Chapter 18
The chamber where they were held was clearly meant to house the more traditional kind of jih spirit, the ones that walked on four or six or eight legs, had horns or wings or breathed fire.
There were barred windows just beneath the ceiling, letting in light from the fires of the wider temple, and the interior was painted white.
There were thousands of scratches on the walls from the monsters that had been kept there before them.
Elver shuddered to look at them. Also in the chamber were two deep trenches; one filled with water, the other with piles of what looked like kitchen scraps.
She longed to press a hand to her neck, which was bleeding a little, but her hands were still bound.
‘What even is it?’ asked Artair. He had the black coin in one hand, lying flat in his palm.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Just looking at the token made Elver angry. ‘Some piece of cruelty. She’s given you that to make you think there’s some hope. The Bloody Claw feeds on suffering.’
‘When I asked how it worked, she said I knew.’ He tapped the surface of it with his index finger, then picked it up and held it to his eye. He rubbed his thumb over the shape etched into the surface. Nothing happened. ‘Maybe she’s not ready yet.’
‘Or maybe it’s a lie.’
‘I don’t know what she meant. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life.’ Artair sighed. ‘What will they do to us?’
Elver turned to find him looking up at the bars.
‘Purify us in Trilot’s holy fire,’ she said, then shrugged. ‘I don’t know what that means, but I doubt it’ll be a good time. I know that no other monster has ever returned after being caught by a faceless priest. At least, that’s what the Queen of Serpents tells us.’
‘Perhaps it’s a metaphor.’ When she gave him a long look, he continued. ‘I mean, perhaps it’s a ritual they have to do to appease Trilot, and then they’ll let us go.’
‘Artair,’ she said. ‘They’re going to kill us.’
In the silence that followed, they both heard the distant sound of chanting, the same set of indistinct words over and over. It was beautiful and terrible.
Artair pointed at the water and the food. ‘Why feed us then, if they’re going to kill us?’
‘I don’t know, monk.’ She sighed. ‘Maybe they like to keep the ones they burn alive for special feast days. I doubt that will apply to us, though.’
‘It’s madness! We haven’t done anything to them.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She wandered over to look at the food.
Potato peelings, half-gnawed bones, partially rotten apples.
‘They hate us.’ She took a deep breath. ‘For what it’s worth, monk, I’m sorry.
I’m the one who burned that priest and got us into this mess.
I might be poison, but as far as I can see, you haven’t done anything wrong. Apart from try to save your friends.’
He joined her by the food and water trenches and took a folded piece of material from within his robe. He dipped it into the water until it was sodden, then squeezed most of the moisture out.
‘Here.’ He stepped towards her. ‘Let me clean that. The water’s good and cold at least, so it should numb it a little. If what you say is about to happen is going to happen, then… I don’t see why you should be in pain.’
She hesitated. Standing this close to a human—to someone who looked human, she corrected herself—was still difficult.
But he could touch her without being in pain, without dying, and that was a bright, curious thing.
He leaned in close, carefully cleaning the black blood away, moving the cold cloth down her throat, and then dabbing gently at her torn skin.
His spare hand settled on her shoulder to steady her, and periodically his warm fingers would brush against her collarbone.
His touch was different to Lucian’s, she noted: when Lucian had taken her hand after they’d freed the monsters in the fair, he had grasped it fiercely—not painfully, but in a way that suggested this touch was the most valuable thing to him in all the world.
It was something he craved. Artair, in comparison, was gentle.
She watched his face as he worked, so still with concentration.
His brown eyes had golden flecks in them, she realized, only visible when she was this close.
It felt like being given something secret, something hidden.
When he finished and stood back, she felt a small pang.
Idiot , she told herself. You’re about to be burned to a crisp for all you know, and you’re grateful to have a tiny cut attended to.
That wasn’t it, though. The thought of his hands burned in an entirely different way. A way that worried her.
‘That’s better.’ He seemed to notice the way she was looking at him, so she turned her head away.
‘Thank you,’ she said shortly.
