The Book of the New Moon Door

By Madeline Crane

Mondirra is a city on the brink of destruction. While magic wanes and science leaps forward, the church and the university are about to come to blows, and the veil of progress hides deep cracks in the foundation of the world.

Isabel is a Sentinel of Ondir, the god of death. Armed with bell, book, and candle, her duty is to cal

• Language: English
• Publisher: Space Whales Press
• Release date: Dec 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798868997310

Book preview

I

The Broken Ghost

One

The gods weep when a Son of Galaser dies.

Berend would know. It rained for five days after the battle on Braenach Hill, seven years ago, when nine Sons out of every ten were slaughtered in the grass. He stood in the mud, afterward, water pouring down on his bandaged head, listening through the ringing in his ears to the announcement that he and the handful of others who were still breathing would be out of work, as part of the terms of their employer’s surrender.

Not many walked off that hill. Even fewer are still around.

And now one of them lies in six pieces on an embalming table.

Berend takes another swig of cheap whiskey from his flask. The liquor burns on the way down, but it’s warm. I’m sorry, Mikhail, he says to the wet, gray evening. You didn’t deserve this.

The rain beats a steady rhythm against the soft earth, and distant thunder rolls over the field. Water runs from the chapel’s gutters, pressing a rut into the mud beneath. The little overhang above the door keeps Berend dry, more or less, but the wind bites, and he shivers.

He lets himself indulge in one moment of longing for the Widow Breckenridge’s feather bed. She did say she’d like the pleasure of his company, now that he was back in Mondirra after being gone more than a month, but he’s got to do this for Mikhail. He can sell his good doublet, scrape together enough for a proper funeral—and a headstone, maybe, or a plaque. Something to tell people that Mikhail Ranseberg lived, and he mattered.

The nearsighted old monk who runs the chapel offered to perform the rites and bury him here, in the blue field, in a hole marked only by the tiny flowers that give the place its name. Berend refused. He’s going to do right by Mikhail. The man may have been a drunk and a vagrant these last few years, but he was a Son of Galaser, and that name carries weight even though few remember it.

That’s why Berend is waiting here, in the middle of the night, by the chapel in the blue field. So that someone is looking out for Mikhail. If only he’d done a better job of it before.

It’s getting colder, and the thunder comes nearer with every crack. Where is the blasted Sentinel, anyway? The old monk—Risoven, his name was, as old-fashioned as his church—sent for one hours ago.

Berend squints into the darkness and suppresses another shiver. In this weather, at this time of night, the Sentinel probably isn’t coming. He wanted to wait, and stay out of the same room as the body and the reek of blood, but he’s one more lightning strike away from changing his mind, even though it was he and not the constable who insisted Brother Risoven send the message. How much good will a Sentinel do, anyway? They’re a dying breed, much like the Sons. He’s seen them talk to ghosts, ask them questions, and send them on to Lord Ondir’s cold and loving embrace, but that was years ago. Still, he wants to know who did this to Mikhail. Constable Mulhy has yet to find any witnesses, and Mikhail himself isn’t exactly in a state to talk. A Sentinel might be the only chance they have.

Mulhy paces the chapel, his shadow moving back and forth under the door. Risoven has lit enough candles in there to turn the tiny church bright as midday. It must be good for Mikhail’s spirit, or maybe it’s just that the old monk can’t see so well in the dark.

And by the Seven, it’s dark. The storm will reach the chapel’s sagging roof any moment now.

Berend takes another drink and stomps his feet on the small square of dry ground beneath him to restore some feeling to his toes. He wishes he’d worn his heavy cloak. He wishes someone hadn't decided to rend poor Mikhail limb from limb, but here he is. It must have been some crime boss, sending a message to his rivals. Mulhy says things have been quiet in the Shell District where Mikhail was found, but that’s clearly not true anymore.

Hoofbeats roll in underneath the next rumble of thunder, soft and quiet on the wet soil. Berend leans out into the darkness, putting his hand over his good eye to keep the rain out. Water trickles under the patch over the other eye. Just as he’s convinced he imagined the sound, a flash of yellow-white lightning shows the shadowy figure of an aging gray mare carrying a woman in a faded black traveling coat, coming slowly up the path between patches of trembling blue flowers.

The woman dismounts in the watery patch of light outside the chapel window and regards Berend from under her broad-brimmed felt hat, also black. Her skirts are tucked up into her girdle, revealing a worn pair of boots laced up to the knee. Isabel Rainier, she introduces herself. I’m the Sentinel.

That much is obvious, from her blacks to the fact that she’s out in the blue field in the middle of a storm, to the silver pin on her coat in the shape of an arched gateway. Interesting, that she’s a woman—all the holy warriors Berend ever met, and there haven’t been many, were men. An arming sword hangs at her hip, a short blade with a simple swept hilt, among other objects hidden in the darkness and her skirts. The sword is part of the uniform, but Berend has never asked if a Sentinel can wield it, or if it’s made of silver or some such nonsense.

