He was gone when I woke up.
I had expected it, and I don’t think that Millie or Osan were surprised either. None of us spoke about it. We didn’t say much at all.
“Go ahead; I’ll join you in a moment,” I told Millie. “I need to restore my lace.”
She and Osan continued down the path, and I opened my last jar. Breathing through my mouth, I cut the flesh into smaller pieces and tried to swallow them one at a time. As soon as the first sliver touched my tongue, I gagged. Worse. This was much worse than last time. My body recoiled from the meat’s rank sourness, and sweat broke out over my skin.
I managed to force down the sacrament without throwing up. Lace swelled in my gut and entwined with my nausea. Even though we were running low on water, I drained a canteen to wash my face and hands, and to rinse the inside of my mouth. The smell persisted; with every breath, I could taste Verje’s flesh again.
I hurried to catch up with the others. Without Finn, we were forced to leave behind almost a third of our provisions. It would be a long, thirsty walk to the mountains.
Millie and Osan halted their conversation as I joined them. They looked tense, and Millie’s eyes were red.
“Are you all right?” asked Osan.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Is there a problem?”
He pointed. “Look.”
I followed the line of his finger. Overnight, Aytrium had sunk further toward the crater. I strained my eyes. Three white dots glinted against the dark mass of the island.
“Do you think it’s them?” I asked.
“Probably.”
I watched the pale specks descend. They were too far away to see clearly, but I imagined Celane staring down at me from above. I felt her gaze despite the distance.
“I think that they’ll stay in the air for as long as they can,” I said. “That would be the fastest option. And the safest.”
“But it’ll burn through their lace, right?”
“They’ll be able to divide the load between themselves.” I chewed my lip. “They’re certainly going to stay airborne longer than we did.”
“I guess it’s too much to hope that they’ll be eaten by Haunts when they reach the ground.”
I shivered. “That’s a horrible thought.”
“You’re far more generous than I am, Just El.” Osan shook his head. “After everything these women have done, I’d consider it just deserts.”
“We should keep moving,” said Millie, her voice heavy. “Standing around only gives them more time to catch us.”
She carried on down the path, bent by the weight of her bag. I cast a glance back at the white specks, then followed.
The sun rose, throwing long shadows behind us, and the morning chill dissipated. The air tasted fresh and sharp. We stuck to the path, even as it veered eastwards and away from the mountains. Ventris kept still and quiet—this morning there were no insects, no birds, no rustling in the grass—but I remembered the howl that had driven off the last Haunt. We were not alone.
The Old Ones, Finn had called them, with unmistakeable reverence in his voice. I tried to push the thought of him out of my mind.
The first building we came across had probably been a farmhouse. The roof had collapsed on one side, littering the ground with broken clay tiles. Weeds grew up around the walls.
Although I could not immediately work out why, something about the ruins made me feel uncomfortable. When Osan moved to investigate the building’s interior, understanding dawned on me.
“I remember this place,” I said aloud.
Like Geise’s Crown, the same sense of having two realities overlapping one another. I blinked. Millie was staring at me.
“I mean, I have memories of this place,” I said. “Not my memories. Someone, no, many people died. The bodies were brought here. Outsiders…”
I knew that after the winter the corpses had been stacked up like firewood, eyes glazed and lips blue. The survivors huddled together in a vast camp, their bodies shrunken and emaciated. For each that perished, another would replace them. In my mind their faces shifted and changed, woman morphing to man morphing to child, all feverish with need.
“They had walked for weeks,” I said. “They were … stopped. Here.”
I had seen them from a distance, the smoke of their fires. What could they still have to burn, after they had swept through this land like locusts? How could there still be so many?
Osan touched my arm, and I started.
“You’ve never seen this place before,” he said gently. “Come on.”
He was right. My eyes lingered on the broken roof. There had been a red chimney there, once.
After that, Osan set a relentless pace. By midday, the mountains appeared nearer and more solid. The further we moved from Aytrium, the greener the landscape became. Copses of unfamiliar steel-grey trees sprang from the valleys, and smooth, slender grasses caressed the hillsides. For all its new lushness, Ventris remained oppressively silent. The only animals we saw were birds, specks against the blue, too distant to identify.
