Chapter 15 The Burial #2
Burr, whose horrified eyes ricocheted between the Saint’s gun and his bleeding master, was very aware that two guns were still pointed at him. Without any further show of bravery, he dropped his own pistol and turned his palms up in surrender.
“Who hired you?” St. Silas asked unhurriedly, as if he was having a pleasant conversation with an old friend. He walked toward the revolver on the ground and pocketed it.
Burr’s lips barely moved in response. “M-Mr. Martin.”
“How uninspired.” Although this revelation astonished Leena, St. Silas seemed unsurprised. Were they speaking of the very same tradesman who now owned Weavingshaw?
“Yes, sir. That’s all we know, I swear,” Burr stuttered.
St. Silas assessed the boy and the moaning Mackenzie dispassionately. “Leave, before I fancy shooting your remaining hand. Or practicing on the other ear.”
Mackenzie, still clutching his gaping palm, staggered to his feet. But just as he and Burr turned to leave, St. Silas stopped them. “The sword. Give it back.”
Both Al-Sayer siblings jolted.
His chin quivering beneath the glare of moonlight, Burr unsheathed the sword from his hip and threw it toward them on the grass. No one spoke as they watched the two Black Coats disappear through the winding woods.
“Thank you,” Rami said haltingly. His head swayed, and he grimaced as he attempted to stand on his own.
Leena could not look away from the body that lay unmoving by her feet, the blood staining the grass a midnight black.
She still held the dagger in her hands, and she had to consciously uncurl her stiff fingers to let it go.
In the span of less than a month, two Black Coats had lain dead at her feet.
But this time, she’d had a direct hand in it.
She brought a fist to her forehead to block out her panic.
“Leena, are you all right?” Rami tried to make his way to her, but collapsed. She turned to the sound of her brother falling, eyes swimming, landscape blurring. She wanted to ask if he was well, but the words lodged in her throat painfully.
Leena staggered toward her brother just as St. Silas pocketed Rami’s pistol before hoisting her brother up with a hand below his shoulder, guiding him along the path back toward the carriage.
Leena picked up Rami’s sword and walked closely behind them, the moonlight now starker than ever.
She could finally admit that a part of her was not sure that she or Rami would have survived the night, and they certainly wouldn’t have done so without the Saint. It was a bitter truth to carry—far heavier than the sword in her hand.
They returned to the carriage. Arthur, who drove St. Silas’s team, was discreet, and he wasted no time in helping St. Silas lift Rami into the carriage.
He didn’t remark on Rami’s battered appearance nor the blood that soaked Leena’s sleeves.
Within minutes of settling him in, Rami had fallen into the deep sleep that follows a shock, his breathing coming fast and short in his chest.
“We must bury the body,” Leena whispered, turning to view the clearing. It hurt to speak.
She felt St. Silas still.
When she turned to look at him in question, his eyes were made darker by the filtered moonlight. “Leave it. The Black Coats will find him in the morning.”
Leena remembered how the Black Coat’s flesh had felt as her knife serrated it, like cutting through silk.
The frayed control she held over herself was unraveling. The Saint did not understand; she must bury the body tonight. If her hand did not mold itself over the handle of a shovel now, it would forevermore carry the feeling of the knife instead.
“Tonight.” She did not recognize the near-hysteria in her own voice; very rarely had she ever felt so undone. “Tonight.” She swallowed again. “You can leave. I will go back.”
“He is dead.” St. Silas’s voice was flat. “It will keep.” She knew that tone well; there would be no arguments that would sway him. Nothing that would shift his forceful eyes.
For the second time that night, without waiting for his permission, Leena jumped down from the carriage.
His iron grip held her steady. “What if I forbid you?” His eyes were hard, but there was a crack in his voice.
Her own voice was unsteady. “Then I will return, even if you drag me back and lock me in my room. I will force my way back to bury him.”
“Your misplaced sentiments are foolish,” he gritted out.
She put her hand over his clasped fingers. “Let me go.”
“Or else?”
“Or else I will never speak of Lord Avon again, contract or no.” She was unwavering, her brows drawn and set on her face. “Some things are worth the sacrifice.”
They stared at each other for a searing moment.
