GRIMDARK MAGAZINE

- The Crimson Empire -

Alex Marshall

On a moonless summer night, long after all the sisters were asleep, Jirella and the other novices sneaked up to the roof of the convent and tried to summon a devil. Maybe their sacrifice, a sparrow chick Yekteniya had stolen from the nest in the window of their dormitory, was insufficient. Or maybe the ritual failed because they weren’t actually witches, just bored teenagers eager for an excuse to strip naked and guzzle communion wine beneath the thousand glowing eyes of the heavens.

Unlike the others, Jirella hadn’t been disappointed when the pin-riddled little bird bled to death in the centre of the pentagram to no result save an awkward silence from the would-be sabbath. She had been relieved that her silent prayers to the Fallen Mother had been answered and the Deceiver had not actually materialized to tempt them. Even still, she lay awake all night, her heart pounding in her breast, tears running down her cheeks as she shuddered with silent sobs, her crushing guilt compelling her to be the first in line for confession the next morning.

They were assigned a penance that Jirella felt severe but fair. Her roommates agreed on one of these points but not the other, and several nights later they held her down and beat her mercilessly, gagging her screams with a bar of soap and a stocking. Despite their hissed accusations that Jirella was a rat she never reported them, for this or any of their later attacks. After all, vengeance and hatred were virtues of the Burnished Chain. For all their outrage and the way everyone but Yekteniya shunned her ever afterward, Jirella believed one of the others would have confessed, if she hadn’t. She had faith in her fellow mortals.

That reckless transgression on the convent roof was all Jirella could think about after the Abbotess informed her of the Black Pope’s summons. She must have embarrassed her uncle terribly, for him to bring her all the way to the capital. She deserved whatever punishment he would assign, she knew that. Even if it meant her life.

Rather than fearing his judgment, she welcomed it. Before entering the coach that would take her to the Voice of the Allmother, she had secretly donned a hairshirt under her robes and cinched her rosary so tight around her throat every breath was a tribulation. She kept them in place every agonizing day of the long journey. Jirella prayed constantly, and wept not for herself but for the Shepherd of Samoth, whose own niece had rejected the path of righteousness and attempted to conspire with the enemy of mortalkind (only out of peer pressure, but still).

Yet when they climbed the final ridge of the Black Cascades and arrived in Diadem, capital of Samoth and former seat of the Crimson Empire, the papal guard took her not to the public stocks for crucifixion but to a tasteful study. The Black Pope’s chambers were situated in the upper reaches of Castle Diadem, which was itself nestled into the walls of the dead volcano that cradled the city. Climbing the endless stairs to this sanctuary of oaken bookshelves and warm hearth proved an agonizing ordeal for a girl whose collar choked and hairshirt scratched.

In her imagination, Pope Shanatu was forever wreathed in the light of the Fallen Mother, his features blurred—for no mortal sinner could look full upon the face of grace. When the guards ushered her into the study and shut the door behind them, she saw not a radiant figure of divine wrath, but a kind-eyed old man sitting at a sumptuously laid table. He rose as she stood worrying her rosary in the doorway, struggling to catch her breath.

Instead of glowing robes and a hat as high as a steeple, he wore a brocade housecoat trimmed in sable. Silver shot through his dark beard and tonsure, making him appear disarmingly mortal. His slippers glided across the Ugrakari rug, and Jirella fell to her knees. He did not look so very much like her mother, but when he smiled it was the same warm expression, his wrinkles deepening at Jirella’s tears. She lowered her face and he stroked her head as if she were his dearest hound. It was the happiest moment of Jirella’s hard life, and when she pressed her lips to his black opal ring, Jirella felt such love as she had never before known.

“Welcome home, my child,” he said, the hand that wore the Papal ring now cocking her chin up to look at him. “Come and join me for dinner. We have so much to discuss.”

“Your Grace—” Jirella began but he lightly knocked her skull with his ring.

“None of that, dear Jirella, none of that!” His smile was every bit as radiant as she had imagined. “Well, not in here, anyway. When we’re in public it can’t be helped, of course, but in my chambers you may call me Papa.”

“Pa...Papa?” After her parents died she never dreamed of calling anyone that ever again.

“You must be famished, though!” He helped her to her feet, and frowned when he rubbed her shoulder through her sackcloth habit. “You aren’t wearing a penitent’s vest, are you?”

Jirella looked down again, embarrassed at his concern. “I have so much to atone for...Papa.”

“We all do, my child, and in the days to come you will wish that all your burdens were worn as easily as a hairshit!” He shook his head, smiling even wider. “You will find more appropriate attire waiting for you in the ablution closet, just through that door. Hurry and change and then join me—I’m as hungry for my quail as you must be for answers. Isn’t that so?”

“It’s alright, Jirella. My very first rule for you is that you must ask me any questions as soon as they pop into your pretty head. Why do you think I’ve summoned you?”

“To... I...” Jirella bit her lip as his brows furrowed, and she found a strength she didn’t know she possessed. This man was her uncle but he was also the Fallen Mother’s mortal eyes and ears and voice. Jirella was a sinner born, yes, but she was not so craven as to lie to her saviour. She looked into his eyes, promising herself she would never again fail to meet them. “I tried to summon a devil. At the convent. It didn’t work, but I thought you must have known and—”

The Black Pope exploded in laughter, bracing himself against her as he chortled. When he could speak again he said, “Oh my child, we all have a skeleton or two in our confessional.”

“Then why am I here?” Jirella asked, flushed with embarrassment at his outburst. She wasn’t just some stupid little girl—there just hadn’t been any other explanation.

“Because I need a successor,” he said quietly, all the mirth gone from his voice. “I called you home because my time has come to step down from the Onyx Pulpit. The Fallen Mother has chosen you as her new Voice.”

Jirella tried to smile at his joke but couldn’t. Her eyes filled with tears as she struggled to understand why the Black Pope would make such a blasphemous jest. Why? He put his hand on her back, his palm pressing her hairshirt into her raw flesh as he guided her to the door of the ablutions closet. She felt like a ghost haunting her own skin, floating across the room as her limbs moved of their own accord. Why?

