June 5th
Merrily looked up sharply at Father. “Rolly? You mean Rolly, and Professor Tentimes’ new star?”
The bandages twitched slightly; she thought it was a smile.
“You must kill him,” said Father.
Merrily stared at him. She knelt, and he knelt facing her. The stone floor of his office was cold and hard. In the under-temple, through the open door, there was a soft murmur of hushed voices, chanting together.
His face, swathed in bandages, was unreadable. But the pale blue eyes bored into her face and her mind.
“I… I don’t think I can,” she stammered.
“Why not?” asked Father. His voice was soft, but a threat lurked beneath it.
“Because he’s my friend.”
“Do you love him more than you love God?”
“No.”
“Do you love him more than you love me?”
“No.”
“Then you must kill him.”
She looked at his knees on the ground before her, fixating absurdly on the dirt stains on his shabby pants.
“It is a test of your faith, Merrily, and your commitment to the Elect. God requires that we live to elevate our souls beyond the dark seduction of the material world. Your shallow friendships on earth are as nothing compared with the bliss of Heaven. Did not the Second Prophet say:
> And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
“You must cut away from you what offends God. And I tell you, Merrily, that this man offends God. Cut him away.”
She was silent. The First Voice and Second Voice growled and screamed soundlessly in her mind. A long minute passed. And then Father sighed and rose to his feet. She remained kneeling before him.
“You are sinful, Merrily. We are all sinful. Even I am plagued by sin.” His eyes rested on her for an unendurable space of seconds, as she knelt before him, looking up. “But this is not the final test. You have failed, but you may still seek redemption through God’s grace. Rise.”
She stood up, looking at him uncertainly.
“What about Rolly?” she asked.
The bandages shifted ever so slightly.
“My angel requires that God’s will be done,” he said, his voice still deadly soft. “The task falls to me. You need only remain silent, and I may yet continue to offer you the hope of salvation.”
We cannot be silent! screamed the First Voice. Rolly can get away—go to his family, or to the Billies, or the Queen.
We will be silent, responded the Second Voice. Father trusts us, and we must save our soul from the Pit. There would be no fault to us. We would not be responsible.
The First Voice was not impressed.
If we remain silent, then it will be we who killed him.
✽✽✽
Merrily’s eyes fluttered, and she awoke from the dream, sweating. It took her several long minutes to stop replaying the phantom conversation in her head, and to put it in the past where it belonged. The First Voice, after all, was no more.
She put on her clothes, stretched, and walked across the broad square between Bastings Hall and the gates of Triad University. The early June morning was chilly, and Merrily found she was shivering by the time she reached the students’ breakfast hall. She picked despondently at the food, forcing herself to eat a bit of bland porridge and cold roast chicken.
Across the table from her, Gerald sat down with a large plate of eggs. His tall frame hunched over the table, and his shoulder-length brown hair was tied in a neat bun behind his head.
“Good morning, Merrily,” he said. And then he added abruptly: “Tomorrow is the day. You know what I mean. Will you be ready to do the task he gave you?”
She stared up at him over her porridge. “Ready… for our final examination,” she stated flatly. She refused to think about the name that Father had given her in the under-temple.
Gerald nodded, glancing briefly around at the other students eating nearby. “Yes. You and I will be examined, Merrily, and our… instructor… will decide if we are worthy. You’re his favorite, but I keep wondering when you’ll prove you deserve his love.”
“What is it with you, Gerald?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “What is it with you… and me? You and Kel get on fine, and you manage not to hassle her endlessly. We’re supposed to be brothers and sisters in love and faith, but you never turn down a chance to remind me of everything you’ve ever seen me do wrong. What did I do to earn your contempt, and how can I undo it?”
His eyes widened in surprise. “I don’t feel contempt for you, Merrily,” he said, apparently genuine.
“Then why—”
“Because I love you,” he said.
She blinked.
“We’re not supposed—”
“I know. But I can’t help it. When God burns the world away and takes us to Heaven… I hope… I hope to see you there. And to sit next to you at His table.”
He stood up, picking up his tray of uneaten food from the decidedly less grandiose table at which he presently sat.
“Forget I said anything,” he said miserably. “I’ll see you at Doctor Pierce’s practicum.”
“Why?” she whispered. “What’s the point? Why go to the trouble of taking these stupid final exams, when we both know…” she trailed off, glancing around meaningfully. God’s fire would come tomorrow, by Father’s confident proclamation.
He looked down at her.
“Perhaps it is the sin of pride,” he said. “But I intend to finish what I have begun. I hope you do as well.”
✽✽✽
Merrily thrust boldly at Cyrus’s unarmored chest, the tip of her sword lancing toward him like all the fury that Hell hath not. He parried lightly in the economical Quarte of an experienced swordsman and struck back, using his superior weight to close the distance between them and force her backward. She deflected him contemptuously in Sixte and stepped to his right, bringing the basket of her sword up and toward his forehead in a quick, controlled punch. He ducked under it, reversing their positions, and kicked backward at the inside of her knee. Merrily didn’t resist the blow, but instead used his force to roll herself out of it, coming to her feet facing him again. She teased her blade to his right, daring him to overcorrect; instead, he called her bluff and lunged directly at her.
It was a predictable gambit. Father had taught it to her. Merrily dove forward past Cyrus, brushing aside his blade in a delicate Prime, and used her off hand to push against his back. He tripped obligingly over her extended leg and fell heavily on his chest. He rolled aside, but her blade was at his throat.
