Chapter 6
Six
Mercy
Morning comes, and I’m still on my knees in the reliquary, raw fingers sticky with dust and sweat, cataloging holy contraband like I’m some kind of deranged librarian.
Sunlight claws through cracks in the boarded windows, but I refuse to turn on the overheads.
The last thing I want is to be noticed and stopped from finishing my job.
The Rev’s comment about punishment shamed me enough yesterday that I couldn’t even think about putting the cilices on. This busy work is the only thing keeping my body from exploding out of my skin, but it feels like I’m no closer to securing our most valuable items than I was a week ago.
Goddammit.
I straighten and rub sweat from my forehead with my forearm, then sweep the dusty room with a glance and try to recalibrate my plan of attack.
At first, when we learned that Cisco was Entity, I rushed here and discovered big, clumsy male fingerprints on far too many items. Those, I squirreled away first to the secret bunker beneath the barn.
But when I returned, I didn’t know where to begin triaging the centuries-old collection.
A week has passed, and I still don’t know.
“How do I know what’s important?” I asked the Reverend Mother when she poked her head in early this morning.
I could be the only one standing between truth and fiction when the Vatican inevitably rewrites history.
The Rev, although weary, hobbled along an aisle and traced gnarled fingers across flipped pages of books, diaries, and ledgers. In the end, she looked at me and said, “You are a Sinner. Whatever calls to you is important.”
“Everything calls to me.”
The Vatican’s SWAT team could be here any day, pilfering our precious history. I can’t save everything. Who am I to judge whose life, whose fight, is not worth preserving?
“I can’t help you,” she said. “This is your legacy.”
“Yours too,” I grumped. “You’re one of us.”
She stared at me, long and hard in that penetrating way of hers.
“I have supported you as best I can, but I am not one of you. I did not bleed for the cause, Mercy. I did not put my soul on the line.” She swept her gaze over the dusty room one last time.
“That sacrifice, that honor, goes to you, girls.”
Gritting my teeth, I went to work and only allowed myself to breathe once the Rev left the room.
Hours later, I’m still looking at each relic and thinking it’s more important than the last. I’m still thinking about the stupid prophecy, about how one of us Sinners is destined for a Saint.
And I’m feeling helpless. Contained. Alone. Abandoned.
And when that happens, when my heart goes silent, my body likes to remind me it’s still there. The craving claws at me. It tells me I might be a slut, but I’m not a slave. It reminds me that I’m certainly not a woman who likes to get fucked in the ass lying down.
I’m the one they send in when every other Sinner has failed. So, when I think of which of us five Sinners is built for breaking a priest’s vows, I already know the answer. Just like I know it will happen over my dead body.
Before hearing about it, I was quite happy with the thought of fucking the priest. In fact, I got off on it.
Multiple times. But the wanting was mine.
It was private and chosen. Now some moldy bit of parchment is telling me the wanting was never mine at all, that I’m supposed to fall into his bed because fate said so, because God said so, because the same kind of bullshit my mother used to peddle has dressed itself up in robes and become official.
Fuck that. I didn’t work this hard to be at the top of my game just so a stupid prophecy could control my life.
“I’ll fuck whoever I want, thank you very much, Mary Magdalene.”
I harrumph righteously and tug another artifact out of a velvet-lined drawer. The tag says: Ex Voto—St. Agnes, c. 1450, and it belongs to a battered silver heart, all scorched edges and sharp points. Maybe it’s meant to make believers bleed for their blessings.
“Girl,” I mutter. “I can relate.”
It doesn’t seem important, and it’s not on the Spanish manifest the Rev gave me last night, so I put it in the maybe pile and log its number in my leather-bound ledger.
Not for the first time, I wonder if it matters that I’m doing this.
We’re going to be erased anyway. To avoid thinking about it more, I focus on the work, fingers moving fast. Tag.
Wrap. Stash. The secret bunker under the old barn outside is not even close to full, but I’ll keep stowing every relic I can before the Entity gets its greedy mitts on our history.
I only stop for food, a shower, and to check in on Raven, who isn’t in her room. Mid-morning turns to afternoon, and then the sunlight sneaking through the boarded windows grows dim.
