A huge hand clapped me on the shoulder, making my knees buckle, and a deep voice boomed, “So, Marne, how was the freak show?”
I looked up into the square face of one of Djera Maha’s nephews (I hadn’t figured out yet which one was which – not that it mattered since I planned to kill both of them eventually anyway). But how would Marne respond to his greeting? What sort of relationship did the almost-but-not-officially-second-in-command have with her boss’ pet enforcers? Most importantly, how would she react when someone – anyone – brought up her favorite hobby?
Smiling, I let enthusiasm color my voice. “Very exciting, actually. There was one leviathan spawn called Spike that….” I blathered on in that vein while we boarded the boat and cast off for the mainland.
Around me, the Hive leaders were laying down their worries and relaxing in their sixth-day best. Akorosians such as Marne wore suits and cloaks, while the Dagger Islanders donned their traditional embroidered robes, albeit in thicker fabrics than you’d find in the Dagger Isles. Although I inspected all of them closely for gun and knife bulges, only the bodyguards were carrying their normal complement of gear; everyone else went light out of respect for the Church.
Reverence and anticipation of this week’s revelry didn’t stop Djera Maha and her lieutenants from being in a chatty mood, though, and I listened very carefully to faction gossip. At an opportune moment, I slid in a question about the dock space: “So what’s going on there? Is there anything I should be doing to help with that?”
Offhandedly, her attention on something one of the other lieutenants had just murmured into her ear, Djera Maha replied, “Well, yes, that’s still the plan, but obviously all of that needs to wait until after the invasion is over, so hold tight for now, and just be ready for whenever – ” Then her brain caught up to her mouth. She stared at me, her eyes narrowing. Slowly and dangerously, she stated, “But all of that was in the latest report.”
Everyone on the boat tensed. The bodyguards shifted slightly, ready to protect her or take me down.
Since I had absolutely no idea how Marne would behave in a situation like this, I started with profuse apology. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I babbled, hoping I wasn’t overdoing the servility. “I’m still trying to step into Commander Orris’ shoes, they’re really big boots to fill, it just slipped my mind – ”
Obviously Djera Maha had that effect on people, because she accepted my excuses. “You’re better than this,” she said icily. “You know you’re better than this. Do better.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled, hanging my head.
For the rest of the boat ride, she refused to speak to me or acknowledge my existence in any way, and her lieutenants followed suit. Even though that silent treatment helped my act – fewer chances to slip up when I didn’t have to say anything – it was still excruciatingly awkward. I was relieved when we finally docked in Brightstone and “all ‘em tops” of the Sanctorium hove into sight.
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I wasn’t the only member of the crew playing an unfamiliar role. Right after breakfast, Ash rounded up Spider, Beetle, and the three orphans who were on Faith’s shortlist for future sleeper agents. Although the vast majority of the Sanctorium congregation was Akorosian (minus a handful of visiting nobility from other isles and ones who’d married into the Doskvolian aristocracy), Ash grabbed Azael too in a moment of weakness. While wielding his makeup kit to transform both Azael and Beetle into Akorosi, he instructed his little team, “We’re going to Mass at the Sanctorium. You’re going to act like the quintessential Brightstone children. You’ve already learned the accent. Now we’re going to rehearse some witticisms.”
While they practiced their cute lisps and their dimply smiles, Faith supervised the selection of frilly, pastel dresses for the girls and miniature suits and ties for the boys. Both Ash and Azael reluctantly defied Zamira’s orders and left their cat ears in Strathmill House.
“I’m sure Mother will forgive me,” Ash said to no one in particular.
Then he floated off to Church surrounded by a cloud of children.
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Foolhardy as ever, Faith, too, attended sixth-day Mass at the Sanctorium – but in her own inimitable fashion. Channeling her misspent youth, she dressed down as a lowly acolyte, one of those trainees who were always underfoot and obnoxious and very definitely beneath the notice of any important clergy who would remember Faith Karstas (or whatever her real name had been).
