Chapter X
X
Cleverest among the Three is the moon, whose wisdom so often comes cloaked in darkness.
Hers is the realm of death and judgment and subterfuge; hers is the province of questions without answers, of sins rendered necessary by circumstance.
She alone of the sisters understands the difficulty of life in a world wracked by violence, and that sometimes, threats and force must be met in kind.
Her followers are made in her image; subtle, changeful, and fluid in their ethics and ideals.
—FROM THE CODEX SILARIS, HELD IN TRUST BY IMPERATRICE GILETA SILITHIEN FOR THE ORDER OF THE MOON
The sharp sting of a biting insect burned at Fia’s neck, and she slapped the spot harder than was strictly necessary.
The pine forests in the outlying foothills were cloudy with gnats and midges and hungry flies, which were having their fill of the short-tempered postulant.
Even her placid mule switched its tail in annoyance, occasionally tossing its dun head.
Only an hour into Fia’s flight from Inverlyn, the creature had grown inexplicably lame in one hind leg—not enough to halt her progress altogether, but enough to force her to walk.
Enough to slow them considerably. They’d traveled the night through and all morning, and Fia had not even reached the flat land of the plains.
Behind them, the castle and its surrounding city were still visible above the trees.
Though Fia tried to keep herself from glancing over her shoulder now and then, she couldn’t help it.
She’d expected to be fixed on the homeward road, bent on the path ahead, yet her attention wavered, skittering back to the mountain and its Inver stronghold.
Guilt roiled in her stomach and images plagued her, flashing through her mind at random—Ariana in bed, desperately afraid and surrounded by blood.
Ariana in the throne room, sealing the intentions of the powers she’d assembled as she bled onto the flagstones.
Ariana with a world of sorrow in her eyes.
Steeling herself, Fia carried on. Though she’d spoken of herself as a gift from Dolenza, she was a free woman, and doubtless Honoria’s queen would have a ready answer if pressed as to her wet nurse’s whereabouts.
All would be well. Fia was not needed in the castle—where Ariana Lyrien had been a perfect daughter of stars, Ariana Inver was obviously an accomplished mover of high powers, shifting the fate of nations with her every word and deed.
She would be all right; without a mother, Miriel would not.
She would be all right.
At a fork in the road, Fia found an inn tucked beneath the pines.
A ragtag group of gaunt and hollow-eyed Corrinians had camped among the trees across from the stone building, and Fia let out a fretful sigh at the sight of them.
Corrinians made a habit of traveling by night, under the provision of Lyria, and stopping by day.
Their presence on the roadside meant that either the Corrinians couldn’t afford the inn, or they’d been turned out.
Encampments of that sort were a common sight across the great continent of the Hand, in the years since Honoria and Caervallion’s war.
Pulling the lead reins a little tighter, Fia brought her mule over to them.
“Clear skies and bright stars,” she said in Honorian, using the traditional Corrinian greeting, though she couldn’t speak the language it was made for. “I hope you’re able to rest well here. Where are you all traveling to?”
Most of the group was sleeping fitfully in makeshift tents, but one of the women got to her feet and went over to Fia, reaching out a hand.
Fia did likewise, and they stood for a moment, palms resting above each other’s hearts.
It was a relief and a comfort, to greet someone in the goddesses’ manner after spending time at the Inver court.
“We’re going southwest,” the woman said. “Across the plains. We’ll leave the Hand altogether and continue to Eire, if we can find safe passage, and work for our fare.”
Fia shook her head. “Eire won’t take you. Or rather, they will, but once you get there, you’ll find it’s not a place you can stay. There isn’t any work to be had, and nowhere for you to settle. My Matria doesn’t send anyone there, if they come to us looking for advice.”
The woman removed her headrail, the old-fashioned headscarf that only sorias and Corrinians still wore.
She wiped her damp forehead with the back of one hand and gave Fia a worried look.
“It’s the last place within a week of the Hand’s shores that we can think of.
Song Royale turned us out, saying they’ve taken in too many of us already.
Skandara’s borders are closed. And Caervallion’s out of the question. ”
“You’re right on that score,” Fia said. She glanced at the roadway and saw no one coming but a lone traveler in the distance, mounted and headed for the inn at a brisk and efficient trot.
“Go south to my cloister,” Fia told the Corrinian woman, her voice low.
