Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(21)

SIX


Peering through the harrow’s screen the next morning, the revenant said, “That idiot priest has no idea what he’s doing, riding with my reliquary out in the open. Do you see, nun? We’re being followed.”

Outside, the rising sun glared above the treetops, burning away the fog that blanketed the road. Still sticky-headed with sleep, I took a moment to spot what the revenant was referring to: a ripple in the fog, similar to the eddies stirred by the trotting horses. As I watched, I made out a translucent shape furtively slipping away.

“A gaunt,” the revenant supplied. “It’s being used as a scout. They’ll attack soon. That will be our best chance to escape.”

Leander rode ahead of us, surrounded by knights wearing suits of consecrated armor. I couldn’t tell whether the stab of dislike I felt at the sight of him belonged to me or the revenant.

After what I had learned yesterday, it seemed obvious that the spirits would continue trying to destroy Saint Eugenia’s relic. But unlike me, Leander hadn’t stayed awake half the night interrogating a revenant.

I leaned toward the screen, trying to catch a glimpse of his onyx ring. “He has a powerful relic—it binds a penitent. Won’t he notice that something’s wrong? Will the penitent warn him?”

The revenant hissed a laugh. “Not unless he calls it forth, and I doubt he can afford to use it casually. Look at the way he’s sitting. He has to mortify himself to control it.”

“He has to what?”

A flicker of surprise came from the revenant, followed by a wary pause, as though it was wondering whether it had accidentally revealed too much. Finally, it said, “It’s what humans do when the spirits bound to their relics try to resist them. There are a fascinating number of different techniques. Whips, hair shirts, girdles of thorns. Sleeping on beds of nails used to be quite popular. I had one vessel who would kneel on gravel for hours, reciting prayers—I gather the intent was to vanquish me through boredom.” Suspicion crept into its tone. “You weren’t practicing mortification when you used your dagger on yourself in the crypt?”

“Not on purpose,” I said, glancing at the fading marks on my wrist. “I just assumed you wouldn’t like it.”

“How delightful. Being horrid must come naturally to you.”

I shrugged, not disagreeing. I was already thinking about doing worse. Despite the agreement we’d arrived at last night, I knew I couldn’t trust the revenant to uphold its end of the bargain. Now that I no longer had my misericorde, I might have to resort to other measures to keep it under control. I was certain I could manage something. Sleeping on a bed of nails couldn’t be much worse than sharing a room with Marguerite.

The revenant continued talking, but I had stopped listening, studying Leander. It hadn’t occurred to me that there might be a physical explanation for his stiff, straight-backed posture. He had looked that way even back in Naimes.

He seemed young to be wielding such a powerful relic. By that fact alone, I wondered if he was one of only a few people capable of controlling it. If it could have gone to someone older and more experienced, it likely would have. I knew little about penitents, only that they were rare even for Fourth Order spirits—so much so that they hadn’t been included in our lessons. Relics binding them had to be even rarer; the Clerisy likely went to great efforts to find suitable candidates to wield them.

I remembered how disdainfully Leander had spoken of lesser relics. Ironically, if he weren’t too arrogant to wield a First Order relic like Sister Iris and Mother Katherine, he wouldn’t need to limit its use, and he would have been able to sense the gaunt spying on us.

Mother Katherine. Without warning, the memory flashed through my mind: Sister Iris’s scream, Mother Katherine limp in her arms. None of my fragmented memories of lying fevered in bed afterward included her, only Sister Iris and the other nuns. Mother Katherine should have been there. If she could have, she would have come.

I couldn’t think about that, not now. I wrenched my mind away and stared hard at my hands, turning them palms-up in my lap, summoning the memory of heat and agony and letting it wash over me in a blistering wave, burning everything else to ashes.

“What are you thinking about?” the revenant broke in, its voice low and venomous. I realized I had been silent for several minutes.

“Nothing.” I sincerely didn’t want to talk about it.

“You’re lying,” it hissed. “There’s always something going on in your detestable nun brain. You’re going to betray me, aren’t you? You’re already thinking about breaking your promise.”

“What?” At first the revenant’s accusation merely surprised me. Then a lump of anger formed in my throat. “No, I’m not.”

“If you imagine that you can fool me—”

“You’ve spent the past week trying to take over my body. Of the two of us, I should be more worried about you betraying me.”

“Ha!” The revenant dragged itself up. I felt it stalking around the confines of my mind like a caged beast. Then it hissed savagely, “You have no idea what you’ve offered. You promised that if I helped you, you would do everything in your power to keep me from returning to my reliquary. Do you truly understand what that means? What you’re sacrificing?”