Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(105)

Hearing those words in his kind voice did something terrible to me that I didn’t understand. My throat closed up like a fist; my heart ached as though it had been pierced. I nodded, avoiding his eyes.

He reached out as though to touch my shoulder. I flinched, and he dropped his hand. He looked at me once more with that same deep sadness, then opened the stall’s flap to usher a third person inside. “This is Master Olivar, from the Blacksmiths Guild. Will you let him take a look at those cuffs?”

Master Olivar turned out to be a small, wiry man with skin as brown and wrinkled as a walnut and bright, intelligent dark eyes. To my relief, he sketched a perfunctory bow and then proceeded to ignore me almost completely in his rapt inspection of the shackles.

“I have never seen their like,” he marveled, his fingers fluttering deftly over the hinges. “Extraordinary craftsmanship, extraordinary. The iron could be filed, yes, but it would take a long time, longer than you say we have. To break them open by force…” He shook his head. “No person has the strength. One might heat the metal first, but of course, we cannot do that without injuring young Artemisia.”

His gaze hadn’t lingered on my ungloved hand, but his eyes were knowing. To a blacksmith, his own arms striped with old burns, my scars had to be easily identifiable. He looked up at me keenly, questioning. “To open them, we will need the key.”

If either the Divine or Sarathiel had been carrying it, I hadn’t noticed. Sarathiel, I suspected, had never had any intention of releasing me. For all I knew, it could have tossed the key into the Sevre. “I don’t know where it is,” I answered.

In the silence that followed my admission, which I tried not to read as despairing, the worried murmurs filling the square outside intruded on the stall’s fragile privacy. With the sound, my awareness of the crowd returned. I doubted many of them knew the whole truth, but they had to suspect something. Rumors must be spreading like wildfire.

My heart lurched when I glanced outside and noticed for the first time that there were children among the protestors. Even babies, cradled tightly. Their families likely thought it was safer here than at home, even with the riots. Danger had infiltrated every part of Roischal, including the streets of Bonsaint. Nowhere was safe. It wasn’t the cathedral that offered a final promise of protection now—it was me. They were gathered here to be close to me.

I wondered how Saint Eugenia had felt facing the revenant on that hill in the scriptorium’s tapestry—if she had been afraid, or if faith had turned her heart to iron. Or if there had never been a sunlit hill, a rearing horse, a glorious battle. Perhaps those parts had been made up, like my holy arrow. Perhaps the decisions that shaped the course of history weren’t made in scenes worthy of stories and tapestries, but in ordinary places like these, driven by desperation and doubt.

Enguerrand was right, I thought with a painful twist. No one would be upset with me if I couldn’t help, because they’d all be dead. The people of Roischal needed me as much as I had needed them. Even with the shackles, there was still one way I could save them.

I looked back to Captain Enguerrand and Master Olivar and said, “I need to pray.”





TWENTY-EIGHT


I was left alone in the stall. To complete the illusion, I had knelt on the ground, where I had gained a view of the empty jars of pig’s blood lined up along a hidden shelf. I wondered if the Lady was feeling ironic. Or perhaps the message wasn’t intended for me—perhaps the stall’s owner was standing outside, shaking in his boots.

If he was, I had no way of knowing. Only a few hushed voices betrayed the packed square outside, their murmurs barely louder than the stall’s cloth flapping in the breeze. The news that I was praying must have spread. I felt a twinge of guilt at the lie. I was painfully aware of how little time we had and the possibility that I might be wasting it. Thus far, my conversation with the revenant hadn’t been fruitful.

“So there aren’t any places we could use for a ritual?” I asked in frustration, feeling as though we were talking in circles.

“No—I mean that if there are, we’re unlikely to find them in time. We would need to search the entire city. That would take days. Our best bet would be the catacombs, but I wouldn’t want to risk opening any of the grates; we might as well ring a dinner bell for Sarathiel….”

It continued talking, but I was only listening with half an ear, my thoughts churning. It had already explained why we couldn’t create our own ritual site—the same as filing through the shackles, we didn’t have time. Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I stared hard at the cobblestones under my knees. The entire city. Something about that phrase had stuck in my mind.

The entire city…

That was it. The cobbles beneath me, the stones that made up the city’s walls—they were ancient. So ancient they attracted shades, just like the ruin outside my old village.

“What about Bonsaint?” I asked, the idea blossoming in my mind like a bizarre flower, wondrous to behold.

“Bonsaint? The food is average at best. Architecture, mediocre. And don’t get me started on the overpopulation of nuns—”

Frowning, I interrupted, “When we first got here, you said that Bonsaint was built from the ruins of another city, one that stood during the Age of Kings.” I felt its startled pause. “Old Magic must have been practiced there. And they’re the same stones, used over again. That’s why you think our best bet is in the catacombs, right? It’s the old city down there. But the old city never went away. It’s still here.”