Telo stared at each vein, knot, and scarred knuckle of his remaining hand as if memorizing every detail. The flickering light of torches revealed the specifics but fitfully; however, the sight was clear enough. Strange how flesh remained largely the same even as the soul changed. And Telo feared he was much changed inside.
Father Ansuro’s warning not to go back to the man he had been rang in his head.
He pushed the thought of transformation away. By the saints, studying his flesh was better than examining his soul and much better than staring at Santabe as the Northern priestess lay on a tomb, sleeping off the effects of the drug they’d given her. After they’d survived the laundry chute and left the cathedral, Telo had taken them to a forgotten hidey-hole of his childhood. A place deep underground and another part of his shelved past—an abode of tombs that were centuries old. While Ramiro fetched his horse and Teresa took a light to read epitaphs to lost souls long dead, he stood guard over their unconscious charge.
Bits and pieces of the living lay scattered all around from past refugees hiding from other troubles—a bent spoon too valuable to discard and meant to be retrieved but never recovered, a rag doll so rotted as to be barely identifiable, ashes of campfires between the stone sarcophagi. All remnants of those who were as cast off as the dead. Once upon a time Telo had been one of those castoffs—maybe against all his best intentions he was again. His life become a loop.
A soldier, his father had died before his birth, killed in some meaningless border battle between Aveston and Colina Hermosa. His mother had joined his father just a few short years after Telo’s birth, worked to death in supporting them both, while alone and kinless. Telo had grown up running in the streets—a street orphan—hiding from authority and stealing to feed himself. He had spent much time below ground in such hidey-holes until he was old enough to work in the brawl pits and learn a more sophisticated style of fighting. From there it was a small step to stints with bandits, harming others in a larger way.
He would have stayed there if not for two things: His small memories of his mother all revolved around her praise of the priests—he’d promised her to go to them for help—and the concern of a few such priests, like Father Vellito and Father Ansuro, who helped him without judgment. They had seen something of value in him when he could not. Various other priests had repaired his education and instilled enough values in him to bring him out of his sinful life. Perhaps they had fed upon his guilt, but for that he cast no blame, as it had saved his life. In return, he’d eventually joined them to make amends for his criminal past, to do good for others instead of harm.
In the priesthood he’d been content, not seeking fame or importance, choosing the life of a wandering friar rather than the political risings of the Church. Never part of anyone’s life in a permanent way, or connected to one acre of the world for long, or key to the center of events—until now.
Somehow Beatriz Alvarado had seen in him a counselor fit to help her husband. Julian Alvarado had found in him the courage to fight for the lives of children held by the Northerners and his role had grown from there. And Ramiro Alvarado had trusted him enough to follow his lead in capturing Santabe. Each step forward small and natural until he’d been yanked from his self-imposed humbleness into a battle to stop a god.
Ah, pride, he chided. As if you are more important than the rats hiding in this darkness. Yet here you are, back where you started.
He shivered, eying the shadows around their small fire, but without fear of the rats. No, he’d spent too much time with such creatures to fear them. But the air down here had an icy touch; moisture dripped in slow plops in an unseen corner, enough to chill anyone. All the chambers for the dead led to three or four others, doubling back on each other, resulting in a tangled web of interconnected rooms that would be a maze to anyone unfamiliar. The ceiling spanned high above, lost to the darkness. Too chilly for spiders, the catacombs were part natural cave and part man-made. The stone coffins—chest high, some plain and others covered with designs and lettering—took up just about all the space, meaning barely enough room existed between them for a person to sprawl out straight. Telo sat on one of them with Santabe on another—the carving an uneven lump under him.
In his fearless youth, Telo had traced out less than half the space in this catacomb with the sort of unheeding bravery only children were capable of. Others of his friends had learned many more of the twists and turns. And some had died here of hunger and neglect, their small skeletons hidden by the larger tombs of what had once been Aveston’s most wealthy citizens—the unwanted and the rich, now mingled together in holy equality.
Telo touched mind, heart, liver, and spleen to drive away the gloom that had entered his soul. God will provide. He always did.
But the confidence and peace of mind Telo had gained from witnessing miracles had been snapped by the death of Father Ansuro and his violent reacquaintance with Santabe, leaving him feeling emptier than before. Why had a God who worked miracles abandoned one of the best of souls to roam this land? Father Ansuro hadn’t deserved to die. And Santabe didn’t deserve to live.
Telo had pondered the unfairness of life many times, yet never felt it more keenly than today. Faith faced with concrete evil seemed like so many empty words, and gone was his sense of prevailing over depravity. Suffering had stripped from him the one virtue that had always saved him: the ability to laugh at life and himself—leaving his heart unable to sense truth. It hurt to acknowledge that his humor had been subsumed under so much grief, and he wondered if he had the will to face the world again when they might fail. If only a source among the living or dead could provide answers.
Santabe lay still and Telo strained his ears for a holy word, but the only noise came from Teresa some feet away as she struggled to read in the faint light. As he’d feared, the Lord would send no answers to him. He was no saint. No one worthy of God’s time. Just a man doing his best in a world breaking down.
