Four Years Ago #3
“Hiwa, please concentrate. You need to get the bleeding stopped or I’ll have to take his knee,” the maiden-priest said through gritted teeth.
“I’m sorry, I’m trying, but I’d just learned that one, and—oh, it looks so bad. Should you amputate more anyway?” the first girl asked.
“No, I can fix it,” said the redhead. “Look at his hands, he’s a farmer. If I take his knee, he won’t be able to walk without a crutch, let alone push a plow. Shit, it’s gotten into the bone.”
She set the knife aside to tighten the tourniquet just above the man’s knee, and the saffron-clad girl smothered another sob on her forearm, eyes landing on me when she straightened. They flew open as her face suffused in a blush, which was the usual response I drew from younger women.
Seeing an opening, I cleared my throat politely. “Excuse me, I’m looking for Iona Night-Singer.”
This made the second girl finally notice my presence.
With that glorious mass of red hair, I’d expected blue or green eyes, but when she briefly turned her head to look me over, I was surprised by dark brown ones, set in a very ordinary face that was older than her height or slender figure would have indicated.
Her cool, assessing gaze raked me up and down before completely dismissing me.
This was not the response I ever got from women of any age.
“I’m busy,” the redhead said, clenching her jaw to cut off the words. She bent to look again at the stump of the man’s leg. “Hiwa, I’m going to purge the infection, but you need to regenerate the marrow at the same time, then close the bone. Can you do that?”
“I don’t know,” the younger girl sniffled. “I’ve never even sung that one before.”
“It’s actually quite urgent that I speak with Iona Night-Singer,” I said, taken aback at having been dismissed. “Is that…you?”
While I supposed carrying out a summary execution for blasphemy wouldn’t take me very long regardless, in the unlikely event this young woman had been responsible for murdering dozens of death-priests, burning down the temples of several other gods, and turning the masses of mortals away from their proper posture of reverence, perhaps I might just… tell her to stop?
Have you noticed that it is extremely unpleasant to die of gangrene in the woods? Yes? Why don’t you go home and sacrifice a few cows to Skyfather so you don’t all starve to death this winter, and I’ll consider the matter closed.
The redhead ignored my question in favor of seizing me by the arm and pulling me closer to the wounded man.
“Grab his hands and help hold him down,” she barked at me. “This’ll probably wake him up, and I can only sing one blessing at a time. Hiwa, get ready.”
Three hundred years of obedience to the Peace-Queen’s will must have left me primed to follow orders, because I found myself complying. I took the injured man’s hands in mine and bent over his torso as the redhead and the acolyte of Genna both began to sing.
The patient’s body jerked and his breathing quickened as his pain fought against whatever anesthesia he’d been given before I arrived. I pressed my weight to his body when he would have convulsed. Healing was painful, and both girls were calling the gods’ power to heal.
The little acolyte’s voice was breathy and halting and barely effective. The maiden-priest’s though…
Even devoted to a ritual chant, it soared up past the canvas roof, as lovely and natural as a nightingale’s song.
Every temple taught its priests to sing, because each god had blessings entrusted to their followers.
Not all blessings were equally complicated though, nor all singers equally talented; the Moon’s priests were excellent composers, and the Peace-Queen’s priests mastered the largest number of melodies, but the Maiden’s priests had been selected for their musical ability alone, and this one was the best I’d ever heard.
It was probably for that reason that I joined in.
The maiden-priest had a beautiful voice and the other girl couldn’t match it, and I was in a hurry, and I wasn’t going to get any answers, much less out of this dank and malodorous tent, until the surgery was done, and I didn’t like being dismissed as useless except for brute force.
So I sang the blessing of the Peace-Queen that the other acolyte should have used, because over the centuries I’d picked them all up, and I had a drop of the Peace-Queen’s power running through my veins to bolster it.
The redhead didn’t so much as twitch in surprise when I started to sing, but she took advantage of the flush of healing in the man’s wound to carefully excise the remainder of the dead muscle with her stone knife. Her hand didn’t shake as she trimmed useless ligament and evened out ragged bone.
She must have been accustomed to working in tandem with a peace-priest, because her voice wrapped around mine like we were singing a duet, effortlessly matching phrase and meter.
I was exquisitely conscious of her breathing, the tempo of her movements—curious to see if she could improvise, delighted when she exceeded my own talents.
