“You mean these priests?” Irion said like a song, jumping off his desk to point a straightened finger at the archbishop. The archbishop clutched his throat.

  “Oleugsby!” Bone grabbed Seasmil, commanding he not let go of his hand. As Drot went down to flail and gasp on the floor, Bone frantically chanted. Seasmil knew he was being enveloped in some crackling buffer. Through the amassing force Seasmil watched to some degree of glee as the wretched archbishop’s face went purple as blood poured from his nose. Irion next pointed his finger at the archbishop’s terrified assistant. The young priest clutched his heart, falling on top of the gold he spilled to the floor.

  A forceful wave reverberated all about them. Bone opened his eyes, ecstatic his attempt had worked but sent to his knees to vomit upon the sight of Archbishop Drot and his dead, swollen tongue.

  “All the better,” Irion said, acknowledging the irksome white magic, sending his imp up into the air. He sneered and kicked the chest. “I think I shall make her a slave.”

  A muffled cry came from the locked wood, in one instant transforming Seasmil’s hate into white-hot action. He took a better grip on his sword.

  “Stand tall, Irion! Stand tall and die!” he screamed. “You took my daughter. You killed Somyellia, and now blood from a House of war will spill yours clean!”

  Charging forward, lifting his sword and drawing his dagger, he brought down the larger blade in a thunderous chop, hewing deep into the desk as Irion rolled over and behind it. Bone yelled out a continuous prayer, stricken by a weariness that buckled his knees. Seasmil swung. Irion touched him in return. The great blade missed, and Irion continued his attack. Soon Irion had punished Seasmil, slipping around and beneath his attempts with deviant quickness, blasting dark energy into his stomach and chest with each slap of his hand.

  The grinning skull on the desk shot across the room, but it was the heavy jar that the imp dropped on Bone’s head that sent the praying man to the floor. Seasmil did not see the torches and candles all flicker and dim. He swung and stabbed futilely, turning in a flash to swat the approaching imp with the side of his sword. The little fiend squealed, flying out the nearest window as Bone staggered to his feet, praying louder.

  “She knew the curse could kill her,” Irion hissed, keeping the desk between them. “She knew the risk—the cost. It’s what one does for family. What would you, grime-fly, ever know of such things?”

  A fearful noise seized Seasmil. “Bone!” Seasmil yelled, not taking his eye off the neck he aimed to cut. Bone’s words ended as he ran to the door, working its iron locks as the rest of Irion’s guard force charged up the stairs. Bone leaned against the doors, breathing heavily as swords and axes hacked against the other side. The sounds just beyond a closet door that Irion now pointed at were worse. Hellish moans and bedlam slapped against its wood. Monsters were coming.

  “You are trapped, great avenger,” Irion said. “And now you’ll join who you wished to avenge.”

  “Wish this,” Seasmil wheezed, leaping over the desk with legs that had been stricken more than numb. More a fall than a tackle, he pinned Irion to the wall, suffering the strongest sucking blast yet from his foe’s foul hand.

  Bone roared over the bursting of the closet door. His frantic prayer did not slow the creep of slimy tentacles, the blinking glitter of fire-swirled eyes, or the sickening paw that reached slowly out of the blackness. Seasmil drove his dagger deep into Irion’s gut, wrenching it upward with a hard pull. At the same moment every flame flickered, went out, then burst anew. In the sun-like light, Irion stumbled away, the dagger still in him as he fell back against his desk. He held his arms up to the sky, signifying his surrender. Seasmil watched as he mumbled.

  “Speak up,” Seasmil commanded, drawing near. “Let me hear your plea.”

  “What? Yes—yes, Seasmil. Spare me.” Irion shut his eyes, bleeding from his wound.

  Seasmil felt himself falter. He was unforgiving: remorseless to life and those early in it who’d wronged him. Streets had been painted a darker lacquer of black through his deeds. Flawed and directionless, he’d wandered under indifference, to what good it sickened him to consider. But he’d had a child, prying his eyes to be washed by a light he had been otherwise blind. But some transgressions must remain unforgiven. He gripped his sword with both hands. “There are things more powerful than magic.”

  “No!” Bone shrieked. “Oleugsby, no! Better a prison. Let us show we—”

  Seasmil brought down his sword, driving its blade right through Irion’s skull, sending the great Ordrid to the stones in a spew of brains and gore.

  Bone hesitated for a moment before dashing to the open closet door to see not a thing crawling forward. “It’s empty,” he gasped to Seasmil. A very human moan then sent Bone running over to the young priest still sprawled out over the loosened sack of gold. “He’s alive!”

  But Seasmil was not listening. He stumbled over to the locked chest, severing its lock. Inside lay Niera, bound, gagged, drugged by some potent filth, but joyously alive. He lifted her from her prison, tearing free her binds so she could cry into his neck.

  Seasmil felt the stings of Irion’s hand fading. He dropped his sword and looked at his own. “The power of perseverance,” he said to his friend, flexing his fingers. “You,” he laughed, drunk with pain. “You are far more powerful than that church of yours thought.”

  But Bone was not listening. He grabbed the young priest by his garments, pulling the battered man upright. The young priest coughed, then puked, then loudly spoke.

  “I hated that vile Ordrid—and hated worse,” he cried, “that awful archbishop.”

  “Then why, why did you go along with such devilry?” Bone shook him.