Memories flickered through my head, fleeting and vague. They did not frighten me, although I saw Millie and Osan exchange looks of concern more than once. Hour by hour, the truth revealed itself to me—I began to grow conscious of all the patterns underlying the world, the repetitions and echoes, the way that tree branches mirrored tree roots, the way that rivers fed the land like arteries fed the flesh. It became clear to me that each element of creation possessed a correct state of being, and that deviations from those states were both offensive and glaringly obvious.
I could also sense her. It felt like I might be able to reach her if I closed my eyes and stretched. I followed the curve of the path with my eyes till it disappeared over the rise of a slope.
It occurred to me, quite abruptly, that I was a deviation myself. That posed a problem. I frowned. Not an unsolvable problem, but certainly one that would require attention.
“El!”
I jumped. Millie shook me by the shoulders.
“Didn’t you hear me?” she asked.
“Sorry.”
“I said drink some water.” She thrust the canteen toward me. “You look sick.”
“Maybe we should take a break,” said Osan.
“No.” It came out more strident than I had intended. I tried to sound reasonable. “She wants to reach the temple.”
Millie tested my forehead against her wrist. “She? Eater, El, what are you even saying? You’ve been raving all day, and it’s scaring me. You aren’t sweating.”
“Maybe I’m not hot.”
“You’re boiling. But not sweating.” She pressed her lips together. “I hate asking, but how much flesh have you consumed?”
“I was careful.”
“Then what is this? How much flesh, El?”
“Three quarters of Verje’s heart. And I feel fine.”
“Listen to me.” She held my jaw. “You aren’t behaving like yourself.”
This wasn’t right. We should be moving, not talking. Did that mean that Millie was a deviation too? How was I supposed to set everything right when these aberrations cascaded upon one another, multiplying, gathering momentum. We were sliding, we were sliding, and I needed to do something drastic to correct matters.
“You should let go of me,” I said. I imagined biting down on her fingers, the spray of blood and crack of bone. “You’re upsetting the pattern.”
“Kamillian,” said Osan, with a note of warning.
She stepped back, releasing my jaw. I smiled. That was better. Millie looked angry. She held her hands close to her chest, and her cheeks were high with colour.
“How could I let this happen?” she muttered.
“No one is at fault here,” said Osan. He scanned the path. “We should try to get her out of the sun.”
Another ruined building lay a few hundred feet ahead. It was smaller than the farmhouse, and the squat shadows cast by the crumbling walls disturbed me. The sunlight swam like liquid as we approached.
“This is where they used to bring the tithes,” I said, and then threw up. My vomit was bloody, and the smell of rotten meat overwhelmed me. I clutched my head.
Osan looped his arm underneath mine and pulled me to my feet. Millie helped him drag me over to the shade. I squirmed in their grasp as they sat me down against the wall.
“Easy,” said Osan. “Just take a breather.”
“It’s not right, it’s not right, it’s not right!”
He held me down.
“Listen to me,” he said fiercely. “You have gorge sickness. We are not trying to hurt you, we are trying to stop you from hurting yourself. Do you understand that?”
I bared my teeth at him in a snarl, but at the same time, a sensory memory tugged at me. I knew the feel of these hands on my shoulders; Osan had restrained me before. The last time I lost control. Everything was jumbled, too bright and gleaming and hazy, but that memory cut through the tangled threads of my thoughts. He had held me back during Finn’s execution.
“El?” Millie peered at me anxiously.
“Can’t think straight,” I said. “Please help me.”
“You’re safe, and you’re going to be fine,” said Osan. “But I think you need to burn off some of your lace. Can you do that?”
I shook my head. I need it. She wants it back.
He kept his tone even and friendly. “Come on, just a little? Stick with me here, El. Your lace is making you sick, can’t you see that?”
But she’s already so angry, I wanted to argue.