“The burial—” he began, before cutting himself off harshly, abruptly releasing her.
Finally, St. Silas let out a staggered breath before dragging his hand through his hair. It was such an uncharacteristically human gesture it made Leena pause. If she had not known better, she would have said he was angry. No, not angry—agitated.
The only reply she got was an imperceptible nod of his head. Without waiting for her, he headed back toward the clearing.
With one final worried glance at her brother, who still lay deeply asleep, Leena followed.
—
The bullet had hit the corpse in the middle of his forehead, an unsurprisingly perfect shot, and the river of blood and brain matter concealed his face from view.
Leena preferred it that way.
“Is his ghost with you?” St. Silas broke her heavy thoughts, his voice oddly quiet.
“No,” Leena whispered, making another careful search. “Thank the Saints.”
They found a wooden shed with an assortment of garden tools, including two rusted shovels.
The rain had softened the soil. St. Silas rolled up his sleeves and began digging without prelude, the hard muscles of his back coiling with every mound of soil he lifted.
Exhausted, Leena worked beside him—albeit at a slower pace, in spite of her best efforts to keep up.
A few times she glanced over at St. Silas. He worked almost mechanically, a distant look in his eyes. Even in her haze of misery, she could not account for his strange behavior.
The task was long and arduous. The earth beneath them was not meant to be a burial ground, and it opposed their unsaintly digging.
“Speak.” So focused was Leena on her task that she thought she had imagined St. Silas’s voice. She paused and turned to him, but he did not stop, hard eyes fixed on the earth before him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Speak. Say anything. I cannot abide the silence.”
Leena’s mouth parted, both weariness and confusion making her slow to react to his words. But as her focus cleared, she regarded the rigidity of his expression and understood his unsaid meaning—I cannot abide the silence while I am creating this grave.
After another long, searching moment, Leena murmured, picking up her own shovel again: “Chapter Seven: The Rosethorn. The Rosethorn is native to colder climates, found most notably in the meadows of the Aksari Mountains, blooming in early spring and thriving until midwinter. Its petals are a curious mixture of red and orange, giving it a sunset glow, which helps keep insects active through the winter…”
Leena could see the text as if A Guide to Botany was open before her.
She was sitting reading to her mother, legs swinging beneath her on the crooked chair, the soft breeze bringing in the smells of salt and cooking.
There was warmth. And there was love. And she had not been cold or afraid or heartsick.
“Will I never hear the end of that blasted book?” St. Silas finally replied when she took a pause, but when she glanced at him the tightness around his eyes had abated a little. Leena was glad, without knowing why, that he did not look, for a moment, like a ghost himself.
“It is customary for the people of the Aksari Mountains to plant Rosethorns over the graves of loved ones,” Leena continued, “symbolizing that if such a flower can endure the harsh winter of the mountains, so can the spirit find peace in the coldness of the earth.”
This time St. Silas did not comment.
They continued—Leena reciting, both shoveling—until they’d dug a rectangular hole deep into the ground. Streaks of sun began lightening the sky and birdsong filtered through gaps in the trees—which seemed an odd contrast to the grimness of grave digging.
“Enough.” St. Silas finally put his shovel down. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a streak of mud by his left brow.
St. Silas dragged the heavy body across the grass, a trail of blood behind him. With one final push, the body fell into the grave like a disjointed rag doll. The corpse’s head hit the ground first, with a sickening thud.
“Wait,” Leena cried. “We are the only witnesses to his funeral. We must say something.”
“I caused his death, Miss Al-Sayer,” St. Silas said, with another twist of his mouth. “I do not think this man’s main concern would be whether or not his killer says a few kind words over his grave.”
She flinched at the word killer. Taking a deep breath, she said a phrase in her father’s language—a common saying to send off the departed.
May your soul no longer crave the soil.
“That sounds similar to what you said in the prison.” St. Silas’s voice held guarded curiosity. “Is it a prayer?”
Leena looked at him, surprise on her face. “You remember what I said?”
“I did not understand it. Both sounded…final.”
Turning back to the grave with stinging eyes, she whispered, “Of sorts. Both are goodbyes.”
