But today his job was not so sinister. All he needed was a hair—a particular hair. More than one would be ideal. Still, it was dangerous. The girl would be in confinement, in the deepest part of the estate, even underground, and guarded. The guards didn’t matter; he could kill them if needed. It was always better if he didn’t, though. Dead guards meant more guards the next time he visited.
And his master would frown. Maunyn’s long, dark fingers would dance on the pommel of his short blades and his words would shred Ren. So long as the blades stayed sheathed, he could take the lashing.
A chill ran through him. He’d rather have neither if he was honest. For now, it was a simple enough mission.
Ren worked his way to the edge of the line of shuffling brown shapes and scanned the surroundings. He needed just a moment out of sight of the steward, and that would be easy because he was thorough and had prepared a diversion.
Never leave to the goddess what you can do yourself, Ren’s teacher would say. The goddess was fickle. Everyone knew that.
After a half hour, a man rode up. No one noticed the rented pony. All eyes were on the man’s Ilor’Hosmyr livery, just as Ren had hoped. He’d get the tabard back later and pay the man his two silvers. A messenger of the third high house demanded attention, and the foreman didn’t hesitate to run to the gate. Ren broke away from the workers, barely any dust on his gloves. It was so easy to look like you’re working and really doing nothing at all. These workers knew to mind their own business, heads down.
Darting into an arched hallway, he tore off the brown garments and tucked them behind a water barrel. He brushed the dust from his hair and washed his face in a basin. And just like that, dressed in servant garb, he moved inside to the servant’s quarters.
Everyone was too busy to notice another gray shape moving through the half-lit tunnels of the servant’s quarters. He blended in perfectly. One, a young man, paused for a moment, deciding whether to ask who he was, but decided against it.
His teacher had explained that Mornae were so concerned with keeping their station, their fragile positions of power, that none would dare ask who someone was, or what they were doing there. It would look weak. How could they not know? If their matron or her consort did not deign to include them in their plans, who were they to question? As Ren hoped, the teaching paid off over and over, predictable as the stars traveling the night sky year after year.
He knew well the pattern of the newer Mornae houses, less like mazes than the ancient ones. As expected, small kithaun plaques with a symbol etched into it by the sorcerer’s finger or a stylus dotted the walls—priceless things. He’d never seen the real ones. Here, etching was a stretch. This sorcerer’s mark was barely a scratch, and most were just gray steel covered in black paint! Diviners had their own style, but the lazy ones—and there were plenty of those—just copied what they’d seen before. None took pride in his work anymore. This one preferred a circle—for the goddess—with three dots around the top half. Did the dots stand for the Raven? Ahead, a maid leaned against a wall, and he dared brush a finger along it. The glyph’s power was light, he could barely sense her through the darklight mesh.
Alarms were just for the night when servants would be in their quarters. The matron’s apartment would be even more secure. He just needed the countersign. It would be a badge or a garment, something a high-ranking servant might wear, or a special servant allowed into the confinement apartment. Like a nanny.
A woman walked past with a basket of bed linens.
“Or washerwoman,” he said under his breath. He grinned at his cleverness. No need to go in. He just needed the soiled linens.
The woman turned into another hall. He plunged through the shadows after her. After wandering down a long hall, he spied another servant with a basket of dirty clothes and followed him. The man led Ren straight to the laundry, where the baskets waited for him. A small one with small garments drew his attention. It held delicate clothes for the prize and pride of the house. A daughter, only three years old, with ample time for the matron to decide whether to declare her. A ten-year confinement was the norm for houses of quality. Valley houses tried to imitate this, but often declared earlier. Why they waited made little sense to Ren. What did it matter? Not like any priestess wanted to give up a child, especially a girl.
Unless there were men like his lord, ready to pay handsomely for one.
More men entered and got to work with the wash. Ren poked at the garments in the basket and found a tiny tunic sleeve. Lamb’s wool. Precious, this one. Had to be a girl.
“Leave those,” grumbled the washerman. “Nanny Gala will wash those. Princess doesn’t need our hands all over them.”
Of course, the nanny. He waited a moment. So much of his job was spent waiting, and he was good at it.
