Chapter Five #2
Ione chewed the inside of her mouth, frowning. Frankly, she hadn’t expected to be questioned. It was a very good deal.
“Because…” She glanced to the side, embarrassed, feeling Menon crowding within her ribcage.
Because Menon wants you.
Because you feel warm.
Because if you can help me, then I can save us all.
“Because of what you said to the warden,” Ione decided. “About falling asleep on a bench. It was funny.” A pause. “You’re funny.”
A beat passed and Lina snorted, her guarded edge softening. “Seriously,” she said doubtfully, laughing; for the first time, she squeezed Ione’s hands back, sending a spark of ice up Ione’s spine. “That’s why?”
Someone rounded the corner onto their lane; reluctantly, Ione dropped Lina’s hands and lurched back a respectable distance.
As expected from the familiar, graceful rhythm of the footsteps, her mother swayed up the narrow lane, attendants trailing after her in an array of gauzy pastel dresses, a rainbow cast from Penina’s prism of ice.
Also as expected, Penina stopped just before her daughter. “Ione,” she said mildly. “Is there any particular reason your seleneschals aren’t with you?”
Ione held her mother’s displeased gaze, keeping her own expression bored. “I had tasks for them.”
Penina hadn’t a response to that. Instead she lowered her eyes to her long cloudy sleeves, one hand brushing at a nonexistent wrinkle.
“You left the meeting before hearing its conclusion,” she said.
Her light blue eyes lifted, felt like hailstones.
“Jorah is no longer your hydromancy teacher. From tomorrow, the warden will teach you.”
A pit formed in her stomach. “No, thank you.”
“It isn’t your decision,” Penina said, frostier. “Your father and I aren’t particularly happy with it, either.”
“Then veto it.”
“We can’t. Neither can you.”
Her mother’s attendants shifted, their eagerness to witness an argument palpable. Ione ignored it, disgusted with them, with everyone who saw her as a spoiled child, an ounce of entertainment.
She was their goddess. And someday, she would bring them all to their knees.
“Ione.” The impatience in her mother’s voice made Ione’s blood run cold. “From tomorrow,” Penina repeated, “the warden – ”
Ione threw her fists down. “The warden is a conman.”
“The warden is our last godsdamned – ” Penina cut herself off, her attention flying to Lina, a witness, half-obscured by the hydrangea vines. “You,” Penina said, her control fast returning. Behind her, the gaggle of attendants tittered. “You’re from Caelos, I gather?”
After a dense moment, “Yes, Lady.”
Penina smiled. There was the quiet, self-satisfied scoff Ione knew so well. “That explains that,” her mother mused. “Leave, Caelosi, if you’re finished loitering around here.”
“I’m not through speaking with her,” Ione broke in, “Just as I’m not through speaking with you about the warden. He already offered his so-called services once and I refused. I refuse again. I will refuse a thousand times.”
Her mother emitted a long-suffering sigh. “Curb the melodramatics, Ione. He is teaching you for free, and – ”
“Oh, for free, is he! And how convenient that no one’s questioned why. He is cut from the same cloth as his power-hungry family and Saros is too stupid to see that.”
Unbelievably, one of Penina’s attendants felt compelled to share her opinion. “Just try it,” she said, her voice cloying, like she was speaking to an infant. “You never liked Jorah. Maybe you’ll have better luck with someone new.”
“I’d let him teach me,” one of the others said, pretending to fan herself.
“Quiet, both of you,” Penina hissed behind her.
“You,” she said to Lina, “Return to the acolytes’ building before I lose my patience.
” And to Ione, “Argue this with the Archpriest, but I won’t hear any more of it.
Now, come.” She half-turned, daring Ione to disobey.
“I’d like a word with your seleneschals about leaving you without an escort. ”
Ione clenched her fists so tightly her arms trembled, humiliation and loathing rising hot and acrid in her throat. To her mother, she had always been such a dire, wretched disappointment.
Something flickered in her periphery, the flutter of a flax-yellow dress. Lina edged forward, half a step in front of Ione, and curtseyed.
“I apologise for the late introduction,” she announced, her voice shaking. “But Io – Lady Ione isn’t without an escort.” Another curtsey, deeper. “I’m her attendant. Lina Morrow.”
One of Penina’s attendants stifled a surprised laugh; and then silence, simmering anger from the high priestess.