That distant expression returned to St. Silas’s face. When he looked back at the dead man, it seemed to Leena as if he was not quite seeing him. Then he picked up the shovel and started throwing dirt over the grave. “You’re shivering. Let’s finish.”
She was shivering, but she was not surprised that he had noticed. As always, very little escaped him.
They began to make their way back after the last drop of soil fell onto the heap. Just as they crossed the clearing, Leena turned to have one final look at the grave.
She halted, sweat breaking out on her forehead.
A ghost stood over the mound. An Algaraan, barely older than Rami. Blood pooled from his forehead, and his abdomen bore the mark of Leena’s dagger.
“Miss Al-Sayer, what is it?” St. Silas was beside her, his sharp tone silencing the birds.
She brought a trembling hand to her eyes. “The boy we killed—” She could barely speak over her own heartbeat. “He looks like Rami. He’s half starved, he’s young—”
St. Silas’s eyes flickered to where Leena’s gaze was trained, but he clearly saw nothing. “Look away from the dead.” His own voice sounded suspended between concentrated control…and a fiercely buried lack of it. “We had no choice—”
Leena shook so hard that she could not focus on St. Silas’s words, her eyes still trained on the phantom that now lay weeping over his own grave.
“No, he didn’t have a choice,” she replied brokenly.
“That is what happens to people who look like me. They take our homes, they take our fathers, they take the very food from our bellies—”
“He tried to kill you. It was either be slain or live.” His voice tightened as he looked at the nothingness, jaw rigid. When he glanced down at her still-pale face, he added, “He was a Black Coat.”
It was no real comfort to her that the young dead boy had been a gang member. “Rami could’ve easily been a Black Coat.” The metallic taste of copper coated Leena’s tongue. “The Black Coats are filled with immigrant children—children whose homes could be found on the opposite end of a closed fist—”
“I understand—”
“No, you don’t understand. How could you?
” Her cheeks were wet, the cold air biting her face.
“You are Morish. The soldiers on the street stop to interrogate me daily, but they bow to you. The color of your skin, the tenor of your voice, even your accent, all proclaim your right to exist here, whereas anyone who looks like me—like that boy buried in this unmarked grave—is wrong. He never had a fighting chance.” The rise and fall of her chest felt like she was squeezing air through clogged vessels.
“It is beyond you being the Saint of Silence. You belong to this land, hold superiority in it.” She wiped her face with her dirt-crusted sleeve. “You always have a choice.”
St. Silas looked away from her, his stare now locked on the rising sun behind the treeline. The hard lines of his throat worked, as if he was trying to swallow down words—or memories.
When he spoke next, his voice was carefully detached, his expression fixed.
“I was very young when I buried my first body. I was sobbing so hard I could not hold on to the shovel.” His voice barely changed, but she caught the fragmented borders of it anyway.
“Believe me, Miss Al-Sayer, I also had little choice then.” His stance was rigid, muscles coiled, as if he still held that same shovel.
“The boy I buried was fourteen. I was twelve. The earth was not soft.”
Leena stared at him in astonishment, feeling a sudden, visceral, burning shame. The need to desperately take back her words rose through her like a tide. At twelve she had been holding her father’s hand, eating halwa on lazy summer days, not learning her way around a grave.
But Leena’s tongue didn’t know how to form words of remorse, so instead she continued to mutely watch St. Silas. She found he was staring back, equally wordless, equally weary.
“Survival is a sordid business.” There was an odd aloofness in his voice, as if he was not speaking to her.
His choice of words did not immediately make sense to Leena, and it took her a long moment to realize that the Saint of Silence was attempting to comfort her.
She could not explain why such an unexpected act of kindness brought forth another rush of tears. She pressed her closed fists against her eyes, turning away rapidly, unable to reply; her aching mind could not lift the weight of so much heartache.
Leena’s blurring eyes returned to the grave they’d left behind. The ghost of the young Black Coat was gone, and she was relieved that he hadn’t lingered to haunt her.
St. Silas’s voice when he called for them to continue sounded distant in her ears, but she managed to put one foot in front of the other to follow him through the clearing. The birdsong continued, drowning out her thoughts and all other sounds of the forest, a symphony of farewell.