Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(24)

“Nun,” the revenant broke in urgently, at the same time I snarled, “Everyone at my convent would be dead!” I threw myself to the end of the chain, the bite of the shackles drawing me up short.

He jerked back, startled. I had almost reached him—almost touched his keys. His mouth twisted into an involuntary defensive snarl, like a cornered animal baring its teeth, before he drew his composure back into place with a strained effort. “I shouldn’t have come.” He turned sharply and began to step out of the harrow.

“Nun! They’re here!”

My hair had fallen in a curtain around my face. The strands quivered with my breath. “Your Grace,” I said. “Don’t you want to hear my confession?”

He paused, one hand on the doorway.

“The key! Nun—the key!”

“I’m going to escape,” I told him.

Slowly, he turned, his face wiped clean of emotion. Through my hair, I met his eyes. “I’m telling you,” I finished, “because there isn’t anything you can do to stop me.”

Reflexively, he reached for his relic.

Above us, Trouble’s mutterings had gone silent. Now he uttered a single clear word. “Dead.”

Leander looked up, horror dawning across his face.

“Nun, brace yourself!”

That was my only warning before the harrow exploded.





SEVEN


The next thing I knew, I lay insensible among splinters of wood. My ears rang, and the stink of mud and copper filled my nose. Everything was chaos; hooves flashed perilously close to my face, the sun glancing from their metal shoes. The sounds of horses screaming, men shouting, and Trouble unleashing his harsh cry of “Dead!” sounded distorted and far away, like my head had been shoved underwater.

The sky looked impossibly blue. The light seemed too bright, the shadows too dark. I watched clods of dirt fly through the air.

“Get up, nun!”

My senses came rushing back in a torrent of sound. I rolled over. The chain slithered with me, freed from the harrow’s wreckage. One of the carriage horses lay dead on the road, twisted up in its traces. Spirits flitted past, converging on the knights like wisps of fog.

I half fell, half climbed over the harrow’s broken frame. And almost collapsed onto Leander, lying stunned amid the wreckage, a trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth.

“My reliquary. Get my reliquary first. There’s a rivener nearby. It’s coming—”

That explained the harrow. Riveners were Fourth Order spirits risen from warriors slain in battle, armed with the rare ability to affect the living world with powerful blows that could splinter wood and shatter bone. I had no hope of surviving it without the revenant’s power.

I wanted to get the key first, but the revenant sounded panicked. I yanked the chain from Leander’s neck and ducked my head through its loop. Thinking quickly, I stuffed the reliquary down the front of my robes, where the thick, bulky wool would conceal its shape.

Leander groaned, then coughed. He was waking now, awareness returning to his staring blank eyes. I fumbled with the key ring at his belt. Sliding the correct key from the ring posed a challenge for my clumsy hands, their stiffness worsened by days of disuse. The revenant’s agitation flapped around in my head like a frenzied bat as the tiny key slipped repeatedly from my fingers. Finally, I gave up and yanked the entire ring free, snapping the leather thong that attached it to the belt.

My victory lasted barely a heartbeat before Leander’s hand closed around my wrist.

“Behind you!” the revenant shrieked.

I threw myself to the side, dragging Leander with me. The spot where he had lain erupted in flying soil and shards of wood. Debris rained down, pelting my robes and pattering across the carriage’s wreckage.

I looked up, and then up some more. The spirit that towered over us was nearly half again the height of a man. It was clad in cracked, battered armor, with broken arrows and spears protruding from its body, like a great bear that many hunters had tried and failed to kill. Two pinholes of light glowed in the cavernous recesses of its helmet.

Recognition smote me—it was the same type of spirit as the one Mother Katherine had called forth in the chapel, bound to her amber ring.

The rivener raised its sword for another sundering blow. I was lodged against one of the carriage’s wheels and couldn’t move. At my side, Leander gave me a quick startled glance and reached for a spar of wood among the wreckage. He still hadn’t let go of my arm.

As the sword descended, he raised the piece of wood between us, which I saw was a slat broken from one of the harrow’s iron-studded wheels. The sword struck it and dissolved into a gust of mist that swept over us, as cold and stinging as a winter wind.

Puzzled, the rivener looked down at the empty hilt clutched in its gauntleted hand.

Of course—whoever had built the harrow hadn’t taken any chances. Even the wheels were consecrated.

Leander scrambled to his feet, unsteady and panting. First he pointed the spoke at me, wild-eyed, and then at the rivener, whose broadsword had already re-formed and was sailing through the air in his direction.

The keys’ jagged shapes bit into my palm, clenched in my fist. As Leander engaged the rivener, I scrambled over the broken wheel and huddled behind it, jabbing the key toward the left-hand shackle’s equally tiny keyhole.