There are more pressing matters at hand. Berend Horst, he says with a tip of his own hat, also broad-brimmed but scarlet red. A bow would take him out of his shelter by the door, and that’s a step he’s unwilling to take right now. You’re here for Mikhail Ranseberg, I assume? He was my friend.

I’m sorry for your loss, says Isabel. The words are gentle, but there’s a hint of rote repetition about them. She ties the mare’s bridle to the post supporting the overhang. Is he inside?

Berend moves to the edge of his dry spot with a nod, and Isabel removes her hat and enters the chapel. A wave of light, smoke, and a miasma that might be decaying flesh pours out of the door. Berend has seen—and smelled—a lot of death in his time, but the unbidden thought of Mikhail’s poor corpse roots him to the ground.

He takes one last drink to steel himself and pours the rest out into the mud, a libation for his comrade. Let’s get this over with.

Inside, incense wafts from three separate censers, not quite covering the persistent smell of death. The many candles cast a wavering, eerie light, and Brother Risoven’s shadow stands tall and spindly against the chapel walls. Berend places his hat on the bench closest to the door, careful not to crush the feather, and crosses the short distance to the back room behind the altar. Constable Mulhy keeps watch in front of the door, arms crossed over his chest. The spiral embroidered on his vest, marking him as a constable of the Shell District, catches the candlelight as he shifts his weight between his feet. He glances behind him at the darkened room, a troubled frown crossing his young face.

I don’t like ghosts, he says.

Neither does Berend, but if this is what it takes to find justice for Mikhail, then he’s going to bear witness to it. He nods to Mulhy and steps over the threshold.

Stop! Isabel commands. Don’t touch that.

Berend’s boots catch on the floorboards, and he throws his arms out to keep from falling. Two lines of chalk mark the ground in front of his feet, stretching out into a pair of concentric rings circling the room. At the center is the table where a shape that isn’t much like a man lies under a sheet.

As much as he doesn’t want to be in that room, he also doesn’t much like the idea of being kept out of it. He’s the closest Mikhail has to next of kin. Can I stay here, then? he asks.

Isabel looks up. She kneels beside her circles near the opposite wall, a thick piece of chalk in her hand. I suppose. Don’t break the circle.

She’s moved half a dozen candles from the chapel and placed them on the floor. Her coat and hat are slung over a chair in one corner of the room. From underneath them, the hilt of her sword shines in the flickering light. Berend had thought she might move the body, placing it in order instead of leaving it in a pile, but it’s the same as when he arrived here hours ago. At the edge of the table, an iron handbell weighs down a corner of the sheet, and an octavo-sized book bound in black leather lies propped up against it. The same symbol of an archway is embossed on the front cover.

Isabel draws a curving sigil into the space between chalk rings and stands up. The chalk disappears into her skirt pocket, and she brushes dust from her hands before snuffing out each candle between her thumb and forefinger. She’s a mousy sort of woman, tall and thin, with large eyes and a pointed face. It’s hard to tell her age; Berend guesses thirty or thirty-five. Her dark hair is pulled back into one long braid, heavy with rainwater.

The last candle goes out. Blackness swallows the room, turning the threshold into a precipice over a bottomless void. A tremor vibrates through the air, humming like a taut string. Pressure, like the wind outside, pushes against his body from the edge of the circle.

A match flares to life, burning a bright spot into Berend’s vision. Isabel lights a single candle of black wax, setting it into a small cup formed of branches of wrought iron. It sputters, and shadows bend and waver up and down the walls. She sets it down on the table beside Mikhail and picks up the book. With her other hand, she takes the bell and rings it once, a clear, piercing note. The sound fills the room and spills outward, seizing hold of Berend’s body and bending the beat of his heart to the rhythm of its reverberations. He wants to look away, to shake off the peculiar sensation, but he cannot move. He can only watch.

In the name of Isra, mother of creation, Isabel recites, her gaze turned away from the book and toward the empty air, and of Alcos, king and father, and of Ondir, lord of the gates: I call the name of Mikhail Ranseberg. Hark to me and speak!

The bell rings again. In the small, still room, the echoes fade to silence. Berend’s pulse hammers in his ears. He takes a breath, slow and shaky, afraid to disturb the quiet.

Then, there is a deafening, distorted scream.

It’s almost a human voice, but not quite—it is like metal scraping against metal, like an animal being slaughtered. It is many voices all at once, so loud the entire city must be able to hear it, and it goes on and on in wordless agony. Mulhy covers his ears with his hands. Berend clenches his fists, holding his arms at his sides.

Is that Mikhail screaming?

Isabel takes a step back. She holds up the bell, and its rim catches the light, but the horrible din swallows any sound it might make. Light blooms in the air above the table, not firelight but something eerie and pale, flickering with distorted shapes—first half of a face, its mouth open and twisted with terror, then an outstretched hand, and then the meeting of a shoulder and a neck, muscles straining. It might be Mikhail, but there are only flashes, too fast to recognize anything.

Isabel rings the bell one more time. The screaming continues, shaking the building, from the dusty ceiling to the floor beneath their feet. Berend relents and puts his hands over his ears, but the sound is no quieter, as though it’s as much inside his head as out of it.

