7
THE VERDICT
The priests stopped moving. Coral stopped clapping and Damina Jovien set down the violin and bow, taking up the sword Coral had provided her earlier in its place.
‘Desecration,’ the corpse repeated, though now the shrieks had become a piteous wail. ‘Monstrous sacrilege performed as planned, and he of virtue thus thrice-damned.’
‘What does that—‘
But the Viscount’s question was cut off when the chamberlain’s body fell silent for the last time. His body stripped of unnatural life, turned like any piece of dead meat would, until suddenly the rope that had kept it there fourteen days gave way, and the corpse fell to the floor with a crashing thud.
‘By all the Gods,’ Venerati Lazare swore, and this time, he sounded genuinely prayerful.
Estevar Borros felt the weight of Pris
