Celeste thought to answer, but Grace pressed on, Celeste’s participation in the conversation clearly not required.
“A Fallen woman murdered a Virtue. Order of Raphael, he was, so practically a saint! Well, I don’t know the details, but I know the sheriff was called in to break up a disturbance, and Ybarra walks right in and finds the girl covered in blood. Further investigation reveals a body, and then the Virtues are storming in and scooping her up before she can run.” She gestured around the room. “We’re all here to get the scuttlebutt. Oh, here’s the clerk now!”
The noise in the room dulled to a muddled hush as a woman emerged from a side door carrying a large chalkboard. She climbed a stepladder to hang the board overhead from a hook on the wall. Every neck in the building bent back to read it.
The board was divided into neat columns filled with cramped, narrow handwriting. It listed the names of the accused, assigned judges, and courtrooms. A blank space at the end was reserved for the defendant’s lawyer, assuming they had one.
Celeste read the board eagerly but failed to see Mariel’s name.
Grace sighed in disappointment.
“What is it?” Celeste asked.
“This is today’s docket, all the cases the court will hear. The Slaying Chanteuse isn’t up there.”
“Slaying Chanteuse?” Celeste repeated, alarmed.
“On account of her being a singer. Do you like it? I just thought it up. Or what about the Slaying Songbird? Yes, that has a bit more rhythm. Although it lacks the panache of the French.”
“They’re both terrible.”
Grace shrugged, unconcerned. “Everyone’s a critic. I’ll find something to make the headline.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “I hear the murder was a bloody one.”
Her stomach turned. “How bloody?”
“You ever castrate a goat?”
She shook her head.
“Well, she castrated this old goat for sure.” Grace laughed at her own joke and then added, belatedly, “Allegedly.”
“How are they able to do it?”
“Castration? Well, with a sharp knife and a strong stomach, I suppose.”
“No, the secret trial.”
Grace laughed. “You must be new here. The Virtues are the real law in Goetia. Politicians, mining barons, clergy. It’s a veritable who’s who behind those masks. And with all that divinity at their fingertips, why, they do what they want, when they want to.” She snapped shut the notebook she had been scribbling in. “Oh, they have certain rules to follow, like having a trial at all, but how honest can it be?”
“I’ve thought the same thing,” Celeste murmured. “How do I get in to see the judge?”
“The Order of Chamuel?” The reporter gestured toward the far end of the room with a toss of her head. Celeste hadn’t noticed it before through the crowd, but there stood a Virtue all in white, an olive branch painted across his white mask, guarding a door.
“Best of luck, but he won’t talk to you,” Grace said with a derisive snort. “He won’t talk to anyone. Believe me. We’ve all tried.”
Celeste’s tone was grim. “He’ll talk to me.”
Grace cocked her head, eyes narrowing, as if seeing something new in the woman next to her. “What law office did you say you worked for, again?”
“I didn’t.” Celeste offered her a tight smile. “Thank you,” she said, and walked away, the question unanswered.
Despite her professed optimism, once she was standing in front of the Virtue, doubt rushed upon her like a rising river. But she had thought about what to say on the walk over and was prepared.
“I need to speak to someone in the Order of Chamuel. I’m a witness to a crime, the murder last night. On Perdition. At the Eden.” She was stumbling over her words, nervous as a virgin in a whorehouse. But why wouldn’t she be, having witnessed a murder? She started again. “I’m here to speak to the Virtue in charge.”
The Virtue was still as granite and as cold. She repeated herself, with the same lack of results. But she refused to give up. She was about to inquire yet again when the Virtue moved. Behind him was an elaborately carved door with the now-familiar flaming sword upon it. He opened the door and then stepped aside, waving for her to enter.
She expected to see another room or a hallway but instead faced a lacy metal gate and, behind it, a box. The box looked big enough to fit three grown men, and it was connected to a series of visible ropes and pulleys. She glanced down through the grate at the bottom of the box, and there, far, far below, glowed a golden chunk of divinity.
She had never ridden in an elevator but knew this to be one, and the divinity below must be the beating heart of the mechanism that moved it.
She looked back briefly toward the courthouse lobby. Grace Walter met her gaze, her mouth open in shock.
“Step all the way in, Miss.” There was a man just inside dressed in a simple coat and trousers. Short in stature and thin as a settler’s soul, his hands rested on the lever that worked the machine. Celeste hesitated at the threshold, unsure, until the man looked up. Golden rings wreathed his brown eyes.
It was enough to move her forward.
Once she was inside the elevator, the Virtue pulled the metal gating closed and shut the outside door. The Fallen man pulled his levers, and the box filled with the sound of mechanics, whirling and cranking. The divinity below flared, bright as a flash of the infinite. They lurched upward. Celeste gripped the railing, knuckles white.
The elevator operator chuckled. “Don’t you worry none, Miss,” he said. “This here machine is in apple-pie order. I maintain it myself. You’re safe as can be.”
“And where does it go?” she asked, struggling even to find that many words as the box shuddered ever higher.
“Why, this one?” The old man laughed, loud and a little mad. “This one runs between heaven and hell.”
CHAPTER 7
After that, they rode the elevator in silence, and she was grateful for it. The man was unsettling, and by the time the machine came to a halt, she was more than willing to face whatever was before her rather than spend another moment in that stifling box.
He opened the gate and then the outside door and gestured her out. No sooner had she crossed to solid ground than she was confronted with another olive-branch-marked Virtue. This one was not alone. Beside him stood two more Virtues, their masks weeping bloody tears. One held in his hand a small silver bowl, the other iron shackles.
Sweat broke out at the back of her neck. She felt her knees shake and locked them in place. Behind her, the Fallen man giggled.
She forced herself to calm and asked, “What’s this?”
“Place your hand in the bowl.”
“Why must I?”
“If you wish to pass through, you must take the test.”
“But what does it do?”
“It is holy water.”
Holy water to burn the flesh. She tilted her face up to show him her ringless eyes. “I’m no Fallen.” The lie came smooth to her tongue.
He leaned in, using his superior height to great effect. “Then you have nothing to fear.” She could not see his smile behind his mask, but she knew it to be there. His next words crawled across her scalp like a nest of spiders. “Do not despair. Should you fail, the Virtues have ways to rehabilitate your kind.”