CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT #4
The other six gods governed things that could be legislated: obedience, devotion, sacrifice, the body in labor, and the body in war.
Orath governed the body in stillness. The self that existed before vow, collar, or command.
He was the god of the interior that no other person could enter without invitation, which was precisely why Galahad had torn out his chapter.
A god of inviolable selfhood had no place in a theology built on control.
You couldn’t demand obedience and also worship the god who said the self could not be compelled.
The contradiction was too visible. So Galahad had excised him, declared him not doctrine, declared him the province of the faithless.
Which meant he had no counter for him. No scripture to cite, no reframing available, no argument that didn’t require him to reach for the exact chapter he’d destroyed.
His hand withdrew from between my thighs as though I’d burned him.
The shove that followed wasn’t gentle. It was a hard push that sent me off his lap and onto the stone floor, my hands catching the impact, knees striking hard. I stayed down. I heard him stand, but I didn’t look up.
The silence in the room had a different quality now. It was thinner, stretched. I was aware of him standing behind me, and I was also aware of what his robes didn’t hide.
“Dress yourself properly,” he said.
I was dressed. We both knew I was dressed. I pulled the hem of my tunic down where it had ridden up but said nothing.
“The correction is complete.”
His footsteps moved to the door, but I still didn’t look up. When it closed, the door didn’t slam. Instead, it closed with the careful control of a man who was one tremor from shattering something. I listened to his footsteps move down the corridor and then stop.
There was a single impact. His palm against the stone. Or maybe it was his fist. I knew it was something painful by the dull resonance of it through the wall.
Then the footsteps resumed toward what I could only guess was the chapel.
I pulled my knees to my chest and finally breathed out the air I’d been holding as I sat on the cold floor and went through everything that had just happened methodically.
The time was midday, Kaelthar’s Hour. It was approximately the fourth day since the scourging.
Galahad’s trigger was manufactured because my infraction had been minor.
I’d simply closed my eyes for a second or so.
I thought about where his hands had gone, then the scripture he’d cited.
Orath had stopped him. I’d learned as much after I’d named the abandoned god during Galahad’s bath liturgy, and I’d watched something flinch behind his eyes.
I’d used Orath’s name now as a lever, and it had worked.
I wouldn’t use it a third time without necessity because every time I used it, Galahad adapted slightly, and the next time would require more than a word.
Yes, Orath was a depleting resource.
I went to my pallet, lay down, and faced the wall because the wall was something that didn’t require interpretation. The stone was just stone. It didn’t want anything from me.
The next hour was Illara’s: the Healer’s vigil, two hours from now. I’d be on my knees for it, and this time, I’d be sure not to close my eyes. I wouldn’t give Galahad the infraction he needed because I was done making the path to my body easy.
The stone was cold against my cheek, and I heard something moving near the base of the wall.
I went still in a different way. I was alert now, not braced.
There was a gap in the mortar near the floor, a crack I’d noted in the second week, but it was too small for anything to push through.
Yet, as I watched, a shadow moved through it, and soon that shadow resolved into the shape of a cat.
It was small, midnight black, with emerald eyes that held too much awareness for any natural animal.
Morgan.
It moved without sound across the floor to my pallet, where it sat down in front of my face and regarded me with the calm patience of something that had seen considerably more distressing things than this room.
The cat rubbed against me and began purring in a way that I was sure was meant to comfort me, to let me know that Morgan hadn’t forgotten about me and she was still here, in this castle. Somewhere.
The still place at my center cracked as I breathed through my nose, slow and deliberate, until the crack sealed itself back up. The cat watched me with its beautiful eyes, and I reached out to touch the top of its head just to feel that luxurious fur beneath my fingertips.
“Be careful,” I whispered, suddenly afraid that Galahad would return, and if he did, I didn’t know what he’d do to the cat. I also didn’t want to find out. “You should go. It’s not safe for you here.”
The cat blinked once. Then it turned and moved back toward the gap in the wall and was gone.
Outside the window, Camelot went about its afternoon. Somewhere below, a blacksmith’s hammer beat against iron in a steady rhythm that had nothing to do with canonical hours, the theology of correction, or the seven gods and their seven demands.
Illara’s Hour was coming.
And this time I’d be damned well awake for it.