Chapter 2 - Reap and Sow

Precious few flowers grew in Blackbridge, but Eda knew where to find them.

The city was a sprawling landscape of canals and bridges and towering spires—the oldest conurbation in all of Wesland. Little greenery survived among the hard-packed thoroughfares, save for the maintained gardens of the upper city. But Shaws’ Antiques & Curiosities was advantageously placed opposite an alleyway that cut through to the Saint’s Waterway. The great river bisected the city from the east, and water lilies sometimes grew along its bank.

Eda navigated herself down the service steps to the river’s edge. A cluster of delicate water lilies clung to the algae-thick margins; she pulled a handful free. They were wet and rumpled, but they cost nothing. Aldith Moore would charge two coppers for her pretty floral arrangements, and Shaws’ Antiques didn’t make enough to warrant such a frivolous purchase every week. Eda preferred it this way. She liked the honesty in doing a thing yourself. In owing nothing to no one.

The foreshore was busy of a morning, thick with opportunistic street urchins. Eda was unsurprised to find a young boy in filthy garments at her back as she straightened. She snatched his reaching hand. “What are you picking my pockets for?” she groused as he hissed like an alley cat. “Do I look monied to you?”

“Ger’off!” He kicked and thrashed. She let him go. He fell onto the steps.

“A two-horse carriage is stopped back up the street, with gilding on the doors. Try your luck there.”

The boy spat at her and bolted. I swear they’re getting bolder.

She took the main road westbound. The Waterway was commonly thought of as a border dividing the wealthy boroughs of the upper city and the heaving chaos of the lower. Living along its banks made Eda’s world some strange amalgam of the two. Hers was the borough of Crowgate: an odd melting pot of working-class metalwork, whinnying cart horses, shrieking children, and barking dogs. Traffic from the inner city brought iron-shod hooves and carriages, lively street fiddlers, and busy merchants.

She felt apart from all of it.

Two girls with dirty hems gossiped in a shop doorway, leaning against each other in mirth. The sight made Eda’s heart ache. She had no friends of her own. What would she talk about, as other women talked to one another? What precious secrets and vulnerable pieces of herself could she share, when to speak any of it aloud would end with a hangman’s noose about her neck? Until her father’s debt was cleared, getting close to anyone spelled disaster.

Eda thought of Wymond. The merchant’s son had first come to the shop on business but returned over and over with small, transparent excuses meant to place him in her path. His dark eyes had set her pulse racing in unfamiliar ways, and it was not long before they were sneaking off together. She’d cherished those stolen moments: fevered, thrilling, all hers. Sharing Wymond’s bed had made it easy to kid herself.

But when he offered to leave his father’s business—to stay in Blackbridge with her—Eda had forced herself to call him foolish. To tell him their entanglement had been a mere tryst. Wymond left brokenhearted. Eda allowed herself to weep at the time, while Lawrie awkwardly petted her hair and assured her it always ended in tears with the pretty boys, anyway.

Wymond would never know that she’d done him a kindness, for no man should love her. Not so long as her life was paved with shadows.

Eda shook off the reverie like a bad chill.

One of the girls in the doorway wore a vial of colloidal silver upon her breast. A cheap knockoff, no doubt, peddled all across the city as protection from the demonic. The real thing was said to be corrosive as acid upon a demon’s skin. Not that Eda had need of such things. It was only a biting reminder of the yawning divide between her and everyone else. She was a mere specter in this city. Friends, lovers, protection from demons—all wasted on her.

Eda looked away before resentment rose like bile.

At the mouth of the next bridge, a templehouse loomed over the river. It was an aged building of discolored limestone, paler than the sagging, half-timbered stucco houses lining the streets around it. The templehouse marked the center of Crowgate’s parish, and though Eda did not worship, she visited the grounds every week without fail.

A gargoyle leered down at her from the steeply gabled roof as she neared. Through the iron gate and up the gravel path, gravestones surrounded her on both sides. They were stacked so closely together it seemed preposterous that any more bodies might fit, even for those with the coin to afford it. She cut across the muddy grass and stepped around each stone with a wince. As if the dead cared.

It didn’t take long to find the right one. Eda could walk this same route blindfolded. “Sorry I’m late, Ma.”

