her. Do you want to see her?”
“Yes. I want to understand why she has this hold over you.”
She doesn’t believe me at all. She thinks I’m delusional. She wants to bring this to a head, to have a final fight, to force me back into being the person I was when we first met. Lorenzo glanced around the quiet alleyway for some sign, some inspiration, some help. There was none, and he stammered, “I’ve tried to tell you. She has no hold on me, not in the way that you mean. She’s just showed me the story of her life, images and feelings, her memories. And it’s made me see my own life in a very different way, a way I’m not proud of.”
Qhora started to object but he plowed on, the words tumbling out almost faster than he could think of them. “Ariel lived a pure life, the life of a nun devoted to charity and compassion. She fed the hungry, clothed the poor, tended the sick, and ministered to thieves and killers. She lived without fear, without sin, without doubt. She walked the righteous path. She did all the things the priests tell us to do but no one actually does. Ariel has shown me that holiness and purity aren’t just words. They’re real. And I am so far from them, so far below them. And it wasn’t just her charitable works. She wrote sermons and letters and hymns. She taught children to read. She studied the heavens themselves with some sort of telescope given to her by the king himself. One night she saw a falling star and she mapped where it was and led an expedition to find it. The skyfire stone, she called it. She never found it, but the point is that she tried. She did all these things for other people, all these selfless and noble things, all in the name of God, and what have I done with my life? What? Killed men? Taught other men to kill men?”
There was pain in Qhora’s eyes, but there was iron there too as she said, “Take me with you. Let me meet her.”
If Ariel had been a living woman, Lorenzo would have feared for her safety as he heard the hard resolve in the princess’s voice. He swallowed and asked, “Why?”
Qhora took his hand. Her skin was rough and dry, but warm. She said, “You are the finest man I have ever met. Brave and noble, dedicated and loyal, skilled and strong. But if that isn’t enough for you anymore, if this ghost has given you a reason to turn your back on everything you once cared about, then I want to meet her. If Ariel is so important to you, then she is important to me as well, my love. It is past time that I met her.”
“Here? Now?”
“Here. Now.”
He thought there was probably more to say at that moment before they went any farther, but he didn’t want to fight and a part of him really did want Qhora to see Ariel, to put the two of them together face to face, especially if it meant he would no longer be standing directly between their competing needs, if only for a moment or two. So he nodded and led the way down the street.
They passed dozens of men and women, most carrying baskets of food or laundry, and some leading mules laden with more of the same. Servants filtered quietly in and out of the rear doors of the proud houses on the right while elderly couples lingered on the dusty stoops of the old rowhouses on the left. Lorenzo felt their eyes on him, on his clothes, on his pale skin. He would have hurried past them all, but Qhora’s short legs kept him plodding along far slower than he would have liked.
After a quarter hour of crossing side streets and studying Mazigh street signs, they found the butcher’s shop. The butcher was not very busy and when his last customer had been served he listened to Lorenzo’s request with a confused frown twisting the whole bottom half of his face down. But he shrugged and pointed them down a short hall and then down a spiral stair to a heavy door. The metal handle on the door was cold, so cold it stung Lorenzo’s bare fingers.
Inside they found a storage room ten feet wide and twenty feet deep. The walls glistened black and silver where the blocks of ice had been stacked floor to ceiling and the moment they stepped inside their breath curled and floated in a pale vapor around their lips. A dozen huge carcasses hung from hooks in the ceiling and the racks along the walls held a variety of sport fish and exotic game birds from countries far to the east and south. Lorenzo thought he recognized a feather here or a fin there, but no names came to mind.
There was nowhere to sit except the stone floor, which was stained over and over again with the bits of flesh and blood that had fallen from the meat. Lorenzo led Qhora to the back corner where there was some space between the hanging carcasses and the wall. And they stood there.
