five
“Isaid I would be just a second,” Sulim said to her husband after dinner, when everyone retired to the large sitting room toward the front of the house. “I want to get something from our room before having to be social again.”
His hand remained wrapped around her arm.
The two of them stood in the galley between the kitchen and dining room, where more than one maid attempted to pass without directly addressing them.
Dishes rattled. The scents of leftover, uneaten food on plates reminded Sulim that she had lost her appetite.
And here her husband was, catching her in the act of taking the back stairs up to the second floor.
“All right.” He released her. “If my mother asks, you had to run to the bathroom.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“It’ll shut her up if she gets on my case about your lack of presence.”
“Whatever you need to say to your mother.” Honestly, Sulim sometimes swore that she was better at mitigating Jacelah’s moods than Sonall, the man who had known her his whole life. But now was not the time to get into it. Sulim only had a few minutes.
As soon as Sonall left, she bounded up the stairs, avoiding another maid coming down.
The stairs only went up to the second floor.
It hadn’t been about efficiency, though.
It was about being undetected by the rest of the family, particularly Graella and Jacelah, who might be on to what she was up to.
So when Sulim dashed down the hallway and hoofed it up the main stairs to the third floor, she knew time was of the essence. Besides, julah knew how to teleport.
She couldn’t let Hannu know she was coming.
There was only one potential guest room on the third floor for two young julah women to comfortably stay in, and Sulim knocked on its door as soon as she thought of what to say.
When the door opened, she shoved her arm inside, forbidding the priestess from slamming the door shut again.
“Ah!” Hannu retreated into the guest room, shielding her face with the same stringy hair she used to keep tucked back or confidently tied with a big pink bow.
Now? She was a shell of her former self.
A woman who had once looked young but ready to tackle the world now cowered by one of the beds near the window.
Sulim entered, shutting the door behind her.
“You.” Sulim approached, her voice attempting to rise as she faced the one woman capable of angering her like this. “What are you doing here?”
Hannu sat on the bed, head still bowed, and hands shoved between her knees. Sulim had half a mind to sit next to her, but refrained. “You should ask Lady Joiya. It’s because of her that we stopped here. I… I was content to keep passing by.”
“Why are you with them?”
Finally, Hannu’s grayish eyes lifted to meet Sulim’s sour gaze. “I’m doing a tour of penance, just like Young Lady Dunsman. Lady Joiya is our guide.”
“Penance? Is that what you’re calling it?”
A sizable lump fell down Hannu’s throat.
What a pathetic excuse of a julah woman.
For years, she was the only one Sulim had known.
The few years she was assigned to the Yarensport Temple had been wrought with skepticism from the community and incompetence from within.
But the greatest betrayal had been when Hannu’s cowardice caused the deaths of dozens.
Including some people close to Sulim.
“I greatly regret what happened several years ago,” Hannu said, attempting to lift her head high enough to look Sulim in the eye.
She can’t even do that. “Since returning to Yahzen, I’ve done everything in my power to make up for what happened back on Qahrain. When Lady Joiya mentioned this pilgrimage, I asked if I could join. For my own penance.”
Something snapped in the back of Sulim’s chest.
“So nice of you to get penance, I suppose. Does the Void forgive so easily?”
“I’m sorry.”
She’s pathetic. To say that to her face was a waste of a voice. Instead, Sulim clung to the image of someone who had been important to her adolescence. Someone even her husband admitted was a loss to the community.
“Eyne is dead because of you.” Sulim escorted herself out of the room. “If you find penance here, it won’t be because of me.”
She slumped against the hallway wall once she was pried from Hannu’s disrespectful presence. I can’t believe this is how we meet again. Ever since she heard Hannu’s name at the dinner table, Sulim was ripped away from the thoughts she had before then.
Namely, that it was nice to meet some julah with spines and a personality beyond their names. Especially the woman sitting across from me. There was something about her… Mira, right? Sulim clung to that to distract her from the terrors she had once seen in Yarensport.