Of course she’d known which way he would roll. It was a natural as breathing to know. This shabby, irritating little man who presumed to tell her what was right for her was as easy to read as a page of scripture. She wanted to kill him right here; her practice blade would pierce his throat if she pushed hard enough.
But Cyrus Stoat was not the name that Merrily had been given. If she committed murder in full view of dozens of witnesses, she would not be able to complete her assigned task.
Cyrus laid down his own dull practice sword and reached up one gloved hand. Taking her blade delicately between thumb and forefinger, he drew it away from his throat and stood up. She reluctantly permitted the sword to be pushed aside.
“I yield,” he said calmly. She lowered the practice blade.
“You pass,” he continued. “Congratulations. All that now stands between you and your fourth year at the College of Applied History is my written final exam. Also, Mrs. Hunter, I’d take it as a personal kindness if you’d recall that it’s poor form to kill your sponsor on the practice grounds.”
“You’re still slow,” she remarked, sheathing the sword. “Is the leg giving you trouble?”
“I’m not slow,” he retorted defensively. “But you’re fast. I’ve honestly never seen anyone improve as quickly as you have this year; you’re becoming a fencer fit for Robert of Gorham’s rapier. Have you been seeing a tutor in swordplay?”
A tutor far superior to you, Cyrus Stoat, gloated the Second Voice. In every conceivable way.
She shook her head. “You are slow. It must be difficult learning how to use your leg again after… well. After what happened. But you’re slow. Even Greensmith would beat you right now, and he’s dreadful with the Sabre.”
Cyrus muttered something inaudible. His mind seemed to be elsewhere. “Well,” he continued aloud. “Highest marks for swordplay this year, Merrily. But don’t get complacent—I think you’ll find my exam more than enough challenge for your mind, even if I’ve become too old and feeble to exercise your body.”
She cocked her head at him curiously.
“What?” he asked.
“You called me Merrily,” she said, bemusedly. “Right here, inside Triad.”
It doesn’t matter, said the Second Voice. He’ll be dead tomorrow. What Cyrus Stoat thinks of us doesn’t matter anymore.
He shook his head in disgust. “It comes with the madness, Mrs. Hunter,” he explained, as they both walked toward the arched gateway out of the yard. “When the roof of rational objectivity has rotted away, all manner of little niceties slip through the cracks in the rotten floorboards of cognition. Soon enough I’ll be calling you Daisy and trying to ride you.”
She suppressed a wave of startled empathy. Madness was a familiar companion.
“What ever happened to that rapier?” he inquired. “The one you stole from Robert Franco after he—”
“It’s tucked away,” she interrupted.
He needn’t know, said the Second Voice. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now but faith and obedience. We shouldn’t even be here.
But she had to suppress a smile as, on the way out of the practice yard, Cyrus distracted Gerald Hornhugger long enough for Professor Crisby to punch his nose.
They parted ways at the foot of Peacock Hall.
“Go now unto the field of battle, Merrily,” he said, “and let no personal nonsense distract you from the final struggle with words and thought and meaning.” He smiled gently. “When I first saw you, sitting in Mrs. Miller’s little library in Hog Hurst, you were halfway through Franco’s brick on the Vereids. I knew then that you could be one of the best. I trust you’ll prove me right once again.”
She looked up at the pretentious pile that was Peacock Hall, and then over at the chaotic jumble of Redbun Hall nearby, home of the mathematicians.
Tell him, came a whisper in her mind. If we remain silent, then it will be we who killed him.
It was only a voice crying out in the wilderness.
Merrily went back to her room at Bastings. She gazed long at the dusty violin case sitting under one of the tables, and thought of Wigglus, who had not written to her since she left Uellodon in January. She looked at the scribbled sheet music on top of one of the bookshelves, and heard the music in her head. And then, to her great surprise, she retrieved her notes and books, and returned to the library at Peacock. There she spent the rest of the day, and late into the night, studying for Professor Stoat’s final examination.
✽✽✽
Merrily gathered with her classmates the next morning. A small group of them drifted together—Gerald, Kel, Aristine le Hen, Freddie Greensmith. They spoke of nothing in particular, in that way students do before a test, probing each other for signs of weakness. It was the last time they would be together as classmates. The fourth year would see them split into smaller groups with different specialties, and the fifth year was the tutorial.
“Where will you spend the summer, Aristine?” asked Merrily. “Are you going back to your family in Brasse?”
“We shall see,” she answered, with her sprightly accent. “Much depends on the military situation. It may not be safe to travel south.”
Freddie looked up at her sharply, but said nothing.
“You mean, it depends on whether the Republican Guard has placed Green Bridge under siege,” said Gerald. “You should get out while you can Aristine.” Merrily imagined a thinly veiled threat; Aristine le Hen and Freddie Greensmith were not of the Elect, after all.
“Or perhaps I should remain, while I still can,” answered Aristine fiercely. “If the Republic is to besiege this city, should not the College of Applied History be first on the walls to defend it?”
At the head of the classroom, Cyrus cleared his throat loudly.
“You have three and a half hours,” he announced, handing out the stacks of thinly bound exam books. “Points added for style and persuasiveness; points off for poor penmanship, amateurish grammar, and substantively wrong arguments. The third essay tests both your knowledge and your moral quality. I expect the best of both from each of you.”
