At the center of Sacred-Palm-of-God, in the hall of the Shining Heart of Our Lady Cathedral, a solitary figure in scarlet lingered in the nave like a jagged red rock at the center of a great river. While the hordes of worshippers in white flooded out onto glittering marble steps, murmuring in hushed tones about the mass that had just concluded, the man in red simply stood still and waited.
To the casual onlooker, he seemed to be idly examining the interior of the hall — admittedly, one certainly could not blame him for being absorbed in the sight. Even in the oily dimness of candlelight, the burnished gold filigree dripping off the columns, banisters, and windows reflected warmly on the rich, sprawling murals covering every surface. The murals had been rendered by many artful hands, and varied and vibrant were their scenes; in one, a woman in armor fought an enormous coiling serpent; in another, a man dressed in white knelt before a blazing pyre. The man seemed particularly fascinated by the one taking place behind the altar, in which a woman with fire-bright hair was emerging from the enfolded branches of a gleaming black ironwood tree.
As he drifted forward to get a closer look, hands tucked demurely behind his back, the sound of his booted footsteps rang out clearly in the deserted hall. This was no act of carelessness on his part, for he never acted carelessly.
From the double doors to the left of the altar, a figure in ink-black stepped through as if summoned, just as tall and statuesque as the many marble likenesses of saints that lined the aisles of the cathedral. His sharp, hooked nose cut a severe profile in the evening light leaking through the stained-glass windows, and his dark furrowed brows lowered over glass-cut gray eyes as he caught sight of the man in scarlet. He strode swiftly forward, his mouth turned sharply down and his onyx bishop's robes billowing around him like some amorphous shadow.
But the man in red simply waited, smiling crookedly, head canted just so. He had become very good at waiting by now. He had begun to like it, even; the slow pull of time, the anticipation, the feeling of being at a precipice. It was a lovely agony to a man who had spent too much of his life urgently.
"Good morning, Father," he called out pleasantly, when the Bishop was within earshot. "I liked your sermon today."
The Bishop slowed, stopped, that thundering anger around him dissipating as he collected his expression into a more surgical disdain. He wore it so handsomely, in the deep lines flanking his eyes, in the white bleeding into slate-gray hair at the temples, and the way his beard grayed at the jaw. The man in red thought it must have been necessary to him — an official of the church did not get far without knowing how to distill cruel disgust into a single look like that. He himself had been on its receiving end so many times that it had almost lost its power over him.
But ah, there it was, that slight flinch, slight grimace, deep within him. Fingers in the wound, he thought with an internal sigh. Perhaps that particular hurt would never heal, so early had it been carved into him and so repeatedly had it been aggravated back into rawness. That was alright. He didn't mind pain in little nipping doses like this; his brother used to say it kept the spirit vibrant. Of course, he'd meant it like a joke and Priam had never been good with those.
"Brother Kill-Sin," the Bishop said sternly, regarding him down the slope of his nose. His voice rumbled low like thunder, low like a purr which swept teasingly under the skin. "In today's times, surely an exorcist's talents are needed elsewhere."
Priam Kill-Sin looked at the Bishop. It would not have been a pleasant sight to behold, which he had known about himself since he was a very young child. Priam's eyes were green like a toxin, such an unnatural, startlingly yellow hue that it looked like they had been transplanted into the dark hollows of his face. Indeed, the Bishop's own eyes narrowed slightly in response, his face shuttering subtly in the same way he might toward a dead rat left at his feet by one of the cathedral's feral cats.
"Surely," Priam agreed after a pause, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. "But even an exorcist must come to worship. I would not neglect my holy service to Her Ladyship."
"Then your service is acknowledged," said the Bishop, with what looked like painful stringency. He was a mountain, he was a monument. "Is there more?"
Priam smiled. This was an even less pleasant sight, he knew; too many teeth, too much sharpness, and not enough warmth. "So brisk, Father."
"If there's nothing else," the mountain who was the monument who was the Bishop said, "I'll excuse myself. I'm afraid I'm very busy these days."
Priam huffed a feigned sigh as he sidled a little closer. "Are you truly in such a rush to escape me? I won't bite, Your Excellency. Don't you want to discuss the summons you issued last night?"
"All of your order received that summons."
"All of my order," he repeated, his mouth twisting into a wry smile. The Order of Exorcists couldn't have been any more than a mighty twelve members these days, each of them jagged and divorced from each other like lost teeth. "Yes, I suppose you're right. But what about the one from the night before that?"
He reached a gloved hand out, ran feather-light fingertips up the Bishop's arm, along the broad line of his shoulders. The older man's jaw flexed, feathered, as Priam traced the details of the golden embroidery—pears, swallows, dahlias—along his shoulders, then crept teasingly up the crisp white of his shirt collar.