“I asked myself the same question when I received the call,” he murmured, as if he could hear her thoughts. Perhaps he could. “You have doubts. I have answers. All the more reason to change in a hurry and join me for dinner, yes?”

Jirella nodded, and staggered into the chamber hewn from the black stone of the mountainside. The door clicked shut behind her. Staring at her pale, dazed expression in the looking glass above the bureau, Jirella tried to pray...and threw up into the water basin instead.

“The Council of Diadem is tomorrow,” Pope Shanatu told Jirella as she tried to soothe her nervous stomach with tallow-smeared black bread. His own plate was piled with oily meat, mashed turnips, and stewed greens. Even more decadent than the array of food was the fact they were eating it alone in his cosy library, instead of in some drafty dining hall. “Do you know what that is?”

“No,” she said, shivering in the too-soft velvet gown he’d set out for her and staring queasily at her goblet of wine.

“It is the formal meeting between me and Indsorith that will end the war,” he said. “Word did reach the convent that there’s been a war on, yes?”

“Of course,” she said, embarrassed that he thought so little of her provincial education but relieved to hear the conflict was won. “We ceased our daily prayers for the Crimson Queen as soon as she declared war on the Burnished Chain.”

“Well, technically we were the ones who initiated this most recent conflict, though I suppose that nuance isn’t really relevant!” The Black Pope’s lips were slick with quail fat as he smiled at his niece across the cluttered table. “What is important is that the Empire is once again whole and happy, and we can begin to rebuild. The terms of the truce have all been set, the Council of Diadem is merely for show.”

For the first time, her uncle’s sweet demeanour turned sour. “To preserve the dignity of all concerned we are not using the term surrender.”

“Oh.” Jirella nervously took a sip of wine. “We were told...that is, the sisters told us that the crusade would continue until the queen had fallen and the Empire was saved.”

“I suppose you aren’t old enough to remember the last few times similar oaths were pledged.” Her uncle smiled, but it lacked his usual humour. “It has been twenty years since Indsorith assassinated the Stricken Queen and claimed the Carnelian Crown. While her reign has been more accepting of the church than regents past, that is damning with very faint praise indeed. This is neither the first time nor the last that the faithful will be called upon to protect the Empire from Her Majesty’s godlessness.” He pointed a greasy drumstick at her. “This is where you come in, my dear. To end this civil war both the righteous and the profane have had to make sacrifices. The Fallen Mother has ordained that I step down from my station, and the Holy See shall appoint a successor.”

“You.” The Black Pope’s smile had regained some of its warmth. “Of course, none of this is official yet, but that is what the Holy See will decide at the Council of Diadem. Everything has been preordained. Our seeming defeat to the Crimson Queen will, in time, prove to be the turning point that saves the soul of the Empire.”

“But I’m not even a nun, not really!” Jirella took another gulp of wine. “How could I possibly become...”

“You are a blood relation of a member of the Holy See, Jirella,” he said. “And you are a virgin.”

Jirella drained the rest of her goblet at that. He was right, of course, but how had he known? There were plenty of novices with compromised chastity—to say nothing of the sisters.

“These minor formalities are all that is required for the position, though it is true that traditionally one first climbs to a far higher rank in the Chain before attracting the notice of the Fallen Mother. We live in exceptional times, however, and the Allmother has informed me that you shall be my successor.”

Again Jirella found herself incapable of speech. Her uncle refilled her glass as she stared numbly at the quail in front of her, a roasted horn of plenty spilling out wild rice and dried fruits.

“Do not fear, my child; though your calling is great you shall not face it alone. Until such a time as the Fallen Mother deems you capable of shouldering the burden by yourself, I will continue to be the conduit through which she addresses this iniquitous world. You shall undergo the ordeals and rituals necessary to become the Black Pope, but even after you assume your role your dear Papa will counsel you on everything and anything.”

“We are together in this, my child, and while we pay lip service to the corrupt queen we shall work tirelessly to depose her once and for all. This is all part of our saviour’s grand design. She has chosen you, Jirella. Are you willing to accept her call?”

“Yes.” The word left her wine-numb lips before she was even aware of it, as though the divine spirit were already moving through her. “Yes.”

“Good girl!” The Black Pope beamed, reaching across the table to knock his goblet against hers. “I have many preparations yet to make for tomorrow’s summit, but before I bid you goodnight I must warn you of the perils ahead. I fear your path to the Onyx Pulpit will be dangerous.”

“The Crimson Queen is a heretic, and her agents are our enemies,” said Jirella, eager to prove to her uncle and the holy spirit inside him that she had been paying attention, that she was fit for her new role. “I must be on guard against them, yes?”

“Certainly, certainly,” agreed the Black Pope, but again she noticed a shadow fall over his pleasant face. “More immediately, however, I speak of enemies within the Burnished Chain itself.”

“Enemies in the church?” Jirella felt as dizzy at the suggestion as if she’d quaffed the whole flagon by herself.

“Sadly, yes.” Her uncle shook his head, unhappy to deliver such ill news. “There are those among our ranks who seek base power in this world instead of salvation beyond it. Once you are ordained as Black Pope they will be forced to accept your stewardship. But, from the time the Holy See announces your selection until the time you don my mitre and ring you will be their target. If some tragedy were to befall you in that interim their own candidate could step in to claim your rightful place. Fortunately, the confirmation process is not as protracted as it used to be. Within a week you will take on my title. Once you have taken the divine spirit of the Allmother inside you, not even they will dare stand against you.”

Jirella stared into her wine. “Who are they? These enemies who seek to thwart the will of the Fallen Mother for their own vain ambitions?”

“I fear the ringleader is one of the three most powerful members of the Holy See, my Chief Officers, but my source was poisoned to death before we could confirm which one of them it is.” Jirella flinched at this casual mention of murder. “My agents are working even now to unmask our enemy, but in the meantime you will have a bodyguard with you at all times. Trust no one but your Papa, and be forever vigilant.”

