and does not dream.
I just finished rereading all of Part Two! So if you find any mistakes in this chapter, you can imagine me finding them along with you as I continue rereading into Part Three. As always, thanks for reading!
Space Whales Press 
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