Chapter 3
One month later
The acoustics of the lower southeast fish-market were very poor for my last performance.
Flat, wide-open, packed-dirt floors swallowed most of the sound I picked out of my kithara, and this particular song had actually been written for the lyre—a gutter instrument, by my teachers’ estimation, though perhaps more appropriate to accompany this folk song about a sexually adventurous milkmaid, her well-endowed lover, and a bucket that advanced the rhyme scheme more than the plot—but I amused myself by inventing a complex harmony on the fly, making my sacred instrument sing.
Three tipsy fishermen handled the vocals, the crowd clapped and stomped their feet in accompaniment, and everyone shouted the explicit last lines together.
Not my favorite genre of music, but the tips were better when I took requests.
I couldn’t perform Wesha’s epics, because there was a guardsman loitering nearby.
Death-worship was a capital offense as of the last week, and the queen’s guard might not make fine distinctions between worshipping and singing about.
I didn’t think a song about how Death’s own bride had locked him out of Heaven would win the god any new devotees, but then again, I had often been surprised by the number of people who willingly joined his cult.
There were new songs about the rebellion that I might have legally performed.
Some were even about me. But they were very to the point, not composed in the epic style they deserved, and it would have not just kicked at the shattered pieces of my grieving heart but also offended my artistic sensibilities to sing about the tragic events of my life like I was giving directions to the bathhouse.
So tonight’s musical performance for the lower southeast fish-market by Iona Night-Singer, formerly Iona ter Wesha, was about milkmaids.
As I plucked the last chord of the charming tune, I saw Drutalos’s appalled face in the back of the crowd.
My heart lifted. I’d been waiting for him to return for weeks, so I bent in a half bow and put my instrument in its case to signal the end of the concert, receiving a round of disappointed clamors for an encore before I handed a wooden bowl into the crowd for tips. People were smiling, but not Drutalos.
“You’re playing in the fish-market for coin?”
Hello, Iona, you look well under the circumstances, beautiful instrumental work there.
No such luck. When he reached my side, Drutalos hissed at me in a low voice—or what he thought was one.
That last big explosion on the beach hit all of us differently, and he couldn’t hear well anymore, so he yelled.
“It’s an honest living,” I said, tilting my face up so he could see my lips.
I positioned my cane and waved off his silent offer of help as I got to my feet. I didn’t need the cane to walk the short distance we were going, but my foot stiffened if I sat for a long time, and I stumbled as it complained under my weight.
Damn it, Taran, I thought, more cheerfully than usual, since I hoped I would see him very soon.
Drutalos grabbed my elbow, because everyone now felt entitled to manhandle me, and I shot him an annoyed look until I was free. We both turned toward the harbor, the fresh scent of brine on the breeze almost alluring over the stink of tar and kiln fires from the city’s new construction.
Tonight! I could go tonight.
“I can’t believe it,” my fellow acolyte loudly rumbled, still offended on my behalf. “Bawdy drinking songs for fishermen. Do they know who you are?”
“They know. They’re very appreciative. Some of them come see me every night.”
Drutalos was a bit of a snob, like many of the acolytes whose temples had drawn from the higher classes.
“The last, best singer of Wesha’s temple can’t perform somewhere better than this?” he ranted.
I vaguely remembered my birth family selling fruit at a crossroads. I was by no means too good to perform for dockworkers and fishermen.
“It pays pretty well, actually. I’m sure I could make even more in tips if I showed some leg, but, you know, I have my pride.”
“Iona. This is ridiculous. You were trained to be a priest of Wesha. Why aren’t you delivering babies? Tending to the sick? That would have to pay better.”
“It probably would, but the queen won’t have it.
” I made a covert gesture, chopping at my neck.
Someone had whispered to me yesterday about an old vocate of the sea god, at a town halfway up the coast from here, caught calling the fish to his nets with Marit’s blessings.
A mob tore him apart before the queen’s justice could do the same. “I hope you’ve been discreet.”
Drutalos’s deep brown eyes widened in a face the same color. “I meant without the gods’ blessings. In an ordinary way. Have you talked to the queen? Since…since?”
He was awfully interested in my life choices, and I noted that he had a careful hand over the big pack he carried with him as we made our way to the harbor. He didn’t approve of what I’d asked him to do for me.
