APIBAGS Chapter 45

The smile curved past the veil—soft, unhurried. Gabriel could not bring himself to return it.

On the floor in front of the veiled woman was a body. Dissolved through in places, perforated, as if something had burned holes through it from the inside.

"It seemed improper for a sinner to remain in his religious robes. I had them removed."

The face was barely recognizable. It was only by looking at the neatly folded priest's vestments set to one side that Gabriel was able to identify the body as Brother Priest Berga.

"The heart isn't beating. Do you notice the cavity in the skull? That was likely the moment of death."

The body—injured so far past any threshold of survival it barely qualified as one—convulsed. Bishop Marik reached down and lifted it by the hair, a perfectly unhurried gesture, as if demonstrating a point.

"And yet, in spite of all this, it continues to move."

Several bottles of holy water had been expended, and the result had been nothing more than dissolved flesh. To finish it off entirely would require submersion—drowning it in holy water until the process was complete. There was nothing more to learn from it. That was how it would have to be handled.

"To die and fail to reach the embrace of Rahel's grace..." Marik released her grip. The body folded back onto the floor. "This is the fate of those who betray God."

She laid hands on him with a brutality that surpassed her usual standard—though that was perhaps owing to what the man had been. Bishop Marik had originally been a nun. What Berga had done in that remote convent would have struck her as a particular offense.

Following Daisy's report, Berga and the two monks who had served under him had all been sent over together.

The demon Daisy had claimed to have witnessed had never been located. But the blood-soaked papers found in Berga's room made his use of summoning circles unmistakably clear. Beyond that, evidence and witnesses had come forward pointing to bribery, sexual assault. When it emerged that he had also orchestrated murders, even the family that had been protecting him moved quickly to cut ties rather than draw the temple's unfavorable attention.

"He saw the painting hung in the temple and used it to conduct his rituals."

Marik had recognized the summoning markings immediately.

"Are you familiar with the purge of heretics twenty years ago, Your Excellency?"

"Purge, Commander—mind your language. That was a cleansing. And yes, I remember it very well. It was around that time that I left the convent."

This devout bishop did not hesitate to shed blood for Rahel's sake. The credit earned in that cleansing had been what carried Marik to her present position.

"You were too young to remember, I imagine."

Marik, by contrast, remembered those days with complete clarity. The most passionate years of her life, perhaps.

She reflected on the past as she shared what she knew with the younger man.

"The markings sorcerers use are quite easy to identify. They contain stars."

Under Rahel's dominion, the sun signified the singular divine. Stars signified the opposite—things that threatened the sun but could never rise to its level, contemptible and corrupt things, the kind that could only be compared to stars. Incapable of threatening the sun. Incapable of being taken seriously.

And so the markings sorcerers drew were full of them. Those too base to look upon Rahel made their wishes to stars in the god's place. But unlike a god, those stars could not be omnipotent—there was always a price. Wicked by nature, they had to be bound by contract.

"They claim that if you make an offering and state your wish, the contract is sealed."

Gabriel thought of the woman he had met in broad daylight.

"You had already recognized the danger—that's how you knew to identify the painting."

"Yes. If I had known the trouble would spread following the channels Donau Blue opened up, I would have disposed of that painting far sooner. Even over the objections of my fellow brothers and sisters, I could have insisted..."

Spread following the channels...

Gabriel turned the words over. The manner was forceful. But the phrasing—she was speaking as though she had wanted exactly this.

Bishop Marik wielded considerable influence even among her fellow bishops. If Marik had truly wished to have the painting taken down, she could have managed it with far less difficulty, long before it burned.

Deliberately allowing Donau's painting to remain on display. Allowing it to circulate. Then moving in to arrest the sorcerers it attracted and claiming the credit. It was entirely reasonable to suspect that Bishop Marik had chosen to repeat the past as her method of advancement to the cardinalship.

Marik smiled. Warmly. As if there were nothing in her at all.

"It really was fortunate that the fire came and burned the painting before things could get worse."

Gabriel could not bring himself to consider the painting's burning fortunate.

He had been looking into what had caused the painting to ignite when he came across news of Jim Nofedi—the painter who had made it.

Jim had apparently been traveling the countryside in search of inspiration for a work that would surpass his previous one. Since his original inspiration had been Donau's death, the places he sought out were of a similar nature. Bereaved families willing to tolerate someone desecrating the bodies of their dead were not numerous.

Jim had eventually found a body he was particularly taken with. He had gone to an elderly woman who had lost her young grandchild, praised the grandchild's corpse to her face, and asked whether he might paint it. The woman threw him out with a stream of curses. Convinced he was backed into a corner, Jim went so far as to steal the body.

