He cleared his throat. “Why are you here?”
She clasped her hands in her lap, knuckles blanched. “It’s my son,” she murmured. “He’s so ill. Has been since he was born. I’ve always prayed to You to make him well.” She smiled, as if this were a good thing instead of a tragedy. “I thought perhaps You could hear my prayers better in here.”
This was a bad idea. He could ask the woman to bring her son, try to heal him with Spiritum. But what were the odds that he’d be the one in control when she did? And what were the odds that, if he wasn’t, Apollius would bother with healing one small peasant boy? If Bastian knew the god—and he did, intimately—it would be more likely for Apollius to make him sicker out of spite, to punish Bastian for these few moments of control.
So he’d better do it now.
“Bring him to me,” he said, feeling Apollius grow stronger, feeling their clock wind down to zero. He gritted his teeth and held on. Just for a little bit longer.
Behind him, Alie’s lips were a bloodless line.
The woman’s eyes widened. She stood, bowing, a babble of thanks, and headed toward the door, out into the night.
Sophie watched her go. “Do you want me to lock it behind her, Holy One?”
“No,” Bastian barked, one hand pressing against his temple. “I’ll be back in a moment. Don’t let her leave without me seeing the child.” He stumbled out of the Sanctuary, down the hall, toward the Church library. Hurry. He had to hurry.
Alie caught up with him. “While I appreciate the show of magnanimity,” she said, “that was probably not the best use of our time.”
“Couldn’t leave it.” Reduced to fragments of sentences. “Can’t choose what I do with it, most of the time. But I can right now.”
She nodded in understanding.
The library was unlocked. They blundered in gracelessly, and Alie turned the bolt behind them. “Where is it?”
Bastian didn’t try to speak, just headed toward the tiny alcove in the corner, the one where Malcolm had told him some prophecies were kept, the unimportant ones. This was what he’d seen in the memory, the sliver of light through that door just enough to tell him where Apollius and Gerard had been.
He pressed his palms against the wall.
The mechanism here was not magic, not like the doors Lore had opened with Mortem in the catacombs. Opening this door was just a matter of knowing where to place his hands, and though Bastian had never known about the secret chamber behind this wall, it was a fairly simple thing once you knew there was something to look for. He inched his hands over the wall until he found a place that stuck out, a stone not flush with the rest. He pressed down.
The door creaked open.
Beside him, Alie’s eyes widened. “Myriad hells.”
Had he not been preoccupied with the god trying to chew His way back into his brain, Bastian would have been stricken by the contents of the room. He was no stranger to obscene wealth, but the tangle of gold in here, the boxes of gems rough as if pulled straight from the Burnt Isles, was still mind boggling.
As was the state of the ring. It sat on top of a closed box, no case to speak of, as if it had been thrown there in a hurry.
Bastian guessed it had. He’d never stopped trying to fight his way free of Apollius; it seemed the god was warier of him succeeding than He’d let on. He must have tossed the ring in here right after taking it from Lore, before sending her to the Isles.
He picked up the ring and handed it to Alie. “Sunrise,” he saidthrough gritted teeth. “Hold it up at an angle. Should show… something.”
She nodded, slipping the ring into her pocket. “Come on. You don’t have much time.”
There was no energy left for speaking, every bit of him oriented toward fighting off Apollius. Just long enough to heal the boy. Just long enough to do one good thing.
He was there with his mother, small and bony, tired bruises around his eyes that would be more at home on an old man than a child. Bastian’s vision was narrow, the sound in his ears soupy and hard to suss out into individual words. He heard Alie’s voice, speaking softly to the mother. Sophie glowered at the end of the aisle.
Bastian put a hand on the boy’s forehead.
Like this, pushing so hard against Apollius he felt like he might pass out, Spiritum and Mortem were easy to see. It was something in the boy’s lungs, the star-map of gold there marred by a growing bruise of black threads, slowly alchemizing. It was easy to channel that Mortem, turn it back to Spiritum.
Even though he could feel that the well of power was dwindling. Being pulled away, somehow, a spool slowly spinning out.
But he’d done a good thing. The only one he was guaranteed. He’d wasted so many opportunities for goodness, and damn him if he’d let this one pass by, too.
“You’re fine,” he murmured. “You’ll be fine.”