At last, Isabel reaches out and knocks over the candle. Darkness and blessed silence smother the room.

Berend’s ears ring with a high, insistent tone. He swallows, and the ringing lessens. I take it that wasn’t supposed to happen, he says.

Brother Risoven brings a light, his robes rustling and his eyes squinting through his thick lenses. Is everyone all right?

I think so. Isabel has bell and book clutched to her chest as she stares at the body under its sheet. She shakes her head and places the objects down one at a time. A broom, if you would, Brother.

Risoven sets the lantern down in the doorway, just outside the chalk circles, and hurries off.

What does this mean? Berend asks. What just happened?

I assure you, Mr. Horst, everything is under control, says Isabel. Her face is a neutral mask, but her eyes are wide, and her voice comes out too high and too fast.

Under control? he echoes. That’s happened before, then, has it?

No, it hasn’t, she admits. Risoven reappears with a broom, and she takes it and waves Berend off. If you’ll excuse me for just a moment?

As Isabel sweeps away the chalk on the floor, Berend follows Mulhy and Risoven back out to the chapel. She’s not going to try it again, then.

He slumps into the first bench by the altar, under the faceless gaze of the carved figure of hooded Ondir. His hands are shaking. He clenches his fists to keep them still.

Something terrible has happened to Mikhail; something that has even the Sentinel spooked, and Sentinels are a stoic bunch. So are Shell District constables, but Mulhy is pacing again, tugging at his tawny hair with one hand.

The spell failed. It happens all the time. There’s a reason Isra’s priestesses mend bones with time and splint these days, just like everyone else, instead of inking sigils over the skin and chanting. A Sentinel of Ondir would be no different. Berend will just have to find the madman who did this to Mikhail himself, using mundane means—such as violence, and threats of violence. He left his pistol and his saber at the Fox and Dove, his lodgings for what’s left of the night, out of respect for the chapel. He can always fetch them later.

But if the magic had failed, nothing would have happened. We wouldn’t have seen or heard anything.

Isabel sets the broom in the doorway and enters the chapel. She sits down at the opposite end of Berend’s bench, her hands folded over her dusty skirts. I need you to tell me everything about where and how you found him, she says.

He was in the Shell District, says Mulhy. He stops his nervous route in front of the altar and taps the patch on his vest. At the center of the old plaza. I found him like that, just at sundown.

Did anyone see what happened? asks Isabel.

Mulhy scratches the back of his neck, not for the first time, judging by the angry red welt there. No one has come forward.

Impossible. No one could cut up a body and leave it in the middle of the Shell District without any witnesses. If Mulhy is going to be just as useless as the Sentinel, Berend will have to find those witnesses for himself as well.

Interesting, Isabel says. Can you take me there?

I…I suppose so, Mulhy stammers. His eyes flick between his spiral patch and Isabel’s black dress. Legally speaking, his authority outranks hers, unless there are ghosts involved.

I think it would help, she says, with a reassuring tone that Berend can’t help but hear as hollow. Her unkempt brows draw together in a troubled frown as she brushes chalk dust from her clothing.

Shall we, then? Berend interjects. He claps his hands together and gets to his feet. There’s no time to waste. And if these two are going anywhere, he’s coming with them.

His sudden enthusiasm gives Isabel pause. I’ll get my coat, she says.

***

The Shell District sits inside Mondirra’s southern wall, half an hour’s walk from the chapel on the blue field. It’s a sprawling, ugly stretch of the city, the original houses and shops built over with layers of additions and lean-to shacks, rotting wood and cheap plaster covering old marble. The mosaic-tiled plaza from which the district takes its name, imitated in thread on Mulhy’s vest, was once open and clear and polished every second day, or so people like to say. The dirt of centuries covers the tiles now, and only a small circle at the center, maybe fifteen feet in diameter, remains clear of dubious architecture.

Here, at the center, is where Mulhy found Mikhail. Two other constables stand watch in the gap between two sagging wooden roofs, holding lanterns and yawning. Despite the rain, a smear of blood remains on the origin of the spiral. It isn’t much. Mikhail’s flesh had been a bloodless gray.

Whoever did this hadn't cut him apart here. He’d been brought here from somewhere else, which means there might be a trail—or there was, before the storm came through. A fine mist hangs over the district, and the constables’ lanterns are ringed in yellow light.

Isabel enters the small space and stops before the bloody smear. Her hat shields her eyes, and her hands fidget in her pockets. If she notices the many pairs of eyes watching her from the dark windows overhanging the circle, she ignores them.

Someone must have seen something. Berend walks all the way to the edge of the old plaza and back, but there’s no more blood, only the city’s filth all turned to mud in the rain. With the buildings leaning into each other, pressed close together like drunken companions stumbling home at night, his line of sight reaches only a little farther than the reach of his arms. If one were careful, one might be able to drag the pieces of a body into the plaza without being seen.