He looked over at the tall pendulum clock in one corner. The students quickly took their seats.
“Begin,” he announced.
Merrily bent her head and read the first question. And then, her fatigue and confusion forgotten, she found that three and a half hours passed very quickly indeed.
✽✽✽
When she put down her pencil and walked out of Peacock Hall, Merrily knew that the time left to avoid the inevitable grew short. She returned to Bastings Hall and sat alone in her room. She closed her eyes and prayed, as the afternoon passed, and the light in her window began to grow rosy with sunset.
Now is the time, said the Second Voice. We know our task of duty and love. We know the name. Now is the time to be the instrument that God requires of us.
She looked, incongruously, at the violin case tucked under her desk.
Not that kind of instrument, you imbecile, rebuked the Second Voice.
She wondered whether Wigglus was still alive; whether he had escaped with Frederick to Carelon.
It doesn’t matter! snapped the Second Voice. End these distractions! Do your job, and then go to wait with Father until God’s judgment comes to Green Bridge. Join the Elect in the light.
Merrily fetched her thin steel poignard and tucked it into her jacket. She remembered the elegant little dagger that it had replaced. A gift from Lady Triggle, and a gift she had given to Wigglus.
Be calm, said the Second Voice. We do God’s will. He will protect us.
She left her apartment, the poignard still tucked into her jacket.
Merrily’s apartment was on the second floor of Bastings. In the lobby near the stairway up from the ground level there was a large desk, where there sat a clerk who ensured that only those with proper business could enter. When Merrily arrived, there was also a mercenary in each corner, each man wearing a breastplate and carrying a long gun. A man with a satchel bearing the sigil of the Merchants’ Post stood before the desk, arguing rather heatedly with the seated clerk.
“I don’t care if you’ve got a message from Horace Carelon,” said the clerk sharply. “You’re not going to see Queen Anne in person. Give me the papers, and I’ll have them delivered.”
Convenient, said the Second Voice. Let us help this good man to do his duty.
Merrily walked to stand next to the messenger, before the clerk.
“I’ll take it,” she said. “I have my own messages for the Queen.”
The clerk looked up at her in surprise.
“You weren’t expected today, Mrs. Hunter,” he said. “The Queen said you’d be taking a few days off for your exams.”
“They’re finished,” she said shortly. “And I need to speak with the Queen immediately.” She turned to the messenger. “Give me the message, sir, and I’ll take it to her directly. If you wait here, I’ll bring her response. If she feels it’s necessary, I’ll bring you to see her.”
The post rider nodded slowly, and withdrew a circular scroll case. He unlocked it and drew out a roll of paper with a seal of black wax and a bright gold ribbon.
“I’ll wait,” he said.
Merrily took the scroll and tucked it into the pocket on the inside of her jacket of hardened leather. Then she walked past the clerk, and into the narrow stairwell up to the royal apartments on the third floor.
Her eyes drifted to a faint stain on one of the steps. She had seen it many times, climbing these stairs. She stepped over the stair, as she had always done. To step directly on it felt like stepping on a grave. Though the building’s staff had labored to scrub the stain away, Beatrice Snugg’s dying blood was as stubborn as the woman herself.
It was immediately after her death that Robert Franco disappeared from Triad University. Beatrice Snugg’s poisoned dagger had not killed her assassin, as most supposed, but it had left his face and body horribly scarred. It had not been difficult for him to reappear as Demetrius Filtch, twisted and ugly, to mop the floors and watch his old rivals.
By the time Merrily learned these things, she had already committed herself to God in Father’s congregation.
We do God’s will, said the Second Voice.
She reached the door to Queen Anne’s bedchamber, fingering the poignard under her jacket, and knocked lightly.
“Your Majesty?” she said. “It’s me. Merrily. I need to speak with you.”
The door opened. Nicola Snugg stood there.
“Come in, Mrs. Hunter,” she said.
Merrily’s eyes darted around the chamber. There was no one else there. She walked in.
“Where is she?” hissed Merrily. “You shouldn’t be here. This is my task. Your name was Veridia Snipe.”
“It was,” said Mrs. Snugg. “And I have not killed her, nor will I. The Queen is elsewhere. But we will not be disturbed. Sit down, Mrs. Hunter.”
Astonished, Merrily sat in one of the overstuffed chairs in the Queen’s private living room. Nicola Snugg seated herself in another.
Well, this is not going to plan, observed the Second Voice blithely.
“Do you know that Father killed my cousin Beatrice?” she asked.
Merrily nodded slowly.
“Do you know why?” she went on. Her usual, slightly pretentious solemnity had evaporated, and instead she spoke with a fierce urgency.
Merrily shook her head. “I can guess,” she said, “from what I knew of Beatrice, and Father. But I don’t know.”
“I know why,” said Mrs. Snugg. “Father is a member of a very old religious order. They’ve had many names over the centuries—the Holy Office of Purity, the Brothers of the Star Temple, the Thrice-Accursed Order of Keepers; but now they call themselves the Order of the Fallen Stars. What their original purpose was I do not know. Today, to outward appearances, they are in the business of buying and selling information. They make a great deal of money in that trade. But there are others among them who have a different purpose. They embed themselves in a place, wait for instructions from the Order, and then, at the appointed time, they kill. The Order believes, probably with some justification, that the right person killed at the right time can change the course of history in ways that suit them.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“The man we call ‘Father’ was once Robert of Gorham, the uncle of King Leeland. But when Leeland was born, Gorham renounced his inheritance and wealth and went to the Order. And then he turned up here in Green Bridge, where he made himself Robert Franco, and waited for the moment to do God’s will.”