Slipping into her old stomping grounds via a back door, she blended easily into a crowd of acolytes, who were disturbingly disproportionately attractive young women. She even glimpsed Lauretta Mayvin, sister of Eridan, that way-too-important curate who’d been reassigned to Charhallow just long enough to take Kallysta to be Hollowed – and then to die in a mysterious fire. To Faith’s disappointment, when she stealthily spread her senses into the ghost field, she discovered that although three Ascendent, including Dunvil, were in the Sanctorium, Lauretta was not one of them.
(“I am disappointed in Miss Mayvin!” she clucked afterwards. “She’s so cuuuute! So ambitious and adorable.” One of her signature pauses and head tilts. “She’d also have murdered me happily if she’d known I was there.” Faith did seem to have that effect on people.)
Showing some modicum of self-preservation, she did give Lauretta a wide berth and bustled about with the rest of the acolytes, counting out the theologically correct number of candles and doing other such make-work, until she identified the most mischievous-looking girl. Sidling up to her, Faith suggested that they could explore the catacombs while Senior Acolyte Mara was distracted. The acolyte, a pretty brunette named Arilyn Strangford, immediately agreed. Together, the two snuck around the catacombs and the private reading rooms while Arilyn caught Faith up on Church gossip.
(“It’s nice to have pets!” Faith justified herself.
“Like Cricket,” I remarked.)
From her new acolyte pet, Faith learned that Elder Agravaine Rowan had finally succeeded Lord Scurlock as the Commander of the Spirit Wardens, and that Preceptor Dunvil was grooming Lauretta Mayvin as his successor. Lauretta was fanatically committed to proving that she was worthy of her position, so much so that she didn’t even have a romantic partner (which was apparently shocking for a Church higher-up).
“It’s interesting that he’s chosen another one of them to be his successor,” Arilyn confided. “After what happened, I mean. There’s still a cloud hanging over the Mayvins.”
(“Wait, wait, wait,” I exclaimed, putting some pieces together. “Don’t tell me Dunvil was training you to be his replacement!”
Faith flashed her dimples. “I don’t know why you would think that.”)
“Speaking of a cloud over the Mayvins,” Faith said in a hushed whisper, “did you have to help clean the catacombs after that failed ritual? Do you know what the ritual was for?”
Arilyn shuddered at the memory. “All they told us is that it failed. But there was a body with charred ash everywhere. I didn’t have to touch it myself – Mara and the senior acolytes did that – but it was still horrible. I was the one who had to retrieve that Hollow. It was just…wandering around aimlessly, afterwards.” At Faith’s sympathetic expression, Arilyn leaned close and whispered, “I heard that they tried to do something to someone – some of the acolytes say it was Karth Orris himself! – and that the person wasn’t worthy somehow, so it destroyed them from the inside out. But they won’t tell us anything. The senior acolytes were there, but none of them will talk.”
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With a few more artless questions, Faith ascertained that all the most important clergy and high-ranking nobility had been in the ritual chamber, including Karth Orris, Djera Maha, and Lauretta and Eridan Mayvin. “Well, I heard that Eridan died later that same night,” she said slyly, “so maybe it was his fault that the ritual went wrong. Maybe it was the Church that failed Karth Orris, not the other way around. And you know how…zealous his sister is….”
Arilyn looked perturbed at the implication that a Church leader would have her own brother murdered. The poor acolyte was eighteen years old and only just starting to discover that the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh was about more than drugs, sex, and really good music. Glancing around nervously, she reminded Faith, “Mass is going to start soon. Mara will need us to help light the candles….”
“But I heard that something exciting is going to happen in one of the reading rooms!”
Arilyn bit her lip, torn between curiosity and duty.
“Don’t you want to know what happens?” coaxed Faith, temptress-in-residence.
That decided Arilyn. “Okay. But we can’t let anyone see us.”