The constables must have dragged a few of the squatters out for questioning already. Either they truly hadn't seen anything, or they’re more afraid of Mikhail’s murderer than they are of Constable Mulhy. Berend can’t blame them.

He’ll try a different alley. No fewer than eight of them lead out of the plaza. He turns on his heel to head back toward the center.

Something wet glistens in the dim light of the constables’ lanterns. On the side of the building to Berend’s left, a dark line reaches from the ground all the way up the plaster wall and under the width of the awning. On the other side, another line mirrors it, straight and sharp-edged as though it was painted with a brush.

A dank smell fills the narrow space. Berend bends in close to the dark marking and sniffs. The unmistakable odor of old blood fills his lungs, along with something else, like damp and rot.

Sentinel, he calls across the plaza. You should look at this.

Isabel comes over at a brisk walk, a hand on her hat to keep it from falling. What is it?

Berend points to the lines, first on the left, then on the right. What do you make of it? he asks, before she can ask him the same thing.

She examines the wall at eye level and tilts her head back, holding her hat in place. Still facing up, she backs into the plaza. Look, she says.

Berend follows her gaze and finds another line, down the side of the next building, and another up the side of the rickety lean-to a few feet away. In the next alley, under a pair of awnings close enough to touch each other, the same sticky substance travels down one wall, across the dirty tile ground, and up the adjoining wall.

What is this? Is this Mikhail’s blood? There’s so much of it.

It’s a circle, Isabel says. It must go over the roofs, as well, or it did before the rain.

It’s enormous. You’d have to be a hundred feet in the air to see the whole thing, Berend says. Why?

I don’t know. She ducks under the awnings and taps her finger against the right-hand wall, just underneath a symbol on the plaza side of the circle. It looks like a pair of many-branched candelabras, joined at the stems, painted of the same substance with a fine, small brush.

What’s that? At least to his own ears, Berend sounds calm, though his pulse has taken up its frantic rhythm against the inside of his skull. The blood-and-rot smell is stronger here, and the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end.

A sigil, of some sort, Isabel says. I don’t recognize it, but this is clearly a magic circle.

Clearly. But most magic circles are drawn in chalk, and aren’t as big as a whole district, and don’t look more like fresh blood with each passing second. The surface ripples like a still pond, or a dirty puddle, and tiny red-black growths like branches or fingers reach into the air from the liquid surface.

Berend jumps back. His stomach turns, and his skin prickles, like he’s been beset upon by a nest of insects. Sixteen hells, he mutters.

Isabel reaches out and puts her fingers around the largest growth. It snaps off into her hand, leaving reddish dust in the creases of her palm.

"What is that? Berend asks. Are you sure you should be touching it?"

She holds the misshapen thing up between them. He turns his face away. Nothing good can come of breathing in that dust.

It’s a fungus, she says. It’s not an uncommon side effect of an improperly woven spell. Whoever it was is lucky the district didn’t explode.

Berend’s throat constricts, and not from inhaling red spores. What are you saying, exactly? he chokes out.

Someone used your friend’s body and blood to cast illegal magic, Isabel says, and it went terribly, terribly wrong.

Two

In the morning, Isabel sits at the small table across from Brother Risoven, her tea growing cold and a piece of bloody fungus lying on a scrap of paper beside it. The growth has shriveled a bit, staining the paper a wet, reddish brown, but otherwise it’s the same as when she pulled it off the side of a Shell District shack last night. In the thin, early morning light streaming into the chapel’s upstairs living quarters, it bears an uncanny resemblance to a severed finger, dark and twisted from putrefaction.

It is, in fact, a fungus, all spongy tissue rather than flesh and bone, but it’s not any that Isabel has encountered before. It might not have existed before last night, and might not exist anywhere outside of the Shell District and here, in Brother Risoven’s tiny dining room.

Isabel slides the paper across the table to the old monk, who is happily devouring his eggs off of a dented tin plate. She cooked them this morning, between watering her horse and sweeping the front steps. It’s expected of her to do chores—as a cleric, Brother Risoven outranks any Sentinel unless and until the undead start battering down his door—but she doesn’t mind. He’s giving her a place to stay for what might be a long time, depending on how long it takes to find out what in the sixteen pits of hell happened to the spirit of Mikhail Ranseberg, and the work gave her a welcome distraction. By now, she’s run out of things to do and breakfast to eat, and the fungus can no longer be ignored.

Do you recognize this? she asks.

Risoven looks up from his plate and adjusts his lenses. Tufts of gray hair stick out around his ears, and his eyes are hugely magnified above a small, beaky nose. He blinks a few times. Can’t say that I do. It’s not from our friend downstairs, is it?

No. Isabel knows better than to remove pieces of a body from the embalming room to the breakfast table, and Risoven should know better than to accuse her of such. It’s from where he was found, in the Shell District. Someone had drawn a ritual diagram in what looked like blood, and these mushrooms were growing from it.

Interesting. Risoven reaches out, but he withdraws his hand and sets it on the edge of the table instead. With the state our friend is in, he’ll need to be buried soon. I offered him a place in the blue field, like I did the others, but Mr. Horst said he wanted to take him to the temple in the city. Did Mr. Horst say he was coming back?

