Chapter XIII
XIII
By our traditions, if not by our laws, I move to have the ninth Priest stripped of his office.
Not only has he tampered with the rites and honors due to our gods, claiming divine inspiration in matters of personal choice, but he has in every way worked to render our people weak and diffident.
He welcomes blasphemous worshippers to our sanctum, permitting them to carry out their antiquated and occult religious services, and it is everywhere rumored about that his preference is for the followers of the Beloved Three.
Frankly, it is an insult to our forefathers that he was permitted to live.
Three times over he ought to have been put down: first, as a royal bastard, second, as a threat to the current throne, and third, as a heretic and underminer of the purity of our faith.
—A MOTION PUT FORWARD BY HADRIAN INVER, STRUCK DOWN BY A NARROW MARGIN IN COUNCIL DURING THE SECOND YEAR OF ORDEN INVER’S REIGN
You asked for me?” the Priest said, as he let himself into Ariana’s private chambers.
Her summons had been a welcome distraction—the mountain sanctuary, usually a place of refuge and isolation, swarmed with naming ceremony attendants. The Priest’s preparations were all complete, and he’d been glad to leave the noise and heat and torch smoke behind.
The queen’s rooms, by contrast, were utterly silent.
If there was anyone present besides himself, Ariana, and the prince, he couldn’t hear them.
A twinge of regret stirred in the Priest, that the postulant was not there.
He wanted to test her mettle again—to determine whether or not she was a fit companion and ally for the queen.
The spark of interest he felt was all for Ari’s benefit, the Priest told himself sternly.
It had nothing to do with the pleasure he’d taken in matching wits with that bristling mountain cat, or the way her goddess mark had felt cool beneath his hand.
“Yes,” Ariana said quietly. “I wanted to speak with you about the ceremony tonight. Have you chosen a prisoner for the sacrifice?”
The Priest nodded. “A Vesperin soldier—a commander from their army. He’s the highest-ranking prisoner of war in our custody at present. Orden will believe his death honors your child.”
“And you?” Ariana asked. “Do you believe the same?”
Sweeping the floor with his cane, the Priest went to her, where she sat before the fireless hearth, in one of a pair of highbacked, cushion-strewn chairs. Lowering himself into the other, the Priest fixed his full attention on Ariana.
“I was under the impression that we have an agreement,” he said. “Certainly, neither of us has ever put it into words, but it goes like this: I do not ask about your faith. You do not ask about mine.”
“I want to know,” the queen said. He heard her rise, and then the small, living weight of the prince settled in his arms. “Do you believe this death will honor my son? Do you believe it will earn him the regard of the Inver gods?”
With one finger, the Priest traced a line across the sleeping prince’s face, from the crown of his head to his chin.
The scent and weight and shape of him was an echo of Ellimere.
The Priest had sacrificed for her, as his gods required.
Had wanted to do it, and felt it would serve her well.
But he hadn’t intended for it to be life’s blood that he spilled—only an offering of his own, willingly given.
The death he sealed her name with had been a matter of opportunity and convenience.
Tonight would be different. There would be no threats, no insidious whispers in the dark or struggles over the war god’s altar.
Instead, the sacrifice would take the shape of a prisoner on his knees, helpless in a strange land, chained to the altar onto which he bled out and died.
“I believe there is little honor in my people at all,” the Priest answered with complete honesty. “And as the gods do not speak to me, I’m a poor judge of what might secure their favor.”
Ariana let out a regretful sigh. “I thought as much. What is the prisoner’s name?”
“Acaius Berentos.”
“And when you make an offering, Priest, how do you go about it? You seem to manage things… neatly. When you make the sacrifice, everything is over in a heartbeat. What must be done to ensure a quick death, as you do?”
Only awareness of the prince in his arms anchored the Priest as Ariana spoke. She made her inquiries in an even tone, but the Priest could think of no reason save one for her to ask such a thing.
“Little queen,” he said, leaning forward as he spoke. “What are you planning to do?”
“To bless my son.”
He realized, then, that it was hollowness, not evenness that he heard in her voice. There was a void in her—an empty and blighted place from which these words and intentions proceeded.
“You can’t,” the Priest said vehemently. “Orden can, or I can. Not you. There’s no reason for it.”
