Chapter VI #4
With a careless motion, the Priest unbandaged his left arm, revealing the network of old scars and fresh cuts. He could feel the shift in the air as the spy’s wariness immediately became disdain. What Inver, after all, would suffer willingly?
The Priest offered his arm without hesitation, wincing slightly as the spy made a vicious cut, deeper than necessary.
When sufficient blood had run down to Tyrus’s altar, the Priest took powdered herbs from a pouch at his side and pressed them to the wound, where they staunched the flow of blood in almost an instant.
It wasn’t a medicine known to other Invers, the clotting powder he used—he’d borrowed a great deal from the daughters of the moon, having found an old herbal of theirs in one of the abandoned cavern chambers, its pages still in perfect condition.
It had been written both in Honorian script and in an odd, pinprick manner of writing meant for those without light or vision, for it must be read by touch, rather than sight.
With Beneson to read the Honorian as a reference point, the Priest had learned it, though he knew of no other book written in such a manner.
“What else must I do?” the spy asked, his tone vaguely scornful as the Priest rebandaged his arm with a mild expression.
“Light the tinder in the brazier—use the patch box, not the torch; you’re required to kindle the flame yourself,” the Priest said. “Then declare to Tyrus that you intend to stand as patron for the new prince tomorrow night, with his approval.”
“Very well.”
At that moment, Ellimere let out a small cry. Immediately the Priest felt the spy’s attention splinter as he focused on the sound. The man drew away, moving toward the cry, murmuring to himself as he bent over the bundle of blankets and its helpless occupant.
“What in Tyrus’s name are you doing with the prince already, Priest? Is he—” The spy’s voice cut off, and when he spoke again, there was disgust in his words.
“A star-marked child. Orden will be livid. All of Honoria will think his get cursed, after the moon girl. So much for the heir he desires.”
Silent on his bare feet, the Priest drew up behind the spy.
He’d taken the bloodied knife from Tyrus’s altar without a sound.
All the spy’s attention was on the baby, and so he did not see or sense the fatal moment in which the Priest’s focused patience turned to searing anticipation—the moment before the strike.
“Not the heir,” the Priest said with quiet satisfaction. “Orden’s son is with his mother. This is the stillborn girl. Ariana’s heir, I suppose. She’ll be sent to Lyria’s cloister to foster, never the wiser about her true provenance.”
The spy let out a snort of disapproval, still turned toward the child.
“Orden is even weaker than my master believes. First taking a daughter of stars to wed, now swelling their ranks with the fruit of his own loins. A disgrace to his forebearers, that one, though it seems all of Darias’s pups who lived are.
Pity Honoria, led by a blind man and a king who rules from between the legs of his queen. ”
With the energy of a coiled spring, the Priest seized the spy with his right hand and dragging him backward as his left grasped the offertory knife, bringing it up and driving it into the side of the spy’s throat.
In one decisive motion, the Priest tore the blade forward through artery, veins, muscle, and flesh.
A hot spray of blood fountained out, undoubtedly anointing the blankets and the child nestled in them, but the Priest did not cease his burst of movement.
He forced the spy away, farther from his infant niece and toward Mortis’s altar.
“Not a war god for her,” the Priest ground out as he held the spy face down on Mortis’s shrine while the last lifeblood pumped out of him.
“Not this time. I name a child here and dedicate her to our pantheon. May Mortis, god of judgment and death, stand watch over Ellimere Inver. Let him be her guardian, and the flame that settles in her burning soul.”
When the impertinent stranger in his grip fell entirely still, the Priest shoved what was left of him aside with a twist of his mouth.
He moved the brazier of coals from Tyrus’s altar to Mortis’s, scattering its contents so that his own blood and the dead spy’s mingled together.
It would leave the child he spoke for doubly blessed, the force of her naming powerful in the eyes of the gods.
Or so Inver tradition would have the Priest believe.
Taking the torch from Tyrus’s altar sconce, he set the coals and tinder alight, the heat of flame flaring up and drying the blood that slicked his hands. As the fire crackled and the scent of incense rose, he was struck by a sudden and uncharacteristic resolution.
Once he’d dealt with Ellimere, and seen her safely out of the castle, he would make his presence known at council.
This summer, unlike every other, he’d take an active interest in Honoria’s politics.
What did it matter if it painted yet another target on him?
He’d been born with one resting over his heart by virtue of his name and bloodline.
The Priest nodded, fixing himself on his new course as somewhere in the cavern’s endless gloom, a long-dead soria laughed, an eerie silver sound that echoed back from the walls and seemed to carry on forever.