Chapter XIX
XIX
Mother of all, guide us rightly
Grower of fields, bless us brightly
Cast your gaze on our lands
Hold our fate in your hands
And when your judgment falls,
Let it fall lightly.
—A SONG OF THE SOLIS PLAINS
Fia slept little, given Justus’s growing appetite.
It was more wearying sometimes to pretend she might sleep than to sit up until dawn.
So she did as she had during the earliest days of Miriel’s infancy and took herself to the chapel when rest could not be had during the smallest hours of the night.
Seated on the floor against the back wall nearest the doorway, she leaned her head against cool stone and thought of the music she’d made with Dolenza and Ariana, and of the warning Ariana had delivered.
Her soul was a maelstrom within her, unsettled and storm-ridden, and it grew more turbulent still when Imperatrice Gileta ghosted in, along with Ambassador Gwylen.
Silver moonlight poured into the chapel, a luxuriance of it cascading through the leaded glass windows and limning everything with silver.
The two women moved silently and in tandem, one ebony, the other olive, and Fia was struck for a moment by their beauty.
Gileta was Song Royale, as the postulant was learning—its fine, understated elegance, its perfect restraint and gracefulness.
And Gwylen was Caervallion in a way that Afon never would be.
She moved like a creature of the pathless forest, and there was ancient knowing in her gaze and the stealth of her tread.
“Imperatrice,” Fia said with a dip of her head, both to show respect and to indicate her presence. The last thing she needed was to stir up trouble because two such formidable guests believed she’d been eavesdropping. “I thought you and your retinue had taken leave of Raea’s house.”
The women turned, and Gwylen’s teeth bared in a smile that unnerved Fia. “You see, Gileta? I told you we’d find her here. And the boy, too. How fortuitous.”
Gwylen’s hand was on the hilt of her curved knife, resting there as if by habit, and yet the sight of it sparked all Fia’s latent protectiveness.
Without hesitation, she scrambled to her feet, holding Justus closer.
And she realized, in that moment, that the devotion she felt for Miriel had doubled.
Regardless of this infant’s provenance, Fia was bound to him by milk and blood and saltwater, and prepared to kill or die for him.
Nevertheless, she did not show what she felt, only dropped into a polite obeisance before regaining her full posture, the Inver heir held to her racing heart, the open doorway now at her back.
Whatever information Gwylen had offered her by way of aid, whatever the ambassador’s true feelings about Afon, there was something in her that set Fia on edge and amplified her innate distrust. She did not relish an interview alone and exhausted with both Honoria’s former ally and the servant of their staunchest enemy.
A small sound caught her attention and immediately slowed her pulse with a wash of relief. The rhythmic tap, tap, of the Priest’s cane as he swept it back and forth, moving down the corridor. Gwylen and Gileta said not a word, waiting silently as he approached.
“Priest—” Fia began, and he cut her off with a wry smile.
“Aurelia said you would be down here. You know, Orden has guards placed all around the cloister, but it’s foolish for him to let you wander so freely with his son.
You ought to be supervised more closely, so I thought I’d volunteer myself for the graveyard watch.
An Inver child merits an Inver overseer, and before you argue, understand how often we die in infancy.
I myself had escaped death by a hairsbreadth half a dozen times before reaching my tenth year.
Four of my siblings died in earliest childhood, though two, of course, were killed by our father, for the fault of being goddess-marked. ”
“Gileta and Gwylen are here,” Fia said flatly the moment he was silent. She watched with an odd, pleasant satisfaction as the ease he’d shown in her company vanished at once, replaced by his habitual wariness.
“Ah,” the Priest said. “So we’re graced with the company of both the full moon and the new. How… illuminating.”
Gwylen chuckled, a low, wicked sound, and Gileta smiled with her eyes on the pair of them.
“Well put,” the ambassador said. “I can see why you enjoy his company, Imperatrice.”
The Priest had stopped very close to Fia, so near that her shoulder brushed his, and she felt the tension in him, taut as a drawn bowstring.
She was safe, she realized at once. It was no longer necessary for her to kill or die on Justus’s behalf; the Priest would be first to manage whichever was required.
“Fortuitous yet again,” Gwylen went on. “I’ve often wished to make the acquaintance of Orden Inver’s bastard Priest. It’s said you commune with ghosts.”