Her face was emotionless as she recounted this history; she might have been discussing yesterday’s weather.
“He killed my cousin. He has killed many others. And now he would use you and the other Elect to kill Queen Anne, the Charter Council, Veridia Snipe, Vernon Vigg, and, yes, Professor Cyrus Stoat.”
“How do you know all this about him?” asked Merrily.
Mrs. Snugg snorted. “My family owns, and I control, the largest trading concern north of the Gulf of Carelon,” she replied, somewhat haughtily. “My intelligence department is very nearly as effective as the Order itself. If I had to, I could find out what the Mouth of God had for breakfast this morning.”
Merrily stared at Nicola Snugg, quickly putting the pieces together.
“You are apostate,” she said. “Or you were never a believer to begin with.”
Snugg looked down at the ground.
“I believe in God, Mrs. Hunter. I believe in the prophets and the scriptures. Father seduced me, in the beginning, through my faith, just as he seduced you through your desire for answers, and for solutions to the conflicts inside you. There was a time when I truly believed he was holy, and would have done anything I could for him. He asked me to deflect the investigation of Mr. Gorp’s death onto the goblin, Smallhat, and I did. I used my resources to conceal the Elect, and Father’s sanctuary in the under-temple. But where I once saw a prophet, now I have come to see nothing more than a man, self-obsessed and deluded. If he suspected I was less than committed to him, he would kill me with as little difficulty as he killed my cousin. All my bodyguards and soldiers would not protect me from Father. We are here, in the Queen’s chambers alone, because I believe you see, as I do, that what Father offers is madness and threats dressed up as revelation.”
“But God’s judgment is coming,” insisted Merrily. “It is coming tonight.”
“The only judgment that is coming to Green Bridge,” scoffed Mrs. Snugg, “are the spears and arrows and siege engines of the Republican Guard. If the Queen and the Charter Council and the Billies are wiped out, do you think God will reach down his hand to smite Hobb the Wise before he massacres every one of the Elect, and every priest, and every believer in God, throughout the North? God will do no such thing.”
Nicola Snugg leaned forward urgently.
“The only miracles, Merrily, are the miracles we make.”
Merrily blinked once, and thought. There was silence in her head as she struggled to adjust her point of view. There was, where surety and faith had once been, only a void of uncertainty.
Who am I?
“What will you do?” she asked finally, taking comfort in a problem less daunting than internal inscrutability.
Mrs. Snugg looked out the window at the waning glow of the sun.
“Father’s killings were to take place at sunset. He’s always had a weakness for pointless drama. Veridia is safe in the factor house with Mr. Miller, preparing for a… shift in our commercial activities. You have already failed to kill the Queen, thankfully. And she is in a safe place as well, in case you should also fail to change your mind.” Mrs. Snugg looked at her pointedly. “I have not told her of your involvement, Merrily. I said only that my agents uncovered a plot against her. Whether she learns of your part depends on your actions, starting now.”
Merrily began to rise, and then sat down again, torn by indecision.
Mrs. Snugg, sitting with a relaxed posture in the Queen’s overstuffed chair, gave Merrily a piercing look.
“If I’m not mistaken,” she said, “the name of Cyrus Stoat was given to Kelestine Maliss.”
Merrily stood up again, and ran from the room. She ran down the stairs to the ground floor of Bastings, pausing only to retrieve her hunting bow and quiver from her room. She ignored the startled looks from the clerk, the post-rider, and the guards. The orange light of the setting sun had already given way to a dimming gray dusk, though the sky was still a pale blue. She whirled through the gates, ignoring the startled shouts of an oddly-dressed goblin who was emerging from within Triad. The streets were nearly empty of students and professors, as the usual occupants of the university grounds made their way home, or to the Pinny Purse, for their suppers.
Before she reached Peacock Hall, Merrily spotted a familiar tall, lanky figure, lurking in an alley across the street from Redbun Hall. She ran up to him, and Gerald glanced at her in surprise.
“What are you—”
“Where’s Kel?” asked Merrily urgently. “And why are you here? Did you…” She trailed off in horror.
He nodded grimly, though she fancied there was a hint of doubt written on his features. “It’s done,” he said, his voice quavering. “Vigg is dead. God willing, Kel will finish her part.” He looked up at the rooftop of Redbun Hall. “I was going to go up and help, but she said she wanted to do it alone. She thinks she has something to prove to Father, ever since Stoat got away from her last October.”
“What?” asked Merrily sharply.
“She didn’t tell you?” he said with a quizzical look. “No, perhaps not; we always thought you were too close to him. Father had preached on Stoat’s evil and lies, and how we are all bound to wipe out evil whenever we find it. Kel took it on herself to hunt him down. He got away after a chase. She’d covered her face, so he didn’t know it was her, but it’s rankled her ever since. She told me about it afterward. We prayed to God to forgive her weakness.”
They both looked up at the rooftop. There was a faint sound of ringing steel. Merrily started forward, but Gerald grabbed her hand.
“Let her finish it,” he said. “God will strengthen her arm.”
“Are you out of your mind?” demanded Merrily, wrenching free of him. “Stoat has been swinging a sword for longer than Kel’s been alive!”
