Wingbeats flapped past. “Pretty bird!” the raven shrieked defiantly.
I tried to stand up, only to get jerked back down by the shackles. “Trouble.”
“Oh, do you think so?” the revenant hissed. “Aside from an impending attack by spirits for which we are completely unprepared?”
“No, that’s the raven’s name. Trouble.” His timing didn’t strike me as a matter of chance. “The Lady must have sent him to help us.”
“I would be interested to know how many hours daily you nuns spend inhaling incense. Clearly, it has an effect on your brains.”
I ignored it, listening carefully to the knights’ disgruntled shouts, the chaotic jingling of tack. It sounded like Trouble was diving from the sky, spooking the horses.
I wasn’t worried about his safety. My favorite book in the scriptorium was a collection of parables describing the gruesome fates of wrongdoers who had offended the Lady by harming Her sacred birds. Even the knights wouldn’t dare hurt a raven. As the knight blocking the screen rode past, I saw another waving his scabbard in the air, futilely attempting to shoo Trouble away.
Their efforts were in vain. At last, infuriated, Leander called out orders to stop the harrow. As it slowly bumped to a halt, I heard him issue a few more indistinct commands. The loud, grinding vibration of the winch drowned out the rest. I clambered to the floor and crouched there, watching the links rattle into the mechanism.
After the winch stilled, the metal slot in the door slammed open, and a tin cup slid inside. I dragged it over with my foot and gulped down the cold, metallic water. When the knight reopened the slot, the empty cup wasn’t waiting for him.
Eyes appeared on the other side, shadowed and unreadable behind the grille of a helmet’s visor. I slid the cup partway across the floor, almost close enough for him to reach.
“I need to speak to the priest.”
A long silence emanated from the knight. He had probably been instructed not to speak to me. I pushed the cup the rest of the way over.
“There’s something I need to confess.”
He took the cup. The eyes vanished, and the slot dropped shut. I waited, hoping Leander wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation. I was rewarded a moment later when the bolts began to slide open on the door.
“There’s something else,” the revenant said quickly. “You can’t let anyone find out that we’re talking to each other, or that I’m helping you willingly. If we’re ever caught, pretend…” I felt it bristling as it forced out the rest. “Pretend that you subdued me, and I’m under your control.”
I’d rather not. People truly would believe I was a saint if I made such a claim. But it was right—if anyone found out that we were cooperating, not just the revenant with me, but also the reverse, an exorcism would be the least of my worries. I might even face burning at the stake for heresy. I nodded to show that I’d understood.
The door swung open, flooding the harrow with light. I resisted the instinct to cringe away from the glare and faced the figure standing there with watering eyes. Even through a blur of tears, the tall, spare silhouette unmistakably belonged to Leander. I wondered what he saw in return as his gaze swept over me. My robes stank of sweat, and my unbraided hair hung lank and greasy to the floor. No doubt he found the image satisfying. He had wanted to see me humbled at his feet in Naimes, and he had finally succeeded, though it had taken a chain and shackles to bend me to his will.
The harrow dipped beneath his weight as he stepped inside. His robes blocked out the sun, bringing into focus the key ring hanging from his belt beside his censer. One of the keys looked old and tarnished, a possible match for the shackles.
“That one,” the revenant confirmed.
“You may speak,” Leander said, as though I had been waiting for his permission. “What is it you wish to tell me?”
He sounded composed, but I noticed that he was standing just outside the distance I could reach him if I suddenly lunged to the end of the chain. My gaze traveled up from the key ring, past the glittering jewels of Saint Eugenia’s reliquary, and finally to his face. As I met his eyes, I caught a flicker of emotion in their depths, there and gone again, like the flash of a fish’s scales vanishing into a dark pool.
“Stop wasting time,” the revenant hissed. “What is your plan? Don’t tell me you’re making this up as you go along.”
I racked my brain for something to say, and my thoughts returned inevitably to Sister Iris’s scream, the sight of Mother Katherine limp before the altar. “I want to know what happened to the sisters in Naimes. Were any of them injured in the attack?”
“Am I speaking to Artemisia, or the revenant?” Leander returned coolly.
“Can’t you tell?”
Our eyes were still locked. He looked away first. “You seem to be in command of yourself, but it can be difficult to tell for certain. Spirits study the human world through their vessels, growing more cunning with each person they inhabit.”
A hoarse muttering sound came from above. Trouble had landed on the harrow. His claws pattered across the roof, and Leander tensed, a reaction that might have been a flinch in someone less controlled. Whatever he had seen in the past weeks in Roischal couldn’t have been pleasant to have affected even him. The shadows beneath his eyes looked deeper inside the harrow.
But he continued smoothly, “If a spirit as old and experienced as the revenant were to take over your body, it could impersonate you so skillfully that even the sisters who raised you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Until it ceased the act, and killed them.”
“Unlikely. I would rather spend another hundred years in my reliquary than try to impersonate you. I’d go straight for the killing.”
I received the impression that I was going to have to get used to ignoring it in the middle of important conversations. Through clenched teeth, I asked, “Even if I were possessed, how could it be dangerous to tell me?”
“Speaking to you at all is a risk.”
“But you came anyway.”
Leander’s hand twitched—the one wearing the onyx ring. He looked at me again, his expression impossible to read. Then he said in a low, intense voice, “Right now you should be receiving instruction in Bonsaint. You could have had anything you wanted. Instead, you’re chained inside a harrow, tormented by a spirit you might have one day learned to control.”
“You have no idea what I want,” I countered.
“You’ve seen nothing of the world save a convent and the miserable little town in which you were born. I think it’s possible that you don’t know what you want.”
I gazed back at him expressionlessly. “I want to know what happened to the sisters.”
Forgetting himself, he took a step forward. “You should have listened to me,” he said. “If you had come with me—”
“Nun,” the revenant broke in urgently, at the same time I snarled, “Everyone at my convent would be dead!” I threw myself to the end of the chain, the bite of the shackles drawing me up short.
He jerked back, startled. I had almost reached him—almost touched his keys. His mouth twisted into an involuntary defensive snarl, like a cornered animal baring its teeth, before he drew his composure back into place with a strained effort. “I shouldn’t have come.” He turned sharply and began to step out of the harrow.