Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(38)

“It isn’t as though I have much else to do,” the revenant snapped. “In any case, if the priest had caught you again, what do you suppose I could have done about it? Since you’re so determined not to hurt any humans, even the ones who deserve it.”

“Did those people you tried to kill on the battlefield deserve it?” My voice had gone as cold and dull as lead.

The revenant didn’t answer. It seemed to have realized it had gone too far. I still held the relic on my palm, and it looked suddenly pathetic, a fragile nub of ancient, brittle bone.

For a moment I had been worried about the revenant—actually worried that I might have lost it, and not merely because I couldn’t help the people of Roischal without its power. Even after it had nearly slaughtered hundreds of people using my body as a vessel, including the woman who was helping me and her family. I didn’t understand how I could still spare a single scrap of concern for it after that.

“What I hate about you is that you aren’t some mindless creature,” I said tonelessly. “That’s what I thought you would be, when I first opened the reliquary—a more powerful version of the ashgrim. But you can talk. You can think. Which means that when you do something, you’re making a choice to do it, like a person. I had started to think of you as a person,” I realized aloud, disgusted. “I suppose that was stupid of me.”

“Yes, I suppose it was,” the revenant retorted, but there was a note in its voice I couldn’t interpret. It had listened to that entire speech in silence. It was probably waiting to see whether I was about to crush its relic in my hand.

Using slow, deliberate movements, I placed the relic into its velvet slot, shut and latched the reliquary, and tucked it back underneath my clothes. Then I drew the blanket over my head and stared into the dark.





TEN


Today I would have to cross the Ghostmarch. Its shape loomed above the encampment in the predawn gloom, leashed to the city walls with a complex array of ropes and pulleys as though it were a beast in danger of breaking free.

I vanished from the family’s camp before dawn, leaving them asleep in the murky half-light. Before I left, I pried one of the smaller, less recognizable gems from the reliquary and placed it carefully in front of the woman’s face as she slept on unawares, ignoring the revenant’s hissed objections. I was certain the Lady would want her family to have it.

People were already stirring, but the smoke of last night’s banked cookfires hung low above the ground, shrouding everyone’s movements. No one bothered me as I passed.

As I neared the edge of the encampment, the roaring of the Sevre grew louder, and louder still as I picked my way up the rocky escarpment that overlooked the river, its weathered boulders pockmarked with pools of standing water. No one had camped here, likely because the wind kept blowing the river’s spray in drenching sheets over the bank. I found an outcropping of rock to crouch behind that shielded me from the spray but still afforded me a view of the drawbridge and the city.

Up close, Bonsaint lost some of its grandeur. My view was mostly of the walls. The banners hung sodden with dew, the high gray battlements that thrust from the tumbled rock of the bank mottled with lichen from the endless moisture of the Sevre crashing below. The soldiers patrolling the battlements were so high up they looked like toy figures, their positions betrayed by the occasional glint of steel. From this vantage, I would be able to study the Clerisy’s defenses before I crossed the bridge.

Eerie groaning and creaking sounds shuddered across the bank, like the whale song we sometimes heard on the coast of Naimes, echoing up from the depths of the sea. They were coming from the Ghostmarch, the revenant explained, as the colossal wooden beams expanded and contracted in the damp, straining against the drawbridge’s metal components.

“The metal is consecrated, of course, but that won’t be the unpleasant part. I haven’t crossed the Sevre since before I was bound, and I’m not looking forward to doing it again.”

“Won’t walking on a bridge make a difference? We’ll be high above the water.”

“Certainly, it will make a difference. You can’t drown from on top of a bridge. You can, however, ardently long for death as you vomit over the rail. I’ll be able to suppress my power to reduce the effects on your body, but you’ll still feel sick as we cross, and you’ll need to hide it from the other humans. Your Clerisy will be watching for signs of possession.”

Neither of us mentioned that the problem could be avoided entirely if I were able to dismiss the revenant back into its relic, even just for a few minutes.

“Lean over and look into that puddle,” it said suddenly.

“What?”

“Your reflection,” it said impatiently. “I want to see what you look like.”

Soon it was going to regret saying that. “Just don’t scream.”

“Why would I scream?”

I shrugged. That was how Marguerite had reacted when she’d first arrived at the convent and discovered me watching her from beneath the bed of our shared room. But possibly, hiding under the bed had been a factor.

I bent over the puddle, watching my reflection materialize in the shallow water. Gray eyes, stark against a filthy face smeared with dirt and dried blood. The skin underneath ghastly in its pallor, surrounded by a tangled curtain of long black hair, snarled like a bird’s nest with burrs and leaves. Overall, not the worst I had ever looked first thing in the morning.