Chapter 47: The Empty Urn

The Keeper didn’t say anything else for a long time, and she just stood there in the light of the fire, holding the piece of clay against her heart as if it were the last piece of someone she had loved.

The pale man in gray had knelt down and begun picking up the rest of the shards, handling each one as carefully as if it were made of glass, while Kai stood beside the tipped-over stool with absolutely no idea what to do with his hands.

[Kai, say something]

"Like what?" Kai whispered.

[I do not know. You are the one who is good with words. I am only good with heart rates]

Kai cleared his throat, and both of them looked up at him at once.

"I’m sorry about your urn," Kai said. "And I’m sorry about the forty years. I know how it feels to find out that something you believed in was a lie. It happened to me every time I looked in a mirror back home."

The Keeper looked at him with her pale, milky eyes for a long time, and then she slowly held the piece of clay out to him.

"Take this to the ones who sent you," the Keeper said. "And to the Conclave, if you must."

Kai took the shard from her hands, and it was still warm from her grip, with the name of High Priestess Celestine engraved sharp and clear across the clay.

"I thought the Twins couldn’t vote for me," Kai said.

"They cannot vote for someone whose name will not stay on the page," the Keeper said, lowering herself back down into her chair beside the fire. "But for forty years, my brothers and sisters have been writing the name of a woman who was never dead, while she was out there somewhere in this city, laughing at us. You found her empty urn by accident." She placed her wrinkled hand flat on the enormous book. "Find out where she went, God of Failure, and bring that truth back to the dead. If you do, I will write your name in the ash myself, every night until the Conclave, whether the book allows it or not."

"What if the wind takes it away?" Kai asked.

"The wind always takes it away," the Keeper said. "That has never stopped us from writing."

Kai didn’t know what to say to that, so he just bowed, which felt very awkward, because he had never bowed to anyone in his life before he came to Veyrath, and now it seemed like he did it every single day.

[Faith gained. New follower: The Keeper. Faith: 6%. Status: Willing to Write.]

The moon was just beginning to rise when Kai made his way back down the hill from the top of the graveyard, past the long rows of headstones, and he could see fresh names written in the gray bowls of ash in front of every one of them. He reached the gate just in time for Mira to come running across the street and grab him by both arms, as if she needed to make sure he was still solid.

"The moon is up," Mira said. "I was about to come and get you."

"Did you die?" Kai asked.

"I was getting there," Mira said, and she didn’t let go of his arms.

Garrick, Sunny and Elowen came up behind her, and Elowen turned her blindfolded face towards the shard in Kai’s hand before he could even hold it up to show them.

"That is not yours," Elowen said. "It belongs to the dead."

"It belongs to a dead woman who isn’t actually dead," Kai said, and he held it up so they could read it in the moonlight.

Sunny read the name, and Kai watched the color drain right out of the Holy Champion’s face.

"Celestine," Sunny said. "I know that name. Every novice at the Cathedral knows that name. She was the High Priestess who served before our current one, and we were told that she passed away in her sleep with a prayer on her lips. We said a blessing for her every year on the day she died."

"For forty years?" Kai asked.

"Yes, for forty years," Sunny said, clenching his jaw. "And that was the same year the Mother stopped speaking."

No one said anything after that, and they made their way back to Hale’s house through the dark streets in silence, with Garrick walking at the front and Sunny walking at the back, and Mira holding onto Kai’s sleeve the entire way.

Justiciar Hale was still awake when they got back, sitting at the desk in his study with a stack of papers and a cold cup of tea in front of him. When Kai set the shard down on the desk, the old judge read the name three times before he finally looked up.

"I attended her funeral," Hale said slowly. "I was a young clerk at the time, and I was standing in the back of the Cathedral when they carried her urn out. Half the city was there that day, and everyone wept." He set the shard down on the desk very carefully, as if it might bite him. "They sealed the urn, and no one ever opened it."

"Well, of course nobody opened it," Kai said. "That’s the whole trick. You put on a big enough show, and you make sure nobody ever thinks to look inside the box."

Hale stared at him over the top of his spectacles for a long moment.

"You sound like a man who has sold his fair share of empty boxes," Hale said.

"I have," Kai said. "I’ve never sold one with a High Priestess in it, though. Or not in it, I guess."

Kai couldn’t fall asleep that night, so a little before midnight, he climbed out of his window and sat on the flat part of Hale’s roof, next to the empty pole where the weathervane used to be. The moon hung huge and white over the city, and if he listened closely, he could hear the Sisters of the Silver Moon singing from the top of their tower on the eastern hill. It was the first night in forty years that anyone had sung to the moon.

He wasn’t surprised at all when the window creaked open behind him a few minutes later, and Mira climbed out onto the roof in her borrowed nightgown and sat down next to him, so close that their shoulders were touching.

"Old habits," Mira said.

"You always say that," Kai said.

"I always do it," Mira said.

They sat there for a while listening to the singing, and Kai could tell that Mira wanted to say something, because she kept opening her mouth and then closing it again, the same way he did right before he told a lie.

"The book couldn’t keep your name," Mira finally said. "Garrick heard the Keeper tell you. He told me on the way back."

"Garrick has a big mouth," Kai said.

"He was worried about you," Mira said, pulling her knees up to her chest and staring out at the moon. "Kai, if you fail, I won’t remember any of this. Not the rocks, or the river, or the fireplace, or you jumping off that ledge into the ocean when you don’t even know how to swim. I’ll wake up in that cage, and I won’t even know what I lost."

"I won’t fail," Kai said.

"You fail at everything," Mira said. "That’s literally your title."

"Fine, I won’t fail at the one thing I need to," Kai said. "I’ll fail at everything else, probably constantly."

Mira laughed, and her eyes were a little wet, and when she turned to look at him, her face was only inches away from his, with the moonlight shining in her silver hair.

"If I ever forget you," Mira said softly, "I want you to know that I’ll find you again. I don’t know how, but I will."

[Kai, her heart rate is very high. Yours is even higher. I will stop talking now]

For once, Syraphim actually did stop talking, and Kai leaned in, and so did Mira, and this time, there was no goddess popping up between them and nobody falling off the roof.

Their lips were just about to touch when the window behind them slammed open so hard that it hit the wall, and Princess Seris climbed halfway out of it in a nightgown that was far too big for her, holding her notebook in one hand and a candle in the other.

"I found her," Princess Seris said, out of breath. "I know where Celestine went."

Mira closed her eyes and let out a long breath through her nose, while Kai fell backwards onto the roof tiles and stared up at the sky.

"Of course you did," Kai said.

"I was going through Hale’s records on every church in the city," Princess Seris said, completely ignoring both of them. "All of them are hundreds of years old, except for one." She held the candle up to the page so they could see the date she had circled three times. "The Church of the Weeping Saint was founded forty years ago, in the same month Celestine supposedly died. It was founded by a woman who wore a black veil and never gave anyone her name, and her followers say that she wept every day for the sins of the city."

Kai sat up slowly, and beside him, Mira had gone completely still.

"The Weeping Saint," Kai said. "She’s not a goddess at all."

"No, I do not think she is," Princess Seris said, and her green eyes glowed in the candlelight. "I think she is a High Priestess who does not want to be found."

[It is midnight. 347 days]

"Well, I guess we know where we’re going tomorrow," Kai said.