AWAKE, AWAKE
Kendra Leigh Speedling
The basement repose-rooms of the temple of Rivni were drafty once the weather chilled. The dead occupants hardly minded; the living were generally too focused on their work to pay attention. Idenna Beravnis, junior priest, was no exception.
Her needle made a few final, deft strokes in the dead man’s chest. She tied off the thread and removed her jade priest-ring, pressing its signet briefly into his forehead as she whispered a prayer. The stitching across the knife wound slashed from sternum to collarbone was as delicate as an embroidery sampler. When it came time to display the body at services, no one would see anything amiss. His face was peaceful; had it not been for the stillness of his form, and the line of blood-red thread across his skin, he might have been asleep.
A draft wafted through the grate over the dust-coated window, sending a sudden chill through the room. The gaslamp on the wall flickered. Idenna replaced her ring, murmuring the final words of the incantation. Her fingers only trembled slightly as she set the needle aside. She carefully dipped her forefinger in the cup of white tea next to her and splashed one, two, three drops on each of his eyelids. With the ritual complete, the only sound in the room besides the whistling of the wind outside came from the steady ticking of the clock in the corner.
It was done. Acanthus Moreva would not walk again.
Poor soul, Tirya, one of the temple acolytes, had said when the body had arrived. Successful businessman, generous to charity, eligible Society bachelor—Moreva had been well-known and well-loved throughout the city. I wonder if they’ll ever find who did it.
Idenna certainly hoped not.
* * *
The temple was all but invisible once she had crossed the street, fading into the fog. Winter in Irdall was not cold so much as clammy. Sharp chills and bitter winds were for the northern islands; the feel of winter on an Irdalli street was that of a tendril of fog working its way under one’s skin, blotting out the gleam of the gas streetlamps and making the citizens on the sidewalks appear nothing more than sinister shadows. Those hurrying past Idenna paid the temple no mind. The evening was chilly, and growing dark, and it was not a festival day; piety has its limits, even for a god of something as omnipresent as death.
Idenna stopped at the fishmonger’s on her way home, as she did every Verday. One salmon fillet for her supper and one small sardine as a treat for her cat Palka.
Arden Vail, the fishmonger, made a quick gesture as she approached the counter. A piece of twine leaped up obligingly to wrap around her parcel. Vail was from the mainland, the southern portion like her father, and as such Idenna felt a sort of kinship with the man.
“Finally stitched up poor Moreva, have you?” he asked, offering her the wrapped parcel.
“How did you know?”
The words came out sharper than she had intended, but he didn’t take her tone amiss. “Tirya stopped by earlier. She said you were working late to finish things.”
“Well,” she said, “it wouldn’t do to have him get back up.”
“Indeed not,” he said, and clucked his tongue. “Are you doing all right? First your father, and now this.”
“I’m fine,” she said, and held out her coins.
He waved them away. “This one’s on me. You’ve had a rough enough time of it.”
Idenna’s throat tightened. She took a few quick breaths, hoping that Vail wouldn’t notice, or if he did, that he would attribute it to grief alone.
It was not enough; she had to turn away. Tightening her cloak around her, she waved a hand in thanks as she opened the door.
Outside, the fog had thickened. The carriages on the other side of the street were now eerie silhouettes. She held her skirt out of the half-frozen muck. It was the sort of day her father had always called adhak—bad atmosphere, in his native Elikan. Bad omen. Now that she was grown, Idenna was not a superstitious woman; she knew Rivni would take you when and where he wanted to and it would make no difference whether there was fog in the air or not.
But old superstitions die hard, and she found her steps quickening even so.
* * *
The night was quiet. Idenna cooked her dinner on the small gas hob in her kitchen, gifted Palka with her sardine, and settled down next to the fire with the latest R. Mairis pirate novel. The only sound in her snug townhome was the crackling of the fire and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner; the neighbors seemed to have resolved the familial quarrel that had been Idenna’s unwelcome companion for the past several nights.
When the clock struck eleven, she closed her book, deposited Palka from her lap to the floor, and headed to bed.
She did not expect to wake in the middle of the night.
She wasn’t immediately sure of what had woken her. Squinting in the dark, she managed to make out what appeared to be a shadowy figure standing in her bedroom doorway.
She banished a silly thought of vengeful pirate ghosts and fumbled for the box of matches on her bedside table. Finagling one free, she struck it and lit the lamp.
