Vespertine Quotes
"Every novice and sister carried one, a thurible on a chain to defend ourselves against the Dead."
"She wouldn’t have burned incense unless something had really frightened her; even children knew that incense was too precious to waste."
"Trouble," I called. I felt in my pocket for a crust of bread. As soon as I held it out, he launched himself from the roof in a wind-buffeted flurry and landed on my arm, his claws pricking through my sleeve."
"I’m looking for Sophia," I told him. "I think she’s in danger."
"Shades were so common that Trouble wouldn’t have paid them any mind."
"But that had been before the Gray Sisters found me. Before they had saved me—and taught me that I could fight back."
"Only the most powerful spirits could pass through a barrier of incense smoke."
"I was sure of it when we reached the final door, a heavy black monstrosity of consecrated iron."
"She had died a martyr at fourteen years of age after sacrificing herself to bind a Fifth Order spirit to her bones."
"I knew I should say something to reassure her, but I could barely move for the pain in my frozen wrist."
"I wasn’t prepared to tell a stranger that I didn’t want my name because the people who gave it to me hadn’t wanted me."
"I was conscious of the places where I felt no sensation. It was like touching leather, or someone else’s skin."
"Little did they know that this was better than the alternative. I had once tried smiling in a mirror, with profoundly unfortunate results."
"I doubted it would be difficult to fail the evaluation on purpose."
"No one wanted to stay in Naimes and spend the rest of her life tending to corpses."
"Most children don’t survive possession, especially not for the length of time described in your entry."
"Then she released him with a shout, falling back from his beating wings. 'Dead!' he cawed, wheeling above us."
"The air carried by the storm smelled of damp earth, and around me the sisters’ faces were blanched with fear."
"Our flesh may be weak, but our hearts are as iron in service to Your will."
"I had never seen soldiers before. Boys with the Sight were raised in monasteries, and most went on to become soldiers or monks."
"Surely, I thought, the consecrated iron would hold—but the lichgate was meant to protect us from spirits, not the brute strength of living men."
"Mother Katherine surveyed the huddled mass of girls and women, faces ashen, wet hair plastered down."
"Our hearts may be weak, but our spirits are strong, as we stand united in the face of darkness."
"The chapel's warmth enfolded me, but gooseflesh still pricked my body."
"Goddess, Lady of Death, Mother of Mercy, give us strength."
"Lady, do not forsake us. Please, do not forsake us."
"Whether we lived or died was up to us, and maybe She had come so we wouldn’t die alone."
"Whatever you plan on doing, hurry. They’re close enough that I can sense them even through these accursed shackles."
"I would be interested to know how many hours daily you nuns spend inhaling incense. Clearly, it has an effect on your brains."
"You may speak. What is it you wish to tell me?"
"I’m going to escape... because there isn’t anything you can do to stop me."
"I was possessed by an ashgrim as a baby... The other novices think I murdered them. That’s why."
"You treat that beast better than you do yourself."
"Don’t you dare. Your pathetic little meat body is on the verge of collapse, and there’s a building made specially for humans just a few steps away."
"I’m not going to leave someone to die. Even someone I hate."
"I can’t lend you my power too often. Your body has limits, and not being able to feel them is dangerous."
"I had gotten used to relying on its advice. For a brief, horrible instant I had no idea what to do."
"You’re a nun. Silly of me to suggest that you’ve ever imagined a single delightful experience in the entire span of your dull, miserable, hateful nun existence."
"We’ve lost her," Enguerrand said grimly. "I would wager she hit her head when she fell from the horse, and went over stunned."
"If the Clerisy sees you like this, they’ll think you’re a thrall!"
"As if she would really fall into the river and drown! I’m telling you, the captain might as well have winked."
"Artemisia of Naimes is watching over us tonight."
"Each voice stabbed at me like the beak of an attacking raven."
"The voice belonged to a hugely stout nun who was charging toward us with alarming speed, her face purple with anger."
"Their blue robes and moonstone relics identified them as low-ranking Clerisy officials called lectors."
"I had never heard of someone wielding so many Third Order relics."
"Sometimes, if you want to save other people, you need to remember to save yourself first."
"The Lady sends us such gifts only in times of darkness."
"The silent bell wakens to herald the Dead; and the last candle is lit against the coming night."
"There are only two penitent relics in all of Loraille, and most clerics are near my age when they take up the mantle of confessor. He has the ability, yes… but the strain upon him is great."
"Some might say it is necessary for a confessor to be submitted to adversity. To experience failure and pain. Only those who bear a great burden of guilt are able to control a penitent."
