Chapter 27
“Oh, fuck,” said Fern.
Astryx lay with a crisp, clean sheet covering her to the chest, bare arms pinning it to her sides.
Her hair clung to her forehead in damp clumps like waterweed, and her shortened ear seemed somehow more cruel in the light of a wintry morning.
The elf’s skin looked bloodless but for a feverish blush in her cheeks, although her breathing had lost the terrifying whistle Fern had fretted over in the Tarimite shelter. It was even, if shallow.
They’d had to push together two rattkin-sized beds to accommodate her, which made her seem gigantic.
Nigel stretched beside her on the sheet, her right hand protectively curled around his sheath, as though to keep someone from attempting to remove him while she slept. Fern reflected that they probably had.
Zyll had been predictably missing when Fern had risen to a chilly darkness, with little sense of time in the windowless room.
The nature of Zyll’s “captivity” seemed a peculiarity hardly worth dwelling on anymore.
She’d opened the door to peer into the hallway and startled Brother Rhubarb, his paw raised to rap on the oak.
Now, he waited behind her with Brother Burdock, the physician, who was drying his paws on a cloth.
“She’s remarkably sturdy,” observed Burdock, with a surprisingly gruff voice for a rattkin.
“Stitched her up last night and managed to get a bit of broth into her this morning. It’s clear she’s recovered from worse.
Scars like she was rolled down a hill in a barrelful of knives,” he added with a disapproving shake of his head.
“How—” Fern’s throat clicked. “How long ’til she recovers?” She wondered, possibly uncharitably, if they’d collected any of Astryx’s blood for some unsavory practices honoring Tarim while they were at it.
The black rattkin shrugged and tossed the rag on a table. “Never physicked an elf before. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Fern glanced back at Astryx and found her ghostlight eyes slitted open and staring back.
“Little . . . squire . . .” she whispered, almost inaudible. Fern flushed with a sensation halfway between embarrassment and pleasure. Quillin had called her something similar, although of course Astryx couldn’t know that.
One corner of the elf’s lips twitched up just a hair, and she swallowed laboriously. “Looks like . . . you can manage . . . a fire . . . after all.”
Fern tentatively reached out a paw to lay it on Astryx’s hand where it rested atop Nigel, the wire bracelet still tight around her wrist.
“You’re going to be all right,” said Fern, hoping she sounded like she believed it.
“Do something for me?” mumbled the Blademistress.
“Yes?” Fern leaned closer.
“He’ll . . . never let me hear the end of it, unless he can . . . say his piece.”
It took a moment for Fern to understand, but then she nodded, shifting to the head of the beds. It took both paws to drag Nigel’s sheath down an inch, like a stubborn pair of wet trousers.
“Oh, m’lady, they’ve butchered you,” he wailed immediately. Both of the monks squeaked in varying degrees of alarm.
Astryx’s eyes drifted closed as the Elder Blade crooned his concern and demanded explanations from the monks in turn.
A creak made Fern turn to see Abbess Bluebriar peeking in the door. The silver rattkin gestured to her with one paw.
“I’ll check in again later,” said Fern to Astryx, although she didn’t know if the elf heard a word of it. Her eyes remained closed as Nigel’s babble washed over her.
Then Fern trailed the abbess into the hall and let the door shut behind her.
Fern followed Bluebriar through a heavy, iron-banded door and onto a covered, elevated walkway lined with thin pillars.
Dry, biting cold and blinding brightness assailed her, and she stood blinking for a moment as snow skittered around her feet.
Then she hurried to catch up as the elderly rattkin reached the door at the other end.
Fern gazed out at the icy crags and snow-frosted buildings of the abbey as she went.
Everything seemed curiously flat, with all subtleties of definition hammered out by the watery light of day.
Then they were indoors again, descending a cramped staircase, which opened onto yet another long hallway. A blue carpet writhing with embroidered golden tentacles stretched its length.
Wordlessly, the abbess passed through another door. When Fern entered the room beyond in her wake, she gasped and clutched at her cloak-pin in amazement.
It was a library, two stories tall, with narrow windows that traveled nearly from floor to ceiling. Balconies lined either side of the room, accessible by tight iron stairways. Rolling ladders clung to the shelves.
Two long, severe study tables ran down the center of the library, but more comfortable chairs and couches were scattered about the perimeter upon scuffed carpets.
“Whew,” puffed Bluebriar, rustling the hem of her habit. “Frosty.” The room was unoccupied and, indeed, bitterly cold, with no fire burning in the corner hearth. The abbess bustled over to it and began arranging stovewood on the andirons.
While she busied herself with kindling and striking steel, Fern drifted to the shelves and traced her fingers along the books there. Expecting religious tomes or abbey records, her brow wrinkled as she read the embossing on the spines.
“What the fuck?” she muttered with honest surprise.
She turned at the pop of flame behind her to find the abbess rising laboriously from a crouch and regarding her with amusement.
“These are real books,” said Fern, accusingly.
Dusting off her hands, Bluebriar approached and examined the volumes Fern had been inspecting.
“If you mean books that have better things to do than enumerate the tentacles of Tarim, then, yes, they’re real books.
Although we have the other sort, too.” She flapped a paw toward a far corner of the library.