“What are their names, these officers?” They would mean nothing to her now, she knew, but if she were indeed to become the Black Pope she must begin her education immediately.

“Cardinal Artsidr is the first—she is Dean of the College of Cardinals, second only to myself in the church. The next is Cardinal Ihsahn, Prelate of Samoth and liaison to the court of the Crimson Queen. And the third is Cardinal Wendell, the Chain’s Minister of Propaganda. When you rise to the Onyx Pulpit these three will sit at your left hand. However, until that happy day, one of them may prove your mortal enemy.”

Her time in a convent dormitory had taught Jirella the necessity of playing politics with fair-weather friends, but this was pushing it rather far. “If you have cause to doubt any of them, should not all three be unseated? If they are faithful they will understand and welcome your decree.”

“Would that it were so simple!” His Grace dipped his hands in a fingerbowl and wiped them on his monogrammed napkin. “If you are to live long enough to take my place you must learn to never strike until you are sure who is an enemy and who is an ally. No matter how many of the former you eliminate new ones will always crop up to take their place, but the reverse is true of the latter—the more alliances you sunder the harder it is to forge new ones.”

Perhaps seeing the doubt on her face, he said, “Believe me, child, I should like nothing more than to secure your safety, even if it meant sacking the entire Holy See. Alas, I am but a conduit for the will of the Fallen Mother, and she has commanded me to work my diplomacy with a pen rather than a poniard. She will reveal our enemy in her own time, and until then you must consider this your first trial.”

“My first trial,” said Jirella, hoping against hope that it would not prove to be her last.

Jirella spent a sleepless night in the bedroom adjoining the study, chambers which apparently belonged solely to her. Her uncle had suggested she might start her conquest of the library with the stack of volumes on theology and theocracy he had left on her nightstand, but she turned her attentions instead to the tapestry of the Fallen Mother that hung on the far wall. In all her years of prayer she had never received any kind of response, but she dared to hope that this time it would be different, that her saviour would deign to address her clearly...but Jirella heard no voice but her own in the lonely chamber. She stayed at prayer even when the black tallow sizzled out in its bowl and her exhausted mind began to drift in and out of the First Dark, the cramps in her legs preventing her from falling completely under.

Yet sleep will no more be denied than her father, death, and so as the Council of Diadem assembled to decide the fate of the Crimson Empire its future pontiff lay drowsing on the rug where she had eventually collapsed. A knock woke her, light but insistent, and Jirella sat up with a start, marvelling at the absurdity of her dream...and then feeling a fist close over her heart as she realized she wasn’t back in her dormitory. The enormity of what had transpired reared up in her mind, a cold, black wave building higher and higher, poised to break and drown her...

Jirella lurched to her feet in front of the tapestry, staring up at the beatific face of the Fallen Mother and refusing the Deceiver his due. The fear didn’t vanish, not all at once, but it did falter, and that weakness was all the girl needed to press the advantage. She was Jirella Martigore, the next Black Pope of the Burnished Chain, and she deserved this. Of all the prelates and princes of the Crimson Empire, she had been chosen by the Fallen Mother. Her heart swelled with virtuous pride, and she denied the weakness that had attempted to consume her. It retreated, flowing away as swiftly as it had come. Imbued with a confidence she had never known, Jirella went to answer another knock at the door...and paused.

Sleepy though she was, she could scarcely forget her uncle’s many warnings. So long as she remembered to follow his instructions their enemies wouldn’t find an opening to attack. At least, he had said, not effectively.

“Link four, verse thirteen,” answered a gentle voice. It was Jirella’s favourite piece of scripture from the Chain Canticles, which she had shared with her uncle the night before. Though the Star grows dim, Her light shall show yet brighter in the darkness.

Unlocking her chamber, Jirella met a war nun nearly as tall and broad as the door. Her penitent’s mask hid most of her face, but the rough skin that showed around her purple eyes was pitted with tiny scars. A steel cross jutted up over one shoulder...the hilt and guard of a sword nearly as tall as this giantess herself, strapped to her broad back.

Jirella had seen plenty of armed guards and soldiers, from a safe distance, but she had never seen a warrior more formidable. And according to her uncle, this woman was her personal bodyguard. As she gawped at her protector, the woman dropped to a knee in front of her. The fifteen year-old girl still had to look up to meet the woman’s eye.

“I am Sister Vaura,” the woman said in a disconcertingly soft voice. “I pledge my life to your service, Jirella Martigore, from this day until the Mother calls me home.”

“Thank you?” Jirella didn’t know what else to say. “I... We are very well met, Sister, and I welcome your service.”

The two remained in an awkward silence until the war nun said, “May I rise, ma’am?”

“Yes, of course!” Jirella smiled as the woman stood. Here was the first person that would heed Jirella’s every command, and she had to admit she rather fancied the taste of such power. She was destined for great responsibilities, but it would do her good to start with something small...or someone big, as the case may be! “My uncle must be at the Council of Diadem, so perhaps you might care to join me for breakfast?”

The woman’s eyes widened as she stepped back into the study for Jirella to pass.

“I welcome your invitation, ma’am, but it is forbidden for an anathema to break bread with one of your station.”

Jirella’s breath caught in her throat. An anathema? She had heard ghost stories about the witchborn before, of course, had even told a few back at the convent, but she had never imagined meeting one of the monsters herself. Having such a creature assigned as her bodyguard ranked just under finding herself heir to the Onyx Pulpit for unexpected developments.

“Pray never apologize to me, ma’am, for anything. The barbers blessed me well indeed, if you did not know at first glance.”

“If you’re not supposed to eat with me I imagine you’re not supposed to interrupt me, either.” Jirella smiled so her guardian wouldn’t get the wrong idea. “I am sure I will defer to your experience in many things, Sister Vaura, but I imagine I can say whatever I want to whomever I want, be it a sincere apology or a ridiculous order.”

“That...that may be true, ma’am,” said the woman, and Jirella fancied she might be smiling, too, underneath her mask.