  “Because,” the man stuttered, still unable to stand. “Like so many, I lived in fear. Fear of black magic. Fear of speaking out. Oh, forgive me brother,” he cried into Bone’s chest, hugging him with trembling arms until suddenly pulling back with a startling joy. “But now,” he said, placing an adoring hand on Bone’s cheek. “But now a true hero of the church has emerged.”

  “That’s not a bad idea, Bone,” Seasmil said, noticing for the first time the cacophony outside had ceased. He turned and nodded over to where the archbishop lay. “They kind of need of a new leader.”

  “Yes, yes,” the young priest said, not only rising to his feet but helping lift Bone. “I can say Drot wished it so, right before this disgusting Ordrid killed him. The effects of black magic,” he forced his eyes away from the ornamented corpse, “they are clear and they will convince all who may doubt us.”

  Petting his daughter’s head, soothing her whimpers, Seasmil could not help but feel a twisted form of amusement. Would Bone—this beauty of humility—accept such a call? Bone walked over and removed from the dead archbishop the official chasuble, placing the bloodied rag over his own shoulders, taking up in that instant the mantel of whatever was left of his church.

  “I swear I will testify Irion killed Drot,” the young priest reaffirmed, then dropped to his knees to rejoice in his newfound allegiance.

  Though the supernatural clatter that had half worked its way out of Irion’s closest had permanently ended, the same could not be said for the natural noise of his guard force. Right then, the dozen or so men who’d abandoned their efforts to procure a battering ram used it to burst open the doors and spilled into the room. The sweating wild-eyed men dropped the ram and drew their swords.

  “Daddy?” Niera whispered sleepily.

  “Take these—look at me,” Bone commanded. “Take both of these bodies over to the main Chapwyn temple, now.”

  The guards stood as if stricken by a spell. “Yes,” the young priest jumped in, drawing attention to what Bone now wore. “Yes—you heard the new archbishop. Now get out of our way.”

  “It’s gonna be all right, honey,” Seasmil said.

  The guards argued amongst themselves, and were still arguing when Seasmil parted their ranks and descended the stairs.

  *

  Out on the Nilghorde docks, the sun burned and seagulls mewed. Up into the day’s brightness Seasmil watched as the birds wheeled above the great mast of the outbound ship.

  Bone had asked he attend, and for that reason alone he suffered the jubilant crowd. Two ceremonies were to go off in a moment where trumpets would sound and confetti would fly. The idea had been not to hold another commencement in Do-Gooder’s Row, but out in the salted air of the bustling docks, where, lighter hearts insisted, icons of the virtuous workmen still lived and breathed.

  “And there he goes,” Archbishop Bonaveere said, climbing down from the platform still being decorated by wreaths of nettielium.

  “There he goes,” Seasmil said as together they watched the young priest who’d aided them, not only in his testimony but in an even more recent survey of all things damning in the now-for-sale Ordrid mansion. At the young man’s insistence, the new archbishop graciously caved. Now he rode upon the back of a fair horse, up the gangplank of the ship.

  “Departing for unknown lands,” Bonaveere said with a smile. “To spread the good word.”

  “Well let’s just hope wherever they land is a better place than here. I’m not sure Nilghorde will ever be—hey!” Seasmil said to Staidilia, who’d appeared with Niera on her hip.

  “Daddy!” the munchkin squealed, reaching out for him with one hand and in the other holding tight her hideous Pelati doll.

  “Hey, handsome,” Staidilia said, as if it were the first time he’d heard her, perhaps ever. He looked at his wife, her tested smile, her brown hair shining in the sun like a river.

  “Hey there, beautiful.”

  “Seasmil Oleugsby?” a gruff voice then said. The crowd made room for the approaching Ward. The leader unrolled a lengthy scroll. “You are under arrest for—”

  Archbishop Bonaveere, who still had legal powers no man of the cloth should ever wield, used for the first and only time his sway before its banishing by his own hand. “This man,” he said, slapping a ringless hand onto Seasmil’s broad shoulder, “is hereby pardoned.”

  “But, Your Grace,” stuttered the Wardsmen.

  “But nothing, gentlemen. Now enjoy the ceremony. After all, it is you who we must thank for ensuring such gatherings go unmolested.”

  At that the lawmen dispersed, some floating on a cloud in the light of such flattery as the crowd reabsorbed the Oleugsbys. The new archbishop then winked and pulled out from under his nearly bloodless chasuble a hefty pouch and plopped it in Seasmil’s hand. Inside was more gold than he’d seen in a decade of donations to the Institute. “I believe you left this at the mansion,” Bonaveere whispered, then winked again. “For a better tower.”

  “You know,” Seasmil said to Staidilia as they watched the archbishop take the steps up to join a throng of bishops doing their best not to appear irate. “I think I know how I can finish my book.”

  Soon Seasmil’s wife and daughter watched as the new church leader nullified a number of church orders amidst a throng of cheers. As the ship set sail, the young priest climbed off his steed and handed the reins to a bowing sailor. He then extended his arm, onto which, floating down from the brood of seagulls, a sickly creature swooped low and perched.

  The young priest looked across the water and to Seasmil he smiled. Slung over his shoulder was a black satchel, which he then opened to briefly expose the cool blue of lapis lazuli hand. Then he put his imp deep inside and cinched it down.

 

 

  David Rose, The Scrolls of Sin

 

 

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