The Hemlock Queen, page 13
And Lore still didn’t know where she fell. A fulcrum, the tipping point between Gabe’s piety and Bastian’s indifference.
“I guess it’s possible they mean nothing,” Lore said, when it became clear Gabe planned to hold his quiet. “But since the whole point of us meeting here is so my magic doesn’t somehow bring back the Buried Goddess, I think they’re worth discussing.” Her voice snapped, there at the end. “Now is the part where you say something, Remaut.”
His surname made him stiffen. Slowly, Gabe sat up straight. A shadowy blur as he ran his hand over his face, his hair, adjusted his eye patch. “What do you want me to say, Your Majesty?”
“I want to know whether you think they’re important.” She let go of the lattice and clasped her hands in front of her, because this next part felt like a confession. “I do.”
A pause, heavy.
“Tell me about the dreams.” His tone was even, but the shadows moved as Gabe stood, paced back and forth. “As much detail as you can.”
Lore sank onto the bench. “I’m in a forest,” she said quietly. “Or kind of a forest, at least. It feels like the one on the green—something planned, not natural. It looks a lot like the one I imagine as my barrier.”
“That could be why you dream of it,” Gabe murmured. “You’ve built it up often enough that it stays in your mind without you trying.”
But Lore was already shaking her head before he finished. “It’s not like that. It’s more like… like I remembered this forest, and that’s why I chose it as my barrier.” She waved a hand. “Anyway, I guess that part isn’t important. I’m in the forest, and my hands are on a tree, except they don’t look like mine. They aren’t scarred.”
A brief pause in his pacing, the memory of how she’d gotten that scar arresting his movement. But then the pacing started back up again.
“And I’m talking to people, sometimes,” Lore continued. “Having these full conversations that don’t seem odd at all, inside the dream, but make no sense outside of it. I can’t remember the specifics when I wake up, but it’s something about a decision being made…”
The more she talked, the more foolish she felt. Maybe she was ascribing meaning to something meaningless, just like trying to find a sign in Gabe that he cared about her when all he’d done was show he didn’t. When it was cruel of her to still want him to.
A long sigh, her head dropping into her hands. “Forget it. I’m being stupid, this doesn’t mean—”
“You aren’t being stupid.” He was standing directly on the other side, as close as she had been before. A moment, then his fingers hooked through the metal, blunt and callused.
“Have you told Bastian?” he asked quietly.
She tried to parse out the nuances in his tone, separate the hurt from the longing and the anger. But they were braided together and wouldn’t come undone.
“I told him that I dreamed,” Lore answered, “but not what was in them.” She laughed, quick and breathless and a little bit desperate. “They scare me, Gabe. And I just want to know if I should be scared.”
His fingers twitched, like he didn’t like that answer. But the fragmented light from the sconce flickered over the golden-red of his hair as he nodded. They stood in silence, a fragile moment that could shatter if either of them moved in the wrong direction.
Finally, Gabe sighed. “You know I want to trust you, Lore.”
And her heart shouldn’t leap up at that, not with Bastian’s ring on her finger.
“So I’m going to,” he said, almost a challenge. “A little bit, at least.”
He was not a man accustomed to giving in to what he wanted. Gods knew Lore hadn’t given him a good reason to trust her, but he was going to do it, simply because he wanted to.
She wanted to touch him. Wanted to feel the move of his skin under hers, the tender thrum of his heart. She still remembered every beat of that kiss in the southeast turret so many weeks ago, like a dance her muscles hadn’t yet forgotten.
Gabe’s other hand went to a notch in the wall, twisted something. With a long-rusted squeal, a piece in the middle of the metal lattice popped open.
A door. It seemed logical now that there would be a door, a way between the different sides of the confessional, but Lore hadn’t considered it until she saw it open, hadn’t even seen hinges anywhere in all that twisting iron, it must’ve been a delicately wrought thing, very subtle—
All of those details were just distractions her mind provided her, trying to take away the impact of Gabriel Remaut standing in the now-open door, looking at her, close enough to touch.