We’re due to have another team meeting after dinner. That gives me less than an hour to sneak the next load of relics out to the bunker before anyone notices.
One more item.
I remove a journal from a stack, but the binding cord is attached to another bundle. I accidentally tug that too, and a long, canvas-wrapped stick falls heavily on me, pluming dust. A name on the dangling tag startles me.
Joan.
No one’s called me that in years. Weird seeing it, particularly after the Rev’s comment yesterday dredged up bad memories of my past. I try to shake it off, but my heart beats faster, and my mouth goes dry.
Fractured glimpses from my childhood arise.
Me, being jerked roughly from the neighbor’s backyard pool.
Wrapped in a towel so big I couldn’t breathe. The muffled apologies of my mother…
“Look at you, Joan,” she hissed, tugging me by the earlobe home. “Flaunting it for all the neighborhood men to see. It’s no wonder your father gets dirty looks.”
“What did I do?” I wailed, fumbling my hold on the towel. My mother had bought me the swimsuit.
“You’re a little Jezebel.” She huffed and yanked the towel tighter around my body. “Just asking for trouble. Don’t you come crying to me when you get it.”
Sharp pain in my palm snaps me back to the present.
I glance down. Blood smears a line along the gaping wound in the canvas bundle from where I gripped too tightly.
It must be a blade. Without a clean rag in sight to stanch the bleeding, I shove my palm against my mouth and suck once, tasting copper and dust.
I can’t stop looking at the bulky package and lean in for a closer inspection. I’m almost disappointed that I don’t find any telltale fingerprints on the packaging.
But it’s just a sword.
Then why can’t I look away?
Whatever calls to you is important.
A frenetic energy skips over my flesh. Before I know it, I’m unwrapping the cord with haste, heedless of the pain in my cut palm. I need to see the blade. I need to find out why my birth name was on the tag.
The journal gets in the way, so I cut it free and resume unwrapping. With each layer revealed, that pull grows stronger.
It belongs to me.
Mine.
The canvas gives way and pools on the floor with another plume of dust. I don’t realize I’m hoping for a flash of holy light or a surge of power until I see the sword is dull.
Rusty. The blade is battered and pitted with scars.
The grip is missing from the dented hilt.
It’s the kind of broken weapon you’d pawn for cash or use to gut a pig.
Absolutely not relic material. But something about it is wrong, in that dangerous, overlooked way all Sinners are familiar with.
My breath stutters. There, at the base of the handle: Five crosses have been burned into the steel, and below them is a fleur-de-lis.
Goosebumps break out on my skin as I brush off dust from the companion journal. The name on the sword’s tag is Joan, but when I open the journal, it’s labeled: Jehanne de Vouthon.
I pull out the manifest. Jehanne is listed, but not Joan … but she was never known by that name until after she was dead.
I flip to the first page of the journal. French words have been scratched into the paper so hard that they’ve torn clean through: “La relique requiert miséricorde parfaite.”
I gasp, slam shut the journal, and then press my palm to my fluttering heart.
My French is good enough to get a man into bed and out of his wallet, so I recognize it well enough.
But this … this is something else. The script is all fussy, spiked letters, and the words are … off. Puffy. Old. Medieval.
Cautiously, I open the book again and read the words to be sure I wasn’t hallucinating: The relic demands perfect mercy.
Holy shit.
This belongs to Joan of Arc, and … my name was Joan, and … my new name is inside the journal.
Is this really mine?
They say the archangel Michael himself gave Joan this sword. They say it erupts into flame and … that’s all I remember from the stories in the history lessons I took after joining the Sisterhood.
Is it a divine relic, after all?
Prickling panic engulfs me, and I take a step back. I shouldn’t want it to be mine. If it is, then the prophecy is real—I shudder.
An eternity of time seems to pass as I stare at the sword and journal. I feel as though it’s calling to me, latching onto me through the air and urging me forward.
Is this real, or is this my imagination?
I step forward again and quickly flip past the first ruined entries. Too much is illegible through the devastation caused by the writing on the first page. That means that the first line must have been important. Surely.
Before I know it, I’m sitting on the dusty floor and tilting the book toward the light to read the handwritten scrawl.