Acanthus Moreva was standing in her bedroom, shirtless, her carefully stitched blood-red thread slashed across his chest.
A dream, she thought, but she could think of no reason why she would dream of him. She was no stranger to death and certainly did not find it disturbing, and she felt her conscience was clear. The only other alternative—that she had done the ritual incorrectly, that Moreva had awoken once more to walk the earth—was unthinkable. She had done that ritual a thousand times. No one stitched down by a Rivni-priest got back up again.
He smiled. “Good evening, dear Idenna.”
She did not bother pulling her bedsheets over her chest. Nightgown or no, there was no reason to dither with modesty in front of the dead.
“You’re dead,” she told him—foolishly; he knew that.
“Rather,” he agreed. “It hurt. Thank you for that. I was enjoying my life.”
“Too much,” she snapped. The fire in the other room must have burnt down to embers; a chill was working its way through the cracks around her window. She resisted the urge to wrap herself more tightly in her quilt. In the old tales, showing fear to the dead meant showing weakness. Especially for a priest of Rivni, this would not do. “You were meant to stay dead.”
“The dead don’t stay dead when they’re stitched down by their killer,” he said, teeth flashing in a grin. “Didn’t you pay attention to the nursery stories?”
“Superstition.”
He sat down on the edge of her bed. She was tempted to throw the lamp at him, but she didn’t want to risk burning down the entire building. Though if word got out that dead Moreva was still walking around, her reputation would be ruined. In more ways than one.
“Superstition, says the Rivni-priest of the walking dead.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?” He eyed her for a moment, head tilted to one side just a bit too far to seem natural. His movements were abrupt, but still graceful, the quick dart of a bird snatching a fish from the river.
“What do you want?” she demanded, setting her lamp down on her bedside table. “Revenge?” You deserve no revenge, she wanted to say, but that was intemperate, far too uncontrolled. She had thought the feeling had all drained out of her, weeks ago, but the sight of Moreva—dead Moreva, violating Rivni’s Strictures as well as her father’s memory—
Idenna took a deep breath, hoping that the sudden swirl of emotion hadn’t shown on her face.
“Well,” he said, tracing the line of thread on his chest with a finger, “you did kill me.”
“You killed my father.” Slowly, so he would not notice the movement, she edged a hand toward her nightstand, where she’d set her priest-ring when she’d taken it off for the evening. The marker of her position was mostly ceremonial—no priest in living memory had needed to bind the walking dead. But she trusted it would still serve.
“Your father put a small pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger.” The words were dispassionate, neutral. No sign of remorse for the fate of his onetime business partner—were the dead even capable of such things?
“Because you ruined him!” She took a deep breath, trying to wait out the white-hot flash of rage. Wasn’t killing the faithless bastard once enough; wasn’t stitching him down enough? Did he have to reappear to torment her?
“I have a job for you.”
“The dead have no jobs to offer. Especially not you.” Her hand closed around the ring. Before Moreva could react, she squeezed her eyes shut and uttered the traditional incantation, one she’d heard used a hundred times in ritual, but never for its original purpose. The stitchings had kept the Rivni-blessed dead down for thousands of years.
When she opened her eyes again, he was gone, leaving behind only the scent of white tea.
* * *
In the light of day, it was easy to convince herself that Moreva’s visit had been a dream after all, or if not, that she’d successfully bound the blasphemous aberration. Idenna went about her routine; she knew well enough how to keep up appearances. Her duties at the temple were uneventful—morning prayers, offering some words of comfort to those with departed loved ones, three more stitchings of the recently deceased. She was tempted to avoid these in favor of other tasks, let one of the other priests take her place, but rejected this as foolishness. If something had gone wrong, it hadn’t been with the ritual itself; besides, shirking her duties would be shameful. Her father would not have wanted it.
She did not think about dead Moreva.
Her final task for the evening was preparing the small chapel for a mourning ceremony. Neve, the senior priest, would be presiding; Idenna’s duties were only to consecrate the room and light the candles before making herself scarce. It was a simple duty, one she could perform in her sleep.
Dusk was falling, the sunset gleaming blue and gold through the chapel windows. Idenna dipped a candle in the altar flame, using it to light the others one at a time.
Awake, Idenna Beravnis.
She spun around, the flame flickering out at the sudden breeze. She was alone, but she had felt a definite presence next to her. And that had been Moreva’s voice.
This is a sacred place, she told herself. Here, the dead stay down as they should.
