He whispered words so quickly that I could hardly catch more than hisses of his breath. Each time Sariel let out another string of incantations, the flames surged up, forming a rolling mass of blazing fire.
I couldn't help but glance at Harper. He sat still, watching Sariel with his fingers steepled and pressed against his lips.
"Lucifer, light bearer, lord of wisdom." Sariel came to a stop only a few steps in front of me. He raised his arms, then slashed the long talons of his left hand across the open palm of his right hand. A deep furrow of blood gushed up. Sariel thrust his bleeding palm into the fire. A scent of searing camphor choked the air.
"Show me this woman," he hissed as the tongue of fire surged up over his hand. "My will is greater than even your own." Sariel grasped a single flame and lifted it up above the rest.
"Show me," he commanded.
Suddenly the candles dimmed to mere sparks. The single flame in Sariel's hand leapt up to a blinding white heat. It twisted and rolled, growing larger and brighter. Slowly it formed the soft curves of a woman. Smoke rolled and wound over her, adding shadows and dark hollows to her luminous flesh. She floated above Sariel's outstretched arm, gazing out at the empty corner of the room.
"Joan." Harper came to his feet and stepped up to the edge of the table.
As the woman turned I studied her face. She was beautiful. Her dark eyes were wide and luminous. Her black hair had been pulled down and hung in long curls around her torn clothes. Her mouth moved, but only a curl of white smoke poured out. She looked frightened.
"Is she alive?" Harper demanded.
Sariel said nothing. His eyes were clenched shut as he concentrated. Tremors of strain passed through his arm. Slowly he nodded his head in answer to Harper.
"Where is she?" Harper asked.
"There's a man...a Prodigal..." Sariel pushed the words out between tight gasps of air. "He's dead...like the others...There's blood and broken glass everywhere...Someone else..."
Suddenly I felt the air change. An acrid bitter scent, like scorched limes, burst through the air. I knew the smell. It was demonic fury. At the same moment a ripple of darkness passed through the image of Harper's sister. Something black burst from inside her and exploded outward.
I lunged forward, throwing my body over Sariel's. He crumpled under me as I felt dozens of tiny blades slash through the back of my coat and shirt. The razor edges knocked me forward as they drove deep through my coat and skin. I stumbled down to my knees. I smelled my own flesh searing. A breathless shout of agony escaped me. Fires burst up along the edges of my torn coat.
Then suddenly a stinging wetness splashed across my back. The horrific burning stopped. I gasped for a breath and tasted something metallic. Liquid poured down my back, mixing with my blood. In a circle around me, glittering black slivers fizzed and melted into the pool of liquid.
"Are you all right?" Harper knelt down beside me.
"What did you do?" I asked, still too shocked to guess. From the stinging and the metallic smell, I should have known.
"Silver-water," Harper said. "I always carry a few vials with me, in case things get ugly. I'm sorry if it stung you, but I thought that would be better than what seemed to be happening."
"Yes, I think so," I said.
Beneath me, Sariel opened his eyes and swallowed slowly. He coughed and I moved aside so he could sit up. He pulled himself up-right and then leaned back against the wall. For several minutes he simply stared up at the ceiling and took in slow steady breaths.
"I believe," Sariel said at last, "that we have come to the end of this line of questioning."
"What about Joan?" Harper asked.
"If you had any sense at all, you'd let her go." Sariel clenched his burned, bleeding hand to his chest. "Didn't you see what just happened?"
"But she is alive," Harper demanded.
"Yes, for what that's worth. You have no idea of the kind of fury that gives rise to an attack like that one," Sariel said.
"Do you know where she is?" Harper pressed.
"No." Sariel shook his head. "But if you plan on pursuing this any further, I'd ask that you leave me out of the matter. I think that more than enough Prodigals have died for you and your sister."
Harper frowned. Then he stood and straightened his coat.
"Thank you for your time, Mr. Sariel," he said. Harper walked to the door and then glanced back at me.
I could hardly think for the biting pain that lanced across my back. I started to stand but Sariel caught my hand. His touch caught my attention, for a moment overwhelming even my pain. His fingers were warm and gentle. I should have found comfort in that, but I couldn't.
"I forgave you years ago," he whispered.
"I know." I stood. "That makes it all the worse, really."
Sariel turned away from me. He wouldn't beg. I wouldn't have wanted him to.
I left with Harper.
Chapter Six
Ophorium
The deep cuts in my back and the bubbling corrosion of the silver-water pooled into a single unyielding pain. I could not disentangle them. I could not separate the sharp stings of my sliced skin from the memories of older wounds. Each aspect of my pain touched another and bled into it until they formed a seamless fabric that enfolded me.
I didn't accept Harper's offer to clean me up. I turned him away at my door and stumbled up the stairs to my rooms in a daze. On the walk back from Hells Below, I had hardly seen or heard Harper. I recalled hazily that he had wiped away the foaming mass of blood that dribbled down my back. The rest of the world was lost to me.
My own hurt wound around me, weaving past into present. The jagged memories that I had carefully cut out of my thoughts suddenly poured their fury into my torn flesh. Inside my rooms I dropped to my knees and pressed my face hard into the cool wood of the floor. My muscles were shaking too much to let me stand, but I couldn't bear to press my back into any of my chairs or pillows. I knelt on the floor as time and memories bled into each other.
My suffering at the hands of the Inquisition had been far worse than this. But then, I had not known it could break me. I had believed in my own courage and my will. I had thought I was a strong man, incapable of betrayal. Then the prayer engines had begun their steady slicing into my flesh. Silver-water had been ignited in the bleeding furrows, searing each holy letter into my skin. Thousands of tiny white scars still traced the flesh of my arms, back, chest, and groin. They were marks of my cowardice, impressed into me like delicate watermarks.
I had thought that I was stronger than pain. Even stretched on the table, bleeding and burning, I had believed that I would never utter Sariel's name. But I had not known myself. I had not understood the Inquisition either, but they had certainly known me. They dealt in my kind. Thousands of us had come through their doors and been worked through like bank sums. I was no new mystery to the Inquisition; they simply slipped me into their mechanisms and opened me up like an oyster.
The prayer engines' needles had not always been packed with silver-water. Between days of burning agony they had given me sweet stinging pleasure. They had traced my body with rushes of ophorium and let me learn how deeply I loved its respite. In the end they hadn't needed to threaten me with pain; they had simply withheld my pleasure. I had given them Sariel's name.