“Matria Dolenza can find passage to Vesper for you, and safe transport across the frontlines. There’s room in Vesper for Corrinians, and work to be had.
They don’t worship the Three, or any god, really, but they’ll let you do and believe as you like, so long as it’s not harming anyone.
They won’t send you to the front, either; they respect those who pursue peace. ”
An elderly man with white hair and shockingly blue eyes joined the woman. A goddess mark ran along his jaw—four snow-white stars, stretching from his ear to his chin.
“What does she say?” he asked the woman, speaking Honorian for courtesy’s sake.
“That there’s room for us in Vesper, and the Matria at Raea’s cloister can arrange passage.”
The old man’s eyes clouded over. “Vesper? It’s so far. And they’re at war, with Honoria. How can we find safety in a place like that?”
“I know, Adda, but what other choice do we have?”
He shook his head. “Too far, Elora. How would we know when it’s time to go home?”
Swallowing back bitter words, Fia turned to her mule.
She’d heard this a thousand times before from Corrinians seeking refuge at the cloister.
They all held on to a vain hope that someday, Corrin would be secure again.
None of them wanted to stray too far, for fear of missing their chance at a return.
Fia could not understand it herself. She’d shaken the dust of her birthplace off her heels with relief, and it would give her no sorrow to hear the entire village had burned to the ground.
But she could not say as much to people in desperate straits.
So she patted her mule’s warm withers and prepared to lead her on once more.
Before Fia could leave the Corrinian encampment, though, something about the lone traveler on the road caught her eye.
She could see it was a woman—Caervallin, by her dress and her close-cropped hair.
That was a rarity in Honoria, although not unheard of.
But as Fia squinted, she recognized that hawkish profile, and the canny gleam in the Caervallin woman’s eye.
She’d seen her only a day before, in the audience hall at the castle.
Gwylen, she’d been called—a diplomat of some sort, emissary for the Caervallin king.
Suspicion pricked at Fia as she stood behind the shield of her sturdy mule and watched the ambassador dismount and duck into the roadside inn. Surely, Gwylen ought to be on the mountain preparing for the coming negotiations, not down here at a stopping place meant for tradesfolk and peddlers.
“That gray cloak,” Fia said, pointing to where the Corrinians had hung some of their washing over pine branches to dry. “Could I borrow it?”
The Corrinian woman’s eyes narrowed. “Twelve copper carvers and you can keep it.”
Fia pursed her lips. It was nonsense, the Honorian belief that all Corrinians and all those marked by Lyria were gentle and generous folk.
If anything, necessity had taught them to drive a harder bargain than anyone else on the Hand.
“Eight. I’ve barely got more than that, and I don’t have time for this. ”
“Eleven,” the Corrinian woman said staunchly.
“Don’t make me say nine,” Fia warned. “We’ll settle at ten and you know it, so take your coins and give me the cloak.”
Satisfied, the woman brought Fia a patched and faded homespun garment, deep-pocketed and with a voluminous hood.
“I’ll give you another three pennies to watch my mule while I’m across the way, but that’s really all I’ve got,” Fia said, shaking out her coin purse for emphasis.
She’d been given an allowance of travel alms by Matria Dolenza—an unexpected wealth to Fia, who’d seldom even held a coin before arriving at Raea’s cloister.
Accepting her offer without a word, the Corrinian woman took the mule by its bridle and led it away to graze.
Pulling the cloak about herself, Fia hurried across the road.
She covered up any sign of her unmistakable postulant’s kirtle, and drew the hood over her head.
Just outside the inn door, she kicked off her shoes, rubbing her feet in the dust. She could at least pass for a pilgrim on her way to Raea’s cloister now, rather than one of Dolenza’s women.
Satisfied with her thin disguise, Fia pushed the inn door open and stood blinking on the threshold of its crowded public room.
For a moment she thought she’d lost the ambassador—that Gwylen had gone up to a private meeting place on the second floor—but then she caught a glimpse of a shorn head at a table near the back.
Slowly, Fia skirted the room, keeping close to the walls, and scanning the seated patrons as if she was searching for someone else entirely. She’d only passed three tables when a prosperous-looking merchant in his middle age reached out and dropped a number of coins into her hands.
“For your journey, mother,” he said piously.
Fia pinned the merchant with a glare. “Do I look like your mother?”