There was no motion from the stairs behind her, leading up to the altar, no sound from the empty mourner-benches. No sign of anything at all, living or dead.
Idenna allowed herself a small sigh and turned to light the candle again. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror atop the altar and nearly dropped the candle in the fire.
Moreva was standing behind her.
She whirled, clenching the candle like a weapon, to find that there was no one there.
* * *
Idenna retired to bed at her usual time, forcing herself to return her book to her nightstand and avoid the temptation to wait out the night by reading. She had often read past her bedtime when she was small, hurriedly covering the lamp whenever she heard her father’s footsteps near her door—but that had been years ago. She shook off the memory and turned to blow out the lamp, allowing herself only a brief hesitation.
She awoke not to noise, nor to movement, but to the scent of white tea wafting through the room. A silhouette stood at her door.
“I have a job for you,” he said.
She lit the lamp, wishing she had bought some juniper branches on her way home. The notion had crossed her mind, but doing so would have felt as though she were acknowledging something.
“I don’t take jobs from the dead,” she snapped.
“You have only yourself to blame for that series of events.” The way the shadows danced across his face made him look hawk-like, predatory, an unexpected impression from Moreva’s boyish features. Though nearly her father’s age, he had worn his years much more lightly.
“I did what was necessary to let my father rest.” Anger rose to her throat again, choking off further reproof. Moreva knew very well what he had done, and even at the last, he had offered nothing but excuses.
“Your father was resting already,” he said. “Fate ties us each with our own strand, awaiting shining Rivni and his scythe to return us to our natural state. The body is a temporary thing—”
“—for we are born of starlight and earth, a mixture which by nature cannot last,” Idenna finished. “Do you truly mean to lecture a Rivni-priest on the Strictures?”
He chuckled. “Do you mean to lecture the dead on the nature of death?”
“You earned your fate!” The words burst from her before she could consider whether it was wise to provoke him. Wise, not wise, what does it matter now? The only one who would miss you is gone.
He stepped forward, far more quickly and fluidly than was natural, and was in front of her before she could blink.
“I was going to earn it back,” he said. “I needed money. I needed time.” His eyes, in this light, were hardly recognizable as Moreva’s, which had been a piercing bright green. Now they were black, with no trace of either white or iris.
Was it the light?
“So you swindled him out of his fortune and stole his life! No apology, no remorse—”
“I did not make his choices for him!” The words were almost a snarl; he drew himself up to his full height—then, just as suddenly, he calmed. “We light our own fires, viyane. It is time you took up your torch.”
Dear one, in her father’s tongue. He was the only one who had ever called her that.
Idenna closed her eyes for a moment, letting the emotion pass. When she opened them again, she said, “You aren’t Moreva.”
He smiled.
“What are you, some sort of spirit possessing his form?”
“I am Moreva,” he said. “After a fashion. At the moment, we are, for lack of a better term, sharing.”
Was it her imagination, or were the dark pits of his eyes growing?
“It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement,” he said. “He gets to cling to a semblance of life for now—your sort always want that, regardless of whether it actually benefits you.”
“And what do you get?”
His smile widened, too much; it looked feral and wrong. “I get the chance to talk to you, Idenna Beravnis.”
“Why?” The word came out in a whisper, and she loathed herself for it. “What are you?”
He extended a hand, one long finger a hairsbreadth away from her face. “I’ll give you a hint,” he said, and brushed the finger against her forehead.
Idenna had almost drowned once, as a child. She’d fallen in the river while playing and the current had swept her away before her friends could reach her. She remembered the crush of the rapids, the waves cresting relentlessly over her head until all there was to breathe was water.
The sensation crashed into her like drowning; she had no sight, no air. She was not sure if the room around her was gone or if it was she who had left. In her ears echoed a choir, a chant—one she had performed at the temple a thousand times, but sounding like no human voice imaginable.
Bright spots began pulsing in her vision, different colors and sizes; they seemed to form a tapestry across an unimaginable distance. She could sense each and every one of them—their lives, their emotions, their deaths. She knew when all of them would meet their end—
The chant reached a crescendo. Her vision flared bright, and then there was darkness.
When Idenna opened her eyes again, she was on the floor. Moreva’s silhouette was standing above her.
“You—” she gasped, once she’d gotten her breath.
“It’s overwhelming the first time,” said Rivni, shining Rivni in Acanthus Moreva’s body. “One adapts.”