There were dark bruises beneath his visible eye, and his face was wan beneath his faint scattering of freckles. There was a red mark on his temple, like the strap of his eye patch had rubbed him raw, like he’d been wearing it too long without giving himself a break.
“Follow me.” A turn on his heel, as if it didn’t even occur to Gabe that she wouldn’t.
“There’s a bloodcoat outside of the confessional room,” she said as she stood. “Bastian told him to stay with me.”
Gabe tossed a dark look toward the front of the room, as if the bloodcoat could feel it through the velvet curtain and oak door. “I’m surprised you were able to come in here without him, then.”
“That, apparently, was also part of Bastian’s orders. I’m to have privacy when I’m with you.”
Surprise made Gabe freeze, made him look over his shoulder at her with his forehead so furrowed it nearly nudged his eye patch out of place. “Well,” he said, and didn’t finish.
“Well,” Lore agreed.
A moment, then Gabe turned back around, continuing his stride through the priest’s half of the confessional, to a small stone door beyond. “Thankfully,” he said, “we can get to where we’re going without leaving this room, so Bastian’s guard won’t see you leave.”
“And where is it we’re going?”
He tipped his head back, loosing a sigh at the ceiling. “The stone garden,” he said, resigned. “I’m going to show you why I was there that night.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Upon My return, the earth will be united, one Holy Kingdom that spans all land and all sea.
—The Book of Holy Law, Tract 173
Labyrinthine stone passageways twisted through the bowels of the Church, all of them appearing clean and well maintained. Apparently, the Presque Mort and other clergy often needed to move through the Church without entering the Citadel grounds. Lore supposed it made sense, the Church’s construction being what it was—a huge stone circle around the Citadel and surrounding area, as much a wall as a structure in and of itself. The North and South Sanctuaries were like beads on the granite necklace, places where the building expanded, while the eastern and western sides were thinner, housing storage and cloisters.
Despite the fact that these passageways clearly weren’t secret, Gabe moved swiftly, like he didn’t want to be seen. Not that the chances of encountering anyone were high. Since half the Presque Mort and all the clergymen who’d conspired with Anton were in the Burnt Isles, the number of people traversing Church corridors was significantly reduced.
They approached a door that looked like any number of others they’d passed. Gabe produced a key from his pocket, slotted it into the lock. It opened into an arch of harsh summer sunlight, heat so thick it was nearly visible. Gabe slipped out the door, and Lore followed like a shadow.
The garden looked smaller in the daytime, without the seethe of mist to obscure its corners. The light made the changes easier to see, too. The banks of geraniums were thicker than she remembered, eating up the humidity and light. The living roses bloomed so densely that they nearly covered the stone ones, hiding the gray among green stems and brown thorns.
There was less Mortem to channel out of the catacombs, now. There’d been one minor lunar eclipse since the ritual—on a night that Lore spent huddled in her room around a bottle of wine—but apparently, it hadn’t yielded much magic.
She wished she could be comforted by that.
Gabe led her through the winding pathways, a different route than they’d taken the first time he’d brought her here. Up ahead, the well loomed out of the banks of flowers. The statue of Apollius sat small in the shade, hands outstretched. It seemed to Lore like He beckoned her forward. Taunting.
But Gabe didn’t linger at the well; he took a sharp right turn, moving back into the roses, toward the wall of the garden and the small greenhouse settled into the corner. With one last look at Apollius—and a lifting of both middle fingers—Lore followed.
Gabe paused outside the greenhouse. His one eye closed, opened again. “It’s not pretty,” he warned.
She’d forgotten to ask about Anton, in the rush of emotions left over from talking to Alie, confronting Gabe with the dreams. And yet here he was. Of course this was what Gabe had been doing that night.
“I’m not afraid,” she lied.
He nodded, squared his shoulders, and pushed open the door.
The greenhouse was divided into two rooms, one at the front with shelves along the glass walls, and then one at the back, covered by a half-open door, nothing but darkness visible beyond. The shelves were cluttered with broken pots and half-dead plants, clearly neglected and stuck here because there was nowhere else to put them. Gabe strode toward the back of the greenhouse and slipped through the open maw of the door.
With a gulp against preemptive nausea, Lore followed.