"The death he has seen in the countryside these past weeks, the suffering—he has hardly been sleeping since."
"He must have been awfully jealous of Gabriel, don’t you think? Living in someone’s shadow like that, never being noticed, always second best…"
"Everyone had seen it, not just the sisters. Sophia had seen it—she’d seen me holding a dagger to my chest, threatening to plunge it between my ribs."
"Only those who bear a great burden of guilt are able to control a penitent."
"Just because you can survive by being scary and intense all the time doesn’t mean you should judge everyone who can’t."
"If the revenant wanted to possess me and kill everyone, it would have already tried. That isn’t what it wants."
"You wouldn’t have died if you had jumped out the window. We were only one story above the ground. At worst, you would have broken an arm."
"You can steal a thing. You can’t steal a person."
"Crying doesn’t make you weak, you know. It’s just a reaction your body has, and there isn’t anything you can do about it."
"It’s so happy. It just likes having company."
"Being stuck there was like dying already, except so slowly that I barely noticed."
"I want to go places. To see the world for myself, not just read about it in letters."
"The Lady has delivered us from danger. By Her grace, the Dead have been driven from our fields."
"You idiot. This isn’t an ordinary cookfire—of course it’s affecting you."
"The white vicar pointed, and the silver funneled out of the dead woman’s body, taking shape as it went."
"My eyes caught on a soldier engaging a blight wraith nearby, its silver glow illuminating the openmouthed terror on his face."
"Nun," the revenant snapped. "Nun! You’ve done enough. Let them help you."
"A possessed soldier had backed a group of people against a building... I wasn’t sure if the revenant had exorcised it, or if it was so desperate to escape that it had abandoned its vessel on purpose."
"The revenant said viciously, "Don’t let go," and I felt the spirit being drawn inward, into me, siphoned up like breath, until all that remained of it was a cold half-sated hunger numbing the pit of my stomach like frost."
"‘Where are my gloves?’ I repeated. For some reason, it hurt my throat to speak."
"You’re awake," he said, his expression relieved until he saw my face.
"A thousand questions crowded my mind. I wanted to ask everyone to leave, but I was their guest."
"It wasn’t a game; the stakes were the lives of everyone in Roischal. If I had to die for them, then so be it."
"Me, the goat, the revenant, we weren’t very different from each other in the end. Perhaps deep down inside everyone was just a scared animal afraid of getting hurt, and that explained every confusing and mean and terrible thing we did."
"Someone must have said them to me for me to have repeated them to the goat, though I didn’t have a memory of it."
"That’s impossible, it had said underground. It might not have a logical explanation, but it had thought of something else, something that didn’t quite make sense."
"There’s something I want to know," I said. "How did Saint Agnes die trying to bind Sarathiel if the altar destroyed it instead?"
"They can’t sense Sarathiel, either," the revenant said, its presence inside me a roiling tangle of emotions. "It’s hiding itself. It will try to impersonate the priest."
"Forgive me, lady," said the lector, distraught. He began to bow to me the same way he had to the Divine, caught himself, and scurried off instead.
"How far would I go, if I had no other choice?"
"You can share these things, you know. You don’t always have to leave everyone in agonizing suspense."
"That feeling was gone forever. I could never get it back again."
"Acceptable evil. Hurt and cruelty that the Lady would allow in service to Her will."
"No one with any real knowledge of Old Magic would ever propose such an idea."
"It’s through the hands of strangers that She has carried out Her will."
"Power roared into my veins like a healing draught, like a river of cleansing fire."
"Once, I remembered, I had wanted to kill her. I wasn’t sure why I had changed my mind."
"Then I felt a waver of uncertainty. A part of me had wanted to kill her—but there was another side of me that hadn’t."
"The golden glimmers of the priest’s soul caught my attention. They were shining more brightly, spreading in patches, overtaking the silver."
"And then I remembered—the ritual. I had to finish the ritual."
"It smelled exactly like the chapel in Naimes."
"Lady, if I have served You, spare the revenant."
"I startled awake in a small, whitewashed chamber, the raven’s voice still ringing in my ears."
"We are in the monastery of Saint Barnabas, in the far east of Roischal."
"There is power that is taken, and there is power that is freely given."
"I don’t want to do it, which in my experience is the surest sign that I need to."
"You aren’t a good person, but I think you could be if you tried. So perhaps you should try."
"You had better not push it, nun. I could do far worse than make you murder someone. I could make you try on hats."
"I’m the one who invented the binding ritual. I’m the reason why relics exist."