Ione’s heart pounded in her ears as she waited for her mother’s rebuttal.
This was far from the first time they had argued, but it was the first time in recent memory that anyone had spoken up for Ione.
There was a delicious, exhilarating pleasure in having someone stand beside her.
“You cannot,” Penina breathed, “take on a lady-in-waiting, Ione – not without discussions, background checks – ”
Lina tensed at that, but forged on bravely, “Lady Ione, that bakery you wanted to visit will close soon.”
“It will,” Ione said, using every ounce of strength in her to look disinterested as she laid her wrist in Lina’s hand. “And just as well – we’re going nowhere fast, aren’t we, Mother?”
Ice crystals flurried around her mother’s closed fists. “Have your pet,” she said, turning; she had agreed to a stalemate. “And may this distraction be fleeting. Once the warden is through with you, you will become everything you’re meant to be.”
“And may the warden be incredibly susceptible to a knife in the throat. Or at least frostbite.” Smiling through her own disbelief, Ione drew the magic away from her mother and moulded it into a whorl of bitter sleet.
She shaped it, sharpened it into the point of a blade.
“I’m getting very good at ice recently.”
She sensed Penina’s barely-restrained ire as she bade her attendants to follow her. This wouldn’t be the end of her mother’s anger – both of them hated losing, and so Ione expected dinner to be unpleasant later – but at least for now, Ione had gotten what she wanted.
Even if Saros had, too.
“For the record – ” Ione stared after her mother and the whispering attendants, feeling Lina creep up beside her.
Already she felt calmed, although her heart still flickered like a hummingbird within a cage.
“ – that was also why.” She turned to face Lina, taking in the deep brown of her eyes, the way the sun turned her eyelashes into spun gold.
“Why I wanted you. As – as an attendant.”
Lina mustered a frail smile. “Why, because I can’t shut up?”
Ione laughed. “Kind of.” She reached, plucking a hydrangea blossom from Lina’s hair.
“You were afraid of the warden. You were afraid of my mother. But you spoke up anyway, and I…” She twirled the soft pink flower between her thumb and forefinger.
“I admire that. Not even my own seleneschals would have interrupted my mother for my sake.”
“They’re probably smarter than me.” She smiled, although her eyes lowered, sadness shading her features.
“I was always quiet. And obedient. And wishing I wasn’t, wishing I was strong enough to…
” She shook her head. “Whenever I open my mouth, I bring myself more trouble. But now that I’m here, I don’t know if I can stop. ”
Ione smiled back, and just as bleakly. “I’m no stranger to bringing myself trouble as well. It would be nice to have another person at my side for this new trouble the Archpriest has thrown at me.”
“Why?” Lina winced, like she hadn’t meant to ask, but went on anyway: “I mean, why have a warden teach someone…” She gestured at Ione.
Ione wanted to laugh at the implication that Kai Mahina was anywhere near her rank, but as far as Lina knew, she was only a high priestess’s daughter. And regardless of Menon’s infatuation with her new attendant, Ione would keep it that way.
“My great-grandfather was the Great Sage Llyr.” She waited for Lina to react, to be shocked or show at least a little reverence; she did, a moment late, but Ione wasn’t fooled.
Lina had said she’d only lived at Caelos for six months – she must not have been a devotee for long before that if she didn’t immediately recognise the name.
“As Llyr’s blood,” Ione continued, “I was supposed to inherit his aptitude for hydromancy. In that respect, I am a failure.”
Lina’s mouth twisted. “I know the feeling.”
So Lina considered herself a failure, too. Or perhaps the man she was so afraid of did. Ione studied her, increasingly curious about the life Lina led before she stumbled into hers.
“Saros will get his way,” Ione said. “I’ll suffer the warden until I’m powerful enough to make them all wish I wasn’t. And aside from running errands and sending messages, you will help me fend off filthy dogs.”
“I guess I can talk him into submission. But…” She looked down, pensive. “There are more of us who would want to stay on Oseidos. Aside from me.” Her gaze lifted, intensified. “I would be happy to become your attendant, if I knew they would be safe here, too.”
Ione nodded and held out a hand, pleasantly surprised that Lina was in the mood to bargain. “I will find a place for all I can.” She held out a hand, and every nerve in her body warmed when Lina laid her fingers over hers.
“I will protect you,” Ione whispered, “All of you.”