The Power and the Glory

Book 2 Chapter VI: The Calm Before the Storm

Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labelled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human. -- Victoria Schwab, Vicious

The stone floor was abnormally cold. She could feel its chill through the soles of her boots. In front of her stood the coffin. She reached out and grasped the lid. For some reason it wasn't cold. It was so warm it almost felt like a living thing. She pulled and pulled at the lid. It slid open slowly. It almost seemed to move independently of her, opening further when she wasn't pulling it. At last it leaned against the wall. The body in the coffin stood motionless before her.

All the mud had disappeared from its clothes. They were back to their original blood red colour, even more vivid than she remembered. Its veil was more opaque than before. That was odd. Funeral veils were supposed to be transparent enough for you to see the person's face. A cold breeze whistled through the graveyard. It tugged at the edges of the veil.

The veil slipped off the corpse's head. It happened so quickly she hardly had time to realise it was happening at all. Her own face stared back at her.

Abihira jolted awake with a strangled yelp. For a minute she blinked up at her ceiling. Where was the corpse? Why was it so bright?

Gradually her mind woke up fully and she realised where she was. She was safe in her own bedroom. The corpse was safe inside the coffin. It was still early morning. The bell summoning everyone to breakfast hadn't sounded yet. It would have wakened her if it had.

Her sleep had been restless and far too short, full of the sort of dreams that made you reluctant to go back to sleep. Dreams of things with too many teeth, of being buried alive, of bodiless eyes staring at her out of graves. Her most recent dream hadn't even been the most disturbing of them all. She rubbed her eyes and stifled a yawn. No point in going back to sleep.

In a few hours Ilaran would report Haliran to her grandmother. In a few hours Haliran would reveal Abihira's necromancy to the entire court.

That thought made her sit up straight. Suddenly horror-struck, she looked around wildly for the clock. In Seroyawa there had always been a clock on her bedside table. She stared blankly at the space where it should be. Then her mind overtook her alarm and she remembered she was in Saoridhlém. Here her clock was on the writing desk on the other side of the room. A very inconvenient arrangement; she had to get out of bed and walk over to see what time it was. That was probably why it had been put there in the first place.

Abi blinked owlishly at the clock. Its numbers might as well have been an untranslated form of Hesnmor[1] for all she understood of them. After her disturbed sleep she was still so tired that her mind automatically went to the Seroyawan time divisions she was more familiar with. It took her several minutes to decipher the numbers and convert them into something she recognised.

It was almost eight o'clock. (Ateyan-uhimeru,[2] her mind substituted.) No wonder she wasn't fully awake yet. She hadn't gone to bed until roge-tsukawen. (After four o'clock, she corrected herself.)

The breakfast bell would ring at half eight. Politicians and petitioners wouldn't start to gather in the Silver Palace until eleven at the earliest. Ilaran had never actually told Abi or Irímé when he intended to go to the empress. The most likely time was after dinner. Now, should she attend court today or not? Abi weighed up the pros and cons. In the face of this new problem she completely forgot she was still in her nightclothes, still standing in front of the clock, and still apparently studying it with an expression of deepest concentration.