She lay down the water lilies before a grave of pale stone. It was chipped and worn, but the engraving remained legible: Emmeline Shaw. Wife and mother.

Eda never knew Emmeline, who had founded Shaws’ Antiques and traveled beyond Wesland’s borders to seek out their rarest, most coveted stock. By all accounts, she’d been a learned and ambitious woman. It made Eda queasy that wife and mother alone should be Emmeline’s legacy. Mother to a daughter who killed her in childbirth, and wife to a man like Oswin…

She glanced at the darker, newer headstone beside her mother’s. Scowled.

Oswin Shaw left Blackbridge just once his entire life. He was not so well educated as Emmeline, nor as adventurous, but he had a head for figures and a good manner with customers. Together they’d built a small, well-regarded business. The way Ben told it, the shop once buzzed with commerce all throughout the day.

Then Emmeline died birthing Eda. Oswin could not recover from the loss. For months he barely ate or slept, and his three young children might have been ghosts for all the attention he paid them. The shop remained closed. Oswin spent all hours writing letters, studying Emmeline’s books until the candles burned down to nothing. One day, he just left, Ben told Eda. He paid Old Mary next door to check in on us and keep us fed. Was gone for weeks. Until he suddenly came back.

With the mirror.

“Thought I’d find you here.”

Lawrie stepped across the mud toward her, his cape pulled snug around his neck. It wasn’t raining this morning, but the gray skies over Blackbridge always threatened it.

Eda crossed her arms. “Aren’t you meant to be home by now? Ben already left for work.”

“The shop will survive. Needed to catch the courier.”

“Ah. So you’re bothering the National Library again.”

“They’ve an extensive collection available for private purchase, and Pagan Ritualism in Wesland is on the list—I checked twice.” He sniffed. “We just keep getting outbid by some collector arsehole.”

“Perhaps you should let them win.” At Lawrie’s appalled expression, she added, “We can only afford so much new stock each quarter. Is one book really worth it?”

“Yes, and it offends me that you’d even ask. Ben’s supposed to be the dreary philistine with the imagination of a teaspoon, not you. I’ve told you how rare that book is—”

“Ugh, don’t go on about it again. You’ll put me off literature forever.”

He shoved her; Eda pushed him back. Lawrie turned to face the graves, and his grin faded. He plucked one of the soggy water lilies from Emmeline’s grave and placed it over Oswin’s.

Irritation flared like bellows on a smelter. “I didn’t bring them for him.”

“He’s our father, Edie. He was a good man. He just got…lost.”

Eda scoffed. “Is that what you call abandoning his children to hunt down a cursed mirror? Was he lost when he made a deal that he couldn’t afford, condemning us to paying the price after he was gone? All to bring her back.”

“Don’t.” Lawrie’s hazel eyes flashed. They were a twin to her own, and in them she saw her reflection: apple-cheeked and freckled, golden hair an angry riot about her shoulders. “You were a babe. You don’t remember any of it.”

“But you told me,” she said. “How you and Ben found him in the foyer, middle of the night. He was covered in dirt, you said, with an even filthier woman dressed in burial clothes. Even a five-year-old could tell she’d come back all wrong—”

“Shut up,” Lawrie snapped. “I know what I said. I know what he did. He was grieving, Eda. He made a mistake. You can’t keep punishing him for it. He acted out of love.”

“That wasn’t love. It was madness.”

She tired of rehashing these same old arguments. Her brothers remembered their father before he’d been a mad fool, and their love for that memory clouded their judgment. Eda was not so afflicted. She saw only the facts: Oswin had sacrificed everything to bring his wife back. He’d bargained with Mr. Night for something so unnatural, so momentous, that the demon seized his chance to demand a suitably ludicrous sum.

One thousand years.

Oswin would not be able to pay it back in his lifetime, let alone with the seven years he unknowingly had left. He’d agreed that his children would be guarantors—an insurance policy. All to pay for something that even a demon as powerful as Mr. Night could not truly give. Oswin got his wish, and against all natural order, Emmeline returned to him. Except she was not Emmeline anymore.

Mr. Night’s words rushed forth like a dark tide. You want and you want so shamelessly.

