Siege of Shadows (Effigies #2)(65)

And so I decided.

“No,” I whispered finally. “I don’t believe that.” My voice had started to rise dangerously, but when I saw the glint of readiness in Natalya’s eyes, I held myself back. “Rhys is too kind, too gentle. He’s not a murderer.”

“He is kind,” Natalya said, looking up at the sunless, cloudless sky. “He’s too gentle, I agree. His heart is pure. And also . . .” Her scar-covered hand gripped the hilt of her sword more tightly than before. “He is a murderer.”

“I don’t believe you,” I repeated. I couldn’t hide the strain in my voice.

“I can never lie to you, Maia.” It was strange. Her grin felt as menacing as it did sincere. How was it possible? This woman I had once worshipped . . . that my sister, June, had once adored. The noble warrior. Looking at her smile now, I felt like retching.

No. I really did feel like retching. My body was beginning to buckle and bend. It was too difficult being here. It took too much energy, too much willpower. Every second I was here in the mist, I could feel my mind breaking down. I could feel something hooking me from the inside, pulling me back out.

“If you do not believe me, I will give you a sign of goodwill.” Shutting her eyes, Natalya lowered her head. “Naomi.”

“What?”

“Naomi will know. But, Maia . . .” A breeze swept over the strands of her short black hair as she looked at me. The nobility, the fierceness etched into her face, was as powerful in death it was in life. “Your enemies are all around you,” she said. “Are you really not aware?”

“Maia!”

It was Belle. I’d fallen over and now was actually retching. Belle and Pastor Charles helped me back up to my feet.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know that when Natalya was here, it was also an intense experience for her. Especially the last time she came.” He shook his head. “I don’t envy the burden you Effigies bear.”

“What do you mean? What happened when Natalya came?” asked Belle as she propped my arm around her shoulder.

“Oh, she was just . . . distraught about many things. She never clearly mentioned why. She referred to a girl called Alice.”

“Alice . . .” Wiping my mouth, I lifted my head.

“She asked me about Emilia Farlow’s writings, about the leader of the traveling sect. Mentioned a man named Baldric.”

“Baldric. Who is that?” Belle asked. “She never mentioned him before.”

“I don’t know. She never explained. She said so much—too many things to remember. But one thing I do remember clearly is the symbol she drew. She asked me if I recognized it, but I couldn’t help her.”

“Do you still have her drawing?” Belle asked.

“I can get it from my office.”

After we returned to the main hall of the church, we only had to wait a few minutes before Pastor Charles returned with a torn piece of notepaper. Though my head was still swimming and my body still languid from scrying, I rose to my feet anyway, fast, holding the back of the pew for support as I stared at the picture of a bright, flickering flame.

“She didn’t know what it was herself,” said Charles. “She told me that she’d seen a glimpse of it while scrying into an earlier Effigy’s memories: Marian, she called her.”

“Marian,” I whispered. The girl both Nick and Alice were really after. The girl inside me.

Belle took the paper. “I’ve seen this before . . . haven’t I?” She searched the ink as if she’d find her answers there.

Yes, we had. It took me a minute to remember, but this was the same symbol I’d seen in the desert hideout. A symbol connected to Marian. Another clue into who she was. I looked around at the shadows scrawled against the wall.

The secrets of the world.





16



THE SYMBOL DIDN’T COME UP in any online searches, and cross-checking it against Deoscali writings at the Sect’s library turned up nothing. Belle tried a second time to crack the flash drive we’d taken from Philip, thinking it’d hold clues to the hideout we’d found him in, but she just didn’t have the skills to get through its encryption. Nevertheless, she was sure she’d seen the symbol somewhere else, not just in the hideout. She simply couldn’t remember where.

Three days of searching yielded nothing, and by Thursday evening, I had a whole new problem to deal with: namely, Blackwell’s fund-raiser. I, along with a few personnel from the London facility, were to join him in putting on a show for a host of select dignitaries at his estate near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. I guess I just had to accept that part of my job description as an Effigy entailed grinning like a trained monkey in front of the cameras.

By the time my Sect van pulled up to the nearly two hundred acres of parkland, ours was only one of a long list of expensive cars lined up along the lengthy driveway. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Blackwell’s estate looked like a little palace perched on a high plateau overlooking the river, its rustic stone architecture and dark arches haunted by the French Renaissance. The pamphlet they handed us after we walked through the red-iron-rimmed double doors told us that the estate used to be a British king’s country home before the Blackwell family bought it in the nineteenth century with the riches they’d accumulated through their rail and shipping empires.