Chapter Nineteen #2
River tugged at her arm, but Ione straightened, fighting to look confident.
Or as confident as possible while sopping wet and shivering.
“Are we nearby?” Ione asked politely, her voice for guests.
She stepped in front of River, concealing the Mahina insignia on his shoulder. “We’ve come a long way.”
“Near enough,” the woman said, squinting up at them with a toothless smile. “I’m heading that way, myself.” She lifted her umbrella, her smile widening when River restrained a tiny agonised noise and took it from her. “Come along. There’s a livery on the way where you can leave your horses.”
Please no, River’s eyes said. But he allowed Ione to pull him along, the umbrella poised over all three of them, as the old woman tottered ahead down the cobblestoned path.
Buildings passed by in a blur as the woman pointed out this landmark and that.
Here was the national library; there was the city’s central plaza, a fountain people threw coins into.
The market was closed for the evening, but this one sold the best pork belly.
And there, that one has the most decadent chocolate. But you knew that, didn’t you, dearie?
Ione’s breath caught. “Pardon?”
“Your accent,” the woman returned. “You’re from Lodestone, originally?”
Her heart thudded. She looped her arm through River’s, pulled him closer.
“Yes,” Ione managed. “It’s been… years since we’ve been up here.
” Her mind raced for the name of another shrine to Sowelan.
“We worship at Heliei Shrine in Sterlingdale. I’m looking forward to seeing Soliz after – after so long. ”
The woman nodded, humming. “Well, then – ” She motioned grandly as she turned down another wide street. “Here we are!”
It was bigger than she remembered. Apprehension prickled her skin, hot despite the autumn chill, as Ione squinted through her monocular at the palatial temple, bright white gleaming like crystal in the fiery glow of the lamps.
Light shone through the lancet windows lining the main building and the gold-tipped spires flanking it, illuminating a courtyard strikingly devoid of greenery.
Despite being a temple for the Sun God, the place felt cold.
She breathed, grounded herself. Castor was dead, and few pyromancers survived Menon’s manifestation. No one would know her face, know River’s. They were pilgrims, come to leave their coins at altars and pray for healthy crops and short, sunny winters.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” The old woman waved at them to follow her through the gilded gates, already open. “Come, you must see the sunset wing. You’re on good time; whole place is closed tomorrow.”
River hesitated, his jaw tight. Ione gripped his hand and swept away her own doubts, her rapidly diminishing confidence. The painful and nagging knowledge that everything she had ever done had ended in failure.
She couldn’t wield her divinity. She couldn’t summon Menon. She couldn’t save her people.
But she could – would – save Lina.
Soliz’s foyer was as grand as Oseidos’s stateroom, three storeys high and crowned by a great, golden door flanked by staircases leading to the upper floor.
Its elegance was rendered even more imposing by the fact that there were no other pilgrims around at this hour, nor guards, nor priests.
Their footsteps echoed and the rain dripped from their hair and clothes in noisy splashes; River removed his cloak and folded it over one arm, hiding the crest. He sent Ione a disgruntled look and she shrugged, helpless.
She couldn’t exactly dry them off right now.
The altar room down an adjacent hall, too, was devoid of people.
Ione made a show of looking around, oohing and aahing at the ceiling painted to look like the sky at twilight, at the colourful tiles and carved panels, before leaving a few coins before the blindingly gold statue of Sowelan.
The woman snapped her fingers and in an instant a dozen candles at Sowelan’s feet lit themselves.
“Are you… a priestess here?” Ione asked.
She smiled, ghostly in the flickering light. “Oh, aye. Good few decades now.”
“Do you happen to know – ”
River squeezed her shoulder, sending her a desperate, silent Please shut up.
The woman left them to their prayers, said she had to illuminate the other altars. Ione closed her eyes after she departed, counted her retreating steps until she could no longer hear them.
Her heart was fit to burst when they were finally alone. “All right,” she whispered, striding past River into the hall. “Help me explore.”
“Oh, sure,” River grumbled, hand on his rapier. “Upstairs, downstairs. D’you think they have dormitories here like in Caelos? We’ll try every door.”
Ione ignored him. She knew Lina’s magical signature now – could she search for her, somehow, by it? Cast her awareness as far as she could, her own magic like fishing line, and hope that Lina recognised her and pulled?
She grimaced, annoyed by a fleeting wish that Kai was here. He had a godsdamned ward for everything, there was probably one for this.