At that moment there was a faint cry from the rooftop observatory, far overhead. A body came floating off the parapet, falling slowly at first but accelerating downward at a constant thirty-two feet per second, per second. It took a horrifyingly long time to descend to the street, where it landed with a faint and terrible thud.
Far above, the figure of a man could be seen against the pale blue sky, peering downward.
Merrily and Gerald glanced at each other, then quickly pulled up their head coverings and tied strips of cloth around their lower faces. Merrily slung her bow over one shoulder. Then they ran to the fallen figure.
It was Kel. Her body was twisted and broken, and her eyes were open, but lifeless. Merrily cried out, and found tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Quickly, Merrily,” hissed Gerald beneath the cowl. “We have to get her out of here. If she’s found, questions will be asked. It could lead back to Father. And he must know that Kel failed.”
They wrapped what was left of Kelestine Maliss in Merrily’s cloak and picked up the body. In the alley, Gerald casually folder her in half and slung her over his broad shoulders like a sack, and together they ran. And Merrily’s thoughts ran as well.
Who am I? What am I doing? Whose side am I on?
Who’s there? asked the Second Voice, fear tinging its dry tone with color.
Gerald hurriedly bought a large chest at one of the street markets while Merrily waited in a dark alley, and together they heaved the sodden remains inside. Then they walked to the Cathedral of Saint Bob, entering through a side door to avoid the crowd for Vespers. Bishop Wildrick’s voice could be heard from the main floor, intoning the opening prayer of the ancient ceremony. They each took an oil lamp from a small table at the head of the stairs into the basement.
In the crypt, they heaved open the sarcophagus of Bishop Gristlewold. They placed Kel inside, on top of the dusty bones of the long-dead churchman. Merrily tried to arrange her body with as much dignity as she could manage, and then they closed the sarcophagus again. They lowered the empty chest down the hole beneath the false tomb of Bishop Crocklin.
“We have to tell Father,” said Gerald, climbing down the rope.
“Wait,” countered Merrily, lowering herself after him. “Maybe we don’t. Maybe this whole thing was a terrible mistake.”
It was not a mistake! shrieked the Second Voice. The only mistake is from… Who’s there?
“A mistake?” asked Gerald incredulously as they reached the floor of the passage. “Any time now, God’s judgment will descend on this city. We were supposed to eliminate the leaders who would stand in the way of the Elect when we seize control in the aftermath. Father’s instructions come from an angel of God. Where could there possibly be a mistake?”
He began walking down the passage toward the under-temple. Merrily followed close behind, fingering the grip on her bow.
“What if it wasn’t an angel?” asked Merrily. Gerald stopped, ahead of her, and turned. From the under-temple at the end of the passage, she could see the faint light of dusk filtering down through the shaft over the altar, only faintly lighting Gerald’s face.
“What?” His voice was flat.
“What if it was… something else. Or it was just something Father… imagined. What if we wait tonight, and nothing happens? And you’ll have killed Vernon Vigg for nothing.”
Gerald drew close. In the dim light of the lamps, his face was bleak. “Where is your faith, Merrily?” he asked.
Where is our faith? asked the Second Voice, despairing.
She looked him full in the face.
“What if it was the wrong faith?” she asked.
He narrowed his eyes, working through the implications.
“Did you kill Queen Anne?” he asked.
“What if it’s all just a story?” she went on.
“Merrily!” he said, grabbing her shoulders. She didn’t resist. “Did you kill the Queen?”
She found she couldn’t answer, but instead followed the trail of her thoughts. “Something to make us obey him. Something we wanted to believe—”
Before she could finish, his hand flashed out; she caught a glint of steel. It pierced her belly and she gasped in shock and pain. She slid to the ground, her mouth working silently. Gerald looked down at her.
“I am going,” he said, “to finish what Kel started. And then I am going to finish what you should have started, but didn’t.”
He turned away from her, moving back toward the knotted rope that led up and out of the under-temple.
Still slumped against the wall of the passage, Merrily drew an arrow out of her quiver, set it to the string of her bow, bent it, and loosed. The Second Voice screamed in agony, gnashing and writhing and gibbering in its torture. In the darkness, she heard the arrow strike Gerald in the back. There was a sound as he fell, and then silence in the passage, and silence in her head.
Who am I?
She crawled up the passage and found Gerald. The arrow had lodged itself deep in his back, slightly to the left. She pulled him up so that he sat against the rough stone wall, feeling warm, wet blood leaking from his back and from her own abdomen.
His eyes were glassy, but they focused vaguely in her direction. He took a shuddering breath, and coughed. Blood dribbled out of his mouth.
“I… I couldn’t kill Vigg,” he whispered. “I lied to you. I was afraid. I looked in his window, and saw him eating dinner with his wife, and I couldn’t do it. I hoped God would take him, when He brings the fire. But I could not. I was weak.”
Merrily took his hand.
“I wish,” he began. He raised his head toward her, his lips close to hers. She jerked her own head backward. And then he slumped forward, and his hand dropped from hers.
Merrily gingerly probed the wound in her belly, and concluded that she might live a few more hours. She wrapped it tightly with a long strip of cloth from Gerald’s shirt, then covered it with her leather jacket. She picked up her bow. She took an uncertain step forward, grimacing from the pain. Then she took another, and another. She pulled herself up the rope with only her arms, unable to contract her abdominal muscles enough to use her legs.
