“Goddess above, help me,” he whispered as he trudged through dense tufts of grass. Asking anything of the goddess was not a Mornae custom, though. The goddess had already given him everything he needed to succeed. He was Mornae, master of the stars and kith, and he was a tender. Yes, he wanted to do his duty, but he also loved Ryldia. He admitted it in the silence of his mind. Duty and devotion were so much more important. Love just made them sweeter. And love matures, his matron mother had told him, through the cycles, through tribulations and setbacks. No life is without strain. If it was, we would not be Mornae at all.
“To strive,” he said, clambering over a fallen ironwood. “To fail… to thrive.” There was no thriving without difficulty and challenge and even more failure. We learn through failing, his father had said on his deathbed. Never be afraid of it.
The current failures seemed critical, though. A misstep could bring Toshtolin crashing down.
A stench was in the air. He turned back to look at Zeldra’s blackness.
Goddess above, if you fail, then what was the point of me?
He shook his head. Zeldra didn’t depend on a single tender. It was a feat of majestic sorcery. So what if he’d bled for her? So had hundreds of tenders more worthy than him.
His party was waiting for him up the slope, dark shapes against the starry sky. Massive peaks loomed behind them. Did they whisper? What were they saying? The Dark tempted him to use what little skill he had to listen in, but if they detected him, he’d be a laughingstock. Everything Mornae did was a calculated risk. He let out a deep sigh, longing to be back among Zeldra’s roots, hidden and protected, free to run and bound like a wild animal. That seemed so much more useful than this charade.
He raised his bow, and the party startled. He shot past them to a low branch and a midnight blue grouse fell to the ground. The party just stared, frozen. Taul called to Terin’s apprentice, and the lad ran off to collect the grouse.
“Fine shot, Taul,” Xautan said with a nod as Taul approached the party. They all gave signs of approval, of feigned obeisance.
Taul lifted his chin, a sign of acceptance, but also that he was above it. He was a prime consort. These men couldn’t know his true feelings. None could be trusted. Let them wonder if he too might strike unawares, eliminating any threat to his consort. The Mornae saying was “House above all”, but Taul struggled with it… for him there was just Ryldia.
“What were you discussing?” he asked.
“Rodar is taking bets on the court,” Xautan said. “Care to place a wager?”
“Not bloody yet, so small wagers only,” Rodar added.
Taul hid his indignation.
“I, for one, can’t wait for it to turn bloody,” Dalkos said. “We’ll wager on what kind of beating that fool takes.”
They expected so little of the Zauhune champion, a knight of Zauhune’s lowest tier, with no academy badge and no training but what the Wilderlands frontier had taught him for twenty-nine years.
“I think he is brave,” Taul said. “Can anyone deny the goddess works through him?”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“What happened in the Beytol was nothing,” Xautan said, sneering. “A bunch of stupid boys caught off-guard.”
“Rumors spread by old men only,” Dalkos concurred.
“He’ll be cut to pieces,” Xautan added. “I hear Roturra will arm its knights with new steels at the next court.”
Taul snapped his head up. “And where did you hear that? Roturra is our enemy, is it not?”
Xautan’s eyes widened and his face, like a stiff mask, bobbed in agreement.
“What will you do if the Son of Hosmyr shows his support?” Taul asked. He was furious with Zaknil, with himself, with everything. If it wasn’t for all the trouble he was facing, he would have placed a bet and laughed at the doomed Zauhune champion, because that was surely what he was.
Like all of them.
9
When he was younger, not five years into his training, Ren had a priestess for a lover. She’d belonged to a low-ranking house struggling to rise higher.
What was her house name? He slipped on a new silver-gray vest. All he remembered of that priestess was the tips of her long white hair and how, over time, the light had gone out of them.
She’d said it didn’t matter, but he knew better.
The woman in the bed was no priestess, more like the servant of a crater priestess. She’d dressed herself higher than she ought in a long, sleeveless, gossamer pale-gray slip. A heavy coat sat on the edge of the bed. She shivered in her sleep, her nipples painfully hard under that threadbare cloth, her skin like gooseflesh under gray stain. Ren felt as if he’d bedded a whore from the South Reaches. He spent his nights with these dingy women in the only dingy streets in Vaidolin. He couldn’t go any lower than the streets of Outer Halkamas. Even Outer Relkamas wasn’t so degraded. Say what they wanted of Ilor’Daushalan, first high house, but Outer Dalkamas was clean and productive. The Voice wouldn’t tolerate any rot in her territory.
Within the crater, in Halkamas proper, Mornae did everything according to ancient customs and to honor the goddess. There the Mornae visited luxurious pleasure houses, not whore houses. Chits didn’t change hands there. Guests bedded each other freely, and usually it was just trysts between consorts. In the Lowkamas, as the low-born called it, it was more like in the border camps. Here, desperation choked pleasure from every room, hall, and crack where bodies writhed for three wood chits.
He looked away from the woman’s gray streaks, marring what would have been an otherwise pleasant figure. She’d tried too hard. The woman was desperate to save herself and her house.
Ren was plain desperate. Money wasn’t his problem. He’d no future except to earn chits. I’m a whore, too, he whispered to the shadows. What did he hope to get out of coming here? He’d known love with that rank-climbing priestess. At least for his part it had been love. She’d left him when the attraction for him grew and the desire to consort began changing her blood. He must have looked Mornae enough, but without a good name, he was inconsequential. There wasn’t a house backing him to help build hers.
Lurking in the shadows, he laced up his vest, something he’d picked up at the gate market. He could afford to buy inside the crater, but dread rippled up from his groin. There, Mornae wouldn’t tolerate his shadow games. Their games were far too dangerous for him. Men like his master ruled there, and priestesses who could consume him in blue fire with a mere look. He shrugged it off. It wasn’t the clothes that made him or anyone Mornae, anyway. Wisps of shadow rippled along his fingers, and he relished their dance.
Was his dark gift why the women of this place lined up to be with him? They had consorts, of course, but probably not properly bound, only regular men. So they came to him looking for a taste of something else, what used to be. They wanted to crawl back into the crater, and he knew deep down that if he wanted something more for himself, eventually he’d have to rub shoulders with his betters.
He finished dressing, walked over to where she slept, and inspected her hands. Small calluses bubbled up on the inside. Pretty enough face, though. Clumped strands of her hair left traces of silver paint sparkling on her face. Her real hair was a mousy gray.
Lor’Paelune owned this pleasure house, and she’d paid them ten silvers just to enter. What happened after she entered was not Paelune’s business. Ren placed a marble chit worth a hundred silver on the table by her silver-plated bangles and a sad little ring with a cluster of garnets.
He didn’t need to know any more about her, nor did he want to. There were dozens like her. He wanted more than what she offered. Now that he was rising to prominence, his duties more important, he thought to ask his master for a proper consort. Even a valley matron would do, so long as she was legitimate. He didn’t think there were many true priestesses anymore, or if there were they weren’t showing off and they’d be too noble for him. They were all hidden away in the crater’s great fortresses.
Shadow licked at his fingers, beckoning him to call, to do more than he had done the last time. In these quiet moments, he considered doing dreadful things, and the Dark encouraged him. Heat braced his skull like a vise.
She stirred and smacked her lips. Ren melded into the dark, vanishing from common view.
