Page 4 of House of Dusk

“You’ll forgive me if I trust my own judgment on that.” Halimede’s lips quirked. “I am the agia, after all. And I see a sister who has served well and faithfully, who has skills and strengths that none other has here.”

“Making novices cry?” Sephre suggested. “Quarreling with Sister Beroe?”

“You are hardly the only one at Stara Bron with that skill,” said Halimede, so drily that Sephre might have laughed if her throat weren’t so tight. “Come. I will show you what I speak of.”

Sephre ground her teeth, trotting after the agia as she continued across the cloister.

The woman was impossible. It wasn’t as if the Embrace was so unusual.

Granted, it was generally bestowed on criminals, but it could be given as a mercy, too.

She’d witnessed it herself, five years ago.

A small boy had been brought to Stara Bron by his grandmother.

Sephre didn’t know what had happened to him, only that the hollowness in his eyes echoed against her own heart. He, too, had seen something terrible.

Something Halimede had burned away. When they departed the next day he had skipped beside his grandmother. Only the old woman wept, and her tears were joyful. Innocence had been restored.

Call it mercy, call it punishment. The end result would be the same. She would be free. If only Halimede would listen.

But clearly the agia had other things on her mind.

She quickened her pace, leading Sephre up a seemingly endless set of steps cut from the stone of the mountain itself.

Tradition placed the agia’s chambers at the highest point of Stara Bron, just below the open ridge where the Holy Flame burned.

The ascent left neither of them breath to spare.

Halimede paused once, gripping the smooth curve of the balustrade, her fingers pale and thin against the golden stone.

She kept her spine grimly erect, but the glimpse Sephre caught of her face—gray, tight-lipped—was troubling.

She continued on before Sephre could suggest a longer rest, pushing them both up the final flight to the arched doorway that led into the agia’s office.

Even Sephre was wheezing and puffing by then, and it took considerable effort not to simply collapse into the softly cushioned window seat that bowed out along one wall.

Instead, she stood tall, sandals set against the smooth stone floor, relentless in her cause. “Agia, you promised to consider—”

“Look.” Halimede touched a blue spark to the delicate copper lamp wrought in the form of a Phoenix that hung above her desk. “And tell me what you see.”

I see an agia trying very hard to change the subject.

But she was still too much a soldier for that sort of insubordination.

Sephre joined the agia. The lamp revealed a broad oak table covered in papers.

No, it was a single large sheet, marked with spiderwebs of ink and whorls of color.

Rippling waves and sinuous rivers. She blinked, and for a brief, unsettling moment she was elsewhen, stepping into the general’s tent, watching the Heron slide a single crimson stone past the inked walls. It will end the war in a day.

The map before her now did not show some distant island, marked with enemy fortifications and tactical positions.

This was home. The entire sweep of the Helissoni peninsula.

But there were markers, of a sort: round wooden chits scattered, seemingly at random.

There were a dozen down along the southern coast, where the Hook curled out into the Middle Sea, trailing a chain of tiny islands.

Then more spotting the midlands. A stack of five chits nearly covered Helissa City.

Scanning further north, Sephre found the sharp cut of the Veil, the line of mountains that severed the peninsula from the mainland almost completely.

Only the Vigil Gap allowed clear passage into the northern steppes of Scarthia.

A blue flame was inked onto the parchment just south of the Veil, above the words Stara Bron .

Another wooden chit nestled close beside the temple.

Squinting, Sephre noted the number painted onto it. 47.

“These are the deaths,” she said, with a chill of understanding.

“Indeed.” Halimede’s brown eyes sparked blue. “And what else?”

Sephre scanned down to the southern coast, then north again. “The numbers. Those are . . . ?”

“The order in which the reports came in.”

It wasn’t a perfect pattern, but then, not all the bodies had been discovered quickly. “They’re moving north. It’s almost like...a trail.” A trail of death.

Halimede nodded, looking grimly pleased.

Sephre gripped the edge of the table, doing rough calculations in her head. Whatever had done this was moving no faster than a traveler on foot.

“You think it’s a person?” There were stories of mystics, forbidden cults that still honored the Serpent. Sephre had never given them much heed. The evil she’d seen had no need to hide behind secret rites and masks. More often than not, it flaunted itself as righteousness.

“A pattern,” admitted Halimede. “That suggests intent. There’s more. Something that I haven’t shared with the others.”

A shiver rippled up Sephre’s spine. “What?”

“Reports of a stranger,” said Halimede, “seen in conjunction with at least half the deaths. A man with a shaved head, carrying a sword.”

“There are plenty of bald men with swords in Helisson,” said Sephre, warily. “Did anyone actually see him doing something? Attacking the victims?”

“No,” admitted Halimede. “But they did make note of his eyes. Apparently they were a quite striking green.”

Sephre clamped her jaw, considering this. Thinking of Brother Dolon’s masterpiece-in-progress, how he had come to her to help compound a particularly vivid green ink for the eyes of the Serpent. “Then you think Beroe’s right? That this is the Serpent’s work?”

Halimede sniffed. “I think that if the god of death were traipsing about the countryside, it would be considerably more dramatic. But Beroe is correct about one thing: we cannot ignore this.”

“So you’re going to send word to the king?”

“If I did, how do you think he would respond?”

“I—I’m sure I don’t know him well enough to say.”

Halimede arched a brow. “You seemed happy to share your opinions earlier.”

Sephre sucked in her cheeks, wishing heartily that she were back in her garden. “He would call it further proof that he’s Heraklion reborn. Raise taxes, conscript troops, call anyone who denies him a traitor.” Her thoughts drifted back to the earlier conversation. “Including us?”

Halimede nodded. “Indeed. Already he mistrusts us.”

“Because you haven’t publicly recognized him as the Ember King?” It seemed a small thing to Sephre. But then, she’d noticed that many powerful men seemed to find small insults more offensive to their pride than outright attacks.

“In part.” The agia looked away. Clearly there was more to this than just the recognition of Hierax’s claim to be Heraklion reborn.

But whatever the secret, Halimede was not ready to reveal it.

“But that isn’t our primary concern. We are sworn to guard this mortal world from the demons of the underworld, whenever they rise again.

If this is that time, then we all must be ready. ”

She lanced her gaze back to Sephre. “And that is why I need you, Sister Sephre. All of you. Who you were, and who you are. I need you to help me fight it.”