The Saint Below

The first bell rang while Mara Veyne was elbow-deep in somebody else's blood. She stopped scrubbing. The water dripped from her fingers as she looked up, blowing a strand of her brown hair from her eyes.Around her, the laundry continued its morning rhythm. Water sloshed against stone. Brushes scraped linen. Steam crawled up the walls and gathered on the ceiling in fat droplets that occasionally surrendered to gravity.Nobody spoke. The bell rang again, low, slow, deep enough that Mara felt it through the washbasin beneath her hands. Mrs. Fallum dropped a sheet."No," she whispered.Mara looked toward the narrow windows running along the top of the laundry wall. Outside, Veyr had gone quiet. It shouldn't have been possible.Nearly fifty thousand people lived behind the city's black walls, and most of them seemed determined to make as much noise as possible while doing it. Merchants shouted from the market before sunrise. Carriage wheels rattled over cobblestones. Factory whistles scr

Mara woke to someone staring at her.She knew this before she opened her eyes.There was a particular weight to being watched. A pressure between the shoulder blades. An ancient instinct left over from the days when waking beneath a predator's gaze generally meant you were about to become breakfast.Mara opened one eye. Two black ones stared back.She screamed.Aurellian sighed."Again?"Mara sat upright so quickly the blanket tangled around her legs. "What is wrong with you?""An ambitious question for this early in the morning."She looked around. Black stone. Candles. Columns disappearing into darkness.Chains.Memory returned all at once. Her father. The cathedral. Seven locks. Twenty-six Keepers. Blood in a glass orb.Which lie did they tell you about me first?Mara closed her eyes."Oh.""Yes."She opened them again. He was still there."I was hoping you were a nightmare.""How flattering.""You aren't?""Unfortunately for both of us."Mara rubbed her face. She had slept badly.

Mara did not sleep.This was partly because she was sharing a crypt with an immortal saint who had a distressing habit of knowing things he shouldn't.Mostly, however, it was because her father had been here before she was born.Before.She lay on the narrow bed, staring at the ceiling, and tried to imagine it. Her father, younger than he was now. Her father, descending the one hundred and thirteen steps beneath the cathedral. Her father, standing in this terrible place while Aurellian watched him from his chains.Had he been afraid? Had he known what Aurellian was? Had he known what would eventually happen to his daughter? Mara rolled onto her side.Across the chamber, Aurellian was silent. That was almost worse than when he talked."Are you asleep?" she called."No.""Do you ever sleep?""Occasionally.""When?""When people stop asking me questions.""That must be why you look so well rested.""I have excellent skin care."Mara closed her eyes.She was going to kill him. She wasn't