Chapter 3
Csilla
Csilla walked with small, sure steps that paused as she bowed her head to every wisp of holiness on the streets. The Eyes of Asten were carved on doors, illegible intercessions to saints baked into bricks along with the maker’s fingerprints, infusing even the shadows with a certain hallowed air.
The fierce form of the angel Ignaz, cardinal embodiment of Justice, was pressed into an alcove, a fat black cat curled beside it. The silver-plated statue was clean of bird droppings, and she nodded approvingly at the resting feline as it opened a slit-pupiled eye.
‘You’re doing wonderful work for the Faith, cousin,’ she told the cat, who yawned wide enough to show fang then shut its eye again.
Well. Maybe he couldn’t appreciate the praise, but it was worth giving all the same.
Ignaz would certainly welcome the feline acting as judge and executioner to any pigeons or crows who sought to dirty her holy form or her protected district when she couldn’t do it herself.
Bells echoed across high roofs, tolling the hour, and Csilla sucked in a breath.
She’d meant to be back an hour ago, but extra minutes here or there, helping take down laundry or soothing a colicky baby, did tend to add up.
She pulled her empty satchel to her chest and ran, dashing through a side street that would let her out near one of the bridges mostly used by merchants.
Then if she cut through one of the open courtyards of the guild district, avoided the main thoroughfare and its horse-drawn cabs, and slipped through a back entrance, she could technically be on Cathedral grounds in time to help make dinner.
The city truly wasn’t that confusing, much as pilgrims complained that the districts bled together and the door fronts didn’t always face the expected direction.
It was simply much like the divine itself: difficult to parse when in the thick of it, and best understood through long study and the occasional overview from on high.
She’d had nearly twenty years, and plenty of time hanging out high cathedral windows, to take in the whole.
Her calculations were almost correct. It was only the wobble of a loose heel that slowed her. Shoes donated for charity had already walked a fair number of miles.
Csilla pulled the iron of the back gate closed with a sigh, adding ‘mend a boot’ to her list of tasks.
‘Csilla. I’ve been waiting.’
The quiet voice drew Csilla up short and dispersed the mental calculation.
Elder ágnes, her face shadowed by the peak of her red hood covering the frost-rime white of her hair.
The Head of the Mercy order must have been waiting for her arrival, and watching in feast day colours.
Csilla bit her lip. Had she missed something?
‘I’m sorry, Elder. There was just so much to do. I’m late for dinner, aren’t I?’
Whoever she’d inconvenienced would no doubt be cross, and then she’d have to apologise for that. She sighed. Sometimes it seemed like her life was nothing but apologies.
ágnes put a hand on her shoulder, urging her through the low door. ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. There’s something else for you to do.’
‘Hm?’ Csilla let herself be led back to where she slept, a windowless side room of the cloisters crammed with three small beds for visiting penitents to share. They came and went. She never left. ‘What else could there possibly be?’ Not that she wouldn’t do it, if asked, but she was tired.
A set of grey robes lay on the bed, the sleeves and hems embroidered with a dance of red poppies and lined in matching scarlet. The uniform of the Church’s mercy priests, the inverted match of ágnes’s colours. Her heart dropped.
‘Who died?’
She jumped to take the bundle before the older woman could reach for them.
If there were empty clothes, it was because a body had left them.
ágnes was sick enough without handling the things of the dead.
Illness had a tendency to creep, and the mercy priests were more often than not tending their own.
But the older woman shook her head, smile lines deepening around her heavy-lidded eyes.
‘They’re for you, dear.’
Csilla ran her fingers across the wool. The fabric was stiff with newness, not a single worn hem or stain.
‘For . . . me?’
ágnes nodded, her smile soft. ‘The Prelate has decided it’s time. Change and come quickly.’
‘Now?’ There was baby spit in her hair, and she had a broken boot, and she still wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t misheard.
The woman’s posture sharpened. ‘Unless our Lord has told you differently, yes, now.’
Csilla flushed. Elmere would be thrilled when she brought his next dose. ‘But . . .’
‘But?’ ágnes’s face softened, stepping forward to take Csilla’s cheeks in her dry palms. ‘My sweet girl, this is your reward. Be happy.’
‘I am!’ The words came out too quick, too young, and Csilla folded her hands together, half in reverence and half to hide the tremble. ‘I just never expected . . .’