The back room was dark, the walls and ceiling nearly covered by climbing roses and ivy. Despite that, they thrived, blooming lush and thick. The air smelled heady, like petals and loam. It was almost beautiful.
Until you saw what the plants were drawing from, richer than any soil.
Anton was barely visible beneath the flowers. His back was flush to the wall, as near as Lore could tell, his head tipped up as if he were a bloom himself, seeking the sun through crowded leaves. Ivy covered his torso, growing onto the wall behind him like living shackles, keeping his arms spread to his sides. The posture evoked Apollius, and Lore had to swallow hard again to keep bile in her stomach where it belonged.
The roses were worse than the ivy. They wove in and out of Anton’s skin, breaching it as easily as dirt, the thorns tearing through the delicate membrane to unfurl gory petals. The one that had grown through his eye stretched up past his head, one red bloom opening wide while new buds studded its length, pushing against his eyebrow, his forehead. The socket was a hole of viscera, complemented by the deep-purple scarring all down the side of his face; a souvenir from his vision, the one that had shown him Gabe and Bastian and Lore and the destruction they would allegedly bring. Viscous fluid ran down his cheek—the remains of his eye.
But the very worst part was how he was still breathing, his chest rising and falling easily, like he was asleep.
Lore found herself angling her head so she didn’t have to face the former Priest Exalted directly, but Gabe stared right at him, not allowing himself to look away. “I couldn’t let him die,” he murmured. “Bastian promised me that much, at least, the night of the ritual. He let Anton keep his life; I couldn’t let it pass.”
The leaves rattled as Anton pulled in a breath. He was listening, Lore knew, conscious in all that thorn and blood. “Why keep him secret?”
“Because it’s undignified to leave him like this out in the open.” The Presque Mort who’d been part of the coup had all been sent away; Gabe would be the only person in the Church who knew this had happened to Anton, who knew the former Priest Exalted wasn’t dead.
“He refuses water sometimes,” Gabe continued. “It’d been a hot day, that time you saw me here, and I was making sure he drank something.”
The image of Gabe watering his mentor like a plant in a pot made her shudder.
“He begged for Apollius, at first.” Gabe’s voice was almost trance-like, reciting this litany of horrors now that he finally had a listening ear. “To save him. He never did. I moved him in here from the garden—it was hard, I had to uproot the roses one by one, and if I so much as ripped a leaf, he screamed.” A frown. “Well, not screamed, really. He couldn’t get that loud. I tried trimming back the blooms for a while, but that seemed to hurt him, so eventually I stopped.”
“Gabe.” Lore pressed a hand to his arm; his muscles were stone-tense. “If he’s in that much pain—”
But he shook his head, knowing what she was going to say and already negating it. “I can’t,” he said hoarsely. “I tried. I can’t.”
She lifted her hand away.
All thoughts of the questions she would ask Anton if given a chance, the reassurance she would seek about her magic, fled her mind at the actual horror of him. He’d been a terrible, murderous man, but the punishment Bastian had wrought was almost worse.
“You.”
It was barely sound, a breath from a dry throat full of leaves and thorns.
But it made Lore’s voice dam in her own throat, made her vision involuntarily focus again, see the man in the mess of bloody flowers.
Anton’s one eye rolled down from the sky, slowly, obscenely. It fixed on her, sharp as the day he’d had her trussed up and drugged in the bowels of the Church. “The deathwitch,” he rasped. “Still alive when you shouldn’t be.”
Lore’s hands balled to fists by her sides, though they shook, and her voice did, too. “You’re one to talk.”
A terrible huffing sound; a laugh, she guessed. “Point taken,” Anton said, rustling the ivy leaves on the vine snaking out of his mouth. “Though this fate is not as awful as you would think. It gives me so much time to commune with the one true god. So much time to speak to Apollius, and know He is listening.” Anton made that rustling laugh sound again, vocal cords rubbing against flower petals. “His plans have changed, deathwitch. He is mutable. Adaptable. All gods are.”
The shivery feeling in her stomach slipped down her spine.
