Chapter 11 #3
Is that you, Maiden? I gathered my strength and stumbled to the bathing chamber to clean the salt off my skin and hair. Whatever divine protection kept this palace as Wesha had left it did not extend to me.
If you’re listening, Maiden, and if it please you, fill Taran ab Genna’s boots with scorpions, his underclothes with lice, and his perfect chin with boils, I sincerely prayed to my goddess. But she was as silent as she had ever been.
I unlocked the door to Taran’s bedroom and went through the chests of her clothes in search of a nightgown, but after I found a marginally acceptable linen shift with only a little gilt embroidery on the hem, I discovered that I couldn’t put it on.
My hands shook when I tried to pull it over my head, and my skin burned when I imagined it covering my body.
I added gallstones and ingrown toenails to the ailments I wished on Taran and put on a green dress embellished with horridly tacky carnelian starbursts instead. Green, to match his eyes.
Taran was imperfectly whistling the melody of Wesha’s blessing of night when he came back. He sat down right next to me on the divan, ignoring my stormy lack of welcome, and batted his knee against mine.
His silence was bait, and I was determined not to fall for it, but as he picked up the tail of my braid and ran a fingernail across the ribbon that held it together, I spoke when I couldn’t jerk it from his hands.
“Please don’t,” I said through gritted teeth.
He let go, and I swept it away over the opposite shoulder. Even braided for sleep, my hair hung past my hips, and Taran’s prior fascination with it was not something I could tolerate now.
When I still didn’t speak, he continued humming. Trying to get the melody right. Good luck—I had been the first of Wesha’s priests to master it with less than two decades of practice.
“Where’s Marit?” I asked when I couldn’t take the sour notes anymore.
“Sleeping it off in the plaza. I left a lamp burning, so he shouldn’t panic if he wakes up before morning.”
Such tender care, when Taran had pointed a knife at the sea god’s heart an hour earlier.
“Would you really have done it if I’d told you to?” I wasn’t sure which offense would have been the worst. Would he have killed his friend again? Would he have let me drown?
“Yes,” Taran immediately said, unbothered. He crossed his feet in front of him, noticed that the leather of his boots was soaked, and reached down to pull them off.
Liar. He was terrible at lying to me. How had he gotten away with it for three years?
I shoved his shoulder with both palms, hard enough that he should have toppled over. Instead, I was the one knocked back.
“Stop lying to me!” I cried, scrambling to stay on the furniture.
“Then don’t ask questions you already know the answer to,” Taran said, quirking one eyebrow at my disarray.
“What would you have done, then?”
He smiled at me, his gaze dipping to appreciate the color of my new dress. “I would have broken the window and tossed him out into the yard. This happens at least once a week.”
“Oh,” I said, now feeling stupid. I could have thought of that. I curled on my side, wishing Marit had left his magical wine carafe behind.
“I have one priestess. Everyone would call me extremely careless if I let anything happen to you,” Taran added, which he no doubt considered reassuring.
“You don’t have me.”
His thick, dark eyelashes shaded the brilliance of his eyes as he gave me a slow blink of wordless disagreement. Keep telling yourself that, his look said. As my cheeks burned, Taran stretched out an arm along the cushion behind me.
“Anyway, I’d be interested in learning that song.” It was very carefully couched so as not to be a request or a command. One more test, to see how I’d react.
“Wesha could teach you better than I could. If you took me to the Painted Tower,” I said, but then I regretted the words.
I was tired of every sentence being a parry or riposte with him.
He used to bring me flowers in winter. He used to ask me for lullabies at the end of the day.
Fighting my instinct to give him everything he asked for, fighting my expectation that he would do the same for me—it was exhausting me.
I rubbed my face. “I probably can’t,” I amended my statement. “I’m not a good teacher, and it took me my entire life to learn.”
“We have your entire life. Lifetimes, in fact. Till the end of eternity.”
That was how long he was planning to keep me here. No doubt assuming I’d break down and agree to serve him at some point.
“What’s so objectionable about being my priestess, anyway?
” he asked, laying the charm on thick. “You were willing to be Wesha’s, and Wesha’s a terrible patron.
What would her vows have been?” He began counting on his fingers.