The Bishop's voice was almost too low to be audible. "Priam."
Priam smiled, guileless, easy. Had he won? His black-gloved fingers hooked over the edge of the collar, tugging gently. "Yes?"
(That was his mistake, he would reflect later. Initiating.)
There was a sudden flurry of motion, and then Priam found all the breath plunging from his lungs as a hand closed painfully around his wrist and squeezed. Something popped and gave way; something ground unpleasantly against itself. The Bishop's eyes blazed white-hot as he leaned in, his breath hot on Priam's lips, which parted in a silent cry.
"Don't," he bit out quietly, each fatal word hurled like a knife, "—think you can play games with me, boy."
The softest groan escaped Priam as the grip around his wrist grew even tighter. Nonsensical shapes, chromatic swirls, starbursts of light, overtook his vision as the pain hit him in unbreaking waves. Fuck, he thought, screwing his eyes shut. It was broken. It had to be. Or it was going to be. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.
And then, just as he thought he would hear that telling crunch, feel that bursting of irreparable damage, the grip slackened and the Bishop released him.
"You're here for confession, then?" he asked, abruptly cool, as Priam gasped and clutched at his wrist. It would bruise, no doubt, in mottled rings of purple and blue.
Even so, he mustered up another ugly little smile — panted through the pain, "Would you turn away a sinner in search of salvation?"
"Watch your mouth, Priam." It sounded so cold. So indifferent. Oh, never mind the disdain in the Bishop's curled mouth, the acute disgust alight in those cold eyes; Priam felt a hot flush rising in his cheeks.
"Yes, Father."
The Bishop's nostrils flared, but otherwise his expression remained a locked gate. "Father Ephraim is holding a confession now. Seek your salvation with him."
Priam's smile fell away as he searched the Bishop's face and came up empty-handed. If there was hunger in those eyes, it was not strong enough to appeal to. Something inside him was jostled loose by the realization. Something inside him was sinking like a stone.
Already, the Bishop was turning away, black robes swirling mercurially around him. "I have other matters to attend to, Brother Kill-Sin. Good day."
Priam watched him go, heart still pounding, wrist still aching. Or maybe the other way around. He did not even breathe until the Bishop was gone, swallowed by those forbidden double doors, leaving him all alone in the nave. Then the exhale escaped, shuddering and painful. On the mural behind the altar, the Lady of Blessed Purity smiled still, perpetually caught at the threshold of her resurrection.
As though in a dream, Priam turned toward the aisle, where the confession booth waited. His steps sounded so curiously hollow to him now. The senses were such tricky things, too elusive to truly be trusted. They deceived him now, wanting him to think he was only a ghost inhabiting these clothes. But he reached for his rosary and felt the sharp end of it bite into the meat of his palm and was soothed back into certainty; yes, he was flesh and blood, still.
"Welcome, child," came Father Ephraim's soft voice through the latticed divider, as Priam slipped past the heavy curtain and took his seat on the bench. The velvet upholstering was blood-red, the same color he wore on his jacket to signal his allegiance to his order.
The words came quickly, easily. How many times had he done this before?
"In the name of Our Lady of Blessed Purity, and of Her Slumber and of Her Most Glorious and Awaited Awakening, I come on my knees to Her Glory, and I seek salvation. Father, it has been a week since my last confession."
Though he hadn't spent that time with much to say, if he was honest.
"Her Ladyship welcomes you as you are. What is it that troubles you, my child?"
Priam's head tipped back, resting against the wall. He thought. His blood was still running hot, uncomfortably hot — that had to be a sin, especially in the house of the God-Queen, but he didn't care much to explain that or who was responsible for it. He rubbed his throbbing wrist.
"I'm being presented with a test, Father, from Her Ladyship," he settled for saying. "The greatest test of my life."
"Oh? Does it frighten you?"
He laughed. "Not at all. I mean, I can hardly wait. I've spent my whole life preparing for it."
"Good. 'Let those with pure conscience go forth toward holy trial without fear, knowing Our Lady keeps us in the palm of Her Splendid hand,'" quoted Father Ephraim. "That's—,"
A whip cracked in the recesses of his mind; it was not so much a sound or a memory as it was something entombed, a clenched fist under mind-muscle-skin-bone.
"The Book of Power," Priam finished calmly, eyes closing. "Chapter six. From Saint Alana's battle with the crowned serpent."
There was a slight smile in Ephraim's voice. "Correct. You are a devout student of the texts."
"One would certainly hope so." Priam looked down at his own gloved hands, the ironwood dagger sheathed at his hip, the powder-pouch of blessed bone, and saw only shackles. He said quietly, "Do you have a lot of family left, Father?"
