“Where did they come from?”
“Don’t … know.” He turned his head on the pillows, eyes drifting shut for a moment. “Found. They were … found. Brother Johann says … the finding of the crossblade and the secret of the chrism are a sign, that there is wickedness in the world to be excised.”
“Was the Order formed before this discovery?” Varney asked.
“It was … above ground,” said the monk, sounding slightly puzzled at the memory. “In sunlight. In … Chelsea? With … people, more people, before the Light came.”
“Chelsea,” Varney repeated.
“Seminary,” he said, as if just catching the edge of the realization. “At seminary. Hall. Allen Hall. I … studied. Johann was there.”
He looked confused. “Johann was there, and then … I wasn’t a seminarian, I don’t … I don’t know how, but I was ordained. A brother.”
“You don’t remember joining the Order?”
“No,” he said, the confusion on his face deepening. “I have always been in the Order, there is nothing else, I was not before the Order, but … I was at seminary, I remember that.”
“It’s all right,” Varney said, gently, the beautiful voice very kind. “Never mind that now. Tell me about the Order. About the Sword of Holiness.”
“We were … in sunlight,” he said, again. “We met in the churches, but then Johann—Brother Johann—found the crossblade, and the sacred chrism, and after that there was no sunlight, no sunlight at all, no sky, but we did not need the sun for there was the light of God, the light that never dims or wavers or goes out, the endless light that burns underground. The true light, truer than day, that speaks to Brother Johann of the holy teachings.”
“What are the holy teachings?” There was a little urgency in Varney’s voice now, but only a little.
“That … we know we are of God, and … the whole world lieth in wickedness,” he said, and Greta recognized the change in tone that came with his memorized responses. “‘Break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man: Seek out his wickedness … till thou find none. Give them according to their deeds … and according to the wickedness of their endeavours: Give them after the work of their hands; render to them their desert.’ It is … our task … our burden … and our privilege. ‘There is no darkness, nor shadow of death … where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves.’”
The last words of his recitation seemed to hang in the air of the room like curling smoke. Varney was silent; Greta ventured to open her eyes, and found that he looked more unbearably weary than she had ever seen him.
She didn’t even realize she was reaching out before her hand touched his shoulder. Varney jerked in shock at the contact, as if she were a live conductor. He twisted around to stare up at her, and the bright numbness of his thrall flooded through her for just a moment before he regained control of himself and returned his attention and gaze to the man in the bed.
Greta blinked hard, trying to get the edges of things back in focus—but she had not taken her hand away from Varney’s shoulder. All at once she had had enough of the blank blue stare, the rote-memorized phrases that didn’t sound as if the nameless man believed them even as he formed the words. Most of all, she had had enough of wondering what else was in there, with the owner of those eyes. What might be looking back at her. What had taken over these people—for they had been people, arguably slightly mad and bent on reenacting a kind of thirteenth-century human supremacist organization as some kind of cult, but people for all that—and turned them into this. Into monsters.
She was so tired of not understanding.
For Ruthven the worst aspect of this … possession … had seemed to be the manipulation of these people’s faith, the deliberate perversion of a deeply held belief. Greta couldn’t forget how cold his eyes had been, how clear and how cold, lit with a controlled anger that was somehow worse than open fury. Now, standing by Varney and feeling him trembling faintly beneath her hand, Greta’s own anger began to make itself known.
It wasn’t ice-cold like Ruthven’s; this felt more as if a small ball of metal in her chest were steadily being heated up by some invisible blowtorch, at first giving off just a sullen red glare and then a brighter and brighter glow, scarlet to red-orange to burning gold. Anger not so much at the fact that the thing had assumed the role of God for these people as that it had taken away their names, taken away who they were, rendered them mindless puppets of its design, rendered the world nonsensical. It had taken away their conscious identities, their will. That, to Greta, was worst of all: an insult to the very center of humanity. That this thing should dare seemed all at once unbearable. The heat behind her breastbone flared, gold to white.
She leaned forward, staring down at the ruined face on the pillows. “What is your name?” she asked, with deliberate clarity. “Who are you?”
The blue glow cut off, flickered, as he squeezed his eyes shut. “No …”
“It’s very deep,” Varney whispered. “He’s fighting quite hard, Greta, I don’t think—”
“Who are you?” she repeated, keeping her voice even with an effort, feeling as if the white-hot ball inside her should be giving off its own light, her skin glowing, her pupils hard dots of their own brilliance. “Where did you come from? Before you were in Chelsea at the seminary. Before this began.”
He shook his head, beginning to squirm under the covers, and gave the terrible mewing cry she had heard for the first time in the church. “Your name,” Greta pressed, her fingers digging into Varney’s shoulder, heedless of his stifled hiss of pain, the way he held perfectly still despite it. “What is your name?”
“Greta—” Varney said, something in his voice she couldn’t identify, but she leaned closer in, ignoring him. The anger roared with a blue-white flame now: How dare it, how dare it steal his name, his conscious identity, the very center of his mind? How dare it make all this happen, set the balance of the world swinging out of true?