“Obedience? Well, if you’re afraid of that, I could be more specific.
Poverty? Ha! Wesha and I both like nice things, and unlike her, I share.
Celibacy?” He tilted his chin, shot me a heated look that made his green eyes sparkle. “Not really my guiding value.”
I couldn’t manage more than a soft groan in response. “Please. I told you it was a mistake to come here. Let me go home.”
He didn’t bother to reject me out loud, just looked with renewed interest at the fall of my braid on the green dress.
“I don’t know why you’re so eager to go back to the mortal world. From what I’ve heard, it’s an awful place. You get a few decades of hard work and then you die. Don’t you think it’s possible that Wesha wanted something better for her last priest? And your lover too?”
He was trying to be convincing, but I knew it was a load of bullshit. Wesha didn’t care about me. Neither did he.
“I could have been very happy in the mortal world, except that Death killed everyone I loved, and now he’s here,” I pointed out, eyes narrowed.
Taran hummed thoughtfully. “What if I proved that you’re perfectly safe here, free to enjoy your reward for mortal devotion? Would you teach me that song?” he asked after a moment.
I pulled up my knees and wrapped my arms around them, fuming.
“I’m not making any more bargains with you, Taran ab Genna. You know what I want.”
Taran grinned at me, unsurprised. He ran one more finger over the end of my braid, then stood up to go to bed.
“I do,” he said. “But as I’m inclined to keep you, you’re going to have to think of something else.”
I waited half an hour after Taran went to bed before getting up.
Just the waiting had been uncomfortable.
Forming the intent to wait gave a sense of unease, one I fought by concentrating on the mnemonics for childhood illnesses.
It was a long way to Wesha’s tower from the City, and if I had to fight my vow the entire time, it would be a painful one.
Putting on my boots made my stomach cramp.
Fastening my new cloak gave me a chill like the first day of a flu.
I could do it. I didn’t have to think about it.
I just had to go. I didn’t pack anything else, because packing was planning, and planning was the first step to breaking a vow.
I didn’t picture the Painted Tower as I took my first step into the hall.
Instead, I imagined one of the low buildings at the edge of Genna’s sector of the City—a storehouse, or perhaps a barracks.
There was no reason I couldn’t go there.
I’d been farther from Taran earlier today.
My vow wasn’t fooled. When I silently closed the door to Taran’s rooms, I felt tightness in my chest. I breathed past it, and by concentrating on the names of the muscles that filled my lungs, I was able to keep walking through the interior courtyard and through the entrance hall.
True pain began once I opened the exterior door and looked for the horizon.
At each cardinal direction there was a different slope of the Mountain.
Wondering which I ought to climb made pain spark in my fingertips and toes, the little nerve endings coming alive as my vow to Wesha was seriously tested.
I tried to bargain with it. Perhaps Taran would come after me, and we’d both end up at the Painted Tower. Perhaps I’d be able to tell Wesha something about him that would show her how to lure him there herself.
My vow wasn’t satisfied. I’d promised to bring Taran to Wesha, end of statement, and it wouldn’t let me do anything contrary to that promise.
The priests sang of vows wrapped around our hearts, and I could feel my heart’s rhythm stutter as I tried to run from Taran, but the vow wasn’t just in my heart.
It was woven into every part of my body and soul, and as I walked faster, trying to outrun it, that fabric pulled and caught.
I tried to think of anything but what I was doing. I thought of my first mentor, Lascius, a sweet man, dead at Ereban, who taught me the rules for a breech labor when I was nine.
If the child is due and the waters haven’t broken yet, try to turn it. You’ll need all your strength, Iona, don’t do it halfway or the mother’s pain is wasted.
I nearly stumbled on the steps as pain began to radiate up from my feet into my legs. But I was in pain every day—I could endure pain and keep moving.
For complete breech, we’ll try labor for a day. If it doesn’t progress, boil your knife and call for a priest of Genna.
When my feet touched the path, I moved more quickly. One foot in front of the other, that was nothing to do with Taran. It was growing more difficult to coordinate my breathing.
For a frank breech, we’ll try labor only if the child is a second-born. Otherwise, boil your knife and call for a priest of Genna.