GREY HAD ALWAYS been good at seeing only what he wanted to see. It was a special kind of blindness, one I almost envied.
He didn’t notice the shanties outside the wall. The children swarming in the shadows, some begging, some picking pockets. He had just smiled at the woman with a ripped bodice, not realizing she offered more than coy looks. Oblivious.
Ernesta would have loved that about Grey, how he only saw the light, never the shadow. They were much the same that way.
Thanks to the maps, I knew that the collector I was looking for was near the wall, almost in the old city, not that far from the old municipal building. While the streets were more orderly here than outside the gate, it was still a tangle of dead ends and narrow alleys along the edge. I quickly ducked away from the main thoroughfare, the dinging bells of the trolleys and the bustling noise of the people fading although never quite fully disappearing.
I touched the side of one of the buildings. I imagined the enormous wall that protected the city rising up and encircling just me, trapping me in silence, away from the chaos.
I walked east. I figured the collector’s business might be hard to find, but a municipal hall should at least be well labeled. I stopped in front of a stoic-looking rectangular building with wide front steps and high windows carved into the yellow limestone. A placard had been engraved into the stone of this building—Church hall of Orious, it claimed, using the old spelling for “Oryous” and giving a date six centuries ago.
I sucked in my breath, staring up at the ancient building. Nothing on Lunar Island was older than two centuries—the colony hadn’t existed before that time. But Miraband had been the capital since before there was an Empire. Allyria had originally been just a smaller nation within the larger continent, and it wasn’t until the last few centuries that it truly expanded, claiming the outlying city-states first, then, more recently, the nations of Siber and Enja. Then more, past the borders of the mainland. Across the ocean, not just with Lunar Island, but other island nations, reaching deep into the Azure Sea, knocking at the doors of the kingdoms on the other side of the world.
But this plain stone church hall . . . it had been here before the Empire. When Miraband was a city-state, with an Elder instead of an Emperor. When the god Orious had only entered the pantheon, and the people were still choosing who to worship, and how, and why.
“Would you like to come in?” a kind voice asked from the street. An older woman mounted the steps, a ring of keys in her hand. She wore a simple black robe, the only color on her body a bright red pallium embroidered with golden thread that formed runes common in the sacred Oryon texts. The Elders of my village church hall didn’t wear palliums outside of important holy days, and I wondered if Miraband’s Elders were required to wear formal dress on every visit to the church.
“All are welcome,” the woman said again. “You can rest awhile.” She nodded to the copper crucible on my shoulder, heavy enough to be a burden even though it appeared empty to her.
“Thank you, Elder,” I replied, a hint of a question in my voice. She nodded at me, confirming my suspicion that she was in the holy order, and swept her arm up, inviting me into the church hall.
I didn’t have time to visit, but something compelled me to linger there. My hand went unconsciously to my throat. I used to wear a cord with three knots in it, reflective of the three stars in the Oryous constellation and symbolic of his eye watching over the past, present, and future. But I’d replaced it with the chain I wore to hold my iron crucible.
The Elder removed her robe once inside. On her left forearm, right in the middle between her wrist and her elbow, there was a dimple in her flesh, a cavern deep enough that I was certain if I pressed my fingers into it, I would be able to feel her bone.
She noticed me looking.
“A fleshbane spider bite,” she said. “They’re common in the desert lands, where I did my missionary work.”
I nodded, then shifted my shirtsleeve, showing my own scars at the end of my residual limb. The Elder gave me a little smile of shared sympathy.
I moved around the old church hall, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the woman’s spider bite and the way it had healed. It was an ugly scar. The fleshbane spider’s venom caused necrosis, eating away the victim’s skin and muscle. I’d seen information about it in my medical texts at Yūgen. The only way to save the person’s life was to cut out the flesh, removing an entire chunk of the person’s body and hoping it would heal around the hole.
That’s what I couldn’t make Grey understand. Grief was like a fleshbane spider bite. It caused a wound that tore a chunk out of you. Grey seemed to think that mourning was like healing from a razor slicing through skin—it hurt, but it would heal, leaving nothing but a faint scar. But really, grief left a hole in you, and while you healed around the hole, you never didn’t have it. A piece of you was gone. You couldn’t heal something that wasn’t there. Just as the Elder’s arm would never be whole—just as my arm would never be whole—neither would the parts inside of me that missed my family. Surviving grief was as simple and difficult as healing around the hole, reshaping your life around what was gone.