The mere idea of Ariana performing a blood sacrifice for pagan gods was a torment to the Priest. After all these years of her walking the razor edge between survival among the Invers and maintaining some vestige of her faith, it was a terrible blow to hear Ariana considering such a thing.
Orden. Orden had asked her to, no doubt.
The Priest knew well enough that Ariana would cut herself to pieces and smile while doing so if Honoria’s king commanded it.
And she would feel more indebted to him now than ever—the Priest had heard things were going badly at council.
Though they’d only met twice before sessions were suspended in favor of naming ceremony preparations, Gileta was using the time to relentlessly berate Orden for his folly, which only made him bearish; Afon was smug and combative by turns; and Corrin’s Arbiter and Arbitress were silent aside from offering an occasional veiled insult to the absent queen.
The pretense of peace talks had broken down entirely.
Whatever concessions or threats or outright scolding Gileta delivered, Orden would not be moved.
Beneson, who had managed to secure a posting in the council chambers for both sessions, seemed begrudgingly respectful of the king’s conduct.
Yes, Orden was being impossible. But he was doing it courteously, and enduring hour after hour of slights in the process.
Ariana would feel it was her fault. So she was offering up the one thing she had left to give—the last prohibition of her goddesses that she kept unbroken.
“You don’t have to do this,” the Priest told her. “I know you, I know what it will mean—”
“Stop,” Ariana cut in. “Please. Nothing you can say will convince me to do other than what I’ve planned. It’s… necessary.”
Inwardly, the Priest leveled a thousand curses at Orden, for eternally failing to understand his queen, and for wielding power like a gauntlet.
“When did you decide all this?”
“I spoke with Orden last night. It was decided then.”
Getting to his feet, the Priest returned the prince to Ariana. Then he knelt before her and took her hand in his.
“You should have come to me the moment it was promised,” he said. “I could have found some way around this, I could have—”
“Get up,” Ariana said abruptly. “An Inver Priest doesn’t kneel to his queen. She kneels before him.”
“Gods, Ari, I don’t care—”
“Get up.”
The Priest stood.
“What’s done is done,” Ariana said. “There’s no way out but through. And if you won’t help me—won’t tell me how to do what’s needed as quickly as possible—I’ll ask someone else.”
“Of course I won’t,” the Priest half growled. “Because I won’t stand by while you do this. I’ll find a way out for you, but it would have made both our lives a damned sight easier if you’d come to me first thing.”
Ariana was silent, and after a moment, the Priest’s shoulders slumped.
“Sometimes I think you like it,” he said, the words a reproach. “That it suits you to make yourself suffer more than might otherwise be required, even by your goddess.”
Still the queen did not speak, and the Priest turned to go.
As he walked out of her room, his mind reeled, working over the problem, considering alternatives and options.
Speaking to the king would only undermine Ariana—by now, Orden had likely boasted to two dozen guards and courtiers about the service his wife planned to render their son.
He couldn’t, through diplomacy or bribery or manipulation, remove the sacrifice from Ariana’s hands.
If he was to save her, he’d have to do so while ensuring it looked as if she’d done the thing.
He needed a spare body. And this time, the Priest cursed himself, because he had one.
Lucian’s dead lackey would do well enough; bodies kept so long in the cool and dryness of the caves.
The only trouble was, the Priest had already hauled that corpse away, leaving it hidden in the Corrinians’ tunnel at the end of miles of cavernous dark.
With a little reworking of the ceremony’s events, though, and Beneson’s help, he might just be able to sort things out in time.
Bent on his planning, the Priest started immediately down the narrow stairs outside Ariana’s rooms, only to be met by a waft of lavender, sun-warmed earth, and frustration at their midpoint.
“Don’t even think of trying to turn me aside, Priest,” Fia warned. “I’ve offered up concessions enough to choke on since coming here, and I’m in no mood for yet another.”
“You’ve made yourself very free of the castle, whatever your feelings for it,” the Priest said, planting his feet. Already grieved to the point of irritation by Ariana, he would not give way to another child of the Beloved Three. “Coming and going as you please. I thought you’d left us for good.”
“Hoped I’d left for good, no doubt,” Fia answered. “Bright Raea had other plans, it seems. Now turn back the way you came—I’m on Her Majesty’s business.”
“I’m on the queen’s business as well,” the Priest said, “and in a hurry besides. You’ll have to turn.”