Page 13 of The Lost Reliquary
Sarcasm. Finally, a sign of humanity.
“We had time for both, I guess, if you count the time Jeziah poisoned my tea with an infusion we’d studied that week.” It’s not really funny—I was puking for two days straight—but I chuckle anyway. Nolan doesn’t. Apparently, the Dusk Cloister kept things tight. “I got back at him by ‘accidentally’ breaking both his wrists during a sparring match. After that, we called a truce, more or less. Pranks from then on were less… incapacitating.” Something tightens in my chest. “The Dusk Potentiates who died, were you… friends?” I’m not sure of the right word. Jeziah and I weren’t really friends. But we weren’t enemies either. Allies, maybe. Or familiar constants, who could fill each other’s time with things other than attempted murder.
Again, Nolan doesn’t respond right away. “Their names were Deena and Malachi. We were companions, in training and in study. That’s all.”
Of course not. No friends in the Cloisters. I take that measure of him and stick it away for future reference.
His step slows. “But both were smart, intensely devoted to our blood mother, and good soldiers. Their loss is a loss for all of us.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I fumble the second word, letting the silence return.
The thick walls of the corridor stretch high around us. Before we go far, inscriptions appear, set at regular intervals. I stop to examine one. Nolan is curious enough that he does the same.
Ephrainn, I read.Fulfilled their duty in the thirty-eighth year of the incarnation of Tempestra-Oren.
Crypts. We’re surrounded by them.
“There’s so many,” I breathe. Hundreds in this corridor alone. Is this what the Goddess meant when they said they shared their gifts more freely in the past? I’d imagined hundreds, maybe even thousands had fallen in service to the Goddess… but this? When they said Cineris is a city of the dead, they weren’t exaggerating.
“Yes,” Nolan says simply. “Our honored brethren.”
The corridor spills out into another spoked courtyard, smaller than the one by the gate. Here, the wagons have stopped. Two are already empty, and Nolan and I watch as the Cineri move with practiced efficiency, gingerly bearing a third body over to an open slot in the wall. After the journey with the tediously loud mourners, I expect some kind of prayer, but they work in utter silence, sliding the corpse into their final resting place before replacing the outer stone slab, sealing them up forever.
Nolan takes a deep breath and lets it out. “They didn’t deserve to die like that.”
“They fell in protection of our Goddess. There’s no higher honor.” A lie, each and every death a waste. I say it because it’s the sort of thing I’m supposed to say, though for the first time, Nolan looks at me as if he actually sees me. “But yeah, Jeziah and the others didn’t deserve it either.”
A faint sheen of reverence appears. “As you said, they did their duty. May the flame of their memory burn forever.”
With who?I swallow. We were only known to each other, and that barely. Still, as another body disappears into its niche, I wonder if it’s Jeziah. Whose abrasive laugh I’d never hear again. Who I’d never steal another bottle of wine with or stand lookout for while he slipped horse apples under Morgan’s pillow. What little we had, I wish we still did.
Though then he’d be standing here with Nolan, instead of me.
We watch quietly until the last of the bodies is interred. By then, the sun is getting low in the sky, its light washing the walls of Cineris in a warm, bloody red. When the Cineri finish, they lead the wagons away, leaving Nolan and me alone with the dead.
“They’ll need our armor,” I say. “We should go.”
Nolan shakes his head slightly. “One more thing.”
He doesn’t offer more, and I don’t ask, only follow when he leads back into the corridors. I’m about to ask him if he has a destination in mind when I see it: the Cathedral tower. Not the one we left behind, but a perfect copy, only smaller. And missing its flame. There’s no living divinity here. Beneath this diminutive reminder of Tempestra’s city lies ashes, all that remains of their previous avatars. Like with our fallen blood brethren, when Tempestra makes the transition from one flesh to another, the Cineri come for their remains and ferry them back to their final resting place. But unlike our blood brethren, no power lingers. No divinity remains to be protected by Cineris’s walls. Their interment is purely sentimental.
Nolan doesn’t say anything, only stares at the monument. Then, with a soft, slow movement, he goes to the tower and clears the handful of stray leaves that have gathered at its base.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay? Are you sure? Don’t you want to pick out a niche before we do? That wall over there looks like it has a good view.”
Not even a hint of a smile. “I don’t intend to end up here anytime soon.”
“Neither do I, but after what happened at the Cathedral—” I cut off the spill of words, not wanting to sound weak. Or scared. “Just saying we have our work cut out for us. Dead gods’ blood…” I don’t exactly broach the topic gently. “Don’t suppose that ever came up as a topic of conversation at the Dusk Cloister?”
He shakes his head. “We never studied such things.” A pause. “But you’re right. Seeing what it did to the Goddess… the damage that remained…”
I can tell he’s thinking of those blossoms of blood slowly spreading across the Goddess’s garment. Is that why he wanted to visit the ashes of past avatars?
“Do you think it’s bad enough that…” I trail off, not sure if I’m misreading this.
“I think,” he says, “that we have our task and should focus on it.”