In the crypt, she collapsed for a few minutes, but then doggedly rose to her feet and walked forward. Somewhere within was a reserve of strength and endurance, previously unknown, that she seized and put to work.
She made her way out of the cathedral, out into the darkening streets of Green Bridge. And then she turned her steps toward the trade quarter.
✽✽✽
She found Cyrus in the streets before she reached the Snugg warehouse, and Jonny. His eyes were hollow and lifeless, and his face haggard.
“I know who killed Rolland Gorp,” she said.
Cyrus stared up at Merrily in disbelief, curiosity lighting a tiny spark of life in his eyes.
“Did you kill him?” he asked. Her heart fell at the thought of how she might answer.
She shook her head. “No.”
He took her outstretched hand and let her pull him to his feet. She swayed slightly, and she could feel the blood draining from her face, but her grip was firm.
“Who did?”
She stared at him closely, tilting her head and looking through his eyes, into the man inside who had given her the gift of a university education, who had called her the best of his students, and who had never tried to kiss her.
“Mr. Filtch killed him.”
Cyrus scoffed. “He’s a feeble old man. How? Why? Do you have evidence?”
“You can ask him yourself,” answered Merrily. “Tonight. He’ll tell you.”
Oh yes, she thought bitterly. He’ll tell you. At excruciating length, after he’s stuck his rapier in you. But I don’t have time, anymore, to discuss it.
She protested when Cyrus insisted on going for Captain Vigg, and half expected to find the man dead after all. But he was alive, and he collected his clothes and two assistants while Merrily gritted her teeth and swayed on her feet, trying to keep her hand discretely pressed on the wound in her abdomen.
The walk back to the Cathedral was a blur of pain and confusion. She was relieved when Bishop Wildrick appeared at the steps of the Cathedral, and explained the history so that she wouldn’t have to.
“There is a murderer in your cellar, Bishop,” she said quietly.
“You are mistaken,” he answered. “I went to the cellars just hours ago to retrieve holy elements for the Compline. There were no murderers there.”
“You went to the wrong cellar,” she answered. And she told them about the old Church of the Joyful Commandment and the under-temple. She looked hard at the Bishop, and wondered: How much do you know? But she could feel her time slipping away, and discounted it as a question to which she would never know the answer.
“There is legal process!” demanded the Bishop. “You may not enter without a special warrant from the Queen’s Bench!”
Merrily slung her hunting bow across her back and approached Wildrick, who eyed her cautiously. She leaned in next to him and whispered into his ear, recalling Nicola Snugg’s revelation of Father’s origins.
“The Order of the Fallen Stars requires this of you, my son.”
She had no idea if the Bishop would feel compelled to obey such an instruction, or if this was even a proper form of address. But his face blanched, even under the flickering yellow light of the oil lantern, and he drew back to stare at her. There was horror in his eyes. They stared at each other for a long moment. Then the churchman wordlessly turned and walked next door to the large, ornate rectory.
She led them down into the crypt. “Faith is a choice,” she heard the Bishop say to Cyrus in the darkness.
When she revealed the false sarcophagus of Bishop Crocklin, the churchman seemed singularly unsurprised at the appearance of the passage below it. He must know, she reasoned, that Nicola Snugg had delivered enough weapons for a small army to his basement. But the spreading warmth around her belly told her that there was no time to confront him. They must reach Father. Vigg, and his Billies, and Cyrus Stoat—together they would be able to overpower him.
When they found Gerald’s body in the tunnel, Merrily was silent. Vigg took the broken arrow shaft from his back and compared it to the others in her quiver.
“This is one of your arrows,” he stated flatly.
“Now hang on, Captain,” interjected Cyrus. “There are dozens of fletchers in Green Bridge, and they have many customers. Just because this arrow—“
“I killed Gerald,” said Merrily. Her voice was flat, and she leaned against the stone wall of the passage.
“Well,” remarked Cyrus. “That was unhelpful to your defense.”
The Billies bound her hands behind her, and the pain in her abdomen jumped tenfold. She gasped, and felt the bandage slip, and she struggled to remain upright.
“I killed him because he was going to kill Professor Stoat,” she continued through clenched teeth. The Billy behind her held her wrists up, forcing her down slightly. Something began to slip out of her abdomen.
Vigg looked at Cyrus.
“We all need to go take a trip back to William Hall,” the law man said firmly.
“How do you know Hornhugger was going to kill me?” demanded Cyrus, holding up one hand to Vigg. “Did he tell you?”
She lowered her head. “Because Robert Franco—Robert of Gorham—told him to. And he was going to do it. He would do anything that Father said. I tried to stop him, and we fought. I killed him.”
“Wait. Father?” asked Cyrus in astonishment. “And—Roberto Franco? He’s been dead for two years now! What does Franco have to do with anything? And where is Filtch?”
“If you want to know who killed Rolly,” Merrily said, raising her head and speaking through the pain, “then you must go forward.” She stared down the passageway, toward the silvery moonlight beyond.
Cyrus looked at Captain Vigg. Captain Vigg looked back at Cyrus. Neither spoke.
Then Wildrick, lurking behind them, stepped forward. He held his lamp high in front of him.
“I would like to know who is in the cellars of my cathedral,” he announced firmly, “and who he has killed.” And with that, the Bishop walked slowly forward.
Merrily felt the life slipping from her as she walked. She could barely hear Wildrick as he explained the presence of the weapons in the under-temple; utterly wrongly, in reality. They were meant for the Elect. But the Elect were nowhere to be seen. They had gone out on their tasks. Where were they?
