“Something like that. Radio transmitters encode information by modulating a carrier wave’s amplitude or frequency. My theory is that this … thing, whatever it is, the intelligence behind all the attacks … is altering the output of the rectifier via magic, so that it can directly influence people who are exposed to it.”
“Is that even possible?” she asked, wishing she knew more about physics.
“I don’t know. It sounds vaguely plausible to me, but Fass will be able to confirm it when he wakes up.”
“I bet he’ll be happy to go on at great length about it. But the end result is, what, that these Gladius Sancti guys actually get something tangible out of their idol worship other than a lovely warm sense of self-righteousness?”
“Yes,” said Ruthven. “They get turned into tools.”
He closed his eyes, opened them slowly. They were very pale in this light, the black-rimmed irises cold and clear like little silver bowls of ice. “Imagine you’ve prayed all your life,” he continued, “that you’ve been taught to pray, taught to believe that you must give praise in prayer and that you are not to expect the blessing of hearing anything ever answer back—that expecting anything to reply to you is hubris and wickedness—but one day there’s this little voice, this still small voice, that does reply. And you believe it and you love it and you worship it, just as you have been taught to all your life … and it shows you wonderful things inside your head, and takes away your fear and pain. And it tells you how to make things … and where to go … and what to do to people with those things, once you get there.”
Ruthven’s voice was slick with acid, and she blinked down at him. “You … really hate this, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, and got up, book in hand. “I really hate this. I’ll put the kettle on and go to check on the ghouls, if you’ll excuse me.”
Wordless, she stood aside to let him go by.
Ruthven had never talked very much about his distant past, but she knew he had lived and died at the end of the sixteenth century—a time when belief in some form of Christianity would have been pretty much universal in this part of the world. Greta thought it was entirely possible that he could see more clearly from the perspective of the Gladius Sancti than she would ever be able to.
She held a roughly agnostic position with regard to the existence of deities. That a great many supernatural beings existed was self-evident to Greta; that an omniscient and omnipotent and benevolent creator was in charge was somewhat less so, based on the chaotic and disorganized nature of the universe. Nor did she feel any desire to pray or attend services, although she had never considered people who did to be particularly foolish or misguided; it was simply a part of other people’s lives that she did not share. Trying to imagine what it would be like to have truly believed in something, truly and honestly experienced faith, was difficult for her. Trying to imagine what it would be like, as a believer, to hear the voice of God was something close to impossible.
Witnessing the intensity of Ruthven’s loathing for the thing that had taken such advantage of these people’s belief made Greta just a little glad she didn’t know what it was like.
She pushed away the thought, with effort, and turned her attention to the man in the bed. The fact that Greta herself had been allowed to sleep through the night was encouraging; either Ruthven or Fastitocalon would have woken her if his condition had deteriorated overnight. In fact, he was rather better than she had expected, and she thought again of the cut healing to a pink, shiny line of scar as she and Anna watched. Whatever is doing this to these people takes care of its belongings, she thought. To some extent.
I wonder if it knows he’s here.
Greta wished she hadn’t just thought that. She started another bag of IV fluids dripping slowly, gave him another dose of antibiotics, and checked the dressings on his wounds—which were noticeably further along in the healing process than they had been twelve hours before. She was changing one of the dressings when his eyes opened: just a slit of blue light.
“Back with us?” she said quietly. “Ruthven said you had a pretty quiet night.”
The slits widened, and she saw his ruined eyes move, tracking her. Clinically she knew perfectly well that there was no way he should have been able to see a damn thing other than vague areas of dark and less-dark, and even that much was highly unlikely, but he was looking right at her nonetheless.
God, but this was so fucking creepy.
Greta kept her face straight, the careful, noncommittal bedside expression reassuring in its familiarity. After a moment he tried to say something, the tip of a dry tongue creeping over cracked lips, and managed it on the second attempt. “Where?”
“You’re safe. You’re safe and nobody is going to hurt you,” she said, and reached over for the glass of water on the bedside table. Somebody—Ruthven, presumably—had located an actual bendy straw to put in it, and Greta’s chest ached with a sudden clutch of fondness for the small kind thought. She held the glass for the monk to drink; the awful eyes slipped half-closed again in relief, or possibly even pleasure. Then he sighed a little, a faint wheezing sigh that she thought was the weariest damn sound she had ever heard.
She set the glass aside. This time when his eyes opened, they opened all the way, trained on her face, and she imagined she could feel the blue light itself touching her skin as they widened in visible recognition. He made a nasty hitching noise in his throat, shrinking away from her.
“You,” he said. It was barely audible. “I know you. The wicked, whose day is come.”
“Yes, I know,” Greta said, feeling approximately a thousand years old. “It’s all right. I know. You were sent to get rid of me.”
“Give them … according to their deeds … and according to the wickedness of their en-endeavors,” he rasped. “For by fire and by his sword … will the Lord plead with all flesh … and the slain of the Lord shall be many.”
She said nothing, looking down at him, and he winced and closed his eyes as if rebuked, and carried on. “But when the righteous … turneth away from his righteousness … and committeth iniquity, and doeth according to … all the abominations that the wicked man doeth, shall he live?”
“I don’t know,” Greta told him, gently. The words were familiar, as if she’d heard them before, and more than once. He turned his head on the pillow in a slow and deliberate negation.
“All his righteousness … that he hath done … shall not be mentioned: In his trespass that he hath trespassed … and in his sin that he hath sinned … in them shall he die.”