Chapter VI #2
Shifting the little weight of the queen’s daughter to one arm, the Priest snaked out his free hand, seizing the postulant by the front of her kirtle and drawing her to him roughly. She did not stumble but remained straight-backed and unbending, clearly used to ill treatment.
“I will cut out your tongue if you breathe even a hint of this elsewhere,” the Priest murmured, his mouth a bare inch from the postulant’s ear. She was tall—scarcely less than him in height—and static fury rolled off her in waves.
“I would cut out my own tongue before I did,” she hissed back at him, the words hot and sweet against the side of his face.
The scent of sun and brine and lavender was overwhelming now, an intoxicating thing, the essence of a world he’d never know.
“I left a six-month daughter behind, safe at the cloister. I’d risk anything on her behalf—kill or die for her.
I’d never betray another woman trying to do the same. ”
“How can I be certain of you?” the Priest pressed. Ellimere was making small, discomfited noises between them, the sound muffled by their closeness, and he could feel the postulant’s focus splinter. But even with half her mind on the baby, she was formidable.
“Do you know what it is to swear by your mark?” the young woman answered haughtily. “It is a sacred oath, which the Beloved Three hold their followers to. No one undertakes such an oath lightly, for if you break it, sooner or later the Three will exact payment for your faithlessness.”
The Priest loosened his hold on her, and rather than backing down, she stayed exactly as she was, so near that if either of them had shifted their weight they’d have stood pressed against one another.
“I know what swearing by your mark means,” the Priest said. “I’m not ignorant.”
“No. Not ignorant. An Inver.”
No one had ever been so utterly dismissive of the Priest before, and yet he could hear the backwater cadence in this postulant’s voice.
Even as she spoke, she took his hand in her own and drew it to the back of her neck.
He could feel the warmth of her skin, the slick sunburst swirl of her goddess mark, the strength in her grip as her fingers cupped his own.
He ought to be angry with her, the Priest thought—ought to be incensed at the disrespect she showed, here in his own sanctuary.
But all that woke in him was a thrill of anticipation.
It was one thing to know what an oath by the mark was, another entirely to hear one sworn.
Few Invers, the Priest suspected, ever had the chance to do so.
The cavern’s manifold ghosts were equally eager. All around them a restless whispering began, though if she noticed it, the postulant said nothing. Instead, she stood a little taller and let out a breath.
“By Bright Raea,” she said slowly, “goddess of my mark, I swear to do as I’ve purposed. To keep Ariana Inver’s secrets and never betray her connection to this child. Should I fail in my oath, may the sun strike me dead.”
There was more conviction and faith in her words than in any ritual the Priest had ever undertaken, and a stab of shame lanced through him.
They humbled him at every turn, these sorias with their fading goddesses.
For all the Invers spoke of fire, it was the remaining daughters of the Three who truly burned, and when he stood in their presence, the Priest felt as if he might be scorched by them.
He felt so now and drew his hand away from the postulant.
“Thank you,” he said, compelled to be honest, wanting desperately, in spite of himself, to earn a shred of her respect. “I’ve never heard a mark-sworn oath before.”
The young woman before him relented a little, her edges softening. She stood with one hand resting gently atop Ellimere, and the baby quieted.
“I’ve never sworn so either,” the postulant admitted. “I meant for my fidelity oath, when I enter Raea’s service as a soria, to be the first time.”
Silence fell between them, punctuated only by the incomprehensible whispering of the cavern’s ghosts and the snapping of the altar fire.
“What shall I tell the queen?” the postulant asked, and her anger had given way to sorrow once more.
“Tell her that I give my word to see her daughter is at peace. Tell her that if I had a mark, I would swear by it.”
Ducking low, the postulant pressed a kiss to Ellimere’s forehead. “May the Blessed Sun guard your going, Priest.”
It was a relief to him to hear his title.
Somehow he could not have borne it if she’d called him Patria, referring to him as a father in Honorian, as Ariana did in the Corrinivar tongue, or as other Corrinians sometimes did.