‘Elver, that faceless priest you burned. He said something to you about… what you get up to at night.’ When she looked back at him, he was blushing faintly, his brown eyes very dark. ‘What did he mean? I know that you had to hit the evil spirit. Was there something more?’
‘His name is Lucian,’ she said, and watched the surprise that passed over his face. ‘I take it you didn’t know that.’
Artair looked as though she’d struck him. ‘You’re talking to him? To it?’
‘Listen.’ She took a step towards him, feeling wild. ‘If Lucian is an it to you, what does that make me?’
‘That’s different.’
‘How?’
‘He is… destructive. You don’t know what he’s done. Why I was put in the Golden Tower of Perpetual Morning in the first place.’
‘So tell me.’
‘I can’t.’
She shook her head. ‘Well I guess if you’re lucky, Trilot the Faceless will just burn Lucian away and you’ll be left pure finally. Right?’
‘Elver…’
There was a rattle at the door and a masked priest stepped inside carrying a long spear with a lethally sharp point. Through the eyeholes of the mask it was possible to see a pair of eyes ringed in white makeup.
‘Jih creatures,’ she said. ‘It is time to face your judgement.’
They were taken to another, larger chamber, this one also painted white and lit with what Artair thought must be thousands of candles; they rested on every surface, pale wax in little pools everywhere, dribbling down wood and stone alike.
Consequently, it was hot inside the chamber, and he felt sweat prickle across his back and over his chest. When he glanced at Elver, he saw that even her pale face looked flushed, the blue slashes of her scars standing out especially clear.
In the centre of the chamber, there was a giant faceted crystal, twice as tall as a human, held in place on its point by a thick silver collar; it was as clear as glass, with a shimmer of golden glitter running through it.
Priests with featureless masks ringed the crystal in circles, all on their knees, save for the one called Faceless Isnere, who was watching them approach with his gloved hands folded in front of him.
Kantor Witt was there too, a shabby figure at the back of the room.
‘There you are.’ Isnere gestured to the guards. ‘First, we have some outstanding business to attend to. Bring in the creature.’
Belatedly, Artair realized a crowd of faceless priests had entered the chamber behind them and in the midst of the group there was an animal—no, a jih spirit, a monster.
It looked a little like the winged cat they had seen in Booster Barnham’s fair, only smaller, and its fur was striped rather than spotted.
There was a manacle around its neck and chains around its legs, and they were dragging it towards the crystal.
The monster hissed and spat at them, thrashing its bat-like wings madly, but there were too many priests.
Next to him, Elver struggled with the guards, her yellow eyes wide.
‘No!’ she yelled at the top of her voice. ‘Let her go! Let her go, you bastards!’
‘What are you doing?’ Artair shouted at Isnere but the priest just watched him, impassive.
‘Let her go or I’ll kill all of you, I swear it!’
‘See what a tiny fraction of our lord’s power can do,’ Isnere said softly, as though neither of them had spoken. ‘Watch, and be assured that your souls too will be cleansed.’
The crystal in the centre of the room flickered with light, as though the sun had somehow passed through the room.
Rays of white flashed out from it, passing over the jih creature and turning it briefly into a monochrome thing, the stripes on its back washed out, the pupils of its eyes shrinking to dots. It screamed.
‘Stop it!’ Artair found that he was shouting too. ‘Why are you doing this?’ He glanced at Elver. ‘You’re hurting her!’
The white light intensified, and the winged cat curled up on itself, like a creature trying to get out of the rain, while little curls of smoke-like steam began to rise from its wings and fur.
It had stopped screaming, which was somehow worse.
Artair squeezed the black coin in his fist, willing Dalesh to appear.
If you can stop this, then do it! But nothing happened.
Instead, the white light grew so bright he had to look away, and when it abruptly went out he turned back to see a small, shabby shape on the stones where the winged cat had been.
He blinked furiously, trying to make sense of it past the after-images that danced in front of his eyes.
‘You bastards,’ Elver was saying. ‘You human scum.’
It was a cat, he realized, just a normal tabby cat that you might see in any tavern in any city, all trace of its jih nature burned from it. And it was dead.
‘Trilot be praised,’ said Faceless Isnere. ‘Now, have them kneel.’