He didn’t mention anything to me. Isabel folds the paper over the sample and returns it to the small jar in which it sat overnight. Rust flakes off onto her hands as she twists the lid tight. It’s probably no longer airtight, and she doesn’t like the idea of the fungus growing in her clothing or sprouting between the plots in the blue field.

Wait, she says. "What do you mean, the others?"

Brother Risoven sets his fork down. There were two more in a similar state to our friend, a couple of weeks ago now. All torn to pieces. The constables brought them here, and I laid them to rest.

You didn’t mention that before, Isabel says.

Risoven’s owl eyes blink again. You did not ask.

Isabel picks up her teacup, now the same ambient temperature as the room, thinks better of it, and returns it to its saucer. Does Constable Mulhy know?

They were in other districts, says Risoven.

The answer, then, is almost certainly no. Each of Mondirra’s districts has its own constabulary, and as each one is in itself roughly the size of the small towns Isabel usually frequents, the city functions about as well as can be expected. She had been an apprentice the last time she was here, following her teacher from district to district, trying to locate the haunting that had sent the reanimated corpses of an Orchard District couple wandering the streets. The constables had been less than helpful then, losing track of the dead as soon as they crossed district boundaries. Then, the culprit had been nothing more than a sudden illness. Isabel has little faith that she can expect any more help with the matter of several murders.

She stands, gathering up the dishes. If I have time, I’ll find Mulhy and let him know. I’m heading to the temple to ask about— She stops, her throat constricting. She’s come to the other subject she has been avoiding. About what happened with the gentleman downstairs.

Ah, yes. A terrible business, says Risoven. I’ve known a number of Sentinels in my time, and I’ve never seen a ritual turn out quite like that.

Never? A holy man of his age, and the caretaker of the blue field, no less, where the unclaimed and unrecognizable are put to rest, and he’s never seen something like this before?

Did I do something terribly wrong?

Even as the thought appears, she dismisses it. She’s careful. Her teacher never let her be otherwise. But the alternative, that whatever happened to Mikhail Ranseberg is far outside both her experience and her control, might be worse.

I’ll go to the temple, she says aloud. It’s the second largest in Gallia, second only to the Sentinels’ headquarters in Vernais. Someone there will have the answers she seeks. She picks up her belt from the back of her chair and fastens it over her coat, knocking her sword against the leg of the table.

Risoven moves his lenses up his nose with two crooked fingers. Leave the dishes in the kitchen, then, Sister. I’ll wash up.

She navigates the narrow, creaking wooden steps down to the chapel, crossing the cramped nave to the hidden door to Risoven’s kitchen. Between the squat stove and the washing tub balanced on its side, there’s just enough room to stand. The sun warms the back door—it’s later than Isabel had thought. She leaves the stack of plates and cups on top of the stove and heads out through the back, the hinges complaining as they open and shut.

Mondirra’s southern gate opens into the edge of the Shell District. Even here, twenty minutes’ walk from the central plaza, constables swarm the shanties like watchful, pike-bearing termites. A beggar with a bandage around his head sits beside a leaning plaster wall, shaking a tin cup at the nearest watchman. The constable ignores him, squaring his shoulders and adjusting his grip on his weapon, and a stray beam of sunlight passes through a hole in the awning overhead and falls on the spiral patch on his vest.

A marble archway, so blackened with soot that only the gods could know its original color, divides the Shell District from the temples. Isabel’s boots leave muddy footprints as she crosses from the former’s overflowing gutters to the latter’s flagstone pavement. The roofs of the seven churches shine in sunlight, washed clean in the rain. Manicured shrubs grow from earthen squares fenced in with stone, alternating with shrines like tiny lighthouses that drip candle wax in shimmering rivulets. A pair of novices from the temple of Isra, in brown robes hemmed in green and white veils over their hair, sweep the wide, open street. Under their straw brooms, leaves and dust collect at the bases of trees and blow into the field of weather-worn gravestones surrounding the temple of Ondir.

At the top of the hill, toward the city center, the temples of Alcos and Isra sit facing one another as divine consorts should, their high, white domes glistening. Their children’s churches stand in two ranks below them, on opposite sides of the street. Ondir’s temple sits at the bottom, separate from the other six. The building is squat and rectangular, its dome a low hill and its columns plain, gray granite. The graveyard surrounds it on three sides: a field of stone and marble, expansive with age.

Everyone comes to Ondir, in the end. The temple itself is a reminder. Isabel pushes open the heavy oak doors and crosses the small foyer, where tessellating carved skulls emerge from walls of white stone and stare down at her with hollow eye sockets. She passes through an open doorway and finds herself under the dome, where the sarcophagi of long-dead knights form a half-circle against the walls, their stone effigies in peaceful repose. Most have carved swords over their chests. One holds a bell in one hand and a small book in the other.

