Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(10)
Over the next couple of nights, her weeping kept me awake until the bell rang for morning prayers. I tried talking to her once, which turned out to be a terrible idea; the results were so harrowing I slunk off to spend the night in the stable, grateful that I couldn’t inflict emotional trauma on the goats and horses—I hadn’t managed it yet, at least.
Then more news arrived from Roischal, and no one was thinking about the evaluation any longer, not even Marguerite. As the first cold rains of winter seeped into the convent’s stones, whispers filled the halls like shades.
Everything would seem ordinary one moment, and then the next I’d hear something that tipped me off-balance: novices in the refectory, heads bent together, whispering fearfully about a sighting of a Fourth Order spirit—a rivener, which hadn’t been seen in Loraille since before we were born. The next day I crossed the gardens where the lay sisters were tearing up the last shriveled autumn vegetables, and I overheard that the city of Bonsaint had raised its great drawbridge over the Sevre, a measure it hadn’t taken in a hundred years.
“If the Divine is afraid,” whispered one of the sisters, “shouldn’t we be, too?”
The Divine of Bonsaint governed the northern provinces from her seat in Roischal, whose border lay only a few days’ travel to the south. Kings and queens had once reigned over Loraille, but their corrupt line had ended with the Raven King, and the Clerisy had risen from the Sorrow’s ashes to take their place. Now the divines ruled in their stead. The most powerful office was that of the Archdivine in Chantclere, but according to rumor, she was nearly a hundred years old and rarely extended her influence beyond the city.
Newly ordained, the current Divine of Bonsaint had once traveled to our convent on a pilgrimage to Saint Eugenia’s shrine. I had been thirteen then. Locals had turned out in bewildering numbers to see her, strewing spring wildflowers across the road and climbing the trees outside the convent’s walls for a better view. But what had left the greatest impression on me was how young the Divine had looked, and how sad. She had seemed subdued on her walk to the crypt, a lonely figure lost in splendor, her attendants lifting her train and holding her elbow as though she were spun from glass.
I wondered how she was faring now. As far as I could tell, the worst aspect of the unfolding situation in Roischal was that no one knew what was causing it. Spirits hadn’t attacked in numbers like this in well over a century, and in the past it had always happened in the wake of obvious events like plagues or famines or a city ravaged by fire. But this time there wasn’t a clear reason, and even the Clerisy didn’t seem to have an explanation.
The day that disaster reached Naimes, I was on my way back from the convent’s barnyard, hefting an empty bucket of slops. After an incident in the washing room when I was eleven, the sisters didn’t entrust me with any chores that might injure my hands. That day, I had scalded myself with lye and not told anyone—at first because I hadn’t been able to feel it and then because I hadn’t seen the point. I still remembered how, when at last someone had noticed the blisters, everything had gone quiet and the sisters had given me shocked looks that I didn’t understand. Then one of them had shouted for Mother Katherine, who had taken me away to the infirmary, her touch gentle on my arm. Ever since, I had been assigned work with the animals.
Beside the plot where we grew our vegetables, our convent had a small ornamental garden. Roses bloomed there in the summer, their overgrown blossoms nearly burying the garden’s half-crumbled statue of Saint Eugenia. This time of year, the hedge around it turned brown and the leaves began to fall. Thus I caught a glimpse of someone inside as I passed. It wasn’t a visiting pilgrim; it was Mother Katherine, her downy white head bent in prayer.
She looked frail. The observation swooped down on me without warning. Somehow, I hadn’t noticed how old she’d gotten—it was as though I had wiped the dust from a painting and seen it clearly for the first time in years, after ages of simply forgetting to look.
“Artemisia, child,” she said patiently, “are you spying on me? Come here and sit down.”
I abandoned my bucket and joined her on the bench. She didn’t say anything else or even open her eyes. We sat in silence, listening to the breeze rustle through the dry leaves and rattle the hedge. Dark clouds scudded above the convent’s walls. The air smelled heavy with rain.
“I’ve never sensed them,” I said finally. “Your relics.”
She held out her hand. The gems shone against her papery skin: a tiny moonstone almost identical to Sister Iris’s, a cloudy sapphire with a chipped facet, and the largest, an amber oval that captured the light, illuminating small imperfections within. They were mere decoration for the real treasures: the relics sealed away in compartments beneath. Cautiously, I touched the amber and felt nothing but a smooth, ordinary stone.
“The spirits’ auras become dimmer when the rings are sealed,” Mother Katherine explained. “This doesn’t affect our ability to draw them forth, but it makes the relics much more comfortable to wear.”
She was regarding me with one keen blue eye, and at that moment she didn’t seem frail at all. I remembered little of the night of the exorcism, but I would never forget the feeling of her prayers tearing through my body, drawing the ashgrim forth in a wrathful whirl of smoke and silver embers. The sisters later told me that it had taken all night, and when she had finished, she hadn’t reached for her dagger. She had merely lifted one hand and destroyed it with a word.