ten #3
Sulim shrugged. “You ask me, he always faced so much pressure to get married young, otherwise, his parents would have picked someone out for him. When he realized he had feelings for me, he went for it. I daresay he didn’t quite expect me to say yes.”
“Again, not so different from julah society. Best case scenario for scions is finding someone you love when you’re young. Then praying that your parents consent.”
“I thought it was the safe thing to do, honestly.”
Sulim sighed. “This family is… wealthy. Even by human standards. Other families in cities may look richer, but the Gardiahs have partially built up their wealth by being frugal. They believe in upfront costs for long-term use, not loans. I like that about them,
because it matches my own attitudes toward money. But it does something to the brain. They become more obsessed with status than pleasure. Everyone has a role in the family, and if you don’t fulfill it properly…”
Mira nodded. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
No one had ever extended sympathy to Sulim before.
Not for this. Not for marrying so well that I’m set for life.
She could even handle Jacelah at her worst with the knowledge that she could usurp Lady Gardiah if she applied herself enough.
Sulim never discussed it with her husband, but if they wanted, they could stage a coup for power in another few years if it came down to it. I really hope it doesn’t come to that.
“I don’t regret it,” Sulim said. “If that’s what you think.”
“I don’t.”
Sulim let the silence hang in the air, counting her long breaths as she imagined the alternate life she could have lived.
No guarantees. No family to fall back on.
Sure, she could have met new people. She might have even met a woman at one of Terra III’s many hangouts dedicated to meeting people. But there were no guarantees.
At least here, she knew her place. She had a future. And she was part of a generation that indulged in feelings and respected each other’s privacy.
“Anyway, Hannu…” Sulim sighed. “The three of us know her well. She was the priestess in Yarensport when the exchanges happened. She’s the one who brought them back, in fact.”
Mira remained quiet, soaking up the information Sulim imparted.
“She was… fine. Not very enthusiastic or knowledgeable, but she tried. It’s because of her I was able to go to Terra III and find another life for myself. She’s the reason I met the Gardiahs. But she was… ineffective in other areas.”
Sulim’s voice dipped when she said that. Mira silently encouraged her to keep talking.
“A few years ago, Yarensport and the surrounding hamlets were targeted by Cerilynian mercenaries.”
She hated how her voice shook when she talked about it.
As if I’m right back there again. Sulim had missed most of the violence, having been in the right part of town when it happened, but the fallout…
“Someone took a hit out on the governor. But in true Qahrainian fashion, they were too cheap to pay for something clean and quick. So while the governor was murdered in his mansion, a bunch of other mercenaries sacked the city to take whatever they could. I’m sure you know how it works.”
“Yes,” Mira tenderly said. “They rape and pillage. Often, not even for their own amusement, but to take the spoils back to Cerilyn.”
“The fact that the Federation lets them do it…”
Sulim didn’t want to talk politics, though.
Not when she choked on her words. “Anyway, they also tried taking recruits.”
The time-honored tradition of mercenaries abducting whatever able-bodied youth they could get their hands on to become one of them was also tacitly allowed by the Federation.
For reasons Sulim would never understand.
“One of the girls they tried to abduct was my girlfriend, Eyne.”
Mira pressed a finger atop her upper lip before lowering her hand again. “I’m sorry.”
“I was at home. In the apartment we shared by the port.”
Sulim closed her eyes. But if she weren’t careful, she would see all of those awful images dancing on the back of her eyelids.
Blood. Bullets. More blood. “She had gone to the Temple to help with something. That’s where we met.”
Sulim opened her eyes again, immediately meeting Mira’s sympathetic countenance.
“We were both attendants at the Temple under Hannu Adelah. I was supposed to go with Eyne that day, but I had been up late the night before and wanted to take a nap, instead…”
Mira nodded. “Something happened to her, I’m guessing.”
Sulim wiped something from her cheek. “She was attacked by a mercenary on the Temple steps. I think she was already there, you know, but heard the commotion. The mercenary had already killed our liaison. Eyne was very justice-oriented, you know? She would’ve run to help.
The coroner said she had tried to fight back. I don’t know if they were trying to abduct her or what, but…” Sulim coughed. “Fuck.”
“It’s all right. You don’t have to say.”
But it was a disservice not to tell the whole story. A disservice to her memory. “They shot her. Multiple times. Probably dead before she hit the ground.”
A hand touched her arm. It was the first time the two of them had properly touched since arriving at the barn. Sulim leaned into it. Until Mira pulled her arm back again, anyway.
