Dead Man's Shadow, Chapter 4

Felix Weiss led Elena out of the hidden workshop, which she discovered was somewhere beneath the church that he served in, accessible through a secret door in his office wall. He left her in the same hallway that he had taken her from, then returned to his office to prepare to meet his contacts. While he was doing so, Elena returned to the chapel, finding Quin now alone in the pews that were now lit only by the light of candles after the setting of the sun. He looked very agitated, but he immediately relaxed when he saw her. She slid into the pew beside him, and he bent his head close so that he could address her in an angry whisper.
“Where have you been? I’ve been worried!”
“I’m fine,” Elena assured him. “I just got a bit tied up.” She paused for a moment, then grinned to herself. “Anyway, I’m going to have to ask you for another favor.”
Now Quin raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”
“I need you to get this,” here she tapped her hand on the bag that contained the Syrneth box, “back to Frida at the dig site.”
“Where are you going to be?”
Elena glanced back at the side door that led to Felix’s office. The man himself was just coming through it, wearing a less-ornate version of the priest robes he had been wearing previously. “I’m going to go help him out.”
Quin followed her gaze, then frowned. “Him? Really?” He glanced back at Elena. “You’re okay, right? You’re not in danger, are you?”
“No. Well, no more than I am anywhere else in Castille.” She glanced around the church before continuing. “He’s a friend of Nic’s. The guide who took us through the Walder.”
“Oh.” Once again, Quin seemed to relax a bit. “That makes sense. Yeah, I can make sure that Frida gets this.” He shifted the bag onto his shoulder. “The guards stopped patrolling a few minutes ago. I think they gave up, but I’ll still be careful. Also, watch your back.”
Elena nodded. “I will. Good luck.”
“And to you.” Quin and Elena stood, and he exited the church with a quick glance around the street. As he left, Felix walked up beside Elena.
“Should I ask what’s so important about that bag?” he asked.
“Trust me, you don’t want to know. You’ve got enough problems with the Inquisition as it is.”
Felix nodded without commenting further. He gestured forward and began to walk. Elena fell into step beside him. As they left the church, Elena asked him where they were going.
“We are going to the best place to obtain information,” Felix told her.
“A library?” Elena guessed.
“A bookstore.” Felix once again fell silent. Elena waited to see if he was going to say anything else, but he seemed to be content to walk in silence. She tried to content herself with watching around them for any sign of either Inquisitors or overly-observant guards, but she was quickly forced to give up the task. Despite the sun having now set, the street was still crowded with people moving about their business. Enough light was left in the air that they would be able to continue their errands for perhaps an hour or so.
Elena and her companion attracted a fair bit of attention from the others on the streets. Passersby greeted Felix warmly, and he returned the greetings. Those same passersby gave Elena odd looks, often glancing between her and Felix with curious expressions. After a few minutes of such looks, Elena determined that most of the people they were passing were merely greeting a Vatacine priest, and were probably wondering what he was doing with an Avalon woman near sunset.
After about three streets of virtual silence from Felix, Elena decided she couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “How do you know Nic?” she asked.
“I met him a long time ago,” Felix said offhandedly. “In a village in the south of Eisen.”
When he did not elaborate, Elena tried speaking again. “He didn’t mention anything about it.” Felix’s only reply was a kind of grunt, and Elena pursed her lips in irritation. “Did you meet him before or after Anna?”
Now Felix was silent for around two dozen steps. Elena was just about to try asking him something else when he spoke. “After. Not long after, actually. He was still in a lot of pain then.”
“I think he still is,” Elena commented.
“Not even close to the same level. He has found a purpose since then. An outlet for his pain. Hunting monsters.”
“Helping people.”
Felix nodded. “He is an enigma in a lot of ways: a man driven by revenge into altruism. I think that contradiction was what made me notice him in the first place.” Felix fell silent again, but this time he resumed speaking without prompting from Elena. “I think that village still remembers him for what he did. And, honestly, it was impressive. Tell me, in your experiences in Eisen, did you ever encounter a werwolf?”
“I can’t say that I did. Nic mentioned them occasionally. I gather that they’re dangerous.”
“Extremely. It is rare for anyone to defeat one. He killed two, and those were the first Horrors he ever killed. Well, the second, I suppose.” He trailed off, a grimace on his face. Elena felt her own expression matching his as she thought back to Nic’s story of having to kill the thing that had once been his fiancée. “Anyway,” Felix went on, “the poor fool needed some help learning how to fight.”
“And you gave it to him?” Elena blinked in surprise. “Where did a Vatacine priest learn how to fight the monsters in Eisen?”
“I wasn’t always a priest,” Felix said mildly.
When he trailed off again, Elena asked the question that he had stopped short of answering. “Where did you learn to fight, then?”
“I am old enough to remember the War of the Cross better than most.” Felix’s tone clearly signaled that Elena should press no further. The War of the Cross had ended nearly a decade before she was born, but the scars from it still lingered to this day. Her own family had experienced problems with the Castillian Armada during that time, a story that her father had often told her with barely-repressed anger and lingering hostility.
Once again, Elena lapsed into silence. Luckily, she did not have long to walk in silence this time. It was only about another two minutes before Felix came to a halt in front of a small shop. The sign over the door declared it to be Valeri’s Books, and Elena could see rows of shelves through the windows on the front. Despite being apparently full, and with the shops on either side of it being open, the bookstore was dark and silent. A large, official-looking notice was nailed to the door. The two of them moved closer and got a good look at the paper.
“’Notice’,” Elena read. “‘The owner of this property has been taken in for questioning regarding the movements of heretical documents and persons suspected of the same.’”
“Not good,” Felix muttered. “The Inquisition got to him.”
“What do we do now?”