His eye lingered on Santabe as the epitome of all cruelty. Telo had witnessed enough cruelty and immorality in his lifetime to recognize the real thing when he saw it. Dal and the Northerners were no group of bandits selfishly grabbing for what they needed without thought of consequences. Instead, they were a deliberate evil with a vocation to harm as many as possible.
Eyes downcast, he rubbed his thumb over a callus in his palm, seeking something real.
“So, you understand now,” a thin voice asked.
Telo jumped before he recognized the voice as Santabe’s, and noticed her eyes had opened. She held one arm flung across her forehead, eyes squinted as though pained by the small light.
“You’ve seen Dal’s work.” Her pained laughter rubbed unclean fingers on his soul. “Your eyes have a freshly haunted look. You’ve seen. Killing me will not stop Him.”
“You must have noticed you’re not dead,” Telo said. “Nor am I interested in torture. I leave that to your kind.” Telo shook his head. How easily she goaded him into anger. He wondered if she ever dealt in any other emotion. Instead of fury, then, he embraced pity for her. The Children of Dal had been trapped by their god’s depravity for thousands of years. No wonder they were twisted.
“But I would seek truce, my child. You’ll get no rancor from me.” He held up what remained of his left arm. “You have taken a piece of me and I have abducted you twice. Can we call it even and speak to each other with civility?”
She moved to sit, and Telo reached for the white Diviner at his feet, her gaze tracking his movement as they regarded each other warily. Two street dogs, each waiting for the other to bite first.
“It hurts to think. What did you do to me?” she demanded. “Why does my head feel like this?”
In the hope honesty would bring a return, he said, “A drug. A mix of herbs that renders people unconscious—but does no lasting harm. It is used for surgeries and other procedures. The pain will clear in a few hours.” They could dose her no more without refilling their supply. He’d spilled the entire bottle down his robe or on the cloth in his haste during the fight in the cathedral. Besides, they needed Santabe awake. “Drink. That will help.”
She eyed the water skin next to her on the tomb but made no move toward it. “It’s untainted,” he said. “My word to my god.”
“Your god is weak.” She snapped the words with little venom and reached for the water, letting it splash over her chin as she drank.
He didn’t want to argue with her about the various kinds of strength and the value of kindness. They had gone over that subject before and no minds had been changed. What they needed was information, not spiritual discussion—as fascinating as that would be. “And your god is strong. Strong enough to get to us underground?”
She paused in her drinking to eye him over the water skin, then the tombs around them. “With time . . . yes. You want to know if hiding your people underground will save them. It’s been tried—and failed.”
He nodded, hearing truth in her words for once, then waited, hoping for more.
“That is why you took me.” Her laughter rang out stronger this time. “You scared little people want what I know of Dal. Then you shall have it: I know He will send you back to your last life to try again. Weak. Untried. You have not been tested like the Children of Dal.”
“And if we find the way to defeat him, when you failed?”
Her laughter cut off sharply. “There is no way.”
“But we have a power you do not,” Teresa said, coming out of the gloom. “We have miracles.”
“Miracles? What is this word, ugly woman? You speak in riddles.”
Teresa frowned. “A miracle? Why a miracle is . . . well it’s . . .”
Telo took over. “It’s a helping hand from God to bridge the impossible, for He can make the dying live and the despairing have hope.”
Santabe snorted. “There is no such thing.” She tossed down the water skin. “Keep faith in your ‘miracle’ when Dal flays the flesh from your body.”
“Then what would you suggest?” Teresa said. “Your people managed to survive. You have nothing if not numbers.”
But Santabe crossed her arms over her chest, looking smug, and pressed her mouth closed like a spoiled child.
“Finding a way to stop this killing is only to your benefit,” Teresa pressed. “Your people would live, too.” She waited to no avail, then huffed out her breath.
Santabe’s eyes roamed the space around them, flicking from one point to another as if in search. A crease formed across her brow as if disappointed. “He’ll be here soon, if you are looking for Ramiro,” Teresa said quickly. “But there are still two of us and we have your weapon. Don’t try to escape.”
A glare was their only answer, and Telo wondered at their prisoner’s ability to keep silent. She had always been easy to goad before. When Santabe’s head began to droop, though, he realized she was in no shape for a physical attempt at escape. As if in proof, Santabe retched up the water she’d swallowed over the side of the tomb and then lay back down. So she was not noting their numbers in order to escape.
It also meant she hadn’t been looking for Ramiro. Why would she? She had seen Ramiro only for a brief stretch. Always before she had seen just him and Teresa. Just the two of them alone should be no surprise to Santabe.
So who was she looking for . . . or better yet—what?
Unless . . .
Telo jumped from the tomb where he sat and turned sideways to sidle between two sarcophagi to their bags. He drew out the red Diviner. Even in the darkness surrounding them, it somehow seemed darker. Santabe’s eyes snapped open, latching on to the implement like a magnet.
A painful hope grew in Telo’s chest. He’d brought the thing with them out of curiosity when Ramiro suggested they hide it with the bodies. Teresa had sided with him and they’d packed the strange Diviner away—clueless as to its uses.
“This!” Telo exclaimed. “You were looking for this.
“Why?”