I halted at the rise over the docks.
“Since she tried to marry me off to her old goat of a cousin, who stared at my chest and asked whether I was a virgin?” I asked, crossing my arms.
My friend immediately clasped his cheeks as though they’d caught fire. Wesha’s priesthood was the only celibate order, but Smenos’s priests were supposed to be modest and respectable, like the tradespeople who adhered to his cult, and they were easily embarrassed.
“But of course you’re a…a…You were almost a maiden-priest, and you weren’t married yet, and—I’m sorry,” Drutalos squeaked, eyes going round as he realized that he was only digging himself in deeper with every word.
I would have been sorry too if I’d actually planned to marry Lord Fentos, who had certainly not earned any maidenly chastity on my part. But at least I could say that although I never took my vows to Wesha, I had done nothing that would break them, and maybe that would make Wesha listen to me.
I waved off Drutalos’s pity.
“Did you find anything?” I asked, looking at his pack.
He took a tiny step away from me.
“I did, but…here? Where should we stay tonight?” He covered his pack with a protective hand and attempted a diversion.
“We aren’t staying anywhere tonight. Hiwa has all the coin I’ve been earning, so go see her if you need a room somewhere. I’m going tonight before the tide changes.”
A month ago, I’d sent Drutalos to the ruins of the high temple in Ereban. Death destroyed it, and then later it was covered by the mudslide that took out most of the city, but if anyone could excavate Wesha’s chapel, I’d thought an acolyte of the crafter god could unearth our former headquarters.
“Tonight? Wait. We were going to talk about it more first.”
While he sputtered, I grabbed his pack and looked to see what he’d been able to find.
It was heavy with recovered treasures. Several white dresses, slightly dusty.
A gold diadem set with pink tourmalines and matching enamel prayer beads.
Ritual jewelry and stone knives. Candlesticks and offering platters, sacred scrolls recording Wesha’s prayers.
It was better than I’d hoped, and I felt my shoulders relaxing.
I would not be going in front of my goddess empty-handed to beg for Taran’s life.
Oh, look—he’d even found the high priestess’s gauze veil, embroidered with a pattern of white stars.
She must not have worn it for my ordination, otherwise it would have been incinerated with the priestess herself.
I allowed myself one moment of bittersweet tribute, glad to have something of hers when Death had left me little else.
The high priestess hadn’t been particularly affectionate—all of us followers of Wesha were an unsentimental bunch—but she’d joined me in protesting the sacrifice of the queen’s daughter on the day the riots started.
The maiden-priests had taught me to sing, but more importantly, they’d taught me right from wrong.
I took the veil and smoothed it over my bound hair to check it for fit before tucking the ends under my belt.
Wearing the high priestess’s veil was a little presumptuous, but there was nobody else to compete for the title, and I was equal parts vain and self-conscious about my hair.
Wesha’s priests chose new acolytes based on their musical ability alone, but masses of wavy, ember-red hair were not what anyone expected of a follower of the Maiden.
It was too luxurious, almost indecent. A particularly mean old vocate had once threatened to shave it to teach me humility.
Taran had thought my hair was beautiful, and secretly I agreed with him, but my hair didn’t match the rest of me.
As Lord Fentos had silently noted, my body was not curved in the way men liked, and I had the same ordinary peasant features and wide brown eyes as everyone else in my home village.
More than once I had turned around to the disappointment of a stranger who’d been admiring my hair, so it was better if I kept it pinned up and covered.
Attire settled, I looked for the boat I had picked out.
It was a pretty little pleasure craft of polished oak and brass fittings, belonging to a noble lady who had sampled foreign wines while everyone I loved died.
The boat was built for two, but I had watched her take it out a few times, and I believed I could pilot it myself.
“You don’t have to do this,” Drutalos said. “We should talk about it more. Does Hiwa know you’re going tonight?”
I didn’t stop walking toward the boat, but I did my best to hear him out.
“Don’t tell me you think I should marry Lord Fentos too.”
“Why couldn’t you get married? If not now, someday? Would Taran want you to mourn him forever?”
That made me laugh. That wasn’t the sort of question Taran would have given a straight answer to in the first place.