At Fern’s frankly confused expression, the abbess laughed. “As a bookseller—or ex-bookseller, I suppose?—I thought you’d be more at home here. We can’t very well spend every moment in supplication. What do you imagine there is to do around this place in the dark of winter?”
“I . . . well . . .”
The abbess patted her shoulder genially. “We have a special wing for the sacrifices and torture.”
Fern was fairly certain she was joking.
“Come and sit with me while the place warms. Over here, closer to the fire. I have a pinch of time before anyone notices I’ve been misplaced.”
The abbess indicated a pair of wooden chairs with lumpy blue cushions. The wood was ornately carved with Tarim’s tentacles. Presumably, woodworking was the wintertime hobby of at least one entertainment-starved worshipper.
When they were both settled, the abbess arranged her habit around her tail and surprised Fern again.
“You know, the Tarimites aren’t widely recognized for their charitable works.
Apart from the more cosmic one, that is.
I doubt that’s a great shock, but, still, you and your friends are part of a very select group. ”
“The cosmic one?”
Bluebriar continued as though Fern hadn’t spoken. “Although we don’t have many opportunities for philanthropy here in the hinterlands. Hardly any exposure to the mundane ills of the world, really.”
“I can’t decide if that’s a polite way to show unwelcome guests the door,” said Fern.
The abbess chuckled. “We won’t turn you out into the snow just yet. Unless that other one absconds with the rest of our cutlery, and then I think our cook, Brother Yarrow, may take things into his own paws.”
She studied Fern keenly. “I suppose I am circling my point, though, which isn’t really like me.
Lance the wound and clean up after, I say.
Saves so much time and agony. I’ll speak plainly.
I don’t think you like us much, and you’re not very subtle about it.
I don’t need you to like us, although others might observe that courtesy demands you keep it to yourself.
But since you’re under our roof and eating our food and occupying our physician, I rather think you owe me an explanation.
So. Out with it. Let’s hear your grievances. ”
Fern flushed hot from nose to tail-tip with a freshet of guilt and a gush of irritation at having her social missteps baldly pointed out.
Opening her mouth to protest, the words already halfway up her throat, she instead blurted, “You worship an evil god that wants to consume the world, and that’s pretty hard for me to think kindly of.”
Bluebriar’s brows rose. “Succinct! Although that begs the question, why aren’t you in more of a hurry to leave.”
Fern raised her paws and then dropped them in her lap miserably. “I don’t think Astryx would survive if we did. And . . . I’m thankful. You’ve been . . . kind. I don’t know how to square that with what you are. What you do.”
The abbess nodded and thought for a long moment before replying. “What do you think we do around here?”
Squirming uncomfortably, Fern finally said, “Um. Worship Tarim . . . ? I heard the chants. Awful lot of tentacles around the place.”
“Nearly correct. But please continue, what do you expect we get out of that?”
Fern blinked. “Um. Horrible divine favor? I guess . . . his will done in the Territory, or something like that? Doom befalling your enemies? A little casual smiting?”
Smiling humorlessly, Bluebriar stared into the brilliant glow of one of the tall windows.
“We don’t spend much time educating anybody on the finer points of Tarim’s will.
We’re not proselytizers, so you can be forgiven for being so terribly wrong.
” She returned her gaze to Fern’s, unblinking.
“It’s more accurate to say we devote our time to preventing him from enacting his will.
Why do you think we’re called penitents? ”
“I guess I’m not sure.”
“Tarim is a god of endless hunger and consumption. His will to devour is never-ending. But he is vulnerable to appeasement—penance, for the temerity of existing.”
“Penance?” Fern asked, with a suspicious frown.
“Oh, not offerings of souls or blood or anything overly messy. As beings of infinite cosmic power go, Tarim is remarkably insecure.” She gestured heavenward. “Fervent, frequent, and sincere expressions of our unworthiness before his terrible majesty are enough to shift his regard elsewhere.”
“Hang on, insecure?”
The abbess nodded. “As a teenager at a barn dance.”
“I’m sorry, I want to make sure I have this right. Are you saying that you all spend your days apologizing for how insignificant we are to preserve Tarim’s self-esteem, because otherwise he’ll throw a tantrum and eat the whole world? And that you believe that actually helps?”
The abbess cocked her head and thought.
“Yes, that’s pretty much it.”
“How do you know it’s working, though?”
“We could pause to test the theory, but if we’re right, then I wouldn’t be around to be smug about it, which would be disappointing. I think we’ll carry on, just in case.”
“But . . . you could be wasting your entire life for nothing?”
Bluebriar regarded Fern shrewdly. “I’m carrying on because I believe a mad god would devour all of existence if I stopped.
From what you’ve said, you’re still wringing your paws about leaving behind a life that no longer suits you.
The Territory will carry on existing no matter what you do, so rather than worry about me staying the course, perhaps you should abandon your fretting, and thank the Eight that you don’t have to. ”
Fern’s mouth fell open.
“Just something to think about,” said the abbess as she heaved herself out of her chair. “Now, do enjoy the library. I really must get back to my duties. The world won’t rescue itself, after all, and I have a wobbly celestial ego to soothe.”