The one whole eye that had rolled down from the sky to regard her had rolled back up again, staring into the punishing summer light. “He grew her a forest,” Anton said, low and hoarse, stirring another rustling of ivy leaves. “He asked all of Them to stay, to help Him hold the power He’d found. But She was the one on whom the isolation grated most, and She was the only one He gave something back to. He asked for Her vow, and She gave Him Her fist.”
A forest. Like the one in her dreams. Lore’s eyes narrowed. She looked to Gabe, searching for explanation. But he shook his head, held a finger briefly to his lips. Quiet.
“He gave Them all the gift of divinity, but that was not enough.” Anton spoke as if entranced, his face tilted toward the sun. But the fingers splayed out on the wall twitched, like he would’ve made fists of them if he could. “And that is why They are not fit to be remembered as gods. Because They threw it all away, They left Him alone. What else could He do?” A tear slipped down his craggy cheek. “He has only ever done the best He can with what He has been given. Changed as He had to.”
Anton fell silent. Lore realized she’d leaned away from the man, her arms clasped tightly over her chest like she could make herself smaller. She slid a look to Gabe.
“The wording changes,” he said quietly, divining her unspoken question. “But the gist is the same. The story about the forest, the betrayal.”
“And you.” Anton’s eye slashed down from the sky again, latched onto Lore. The movement of the muscles tripped something in his ruined face, pumped more viscous fluid from the rose-choked socket of his other eye. “You lived when you should not. You bring about destruction, make more work for Him, and yet still He calls you favored. Because you won’t stop, will you? You will channel and channel, sink yourself into death and darkness, and nothing anyone says will stop you. He wants that, now. A second chance.”
“Where is he getting all that?” Surreptitiously, Lore glanced up, squinting through the vines at the midday light like she might see someone up in the clouds, whispering to the mad holy man.
“The story he’s telling maps loosely onto some of the legends about the gods on the Golden Mount,” Gabe said quietly. “Before the Compendium was written.”
“Back when you were allowed to tell stories about Them,” Lore muttered. In antiquity, when the gods were still alive, there’d been just as many stories about Them as there were Tracts now. Their worship was informal, and They were regarded more like fairy-tale characters than all-powerful deities, remembered both as the people They had been and the gods They’d become. Religion ossified as it aged, allowed less room for interpretation. Most of the stories about the gods that hadn’t made it into the Compendium weren’t written down anywhere, instead told through word of mouth down through generations. Eventually, even those oral traditions died out. The telling of stories about the gods—especially ones that painted Apollius in a less-than-flattering light—wasn’t necessarily outlawed, but it was frowned upon.
An arch look from Gabe, but he nodded, allowing her the point. “I’ve looked through the library, just to confirm. Malcolm helped me locate some old manuscripts—”
“Wait.” It shouldn’t be a surprise, she supposed, but it still hit her like one. “Malcolm knows about Anton? About what he’s been saying?”
Gabe’s lips pulled flat. He nodded. “There was no other way to get ahold of those manuscripts.”
“Have you told Bastian?” The same question he’d asked her earlier, an echo of distrust.
His lips pulled, if possible, even flatter.
Alie, Malcolm, Gabe. All of them subtly positioning themselves in opposition to Bastian—or if not in complete opposition, at least at odds. Distrust grew unless you pulled it out at the root, and Bastian seemed in no hurry to allow himself to be checked.
No Arceneaux rule had ever been challenged, not until August. Maybe they should’ve expected a domino effect after that, one coup leading to another, an endless line of falling Kings.
Gabe read the quicksilver thoughts on her face, the spark of betrayal and understanding that flared and burned out. He sighed, rubbed at the red marks on his temple left by the strap of his eye patch. “Bastian is volatile,” he said quietly. “You’ve known that from the beginning, Lore. He took over violently, and while some of the changes he’s made have been good, you can’t deny that he’s angling down a dangerous path. And he’s taking you with him.” He didn’t look at her ring, but it seemed to sit heavier on her finger, like his invisible regard imbued it with terrible weight. “If he thought Anton was spouting off about Apollius and Nyxara, about channeling bringing about an end that the gods wanted, what do you think he’d do?”