Another bright, wide room splayed out at the end of the hall. Ione lifted her monocular but stopped short, her pulse spiking. Footsteps. Many of them, somewhere in the room ahead, ringing out in the silence like bones rattling in a grave.
“What?” River whispered when she physically turned him around. He twisted to look back, but Ione drew him with her, head down.
Walk, she urged herself: Don’t run. Don’t draw attention. Don’t –
Blinding heat burst in front of them, a ceiling-high wall of fire that set them both scrambling back.
And behind them, more footsteps, nearing. Stopping.
“You really are as white as the moon.”
She could barely hear the voice over the blood pounding in her ears, the blistering roar of the flames. A priest with dark hair and gold-threaded orange robes lifted a hand in greeting, and behind him stood a smattering of guards. And the old woman, her face lowered like this was all rotten luck.
“Good intuition, Austra,” the priest said, patting the woman’s shoulder. “Your family will be well rewarded. And your shrine, kept safe from these traitors to the First Light.” He smiled at Ione, his focus razor-sharp.
“Ione Artem,” he said, deceptively warm. “Menon’s Rejected, accompanied by what I can only guess is the new Menon’s Holy Seleneschal.” He opened his arms. “Welcome to Soliz.”
The guards edged forward, and so did River.
“Careful.” The priest dropped his arms. “Most would at least bow to its Archpriest, but I’ll forgive you your transgressions if you tell me what two rats from Caelos are doing in the House of the Sun.”
The Archpriest. The word barrelled through her, turning her stomach. His black eyes trained onto hers, piercing and superior, crinkling with his self-satisfied smirk.
Rigel.
The hall was too narrow for River to fight comfortably.
The guards, each in light armour and armed with daggers, were better suited to the small space.
Ione squeezed her eyes shut, accosted by images of that night: so much fire, smoke, pain.
Death. She could almost smell the reek of blood, even now.
She laid a hand on River’s wrist.
“Stand down, River.”
He obeyed. River too understood their position, something she should have been grateful for – anything to keep them both alive – but she only felt bleaker.
“I am no threat to you,” Ione said, her face heating when one of the guards sniggered. “Nor am I in any way connected to my old shrine.”
“Is that so?” At Rigel’s mark, the guards advanced.
Ione stepped back, faltering at the bite of flames behind her.
“We’ll leave in peace – ” She cursed as one guard pinned her hands roughly behind her; two more caught River’s arms, seized his cloak, his rapier.
Ione lurched, her shoulders straining, but froze at the sting of metal against her throat.
“Lina,” she shouted, and her guard, River’s, all stilled.
Ione straightened, her heart beating wildly, her arms sore. “I came here for Lina.”
All went quiet. Even Rigel, although he let out a short, mirthless little laugh. “Oh,” he said finally, amused. “You’re a mite late.”
The blood drained from her face. Ione’s knees buckled, that one word, late, late, late, clanging through her skull. “Where is she?”
“Occupied,” Rigel answered. He pivoted, waving for the guards to follow; Ione’s guard yanked her back to her feet, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate, wouldn’t move. Grumbling, another guard pitched in, wrenching her clear off the ground.
How could she be late? Kai said he felt Lina, just last night. Alive, in Soliz.
“What did you do to her?” she demanded when no one answered. She struggled, kicked, a spray of ice instantly evaporated by fireless heat. “Where is she?!”
Bile rose in her throat when no one replied, but she swallowed it back, refusing to cry here.
But in her mind’s eye she saw Lina, her shy smile, her sun-bright eyes.
Remembered how treasured she felt, the desperate, dizzy happiness after they first kissed.
How Lina held her when Ione had tried to summon Menon, how Ione had thought, dazed and aching, that it might not be so bad to die in Lina’s arms.
Too late.
Had the gods not taken enough from her already?
The guards hauled them down a shadowed flight of stairs, through endless hallways and passages. At the end of one cramped hall stood a single wooden door with a small, barred window.
They heaved it open and thrust Ione and River through, both of them nearly toppling over one another down a short flight of stone steps.
They’d be dealt with tomorrow, Rigel said; there was something else about sending a message to Ione’s family, seeing what price Soliz could get for her.
Ione wasn’t Menon anymore, but as it turned out, she wasn’t nobody, either: the daughter of House Artem was still worth enough to Rigel to keep her alive.