The Priest did not want to hear her speak with that sweet and perfect trust he received without merit.
He stood and waited until the last echoes of the postulant’s footsteps had faded entirely, before lifting the crock of goat’s milk and setting out for his cell.
Ellimere had begun to move more insistently, her tiny face turning repeatedly toward him, and what served to nourish a Priest would have to do for this small daughter of the stars.
Afterward, he would see about a naming ceremony, held before the gods with no one but himself and his infant niece in attendance.
He’d do that much for her before sending her off to a cloistered life.
In his time, the Priest had found ways to dissipate gambling debts, halt unwanted marriages, supply ender’s herbs to women in dire straits, and create new lives for those who wished to disappear.
This, however, would be his first attempt at smuggling an infant out of the castle.
He could have done without the challenge.
He especially could have done without it being his brother’s child, on the day of Afon’s arrival in Inverlyn, no less.
First and foremost, he wished to recognize the child and claim her before his own gods.
The postulant bestowing a name on Ellimere set a prickling sense of urgency in the Priest—it was unsafe to speak a name for the first time so easily, rather than properly and with an offering.
Doing so all but pitted the child against the gods, claiming that she would forge her own way, and fight against any fate they sought to place upon her.
Or so the Priest had been taught, and half believed on his more pious days.
This was by no means the first clandestine naming he’d undertaken.
His own existence was proof enough that the Inver court was rife with bastards.
Several times a year some high-ranking man or woman would come to him with a babe in arms and the request that they be recognized before the gods, if not among their peers.
Every time, it caused the Priest to wonder what his own long-ago naming ceremony had been like—if he’d even had one.
Who his mother was, he’d never known. He had no memories of any woman who might fit the role, only of the brawling Inver nursery, and the full story of his origin had, in all likelihood, died with his father.
So he wanted to do things properly for Ellimere.
Even if it never mattered, even if she spent her life as an untouchable daughter of the stars, he wanted to be sure she received the birthright every Inver child was entitled to.
Perhaps someday, in spite of the tranquility she was being sent off to, it would serve her well.
Accordingly, he stood on the altar rise, laying out the tools he would need, with Ellimere nestled in a bundle of blankets nearby.
A newly sharpened knife. A strip of linen for his arm after the offering had been made.
A small brazier filled with tinder and coals, and a patch box to strike a light and imbue the named child with Inver fire.
Newly made shard incense, to carry the gods’ favor to the child on columns of bitter smoke.
The Priest wondered briefly what the worshippers who’d come before him had used in their offerings.
Not the other Priests—the Inver mode of worship had not changed much since their rise to power—but the sorias.
Surely there had been no knife. But had there been fire?
Had there been incense or scented herbs?
Had a lone devotee ever come before Silith, as he came before his gods, or was their worship always in company?
Were they always a chorus, as death had rendered them?
He wondered, too, what was happening above him, in the corridors and receiving chambers of the Invers’ stolen castle.
Afon must have arrived by now. The Priest had never met the foreign king, though he knew him by reputation, and by the obscene and one-sided correspondence Caervallion’s ruler insisted on maintaining with Orden.
Orden occasionally read the Priest fragments of the letters before burning them on Tyrus’s altar, as if he could draw poison from his soul by doing so.
Even the Priest was left furious over the way Afon Caervallin spoke of Honoria’s queen, and a small part of him understood his brother’s bullheaded insistence on taking Caervallion to war yet again.
He’d have done so himself if a rival spewed such venom about someone who held his heart.
Perhaps by now the two kings had attempted to cut each other down.
Perhaps there was fighting above, blood running once more through the mountain passages, staining the halls where sorias had died.
Or perhaps Ariana’s strange knack for steering the Invers away from their more violent instincts had prevailed, and there was no more than conversation and idle pleasantries passing between the assembled nations.
But no—of course she would not be on her feet yet.
This summer, Orden must stand alone. For a fleeting moment the Priest found himself wishing he involved himself more in Honoria’s politics and had a place and a voice at the council.
Instead, he turned back to the task at hand with a grim sigh.