Chapter XXIV
XXIV
I send you thanks for the use of your spymaster, who has indeed been most obliging.
He is now five hundred gold nobles the richer, and in possession of a fine country house at the northwestern edge of my newly expanded lands, which had been intended for my wife.
I doubt he will find it necessary to disclose this acquisition to Your Majesty, particularly given the convenient access to both sea and deep mountains this country house affords.
A tidy bolt hole, for a spymaster and an assassin, should he ever displease his master.
Naturally, I have assured him of my discretion, and that the house and its estate will remain officially in my name, should he ever need to go to ground.
—FROM HADRIAN INVER TO DARIAS INVER
Fia’s touch lit a fire in the Priest’s flesh, and her words lit a fire in his bones. But he was a pragmatist if nothing else, and shook off her hands.
“I have some connections,” he said flatly.
“Some favors I could call in among a few of the nobles. But nothing to rival Lucian, who has the guard in his pocket and the highest-placed Invers already plotting as to how they can take the throne. Even if I could outmaneuver Lucian and claim the kingship for Justus and a regency for myself, an infant and a blind man wouldn’t last long as heads of this court. ”
“Not with Lucian still in power,” Fia said. “Not without the guard under your control and whichever nobles might support you raised to the highest possible positions. Not without an unforeseen ally who can keep the remainder of Honoria’s most powerful families in check.”
“An impossibility,” the Priest told her, one hand straying to his rucksack to methodically check its straps and buckles.
He itched to be away. The idea Fia had put forward was so vast and daunting he could hardly get his head around it.
To rule Honoria. Never, not once, had the Priest considered grasping for that position.
“Not an impossibility,” Fia said. “A difficulty. And one we can surmount, if we set ourselves on this together. I will give you something no other Inver has ever been able to claim before—the full and unflagging support of Raea’s cloister, and all the plains land in its gift.
Those who accept you will survive winter.
Those who don’t, we will censure, and if they don’t starve outright, they’ll be destitute before long, paying for goods which Raea’s daughters and Raea’s faithful did not grow and harvest.”
“You’re a postulant,” the Priest scoffed. “None of this is yours to offer.”
“I am a postulant, yes. But one with Dolenza’s backing. Before we left the plains, she gave me complete discretion to speak for her. What I offer on behalf of the goddess, Dolenza will honor. Think what you could do with Raea’s cloister on your side.”
The Priest’s hands stilled. Her offer so closely mirrored what Orden had spoken of, but Fia’s conception of such a union was entirely different.
In her vision of the future, it would not be Raea’s Matria who was the puppet, moved by Honoria’s king, but rather himself as regent dependent on Raea’s support.
“You understand that I don’t want Honoria?” he said. “That if you offered me the kingship on a golden platter and could promise me a long life of ease and prosperity while I held it, I would refuse? I’ve barely learned to tolerate the role of Priest, let alone of ruler.”
Fia shifted her weight, Justus making small, contented sounds as he fed. The Priest could feel faint heat radiating from her, smell that scent of lavender and sun and hot earth, which had intoxicated him from their first meeting.
“I need this,” she said, her voice low. “I need it because Ariana does. She’s in chains now because I was in the wrong room the morning a king died.
Even if I hadn’t been, though, Orden dying was as good as a death sentence for Ariana and Justus both.
And you, if you’re honest—how long do you think you’d last?
A blind man with an infant? Whoever takes the throne will have you found and butchered no matter where you go.
Vesper will not be able to hide you well enough. ”
The Priest let out a long breath, his irritation made audible. “We’re at an impasse, then. You prefer my chances on the throne, I prefer them on the road. What if I refuse you? What if I just go?”
There was a whisper of fabric on fabric and a faint, disgruntled noise. The Priest felt the weight of his nephew settle into his arms.
“Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t use him like this.”
But he took Justus all the same.
The child rested easy against the Priest’s chest, slight and warm and sweet-smelling.
It felt as if something had cracked open within the Priest as he thought of Celina growing up separated from her own blood at the cloister, and of Ellimere, being raised in secret by the daughters of the stars.
He’d done well by his brother’s children, the Priest thought.