“Rivni,” she said. She didn’t know if there was a proper obeisance to make to a god clad in flesh—anyway, she couldn’t have moved if she wanted to.
“Your people call me by that name,” he agreed, offering her a hand. “There have been others, eons worth. In the end, they all mean Death.”
Idenna took his hand. It was cool, smooth, like marble. He pulled her up effortlessly; it felt as though she were floating to her feet.
She took a deep breath, dressing herself in her usual composure as if putting on a robe. Even if she couldn’t make sense of what was going on, there was no need to seem like a fool.
“In the old tales,” she said dryly, “you all just send visions.”
Death-Rivni-Moreva flung his head back and laughed, the sound making the walls shake. Idenna was too disquieted to spare a thought for her neighbors.
“Unfortunately,” he said, sobering as quickly as he’d been amused, “we have our own rules to follow.”
“Why are you here?” she asked, meeting his eerie black gaze. “And why in Moreva’s form?”
“I told you,” he said. “To speak to you.”
“Why?”
“You killed me.” He laid a hand across the red line of thread on his chest. “It was unanticipated.”
A weft of doubt curled through Idenna’s mind; yes, that vision had seemed fairly conclusive, but a death unanticipated by Rivni could not be. Perhaps he was a spirit after all, possessing Moreva’s form to lead her astray. Or perhaps it was simply dead Moreva, seeking vengeance.
“Rivni sees all fates,” she countered.
“Yes,” he agreed, tilting his head to the left, unnaturally far. “I see all fates, viyane, except Acanthus Moreva’s, and except yours. Your thread gleams, and yet I cannot grasp it; you killed this man unbidden. It was not part of the pattern, and that tells me one thing.”
As ludicrous as the notion was, a chill stole over Idenna. A death Rivni could not foresee would have been blasphemy—had it not been impossible.
“And what is that?” she asked, keeping her voice steady.
He regarded the wall clock in the corner, staying silent so long that she was tempted to repeat the question. She did not; she knew he had heard her. Rivni, spirit, dead Moreva—it would not benefit her to antagonize any of them. The steady ticking of the clock filled the room, though it was only the press of her own thoughts that made it deafening.
“It is time,” he said. “Time to awaken once more. I have been Death for more millennia than you can imagine, yet I was not the first, and I will not be the last.”
“I have no skill with riddles.”
“Because you have always done as you were told.” He extended a hand out, as if to touch her forehead again, then stopped. “Schooling, priesthood, dutiful daughter, day-to-day life repeating and repeating as if you had modeled it after that clock—”
“Until I killed Acanthus Moreva,” she said, unmoved by his critical tone. She knew what her life had been, and she didn’t see why it should be an object of reproach. She had always, always done her duty.
“Until you killed Acanthus Moreva,” he agreed. “One moment of fury in a life regulated by routine. You say your prayers; you repeat the words and do your duty and keep the dead in their place. Do you feel it, I wonder?”
“Is that not enough?” she demanded, anger flashing through her tone. She was no mystic. Her faith may not have been as deep as that of some of the others, as Tirya with her visions or Neve with the prayers tattooed on her arms—but she had done her duty. Why couldn’t he haunt one of them? “I followed your path, as my father wanted.”
“I do not mind,” he said. “But it cannot be easy to live while stitching your feelings down.”
“I am no corpse.” She could not quite hold back the venom from the words. Was haunting her not enough? He had to mock her as well?
He made a noncommittal gesture. “Moreva’s death was a beacon, Idenna Beravnis. You caused a death I did not plan. Your fate has been decided.”
Idenna glanced away, at his elongated silhouette cast upon the wall by the lamp. It was less unsettling than looking at his face, so familiar and yet completely alien. She realized her hand was knotted in her nightgown and made herself unclench it.
“If you’re here to kill me, you could have done that the first night and saved us both a lot of trouble,” she grumbled. She knew she should be afraid, but she had always expected Rivni to claim her one day; she just hadn’t expected he’d do it personally. She had no remaining relations, no close friends, and no further unfinished business—save, perhaps, for making sure someone found Palka. She feared neither death nor Death.
“Equanimity,” he said, regarding her through half-lowered eyelids. On someone else, the expression might have appeared lazy. “Surprising.”
“Are you…reading my thoughts?”
He laughed. “I am not my magic-attuned sister; I do not possess the power. Your demeanor speaks clearly enough.”