Strong arms forced Artair down. He considered resisting—he was stronger than them, he was sure of it—but the priestess with the spear still had its point resting at Elver’s lower back.
There’s a chance we could survive the cleanse , he thought. But Elver won’t survive a spear in the back. I have to take the chance.
And what if the Other was burned away instead? a little voice in his head replied. You’d be free, finally.
The priests were chanting again. Elver was kneeling next to him, her hands still tied behind her back. There was movement within the crystal, a kind of shimmering light that dipped and soared, gradually forming a shape. A humanoid figure. Slowly, it came into focus.
‘My lord,’ said Faceless Isnere, ‘we bring you the tainted jih creatures of the Queen of Serpents, held here for your purifying light.’
‘Purifying light, my arse,’ Elver said, very loudly. Her chest was rising and falling quickly, anger giving way to fear.
I’m looking at one of the Twelve gods , thought Artair. This is Trilot the Faceless.
The god was a creature of white cloth, white porcelain, and empty space.
There was a figure there filling out the shining white robe, and there was a simple clay mask with lips, nose and eyelids, but beyond that…
nothing. Artair could see no head behind the mask or neck rising from the collar of the robes.
The eyeholes of the mask were empty, yet the figure moved, and even spoke.
Twisted, tainted ones , he said. Receive my light and be cleansed.
Trilot the Faceless held out his gloved hands, and a bright, white light once again began to grow from the crystal.
The shadows of the surrounding priests lengthened, reaching out for the walls of the chamber, their edges painfully sharp, while the priests themselves bowed their heads.
The light grew stronger, pulsing like a heartbeat, until it became unbearable.
Even with his eyes closed, Artair could see it.
Next to him, he heard Elver cry out and he forced his eyes open again.
She was curled in on herself, her face a rictus of pain.
Little tendrils of white smoke were rising from her skin, and when he looked at his own hand, he saw the same happening to him.
Without thinking about it, he leaned over her, trying to shield her with his own body.
‘Stop that!’ Faceless Isnere’s voice came from somewhere above them. ‘Separate them. They must be alone for the judgement.’
Before they pulled them apart, Elver briefly pressed her face to his chest, as if finding comfort there, and he felt a pang of mingled terror and sadness. There was so much more to do , he thought.
The light seemed to hit him with a peculiar weight, like bony hands holding him down, pushing him into the marble floor.
He saw his own fist clenched against the stones, bleached of all colour, and he felt a sharp pain in his palm.
The coin, he remembered, with its sharp edges, was cutting into his flesh, and when he moved, close to losing consciousness, he saw a red smear against the white—the only colour left in the chamber.
And then there was another light, blood red and somehow familiar.
Several priests cried out, and there was a crackling sound, like a fire burning out of control.
Artair lifted his head in time to see a portal lined in red fire and Magistrate Dalesh standing in it.
Beyond her, he could see darkened countryside and a thin slither of the moon between the clouds.
After the unforgiving whiteness of the room, it felt like a blessing, like a drink of cold water on a hot day.
‘Quickly, you two,’ she snapped, ‘on your feet.’
Meanwhile, something strange was happening to the floor.
Pulsing pink tendrils were oozing up between the cracks in the flag stones, growing at an alarming speed.
They were wet and somehow… meaty. Artair lurched to his feet as the tendrils began to grasp at the priests, circling their ankles and holding them in place when they tried to run.
The light from the crystal was flickering; Artair saw Trilot the Faceless cock his mask to one side in apparent bemusement.
Elver was already running for the portal, hopping over the pink tendrils as easily as she did the debris of the forest floor.
‘Grab them!’ Isnere yelled. ‘Magistrate, I will know the meaning of this insult!’
Some of the priests tried to reach them—Artair saw Kantor Witt wrestling fiercely with the pink tendrils on the far side of the chamber, his mouth contorted with rage, but it was too late.
Elver hopped through the portal, and then Dalesh was reaching through for Artair.
He stepped up out of the Temple of Trilot and stepped down into a cold autumn night in the woods.
A handful of seconds later, the portal vanished, leaving behind a faint, wild scent of unwashed beast.