Chapter XVII
XVII
It remains a constant irritation to me, that Raea’s house persists beyond our oversight.
But just as our forefathers recognized the futility of raising the ire of the people of the Solis Plains, so, too, must I.
They would set fire to their crops, salt their fields, and starve themselves along with the rest of the Hand before giving up their pagan goddess and their holy women, and if there was ever any proof that such folk would make worthy Invers once drawn into our fold, it rests in that belligerence.
Yet by Tyrus’s drawn blade, I cannot for the life of me find a way to complete that conquest without unleashing the famine to end all famines.
So we must continue to suffer this pernicious element at the heart of our realm.
Someday, though, I do not doubt a scion of mine with more understanding will subjugate Raea’s cloister in a manner I am unable to conceive of.
—FROM DARIAS INVER TO HADRIAN INVER
The quality of the air had shifted. While it had been blazing farther inland, and still and dry among the fields and olive groves, the closer to the sea the royal party drew, the more oppressive the weather became.
The atmosphere was heavy and thick, a tangible thing, and the king’s retinue toiled through it, sweat-soaked in their ornate gowns and doublets.
The Priest fared a little better, dressed in loose, plain linen, but he was on foot rather than mounted, and all the Invers were bareheaded.
Fia, who traveled with nothing beyond the single shoulder bag she’d arrived on the mountain with, had been given a wide-brimmed straw hat along the way by a devout farmer, and while the humidity frayed Inver tempers and led to outbursts, she grew more withdrawn the longer they traveled, silent and brooding astride her mule.
The Priest thought that odd—he’d expected her to calm the closer they drew to the cloister she planned to make her home.
At last, the king reached a crossroads ahead, calling back directions to the rest of the procession as he carried on.
“A few minutes now,” Fia said quietly to the sweating Priest, the first time she’d spoken in over an hour, “and everything will be better.”
He wasn’t entirely sure what she meant. Then they were in the crossroads, and he felt them moving to the east, guided by his hand resting on Fia’s stirrup.
The dirt road beneath them became neatly laid paving stones, and all at once, everything was better.
The air lightened. A breath of wind stirred. With it came the tang of salt.
“Nearly there,” Fia offered. He wanted her to say something more—to explain why she desired a cloistered life so fiercely, or to list some of the charms of Raea’s house for him.
But she only fell back into silence. The Priest drew his hand away from the withers of her mule, relying solely on his cane and the smooth, dusty surface of the road for direction.
If they drifted apart, so be it. He’d never been one to push in where he wasn’t wanted.
They carried on beside each other for another mile, the breeze growing stronger, the heat lessening its hold on them, and a hollow sense of anticipation opened up within the Priest. Fia continued to ride without speaking, lost in her own thoughts, and he was grateful for it now as he tried to work himself back into some semblance of detached and cynical Inver calm.
Then he heard Dolenza’s voice ahead, calling out a greeting to Orden.
The air cooled precipitously as they passed into the shade cast by a building or a wall, and then there was sun again, and a sense of enclosure.
A courtyard, the Priest thought. But he had little time for more than that, because Fia dismounted in a sudden rush, and he could hear her retreat as she ran across the cobbles.
No sooner had she left than someone spoke by his side.
“Priest,” a woman’s voice said warmly. “My name is Soria Aurelia. I am Dolenza Raeana’s right hand, and as she will be at the king’s beck and call during the court’s time here, so I place myself at your disposal.
Is there anything you wish for after your journey?
A meal, in the refectory or alone? Cold wash water?
To be shown around the cloister, or taken to the harbor?
Whatever would refresh you best, I will provide it. ”
The idea of a cold wash, a change of clothes, and something to eat besides the extravagant yet borderline rancid foods the royal party insisted on, was irresistible. But the Priest couldn’t help the frown that wrote itself across his face, or the question that sprang up as Aurelia made her offer.
“Is it fitting for a highly placed soria to serve me?” he asked. “I am, after all, the head of a heretic faith.”
“You’re our guest,” Aurelia answered. “And we have no servants here. It is every soria’s pleasure and duty to serve, from the newest postulant to our Matria herself.”
“In that case, I should like to be shown to my quarters,” the Priest said. “And the cold wash you mentioned wouldn’t go amiss, nor would some food.”
It felt unaccountably strange to be making demands and to be waited upon.
At court, the Priest was often solitary, spending the bulk of his time alone in the darkness of the mountain sanctuary.
He emerged for banquets and court suppers when necessary, and enlisted Beneson for errands on occasion, but mostly fended for himself, choosing to get his own meals from the kitchens, and to take his own linens to various launderers in the city.
It wasn’t so much a matter of independence but of practicality—life had taught the Priest to be deeply distrustful, and what was done by his own hands could not easily be used as a tool to harm him.
“As you wish,” Aurelia said. “Will you take my arm?”
The Priest swallowed back frustration, not at Aurelia, but at the world and life in general.
He hated to be led, but in an unfamiliar place had little choice.
It struck him then that he’d felt no such resentment toward Fia during their four days of travel together.
Even after she’d begun to withdraw, each time he’d had to leave the road to do the necessary and rejoined the retinue, she’d beckoned him back with her voice.
And she hadn’t invited him to use her stirrup or her ankle or the flank of her mule as a convenient guide—it had seemed like a foregone conclusion between them that he would, like an arrangement that had always existed.
Curious, the Priest thought. He wasn’t sure he liked any of that, or how the postulant’s current absence gnawed at him.
He drew himself away a little, internally, and examined the sensations he felt toward her.
They weren’t unpleasantly strong, nor did they give him a warning sense of weakness.
He didn’t fully trust Fia, but neither did he distrust her.
If she was ever to betray or harm him, it wouldn’t be out of malice or ambition, but because he’d set himself at cross-purposes with her faith, or threatened something she loved.
As the Priest had no intention of doing either, it seemed safe enough to indulge the taste he’d developed for the young woman’s company.
At least for now. At least until their goals or beliefs diverged and proved irreconcilable.
Aurelia led him through a warren of corridors and courtyards, peopled with chatting sorias and laughing children.
The Priest wondered where Celina was kept—the court spoke of Orden’s eldest living child so seldom she’d been forgotten, but the Priest remembered.
Ariana, he was sure, remembered too. Somewhere in this good-natured, entirely alien labyrinth, there was a child with Inver blood, and he intended to become reacquainted with her before leaving.
“May I ask you something?” the Priest inquired of Aurelia as she led him through the maze of the cloister, alive with women’s and children’s voices.
“Are men barred from Raea’s order? The queen has made mention of fratrias at Lyria’s cloister—they’re a rarity, from what I gathered, but they still exist. I’ve often wondered why Silith and Raea seem less open-minded than Lyria on that score, when the mother of stars is considered strictest of the Beloved Three. ”
For a moment, Aurelia was silent. When she spoke, her voice was even, kept carefully devoid of emotion.
“Every house of the goddesses had its fratrias before the Inver rise to power. Why Silith’s order no longer accepts them, I can’t be sure.
But Raea’s fratrias were our one loss during the conquest of Honoria—they were deemed too great a threat and put to the sword by your ancestor and his forces.
Perhaps the Invers no longer consider that small slaughter of note, by comparison to the butchery they did on Silith’s mountain.
But we remember our fallen brothers. We honor them by leaving their places unfilled, and strive to demonstrate our harmlessness to the Invers by keeping our order strictly female. ”
“Does that indeed render you harmless?” the Priest asked pointedly. Aurelia made no answer, leading him on.