She’d never expected anything. Hoped, yes. Prayed, often. Those were comforts. Expectations were what hurt.
But the wool was freshly dyed, the robe cut short for her scant height. ágnes was dressed for celebration. The Prelate was waiting for her.
ágnes ran a hand through Csilla’s chestnut hair, untangling the wind-mussed curls with a mother’s practiced grace.
‘Quickly, Csilla.’
Csilla stripped her dirty overdress. Cold puckered her skin as she slid the new robes over her linens, breathing deep of the smell of wool unstained by human sweat.
She adjusted everything so it fell properly and knotted the apron with care. There was only one last piece.
In ágnes’s palm was an iron mark of four, the cross-shaped reminder of the cardinal virtues: Knowledge, Justice, Obedience, Mercy.
The metal glowed warm like a firefly at dusk, reacting to the consecration on it and the goodness in ágnes’s touch. The connection between the creative spark of the divine and the Brilliance of the human soul, still visible thanks to Arany’s sacrifice.
Csilla kept her hands fisted at her side. If she touched it herself, she would break that fragile spell. ágnes pinned it to her chest with a smile of pride.
The last thing ágnes offered was a dark cloth, and Csilla bowed as it was wrapped over her eyes. Everyone, save the Prelate and the Incarnate, went to the heart of the cathedral blind.
They walked for long minutes before ágnes stopped, and papery lips brushed Csilla’s forehead. This close she could hear the rattle in the woman’s lungs, a sharpness with each breath that dug into Csilla in matching agony.
‘Whatever happens, remember that our job is to serve. Trust in the Church.’
Csilla furrowed her brow as a stronger arm took hers and she heard the slide of a door where she was fairly sure there shouldn’t be one. Trust should go without saying. She served, and she trusted, even as she was walked into the depths.
The Seal was well hidden in the labyrinth below the cathedral, surrounded by centuries of tunnelling passages that stretched from the sacred heart and out of the city, now mostly stoppered with sinkholes and refuse.
She’d learned the twists and corners of the structure like she’d learned her letters, and though this path was new and unfamiliar, the broken steps and cool damp air of the underground were old friends.
Her fingers dragged along the water-eaten wall as she was led through and back around bends and curves and odd corners, brushing lichen and the splintering wayward roots tunnelling through the walls, occasionally catching on something that might have been bone.
Before the orders came to save the land and burn the dead, Silgard had been built on the backs of the Faithful.
She’d crept below often in her childhood to search for blessed Arany’s sacrifice, breath heavy as she made prayers that wouldn’t be heard, and waited for the blossom of a miracle in the dark.
She’d never found the Seal, but today there would be a miracle. It wasn’t Gellért’s glass forest or Rozalia’s perfect corpse, but a welcome for a soulless girl was miraculous enough.
The door to the sanctum groaned like a dying thing as it opened, and the cloth was removed from her eyes.
Elder Abe, Prelate of Silgard and second only to the Incarnate in Asten’s eyes, ushered her into the prayer chamber, bony fingers pressing her lower back.
In his other hand was a knife, its handle twined gold and silver, inlaid with a topaz eye ever-glowing with inner fire.
Csilla pressed her palms together, eyes on the holy glitter of the blade in rushlights.
It was what she’d been waiting for.
The other orphans used to make a game of telling her there was a family who’d asked for her, and would help her comb her hair and offer her clean handkerchiefs, then laugh as she sat outside on the steps for hours.
They’d bet sweets and chores on how long she’d wait, but even after she’d caught on, Csilla still went.
There was always a chance that the next time they’d be telling the truth, and hope was stronger than the potential for humiliation.
Standing before the Prelate felt exactly the same.
‘Csilla,’ he greeted, inclining his head. His grey hair was clipped short, thinning to bald at the crown. ‘ágnes has you ready for your role, I see. It suits you.’
‘Prelate.’ She dipped low in response, her voice barely audible, the rest of her silently begging him to say why she was there and assure her thrumming heart that this wasn’t another jest.
He wasn’t wrong, though. The dove-grey wool, with its slaughter-red lining peeking out at her wrists and throat, did suit her.
She might not have a soul, but she’d served the city too long for it not to live in that empty place inside her, moulding her to minister to its needs.
Now anyone who saw her would think her a member of a mercy crew and know she was living shelter for their pain.