Isabel tucks her hat under her arm and asks the gray-robed novice dusting the effigies for an audience with the high priest. The young man looks her up and down and scurries off, leaving his cleaning rag over the knight’s stone face. She picks it up, folds it into quarters, and places it by his feet instead.

Silence presses in as she walks down the center aisle toward the altar and chooses a bench near the front. Small, square windows at the top of the dome filter the bright morning sunlight into dimness. It reminds Isabel of a childhood spent polishing gravestones in Vernais, and learning figures and memorizing verses under the tutelage of grim-faced nuns. Ondir has little use for celebration and even less for preaching, and he has few hymns, reserved for the holiest of days or the most dire of catastrophes. His temples are predictable, somber, and quiet, just like death is supposed to be and just like it wasn’t for Mikhail Ranseberg.

The high priest, dressed in a long, black vestment with sharply pressed pleats, emerges from the hallway to Isabel’s left and sits down beside her. I’d heard there was a Sentinel in the area, he says, and his voice has a soft, distant quality, as though he’s just woken from sleep. Welcome, child. My name is Father Pereth. What can I do for you?

Isabel folds her hands in her lap, on top of her hat, and bows her head. Thank you for seeing me, Father. I’ve had something of a dilemma, and I hope you can help me.

He waits for her to continue. He’s perhaps fifty, young for such a prestigious posting. Silver streaks his black hair, and his pale blue eyes, so light they’re almost white, rest on the altar.

I was called here from Oranne last night, Isabel says. A man was murdered—his body had been dismembered and left in the Shell District. Brother Risoven at the chapel on the blue field asked me to call up the man’s spirit and see if he had witnessed his murderer. I cleared the room and drew the diagram, just as I’ve done dozens, hundreds of times, but this time…

Go on, says the high priest.

The man—he appeared, but he was not whole. He could not speak. There was a terrible shrieking sound, and flickering lights. I saw parts of a human figure in the flashes. Try as I might, I could not get him to manifest. It only stopped when I put out the candle. It was… She gropes for the right word, finds none, and settles on ...unnerving.

Pereth’s icy eyes fix on her, unblinking. "Do you mean to tell me that his soul was damaged, in some way?"

What? No. Of course not. Is he accusing her of inventing the entire thing, or is he suggesting she’s mad? He may as well have asked if the sky had turned to cotton wool or all the furniture in the chapel suddenly fell toward the ceiling. A soul isn’t made of physical matter. Nothing, not time or a weapon or unspeakable damage to the body, can do it harm.

Of course. Pereth’s black brows draw together, and an additional crease forms on his forehead. I must admit, I don’t have an explanation to offer you. This is most disturbing.

Isabel’s modest breakfast turns cold and heavy in her belly. She’s a journeyman Sentinel, only a few years out of her apprenticeship. Someone should be giving her orders, and if it’s not the high priest of the second-largest church of Ondir on the continent, then what is she supposed to do?

Who else knows about this? Pereth asks.

Brother Risoven, in the chapel, and Constable Mulhy. He was the one who found the body, says Isabel. And the other man—Berend Horst. He’s arranging the funeral.

Pereth nods, interlacing his long fingers over the breast of his cassock. I must ask your discretion in discussing this with anyone else, he says, at least until an explanation is available. There must not be any doubt in the soul’s journey to the embrace of Ondir. I don’t need to warn you of the consequences.

He doesn’t—she’s seen them. Improper cremation and interment, when people are unable or unwilling to consult Ondiran authorities, leads to fields of walking corpses bent on mindless destruction, hauntings that bring villages to their knees, and even a vampire and his thralls, hiding in Gallia’s southern mountains. If others were to end up like Mikhail, and her order were to be blamed, she doesn’t want to imagine the consequences. There already aren’t enough Sentinels to go around.

I understand, she says.

I will contemplate what you have told me, Father Pereth promises. Where are you staying, child?

In the chapel on the blue field.

He nods, and rises with one fluid motion. I will contact you should I discover anything. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

Isabel stands. Of course, Father.

Pereth glides away, back toward the side passage, but he turns at the edge of the bench. You may wish to consult our archives, Sentinel. I cannot say if you will find anything, but it might be worth a look. One long, pale finger points toward a door beside the altar, set into the stone wall.

At last, some clear instructions. Isabel bows and puts her hat back under her arm. Thank you, Father.

Compared to the extensive archives in Vernais, this library is a small one: a single, windowless room, with sagging shelves placed so close together that Isabel has to gather her skirts and squeeze between them. A damp smell thickens the air and scratches at her throat. The books are arranged by some arcane logic that places the Songs of the Seven beside Ormagh’s mathematical treatise on the structure of the hells, and the librarian, an ancient priest with a bent back and lenses placed on his brow above his squinting eyes, makes no move to assist her. He watches her from behind his lectern like a vulture in a tree.

If the living high priest can’t tell me what happened to Mikhail Ranseberg’s soul, are these dead ones going to be any more help? She’s read most of these volumes before. A few passages she can recite from memory. A soul might move around, or lose its way on its crossing to the world beyond without guidance from a cleric or Sentinel, or be sold in a bargain with a demon, if one believes the old stories. Nothing would explain what she saw in the embalming room.