“What I was saying, then, was forgive me my curiosity, but would you remove your mask so that I may see the rest of your face?” They both knew it wasn’t a question, but the war nun clearly balked at the notion. “I have never met an anathema before, Sister Vaura, and I wish to see how different your kind truly are from mine.”

“Very well, ma’am,” the big woman said in her small voice. She pulled back the hood of her robe and untied her mask. Jirella sucked in through her teeth as the black cloth fell away to reveal Sister Vaura’s hairless, pitted head. Other than her grotesquely scarred skin she might be mistaken for pureborn, which only made her more intriguing.

“What...how...” Jirella rose on her tip-toes to look closer at the woman’s broad features, not even sure how to phrase her question.

“Feathers, ma’am,” said the war nun, unable to meet Jirella’s inquisitive stare. Whether it was weakness or deference on the anathema’s part, it thrilled Jirella. “Through the grace of the Fallen Mother and her surgeons I have been saved from my monstrous birth.”

“Glory be,” Jirella breathed as the anathema leaned down so the girl could touch her scarred hide. It felt like running her fingers over a plucked chicken down in the convent kitchens. Looking at the woman’s full lips and patrician’s nose, she said, “Praise the Fallen Mother you weren’t born with a beak!”

“Praise the Fallen Mother,” agreed Sister Vaura. “Even if I had, His Grace’s barbers are most clever. I have known others with that affliction, and worse, yet all are made whole before being admitted to the Dens.”

“You mean the Dens are real?” Jirella jerked her hand away, scarcely able to believe the horrifying rumours were true.

“Not a mile beneath your feet, ma’am,” said the war nun as she tied her mask back into place. “It is where I came of age. His Holiness Pope Shanatu believes that even my benighted kind might serve the Burnished Chain, once we are remade in the likeness of the pure.”

“Will wonders never cease...” Jirella shook her head. She scarcely had an appetite anymore, but she certainly needed a hot mug of kaldi to settle her nerves. That was an indulgence the sisters had forbidden back at the convent, but from the extravagant feast her uncle had offered her last night she imagined nothing would be forbidden the future Black Pope. “Whether you join me or not, Sister Vaura, it is high time I broke my fast. Do I just tell you what I want brought in, or do I pull the rope for a servant the way my uncle did?”

“In the future you may tell me of anything you require and I will see that it is delivered, but at present we are already overdue.” The war nun pointed at a cloth-wrapped bundle on the otherwise barren table. “I did have a lunch prepared for you, but now you will have to take it with us.”

“Where are we going?” Jirella looked nervously at the outer door. “I assumed that I would just spend the week here, in seclusion? With all the perils facing me...”

“The assassins, you mean?” Jirella fancied the anathema was smiling under her mask again. “When you have enemies, ma’am, it is better to move around than stay in one place. His Grace commanded me to deliver you to Barber Norton before the Council adjourns, which means we must move swiftly indeed, else we shall be late.”

“A barber?” After the anathema’s talk of Chainite surgeons remaking the flesh of sinners, Jirella couldn’t imagine anyone she would like to meet less.

Yet her path was set by the hand of the holy, so she held her head high as she followed the war nun out, her only hesitation borne from indecision over whether or not to take the packed lunch. After a moment’s dallying she stuffed the bundle in the pocket-sleeve of her voluminous gown—she was not hungry, yet, but she owed it to her maker to seize every gift she was offered. Gluttony had never been her strongest virtue, but if she were to don the ebon mitre of the Black Pope she must strive to embody them all.

Half a dozen more papal guards waited outside Jirella’s chambers, though none of them seemed so fierce as Sister Vaura. The six split up to surround the two women, three taking the lead and the others bringing up the rear from a modest distance. They didn’t just make Jirella feel safe, they made her feel respected—a lord of the realm stepping out to survey her domain.

Castle Diadem was little different by day than it was by night. Whether a passageway was narrow as an alley or wide as a great hall there were no windows to offer a contrast to the spectral blue light of the guttering lamps that jutted out from the stone walls. These eternal flames were fed from ancient fumes beneath the mountain, Jirella’s guide informed her, so that the papal palace should never know darkness until the Day of Becoming. The cave air often carried the spicy tang of incense and once the smell of horses.

“Imperials!” Jirella gasped as they stepped out of a corridor and she found herself overlooking a several hundred-foot drop. Their path led them out across a stone bridge that that spanned a massive square, the parade ground far below teeming with countless soldiers in angry red tabards. She felt dizzy at being so high and exposed, even with the high carven railings.

“We are all Imperials, ma’am,” said Sister Vaura. “Or at least we shall be again, once the Council of Diadem is completed.”

“Yes, well, you know what I mean,” said Jirella, resolving to better act her part: stoic and world-weary, not excitable and naïve. Putting her hands on the railing and looking out over the assembled army, she stifled the puerile impulse to spit—back at the convent spitting at gargoyles from the dormitory window had been a high art. In what she hoped was her most impressively portentous tone, she said, “If Queen Indsorith thinks she has the run of our castle just because she’s returned to Samoth she will find herself dearly mistaken.”

“May the Fallen Mother show all who err the true path before it is too late,” agreed Sister Vaura. Resuming her brisk pace over the bridge, she looked back at Jirella and said, “You have seen the skulls, ma’am? Over the Crimson Throne Room?”

“I have not yet made the time,” Jirella said airily, suspecting the anathema of toying with her inexperience.

“Dozens of assassins came for Queen Indsorith during her first year on the Crimson Throne, and she dispatched each one herself, mounting their skulls over the entrance to the throne room.”

“No wonder she declared the Serpent’s Circle the new capital and fled down there with her court!” Jirella was pleased with herself for remembering what amounted to ancient history. “She must have realized her reign would be brief indeed if she stayed in Samoth, where faith is stronger than fear.”

A great tolling rang out, startling Jirella. Looking up she saw a bell the size of a country church suspended high above the immense square.

“The Council of Diadem adjourns.” Jirella could barely make out Sister Vaura’s soft voice over the echoing peals, the anathema looking to the same heavens as her pureborn companion. “The war is ended. Samoth is again capital province of the Crimson Empire, and Queen Indsorith again rules from Diadem.”

