Her eyes popped open, and she sat up. She looked through his shadowy form to the dead fireplace.
“Just my luck,” she said hoarsely, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and rubbing her face. Silver dye smudged her cheeks. She glanced at the window slits to judge the hour by the starlight trickling in. She started dressing and let out a gasp. A pretty little squeal followed. She took the marble chit in both hands and cradled it to her chest.
Had he saved her from ruin? A secret joy rose in him. A good deed had come from all this effort to be more than a thug, a thief. Could she be more to him than a passing pleasure?
“Baur,” she whispered. “Finally.”
He sunk into a deeper shadow and waited for her to leave. This Baur must be her consort or the one she hoped to consort. Had Ren saved them both?
She gathered her things quickly, not even a thought for the one who had been with her. She had what she wanted, and it wasn’t him.
A dark thought crossed Ren’s mind. He should punish her for her ingratitude. For not seeing him as anything more than a marble chit or a handful of silver. She’d tricked him with her silver laced hair.
His knives sat heavy at his thighs. The Dark urged him to succumb to it.
Is this what it felt like to be soured? Is this what his lord and master felt all the time, consorted to the ancient Hosmyr matron?
She slipped on the coat and stuffed the silver bangles in a pocket. Shivering, she cursed him for not keeping the fire going. He sneered in the shadows. A true priestess didn’t need yellow fire to keep warm. Not here, so close to the crater.
Ren waited in the shadows, contemplating her fate. So easily could he cut her down, slice her into a thousand pieces. And who would say anything? Lor’Paelune? It owed so much in taxes that he could silence it with a single silver bar. All that silver piling up in the vaults with nothing to do might have a purpose in the end.
Before he could pass judgment on her, she slipped out the door and left him to his darkling thoughts.
He could buy her, or him—whoever he was. He could buy this Baur’s place, but that would not satisfy. She’d sour him in a year.
Where had that priestess from his youth gone? She must have a consort and now mingled with the greater houses.
The shadows faded, and with it, his godliness.
He felt tired, spent, used. He stewed in his bitterness, bemoaning his fate.
A tiny spark of joy lit in his chest as he remembered the new task set before him. All was not drudgery and loss. He could still make something of himself, unlike those that aged quickly with sagging skin and creaking bones. The power to live for a cycle or more was in him. The Dark would carry him into that long future. His teacher always told him that the long-lived need not look back or worry over the past when the future beckoned endlessly.
He rubbed the steel blades at his thighs, the comfort of them, the surety. They were common steel stained black, but they were sharp enough. And then there was the Dark, his constant companion.
He’d make something of himself yet. A sad fact to be upset over thirty years of standing still when a thousand more lay before him. There was time for him yet.
10
Taul raced from the shop in the upper market near the Velkamas bridge to the Lor’Toshtolin estate. A servant ran behind him, calling out that it was too late. He needed to see for himself.
At the corner, apron blustering, he slowed and turned onto the compound’s main street. He’d had to fill in for a shopkeeper and cursed himself for not sending someone else.
Gossipers packed the main gate, all shaking their heads, no doubt bemoaning the ill-fate of Lor’Toshtolin. They gave him dour looks as if it was his fault. No one would want to blame the matron. It must be because of the consort, and him only the second son of an insignificant Hosmyr branch.
One of Ryldia’s handmaids broke through the crowd and rushed to his side, her face mottled pink and marked by tears. Taul untied the apron and shoved it into her chest. He fixed his gaze on the gate and walked toward it, avoiding the looks and comments of the onlookers. How quickly their neighbors circled their misfortune like vultures.
Inside would be worse. His father had told him he could be the cure to solve this middling house’s problems. His stomach flopped and he rubbed his chest.
He pushed through the crowd huddled just inside the gate and into the atrium. The gallery was full of milling relatives, so he walked across a maze of small gardens to the matron’s villa sitting on the western half of the compound. Ryldia had prepared so many rooms and they sat empty, the furnishings covered to keep the dust off. It was all for the family she had wanted more than anything. Two girls and a boy. Two boys, even. One for Lor’Nevtar in repayment for Taul, and another for Hosmyr. That had been her dream. And there was room for their daughters’ families. A manse fit for a healthy, flowering Toshtolin tree.
“It is… too… late,” the first servant said behind him, breathing heavily.
And indeed, it was.
Ryldia sat up in her bed. Crimson splayed out from between her legs. She stared out through the slits in the wall, the goddess-light filtering through. A child that failed to be born under the goddess’s gaze could not be called Mornae. It was not worthy of her power.
A clutch of priestesses stood in a corner of the chamber, and he noted the disapproval in their faces. The goddess had judged this house. Would one of them become matron next? She’d send him back to his own house, respectable but lower in status, and the bond with his consort would become a gaping wound in his chest.
It was not just the bond.
He loved her.
Balniss stood at the other side of Ryldia’s bed, his own hands bloody. He shook his head at Taul and turned to wash the blood away in a basin of flowing water.
“Everyone out, please,” Taul said, his voice hoarse and low. “Except Balniss.”
The coterie of house priestesses murmured as they passed.
“The goddess will soon favor you, Taul Lor’Toshtolin,” Xura Lor’Toshtolin said, feigning concern. She was another one of Ryldia’s cousins who could be a matron.
“The goddess always favors us,” he said.
He waited for everyone to leave. The room quieted except for the lapping water of the basin as Balniss scrubbed his hands and arms.
Taul knelt at Ryldia’s side, looking up at her face, which remained turned to the goddess-light. He whispered like she was a wounded animal trapped in a hedge. She looked tired; her face gaunt from the effort. He pulled the cover to hide the bloody mess.
“It was a girl,” Balniss said. “Far too early to survive. Either way, she was still.”
