“Confess?” she asked, “But you’re just a stand in deacon. We’d need a priest or—”
“Just a moment ago you claimed that I know nothing about you. This is true; the only thing a man knows less than his fellows is himself. But by the same spirit, you know nothing about me either. I pray that you’ll forgive me. I have not been honest with you or the township. My name is David, pastor and missionary of the parish of Babylon—the former parish.” And so he told her of the second purge, of the great city burning, and the separation from his son for whom now he searched in hiding under the nose of the selfsame church that stole everything from him. “I brought it upon myself,” he confessed of war crimes from an earlier life. As a soldier, he’d served her father during the Purge. These were the first details Leonhardt had ever heard of her father’s exploits. The pastor’s words enraptured her, every detail a splash of turpentine confirming Trey’s skepticism, dissolving the glory of her childhood legend and recoloring the canvas with images of black-glassed skeletons, ash and soot, desperate threats, cunning, and subterfuge.
By the end, she could only stare at him, stunned yet aware of their barter. He had given his story, or at least part of one. The meanderings, hesitations and thousand-mountain stare at the end of his tale—she could sense he was hiding something—and so when the time came for Jael to share herself, she trusted him in equal amount: running from the fight at her father’s house, the night in the tower, the false vigil, the bloodbath at the pagan village, the arrest of Corvin and the death of Vaufnar, Blackheart’s head rolling on the dirt, broken promises—she recounted this series of murder and misfortune, stopping short before the first. Her feelings toward her mother were still reeling between love, self-loathing, and animus-rage. Had Gavin been alive, she might have braved giving form to her turmoil, but she would not face it in front of this stranger. Nonetheless, this man now possessed power over her. And I over him, do not forget.
“So, what now?” she asked.
David blew out what was left of the candle, turned and started for the stairs. “Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll take you back myself.” Then he paused upon reaching the bottom step. With a tone of relief and welcome exhaustion, “We’ll confess and finally make atonement.”
†
There was darkness and sleep, forgotten dreams and early dawn. Jael and David broke their fast on bread warmed in Gavin’s hearth, cleaned and cloaked themselves, then shared a horse for the Leonhardt farmhouse. The snow had melted in the week she was gone, dissolved by spring mourning the death left in the passing of winter. Her tears had turned the road to mud. Easy for a cart to get stuck in, Jael mused, trying to lighten the tightness crushing inside her chest. They were nearly at the farm. Leonhardt could see the house, a brown blotch in a sea of brown, so saturated had the ground become from rain and snowmelt. Field work would be impossible until the soil dried out. Little chance she find Zach hanging around, though her father and mother would most certainly be home, likely bundled around the hearth in the kitchen. Strange, then, that no smoke rose from the chimney. She blinked and winced a few times as they trotted onto to the property, making sure she hadn’t missed any wisps of gray hidden in the overcast sky.
David halted their hackney at the gate to the stable. Sodden clops and whinnies sounded from inside, three horses at least. Three. It meant they’d found her stolen courser that she’d left at the edge of town, that they’d brought it back, bringing the captain with them, and that he had stayed. Trey had waited for her.
Leonhardt leapt off the horse into the mud below, splashing loud as the snapping jaws of a brackdragon. She asked David if he would wait in the stable until she called; she wanted to confront them on her own.
“Something has changed,” he said, grinning, his eyes soft again.
Jael wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a question, but she replied regardless, “I realized just now that you were right. God doesn’t punish us. We punish ourselves, and we punish one another. If we could just forgive ourselves and let others forgive us too, then maybe our sins wouldn’t be as bad as we believe. And maybe,” she started as new feelings became language, “we could live in penance and actually deserve it. Like you, in search for your son. I thought it over last night. And this morning. Even if they’d take me back, I don’t believe my life was ever meant for the Cross. So after this—I figured you won’t be staying in Herbstfield, that you’d go on looking for your son—so I thought that maybe I could go with you, to help you find Adam.”
“‘Enough from the day are our troubles,’” the pastor quoted, still smiling as he led their horse into the stable, leaving Leonhardt to go on her own. She approached the kitchen door with her insides tied in knots. Her heart fluttered, pounded, and lay flat, all at once weak kneed and rigid as she stood before the doorway. Still, no signs of smoke from the chimney nor of lantern light, though inside she could hear the clamber of movement. Feet on the floor, closing in on the doorway.
“Father?” Jael’s breath hung in the air the faintest