“Alongside the Black Pope,” said Jirella. “My unc—His Grace told me the Black Pope would reign beside the Crimson Queen.”

“And His Grace told me to make sure you preceded him to the barber’s theatre,” said Sister Vaura, looking down at her. “Should you prefer to run, ma’am, or shall I carry you?”

The Fallen Mother wished her pureborn children every happiness they could eke from their harsh lives, and so Jirella would have chosen to run even if her pride hadn’t balked at being carried like a babe. Running was strictly forbidden at the convent, which of course meant all the girls did it every chance they could. All the girls save Jirella.

Now, however, she fairly skated over the polished floors in her soft new turnshoes, her dark hair flying like a pennant as they rushed to make up for lost time. Clergy and guards alike scattered to get out of their way, though Jirella imagined that had more to do with the huge war nun leading the charge than anything else. What would those robed fuddy-duddies and lazy soldiers think if they knew the girl holding up her skirts as she dashed past them would be standing at the Onyx Pulpit in a week’s time?

It was mad, liberating fun. As she chased Sister Vaura out from a corridor and across a wide chapel where nuns prayed before an enormous idol of Saint Megg, Jirella gave thanks that she would never again be like one of them. Up ahead a wimple turned, and a familiar face broke into a wide smile as the kneeling novice recognized Jirella, too, and scrambled up to meet her.

Yekteniya had been Jirella’s only true friend at the convent, and it swelled her heart with joy to see the Fallen Mother had reunited them so quickly. The girl must have left the convent immediately after Jirella, the same day even, to be here now, which didn’t make any sense...but then what did, these days? Jirella slowed her mad dash as Yekteniya opened her arms to embrace her friend, and—

Sister Vaura loomed up behind Yekteniya, and before Jirella could shout a warning the anathema neatly decapitated the girl. Jirella stumbled, staring agog as Yekteniya’s lovely blonde hair swirled around her falling head, so close warm blood spattered Jirella cheeks. Someone grabbed her from behind before she could fall into her murdered friend, and a pair of her bodyguards darted in and seized Yekteniya by the arms, holding her up.

Except it wasn’t Yekteniya anymore, just her limp body. Her head was on the floor of the chapel, lying on its cheek beside her broken rosary, blood oozing from her smiling lips, her eyes fixed on nothing. All the other nuns were screaming. Jirella was relieved they were summoning help, because she was too shocked to make any noise at all, or even struggle away from the strong arms holding her back from Yekteniya.

Sister Vaura stepped around the guards holding up the headless body, blood gouting down the front of its habit. The war nun had sheathed her sword but held a cruel black dagger. It looked so small in her bulky fist.

Jirella stopped struggling, a cold numbness flushing through her. If this was the Fallen Mother’s plan for Jirella, she would face it with dignity. In the darkest hour of the night she had asked the Allmother to spare her the burden of all this responsibility, to choose anyone else to be Her Voice, and now her prayers were to be answered.

Except instead of stepping forward and stabbing Jirella through the heart, Sister Vaura turned to Yekteniya’s body. The two bodyguards were still ghoulishly holding it up, and the war nun gingerly slit open the front of the corpse’s bloody habit. Peeling back the cut cloth, she revealed neither a shift not the budding breasts that Yekteniya had once invited Jirella to touch. A strange bloated mass covered her chest. Over the screams of the fleeing nuns Jirella couldn’t hear what Sister Vaura was telling the guards who held up the body, but their stern faces lost all their color and their narrowed eyes widened in alarm.

“She should see this.” Jirella did hear that, and as the guard who had restrained Jirella let her go she staggered forward for a better look. The curious bulge was not tied to Yekteniya’s chest, she saw, but growing around it. This close she could hear it humming, too, even over the retreating shrieks of the nuns. Then she laughed, an ugly bark of a sound, because she recognized it for what it was. A wasp’s nest of some kind, its bloodstained walls as thin as parchment... Jirella found herself sinking into that hive, the droning of screaming nuns all around her, and as if from a great distance she heard Sister Vaura say,

Jirella jerked upright, coughing at whatever foul draught had revived her. Her mouth stung from the tannic brew. The man who had administered it stepped back, giving her room to breathe the fetid air of this cave.

Every other quarter of the castle she had seen was pristinely carved from the living rock of the mountain, though the architecture varied from baroque Samothan to subdued Geminidean and a hundred other styles besides. This place, though, looked more like a hermit’s lair than a civilized chamber, with smoky candles mounted on tall stalagmites that jutted from the floor, and bottles and beakers set out to collect drippings from thick, mineral-striped stalactites. The uneven walls of the vast room sparkled with glass panels, hundreds upon hundreds of them winking at her in the candlelight. Jirella sat in the middle of it all on a moss-covered table. There was but one door that she could see, and it was bolted from within.

The room was warm and damp and stinking with some acrid smell she couldn’t place. Jirella looked around for Sister Vaura, but found she was alone in this place...save for the man who watched her take in her surroundings with no small amusement. His pristine red operating gown and sparkling chainsilk gloves were an odd contrast to the squalid setting, and his smile was even warmer than her uncle’s.

“You’re the barber,” croaked Jirella. Her throat felt raw from crying, though she couldn’t remember anything after Yekteniya... “Where’s Sister Vaura?”

“I am C. Elbert Norton. The Third, as luck would have it.” The barber took a slight bow. “Your bodyguards are not needed here. In point of fact, they are forbidden, along with every other mortal on the Star. Only those who receive the highest calling may enter, and what is spoken in this sanctified office will never be repeated. Do you understand?”

Jirella nodded, though she didn’t, not really. Everything still felt like a dream. “You’re a barber and a priest, then, one of those who cure the witchborn?”

“I am nothing of the sort!” Barber Norton gave her a withering scowl. “I am not an officer of the church, nor do I approve of your uncle’s ecclesiastic surgeons—perhaps it’s better than burning those monsters like King Kaldruut used to do, but I believe Queen Indsorith had the right idea when she ordered the Chain to stop mutilating them.”