It was the first enjoyable thing I’d done since arriving on this shore. I’d had less interesting sex.
At last, satisfied with what she’d done, she put the knife aside.
I switched to the blessing that would close the bone and the skin over it, and she just as easily sang the man back into dreamless sleep.
The Maiden’s blessing of night, some called it—achingly beautiful in the maiden-priest’s voice.
I now had a guess as to how the little rebel had killed so many death-priests, as well as where her epithet had come from.
When the amputation was completely healed, the redhead took a woozy step back as the Peace-Queen’s acolyte, who’d been holding her breath since I took over her role, burst into fresh tears.
Unexpectedly, I was pleased with myself. Problem solved with minimal effort, now we could talk, and wasn’t I better at managing these young priests than the Maiden or the Peace-Queen had been? They didn’t deserve them.
I waited to be acknowledged, thanked, and admired.
Then I’d say, This is not appropriate behavior for priests. The war is over. Go pack your things, I’m taking you all home with me.
“I think this man’s spleen is torn but not fully ruptured—can you heal that, or do I need to remove it?” the redhead asked instead, pivoting to the next man’s bedside.
I made a chiding noise in the back of my throat, more amused than deflated.
“Just hold on a minute. Please tell me what you’ve been doing before I send the rest of your soldiers out to rampage.”
“They’re not soldiers,” she said, fingers already palpating the man’s swollen abdomen.
“Well, obviously they’re not good ones. But this is the army Iona Night-Singer is aiming at the gods, isn’t it? And that’s you?”
She lifted her gaze in a level stare, utterly unrepentant.
“We got to Cirta three days after the loyalists did. They took all the animals in the village—down to the last scrawny chicken—for sacrifices. When these men went to the town hall to complain, the death-priests collapsed the building on them. We dug the survivors out this morning. They don’t even know there’s a war on. ”
The story made me blink in dismay. Napeth shouldn’t be stupid enough to set his own house on fire while he was still living in it.
If my father had gone beyond trying to get Wesha’s attention to actively sabotaging the mortal world, I’d have to think of some way to dampen his rage back down to his typical dull roar of disappointment before I extricated the rest of the priests from this awful place.
“You know, the Stoneborn do not like it when mortals deny them the things they want,” I warned her. She was lucky she hadn’t gotten any of these children hurt already.
The maiden-priest nodded in solemn understanding.
“Yes. I killed all the death-priests in Cirta. They wouldn’t stop. I think I’m going to have to kill them all.”
I sighed as she expectantly watched for my reaction. There hadn’t been even a shade of doubt in her voice. She sounded like the Allmother pronouncing the law.
“Alright. I will…put this man’s spleen back where it’s supposed to be. But then we need to talk about the killing, nightingale.”
Her expression finally shifted. It wasn’t really a smile—I got the sense she didn’t smile very often.
But those dark brown eyes softened as she focused on me.
It wasn’t the stark desire I often saw reflected on women’s faces, or even the careful admiration I was used to from the more discreet or disinclined among them.
From someone who’d just met me, respect was an unprecedented reaction.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m Iona ter Wesha. Or…I guess I’m just Iona now, since there’s no one left to take my vows.”
So no promises of obedience to my mother. Nor poverty nor celibacy.
“She’s Iona Night-Singer,” the other girl put in quickly. “And I’m Hiwa ter Genna.”
“Taran ab Genna.”
The minute curve of Iona’s lips when she wrapped her small, bloody hands around my own was absurdly gratifying.
“You know, I prayed to Skyfather for vengeance, to the Maiden for mercy, and to the Peace-Queen for just one single peace-priest. It seems they are still answering prayers,” Iona told me seriously, hands gripping mine.
I gave her my most charming grin, though I was abruptly unsteady and less certain of myself than when I’d first stepped into this reeking tent. “I’m not a peace-priest any more than you’re a maiden-priest, but the Stoneborn did personally send me here.”
The quirk of Iona’s eyebrow said she thought I was joking, and she gave me a polite huff of a laugh before turning her attention to the next patient. Her gorgeous voice swept out to soothe his pain away.
Even though I now realized it was going to be weeks before I might expect to lure her out of this disaster, go home, and start working on my villa, that thought didn’t cause me distress. Not because I was too empty to register a response. Instead, listening to Iona’s voice, matching my own to hers…
For the first time since I was freed, my soul didn’t feel like it had holes in it at all.