Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(46)
I remembered hiding under the bed from Marguerite. Jerking away whenever the sisters tried to touch me. Sitting alone in the refectory while the other novices whispered. “Mostly,” I said at last.
* * *
“What did you mean when you said that Jean might prove useful?” I asked once I had shut the stable’s door and found myself alone with the horses. Most were the large, well-muscled draft type bred to pull the convent’s corpse-wagons. Their heads hung inquisitively from their stalls, greeting me with soft snorts and nickers.
“Not now. The brute might overhear you. He’s standing right outside.”
“Don’t call him that,” I replied, but I moved deeper into the stable until I found the ladder leading up into the hayloft. The revenant winced as a rat fled squeaking across the rafters.
“You aren’t planning to sleep in here, are you?” it asked in disgust.
I shrugged, peering into the loft’s murky darkness, trying to make out whether I would bang my head against the slanted ceiling if I straightened to my full height.
“I suppose it is filthy and depressing, just the way you like it. Open that window,” it demanded, a trace of urgency entering its tone. “You might thrive in this vile miasma, but I don’t have to suffocate to death while you’re at it.”
I decided not to point out that the revenant was already dead. I went to the loft door and cracked it open. The revenant relaxed as clear sunlight and a flood of cold, fresh air swept inside. Looking out, I saw that Jean was still standing in the yard below. He had followed Charles and me all the way to the stable.
Charles was still there too, wandering aimlessly around the muddy yard, kicking bits of straw and pointlessly examining the chickens. Stalling for time.
“I’m leaving now, Jean,” he said at last.
Jean didn’t move. I could only see the top of his shorn, blight-mottled head, but it was enough to tell that he wasn’t paying attention, staring instead into nothingness.
Charles looked down and took a deep, reinforcing breath. Then he squared his shoulders and raised his head. “That’s all right, Jean. Maybe tomorrow.” He came over to give Jean a pat on the arm before he went to retrieve his sword from where I had stowed it behind a water trough. I watched him walk away, defeated.
Jean might not have been possessed if I had woken earlier and reached Bonsaint sooner. Their friend Roland might not have died. If I hadn’t paused to eat those apples, if I hadn’t sat gaping at the sight of the city on the horizon…
I could drive myself mad thinking that way. With the power I had now, I could measure every choice I made in human lives.
Exhaustion crashed over me. I slid down the wall, feeling splinters catch in my cloak, and thumped into the hay. My eyes felt gritty, as though they were full of sand. I squeezed them shut before I said, “We can talk now. Jean won’t be able to hear anything from down there.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“You always want to talk.” I knew that much about the revenant by now.
“Perhaps I could use a little peace and quiet during the rare moments in which you aren’t trying to get yourself killed.”
Ignoring it, I said, “I don’t think you’re right about Leander being the one in control of the spirits. They attacked him when they ambushed the harrow. And back in Naimes, he was surprised to learn about the possessed soldiers.”
“I didn’t say he was controlling them,” the revenant snapped. “Not all the time, at least. I said he’s been practicing Old Magic. Do you know the least thing about Old Magic? It’s a notoriously fickle art. If it has one rule, it’s that it always—”
“Twists back on its users,” I interrupted, surprised to find the answer on the tip of my tongue. “Like it did to the Raven King.”
Now that I thought back to the memory—Leander standing opposite the page, holding the folded missive—surprised didn’t seem like quite the right word. He hadn’t been surprised. He’d been angry. As though…
“Just because he’s been influencing them doesn’t mean his command over them is complete. Suppose, for example, he orders a group of spirits to destroy Saint Eugenia’s relic. They fail in the attempt. Then he gains custody of the relic and no longer feels that it needs to be destroyed. But he hasn’t commanded the remaining spirits to stop trying; he hasn’t realized he needs to. And then he’s in for a nasty surprise when they proceed to attack him, because he’s the one bearing the relic. It doesn’t matter that he’s the ritual’s practitioner—their orders are clear. Destroy the relic. They’ll keep trying until they succeed, or until they’re destroyed themselves.”
“And the possessed soldiers… he might have ordered the spirits to do something, but he didn’t order them to do it by possessing people. Except he didn’t expressly forbid it, either.”
“Yes, precisely. Rituals need to be highly specific about their boundaries to go according to plan. Even adepts make terrible mistakes from time to time, and no matter how clever he is, the priest is no adept. Anyone who tries practicing Old Magic now will be working with incomplete resources—scavenged pages, half-burned manuscripts.”
I was still thinking about those first possessed soldiers. What if they had fallen victim to nothing more than an early test of Leander’s command over Old Magic? I wondered how many people had died. If any of the soldiers had lived. “How do you know?”