The woman was incandescent with rage. She and the neighbors who joined her found Jim and beat him to death. The painting had caught fire at precisely the same moment Jim died.

"Lady Rohanson—was that her name? The young noblewoman who extinguished the fire."

"Yes, that's correct."

As Evangeline Rohanson's name came up, Gabriel kept his attention on Marik's face.

"Ha. Do you think I would do her harm? Certainly not... I merely wished to commend someone who acted righteously."

At the council meeting, Gabriel had ultimately chosen silence. He had revealed as little as possible about Evangeline Rohanson and quietly erased her footprints wherever he could.

"You do take care of the one you're fond of, don't you."

And in the process of making Evangeline's presence invisible, he had filled the gaps with an excuse that was, frankly, absurd.

From the moment Donau's body was first found: Evangeline Rohanson became a distraught young woman overcome with worry for the servants caught in the blaze.

After that, every visit Gabriel had paid to the Rohanson estate had been the visit of a man attending to the noblewoman he was enamored of. The reports sent periodically to keep her apprised of the investigation became love letters. Evangeline's visit to the Grand Temple became, in the record, a kind of outing.

The bulk of what had happened with Daisy and Ainoa Orphanage he had omitted entirely. In his account, Daisy was simply the person who had filed the report on Father Berga—no connection to the orphanage whatsoever.

He had coordinated with Troy and established instead that Evangeline had previously done volunteer work at the orphanage, which had allowed her to notice something was wrong. The markings found in the building he had not mentioned at all.

He had initially preferred simply not to use Evangeline's name. Raphaela had disagreed. The reason was straightforward: Gabriel and Evangeline appeared together too frequently to explain away.

'Commander. Are you aware of what people generally think when a knight of your standing meets frequently with a noblewoman, visits her home, and sends her letters?'

'Not particularly.'

'They think: Sir Gabriel is pursuing a criminal he considers suspicious. He'll chase her to the ends of hell to uncover the truth. That's what they think.'

Raphaela had emphasized, at some length, that there was only one way to escape that interpretation.

'You're in love, Commander. Even the great Commander of the Pharalos Knights, apparently, ends up chasing after women when he's in love.'

And since Gabriel would need Evangeline's cooperation going forward, there was no better cover for avoiding scrutiny, Raphaela had added.

Absurdly, this had worked rather well. Throughout the meeting, whenever Evangeline's name surfaced, it was generally folded under the heading of infatuation and moved past.

'Glad to see you've started acting your age.'

One priest who had never particularly liked Gabriel clapped him on the shoulder on the way out and offered encouragement.

Raphaela had watched this and expressed genuine surprise, wondering aloud whether Gabriel might actually have a talent for performance. Though it hadn't worked on everyone. Not, for instance, on the devout believer now standing before him—the one who would not hesitate to kill a beloved for Rahel's sake.

"Come to think of it, another room down the hall has been filled. The matter concerns Lady Rohanson, I believe—is that what brought you down here, Commander?"

"Yes, that's correct."

When it became apparent that Gabriel had no intention of discussing Evangeline further, Marik changed the subject smoothly. She had not attended the council meeting and yet knew about the headmistress Merai—which meant Jabaniya had been keeping her informed.

"The commander evidently has his own business with the prisoner. We'll leave you to it."

"Don't work too hard."

Marik pressed her heel down onto Berga one final time—not quite a stamp, but something close to it—and turned to go.

"May the sins committed hiding in the shadows today remain hidden from the sun."

An inverted farewell, delivered to the stairs as she climbed.

Marik had assumed Gabriel intended to interrogate Merai—hence the send-off.

Back above ground, Marik peeled off her soiled outer garment and held it out. The priest beside her received it without a word, taking the filth-covered clothing with appropriate deference.

"Bishop Jabaniya."

"Yes, Lady Marik."

Jabaniya answered promptly. That their relationship appeared so clearly hierarchical despite their shared rank was because the old fox had thrown in his lot with Marik's patronage.

"It seems even the Commander is finally hitting puberty. He's keeping secrets even from you—and you're the one he supposedly thinks of as a parent."

"He's a young man in his prime. Surely he'd find it embarrassing to discuss romantic entanglements openly."

Jabaniya had, at some point, embellished the nature of his relationship with Gabriel for Marik's benefit—spoken of how Gabriel thought of him as a father figure, how Gabriel was a splendidly loyal young man who would render any service at a word.

And now that boy had grown, and when Jabaniya needed him most—needed him to help demonstrate his influence to Marik—he had simply stood there, unmoved. Jabaniya felt rather like a man who had been caught exaggerating.

Marik let the misstep pass without comment, granting him a gracious opportunity to recover.

"I find myself curious about Lady Rohanson. You said you met her in person once, didn't you? What was she like?"