The cold was invigorating. It stung his lips and wind pipe and lungs. It sharpened his vision even as it slowed his pulse. A thousand fragments of childhood memories crashed against his waking mind: a toy dropped in the snow, sledge tracks by the river, icicles on the cathedral roof, snowflakes on his gloves and sleeves, sliding down a hill, and the warm embrace of the fire when he came back inside the house.
Lorenzo exhaled slowly, focusing on the spiraling wisps of vapor under his nose. He knew they wouldn’t be able to stay long down here. Qhora had buried her hands in her armpits and was pressing her lips together tightly, trying not shiver.
He closed his eyes and turned his thoughts to the divine, to the existence and purpose of the soul, to the meaning of righteousness, to sacrifice, to duty, to balance and purpose and purity and every other high-minded word he had ever heard an entire sermon about.
“Enzo?” Qhora’s whisper shuddered through her trembling lips.
He opened his eyes.
Dona Ariella Espinoza de Cordoba stood beside them. The ghost was as insubstantial as smoke, yet every detail of her serene face and centuries-old dress was sharp and distinct. She appeared, as always, a plain-faced woman of middle age, short but straight-backed, with thin humorless lips but wide smiling eyes. It was a face that could comfort even as it disapproved. Lorenzo glanced from the dead nun to the living woman beside him.
Qhora studied the ghost impassively without a trace of fear of surprise on her face. “Hello, Sister Ariel. It’s very nice to meet you.” If her voice wavered, it was only a tremor from the cold of the meat locker.
“Hello, Lady Qhora. Hello, Lorenzo.” The ghost’s whisper cut the air like a razor.
“Sister.” Lorenzo bowed his head.
“You’ve chosen a strange place to pray.” A hint of a smile played at the corner of the dead nun’s mouth as her gaze swept the room and its contents. “But strange times may call for strange places, I suppose. You looked troubled, Lorenzo. You think we’re going to have a fight, don’t you? Lady Qhora and I?”
Lorenzo shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to say. That’s why I came here today. I had to see you, to ask your guidance again.”
“Oh, you poor boy. There’s nothing I could say that I haven’t already said a dozen times before.”
“I just…I just feel so lost. So torn.” He swallowed and stole a look at Qhora. “I know I have to give up so many worldly things to follow in your footsteps, but my heart doesn’t want to. I don’t want to live without Qhora. And I don’t know how to live except by fencing. It’s all I know, all I’m good at. I know I’m just being afraid and selfish and weak, but…”
“Hush, Lorenzo.” Ariel turned to Qhora. “My Lady, I’m sorry it has taken so long for us to meet, but circumstances do not allow me to come and go as I once did.”
“I suppose not,” Qhora said. A shiver ran through her and she recrossed her arms. “I really didn’t think I would see…you. A ghost, I mean.”
“I know you didn’t. But Lorenzo is as sane as everyone else in our country. The souls of the dead may only be seen in the deep cold and only by a cold light. Even then, the soul must come and make itself seen, and even then, the witness must be willing to see it. I imagine that ghosts are seen throughout the northern world, but only where the people have an understanding of the afterlife.” Ariel clasped her silvery hands in front of her. “But I don’t want to keep you two down here in this place any longer than needs be. Lorenzo?”
“Yes, Sister?”
“I will say this as plainly as I can.” The serious little line of her mouth softened with the appearance of lips, and her eyes suddenly looked quite old and tired. “I was not the paragon of virtue that you think I was. I performed good works and I served the church as I was instructed, but always with fear and doubt. I respected the Mother’s commandments to preserve life, but as a nun I never created any life myself. In fact, I never really cared for children. So much noise, so much dirt, so much worry. I respected the Son’s commandments to show compassion and mercy, but as a nun I was almost as penniless and lonely as the beggars I cared for. It took little effort to pity them as I pitied myself. But worst of all, I did not respect the Father’s commandments to observe the law and seek justice. I sheltered all manners of criminals, knowing full well what they were, and I sent the police away. I think I was too afraid of the criminals. It was just easier to look the other way, to not get involved. I sacrificed justice to keep my house quiet. I chose the easy road.”