In answer, Felix turned and walked around the side of the shop. Elena followed him to the rear of the building, where he pulled a small metal key out of a fold in his robes and inserted it into the back door. When he saw Elena looking at the key in curiosity, he grinned. “For emergencies.”
Elena nodded as he unlocked the door and walked inside. She followed him in, and he closed and relocked the door behind them. She took a few steps into the shop, glancing through the rows of silent shelves. The books seemed to somehow muffle all sounds in the area, making the shop seem more ominously quiet than it should have been. Everything seemed to be in order.
“Something feels wrong about this,” Elena said. “I’m no expert, but don’t Inquisition raids usually result in deaths and burnings?”
Felix nodded. “They do. If they had solid evidence that these books contained messages for the Invisible College, they would have burned them. And they would probably have burned Dionís with them.”
Elena did not know a lot about the Invisible College; her only dealings with the College up to this point had been indirect, mostly via the Explorer’s Society. She did know that the secret society valued information of all types, which put them at odds with the Inquisition in Castille. Nearly all of the Inquisition raids that she knew about were directly caused by their search for College safehouses and the knowledge that they contained.
“Do these books have messages in them?” Elena asked.
“Some of them.” Felix began walking down one of the rows. “If the Inquisition suspected Dionís was connected to the College but didn’t have evidence, they might have captured him for interrogation. Once they have solid evidence, they would then kill him and return for the books.”
“Huh.” Once again, Elena allowed herself to fall silent. Their entire conversation had taken place at about the volume of a whisper, but even that felt like it was too loud in the oppressive silence of the shop. She continued walking down the row of shelves, glancing around the books, and then came to a halt. She sniffed the air, then turned to Felix. “Do you smell that?” she hissed at him. He paused, checking the air himself, then nodded.
“Oil lamp,” he whispered. He said nothing more, instead moving down the row with a catlike grace that completely belied his priestly image. It was slightly hard to tell under his robes, but it looked like his muscles had tensed up, his whole posture ready for an attack.
What was he before becoming a priest? Elena wondered. She fell into step just behind him, her hand closing around the handle of her knife as she did. She and Felix reached the end of the row and quickly ducked around it.
Felix darted forward, directly at the figure standing on the next row over. The woman there let out a terrified squeak and shied back. She was carrying a closed oil lamp in one hand, the obvious source of the smell that had given her away. She clutched her other hand to her chest and uttered a prayer in Castillian.
Felix came to a halt a few feet away from her. “Joana?” he asked, and the woman gasped.
“Father Weiss? Is that you? Truly?”
“It’s me.” Felix seemed to be relaxing, so Elena covertly returned her knife to its place of concealment, hoping that the woman had not noticed it. She had no idea who the woman was, but it was obvious that Felix recognized her.
“Oh, sweet Theus!” The woman seemed to deflate a bit. “I thought that the Inquisition had returned!” She let out a breathy laugh that Elena identified as more of a release of nervous energy than any attempt at humor.
“Joana, what happened here?” Felix asked. “Where is Dionís?”
“They came for Mr. Valeri last night! They must have found something out about him!” She opened the oil lamp just a crack, allowing some of its light to spill into the room. “They were looking for… for the…” Her eyes flicked towards Elena, and she trailed off, looking uncertain.
Noticing her gaze, Felix smiled faintly. He waved a hand dismissively towards Elena. “Don’t worry about her. That’s just my niece, Elena. She’s the daughter of a sister who shamed the family by running off to marry an Avalon. She knows about this place and what we do here. Elena, this is Joana Trabal, Valeri’s assistant.”
Elena forced a smile onto her face while she resisted the urge to kick Felix for the casual insult his lie contained. She waved cheerily at Joana. “Hiya!” she said, allowing more of her Avalon accent to peek into her Castillian than she normally did, hoping to put the other woman more at ease with Felix’s explanation.
The combined ruse seemed to work, as Joana relaxed further. “They were looking for the messages Mr. Valeri keeps in the books. I came back here to try and save the ones that I know about.” She shuffled her feet nervously. “I don’t know how many he actually had here.”
“Dionís was really good at passing messages covertly,” Felix told Elena. “A member only had to come here and pick up a book from him. Tucked somewhere in the pages was a message from other members of the Invisible College. They could sell a book to him and pass a message along in the same way.”
Elena nodded her understanding. The Invisible College’s communication network was legendary in Théah; seeing even this small piece of it was impressive. She also knew that it was almost unheard of for an outsider to be shown any of these things. Elena wondered if she was being given this window into the College’s workings because Felix trusted her or if it was just a necessity in the moment.
“The Inquisition came last night,” Joana explained. “I had finished my shift, but forgot to take a book home with me that I was planning to read. I came back, and I saw Inquisitors in the shop. They had tied Mr. Valeri up and were dragging him away. I hid while they left. I thought they were going to burn the shop, but all they did was nail a paper to the door.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Father Weiss, what am I going to do now? I’ve been scared of anyone coming near me all day! If the Inquisition finds out that I am part of the College, they will kill me without a thought! And even if Mr. Valeri is able to keep my involvement from them, I can’t come back and work here! What am I going to do?” She looked like she wanted to bury her head in her hands, but couldn’t because of the oil lamp. Instead, she bit one of the fingers on her free hand as the tears began to leak out of her eyes.
Felix took a step forward and laid a hand on Joana’s shoulder. “It will be okay,” he said. “I am going to do everything that I can in order to make this right.” Elena was surprised at the depth of conviction in his voice. It was the most non-angry passion that she had ever heard from him. “Let’s work together. We should be able to find most of the messages that way. I will make sure that they find their way to the rest of the College.”
Joana nodded, visibly trying to collect herself. Felix turned to Elena. “Watch for anyone else approaching.” When Elena agreed, he turned his attention back to the books and the precious knowledge they contained.