Avi Marie's Arc

Chapter 14 of 30

Her superior stood alone in the courtyard. The plate proved he ordered the blinding. But it did not say why her mortal had to die. Avi Marie held the metal up. "The order is here. The reason isn't. A man doesn't die for nothing. Tell me what he was." Her superior only watched her. His silence had been his weapon once. Now it hid the last thing she needed. She turned to the others. "He won't speak. There has to be another record." Petra Lund stepped out from the gate arch. She had burned files for seven years to guard this man's name, then turned and handed Avi Marie the proof instead. She held a thin ledger against her charcoal suit. "You went for the plate," she said. "I went for this. His private book. He wrote down every soul he cleared." Avi Marie took it. The mortal's name sat on one line, in her superior's hand. Beside it, three words. Witness to transfer. "Transfer of what?" Avi Marie asked. Azrael moved closer. He dressed in white, but nothing in him was soft. He had watched someone he loved hollowed out by the stolen object. He read over her shoulder and went still. "The object," he said. "The one that shifts power among us. Your mortal saw it change hands." Malphas planted his hooves on the stone. His red eyes fixed on the ledger. "A witness," he said. "So they closed his mouth." He looked at Avi Marie. "And blinded the one who could name the night." Avi Marie understood then. The mortal had not died for anything he did. He died because he saw. And she was cut blind so no angel could testify to it. Her chest went tight and hot. Her superior spoke at last. "You have it now. It changes nothing. The ones I served still sit above you." Shadowmaw Grim slid across the courtyard, teeth long and white. He had left his post to stand with her. He lifted his head toward the man and breathed in. "He's more afraid than he sounds," the hound said. "Not of you. Of them." Avi Marie closed the ledger. "Then he answers to them, and so will I." She looked at her superior. "You watched an innocent man die to hide a theft among angels. I have the order and the reason both now." Above the black towers, the clouds broke. A ragged opening hung in the sky, blue and calm, its edges torn like broken ground. Through it lay the world above, where the ones her superior served still ruled. She had come for the reason her mortal died. She held it now in one thin book. But the hand that signed the order was not the hand that gave it. The trail led up through that rift, past this castle, to angels she had never seen. Avi Marie tucked the ledger away and turned her horse toward the broken sky.