“The queen did what?” Jirella had only just found out that reformed anathemas were real, but apparently this was old news to everyone not banished to a convent.

“He hasn’t told you much, has he?” Barber Norton clucked his tongue. “Your uncle’s obstinate refusal to abandon the practice has only gone and lost him the Onyx Pulpit—that’s what the war grew out of, you know. A perfect bloody mess, with precious time squandered, and for what? Nothing. The church gets to keep manufacturing their Chainwitches, yes, but the Queen returns to Diadem, which will complicate things terribly. If he’d listened to me from the beginning—”

“Who are you?” demanded Jirella. “To speak so outrageously of His Grace?”

“I am the personal barber to the Black Pope, which means I will speak outrageously of anyone I wish,” he said smugly. “The office you are poised to inherit is beset on all sides by toads and serpents, and a sage ruler may find value in a cat’s-paw of my sharpness. I would have thought you learned that lesson on your way to my office—if your little friend’s nestvest had been disturbed, you and half the people in that chapel would have been stung to death.”

“Yekteniya...” Jirella pulled her knees in and wrapped her arms around herself to stop shaking. This wasn’t a bad dream. She closed her eyes, refusing the weakness of the Deceiver. Yekteniya wasn’t her friend. She never had been. She was the enemy, an assassin, and the Fallen Mother had intervened to protect her chosen emissary. Looking back up at Barber Norton, she asked, “If you’re so savvy to what’s going on, who sent her after me? They must have been spying on me even back at the convent, before His Grace summoned me... And they must have known why he called me back, to have Yekteniya follow me to Diadem.”

“Your uncle’s agents are surely investigating the matter even as we speak, but I doubt they will uncover anything conclusive.” Barber Norton shrugged. “Better to gird you in the armour that will protect you through your coronation than waste time worrying over who wants you dead—they all do. But once you ascend to power they will abandon that course and try more subtle means of currying favour. This is the way of things.”

“If they’re going to give up once I become the new Black Pope why wait a whole week for the coronation?” asked Jirella, filled with righteous fury at the cowardice of the Deceiver’s agents. She would respect them more if they continued in their assassination attempts throughout her reign rather than playing politics!

“It is not mere bureaucracy, I assure you,” said Barber Norton, leaning against the mossy table where Jirella sat. “Technically, your coronation began the moment you entered this room. Late, I should mention, but you arrived safely, and now the worst danger is past. Assuming you spoke true of your purity, that is.”

“I beg your pardon?” Jirella bristled at the suggestion she might have lied to His Grace.

“It is for your sake I seek confirmation,” he said in a conspiratorial tone. “If there are any indiscretions in your past, we can make...alternate arrangements. But if you are indeed untouched by carnal experience we can keep with tradition and administer the Ordeal of the Ebon Ghost—it is the ultimate trial of one’s purity, a test only those fit to become pontiff can bear.”

“I eagerly accept any trials you might present,” Jirella said haughtily. “The Fallen Mother has chosen me and I have naught to fear.”

“Yes, well, we’ll see about that,” he said with a queer little smile. “You must not undertake this ordeal lightly, Jirella. It will change you from a simple girl to...something else. A temple for the divine, as the Chain would have it.”

“It does not appear to be pleasant experience,” said Barber Norton, “and if you survive you will no longer be quite human. You shall be immune to any poison known to mortalkind, but your every drop of blood or bile, saliva or urine will be as deadly venom. Your body shall brook no lovers—you shall remain a virgin for the rest of your days.”

“I told you, I am ready,” said Jirella, remembering how she had longed to touch Yekteniya in her bunk that night last summer, how the girl had teased her with reminders that lust was a sacred virtue...and how she had fled to her own bed, driven by some sudden impulse to remain pure. Now she knew from where that instinct had sprung, and thanked the Fallen Mother for her wisdom. Who could know and embody lust more than one who was never able to consummate their desire?

“Very well then, Jirella,” said the barber, winding away between the stalagmites to one of the glass windows set in the wall. Looking back at her, he sounded almost sad. “We shall have much to discuss in the future, I hope, but for now the Ordeal begins. Godspeed, Your Grace.”

Jirella flushed with pride at his use of the honorific. He fiddled with a latch on the recessed glass panel, and then it sprung open on a hinge. As it did the barber flattened himself against the wall beside the small opening, a curious gesture that made the hairs on the back of Jirella’s neck stand up.

Whatever question Jirella was going to call out died on her lips as a small black bird fluttered out of the hole in the wall, bobbing around the hanging stalactites toward her. Clumsy though it seemed, it flew with speed and intention. Jirella scooted back on the table, frantically looking to Barber Norton for help. He stayed pressed against the wall, watching her with ugly fascination. As it darted down at her, Jirella saw it wasn’t a bird at all. It was...something she had no name for, a bloated leach with buzzing dragonfly wings and ichor-dripping barbs.

It flew straight at her face, and on sheer instinct she batted it away, Fallen Mother forgive her.

Instead of falling out of the air the horror wrapped around her hand. Then the pain hit. It felt like she had seized a bouquet of nettles and then shoved her hand in a kiln. Instead of shaking the clinging monster off her hand, her whole body betrayed her, contorting on the mossy table as she screamed and screamed. Worse than the initial pain was the sensation of it slowly spreading as the terrible thing crawled under the cuff of her sleeve and up her wrist. Its very touch was so caustic her gown smouldered and burned away wherever its carapace brushed the velvet. It felt like a white hot coal being slowly dragged up her skin, the smoke from her own blistering flesh making her retch. Jirella stopped thrashing, now paralysed with pain as it worked its way up her arm, bringing mind-blistering agony as it crawled closer and closer to her shoulder. Her neck. Her face. Her foam-flecked lips.

Yet the Ordeal did not truly begin until it folded back its shimmering black wings and wriggled all the way inside her.

