The demon died wrestling with the brooch, and its drowned corpse floated to the surface of the canal. The Merchant Council skinned its body and used its hide as an altar cloth at the Church of Barter.
It’s said that many years later, when the great drought came and the canals ran dry, a stash of jewels was found at the bottom of the canal, including a brooch so heavy no one could lift it, and beneath that pile of gems, a heap of children’s bones.
Every year, lanterns are lit along the canal and prayers are said to Margaretha, the patron saint of thieves and lost children.
SANKTA ANASTASIA
Anastasia was a pious girl who lived in the village of Tsemna. Known as a great beauty, she had red hair bright as a field of new poppies and green eyes that shone like polished glass. This was what the villagers remarked upon when they saw her at market, whispering what a shame it was that Anastasia spent all her time lighting candles for her poor dead mother in the church and tending to her old father in their sad little house. A girl like that should be seen and celebrated, they said, and warned she would grow old before her time.
But the villagers lost their taste for gossip when Tsemna was struck down with the wasting plague. They hadn’t the strength to go to market or even church any longer. They lay in their beds, gripped by fever. No food could tempt them, and even when they were force-fed, they withered and eventually died.
Anastasia did not sicken. Her father, afraid their neighbors would brand her a witch, kept his daughter in the house, hiding her plump limbs and rosy cheeks. But one morning her father would not rise from bed; he would eat neither meat nor bread nor any of the delicacies Anastasia prepared for him.
A voice spoke to her as she knelt by the bed, praying to the Saints for her father’s life to be spared. When Anastasia rose, she knew what to do. She found her mother’s sharpest knife, made a long, slender cut along her arm, and filled a dish with her blood. She lifted it to her father’s lips and bid him drink.
“What is that delicious aroma?” her father cried. “It smells like partridge with crispy skin and wine warmed with spices.”
He drank greedily of his daughter’s blood, and soon his cheeks were flushed and the plague had gone from him. A servant had observed the whole endeavor, and word soon spread of the healing properties of Anastasia’s blood.
The townspeople came to the house, then people from the neighboring towns. Anastasia’s father begged her to see sense and bar the door, but she refused to turn anyone away. Her blood was drawn into little dishes—from her wrists, her arms, her ankles—and taken out to the people, who drank and were healed. When Anastasia learned that there were people too weak to come and beg for her blood, she asked to be placed in a cart, and she was taken into the countryside, from village to village, to farmsteads and cities. She grew weaker and weaker until finally, in Arkesk, the last drops of her blood leaked from her body into a waiting cup and her body became a husk that blew away on the wind.
Sankta Anastasia is known as the patron saint of the sick and is celebrated every year with tiny dishes of red wine.
SANKT KHO AND SANKTA NEYAR
Long ago, before the reign of the Taban queens, Shu Han was ruled by a cruel and incompetent king. His many wars had left the ranks of his troops depleted and his country vulnerable; the draft had been exhausted and there were no more soldiers to fill the army’s ranks. The king gathered his advisers, but all they could do was prepare for the enemy to descend.
A clockmaker named Kho lived in the shadow of the palace and he vowed to use every ounce of his skill to help protect the kingdom. He worked through the night, binding bone to metal, stringing sinew over cogs. In the morning, arrayed in neat lines, their boots and buttons shining, a battalion of clockwork soldiers stood at attention. When the enemy began their assault on the capital, the clockwork battalion marched into the fray. These soldiers never tired. They never grew hungry. No wound could break their stride. They fought on and on until the last of the enemy soldiers were dead.
But the king did not let them stop. He sent the battalion to claim territory to which he had no right, and if the people there protested, he ordered his clockwork soldiers to silence resistance to his rule. On the battalion marched, slaying all who dared offer challenge, laying waste to cities at the king’s command. They marched until their clothes frayed and their boots wore away to nothing, yet still they did not stop.
At last, even the king grew tired of conquest and ordered the clockwork troops to halt. They did not. Maybe the clockmaker had not crafted them ears fine enough to hear the king’s orders. Maybe the soldiers simply didn’t care. Maybe their cogs turned more smoothly with blood to moisten their teeth. Or maybe, they could not stop. They had been made for destruction and had no choice but to see it done.
High on a hill, a nobleman’s daughter watched the battalion approach her city, and like Kho, Neyar vowed to use every bit of
