Chapter 49 Maeve #2
His chest rose and fell with laboured breaths. ‘Too long I have sat idly by. I’ve watched acolytes become saints, become exiles. That ends today. We’re going to save Jude, then burn it all. Is that not what you’re here to do too, Maeve? You read my letter. My warning. And still… you came back.’
‘Yes.’ She cleared her throat as one of the tight knots around her chest loosened. Something close to hope lit a flame she wasn’t ready to tamp out. ‘We came back to destroy it all. To save us from the Abbey. From sainthood.’
Whatever he saw in her face must have settled him, for Felix turned, pulling a heavy tarp off a barrel Maeve hadn’t noticed at first glance. She took a startled step back. ‘What is it?’
‘Kerosene,’ he replied. ‘I found it a few days ago when I discovered this tunnel. There’s a separate door that opens up just behind the confessional booths we can sneak the barrel up through.
We’re going to soak the lower icons on the wall and hope all of them catch when they go up.
It’ll be faster than trying to light each icon individually. ’
Maeve swallowed, head spinning. Clearly, this was something Felix had been planning for a long time. ‘What about all the people in the basilica? There are hundreds of acolytes and pilgrims in there.’
He was quiet for a long moment. His hand came up to rub absently at the burn on the side of his face.
‘We’ll do our best to warn them. To get them out if it’s possible.
But I have to advise you they won’t be… themselves, exactly.
Something about the ritual, the singing, the prayers, it erases rationality.
Creates a sort of group psychosis. It may prove difficult to get them to leave before the smoke becomes too much to ignore. ’
Her own memories of the ritual stretched its legs, reminding her of the haze such a fevered event could bring.
Felix knelt, fiddling with something on the side of the barrel, his familiarity with the object pulling at something in her. Jude had told her he tried to burn the Abbey, that he had help. He’d spoken of a fellow acolyte handing over money in a dank cellar, of his hands damp with kerosene.
Her gaze fell on Felix’s scarred throat.
‘Felix?’ she asked, throwing inhibition to the wind. He glanced up, distracted, wary. ‘Did you help Jude start the Abbey fire years ago?’
He flinched. ‘I… how did you know? Did Jude tell you?’
‘No…’ Maeve shook her head. ‘He doesn’t remember. At least not fully. I just… something he said reminded me, and I thought – maybe.’
Felix sighed. ‘We used to be friends, he and I. Back when friendships were still somewhat… tolerated, not like it is now. I tried to look after him. I didn’t realize what was happening with Ezra until it was too late.
Jude came to me—’ his jaw flexed. ‘He wanted out. We both had started showing signs of magic and heard the rumours of what happened to acolytes who became saints. He was… scared. More so for Ezra’s son than for himself. ’
‘Ezra’s son?’ Maeve questioned, aghast. She knelt down beside him.
‘Yes. I think so. My recollections are… not clear.’ A slight tremor passed through his body. ‘At least where he’s involved.’
‘Who is he?’ she whispered. ‘I had no idea Ezra had a son.’
‘No one did. He kept it secret. I think Ezra was disappointed when he didn’t show signs of memory magic.’ Felix picked at one of the knots around the barrel, his voice dropping. ‘I wish I remembered his name, his face, anything about him. Gone.’ He shook his head. ‘Gone. Just like he is.’
‘What happened after the fire?’ Maeve asked.
‘There are parts of it that are mostly lost to me,’ Felix said.
‘The planning that went into it, how we actually started the blaze—’ he patted the kerosene barrel.
‘I think this is left over from that attempt. Like I said, I found it a few days ago. We must have brought it in all those years ago and didn’t use it.
’ He shrugged. ‘I remember the fire being put out fairly swiftly. I don’t know what happened to Ezra’s son.
They’d told us he’d died… but I’m not sure. It doesn’t add up.’
Above them, the singing grew louder. Maeve glanced up before returning her gaze to Felix. His eyes were unfocused, locked somewhere just behind her as he fought to remember.
‘The elders caught Jude. He covered for me. Took the full blame for the incident.’ Despair lay heavy in his voice.
‘He was exiled, as you know. But me… I was offered a deal. Blackmailed into it, really. I’m meant to be a figurehead; an example of the Abbey’s power.
To encourage devotion to the thing I tried to burn down. And—’ he took a deep breath.
Maeve studied him as he spoke. The familiarity in his features was from more than just painting him, more than seeing him stand on the altar, his hands lifted in prayer.
‘I was threatened,’ Felix continued. ‘My mother is still alive. She’s in the Goddenwood, but it was made clear to me that could be changed very quickly, should I step out of line.
They have ahold of my magic and my memories, as you well know.
Everything I do is under their control. Even this—’ he swept his hand across the room, the barrel of kerosene ‘—was only possible because they’re distracted by the intercession and by your and Jude’s arrival. ’
Maeve had viewed Felix almost like an icon himself for much of her upbringing.
As a saint, he rarely interacted with the rabble of acolytes who called the Abbey home.
He was brought out for important rituals and the seasonal intercessions, always at a distance.
Outside of their portrait sessions, most of her view of Felix comprised of hearsay and her own imaginings.
She wondered what life had been like for him – a saint forced to live as an exile in his own home.
It was hard to imagine a lonelier existence.
‘Why is this time any different?’ she asked. ‘If you tried to burn the icons, and it didn’t work… why now? Why will it work now?’
‘The ritual,’ Felix said. ‘All the prayers build power in the icons. A ritual wasn’t happening when we tried to burn the Abbey as boys.
I think that made a difference.’ His expression hardened, a strained line appearing between his brows.
‘The Call of the Sun is about to begin, and Jude’s life is on the line.
We can’t just sit back and let the Abbey continue to do what they want without care or regard over who is crushed along the way. ’
Sometimes, Maeve realized, revolution wasn’t down to planning or timing or every facet lining up into the perfect moment; it was about perseverance. Determination to see it through no matter how strongly the odds were stacked against them.
‘If this works,’ she said carefully. ‘You’ll no longer be under their control. You’ll have your magic back. You can free your mother from the Goddenwood.’
Felix tensed. He gave a short nod.
There was nothing more to say. She helped him wiggle the barrel onto a wheeled trolley, and, together, they started to push the barrel from the room and up the stairs towards the basilica and the sound of singing.
She’d made herself smaller, eating the Abbey’s words like she was starving and they were the only things that could make her full. She’d closed her eyes and bowed her head, praying to the saints to make her whole, all while the elders watched, knowing she was offering herself up for them to take.
No longer.
She gritted her teeth and pushed harder. Soon, it would all burn.