Eda wrapped her arms around herself as she strode away, stone-faced. “People are selfish, Lawrie. Our father was the worst of them. Some don’t deserve forgiveness.”

He followed her. “I don’t believe that, and neither should you. You can’t dismiss everyone so coldly.”

Why? she wanted to retort. Look around you, brother. What good is left in this saints-damned city?

Eda dreamed of escaping the darkness that bound her, while the self-serving ingrates of this city crawled into it willingly. She hated them. Needed them. They followed Ben and Lawrie to the mirror, like supplicants at prayer, hoping to see their most desperate wishes fulfilled. Was it pitiful or merely ironic, that a demon might answer their pleas when the Lordfather did not?

Eda knew Mr. Night’s power. Saw it in his quicksilver eyes, felt it dance upon her skin whenever he came near. He was indisputably real. Yet she’d never sensed the Lordfather as others claimed to. Had never known His touch, the few times she dared to pray.

He’d once gone by a different name.

In the beginning, He ruled with six others, and together they shaped earth, sea, and sky, the Holy Codex taught. But when His fellow gods fell to earthly vice, He forged a golden blade to split the veil between worlds and cast them out. Under His rule, mankind found industry and order. They pledged to follow His teachings, or else be damned to the Otherworld where those false gods await in blackest corruption.

Eda found it hard to believe that the first demons were corrupted Weslic gods. Sinners being condemned to the Otherworld in death seemed even more unlikely, for Mr. Night surely didn’t spend his days dodging tortured mortal spirits like flies. But if a benevolent god truly did watch over the people of Wesland, one thing was certain: He had spurned the Shaws. To think they were so reviled by one who was supposed to love them unconditionally…

Eda glanced back at her father’s grave.

It hurt less not to believe at all.

“As for last night,” Lawrie continued, “you need to understand where Ben is coming from. He was only—”

“Look!” She cut him off.

Slowing to a halt before the templehouse gate came a procession of horses. They surrounded a fine carriage, all bedecked in the red-and-silver livery of the Order of the Blade. Each rider bore a silver-alloy sword, glinting in the white morning light. Only alchemists sanctioned by the Faithhood could meld silver with steel like that and make a useful weapon. In the hands of an ordinary blacksmith, it was far too soft.

“What are the Blades doing here?” Lawrie hissed.

Her heart cantered behind her ribs. “Be calm. We’re just two people paying our respects to lost relatives.”

“We’re also keeping an extremely illicit demonic artifact in our cellar! What if they’re here for us? What if someone reported us?”

Keep it together. Eda grabbed his hand. It was cold and clammy. Beyond the gate, the four riders remained mounted. They watched dispassionately as people stopped to look. A child tugged on his mother’s sleeve, bouncing in excitement.

“I don’t think so. They’re escorting that carriage.” No sooner had she said it than the doors swung open. From within, a man of middling height stepped onto the street and pulled down his rich purple hood.

A cleric.

“Looks like a priest,” Lawrie said. “Or a bishop, maybe. Do you think he’s here to take over the templehouse, with Bishop Emery gone?”

Gone was a very polite way of saying died of infection after dallying with too many whores, but Eda supposed the point was moot. “Must be.”

Lawrie deflated with relief.

As they approached the gate, she observed this new cleric with mute surprise. Young. Handsome. In Eda’s limited experience, they were all old and warty, with gray hair and rheumy eyes. She rarely spent time outside of Crowgate’s parish, but she did know that it took years of dedicated service to ascend from priesthood to a bishop’s mantle. Yet this man couldn’t be much out of his late twenties. He was pale and freckled, with striking red hair combed neatly to the side. His face was pinched, but if the perpetual waft of the canals—damp and vaguely moldy—offended his nose, he hid it well. He wore a cream-white cassock with amethyst paneling and golden trim. A matching riding cloak hung clasped about his neck. The broach’s design was that of an open palm bisecting a sun: the symbol of the Faith.

He seemed very clean and bright among the drab grays and browns of the street.

Before Eda could open the gate, his gaze found hers. “Allow me, madam.”

It felt distinctly wrong for such an esteemed cleric to wait on her. Eda made herself smile in thanks as they slipped by. He doesn’t know us. There’s nothing to fear.

