Page 92
Oh, this is becoming ridiculous.
I have spent long enough learning how to move amongst mortals without drawing attention to myself, and here I am contemplating whether I might solve the problem of an angry congregation by pelting them with stones.
It is bad enough that Gideon caught me passing soulglimmer into his sister in the first place. Careless of me, certainly, and precisely the sort of recklessness I have spent centuries avoiding. But Ophelia had been so terribly frightened, convinced that the physician she had trusted was some enormous carrion bird waiting to pick the flesh from her bones. I could scarcely get her to look at me without recoiling, let alone persuade her that I meant no harm, and when the fever began to overwhelm her again, I could think of nothing else that might offer her some relief.
I had rather foolishly hoped we would not be discovered.
Leaving the apothecary had been simple enough. By the time I had thrown the last of the Brothers down the stairs, the fire had taken the shop below, and while the lane stood gawping at the flames through the front door, I went out through the back and over the garden wall. Nobody followed. They had what they had come for. Gideon had his sister, the crowd had its fire, and not one of them was in any hurry to go hunting “the Devil” through the dark.
My bare fingers flex at my sides, stiff with cold and blackened with soot. Both gloves are gone, burnt away in the apothecary fire along with a considerable portion of my cloak, and the remaining cloth hangs in scorched strips around my legs. I brush a little ash from my sleeve, glancing towards the church doors as another prayer rises from the crowd. Ophelia is somewhere inside, growing weaker with every passing moment, and I am standing in the trees worrying about how to get past a handful of villagers with torches.
Keeping to the shadows, I make my way behind the oldest graves at the rear of the church, where the ground slopes towards the eastern foundations and the headstones have begun to lean beneath the weight of their years. The stonework here is much older than the church above it, and after pulling aside a thick tangle of dead ivy, I uncover a narrow opening fitted with iron bars, intended to allow the foul air to escape from the crypt far beneath.
I crouch beside it, brush the snow from the sill, and peer down through the thick cut of foundation stone.
Ophelia is sitting against the far wall.
Her head hangs forward, loose strands of hair obscuring her face, and her shift has slipped from one shoulder, leaving far too much of her exposed to the freezing air. The linen gathered between her thighs is soaked dark with blood. More stains her underarms, darkening the sides of her shift, and her fingers are so thoroughly smeared with it that I can scarcely distinguish the colour of her skin. A long, rusted nail lies beside her bare foot, its point coated in something dark.
Oh, Ophelia.
She has lanced the buboes herself.
An unsettling mixture of horror and pride settles beneath my ribs. I ought to be furious with her for putting whatever filth she found down there through her own flesh, particularly when she knows better than most what corruption can follow, but I cannot quite bring myself to begrudge her the attempt.
“Ophelia Harrow,” I call softly down through the bars. “Can you hear me?”
She gives no indication that she has heard, and I am preparing to call again when her head turns against the wall. She blinks towards the narrow shaft of moonlight falling across the floor, and a faint scrape of skin against stone echoes from the dark as she tries to move closer.
“Iscairn?”
“Yes. I am here.”
She makes a small, pitiful sound that might be a laugh, then begins dragging herself towards me, using her elbows to pull her body across the floor while her leg trails behind her. I grip the cold bars, unable to reach through the sheer depth of the sill, and watch helplessly as she stops twice to catch her breath before finally dragging herself directly beneath the vent.
“There you are,” she whispers.
“Here I am. Now, I would be grateful if you would stop moving. You have lost enough blood already, and I have no desire to see you lose the remainder whilst attempting to crawl towards me.”
“I am well,” she murmurs, lifting her glassy, fevered face towards the moonlight. “Well, better. The pain has gone, though I appear to be roasting alive. But Mum’s gone away, and you aren’t a big bird.”
A small, sorrowful smile tugs at my mouth beneath the mask. I would much prefer she had never been frightened of me in the first place, but for the moment I shall settle for being recognisably myself.
She rests her cheek against the stone, watching me quietly through the bars as she catches her breath. “Iscairn?”
“Yes?”
“I want you to take it. My soul, I mean.” She swallows thickly. “You said you could take it when someone was dying. When it had started to come loose.”
“Ophelia—”
“I know,” she rasps. “I know I told you that you weren’t allowed, but I’ve changed my mind.”
The corroded grating creaks under my grip. “No.”
“Please.” She struggles to lift her arm towards the ceiling, her bloodied fingertips reaching uselessly upward into the dark. “I don’t want to lie here until the rats start wondering whether I’ve finished dying. I just want a little peace, Iscairn. I’d rather it be over before Gideon comes down here to spend my last moments telling me I’m going to Hell.”
“Ophelia, listen to me.”