She supposed that was some sort of accomplishment.
“I am not here to kill you,” he said. “Not exactly.”
“What does that—”
“Your soul.” He held out a hand expectantly, as though she could set it in his palm. “It is already in motion. If you planned the death of Acanthus Moreva and I did not, that means it is time. You will agree to unite; I will fade into the background; you will be scythe-bearing Rivni in the tower; it will fall to you to claim the mortal souls.”
Idenna opened her mouth and closed it again three times before she arrived at a reply she considered suitably non-inane.
“You want me,” she said, very slowly, “to…become Rivni.”
“I told you,” he said. “I was not the first. I will not be the last.”
“Impossible. The Strictures—”
“The Strictures are made by mortal hands. Subject to certain…omissions.”
She let that be, for now. “So we unite, and you leave behind Moreva’s corpse—”
“I leave behind Moreva.”
He stressed the word enough that it was clear he was trying to make a distinction.
“Moreva,” Idenna repeated flatly.
“Alive,” he said. “It is how things work.”
She spun on her heel, paced a few steps toward the wall, and stared at the painting there—a landscape that had hung in that same spot as long as she could remember.
“I refuse,” she said.
“I don’t think you understand the gravity of the—”
“Do you know what it took to kill him?” she demanded, spinning to face him again.
“A knife,” he said, with something like humor. “Probably a sharp one.”
“You’re asking me to return to life the man who caused my father’s death.”
“I am asking you,” he said, “to fix what has gone awry. If you seek justice, you’re talking to the wrong god.”
Idenna took a deep breath. “Get out.”
He extended a hand. “If you believe in me as you’ve preached over these years—”
“Get. Out.”
Rivni regarded her a moment more, then turned to the door. “I will be waiting,” he said, and faded into the shadows.
* * *
She could not sleep.
She made a cup of tea—green tea, not white—and sat at the kitchen table, thinking.
It could not have been Rivni. It must have been Rivni.
Palka meowed, rubbing up against her legs, and Idenna absently let a hand drift down to scratch the cat’s head. Outside the window, the fog was still thick, swirling in face-like patterns—no, that was only her imagination.
Becoming Rivni. Impossible—wasn’t it? But that vision, that feeling of those life-lights surrounding her…it sounded like ravings from a wild-haired mystic on a street corner, but it had felt real.
If she allowed that becoming Rivni was possible, that would be one thing. But allowing Moreva to return to life?
Palka jumped up into her lap, which Idenna normally discouraged when she was in the kitchen—the habit tended to lead to the theft of whatever was on her plate. She reached down to push the cat away, but was met with a paw pushing back against her hand.
“The stitchings will fail.”
Startled, Idenna looked down. Palka was sitting upright, eyeing her expectantly.
That had been Moreva’s voice.
“The stitchings will fail. The dead will rise. Those meant to die will live five hundred years. Those meant to live to ninety will collapse in the streets. Chaos. Destruction—”
Idenna leapt to her feet, tossing Palka to the floor. “You leave my cat be!”
Palka glanced over her shoulder, sneezed, and shook herself, then headed off to the living room with the offended dignity only a cat could muster.
Idenna reached for her cup of tea, more to have something to hold onto than to drink—and nearly dropped it on the floor.
Her green tea had turned to white, a delicate floral aroma wafting up at her.
* * *
Rivni was right. Within days, the stitchings had grown harder. Priests long accomplished in such matters needed their work checked two, three, four times. The temple of Rivni in Irdall heard similar tales from their brethren across the continent. The stitchings were not taking as easily as they had, and no one save Idenna knew why.
She said nothing. Even had she wanted to, she knew the politics of the temple. Her words would be dismissed as raving; no one spoke to Rivni directly, nor any of the gods. Not since the era of myth.
Other tales, too, spread: sightings of spirits and haunts and strange shapes in the fog. Some could be dismissed as superstition. Others seemed more plausible. The temple attempted to keep the latter sort of stories under wraps. No sense in causing a panic.
Idenna no longer slept well. Her dreams dwelled on that brief fragment of Rivni’s consciousness he’d shown her, each new glimpse connected to the last like the facet on a gem. Of dead Moreva, she saw nothing, though often she felt something watching her.
She had begun to smell of white tea. Palka avoided her, as though the cat could sense the encroachment of death.
I will not let Moreva live. I will not let Moreva live. She chanted it in her head like a refrain, whenever she sensed her resolve beginning to waver.