Jirella thrashed wildly on the table, her dress corroding off her in sizzling tatters and the moss beneath her baked black as she shrieked with all the fury of a wronged god. This was what she had become. No mortal could endure such pain and terror and live, yet Jirella’s agony grew and grew, lifting her again and again off the burning table. She could feel the thing inside her, prodding its needle limbs into her tender throat. She choked and gagged, but was no longer afraid. She was wroth.

The man in red. He had done this. She looked for him at the window-tiled wall, but he had crept over to the floor in the rear of the room, flinging up a trapdoor as her gaze found him.

Jirella flew at him, wailing. The Ebon Ghost’s wings beat between her lungs, carrying her aloft. Her smoldering shoes fell from her feet as she glided around the stalagmites, her toes dangling several inches off the bare floor of the cave.

The man in red disappeared through his trapdoor, metallic smoke billowing out. She dived down after him, into the fume. The smoke grew thicker, the air hotter, burning her eyes, burning her lungs. Compared to what the Ebon Ghost was doing inside her, blind and choking was a welcome distraction.

She must be falling straight down an ancient lava tube, through the walls of Castle Diadem, into the simmering bowels of the mountain. Jirella imagined the tunnel narrowing around her until she became stuck, lodged in the burning dark rock for all eternity, kept alive as punishment for her presumption. Her rage tried to spiral inward, but it found no purchase—the pain had hollowed Jirella out so perfectly there was nothing left inside for doubt to take hold of. Like a gale ripping through a canyon, her anger exploded back out of her throat.

The smoke became so dense it pressed back against her, slowing her fall, then halting it all altogether. She became lodged, just as she had envisioned, but instead of rock she was buried in whatever it was the smoke had thickened into, a rank tunnel of warm pulsing muscle. She recognized the smell from the barber’s office above, from the cage the Ebon Ghost had fled—it was the stink of a cockroach nest, of foul insects fornicating and defecating and eating each other in some small, hot space.

Jirella dug her nails into the soft, slippery wall and pulled herself forward, no longer sure if she was burrowing deeper into hell or climbing upward, toward heaven. Her blood boiled in her veins. Her skin bubbled off her bones. Yet she persisted. She had made of herself a temple for the Fallen Mother, and no matter what her enemies attempted she would not let that gift be lost down in the First Dark.

Then her fingers found not another burning handful of stinking insect waste, but the cool air of deep places. Seizing the rim of her prison, Jirella hauled herself free. She flopped out onto cold stone, the distended ovipositor leaking vile secretions in her wake. Distant chanting echoed off the walls like the droning of a hive. In the glare of thousands of candles she looked around to see from whence this monstrous birth canal originated, but saw only the titanic effigy of the Fallen Mother standing over her. There was no tunnel at the foot of the statue, no hole in the ceiling high above. She had come from nowhere.

The chanting grew louder. Jirella stood blinking as she wiped blood from her eyes. Not her blood. She was standing naked before the ikon of the Allmother, surrounded by gutted sacrifices, loops of entrails warming her feet. Hooded clerics with ornate silver devil masks stood on the steps beneath her, and beyond them a throng of robed worshippers filled the vast Lower Chainhouse, their hymn rising in time with Jirella’s whine.

The clerics had tricked her, luring her in with bleating offerings. Her eyes couldn’t focus enough for her to see if the bodies at her bare feet were the kids of goats or the children of mortals. She turned to scale the statue, to flee back into the First Dark, but the clerics were already on top of her, chaining her with burnished iron and ancient incantations. The Black Pope led them, his mitre unmistakable, but beneath the tall hat the face Jirella saw was not her uncle’s but her own.

His sibilant chant subdued her long enough for his clerics to chain her to the inverted cross, but when they began to scratch the secret mysteries of the Chain into her unset flesh she bucked in pain. Their scrimshawed quills jabbed through her guts, piercing the Ebon Ghost and harrying it deeper and deeper, poisoning it as it had poisoned her, and she wept for it. Sigils and glyphs pulsed beneath her skin, the steady hands of her assailants tracing them with their blades. A cardinal wearing the frozen grimace of one of the gargoyles she used to spit on back at the convent hunched over her loins with a scalpel and meticulously shaved a cross into the hair between her legs.

The Ebon Ghost wriggled its way into and through her bowel before tearing its way at last into her unspoiled womb, clarifying Jirella’s exquisite agony into something yet more transcendent. She knew that she would soon see the face of the Fallen Mother. The chanting came to crescendo as the heavens exploded in cleansing flame around her. A last thing Jirella remembered was a man in red picking up a small white egg in his gloved hand and placing it into a reliquary.

The final stage of the coronation would be torture of an entirely different sort, and far more humiliating than anything Jirella had endured in the midst of the Ordeal of the Ebon Ghost. She, the most important living mortal in all the Star, must supplicate herself to the Crimson Queen in the throne room they would share ever after. It was entirely symbolic, of course, Shanatu taking off his mitre and passing it to Indsorith, who would then plant it on Jirella’s brow, but it irked nonetheless.

At least it would soon be over. Jirella rose from her knees, her black robes of state chaffing her mortified flesh as she stood in front of the tapestry in her room. The likeness of the Fallen Mother had struck her as so impressive when first she had come here, but now it seemed so shabby compared to the oil painting that hung in the Papal suite. Hard to believe it had only been a week since she had come here—it felt like years.

“Don’t fret, Sister Vaura, I’m coming,” she told the war nun as the big woman stepped into her room. “This is one trial I won’t be late...for?”

The anathema had closed the door behind her and now turned the key in the lock. Jirella’s heart sank, but that only made her stand all the taller.

“Will you tell me who?” she asked as the purple-eyed giantess turned to face her. The anathema shook her heavy head, her penitent mask breathing heavier than Jirella would have expected. The woman didn’t want to do this, Jirella could tell...but she nevertheless unslung her enormous sword from her back. “You will tell me why, though. Whatever else you are, Sister Vaura, you’re a good Chainite, and we both know I am the true and rightful pontiff.”

“You are a puppet,” the anathema said sadly as she lifted her blade. “You are nothing but Shanatu’s surrogate, and you will keep torturing and enslaving my kind as he has always done.”