A demon? The many-branched sigil painted on the Shell District wall flashes into her memory, and with it comes the scent of blood. This is the sort of ritual that features in those stories—blood-magic, flesh-magic, with emphasis on the gore and depravity and a cackling monster rising from the center of the circle at the end. There must be something here that could offer her some clue as to where the painter in the Shell District had gotten the inspiration.

She’s in luck: the archive maintains a copy of the Luminous Codex, lying flat on top of the shelf nearest the door. Judging by its weight, the manuscript is mostly complete. A rusty-edged water stain covers half the cover, and the musty smell grows stronger as she lifts it down. It must have gotten wet at some point in its long history, likely when it was smuggled over one border or another, out of sight of the Church, during the Inquisition when it was banned. She opens the cover, and a cloud of dust wafts up, clinging to her black coat. The lettering was once red, the illuminated capitals and garish illustrations lavishly colored, but now all the ink in the Codex’s pages is a uniform, faded brown.

Isabel props the book up on a shelf below eye level. Her fingers hover over the lines of text and turn the soft, worn pages by their edges.

The librarian’s eyes follow her hands. You’ll have to sign out for that one, he says, his voice paper-dry.

There it is—she turns another page, and the sigil she recognizes is under the thumb of her left hand, at the edge of a full-page diagram of a summoning circle. Essash-sthus, the Devourer, reads the heading.

The scribe must not have felt up to the challenge of drawing this particular demon. The diagram is the only illustration under this entry. A cramped, faded paragraph of text mentions teeth and eyes, and hundreds of hands, but not much else. Unusually for the Codex, the text cautions against any attempt to summon it. There is nothing the Summoner can offer that will appease the Devourer, it reads. This Demon desires only utter Destruction upon all the World. What good is the Sight granted by its Eyes, if there is nothing left to behold? Is it not better to remain blind?

Isabel holds up the book in both hands and pictures the diagram overlaid on the Shell District. Each sigil should line up with the wall of a shack or boarded-over shopfront, and the circle is a simple one, not impossible to paint on an uneven surface. A note at the bottom of the page, in a different hand, states that the circle should be inscribed in blood from one or more sacrificial victims.

She closes the book. The room is already cold, the thick stone walls keeping out the late-summer heat, but a chill falls over her, and she shivers.

Demons, such as this Essash-sthus, certainly exist. She wouldn’t be an agent of the Church of the Seven if she believed otherwise. She also believes that summoning spells like this one have never been attested to work, and the Codex itself is a fanciful work of fiction, a product of the superstitions of the past. No demon had been summoned in the Shell District; Isabel is confident she would know if one had. But, perhaps, someone had tried, and had murdered at least one man to do it. Some magic had been called forth, as well; enough to create an enormous colony of unidentified fungi where none had been before. This wasn’t a flight of cruel fancy, or a ruse to throw the constables off the trail. This was the product of deliberate planning and research.

She places the book back on the shelf above her head. Tucking her arms in, she squeezes out from between the shelves and goes to stand at the librarian’s desk.

I’ll sign for that book now, she says.

The librarian peers at her from under his unused lenses. He leafs through a stack of papers, one of many gathered around his arms, and hands her a sheet, a quill, and an inkpot.

She signs her name at the bottom of a column of signatures, along with her affiliation with the church of Ondir and the date: 29th of Isra’s Moon, 1156. Not many have sought out the Codex in recent history. The column is rather short. Professor Jauffre Arnaut, University of Mondirra. 1st of Mella’s Moon, 1103. Brother Symund Alswich, Church of Numit. 15th of First Frost, 1120. Sir Amos Courbeg, House Courbeg. 7th of First Frost, 1131. More recently, Arden Geray, University of Mondirra. 5th of Isra’s Moon, 1156. Lucian Warder, University of Mondirra. 14th of Isra’s Moon, 1156.

After more than twenty years, two scholars read the Luminous Codex in the last month—three, if Isabel counts herself. It must be the only copy in the city, if they came all the way here to read it. Did you meet these last two from the university? she asks the librarian. Geray and Warder?

He slides his lenses down his balding pate with ink-stained fingers. I meet everyone who comes in here.

Can you tell me what they were researching?

His eyes, twice magnified, flick up to Isabel and back down to the top of the desk. He pushes the lenses back up, where they balance atop his brow. Mr. Warder was researching Sentinels, oddly enough, he says. "He signed out for the 714 edition of the Account of the Black Delve last week. I think he said he was an engineer."

Isabel knows that title, though the edition she studied as an apprentice was only a few decades old. The original was penned during the time of the Inquisition, some six centuries ago, and the church in Vernais keeps it updated and its margins full of commentary. Why would a university engineer want an outdated, moldering text? And one from the church of Ondir’s shameful past, no less?

She opens her mouth to ask the librarian these questions, but his attention has fallen to the pages of a leather-bound ledger, and Isabel has the distinct impression that she’s faded from his awareness entirely. He’s like a ghost, following his patterns with little concern for the living.