Lawrie flushed. “Thank you, sir—er, Father. Many thanks.”

She resisted the urge to elbow him.

“Are you both local to Crowgate?” The bishop’s eyes were a fetching blue.

“Yes,” Eda jumped in, anticipating Lawrie blabbering himself into a conniption. “We live just east of here, farther down the Waterway. I’m Eda. This is my brother, Lawrie.”

“Lawrence.”

“A pleasure. I am Bishop Florian Fane.” The bishop held a hand to his chest, where a pointed vial of colloidal silver gleamed. Eda eyed it with trepidation. The real kind, of course, produced by the Alchemists’ Cloister—that esteemed guild of enchanters devoted to the Faithhood and its many edicts. Eda saw them sometimes, traversing the inner city in their pale blue robes.

“Are you here to take over the temple’ouse, Father?” a woman called.

There were noises of interest; a small crowd gathered about the carriage. The Blades glared from atop their horses, but they didn’t warn anyone away.

Bishop Florian was unperturbed by the attention, smiling beatifically. “I’m pleased to say that I am, madam. May Bishop Emery be at rest.” He held his pointer finger against his forehead in blessing. A few others hurried to do the same. “I come to you today all the way from Alderport. It is His Grace the Patriarch’s fervent wish that a successor be named before his passing. The next Clerics’ Conclave shall be held right here, in Blackbridge.” The crowd tittered excitedly. “In anticipation of this most holy day, I have pledged myself to your service, where the Faithhood’s guiding hand is sorely needed. Blackbridge is a proud and ancient city—the oldest in Wesland! But with such history as this, less savory echoes of the past still linger.”

A Conclave. It had been decades since the last, and decades more since the one before that. Each city was bestowed the honor in turn. The choosing of a new Head Cleric—successor to the Patriarch himself—was bound to have Blackbridge in a great tizzy once the word spread. Piety might have lost its luster here, but an excuse for revelry certainly hadn’t.

Eda stood and listened to Florian Fane speak, intrigued. There was something charismatic about him she could not place. His warm smile. The confident, brassy tenor of his voice. Perhaps it was simply that he was young and handsome, too handsome for a cleric’s garb.

“Gateways of old still linger across our fair isle. It is the opinion of the Patriarch that this, good people, is why you have struggled against the foul influence of demonic bargains, beyond any other great Weslic town.” His tone shifted. “If Gateways are being used to prey on the vulnerable in Blackbridge, those responsible will be swiftly brought to justice. This I swear.”

Eda’s cheeks ran cold. Beside her, Lawrie stiffened. Her mind spun like a runaway cart wheel. They’ve never brought someone from the capital before. If the Patriarch thought to blame the depravity and lawlessness of Blackbridge on the demonic, rather than poor housing, corruption, and unemployment, that was no great surprise—but it meant the Blades would have their noses to the ground. Founded upon the Faithhood’s ideals, the Order of the Blade enforced all city-state law in Wesland, but opposing the demonic remained their core principle. It was no wonder the Grand Marshal had lent them to the bishop’s mission. Not with a Clerics’ Conclave looming.

Eda bit the inside of her cheek. We need to make that final Pact. And soon.

Bishop Florian held up his hands; the anxious chatter died. “Be not afeard. I mean to work tirelessly alongside the Order of the Blade to restore Faithfulness to Blackbridge, not merely for the sake of this Conclave, but for the city itself. We shall not fail. Your salvation is at hand.”

A smattering of cautious clapping quickly swelled with enthusiasm. It was a horrible tuneless buzz in Eda’s ears.

The people clustered around him like bees to a hive. The bishop shook a man’s hand. Bent down to greet a small boy.

“Let’s go,” she whispered, grabbing Lawrie’s wrist and pulling him through the crowd. The eyes of the Blades pressed upon her back like a chill wind heralding a storm.

Eda had been chained to the shop—to Blackbridge—her entire life. The history of her family’s pain was etched into every cobblestone. If there was a place where the Faith did not loom over her and soul brokers did not lurk below, she was determined to find it. Leaving this cursed city would be the first thing she chose for herself, after a lifetime without choices at all.

Until then, they had a job to do.