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“Help us to be generous contributors, both of our money and our lives, that we might make a difference. Guide us towards the right opportunities and help us to demonstrate magnificent prosperity in all the work that we do. Sacred is Ghezen, and in commence we shall see His Hand.” The priest finishes the sermon, his voice echoing off the white marbled walls of the Church of Barter. He claps his hand together and smiles warmly at the congregation before him.
“May Ghezen guide every step you take.”
Inej, perched in the rafters, watches the people dispose with mild curiosity. She sits back against the cool walls of stone, cradled in their embrace, and observes the comings and goings of the faithful, their whispered confessions and their silent prayers.
She isn’t sure why she’s so drawn to this place—this isn’t her god, isn’t her church, and she doesn’t understand the deep sacrality around money and commence. And yet, the present holiness is oddly comforting.
The air in the cathedral is heavy with incense, sometimes so strongly it feels suffocating. It reaches even Inej, high up in the ceiling as she is, nestled amongst the mottled greys and blacks of pigeons and crows.
“What are you always doing up there?” Kaz had asked her once, when she climbed shivering into his window, chilled to the bone after sitting for hours in the cold stone. The sun had long since set.
The truth is, she doesn’t know. “I like watching people come to pray.” She says, because it’s part of it.
They are rarely happy when they come, but there is something about the rawness of their vulnerability that draws her in. The way they move, the way they talk—or don’t talk—the way they touch their hearts and bow their heads in silent communion. “Sometimes, they come and they tell Ghezen about their problems.”
Kaz snorts. “If they’re going to Ghezen for help, they’ve got to be a miserable bunch of sods.”
It is true. But, “seeing them at their worst points fascinates me.”
“Oh, so you’re a sadist.”
The stained glass windows cast a bluish gray hue over the flagstones, illuminating the space in a cool light. She tiptoes over ancient beams, climbs under arches, sits beside the statues that line the walls. The choir sings in harmony, their sorrowful voices rising and falling like waves, and Inej feels a sense of kinship, a strange sense of belonging, amidst the isolation. The cathedral has stood for centuries, a silent sentinel to the joys and tragedies of those who had sought refuge within its walls.
And like the building itself, she has become a part of the fabric of the city, unseen yet ever-present.
She is just a girl in the ceiling, hiding from the world, and yet, here, in her elevated solitude, she can pretend she has a purpose, that she is a silent guardian, a witness to the human condition.
She watches as they kneel before the altar, their hands clasped in supplication. Some whisper desperate pleas, others offer up prayers of gratitude, and a few merely sit in quiet contemplation.
And she does not care about the Ghezen loving Kerch and their commence, but now and then a woman, her eyes sunken and her cheeks hollowed by grief, stands in the empty pews and begs for Ghezen to heal her sick child, or a young girl will come and she will beg Ghezen to not make her pregnant, or a boy will request relief from his alcoholic father's tyranny, and Inej has to keep listening, has to know, has to hear their suffering. She feels compelled to bear witness to their plight. Unlike Kaz would believe, she is not immune to the sincerity of those below her.
The weight feels akin to a sacred obligation, a duty so deeply ingrained she feels like she can’t turn away, like it is her purpose. Despite recognising the absurdity of her perceived duty, and she really can’t tell Kaz because he’ll laugh at her for it, she continues to attend to these encounters, bearing witness to their struggles and anguish. She remains in the rafters, a silent spectator.
When Inej speaks to her Saints, she does not doubt that they hear her. She talks to them whether she is running cons with Kaz or right before she goes to sleep in her cot at the Slat, or when she’s vaulting over rooftops. They keep her connected to the life she lived before this gloomy city, before Heleen’s cage, and she will stay true to them. They can hear her in any place she calls for them.
She has never doubted that they hear her. She has never doubted.
And she had believed, foolishly, that even those who prayed to other gods believed those gods could be found. But—
“Are you there?” The girl who doesn’t want to be pregnant asks the empty cathedral. She’s pleading with her maker.
“Are you there? Please help me. Please.”
Inej’s heart is in her throat. She holds Sankt Petyr close to her chest and takes a shaky breath. What if no one—no, but she hears.
“Sometimes.” Inej says. “Sometimes, they have this feeling that there’s no god up there after all. That they’re all alone in the world. And yet they come and they leave their prayers anyway, not sure if anyone has heard them.”
“Well,” Kaz says dryly, and he has such beautiful eyes, for a heretic. “At least you’re looking down.”