The men laughed at him. They were of nomad origin—no one north of the Moon Sea used the word princess.
A darkness rose in Ren—so familiar yet controlled—to cut these insolent men down. Dark wisped about his fingertips, beckoning. It was his duty to the goddess to cleanse the blackrock of these foreigners, these unworthy clods. Why didn’t the high matron just take what she wanted? Not like any of these men mattered. He grimaced at the thought of them crowding his homeland with their stench.
The men turned back to their chores, their shapes dark shadows in the mist of heated water. Ren’s heart remained even, not a jot above normal. This day was not a bloody one. One, two, three, he counted, and he stepped out of the room with the basket. He ducked into a storeroom, hid behind wine casks, and lit a pea-sized globe. He opened an empty sack on the floor and laid out the clothes and linens. Time ticked ever so slowly, his breath slowing with it. Something glimmered in the light. He passed the globe over the garments. Two flickers.
He took a pouch from inside his tunic, the one next to his pouch of chits. A thin blade slipped from a sheath at his wrist into his hand. Carefully, he lifted the curling silver hairs from the cloth and dropped them in the pouch. Like little slivers of the goddess, they were. He turned over the garments and continued gathering samples.
Ren the god, he thought. It had been so easy. Not every mission had to end in blood. This day, this auspicious day, Ren the god had found another way and spared the filth. But there would come a day that he, too, like the Zauhune champion, would exact justice for the goddess.
Once done, he tossed everything back in the basket and set it at the back of the laundry.
The men had not even noticed.
WINTER
It was from the natives that Runa developed an affinity for the Fox, Hosin, as the natives called him. She named her house Hosmyr to honor him and the goddess’s phase during his peak in the night sky.
Over the following cycles, the original people of the east valley disappeared, absorbed into Mornae houses or blended in with the same nomads who walk the Fringe to this day. Some think they fled to form a society of their own based on what they’d learned from Runa’s house.
Whatever the facts of that union, the groves and orchards remain, the fields teem with flowers and grain, the soil black as kith and as powerful as kithaun. Each is a testament to that alliance made long ago when the Mornae were yet to be, when they still shone golden, filled with Sayin’s power.
They shed that power, risking everything, their very lives, to turn themselves toward the goddess and evolve to something new.
Alas, the verdant valley may outlive them, and someday be all that endures of their magnificent work.
FROM MEMORIES BY JEVAN LOR’VAKAYNE, SON OF SAVRA.
13
Taul’s nose crinkled as smoke rose from the pyre lit next to a refuse pit outside the city, down a hill from the east gate. It was just a sanctuary brazier, but in this moment, it carried his daughter to the heavens. The tinder crackled and a single yellow flame licked up the side of the bundle.
In ancient times, blue fire could have carried the remains away, consuming all of it, not a trace left behind. But these were dark times, and they disposed of this unborn child, even a girl, in the most mundane way. Yellow fire would devour his child, the hope of an ancient bloodline, outside the sacred crater, in a trash pit. That fact was undeniable. The resin they sprinkled to turn the flames blue couldn’t undo that truth.
He rubbed his breast pocket where he’d tucked a sealed message from the High Matron. It had arrived that morning, addressed to him. An ultimatum! He and his consort must rectify the situation within Toshtolin by next spring. Under which stars could such a miracle take place?
Xura Lor’Toshtolin, Ryldia’s eldest cousin, presided. The mother of a girl and two boys, she was the favorite candidate for the matroncy. Five Toshtolin priestesses and acolytes formed a semi-circle behind her.
Ryldia remained in bed, unable to overcome the tragedy. She was a shell, refusing to care, and Taul made sure none but her most trusted servants and relatives entered her quarters. But who among them could he trust?
The rest of the house whispered behind Taul’s back, their eyes boring into him. Xura mumbled prayers, an ancient litany, and lifted her hands listlessly to her shoulders. Rote and bored, a mockery of the great rituals that had shaped his valley and raised the blackrock to the surface.
Taul’s stomach twisted painfully, and a hard grimace marred his face. The priestesses were only there because Ryldia commanded it. Mornae didn’t honor undeclared children, much less an unborn one, with a proper funeral.
