Avi Marie's Arc

Chapter 24 of 30

The masters led Avi Marie up the wide steps and through the cathedral doors. Petra walked at her right, ledger against her chest. Azrael came at her left, his white robe torn. The doors closed behind them. Inside, the light was cold and even. A row of robed figures waited on a raised floor. These were the ones above the ones below. Avi Marie needed a crack among them, one master she could turn against the rest. She did not know which. The robed figures did not speak. They watched her the way a wall watches. Avi Marie studied their hands, their stances, anything. They stood too alike. Her power was gone at this height. She had no way to press them. "They agree on everything," Azrael said, low. "That's the problem. Break the agreement." He cut off there. Petra leaned close. "Read the room, not the faces." She opened the ledger. "One name in here isn't like the others." Avi Marie remembered the ledger held more than the crime. It held the accounts. Who received the power-shifting stone, and who lost by it. She took the book from Petra and turned pages until she found the transfer. One master's seal sat beside a loss, not a gain. The stone had moved power away from him. She raised the ledger toward the raised floor. "You signed for the trade," she said. Her voice carried in the cold hall. "But you did not gain. The stone took from you and gave to them." She pointed at the figure with the marked seal. "They killed a mortal and blinded me to keep that trade hidden. From the whole realm. From you." The marked figure turned his head. It was the first motion any of them made. The others stayed still. That stillness told her she was right. "She lies," the lead master said. "The seal is his," Petra said. "The gain is theirs. Count it yourself." The marked figure stepped forward off the raised floor. He held out his hand for the ledger. The lead master moved to block him. For one breath the two masters stood chest to chest, and the row behind them broke its line. "You let them empty me," the marked figure said to the lead master. His voice shook. "To lift your own." The agreement was gone. Avi Marie had found her crack. "Then help me," she said to him. "Say what was traded. Say why my mortal died. Say it where they can all hear." The marked master looked at the ledger, then at the lead master's face. He took the book from her hands. "Bring the others," he said to the servants at the walls. "Every window that watched outside. Let them hear the account read." The lead master reached for him and stopped. Too many eyes now. One master had turned. But the turned master held the ledger, and Avi Marie's proof was no longer in her hands.