Chapter XV #5
“Glora,” Orden said, raising his voice as he straightened. “Where are you? Matria Dolenza and her attendants will require rooms for tonight, and we will travel on the morrow. See to it the Matria is quartered in the Hesperid Wing and has everything she requires.”
Glora materialized, seemingly out of thin air, a look of acute anxiety on her florid face. “Majesty, with the prince’s naming ceremony, the castle is full, I—”
Orden’s expression had only just begun to grow thunderous when Dolenza graced the chatelaine with a benevolent smile.
“I require nothing,” she said. “No accommodations, and I have no attendants. Furthermore, I’ll take my leave now—I only wished to extend my invitation, and the cloister’s warmest wishes for the prince’s health and long life. Fia, you’ll walk out with me.”
Such was Dolenza’s power and poise that no one moved to stop her, or to send a contingent of the guard along as she swept off with Fia and the king’s new heir at her side.
The noise and smoke of the cavern celebration fell away as Dolenza and Fia climbed the stairs to the tunnel entrance. As they did, the high, clear keening of Silith’s fallen daughters reached their ears instead.
“Do you hear them?” Dolenza asked curiously, without looking back at Fia.
Fia considered lying, still irritable over having been caught unawares by her Matria’s arrival, and unsure where she stood. But Dolenza would know if she lied.
“Yes.”
“I thought you might.”
They carried on in silence, up through the tunnel lined with intermittent guards, then out through the castle’s echoing, abandoned corridors. Fia had never seen the place so empty. It was as if both the Invers and the sorias before them had vanished, leaving only a hollow shell.
Dolenza did not stop until they were in the gateway garden, surrounded by soft night air and the clean scents of thyme and jasmine.
Overhead, a full moon scudded between wisps of cloud, surrounded by a dazzling coronet of stars.
The night sky seemed clearer and closer on the mountain, Fia had to admit, though Raea’s full warmth could only be felt on the plains.
Halfway to the gate, still out of earshot of the guards who attended it, Dolenza turned to Fia. “You seem to have lost no time reacquainting yourself with the queen and becoming familiar with the Priest. I wonder, what do you think of them?”
Everything in Fia stilled as she grew wary and unsure. “In what sense, Matria?”
Dolenza looked as guileless as a woman who oversaw half the business on the Hand could. “No particular sense. I only want your impressions.”
“Ariana is not the apostate she seems,” Fia said, choosing her words with great care. “She is as devoted to Lyria as ever, and it is tearing her apart.”
“Will she last much longer, do you think?” Dolenza asked.
Fia thought of the queen, frantic with fear in her birthing chamber. Bleeding onto the audience hall floor. Having no means by which to halt Orden’s planned attacks on Caervallion. Breaking down with an offertory knife in her hand.
“No, Matria. Not much longer. At least, not alone. But I’m not sure what the end will be like for her—if she’ll fall to pieces, or if she’ll lose her way.”
“Hm. And the Priest?”
“I don’t know what to make of the Priest.”
“That’s all you have to say in his regard?”
“Yes.”
Moonlight limned Dolenza’s ageless, lovely face, and gleamed in her dark, knowing eyes. “Do you think he would make a tolerable replacement for his brother?”
Fia’s wariness became a warning, jangling in her blood and brain. “I was recently reminded that such talk is treason, Matria. Not to mention anathema to our goddess.”
“Blood shed for healing can come in many forms,” Dolenza said with the hint of a smile. “The Priest, Fia. What do you think?”
“Don’t ask me,” Fia said, finding herself reluctant in the extreme to speak of him.
“I haven’t had long enough to make up my mind, and I don’t know why you should want my opinion in the first place.
I am nothing and no one. What I say shouldn’t be of any import to you.
I can’t… I didn’t even know what any of the coin passed about on that mountain was worth.
What their ranks and honors meant. How to read a single one of the notes that move from hand to hand.
I haven’t the learning for any of this.”
Dolenza raised her brows, cool and insistent. “I didn’t send you because I wanted sums tallied or books read. I wanted you to get a little outside yourself, and I wanted your opinions. Not on script or figures, Fia, on people. You parse others’ minds and motives quite well enough. Now, the Priest.”
Fia thought of him sparring with her on the stairs. Naming and saving Ellimere. Providing a way out of the blood sacrifice for Ariana. Kneeling before her in his cell.
“I will not speak of him,” she said at last, and Dolenza’s smile grew ever so slightly wider.
“I see. So a yes, then.”
Unable to help herself, Fia cradled Justus closer and fixed the Matria with her own dauntless gray gaze. “What do you mean to do with that information, my lady?”
“Nothing, child,” Dolenza said, reaching out to pat her on the hand. “I won’t do anything at all. But you may, by and by. We shall simply wait and see how Raea moves us.”