“And you think whichever Cardinal put you up to this will do any different?” Jirella hated this monster even more, now that she realized her naiveté. “Whatever they promised you, it’s a lie. We’ll both die for nothing.”

“My life is already forfeit,” said the big woman stepping closer. “If I spared your life, ma’am, would you swear to empty the Dens, to stop the pogrom against my people? Would you let the wildborn live as they are?”

“I shall not compromise the sanctity of my post for any life, not even my own,” said Jirella. “Unlike those false Chainites you conspire with, I shall not swear any oath I do not intend to keep. I answer only to the Fallen Mother.”

“Forgive me, Sister,” said Jirella, raising a shaking hand, “but pray grant me one final request?”

The war nun didn’t answer, but she didn’t chop Jirella in half, either. Not yet.

“Let me look upon your face again?” Jirella’s voice quavered. “If you are to be a martyr for the liberation of your people, let yourself be the first anathema to shed her Chainite trappings. And if I am to be the sacrifice that buys your salvation, allow me to gaze upon the righteous face of my executioner instead of an assassin hiding behind a mask.”

Instead of lowering her massive sword the war nun managed to hold it aloft with one hand as she reached up with the other and untied her mask. Jirella sucked nervously at her cheek. The anathema was even uglier than Jirella remembered. As the mask fell away, Sister Vaura made ready to carry out her execution, and Jirella stepped closer to accept the will of the Fallen Mother.

“Safe roads guide you to her breast,” whispered Jirella, staring up into the witchborn’s scarred face.

“Safe havens keep you at—” Sister Vaura began, but before she could complete the Prayer of Exodus, Jirella spat into the anathema’s open mouth. Then she wheeled about, diving onto the bed and rolling clear across it, waiting for that massive sword to split her in two, or smash the bed to pieces in the attempt. She landed on the floor on the far side and looked back to see her doom striding angrily toward her...

Yet Sister Vaura stood exactly where she had, the sword clattering to her feet as her shaking hands went to her wide-eyed face. Not only had Barber Norton spoken true of the change that had effected Jirella, but the potency of her poison was incredible—smoke began pouring from the anathema’s slack mouth. Sister Vaura sank her strong fingers into her own throat, blood welling out as she clawed at herself. She fell to her knees as she scraped deeper and deeper into her neck, fleshy cords snapping like harp strings. All the while those purple eyes stared at Jirella where she crouched on the far side of the bed. The anathema almost looked like she had been the one who’d been betrayed.

“Safe havens keep you at your rest,” Jirella told the monster when her relentless fingers exposed the white of her spine and she pitched forward onto her pitted face.

The girl stepped past the shuddering corpse of her protector and went to inherit the Burnished Chain.

According to the pomp of ancient ceremony and ecclesiastic symbolism, Jirella Martigore died that morning on the mist-kissed terrace of the Crimson Throne Room, cold grey clouds swirling overhead. In her place stood Pope Y’Homa III, Mother of Midnight, Shepherdess of the Lost, resplendent in vestments crafted from the iridescent feathers and inky fur of owlbats and beaded with a thousand black opals. The inverted cross of her scepter was carved from the petrified blood of an ancient devil queen. She was fifteen years old.

Everything after Queen Indsorith placed the mitre on her head was a bit of an anxious blur of doubt and worry—her uncle had told her not to expect any great change, but she had hoped he would be proven wrong. Yet she didn’t feel any different, not at all. It seemed the Fallen Mother would find other ways than direct communication to guide Y’Homa’s hand, at least for the time being.

For now, she guided the hand herself, holding it out for her three Chief Officers to kiss the papal ring at the conclusion of the coronation.

First came Cardinal Artsidr, a willowy granddame with more spies than the rest of the College of Cardinals combined. She offered her new pontiff the sweetest of smiles as she pressed her wrinkled lips to the onyx ring. Pope Y’Homa imagined her whispering in the ear of Yekteniya and then Sister Vaura and she returned the crone’s smile with one of her own.

Next was Cardinal Ihsahn, a far younger and prettier woman than Y’Homa had expected. She barely grazed the ring with her lips, but Y’Homa flicked her finger, bumping the onyx against her mouth to make sure the Prelate of Samoth got the message. As liaison to the Crimson Court it was not a huge stretch to imagine her collaborating with Indsorith to kill Shantanu’s chosen successor, bribing Sister Vaura with a resolution the Crimson Queen already favoured.

Then there was Cardinal Wendell, a grotesque parody of a man whose lips smacked greedily against her ring. The Chain’s Minister of Propaganda didn’t seem to be nearly as clever as the others, but Y’Homa couldn’t be sure if his wits were genuinely dull or if his demeanour was simply a ruse to direct suspicion away from himself. He certainly seemed clever enough at his work, oiling shameless lies with sentimental qualifications and making sure every truth was inflated with his hot air until it swelled near to bursting. With his bland appeals to populist sentiment, could he have been the one to tempt a conflicted anathema into betrayal?

Well, it scarcely mattered now which of the three had attempted to thwart Y’Homa’s ascension, for they had all failed and now had no choice but to accept her rule. Not that they would get to enjoy that luxury for very long. Barber Norton had assured her that the contact poison they had coated her ring in would be slow-acting enough to not have them keel over on the spot, but before the sun next rose all three would die in the most exquisite agonies.

Her uncle would not be happy, but sorrow is the lot of mortals. If the Fallen Mother truly wanted any of Y’Homa’s Chief Officers to live, she would surely save them, just as she had saved Y’Homa many times over. Only the guilty would be punished. Y’Homa truly believed that.

“Shall we, Your Grace?” asked Queen Indsorith, nodding her crowned head at the twin seats that rose from the vast veranda of the Crimson Throne Room, here at the crest of Diadem’s cone.

“Certainly, Your Majesty,” said Pope Y’Homa III, taking the hand of the Crimson Queen. By striking his truce with the queen, Pope Shanatu had saved the flesh of the Crimson Empire. Now it fell to Y’Homa to save its soul.

The Divine Death of Jirella Martigore