Chapter 7 Csilla #3
The single sheet in the book of orphans would say the same thing it did every time she’d looked: date found, name given, no family, adopted or otherwise, perhaps a note of her vows, then a blot over them if they’d been quick in their updates.
The one small notation of her existence in all the Union’s history, only to be edited if she married or had children, was reinstated, or died.
Only one of those things was looking likely at the moment.
The inquisitor rubbed the bridge of his nose.
‘Very well.’
But instead of leaving her to it, he stepped back in. Hopefully her smile looked grateful instead of concerned. It felt more like a grimace as she passed him.
The cathedral library was second only to the University stacks in its collection of knowledge, possibly also its size.
Wall-length windows were partially hidden by the shelving that stretched up to the level of the clerestory, the wood further blocking what light could come through the grime on glass too tall and awkwardly placed to clean regularly.
Ilan had gone to sit at one of the quill-knife-scratched tables, bent over something she couldn’t read, everything soft and hazy in the candlelight and dust. Erzsébet took the opportunity to steal into his lap, a paw occasionally tapping at the papers he was sorting, brushed back by a surprisingly gentle hand.
The little traitor was purring. Csilla glared, but the cat showed no remorse.
Fine, it was probably easier to search without her underfoot anyway. Csilla thumbed through bound texts on the pretence of a search, silently willing him to leave. There were a few volumes that looked very interesting and would open a tribunal of questions if she were caught looking.
Ilan didn’t move. He muttered to himself, he made notes, he occasionally shifted and clucked as the disloyal cat attempted to capture his attention with a headbutt to his face, but he didn’t leave or look at Csilla.
She stepped lightly around the room, trying to pretend she was simply confused, when her eyes fell on his work and she couldn’t stop a gasp.
It was what she wanted to see, but so much more horrific than she could have imagined.
There was a sketch of a girl’s body, exquisitely rendered and grotesquely intimate, and across her chest there were carved symbols, not wholly unfamiliar.
Beneath the paper were older works, notes of demons and the hero priests and saints who vanquished them, Ilan’s notations fresh over the yellowed pages with their browning letters.
She brushed her wrist where Mihály had touched her as if some holiness lingered.
‘Shadow script?’
The words escaped before she could help it. Mihály had been right. There was something dark here. No one in Silgard would risk those corrupted words. There were knives that killed a body, and there were words that destroyed a soul.
‘You know it?’
There was a measured note in his voice as he turned, gaze suddenly sharp and pinning, and she stepped back until her shoulders hit the stacks.
‘I’ve seen it.’ Not like this, not written on flesh. ‘When I was little they thought I might be . . .’ She flushed to say it. ‘A demon, or something adjacent. They tried to make me read.’
She’d been made to kneel on stone until her knees bruised, offered book after book until she’d ruined pages with frustrated snot and tears and earned a cuff on the back of her head. Even now she curled in on herself at the memory, forcing it back with a shove.
‘Could you?’ His eyes swept her as if he could possibly see something the scholar priests had missed.
‘Of course not!’ The words were hot with the shame that still squeezed her chest at the memory.
‘Useless, then.’ He leaned back in the chair, Erzsébet jumping to the floor at the sudden shift.
It wasn’t like she was ever anything else.
‘Is it real?’ The words fluttered as they left her lips. Real, as in not a copy made by someone who had studied the imperfect remains from before the Severing. Real, as in written in the hand of a demon itself.
Ilan didn’t answer but instead raised a hand to beckon her closer, pushing the papers slightly to the side. There were three other bodies.
‘Saints preserve,’ Csilla whispered, brushing her mark as a ward, though the paper couldn’t hurt her.
‘Does it look familiar at all? From what they showed you before.’
It was a simple question, but still unfamiliar enough to throw her, and she stalled. Every line he’d drawn was once part of a breathing person.
He looked back, a pale eyebrow arched. ‘I don’t remember taking your tongue.’
Csilla forced herself to step to his shoulder and look.
‘They’re . . . different. All complete, for one thing.’
The examples of Shadow invocations she’d been brought had all been broken, lost to time, or even for those not, a syllable here or there purposefully left blank or reversed to avoid any accidental workings.
‘Complete or correct?’
She flinched at the way his tone snapped like the crack of one of his whips.
‘That I wouldn’t know. But the scholars never brought full lines.’ She reached over him, finger hovering just above the inked marks. ‘Whoever did this writes it well.’ Even on flesh.
‘Well enough to curse us. Not that any of those supposed scholars have been dispatched to confirm it.’ The frustration in his voice was dangerously close to soul-blotting anger.
‘And this all happened in Silgard?’
A cold shiver passed over her scars. His eyes flicked in hesitation, then he nodded.
‘It’s no secret we’ve found bodies.’
This was so much more than bodies. If any word had leaked, it was no wonder the people were afraid, and that the Seal was suffering.
‘You think they’re related? That there’s a demon?’
Her words became hushed. The demons had all been imprisoned after the Severing, and even before, the Shadow-born creatures struggled to raise physical form for long and had to borrow skins to work in a world that still held too much of the divine for their comfort.
Those possessed by them could never hide from Asten’s Eye; the testing glass would read their soul and show them for what they were the moment they tried to enter. There couldn’t be one here.
He didn’t answer, only closed his eyes.
‘Finish what you came for and go. Don’t touch anything else, and I’ll pretend I never saw you.’
He went to stack the papers and books together, clumsy with exhaustion, and she raised her hand.
‘I’ll clean up here. You can start fresh tomorrow. Please, rest. I owe you.’ Let him think it was repayment for his kindness in not asking for harsher punishment and for talking to her at all. And it was, in part. ‘I’ve already seen it all, anyway.’
Ilan snorted. ‘You don’t owe me a thing. My honesty was for my own sake, not yours.’
She hadn’t expected any less. ‘That doesn’t mean I’m not grateful.’
He met her gaze then, cool and steady, and rose.
‘Stack everything together and put it over there. Don’t get anything out of order.’
He inclined his head to a corner that held nothing more interesting than construction orders from two decades back. No one would bother anything there.
She held her breath and counted to thirty after the door closed behind him.
A horrified fascination overcame her as she sank into the seat with the stack of papers, ignoring Erzsébet’s biting and pulling at her bootlaces.
Four victims. The unholy details burned themselves in her mind as her stomach twisted further with each page of etched brutality.
The killings were scattered across the city, the dead with nothing in common but their misfortune and families left to mourn them.
No wonder the Church had been so keen to see Mihály dead.
If people were already turning away from the Church under his influence, they would be that much closer to damnation if death came to them before they could make right.
His spark of divinity couldn’t counter this.
And if the lack of faith was the reason the Seal was faltering, letting all this out would be its death knell.
In all the horror, there was hope. If she saved the city from something worse than heresy, they’d have to take her back. She could make up for all her wrongs and perhaps show the Church one of theirs as well.
She shuffled through the papers, looking for a blank piece. There was no way around the fact that her investigation would have to start with one small sin.
A piece towards the bottom only had a few scrawled street names, and she pulled it from the pile and began to copy out the names of the victims, and the details as far as she understood. She couldn’t bring herself to replicate the Shadow script, but names would give her a good place to start.
Erzsébet was less pleased, pacing across the table and causing Csilla to scatter blooms of ink where she tried to wave the cat off. When she was finished, she had her names, but there was also a mess, and a little black paw print in signature.
She blew on the paper to dry, eyes on the lightening sky outside. At least she’d be gone before Ilan realised what she’d stolen.