He’d lent staunch support to Ariana when she requested Celina be sent to Raea’s house for fostering, rather than dashed against the mountain or shut away at some backwater estate.
Ellimere’s departure, he’d arranged himself.
Now only Justus remained—the last living creature in Inverlyn tied to the Priest by blood.
An Inver son. A little king. The closest the Priest would ever come to fatherhood.
“He deserves a proper chance to live and to claim his birthright,” Fia said.
“Besides which, if you leave, I will stay here. I will confess to having aided Ariana in murdering Orden, at Dolenza’s behest. We will both be executed.
The cloister will be razed. And wherever you are, wherever you go, you will always know there was a chance you could have averted that future.
You will think of it every day, moment by moment, because when I die, I will refuse to leave the world entirely.
I will make myself into a ghost, and rather than be chained to a sanctuary, I will shackle my soul to you.
As a spirit, I will hold no other purpose besides reminding you of what you lost and how you failed. ”
“You are cruel, Fia,” the Priest said, but he couldn’t help himself. His grip on Justus grew more secure, and he drew inexorably closer to her.
“I know,” Fia murmured. “But if you run now, it will be about survival and despair. If we hazard this together, though? We’ll be moving toward hope, and bringing all of Honoria along with us.”
This time, it was the Priest’s hand that went to Fia’s face. She covered it with her own and turned toward his touch, pressing a lingering kiss to his palm.
“I want something if we do this,” the Priest warned. “I know it will leave me beholden to Dolenza and Raea’s house. But you? I want you beholden to me. I want you to remember that you asked for this, and that I gave it, and that you owe me a debt.”
When Fia spoke, he could hear the wicked smile in her voice.
“What will you do with that debt?”
“I don’t know. Save it, until the time is right. But you must agree to honor the debt immediately and unquestioningly when I call it in.”
“Very well,” she conceded.
“Swear it,” the Priest said, running his thumb across the velvet skin of her cheek. “By your goddess, like a good postulant. I do like to hear you swear.”
“By Bright Raea and my mark, I swear to honor the debt I owe you at once and without question, at whatever time you choose to ask for payment. Should I fail in my oath, may the sun strike me dead.”
“Very well, then,” the Priest said. “Let us begin the work of claiming Honoria’s throne.”
It was the Priest’s responsibility to manage Lucian—Fia had claimed she could find a replacement for Gaius who would not just keep the guard in line, but ensure the Priest’s and Justus’s safety while he did so. The Priest was unsure such a person existed, but could do nothing besides let her try.
For his part, he had a delicate series of interviews that must be conducted prior to moving against Lucian.
Each piece must be perfectly in place, to mitigate the chance of failure.
First was a meeting with one of the castle’s most formidable occupants—a player in Inverlyn’s politics who many overlooked, to their detriment every time.
She held power of an entirely different sort than the Priest’s own, but was no less potent in her way.
Standing on the threshold to her private apartment, the Priest wiped his damp hands on the fabric of his trousers, cursing the nerves rising within him.
It was an involuntary response left over from childhood—no youngster frequented the castle without feeling the ire of this particular Inver.
Anxiety did not prick him at the prospect of pitting himself against Lucian, only a fatalistic sense that what would be, would be.
But this? This was a daunting prospect for the Priest.
His knock echoed in the empty corridor. Heavy footsteps sounded within, and the door was pulled open with more force than was strictly necessary.
Silence hung on the air for a moment as the Priest stood beneath the scrutiny of the first ally whose assistance he required.
“Well,” a rough voice said. “The Priest Who Dwells In Darkness on my doorstep. Never thought I’d see the day. I suppose you’d best come in.”
And the Priest meekly did as he was told, following in Glora Inver’s wake.
He’d never been in Glora’s private apartment before—it was near the kitchens and necessarily smelled of baking bread and roasting meat and boiling cabbage.
None of that was unpleasant, only distinctive, and the smell of service had always set Glora apart from her fellow Invers.
It was her form of power and of rebellion against the established order of things, just as his own role was for the Priest.
“There’s a chair on the left,” Glora offered. “And a few steps forward. The space in front of it’s clear.”