Then, with power like I had never witnessed before, she raised the Haunt off the ground and swept it backwards through the air. It hissed, but Asan walked forward, pushing it further into the basement and away from us. Her arms and chest were drenched in blood. In her left hand she held the knife, in her right a slick, dark purple lump of muscle and tubes.

I wanted to leave, but I could not bring myself to look at what Asan had done to Morwin, could not imagine stepping over the body behind me. The Commander walked over to the woodpile and stood above Rhyanon. Her shoulders hunched.

“Rhy?” she said softly. “Rhy, please answer me.”

At her voice, Rhyanon stirred. Her eyelids fluttered and she grimaced.

“Sorry,” she murmured.

“No, don’t say that.” Asan knelt beside her. “Help is coming, we’ll get you fixed. Just stay with me, all right?”

Rhyanon produced a pained wheeze; she was trying to laugh.

“Yes, Commander,” she said.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

It would be far more efficient for us to completely devour our mothers following their martyrdoms. A better use of resources. After all, the logistics of maintaining and safeguarding a vast emporium of half-alive women required an entire branch of our government. But two factors made this impossible.

The first was that, after death, a Sister’s flesh rapidly drained of lace. The extremities first, legs, arms, then working inwards, the head, the abdomen, and finally the internal organs of the torso. The heart lasted the longest. While the power of an ordinary sacrament was lost within a day, a Sister’s heart could retain up to forty percent of its lace a week after death, which made it by far the richest and most powerful organ of the body.

Even so, this type of consumption—the killing kind—was wasteful. And the Order could not afford waste. Over the centuries, our power had naturally atrophied. Sometimes Sisters died too young: in accidents, in conflict, struck down by disease. A not insignificant number killed themselves, especially before the mandatory counselling program was introduced. And with each death, we lost not just the individual herself, but her bloodline.

One day, some whispered, the Order would run out of lace entirely. And what then?

The second factor was that consuming too much flesh too quickly resulted in certain side effects. We called it gorge sickness. When, during past crises in the Order’s history, Sisters forced down more than a few fistfuls of flesh, some of them began to behave erratically. Often violently. Therefore, the practice of gorging was reserved for the most dire of emergencies.

Asan began to show symptoms during the journey back to the city. I was not in her carriage; I only heard about it later. They said it started with the drumming. Her foot tap-tap-tapping against the side of the cab without any regular rhythm, listless, more like a nervous tic than anything else. It grew louder and more insistent.