There was silence.
"I'm sorry." Priam almost smiled. Out of habit, he drew his dagger and examined its gleaming surface. In the reflection he saw there, he tried to make a face he thought might resemble regret. What was he missing, what degree of downturn in his mouth, what precise furrow between his brows? "I suppose that's a cruel question these days. Well, I ask because I myself haven't really anyone left. But there's to be a sort of…reunion soon. Part of the test I mentioned."
"Homecoming is a joyous occasion," came Ephraim's faint voice. "It reminds us of our ties to each other. And as you know, the Great Homecoming will be upon us soon."
Ah, yes. The Great Homecoming. The resurrection.
"Must be the season for it," Priam remarked musingly. He leaned his face against the lattice, felt the wood pressing a checkerboard into his cheek. He thought of Father Ephraim, and tried to remember his face. Was he handsome like the Bishop? Was he handsy like the Bishop? What would he do if Priam pulled back the curtain on his side, knelt before him, and offered the clean white underbelly of himself up like a sacrifice?
Strike him, maybe. Curse him, probably.
The dagger in his hand was still cold. Ironwood never warmed to the touch — it was one of those strange little features about it, like the way it was hard enough to be a metal and shiny enough to reflect any fleeting trace of light tenfold. Another one of Her Ladyship's miracles, still rooted to the earth long after she had gone.
"My child? Are you alright?"
"Yes. Thinking." His wrist still ached. As though he was in a trance, Priam raised his wrist to his lips and then, carefully, licked at the places where the bracelet of bruising was already blooming under pale skin. Should he have confessed to that lie? Some days, he wasn't sure Her Ladyship would care if he did or didn't.
Did a dead god listen to your prayers?
Priam sucked the skin on the inside of his wrist into his mouth, letting the dull pain of it suffuse his whole body. Some animal inside him was pacing restlessly, howling long and loud. He allowed himself, for one heady second, to wish for the Bishop and his big, unworked hands and his broad shoulders and the heavy, heavy weight of him.
Then, from beyond the confession booth, running footsteps and the faint clanging of great big bells.
"An exorcist! Is there an exorcist? Please!"
Of course. Priam dropped his hand with a sigh and tugged the wrist of his glove back over his bruising. He brushed invisible dust off his pants and then stood.
"Well, it seems we must cut this short," he said simply. "I'm needed. Excuse me, Father."
Pulling back the curtain, Priam sidled out into the cathedral, where a truly ugly sight awaited him. The man waiting for him in the aisle was dressed in simple merchant's garb which he had sweat straight through. Perhaps it was his first time seeing an open hellmouth, though he did wonder at that — it wasn't like the sight was rare these days. Doubled over, half-heaving, and almost on the verge of tears with fright, Priam looked at him and saw a thousand others just like him in his memory. These messengers. These beggars. Always terrified, always sodden, whether it was with tears or blood or their own piss.
How it disgusted him.
He approached. "Where is it, then?"
The man jumped when Priam spoke from behind him, the whites of his eyes showing too clearly as he spun to face him. The expression he made upon catching sight of him was like storm clouds giving way to sunlight.
"O-oh!" he gasped, falling to his knees. He really had started crying now, his words choked and garbled with a ceaseless onslaught of sobbing he seemed helpless to control. Mingled snot and tears ran down his face. "Thank god! Thank Her Purity, thank Her Grace! Oh, praise Our Lady, Our—,"
Priam sank to the floor to kneel before him, and took the merchant's clammy hands in his own gloved ones. He leaned in, close enough that his mouth brushed the man's ear like a lover's would, and crooned, "Listen to me."
A startled hiccup; a gulping, hitched breath; an unsteady exhale.
"I'm going to count to three," Priam whispered softly, inhaling the scent of sweat-on-skin, "and if you don't tell me where the hellmouth is when I get to three, I will throw you and everyone you love to the demons myself. Am I clear?"
The merchant's voice was very quiet. "Yes."
"Good. One."
There were three months until the Great Homecoming, when salvation would come for all of them and the Era of Mourning could finally come to an end. The Bishop's summons, sent yesterday in the dead of night, had gone to himself and eleven others. It had been a pretty envelope, sealed with gold wax in the official crest of the church. It had looked like a death sentence to all of them, he was sure.
Not to him.
"Two."
They were coming, his family, coming back to Sacred-Palm. Together again at last, lashed to each other, lashed to the mast of their faith, their Lady. He had waited for ten long years for this, knowing the day would arrive eventually. They had taken an oath, hadn't they? They had promised to serve until the end, hadn't they?
"Three."
It would all be alright. They would all be together.
It would all be alright. They would all be together.
It would all be alright. It would all be alright. It would all be alright.