Two weeks after Rivni’s last visit, she stayed late at the temple. She lit the taper candles in the chapel and waited by the altar, keeping her gaze on the carved marble ceiling above her and not on the mirror.
“In the old tales,” she said out loud, “there are bargains.”
“I am not a vengeful hedgewitch.” Motion in the mirror caught her eye; dead Moreva’s body was standing behind her. Despite the passage of time, the corpse seemed to be as pristine as it had been when she’d stitched it down.
She turned. “Then stop this.”
“You mistake me,” he said. The pools of shadow filling his eye sockets had grown. “I could not stop this, even if I wished. It is not under my control.”
“You’re a god.”
“Would you be able to stop a hurricane, if the people of Irdall wished? It is the same.”
“The world is dying.”
“Yes,” he said, trailing a finger idly along the row of candles.
He did not speak further. Idenna suspected he was trying to leave her to think. How could she think, when every time she closed her eyes, she saw her father sprawled dead on the floor, blood leaking from the hole in his skull? How could she think, when dead Moreva still walked, taunting her at every turn?
He had not apologized. He had equivocated, pleaded, but he had not apologized. I didn’t kill him, he’d said, more than once, as though that made a difference. It was true, but only in the most technical terms.
I was going to make it better, he’d said, and that was when she’d slashed him with the knife.
Had she meant to kill him? It had not been the planned end of that confrontation, but she’d interpreted it as fate. As the hand of shining Rivni, judging her father’s killer. That had to be right, because if not—Oram Beravnis would receive no justice. No court in the land would convict Acanthus Moreva of irresponsibility, of talking his friend into a terrible investment as a personal favor.
“I will not let him live,” she said finally, one hand clenched in her robes.
“And you would let the world die?”
“Bring someone else back,” she snapped. “Anyone. I don’t care who. Why not save my father, if someone has to return?”
“It is not the way.”
She swung a hand toward his face, not thinking, aiming for a slap—this is Rivni, not truly dead Moreva—
She froze, her breathing harsh in her ears.
Slowly, he reached out and brushed a finger across her cheek, eyeing the collected moisture with bemusement.
Idenna was no less surprised. She was not a crier.
“Would he want the world to die for his sake?” Rivni asked.
“Don’t you dare—”
“These are threads mortals cannot touch.” He laid a hand on the red stitching across his chest.
“Moreva deserves no resurrection.”
“It’s not about deserving. Moreva needs to live because perhaps in five generations a daughter of his bloodline will play a vital role in saving a nation far away. Perhaps he needs to live because he invents something crucial to humanity’s survival three hundred years from now. Or perhaps he needs to live in order to die in another way, at a later date. He is an infinitesimally small part of a larger pattern, like each one of you, and it cannot be broken. The world will rip itself apart trying to repair things.”
It ripped me apart first, Idenna almost said. Ripped me apart and remade me into what I was supposed to be, then did it again and expects me to accept it with a smile.
“I cannot force you into this,” Rivni said. He gestured toward the ceiling reliefs, one hand trailing through the candle flames. He did not appear to mind. “But you must understand.”
“You want me to sacrifice the only thing I ever did of my own accord.” It was, it had been. She had thought over and over, trying to find something else, and gods, was that what her life had amounted to?
“I want you,” he said, “to save everything.”
Idenna sat down on the altar stairs, trying to pass it off as a controlled movement. “Do I have a choice?”
“Yes.” He did not elaborate, nor remind her of the stakes.
She looked at him for a moment, seeing not dead Moreva but Rivni, ancient and unfathomable. “Do you know what I decide?”
“No,” he said. “My sight ended when you killed Acanthus Moreva.”
“Then you don’t know what will happen—”
He glanced over his shoulder, at the blue glass windows along the chapel wall. The message was clear enough.
* * *
On the way home, Idenna did not stop at Arden Vail’s; she did not tarry on the foggy streets. A light snow was beginning to fall, swirling around the glowing gaslamps in miniature clouds. A peaceful winter scene.
When she returned, she put the kettle on the hob to boil, then thought the better of it.
She wasn’t in the mood for tea anyway.
The halls of her house seemed emptier than normal, the wood paneling oppressive rather than cozy. Idenna paced around each room several times, trying to find the most comfortable spot, like Palka circling on the bed.
Palka herself was nowhere to be found. No doubt she had gone to see the neighbor woman, the housewife with the nice dried anchovies.