“And Hannu?”
That tone implied that Mira might have known where this was going. She seems to know Hannu well enough to travel with her. Sulim drew a deep breath for strength. “She watched it all happen and didn’t do a thing.”
Something intimidating flashed on Mira’s face. Sulim was taken aback, but when she turned her head, Mira had readopted her neutral demeanor. “Hannu is not a powerful sorceress. I’ve seen her Academy marks.”
“Be that as it may…”
“She still could’ve done any number of things, I’m guessing.”
Mira grunted. “She could’ve teleported to get help. We’re trained in the Temple to summon the YDF if anyone in the Temple is harmed by mercenaries. We have our own treaty with Cerilyn, you know. It’s the only way we can have priests on that ungodly planet.”
Priests on Cerilyn? Who knew it was possible? “Is that what you would have done?”
Mira’s brows formed delicate crescents on her forehead. “Oh, I would have killed them. I’m powerful, unlike Hannu.”
There was that confidence again. This time, though, it was weaponized in a way that beguiled Sulim even more.
“Is that why she’s on penance?” Sulim asked.
“Mm.” Mira once again contemplated the grove of trees beyond the window.
“I honestly don’t know why she’s with us. My mother just dragged her along. But she is repentant about something.”
She glanced at Sulim. “Hannu will probably not be a practicing priestess out in the field again. The best she can hope for is a post in the High Temple. Doing grunt work.”
That hardly seemed fitting to Sulim, but she was not the arbiter of Temple discipline. “She was supposed to protect us. All of us. We felt so safe with a julah among us…”
Mira threaded her fingers beneath her chin, a conspiratorial tone coming from her lips. “I should tell you why I’m on penance, huh?”
Sulim had forgotten about that and said nothing. What does that have to do with…
“You have to promise not to tell anyone. Blood oath or not.”
“Sure. Of course.”
Mira waited another beat before saying, “I’m a murderer. I killed someone.”
Sulim was acutely aware of the tension around her heart again. Only, this time, it was touched with fear. “I… see…”
“I just got out of prison for it a year ago,” Mira continued.
“Ten years. Which is embarrassingly short, but my parents pulled all sorts of strings to keep it out of the news. Which required giving me a short prison sentence so other julah wouldn’t ask questions. I’m lucky, you know. That my parents are who they are.”
Sulim leaned back. “Yeah.” Humans would see at least twenty years for murder.
“In return, I’ve been stripped of my priesthood and can’t perform sorcery for… I dunno how many decades. That part’s important, because it’s how I killed that bitch.”
“That… bitch.”
“Yeah. I killed a woman.”
She had Sulim’s attention again. “Did she deserve it?”
“You tell me.” Mira could barely contain her smug grin. “How would you feel knowing that the chief of the mercenary tribe who killed your girlfriend met a gruesome end on the other end of Void magic?”
Sulim’s lips parted, but she couldn’t say a word.
“The timeline is all wrong for it being the woman who took on the contract for the Qahrainian governor,” Mira mused, “but nearly twelve years ago, I was the priestess at an outpost on Cerilyn. I got to know some of the locals,
from the courtesans in the pleasure houses to several mercenaries looking for spiritual pardons and peace in their hearts.”
Mira’s fingers danced dangerously close to Sulim’s.
“One night, a few of them showed up with more money than they had probably ever had in their lives. They asked me to eliminate their chief. She had been making their lives worse for decades. An absolute menace, even by Cerilynian standards.”
“You…” Sulim wracked her brain for the name. It was a big deal in the Federation news several years ago. The Cerilynian chief who appeared to have died from ritualistic murder. “That was you. Second Tribe, right?”
Mira cackled, the laughter ricocheting throughout the tight quarters of Sulim’s loft. It nearly struck her in the skull, but her aura must have absorbed the worst of it, because Sulim still managed to withstand its piercing peal.
“So, you’ve heard of my work?”
Sulim was speechless.
“Ayna Aiya. That was her name.” Mira shook her head. “She deserved whatever the Void had in store for her.”
“How did you get caught?” Sulim whispered. “I mean, what evidence was there?”
“Well… once word got out, someone noticed that it had the markings of julah sorcery. There were only like two of us on the whole planet at the time. I was brought into the YDF’s nearest office for questioning. Even my mother figured it out. That was how we kept it from getting out.
About twenty people know, all sworn to blood oaths to not say a word.”
The rain started again.
“You know what’s crazy?”