She wiped her lips. Saugraen was the finest male to bear the Hosmyr name since the Fall. He was of the kind that must have walked the halls of this fortress when they were strong and filled with the power of the heavens.

He had to be.

“Yes, high matron,” he said, “They must be quite fine… if their ancestry is to be believed.”

Kandah always hedged. He had made the match, but if he was wrong, he could always hedge and remind her how fickle nature—the very goddess—was.

She would take their son and graft him into their ailing orchard. It happened all the time in the valleys. If it could work with those ancient trees, then it needed to happen with her house.

“Kandah, have you heard from your people?”

He shook his head.

“I know they have little love for us,” she said.

“I've sent the letters, via trusted merchants, but none have replied.”

She coughed and her frame shook. “Vakayne will hold us accountable for that day for many cycles to come.”

The last of the valmasin had fled at the Fourth Accord, against Vakayne's wishes. Most had fled quietly before then, sensing the disarray. Vakayne and its blood houses, and even Xaeltrin and its blood houses, saw the valmasin as the way to prevent total catastrophe. They may have been right, but every house was terrified then and willing to make concessions. Hosmyr had voted against Vakayne, already alert to the taint within its bloodlines. What followed angered Vakayne the most. The remaining valmasin, those that remained steadfast, were murdered at a South Valley estate while performing their ritual. Crater Mornae blamed colonists fleeing north. High-ranking houses guessed what had happened but remained silent. Vakayne withdrew even more, and while it kept its alliance with Hosmyr, they were cold and gave little in return.

Until now. The Lauxyn matron had aided the Zauhune champion. Was there hope still? Even they must yield to the pressures of time. According to Gishna's spies, they were not so innocent or pure. She hoped to form a secret council of valmasin as before the Fall and offer this service to Vakayne in atonement. Then they would be more willing to consort outside its own.

“Still, we must give it time, Matron,” he said. “My people wander. It may take years for a proper response.”

“Ah, time,” she said with a deep sigh. “The great enemy.”

He seemed unperturbed, as if time had no hold on him. He looked the same as the first time she’d met him.

“I would like to study the strand, high matron. A mere glance tells me something of her, but⁠—”

She shook her head. It was too soon. She liked to keep him on a tight leash. “And you'll not write a word of it. Swear it.”

His thin lips spoke the words, but his eyes danced, the corners smiling. He was not bound to anything but his own quest for knowledge he never shared. Who was getting the most out of this arrangement?

She was. She must! As much as she wanted to have him shredded before her eyes and his secrets spilled out at the end of a torturer's whip, she could not risk any harm to his work.

“Maybe later,” she said, “when I've arranged it. Then you can study it if you wish… and paste it in that book of yours.”

Vakayne would honor the union and offer the first boy back to Hosmyr. She licked her lips. Anticipation welled in her chest.

Kandah smiled at her. Blast those eyes and their magic.

“Later, then,” he said.

Gishna spent all her strength rising from her seat. She shambled to the door and knocked. His desk, buried under pages and pages of unreadable script, made her wonder what he was really up to. The urge to take him, force the truth from him, grew daily. But this was one man she could not afford to sour.

She nodded and gave him a wretched smile.

He chuckled as she left.

21

Halkamas, unlike the other cities, had few inner high walls, and the small estates within marked their domains with low stone walls, often elaborately decorated with nature carvings, and their gardens like the land they oversaw in the valleys. Its broad streets had ancient blossoming trees with a wide spread of branches so that even during the daytime, Mornae could walk in the shade. It was an impossible feat to make them grow within the crater. A second blooming was ending, and white petals covered the temple promenade. There was a tavern called the Fifth Blossom, but since Taul was a boy, he'd only ever seen three in one year.

It was two miles to the Halkamas main gate, which stood open and unmanned. He reached the main promenade and crossed to the temple district bridge. He had only ever attended one temple funeral, for Lor'Lauxyn's matron, and only Ilor'Vakayne and its vassals had crossed over. It was a sacred place, but it seemed strange to him. No one had ever prohibited him from crossing, but he never had. Awe restrained him.

Taul set a foot to the bridge leading from Halkamas to the Temple District, the great central plateau upon which sat the temple spire with its globe, and Isilayne, the ancient academy.

White light swirled in the massive globe at the spire's peak, floating in the grasp of a massive kithaun hand. He lost his balance and stepped back. The last time he'd been this close to the temple was the funeral of an important matron. He couldn't recall her name. She'd not been from his house or bloodline. He'd not crossed the bridge then but saw the blue fire from Halkamas. As hard as he tried, he couldn't remember the Voice who'd presided over the rite. Hosmyr priestesses performed funerals with normal fire, its garish orange and yellow flames mingled with a special resin to turn it blue, and fanned quickly so they did not have to see the wrong color for too long.

Five squads of Daushalan ceremonial guards marched along the outer perimeter of the temple’s plaza, saluting the four guards stationed at each of the five bridges.

Taul waited until the guards passed and then stepped onto the bridge. The waters of the Vaissin roared far below. As he moved across the fifty-foot span the sound muffled, and then vanished. He walked past the sentries toward the Temple doors. An oppressive silence dominated a plaza so vast it could hold thousands. The faster he walked, the further the doors seemed. He felt exposed and suddenly ashamed. He should turn back.

The ceremonial guards didn't acknowledge him or seem to notice which city he'd come from, but he knew they'd report it. What could a lone Hosmyr, neither diviner nor priestess, be doing at the temple?

He walked over the stone tiles at the plaza's center, shaped in a great circle, the form of the goddess. Every festival of Nilas, he watched from a terrace of Hosmyr Citadel as the stones altered from black to white under the goddess’s path. Close-up, the stone looked like ordinary kith. It always amazed him, but he took it for granted that it just worked that way. Why did he not question more? He lacked Balniss's curiosity.

To the southwest sat the brooding halls of Isilayne, a row of black against the white towers and villas of Relkamas and Halkamas. He turned away. It had been Isilmyr for him. It was enough.

His legs strained as he pushed himself to go faster, but without obvious haste. He avoided looking up at the globe, whose light made strange patterns on the stone ground. Ten Daushalan knights stood in the forecourt, at the top of a stone staircase with ten steps, each of their tabards marking a phase of the goddess as she took her throne and then ascended to the blackness beyond.

They said nothing as he passed between them. Their full suits of gray steel were as menacing as their tall spears. They bore the temple sigil encircled by a scorpion's tail.

The temple facade was old, in the style of Isilayne. Newer buildings sprawled like unwanted growths, lacking the beauty and simplicity of the older buildings.

The globe loomed above, like a small replica of Vai, almost empty now, its thinning, milky light down to the last tenth. Hands out to his sides, he steadied himself and stared up at it, marveling at how it kept its position, floating in a silver, claw-like structure which held it like the hand of a priestess wielding goddess-light.

He approached the closed great doors and pulled the cord, sounding a dull gong within.

“Name?” asked a voice through a slat to the side of the cord.

“Taul Lor'Toshtolin.”

“City?” asked the voice.

“Halkamas.”

“What business have you with the goddess?”

“I seek her bounty.”

The slat shut and the right door opened a crack. He pushed it open and stepped inside. The door slid back to its closed position.

A magnificent statue of the Voice welcomed him, her nude form on display. Her arms reached out, her face looked up, and the faint light of the globe bathed her. His mind wandered for a moment.

“You'll want to go to the diviner's registry,” said the voice. “To the right, down that hall. Just follow the lights.”