Idenna finally found herself in her father’s study, regarding the bookshelves stacked precariously along the walls. He’d always loved reading; when she was small, he’d read her a chapter of a book every night. So many of those books had been gifts from Moreva, a personal inscription in each one. He and her father had met on the boat to Irdall; they had been inseparable from that point on.
The world is dying.
She heard the floorboards creak behind her and whirled around, expecting dead Moreva, expecting Rivni.
Her father stood in the doorway.
Idenna’s breath rushed out in a hiss.
“You’re gone,” she said. “You were stitched down.”
“Things are changing,” he said. “There is a new breeze through the world. Do you feel it?”
“Rivni. This is one of your tricks.” She wasn’t sure if the knot in her chest was compelling her toward laughter or tears.
He smiled. It was too wide, unsettling. “Rivni has no power anymore.” He walked past her, perusing the bookshelves. The hole in the side of his head was clean and empty. “How many of those would you say we read?”
“Almost all of them.” She took a breath. “You shouldn’t be here.”
He tilted his head to one side, frowning. “Do you not want me around, viyane?”
“It’s not you,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “Not really.”
“No,” he agreed. He held up a hand and studied it in the gaslight, veins standing out from the skin. “But it’s better than nothing.”
“It’s not!” The words burst from her. This was a mockery, a false life; the Strictures told that nothing could truly bring back the dead, not all the way. To see him in this state—
“Do you remember?” he asked. “We used to have dinner on Aildays, you and Acanthus and I, and he’d bring you candied walnuts and ask you about your schooling—”
“It’s his fault you’re gone!”
“You blame him because you cannot blame me,” he said. He glanced away, ran a finger along the spine of his copy of the Strictures. “I understand. I am sorry, viyane.”
Idenna swiped a hand across her eyes. “I killed Moreva so you could rest!”
“No rest,” he said. “Not anymore.”
She turned on her heel and ran, out the door, onto the street, toward the temple. His words followed her—no rest, no rest, no rest…
It’s not going to fix itself.
* * *
The temple courtyard was deserted, cloaked in the hush of newly fallen snow. Idenna shivered. She hadn’t stopped to grab her overcoat.
She had always been quiet, courteous, reserved. She abandoned that habit now.
“Rivni!” she shouted into the snowstorm. “Where are you?”
There was no reply.
“Rivni!”
You did this, she almost added, but—well.
Idenna sank to her knees, shaking, and closed her eyes.
“Do you have an answer?” dead Moreva’s voice came from behind her.
She stood up, gathering herself, and looked him in the eye. “I want to fix this.”
“Then break the stitching,” he said, gesturing to his chest. The slash of red thread stood out in sharp relief against his pale skin.
Idenna reached into her skirt pocket for her penknife. A small, delicate thing compared to the instrument of Moreva’s demise, but it would do.
“What will happen?” she asked, gripping the knife in her hand. “After.”
“We will unite,” he said. “Gradually, your influence will increase, and mine will…wane.”
Something in his tone made her pause. “It’s a sort of death for you, isn’t it?”
“In a way,” he said. “But I have been Death a long time.”
“And the rest of it—the dead, the stitchings—it goes back to the way it was?”
“It does.” He spread his arms, inviting her in. “It is time.”
Idenna looked down at the enameled handle of her penknife. A gift from her father. He’d said it had belonged to the mother she’d never known.
She tightened her grasp on the handle and slashed, slicing through the red thread, opening the gash across Moreva’s chest.
The world roared, or perhaps it was only the snowstorm whipping up again; everything went dark and cold and empty.
Idenna took a breath.
Then another.
It was done, she could tell.
It was done.
Slowly, the darkness around her seemed to warm; spots of light appeared in her vision, coalescing into bunches that spread out in tangles as far as she could see. She understood them, those people, each and every one, their wishes and dreams and fears and their appointed time, and oh, her own vengeance seemed small and unimportant and hugely essential all at once—
It had been part of the pattern after all. Rivni was right; it was time.
Welcome, a voice said within her head. It wasn’t like dead Moreva’s voice, but there was enough similarity in the intonation for Idenna to recognize it.
One of the spots of light danced up, just out of reach. She recognized that, too.
She almost pushed the emotion aside, but then thought the better of it. How long had it been since she had truly let herself feel something?
“Rest well,” she murmured.
Come, Rivni-herself said. We have work to do.