“Of course not! That would defeat the whole point!”
And the two of them crept into the back hallway where all the reading rooms were located.
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Meanwhile, I was trailing the Hive leaders to their pew midway down the nave, behind all the really important nobles, and experiencing the Sanctorium for the first time. Or, to be more precise, being overwhelmed by the Sanctorium for the first time.
Even more lavish than Spiregarden Theater, it was the most beautiful building in Doskvol, probably the most beautiful building in Akoros, and quite possibly even the most beautiful building in the entire Imperium. Its design was all whorls and curves, and marble in all the shades of human flesh, with dazzling mosaics of precious stones, and giant stained-glass windows backlit by electroplasmic lights that flung rainbows over the congregation, and elaborate sconces and sacred fonts and bejeweled statues everywhere. A choir of achingly beautiful children in cloth-of-gold robes filled the nave with song, and the heady scent of flowers from all over the Imperium enveloped me, so thick and strong that I could almost tastethe roses of Iruvia. When I sank into my seat, I found that the mahogany pew was carved all over with detailed scenes from the sacred texts, bordered and encircled by intricate geometric patterns that just begged me to run my fingers over them, over and over and over, marveling at the range of textures that the artists had coaxed out of what was, after all, one single type of wood. Everything about the Sanctorium was designed to be one massive sensory overload.
Wearingly blindingly white silk robes that contrasted sharply with all the colors and textures around us, and whose very simplicity focused attention on him and him alone, Preceptor Dunvil delivered a passionate sermon on the importance of seizing the day and living life to the fullest. “Hear me, O beloved!” he thundered. “Life is about the now! Not about clinging to its feeble remnants by existing as a ghost!” As his words rolled and broke over the congregation, people literally burst into tears of joy. His fervor was so infectious that even I felt a surge of emotion, and when I slanted a quick glance towards the back, I saw Ash and the children perched on the edge of their pew, their eyes riveted on Dunvil’s face.
The Preceptor had an ageless quality to him, which was not surprising given what Faith had revealed. However, what did surprise me was that unlike his sub-priests, he actually elevated Mass to something that bordered on the sacred, rather than the usual tawdry excuse for an orgy.
Until, of course, the sermon ended and Dunvil exited the nave.
Nothing like good, old-fashioned debauchery for breaking a spell.
As the room dissolved into one massive alcohol-and-drug-fueled party, Djera Maha rose unhurriedly and strolled down the central aisle to the altar, where she was met by a priest, a high-ranking one to judge by his scarlet silk robes. They bowed formally to each other, and then he took her hand and led her out of the nave towards the back of the Sanctorium.
Before I could figure out how to follow them, a little girl with two long pigtails traipsed past my pew. Even knowing Ash’s makeup skills, it still took me a moment to recognize Beetle. She tripped, dropped her hymnal, picked it back up, apologized with a winsome smile, and trotted off again. When I examined my hymnal, I discovered that she had somehow swapped them – and that tucked inside the front cover was a summary of Marne’s sixth-day routine. There was more intel too, stemming from my crewmates’ all-night interrogation session, but I didn’t dare read it just yet – or investigate why the book felt so heavy.
Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed a minor stir. A young boy – Spider, from his height – had apparently had such an emotional response to Dunvil’s exhortations that he glugged down an entire chalice of Black-Lotus-spiked punch before anyone could stop him. High as a kite, he tripped over his own polished loafers and struck his head on a pew. Ash and the other children rushed him out, ostensibly to seek medical attention, presumably to tail Djera Maha.
As for me, I kept waiting for her lieutenants to go partake of the bacchanalia so I could slip away too. Frustratingly, the rigid social hierarchy in Brightstone meant that even such devout worshippers as themselves were only barely tolerated, and so, ostracized by all the nobles, the Hive leaders lingered at their pew. But all of them were still pointedly ignoring me, which gave me the exit I needed.