And then Father was there. He killed the two deputy Billies from behind casually.
“I killed Rolland Gorp,” came Father’s voice from behind Merrily.
But I could have stopped you, and I didn’t. And now I will pay the price that you should have.
He stepped out from behind her.
As the men shouted at each other in rage, Merrily’s strength finally left her, and she fell backward. Her hands were red with her own blood. She perceived only snatches of the conversation that would inevitably end in bloodshed. She saw, in a haze, as Father’s sword emerged from Captain Vigg’s broad chest.
“I am an instrument of God’s will,” she heard Father say, “and so is Merrily Hunter.”
She was aware of the furious struggle between Cyrus and Father only as the ugly sound of steel on steel, as two blades sought to pierce flesh and bone. Bishop Wildrick knelt over her, silently applying a fresh, tight bandage and pressing his hand against the wound in her abdomen. But she knew it was too late. Too much blood, and other things, had left her.
The bishop propped her up against a low chest, padding it with his cloak.
“May I pray with you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I would not like to die hearing words I don’t believe,” she answered weakly.
She began to feel a burning heat in her chest.
Who am I? she said again.
Follow the Bright Path, said the soft voice in her head. It was Jonny’s voice.
Her eyes snapped open, and the heat in her chest became greater. It did not come with pain, but only a fiery strength, a kind of final, spreading fulfillment. As Bishop Wildrick looked on in astonishment, she got to her feet.
In the center of the under-temple, Cyrus tripped over a pile of rubble, and fell on his back. He was abruptly still, and Father brought the tip of his rapier—the rapier that Merrily had given back to him—to Cyrus’s throat.
“Dead end, Cyrus Stoat,” said Father.
With a motion swifter than a diving hawk, Merrily’s hand shot to the quiver on her back, and she drew forth an arrow. She set it to the string of her hunting bow, and loosed it in one fluid motion. It pierced Father’s chest, and she could see from the depth of the shaft that it must have emerged from the other side. He turned, astonished, to look at her.
He did not fall. He swayed, but then broke off the arrow tip that emerged from his chest.
“Merrily,” he said. “Come to me. Redeem your faith.”
Behind him, the figure of a tall man moved in the shadows beyond the shaft of light. It had long hair, and a glint came from its face.
She walked forward, feeling the burning in her chest grow and spread. She set another arrow to the bow, raised it, and loosed.
Father swatted it aside casually with the rapier. His hand flicked out, and a knife came from it, flying through the air. She twisted to avoid the knife, and it grazed her cheek, ripping the flesh deeply. But Father had not been idle while the knife flew. He sprang forward, lunged toward her exposed flank, plunged the rapier of the royal house of Uelland into her armpit, through her lung, and into her heart. She felt the metal pierce her, and sank to her knees. Father looked down at her, and did not speak; there was sorrow on his face, and loss. He looked suddenly very old.
Then he walked backward toward the old stone altar at the head of the under-temple, bathed in silvery moonlight.
The figure of the man in the shadows stood there, waiting for him.
Merrily’s vision faded out, and all voices within her ceased. She tumbled backward, as the only thing she could still feel was the burning fire spreading from her chest, into her arms and belly and legs. And then she closed her eyes.
✽✽✽
And then she opened her eyes. There was stillness in her, and she did not know how much time had passed. She lay on something hard, and there was a silvery white light. She blinked, and turned her head to the left. There lay Cyrus Stoat, his eyes closed and his face smudged with sweat and dirt.
She sat up. There was no pain; not in her chest, or in her belly, or her face.
Directly ahead of her, Father lay on the floor before the altar. The man with the metal face stood behind him, holding a long knife. It dripped with dark blood. She got to her feet, without the slightest concern for her own safety, and walked toward him. He was, without a doubt, the same tall, blond-haired man that she had seen beneath Hoel. She drew closer. Her eyes fell on Father; he was lifeless, and a long gash ran across his throat. Her own arrow shaft protruded from his back.
“This result is indecisive,” said a dry, emotionless voice, coming from the steely mask. “It is a dead end. Our tools have not produced the resolution we require.”
“If you had the slightest shred of romance in you,” she heard her own voice say, “then you’d realize this is a victory for me.”
“Many paths remain,” replied the dry voice from the man, “before either of us may declare a resolution. What you call ‘victory’ is only an adjustment.”
There was a shuffling sound behind Merrily, but she did not turn. Instead, she kept her eyes fixed on the man with the metal face, as he drifted up, silently, into the moonlight of the shaft.
Cyrus stood next to her then, looking at her chest in astonishment. She felt with her hand; there was a hole burned in her shirt. The edges still smoldered, and her hands came away smudged with ash. She remembered Boris’s odd ornament that she had worn there, and felt for it, but the beggar’s gift was gone. Only the leather cord remained, its two ends dangling freely.
Cyrus raised his searching eyes to her face again.
I am Merrily Hunter, she said inside, no more and no less, because I choose to be Merrily Hunter.
There were tears, now. She put her arms around Cyrus and held him, and he held her in return. She began to sob.
She gripped Captain Vigg’s hand as he died, and heard the deep tones begin to sound, somewhere in the stone and darkness above her.
“Those are the bells,” said Wildrick. “The cathedral bells. Someone is ringing the cathedral bells.” He stood up, picked up the oil lamp, and made quickly for the portal.
