‘Did you tell Ezra about the gold?’ Brigid asked carefully.
‘He saw it. The room was covered.’
Brigid nodded. Opened her mouth. Closed it. Nodded again. ‘Some things aren’t for us to know,’ she said, a note of finality in her voice. ‘Or to tell.’
Maeve’s heart sank deeper as Brigid opened her charcoal tin and drew out a stick. She sketched a symbol on the crisp white paper. Maeve knew what it was going to be even before she started.
A half-circle with three lines fanning from the top. A pared-back version of the Abbey’s insignia of two hands holding a cupped sun. One of the first symbols every new acolyte was taught.
Each ray held a meaning.Piety. Belief. Devotion.
The symbol of the sacred distance between saint and intercessor. The glorious magic of the Abbey; an unknowable force for them to believe in. Not to doubt. Not to question. Even if Brigid knew more than she was letting on, she wouldn’t tell Maeve. She needed to believe. To trust fully, even without answers.
Maeve straightened her fingers on her thighs, wincing at the stiffness.
‘Do you understand?’ Brigid asked. ‘You might be taking my place soon. I need you to tell me you understand what I’m saying.’
‘Yes,’ Maeve whispered. ‘I understand.’
Brigid closed the notebook and moved to her feet. She bent to collect her bag pushed under the bench, dust swirling through the buttery sunlight. Maeve kept her eyes dutifully forward, breathing slowly through her mouth.
The whisper pressed against Maeve’s ear was unexpected. ‘Ezra will summon you tonight. You must agree to whatever he asks.’
Maeve turned towards Brigid to ask what she meant, to see her face—
She was already gone.
The vast dining hall was empty.
3
Maeve
Ezra came for her as the sun was setting.
Maeve was in her studio. Felix’s icon was no longer there. Neither was the gold. Every speck of something amiss had vanished so completely she wondered if she had imagined it entirely. Only the gold-dusted soles of her slippers reminded her that her memory wasn’t faulty. Somehow, Felix had finished and dried the icon. And soon, Ezra would ask something of her that Brigid demanded she agree to.
The knock came. Maeve moved to the door. Her hand hovered over the doorknob. Gritting her teeth and summoning every last drop of confidence afforded to her, she opened the door.
Ezra wasn’t a tall man, only a handful of inches more than Maeve, but when he drew himself to his full height and donned the air of an Abbey elder, he sketched a formidable silhouette. He fixed her with a calculating look in his pale blue eyes. ‘You’re needed.’
She nodded, letting the door close softly behind her. Her breathing, shallow and quick and far, far too loud, echoed through the maze of halls as Ezra led her to the basilica.
A hushed reverence shrouded the colossal space like a burial shroud. Maeve turned her eyes upwards reflexively. High above, the rose window turned the pale stone and endless parade of portraits multicoloured with the setting sun.
The entirety of the wall to her left was covered in icons, somehundreds of years old. The golden haloes undulated the longer she looked, water-gilded surfaces burnished in glittering metallic. She recognized dozens of her own icons staring down at her.
The style of her work had changed drastically over the years. She’d begun her specialized training in iconography at thirteen after six years at the Abbey, but her icons hadn’t been deemed good enough for the basilica until her seventeenth year. Even still, seeing her earliest paintings hanging on the walls made her cringe. She’d been a littletooobsessed with motifs at the beginning.
But, like all things, practice, patience, and sheer determination to be the best had grown her abilities. Now, her paintings were so lifelike they almost breathed. Close enough to touch, as though mere proximity could win holiness. If that was the case, Maeve might’ve been a saint herself given how many icons she’d rendered over the years.
Ezra led her to just beneath the rose window, sun-bruised light streaming over his shoulders in crimson and azure, gold so bright it hurt to look at. Shadows obscured his expression.
Maeve bowed her head and waited for him to speak. If she knew him at all, he’d make her wait for a few tense minutes before putting her out of her misery. Just because he could.
Although saints were the highest echelon of Abbey power, the elders were the ones truly in control. The ones who decided the rules and regulations, who ran daily life, who monitored the veins connecting each and every acolyte to the beating heart of the Abbey.
More importantly, elders venerated acolytes into sainthood through holy visions. A sacred ability held only by the elders, kept just as secret as the saintly power to answer prayers. All she knew was that once they saw a sign in a person, a saint was marked with a tattoo – a vertical line bisected with three horizontal. The rune forSAINTforever inked beneath their left collarbone.