Pretending not to care that I was still in disgrace, I held my chin high, tucked the hymnal under my arm, and sauntered off to contemplate the lewd frescoes near the altar. By now, practically all the worshippers were drunk and hallucinating, and little groups were slipping away for trysts. I attached myself to one such clump, let them carry me along into the back hallway, and then ducked behind a statue to study the hymnal.
Ash and Faith had glued together the back half, hollowed out the pages, and hidden a gun inside – the very gun that Djera Maha’s nephews had used to murder Pickett and Xayah, according to Ash’s note. Leafing through the front half of the book, I came across a witty poem by Faith about how you needed to “behead in order to get a-head.” The same sheet of paper contained some choice lines from Ash about the Emperor’s will and my regret that I had to take matters into my own hands.
Good.
If I were interpreting everything correctly, Djera Maha was an Ascendent – but that was all right, because demon-human hybrids could be killed by decapitation, and my crewmates had hidden a sword for me in the reading room. All I had to do was shout Ash’s lines for any witnesses to hear, shoot Djera Maha to slow her down long enough to find the sword, and then behead her before she dismembered me. What could be simpler?
Pocketing the notes and the gun, I went off in search of my target.
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Meanwhile, Ash had dispatched Azael with a letter from Marne Booker to His Eminence the Preceptor Dunvil. The boy would drop it in a place where it would eventually be discovered and make its way to Dunvil’s private secretary and then to Dunvil himself.
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While Azael selected the perfect location, Ash was learning to his chagrin that the orphans skulked exceedingly well and that, for a change, he had to follow their lead.
Equally bewildered, the kids were darting incredulous looks at one another and whispering advice such as, “But Mister Slane, behind the pillar!”
Embarrassed by his abysmal prowling skills, Ash gave up and switched back into his noble persona, pretending to be on his way to a rendezvous.
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By the time I reached the reading rooms (which, I had to say, were impressively well soundproofed), the children were peeking out of the shadows across from one particular door. The next door down was the tiniest bit ajar, and Faith’s voice drifted out: “I heard something exciting will happen in that room!”
A young, female voiced hissed back, “That’s Djera Maha! That’s the Hive leader!”
“Uh huh! Isn’t it exciting?”
Faith must have seen me, because she stage-whispered, “Oh, there’s somebody coming! And she seems a little lost! Can you go escort her wherever she’s going and get her out of our hair as soon as possible?”
The other voice protested, “But we’re supposed to be – oh, fine, you’re right, we can’t have people wandering around back here.”
The next thing I knew, a teenager in acolyte robes was gliding out to intercept me. “Are you looking for somewhere specific, ma’am?”
I skewered her with a glare, suggesting that she should know exactly who I was and hence whom I would be seeking, but in light of her age, I would forgive her ignorance and her presumption in interrupting me this once. “I’m looking for Ms. Maha,” I enunciated.
The acolyte cringed – prettily, somehow. “I’m…I’m afraid she’s in a private session right now, ma’am.”
“I am perfectly aware of that,” I snapped. “Where is she?”
The poor girl gulped. “I’m afraid…I really can’t let you in. She’s in a private session…,” she hinted.
I merely stared at her, waiting.
Half-concealed by the door, Faith waved her arms urgently at her new friend, who surrendered reluctantly. “Umm…okay…um, all right. I’ll show you where she is.” She did lodge one final, feeble pro forma protest, “But she is in a private session.”
Her entire body tense, as if she expected a whipping for sacrilege, the acolyte rapped tentatively on Djera Maha’s reading room door, then cracked it open.
“Um,” she called, keeping her face carefully averted, “there’s someone to see Ms. Maha?”
I elbowed her out of the way, ignoring her yelp, and burst into the room.
Inside, the half-dressed pair leaped apart. The priest looked shocked, Djera Maha absolutely furious.
“Marne! What is the meaning of this?”
In answer, I slammed the door, raised the gun, and pulled the trigger.