“Come on!” shouted the Bishop over his shoulder. “Come on! They’re ringing the bells!”
Cyrus looked at Merrily, and they stood up. Remembering a detail, she wordlessly retrieved the rapier from Father’s still body. Then she turned to follow Bishop Wildrick.
“Wait,” said Cyrus, grabbing her arm. She turned back, looking at him, tears still clouding her eyes.
“Who is the man with the metal face?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied. And it was true.
✽✽✽
There was fighting, and fear, and urgency, as Merrily, Cyrus, Bishop Wildrick, and the refugees in the cathedral made their way toward safety on Farley Island as Green Bridge burned. But it was not the wrath of God; she could see the arsonists moving through the streets, killing indiscriminately, setting fire to the buildings. When men attacked the refugees and Cyrus ran forward to defend them, she ran with him, dancing back and forth along the flanks of the small mob, stabbing at their unarmored backs with Father’s rapier. Her training—from Cyrus, from Doctor Pierce, and from Father—flowed through her muscles, and she moved as if everyone else in the world were made of clay. When Cyrus was struck down by a mace, she drifted behind the two men and placed the rapier with surgical precision through their chests.
Her mind drifted from the urgency of fighting and killing, away from the heat and smoke and terror of the flames. She didn’t need to think to kill. Instead, she thought of one man who she very much wanted to be alive.
“Where is Jonathan?” asked Cyrus, as if reading her thoughts.
“He’s at the Snugg factor house, I think,” she replied anxiously. “He was going to leave tomorrow for Hog Hurst. Snugg is doing something up there that he’s supposed to take care of. I don’t know the details. But he’s… somewhere… nearby,” she trailed off. There were tears in her eyes.
Cyrus looked out again at the dim shapes of men in the darkness, torching the city in the night. He listened to the sound of distant gunfire. He looked back at the frightened faces of the men, women, and children standing behind them.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll stay with these people until they reach Three Fish Bridge. Go to Jonathan. Save him, if you can.”
She embraced him quickly, and started to turn back toward the crowd behind them. The Snugg factor house was in the opposite direction from their travel.
“But Merrily,” he added, catching her with his voice. “This is important. Find me, when you are finished. I need to know the truth.”
She smiled, and nodded.
✽✽✽
When she reached the Snugg factor house, it was already on fire. But it was also abandoned. There were no people, no carts, no horses; it was simply a sprawl of burning buildings. She looked around in confusion. What now? She was sure Nicola Snugg had said Jonny was here, preparing for some new venture with Veridia. But no one was here.
“They’re gone,” said a high-pitched voice with an odd accent, coming from near the ground. She looked down.
There was a goblin there. He had a squat gray head, and was rather small, even for a goblin. His eyes bulged, and he was wearing a small mismatched suit. His head was adorned with a flamboyant hat, decorated with all manner of comical and grotesque artifacts. It had been rearranged to resemble the tricorns of the Republican Guard.
“The Gizzard?” she said in surprise. “What on earth are you doing in Green Bridge? And where did Jonny go?”
“He’s with King Simon, and some little snarf woman,” said The Gizzard. His Uellish had improved, but it still had a lilting, purring quality, as if everything he said were some ludicrous joke. “They’re going to an old dungeon with a machine in it. I don’t know—I was hungry, and I didn’t get all the details.”
She scratched her head. The night couldn’t possibly get any more confusing. She tried to figure out which question to ask first.
“Why aren’t you with them? You’ve been searching for Simon since last fall.”
The Gizzard shrugged. “Well, I found him. If he don’t get ‘et, he’ll be back in the Gray Kingdom soon enough, and put the ferals straight. But he left me with a message.”
Merrily stared at him.
“For whom?”
“For youm.”
“What is it?”
The Gizzard grinned.
“Check your pockets,” he said.
“That’s it? That’s the message? King Simon left you in a burning city, with a message to give me if I happened to showed up, and the message is ‘check your pockets’?”
The Gizzard nodded. “Yup. Got anything to eat in there?”
“No,” she said sharply, checking her pockets. There was her poignard, a garrote wire, several flasks of poison, a hand crossbow, a length of thin, strong line, and a piece of paper.
She took out the piece of paper. It was badly battered, stained with her own blood, and the seal had been ripped off.
“Oh well,” she muttered. “The Queen will have more to be angry about than breaking the seal on a secret message.” She unfolded the envelope, withdrew the paper inside, and read by the light of the flames in nearby buildings.
It was encrypted, but it was an older cipher, and easy to read. The key was encoded in the first line. They taught it in the first year at Triad. She’d written one of her first-year final exams in it.
> To Anne Linsey Gray, Pretender to the Throne of Uelland.
>
> We have recovered your son and his accomplice, the lawyer. The boy has become more trouble to King Leeland alive than he would be dead. Another can be produced—and there are unfortunate rumors about his parentage beginning to circulate. If you wish him to be exiled to Carelon rather than drowned alive, present yourself to me on my barge in the Green River off the village of Lesser Sack no later than sundown on the ninth of June. Otherwise, he shall make his way to Carelon in the Green River.
>
> Yours in service, etc.
> General Sir Warren Logwall
She looked down at The Gizzard, who was looking up at her expectantly.
“Come on then, The Gizzard,” she said. “Adventure calls.”
He reached up and took her hand, and together they walked out of the burning city.