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He didn’t. “It’s not the weapons I’m concerned with.”
“You’ve channeled Mortem before,” Lore replied, opening and closing her fists. “You know it’s no picnic. I’m not in a hurry to do it again.”
Malcolm eyed her for a moment longer, then gave a begrudging nod.
Marginally less sore, Lore sat back. “I heard a whole village died overnight. Shademount, to the southeast.” Shademount was one of the smaller villages in Auverraine, more an outpost than a proper town. It was the last Auverrani settlement before reaching what was formerly Balgia, a small duchy now part of the Kirythean Empire. Lore had never been there, obviously, but she’d had Shademount-brewed beer. It was very good. She guessed no one would be making it anymore. “The people had no marks on them, no sign of poisoning or sickness. They just look like they’re asleep. Some think it’s a sign of Apollius’s disfavor.”
“And what do you think it is?” Anton folded his fingers across his middle, like a teacher quizzing a student.
“Mostly, I think it’s all rumors. Maybe one or two got sick and died in the night, maybe a whole farmhouse full, but a whole village? Horseshit.”
“Not horseshit,” Anton said levelly. Priest he might be, but he didn’t stutter at all over the profanity. “Truth. All of it.” A pause. “Though there have been two villages, now. It happened again two nights ago. Orlimar. Slightly bigger than Shademount, nearer Erocca than Balgia.”
Another village on the southeastern border, close to another country conquered by the Empire. Lore swallowed.
Anton’s eye glinted as he leveled an unreadable look her way, something vaguely sinister in the curve of his mouth. But it was gone quickly, covered by a mask of nondescript pleasantry. Behind the Priest, Malcolm and Gabriel were mostly expressionless. Gabriel kept raising his hand to his eye patch, though, like it itched.
“That’s interesting,” Lore said finally. “But I fail to see how I can help you with it.”
“The same way you helped your unfortunate equine friend in the Northwest Ward this morning,” Anton replied. “Reanimation.”
The word fell like a stone in the quiet room. Lore gaped, the uncomfortable feeling of returning circulation forgotten. “I…” She stopped, shook her head, jangling free more of that chloroform headache. “Listen, it’s not something that I do frequently, and the comedown is really unpleasant, so I’d rather not—”
“You’ve done it more than once already.” Anton nodded and waved a stately hand, as if presenting her with her own success. “It’s not an ability you can simply wish away. Wouldn’t you rather do it in the employ of Church and Crown, where a pyre isn’t imminent?”
That was a threat, despite his genteel tone. She sat back in her chair, instinctually putting distance between the two of them.
The scar tissue massing the left side of the Priest Exalted’s face moved as his mouth stretched to a cruel smile. “When you have unholy skills,” he said, “it is best to put them to holy purpose.”
“Don’t you have some unholy skills of your own? Surely one of you could do it.” Incredulous laughter ticked at the back of Lore’s throat. “You can channel Mortem, can’t you? All of you can, that’s your whole purpose.” Her newly free hand cut through the air, jabbed toward Gabriel. “He can feel it! There has to be someone in your damn cult that can raise the dead; leave me out of it!”
Gabriel’s one visible eye narrowed. “Necromancy is beyond our scope.”
“And that is the crux of our issue.” The garnet on Anton’s pendant winked in the candlelight as he shifted in his chair. “While our order does have the ability to channel Mortem, none of us are capable of resurrection. Not like you.”
The logical questions hung thick in the air, the why to the how. But they remained unspoken. The four of them sat in silence, Anton’s and Malcolm’s faces implacable, Gabriel’s slightly pinched.
When it became clear the silence would only break if she did the breaking, Lore sighed. “I still don’t understand how me doing… doing that… helps you find out what’s going on in the villages.”
Anton shrugged. “You raise one of the victims,” he said, as if the answer was obvious, “and you ask what happened.”
The thought made Lore recoil. Raising Horse was one thing—and her throat still burned from the coffee she’d vomited up when she saw the poor animal’s dead eyes blinking—but she couldn’t raise a person again. Never, ever again. “I don’t—”
“Not for an extended time, of course.” The Priest Exalted shook his hand and his head, double negation, the movements exaggerated by his shadow on the floor. “They don’t even need to be ambulatory.”
She didn’t have anything else in her stomach to retch up, but it churned just the same.
“All we need,” Anton continued, “is for you to bring the victims back to life long enough for them to relay their memories. Tell us what happened before they died, to see how it was done.”
“And if I don’t?” She wanted it to sound defiant, but it came out small.
“Then you can choose: a noose, a pyre, or the Burnt Isles.” The Priest Exalted shrugged again, as if it was all the same to him. “They’re mining more and more coal out of the Isles recently, I hear. Going deeper, on the off chance we lose our stronghold there to Kirythean raiders. They can always use extra hands.”
He said it so smoothly, nonchalant, with those rounded royal vowels. Lore clicked her teeth shut and swallowed again, trying to settle her stomach.
“Think of all the people you’d be helping.” Gabriel stepped forward from behind Anton, blue eye locked on Lore, jaw tight. It seemed almost like the Mort begrudged the fact that he was trying to convince her, that he’d been reduced to cajoling a poison runner, fished out of the gutter and brought into his Church.
“This has happened twice now, and we have every reason to believe it will again,” Gabriel continued. “Both villages were along the border we share with the Kirythean Empire. I don’t have to spell out for you what that means.”