She did not return to dinner. Instead, she went to her room, where her thoughts jumped between the first girl she had ever loved and what led her to become the future Lady Gardiah.
Because it was a straight line. Sonall was there for me.
He was one of my close friends. When he proposed to me, I didn’t think twice about it.
I just wanted out of there. She hadn’t even thought about becoming proper nobility or anything that went along with it.
She didn’t consider how rich she would suddenly be.
Having servants. Expectations, both on her mannerisms and her body, now that she was married to the heir of a vast and wealthy estate.
No matter how understanding Sonall was about Sulim’s boundaries, as asserted as part of their marriage contract, he wasn’t in charge. Yet.
But Sulim wouldn’t fret about that now. She was too distracted by the other distressing thoughts in her head—and the fact that some pretty woman kept inserting herself in between the montage of Sulim’s youth.
“You sensed that, right?” Mira asked her mother that night as they settled in to sleep.
In a bed, of all things. It had been a while since Mira indulged in a mattress and a pillow that wasn’t as thin as her arm.
Penance this, penance that. She knew that this pilgrimage was part of the plea deal she took when originally arrested and was more for her mother’s heart than anyone else’s…
but, hot damn, at least in prison Mira had a decent bed. “There is some drama in this house.”
“It’s a noble house, my heart.” Joiya sat in front of the dresser, brushing her long black hair. Her daughter lay on the bed behind her, dressed down to her underwear in preparation for sleeping. “That’s like saying there’s drama going on in a proper Yahzenian House.”
“You know what I mean. Once Hannu’s name was dropped on the table, the whole table was colder than Ullan Estate in winter.”
She referred to the northernmost estate on Yahzen, the only one to touch the arctic tundra.
While there were some vacation and monastic settlements in the more habitable parts of the tundra, only the surly, hardened Ullans bothered with living there full time, where they traditionally made their money as furriers, wild game hunters, and ice fishermen.
I went to the Academy with one of their ilk.
The boy was so big and burly that he redefined what julah masculinity looked like for about twenty years.
Did not hurt for female companionship. Mira was only slightly jealous.
Joiya met her daughter’s gaze in the dresser mirror. “Perhaps her reputation precedes her. Be grateful that she distracts from your history, dearest daughter.”
“That doesn’t sound like my mother.” Mira rolled onto her stomach, kicking her feet up behind her. As her bare toes smacked together with every swing of her legs, she said, “My mother would fess up and admit why we’re really here.”
“What gives you the idea that I’ve machinated anything?”
“Because you always do. Things are rarely a mistake with you. I mean, look at me.”
Joiya put down her hairbrush and turned in her seat. “This is the most fortuitous location for us to properly rest for a few days before heading on to the Kinship Memorial. Besides, there’s rain in the forecast. Do you want to camp in the muck? Again?”
“I’m just saying. I’m on to you.”
“Consider this an opportunity to make connections with humans. You know that’s one of my favorite things.”
“Does Dad know we’re here?”
“Of course he does. I informed him earlier. He thinks it’s wonderful that we’re ‘shacking up in civilization’ at the moment.”
“Ma…”
Joiya got up, fixing her robe before returning to her one large piece of luggage she brought with her. “Let’s try to get some sleep, my heart.”
“Ma…”
“We might have a big day tomorrow. I sense that there is great spiritual distress in this place. The Void is what brought us here for a reason, not me.”
“Ma!”
Finally, Joiya’s head snapped back around. “Yes, dear?”
She could not fool her daughter with such a sweet voice. “You have no intention of us leaving this place for a while, do you?”
Joiya settled onto the bed beside her daughter. “I intend for us to be here for however long we must be here. It’s up to the Void to decide.”
“As per your interpretation, of course.”
“Which one of us has spoken with the Void, my dear?”
Mira rolled back over and stared at the ceiling with a sigh. “You’ve always gotta pull that one on me, huh?”
“It’s never led me astray.”
No, Mira supposed not. Now, if it had led her astray? Well, nobody would be shocked if it turned out that was so.