Chapter Twenty-Three Adela
My first full day in the temple, Ulric sits down with me at breakfast. It’s early—prayers begin at seven so we have time for whatever assigned tasks the day will bring as well as magic lessons—but I’m used to a keeper’s schedule and so was up with the sun, already full with worries.
“How are you?” He takes a bite of a fruit I’ve never seen before and blinks away his sleep.
“I am…” I stab at whatever decadent egg soufflé thing I was served.
I thought a life in the valley was the only future available to me, and now I’m wearing the gray robes of a novitiate, with a phoenix skull on the table before me in the Temple of the Huntress.
And I got here by way of death and destruction.
I settle on a slightly less exposing truth. “Nervous. I want to do well.”
“You will,” Ulric says softly, kindly. “After all, you want to. And that’s the first step toward goodness.”
Kian plops down next to us, bumping me with his shoulder in greeting before he practically inhales a piece of toast with some tea.
“Ready to do some grunt work, Adela?” He huffs and points to a group of young people clearing away dirty dishes. “As the newest novitiate in the Order of the Huntress, it’s time you learned the truth. Novitiates are the housekeepers and scullery maids and drudge workers of the priestesses.”
“Serving has its own nobility,” Ulric says.
I like that.
“Well, today, we’re going to be nobly serving the dead.” Kian rolls his eyes. He turns to me. “Will that be alright?”
“If I were home, I’d be preparing Etana’s skull for matching. I don’t think preparing the dead of Insborough is going to be a challenge.”
Besides, at least if they’re already dead, I won’t be able to hurt them.
We make our way to the end of the temple to where the elaborate process of funeral preparation occurs.
I expect a room of easily cleaned stone.
Instead it is just more of the black marble, veined with gold.
The only difference from the grander rooms is this one has large drains in the floor and more sconces on the walls so the room is awash in light.
It’s actually quite beautiful, despite the piles of naked or shrouded bodies laid out on marble slabs through the room. There are already priestesses and priests at work, preparing the bodies. And the gytrash pair. Linden glares.
Kian steps in front of me. “Stop glowering at her.”
“I can glower if I want,” Linden counters. “She failed me. She failed the order.”
I flinch at his bluntness, but understand his fury. I start to apologize, but Kian speaks over me. “The matcher does not serve the order. She serves the great goddess. She owed you nothing.”
While I appreciate the defense, Linden’s not wrong.
I did fail my community, and Linden and Svena especially.
If I had been more careful with the phoenix skulls, or had gone back to see if I could still commune with them after matching, before the hut burned down, then maybe things would be different.
I tell myself that the deep ache of failure is just feeling, not fact. The matching was interrupted, yes. Partly through my actions, yes. But it was not intentional. It was not malice.
“What do you want her to do?” Kian’s fist clenches. A threat. “Go back to the valley and kill a trio of gytrash, unmatch Molvi and Ylysia, and let you all try the matching ceremony again?”
“Stop making it worse,” I hiss at Kian. Startling slightly, he steps back and relaxes his clenched fist.
But it’s too late. A ragged hope flares on Linden’s face. Surely he knows this is impossible, but hope is a hard thing to quench. Linden steps closer to me. With a small voice, he asks, “Would that be possible?”
I answer the black-marble floor, unable to watch him as I reply. Not even the wildest of matchers left notes about unmatching a bonded pair. I would never even try. “No. The bond of creature and human is eternal. It continues in death, even after their ashes are returned to the earth.”
Ylysia steps forward and wraps herself around Linden. “It will be alright, sweet.”
“We will figure out a path forward. The three of us. Together, as always.” Molvi joins them.
He tucks his face and lets out a sob of sorrow against Ylysia’s skin.
I turn away to give them privacy, determined to at least help the dead, since I can offer no comfort to these three.
Brother Liarn, a young, handsome priest with a high, nasally voice, wearing a gytrash skull, instructs us on how to wash the bodies, then scent them with clove-imbued oils, and wrap them in their burial shrouds.
It’s not unlike the process of preparing a skull for matching, and I’m glad for the familiarity.