Instead I nodded. With difficulty, I grasped my lace and wove a defensive net around the three of us, knitting it tight and dense. The sensation of drawing on my power was all wrong—a horrible, clotted tugging, like dragging a hook through oil and thick mud. I stopped.
“Any better?” asked Millie.
“A little.” The world appeared less shiny. I straightened and rubbed my forehead. “But it’s such a waste.”
“No, it’s necessary,” said Osan. “Do it again.”
I wove a second net around the first. With the fog lifting from my thoughts, I could sense how tainted and warped my lace had become. I burned off a little more.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
Osan let go of my shoulders. “Apology accepted. So long as I never have to hear about ‘the patterns’ again.”
I sat up. I still felt groggy, but the sensation was no worse than a bad hangover. “I, uh … Was I saying all of that out loud?”
Millie offered me her canteen again. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Have some water.”
I drank, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
“How much do we have left?” I asked.
“Three canteens,” said Osan. “But the vegetation is getting greener. Hopefully we’ll find fresh water before nightfall.”
I shut my eyes for a few seconds, then nodded. “Let’s carry on, then.”
We moved slower than before. I was frustrated by my weakness, and the thin layer of delirium that still coated my brain. Millie and Osan were patient with me and relentlessly positive, but we had lost a lot of time; it was long past midday. If Celane was still pursuing us, she would be closing the distance fast.
The path meandered downhill, and the earth became softer and damp as we passed into a fecund wetland. White lilies burst from the peat, and water pooled in shallow, stagnant puddles. The rich smell of decay hovered in the air.
And yet there were no frogs, no fish, no insects. The silence seemed deeper here; it pressed up against my eardrums like I was moving underwater. The further we walked, the more the water rose, and the path began to give underfoot. In places it crumbled away entirely, leaving gaps where we were forced to wade through black silt. The broken stretches never extended more than ten feet, but my sense of vulnerability always increased as we stepped off the path. We were being watched.
Osan abruptly turned to the left, away from the curve of the path. Mud sluiced up to his knees.
“Hey,” I called. “Where are you going?”
He stopped.
“Osan?”
“Sorry.” He was quiet for a while, not moving. “I must have been confused.”
He returned to the path, and we continued. After that incident his behaviour seemed normal, but the moment stayed with me.
Step after step, one foot in front of the other. I tied my shoes to my bag and went barefoot. The wetland seemed endless; mud sucked at my ankles hungrily, dragging me down. Time blurred into a haze of shambling exhaustion as the sun gradually slunk toward the western horizon. We could not stop here. The sky was clear; once night fell, the temperature would plummet. So we continued through the indeterminable expanse of swollen grasses and sedge, the fat reeds bobbing as we trudged past, the deceptive softness of the soil that abruptly gave way to water, sinking us knee-deep in sludge.
The idea of navigating the maze of pools in the dark scared me. It would be all too easy to lose our way. And it would only take one misstep, one error—
“Slopes upwards,” said Osan.
I lifted my head. The sky over the mountains had turned orange. “What?”
“We’re walking uphill. That’s good; we must nearly be at the end of it.”
“Thank the Eater,” muttered Millie. She pulled her foot out of the mud with a scowl.
My own feet were ice-cold and aching, but the weight on my shoulders lightened. Osan was right. We had been gradually climbing for a while; I had just been too fixed on the ground in front of me to notice.
Despite our fatigue, we moved faster. The ground dried, and the reeds were replaced by scrub, then small trees. A few stars winked in the pale evening sky.
“Up there,” said Millie. “There’s a building.”
Along the ridge of the hill, a dark square stood silhouetted against the sky. I sagged with relief. I was so tired that I could hardly stand; the idea of shelter and warmth and rest was almost enough to bring tears to my eyes.
“Go on.” Osan gave me a small push. “I’ll see if I can find anything to make a fire.”
I hesitated.
“It’s fine,” he said, sensing my unease. “I won’t stray again. Go.”