“Just now I mean to commune with Bright Raea,” the Priest answered, offering Fia his arm. “You’re welcome to attend me as I do. Though I chiefly wanted the oversight of one of the sun’s own servants, which is why I sought out my nephew’s nurse.”
Fia rested her hand on the Priest with exquisite lightness, determined to hamper him in no way if he reached for the knife she’d noticed he carried strapped to one arm.
Oh, it was hidden well, but Nikolau had taught her to search for such things, and she’d seen the faint line of it against the linen of the Priest’s tunic that night in the cavern as he knelt before her.
She let herself be led across the vast emptiness of the moonlit chapel, and to the rust-hued altar at Raea’s feet.
There, to her great surprise, the Priest slipped his shoulder bag off and removed two pouches, the first of which he emptied into the offertory bowl on the altar.
It contained young grain, still green in the pod.
The second pouch was goat’s milk scented with paschalflower, and Fia recognized at once the tonic that the Priest favored.
He poured it over the grain as a libation, and she couldn’t help but smile at the seriousness of his expression as he did so.
Raea was not the Inver gods, who required solemnity and utter intent from her worshippers.
Gileta and Gwylen stood several feet away, their eyes alight with interest as they watched.
“Is this correct, postulant?” the Priest asked. “The grain and the milk?”
Fia inclined her head. “Very suitable. Though Raea prefers for such offerings to be harvested by the one presenting her the gift.”
The Priest tilted his head to one side, shaking it a little.
“Do you think, as careful as I am, that I do not manage the goats I sup from personally? I keep them just outside the castle proper, in a small garden purpose-made. They are called Eugenia and Aravis, and suffer no one to a lay hand on them but me. As for the grain, your Matria showed us some of the cloister’s holdings this forenoon, before the unfortunate conclusion of Ariana’s council.
I asked permission and picked every germ of wheat myself.
Now, what else must I do to complete the offering? ”
“The gift is normally conveyed to Raea with a song,” Fia said. “The Beloved Three have a great passion for music.”
The Priest shifted, hesitating. “I am afraid I only know one of their songs. I’m unsure of the words, or the appropriateness for the occasion.”
“Raea will understand,” Fia said, powerfully curious to hear which song he knew.
But when he began, she realized she should have guessed. The Priest hummed, in a mellow, easy baritone, and within four notes it was apparent that he offered to Raea the Silithien hymn for the dead.
Gileta and Gwylen exchanged a charged look, their attention on the altar and those before it growing electric.
Fia did not like to have them inspecting the Priest as though he was a knot for them to unsnarl or a difficult riddle to be solved, and so she stubbornly joined her voice to his, humming the melodious counterpoint to his eerie hymn, the Raean canticle for a new day.
When they’d finished, the Priest stepped back in surprise.
“I didn’t know there was a melody that fit together with that. It sounds less unnerving here, and with a second voice.”
“There’s a third part as well,” Gileta said. “Most of our songs are made for three singers. But the two of you do nicely as a pair.”
“They do,” Gwylen said slyly. “I think they might accomplish great things together, if given the opportunity.”
“Now you make your petition,” Fia told the Priest, choosing not to bite at Gwylen’s broad hints. “In silence, or aloud, whichever you prefer.”
For a moment, his head lowered and his lips moved, though she could not make out his words. Then the Priest turned to Gileta and Gwylen.
“My ladies. Just what service is it you have in mind for Raea’s postulant and I?”
Gwylen watched the Priest, but Gileta kept her eyes locked on Fia as she spoke in her lilting Song cadence. “I wish to commission the Priest to kill his brother, and for the postulant to keep Ariana from interfering while it happens. Afterward, Silas may take the Inver throne.”
When the Priest answered, his reply was not at all what Fia expected. Rather than stiffening, he seemed to grow easier. “I see. Do you believe yourself the first to ask me to undertake such a thing?”
Gileta shrugged. “Of course not. But others would have sought your assistance out of a desire for their own advancement, to lay their own claim on Honoria’s throne. I offer that throne to you as a blood price. All I seek is your brother’s death—nothing else.”
“Fascinating. And what exactly would Fia stand to gain from all this?”
For the life of her, Fia could not read the Priest’s true response to Gileta’s suggestion. His shield of cynicism and dry wit was impenetrable in present company.
“I’m sure I could prevail upon Dolenza to offer a soria’s role—” Gileta began, but the Matria’s imperious voice rang through the chapel.