I’ll be going to the university, then, she says with a thin smile. Thank you for your help.

If he hears her, he makes no sign of it. She leaves the archive, passing under the quiet dome and between the sleeping stone knights, and steps out into the sunlight. The sudden brightness stabs at her eyes, and she places her hat back on her head, drawing the brim down.

She climbs the Temple District hill and passes through another soot-blackened archway to the university. The high dome of the observatory, with its panes of green glass, shines like a massive emerald and casts a shimmering shadow, like the surface of a pond, onto the sharp-angled façade of the university’s hospital behind it. Across the wide thoroughfare, scattered with the first fallen yellow leaves, the school of engineering sits hunched over its small wooden doors, its marble stairs chipped and pitted and covered with a century’s worth of footprints.

Just inside, a panel of thin bronze plates engraved with the names of professors sits collecting dust on the wall. Black spaces remain where plates have fallen out or been removed, though three have been replaced with thick paper; the name Lucian Warder is inked onto the lowest card, along with Eckard Smith and the number 315.

Not Arden Geray, Isabel notes.

The narrow staircase at the back of the building smells of mildew, and a dark stain pushes through a thin layer of new plaster on the outer wall. Green-tinged light filters through a filthy window over the third-floor landing. A grandfather clock, missing its pendulum and both hands of its face, greets Isabel as she opens the door.

Room number 315 is the fifth of a long line of dark wooden doors on one side of the cramped hallway. Dim orange lamplight spills out from underneath. She raises a hand and knocks.

Come in, says a voice from the other side.

Isabel opens the door into a windowless room wallpapered in diagrams of gears and pendula. Another diagram lies over the solitary bookshelf at the back of the room, held up with two heavy volumes placed on top. A man with thinning gray hair, several days’ worth of stubble, and long, gnarled fingers like the branches of a bare tree sits behind an oaken desk. A mirrored lamp burns at his elbow. One hand darts over an abacus, while the other makes notes on a pencil drawing of several interlocking gears.

Lucian Warder? Isabel asks.

The man lifts one set of lenses from his spectacles and peers at her through the remaining set. He’s not here, he says, gesturing with a nod to a second, unoccupied desk against the wall to his right. Can I help you, Sentinel?

You must be Eckard Smith, then. At his wordless acknowledgement, she continues, I’m conducting an investigation, and I’d like to ask Mr. Warder some questions. Do you know where he is?

Smith sets down his pencil. I was wondering when you lot would come a-calling. You’re after the device, then, aren’t you?

His voice drips with disdain. It’s as though Isabel has walked into a theater in the middle of a play, with characters she doesn’t know speaking lines about a plot she can’t comprehend. The device? she echoes.

The Warder device. He smirks. Used to be the Smith-Warder device, but that was years ago.

Isabel’s eyes fall on Warder’s desk and its array of stacked books covering every inch of its surface. You worked on it together?

Smith gestures to the spindly chair opposite him. You’re young for a Sentinel. Some of your colleagues will remember us. These days, Warder’s been chasing his inane fancies of the nature of magical energy, and so on, but we used to work quite closely with your order.

Isabel  sits down and smoothes out her skirts, placing her hat in her lap. She puts on a blank face and nods, to indicate she’s listening.

Well, I shouldn’t be speaking ill of another member of the university, Smith continues without waiting for a reply, "especially one who was once my student. Yes, we did work on the device together, though since then, he’s taken the simple principles upon which it was designed and the simple purpose for which it was made, and tried to make some grand invention that will save the world from all manner of hauntings forever. He’s looking to replace you, Sentinel."

The blank mask slips as her mouth opens in surprise. What do you mean?

Smith picks up his pencil and stabs its point into the air between them. Originally, the device only sent a ghost away long enough for one of you to arrive. Now, Warder claims that he can gather and condense the ghostly energies present in the form of the poltergeist, apply a negative magnetic charge to the magical field, and disperse the spirit’s energies to the far corners of the universe. He holds out his hands in a gesture of innocence. That’s what he believes.

Heresy is Isabel’s first thought, but that’s not quite right. This is just lies, dressed in scientific words that have little to do with the matter at hand. A soul can’t be dispersed, and the connection between magnetism and magic is hypothetical, at best. A Sentinel banishes a ghost by invoking the gods and speaking to the spirit in words it cannot ignore. A mechanical device can’t possibly do the same. Has he… she begins, has he had any success with these theories?

Smith laughs, a sharp snort through his nose. Not in the last decade or so. It’s a waste of time and a waste of his talents, and the university is finally starting to agree. He does have his wealthy uncle to fund his further flights of fantasy, should the powers that be finally pull his funding.

But he was making some progress before? Isabel asks.

In the early days, we were something of a trio of vagabonds, the Warders and I. We’d chase the ghosts away and wait for the Sentinels to finish the job. It worked almost every time. Between the church and the grateful villagers, we’d make a modest commission. He waves a hand, brushing thoughts of the past out of the air. "For myself, I’ve moved on. I’m developing a faster printing press. That will have