I followed Millie up the hill. For the first time, the path split—one way led up to the house, and the other snaked away over the verge. I struggled up the final rise and gasped. A vast lake, dark and glittering, gleamed with the last rays of sunlight. Further along the water’s edge lay a wide beach dotted with sun-bleached trees, all long dead.
I squinted against the light. I could have sworn I saw larger ripples peeling away from the shore.
“It’s not a lake.” Millie gazed over the water, her expression thoughtful. “It’s a reservoir.”
The stone building sat beside the path, right on the waterline. Thick moss coated the walls, black and slimy where the stones met the water, fuzzy and green higher up. The roof was entirely gone, open to the air, and the entrance had collapsed.
“A boathouse?” I suggested.
“It looks ancient. I wonder when someone was last here.” She turned to study the marsh stretching into the distance behind us. “It makes you wonder what all of this looked like before.”
Sunlit hills, green spreading forests, soil so fertile and rich that plants overran each other, the melody of water over rocks, and a city that glowed, flowers of every shade, every colour. I said nothing. The memory hung over the present like a honeyed glaze.
“At any rate, Celane won’t be able to travel any further before morning.” Millie nodded to herself. “No one would dare cross that marsh at night.”
I wasn’t so sure. I scanned the landscape, straining my eyes as I searched for any sign of smoke or movement in the distance. I could see nothing beyond the wetlands, and yet I knew she was out there. I felt tied to the Reverend, like there was an invisible chain around my neck and she held the other end. Although she was little more than a stranger, I knew Celane, understood her, recognised the shape of her convictions and ideals—because they were the Order’s convictions and ideals. She was not like Verje, self-interested and sadistic, and so I didn’t fear her as a person, not exactly. Instead she stood in my mind as the Sisterhood made manifest, both in its failings and its glories. She was the Order, and I knew her as well as I knew myself.
In that, she terrified me in a way that nothing else could, because, in the depths of my heart, I could not quite believe that Celane was wrong for wanting to martyr me.
“El?”
I shook myself. I just needed to stay out of her reach a little longer. Millie was looking at me, her head tilted to one side.
“Want to check out our lodgings?” she asked.
The boathouse’s interior was divided into two rooms: one leading to a stone jetty, and the other overgrown with flowering weeds and vines. We set about clearing a place to sleep.
Osan returned as we finished, carrying an armful of scrubby branches. He set them against the far wall where the light would be obscured from outside. Building a fire was much easier with the drier tinder—by the time the sky had darkened, we had a pot of water bubbling away over the flames.
I leaned against the wall, warming my hands and feet, my chin resting on my chest.
“Are you feeling okay?” asked Millie.
“Just tired.”
She pushed a cup of beans and a strip of dried meat into my hands. On the other side of the room, Osan was sorting through our supplies. Planning, rationing, keeping busy. Millie sat down beside me.
“Do you think he’s still nearby?” she asked.
No need to ask who. I shrugged.
“He was trying to do the right thing,” I said.
She poked the fire with a stick, sending sparks scattering. “Yeah. I know. I just wish he’d given me a chance to say goodbye.”
“You wouldn’t have let him go.”
She fell quiet. The fire crackled and the water hissed softly.
“After our parents died, I was meant to take care of him,” she said, staring into the flames. “I knew that. And I failed.”
“Millie—”
“I ran away. I was the only one he had left, and I abandoned him.”
“You were fifteen.”
“He needed me to protect him.” She drew her knees closer to her chest. “Afterwards, I promised myself that I wouldn’t ever let him down again. I wanted so badly to make it up to him. And I couldn’t. Couldn’t save him from this either.”
“But we’re going to,” I said forcefully. “I’m going to fix him, you’ll see. We’re so close.”
Millie’s downcast eyes reflected the firelight, flickering orange. In the distance, an owl hooted, and a draft of cool air blew through the entrance to the room.
“We both know I’d make a terrible counsellor,” I said softly, “but trust me on this: you never needed to earn Finn’s forgiveness. And when you see him again, he’ll tell you that himself.”
She breathed out slowly.
“Hope is a dangerous thing,” she murmured. “But I want you to be right.”