I forced myself to take in the architecture of the church hall, driving these thoughts away from my mind. Slit windows were cut into the wall near the roof of the building, sending crisscrossed beams of light into the wide space of the church hall. The Elder’s confident steps over the mosaic floor were nearly silent. The only other source of illumination came from the narrow shelves of candles under the large round window set high on the opposite wall. The Oryous eye window had the same diameter of a tree trunk, the stained glass arranged in a myriad of reds, yellows, and oranges with no clear pattern, but it cast sparkling spots of colored light all along the floor.
The frescoes that lined the walls were faded to near invisibility. Squinting in the dim light, I examined the art. The triumphant figure in the foreground was Oryous, and I suspected the sunbeams surrounding him had been gilded with real gold, one of the only parts of the fresco that hadn’t faded, although the gilding was tarnished and dull.
“The Conquering of Death,” the Elder said reverently. “The title,” she added when I gaped at her. Death seemed to follow me everywhere.
I turned back to the fresco. I had at first been distracted by the gilded beams of light, but when I looked down, I noticed that Oryous’s bare feet were curled over a pair of skulls. In fact, the entire bottom of the painting was cluttered with images of bones.
“Today, Death is his own god,” the Elder said. “This scene from the sacred texts is often painted with Oryous fighting a black-robed figure, or some such nonsense.”
I thought of the chapel at Yūgen—the billowing robes of Oryous and the strong figure of Death before him.
“But when our religion first formed, there was no god of death.” The Elder laughed. “We have to personify everything to understand it, it seems. But no—conquering death meant reaching the afterlife, not a literal battle. Death is not a god. Death is a place.”
I bit my tongue. She may have thought Death was not a real god, but I had seen it. Felt it. My hand wrapped around my iron crucible, the icy-hot feel of it burning my skin.
I stared at the fresco, wondering if the gods had truly changed over time, or if I simply had. Oryous would not have wanted me to keep the dead for my own when he would claim them for himself. But perhaps no god had granted me this power; perhaps I had just taken it.
“We still have services here,” the Elder said, turning to me. There was an air to her voice I hadn’t detected before, a little like desperation and a little like hope. “You’re welcome to come and worship whenever you like.”
“I’m just visiting.”
“Oh.” The Elder tried to mask her disappointment. Her eyes dropped to the copper crucible I carried, but she asked no questions.
“Actually,” I said, “I’m hoping you can help me. I’m looking for the old municipal building?”
“Oh, are you an art lover?” the Elder said.
“No—I—why?”
“I just assumed,” the Elder said. “The old municipal building is far newer than this church hall—only a few centuries old in fact. The mosaic on the wall echoes this fresco,” she added when I still looked confused. “Although the material it’s made out of . . .”
“Could you tell me where it is?” I asked.
As she rattled off directions, I was relieved to find that I was close. I dropped a handful of Grey’s coins into the charity box by the door, and when their clinking sounds made me think the box was otherwise empty, I slipped in a few more—three copper coins from my own pocket. The Elder had advised a shortcut around the back of the church hall, so I did not return to the road by the wall and instead headed into the shadows of the old buildings.
I almost missed the municipal building. In fact, if the Elder hadn’t told me about the mosaic, I would have walked right past it.
I had been expecting a mosaic made of tile and glass, glittering in the sun. The mosaic on the municipal building, however, was dull. The faded taupe stone used to make the art was nearly the same color as the heavy blocks of limestone the building was made of; only the gray grout really made the illustration stand out. I wondered if, when the mosaic had been made centuries ago, it had been brightly painted.
I turned my back to the building, scanning the area for a street sign that would point me to the collector’s place. The municipal building’s front steps spilled out to a wide sidewalk that formed a small square. A park—some mostly bare trees and a pair of weather-worn benches—was in the center. All the streets ended at the square, except two that met in a point that pierced the park with a triangular-shaped building.
An all-too-familiar man caught my attention. A flash of red coat against the dusty green park—the ship’s captain. I was instantly suspicious that he’d been following me, but he seemed to have come from a different direction. I froze, my entire body poised to flee, although I had every right to be here.
The captain cut through the square. Even if he wasn’t following me, I had no particular desire to be seen now, so I turned my back to him, strolling up the stairs of the municipal building as if that was exactly where I’d intended to go. Too late I realized how foolish this was; it was far more likely that the captain had intended to come here, for official business, rather than to spy on me. Besides, the huge copper crucible I carried was sure to give me away even if he didn’t see my face. When I reached the top of the stairs, I dared a glance behind me.
The captain was gone.
I shook myself, almost laughing at the absurdity of running into him in Miraband. I was wound too tightly. I had just not expected to see a familiar face in a city of strangers.
There was a plaque by the door of the municipal building, and I leaned in closer to see it better. All thoughts of the captain fled my mind. Because here, too, was a face I recognized.