He explains, mostly for my benefit since I’m unfamiliar with the city’s ways, that those whose families or friends can pay the death tithes receive the blessings of the gytrash.
He gestures to his partners, Brother Keil and Brother Robin, who continue their work in another part of the room.
Their efforts speed up the process of mourning and allow the soul of the deceased to cross to the after quicker.
No one knows yet how the rites will be affected with one of the triad missing. Sister Roberta could do only so much with them back in the valley. And so that is their primary focus today, to figure it out.
He leads Ulric, Kian, and me to a large pile of bodies, and crosses the room to work alongside the other gytrash-wearers.
Some of these people have waited far longer than it should take for the preparation of death rites.
“Why have these waited so long?” I ask.
Kian replies, “Their families didn’t pay the required tithes for expediency.”
It can’t be that simple. Maybe there was a spate of illnesses that swept through the city, or some violence that caused an influx of deaths. After all, a main purpose of the Huntress order is to help the people cross into the after. If they’re just sitting here, waiting, their souls are trapped.
The priestess walks away, to her own tasks.
I pin back my sleeves and tie up my hair. I want to remove the phoenix so I can see without having to tilt my head this way and that, but I’m sure I’m not allowed.
We begin to work.
Beneath his dragon skull, Ulric wrinkles his nose and groans low as he picks up the oil and begins working on the first body. He moves slowly, staying back as far from the dead as possible. His concentration seems to be on not heaving.
Kian teases his friend, but I understand Ulric’s reluctance to touch something living that is now reduced to a slab of meaty nothing. Fortunately, I learned as a child how to shove down my repulsion to do the messier chores of a keeper. I find a rhythm in the work, cleaning, oiling, wrapping.
“Why would people refuse to pay the death tithes?” I ask Kian.
“It’s not refusal; it’s inability.” His words are clipped with anger. “They can’t afford the exorbitant fees.”
My hands continue their tasks as my mind works. “The gytrash ought to be used to help the poor expedite their death rites, rather than the wealthy. They are the ones who need the blessings more urgently. Not those who can afford to take time away from their everyday toils.”
Kian gives me a look as if I have said something compelling. But wasn’t that what he was implying? The creatures stay behind after death to gift us with more ease and abundance. They serve alongside the orders to do good. That’s the whole point.
From somewhere far away, I think I hear the murmur of voices.
I pause my work and listen carefully. It’s more like the impression of sound, like how the skulls felt prior to matching, but it’s different—sad instead of excited, sharper somehow, and more abundant.
Like something between the skulls, a normal human voice, and a quick-moving stream.
I shift to work on another body, and the sound grows fainter. Eventually I don’t notice it at all. It’s strange how quiet working with the dead is, compared with the creature skulls. I’m surprised at the small part of myself that misses feeling their wants inside me.
Well, it would be quiet.
Kian fills the silence, chattering about everything and nothing.
I catch myself staring at his hands, which are large and appear strong, but do the work gently, almost reverently.
As if whoever it is that lies before us is someone precious and it’s an honor to assist them in their body’s last physical moments in our world.
The day passes quickly, and I’m glad to have made a lot of progress on the waiting dead.
“You’re well suited to this,” Brother Liarn says to me as we wrap up our day. “If you’d like a permanent role here after this week, you would be welcome.”
I’m tempted to agree, right then and there.
I would rather use my strong back and stronger stomach than embrace the destruction that flows through me.
But then I imagine how disappointed High Priestess Sarai would be if I chose a role that didn’t utilize my magic.
She’s given me a tremendous gift. I don’t want to disappoint her.
I thank him for the offer and go to the bathing chamber, where I scrub my skin nearly raw. I may be glad to aid the dead, but I do not want them to linger upon me.
At dinner, the only discussion is practicing magic.
We have time after we eat, before the loosely enforced curfew.
The others are excited, eager to go to the courtyard and see what they can do, but the thought of joining them makes my stomach clench.
If I’m not able to access my magic, I will disappoint everyone’s high expectations of what I’m bringing to the order as an outsider.
The phoenix sends excitement and enthusiasm through me. She’s confident and eager to truly explore our bond and what we can do together.