“To whom should I send my steward?” Gishna said.
Joumina stared, mouth agape, wondering what her ploy was.
“I've not decided yet,” she said.
“We could offer suggestions.”
“For?”
“Which houses of yours might have the best aptitude to work those lands?”
And the bloodlines most suitable to my needs, Gishna thought. She negotiated with Zaidra, but perhaps the best possibility lay with Joumina. She was more open and amenable to negotiation.
Joumina’s eyes widened, more at ease now that Zaidra was gone. “I'd intended to grant you both a part of the lands. But now—”
Gishna interrupted with a cough, and wheezed, “Ilor'Hosmyr welcomes the opportunity. It did not send its sons to the court without purpose.”
Joumina's brows lifted. “Well then,” she said, “it's refreshing to know some here see the future.”
Yes, the future. But what future? Gishna saw little but shadows. “Which lands would you consider sharing with those that so willingly aided your champion?” she asked.
“I'll mention it to Verxaen,” Joumina replied with a happy smirk. “He'll be in charge of it all.”
Of course he will, Gishna thought. While you wait for Vakayne to decide how it will distribute its precious daughters.
“I'll send my chief steward, then,” Gishna said. “And my heiress. It would do her well to be present and learn.”
Joumina's eyes popped wide. She always got that look when she had an idea. Julissa and Verxaen, a match across high houses. It wasn't an unsuitable match, but first they must evaluate his lineage with the seer's sorcery.
“We look forward to it,” Joumina said. “In the Rilanik, perhaps? Pleasure always makes negotiation more pleasant.”
Gishna nodded, but her mind was already working on how to get a sample from Verxaen Ilor'Zauhune. What did it matter if he was no better than his mother? All that mattered was whether a union with him could abolish the taint in her daughter. Let the rest come later. Time was something the Mornae could still count on.
She rose, extricating herself from the chair, her bones and joints aching in protest. Stiffness pervaded her. Nothing wanted to move.
Joumina waited and then rose smoothly, respectful of Gishna's age, even though she was high matron of the second high house, and unlike Zaidra, respected the ordinances of the Fifth Accord over the earlier dictates. She was higher, yet she acknowledged Gishna for something other than chits or pride.
Once on her feet, Joumina held her jeweled hands out, palms up, the position of a priestess, and Gishna reciprocated. Then Joumina turned and left Gishna there, hands empty but her mind full of possibilities.
Would the new matron of Lor'Vanarik consider a union with Hosmyr? Consort to the next matron? Would Zauhune be the better ally?
They needed samples!
She chortled through bloody phlegm and swallowed it all down. She sounded just like the seer. And just like him, she seemed willing to do anything for the work.
18
Taul watched Ryldia through another ding of the hour bell from the sanctuary down the street.
She stared listlessly out the slit-like windows. It was a moonless night and her otherwise lovely features looked sunken, unsalutary. He rose from the servant’s stool and stood beside the brazier, burning incense. He placed a message scroll he'd received secretly from his mother on the embers and watched it burn.
We'll take you in, my son. We have prospects. Do not despair. You can only do so much. Sometimes you must allow a tree to die.
His mother had never sent him such a revelatory message in all his time as prime consort. She'd sent the message within a box with samples of this year's harvest of apricots, from a new tree variety imported from the south side of Saylassa. A vast expense, but as he tasted them, he couldn't help but approve. They weren't power rich, but at least they were flavorful and sweet. Beneath them, he'd found the message, written as a glyph and only for his touch. Anyone else touching it would detect a charm but be unable to read it.
He mixed the ashes of the message. The floral scent filled his nose and he grimaced. It was overbearing. Not at all like the true scent one would experience in the valley where must, manure, sea spray, and the perpetual background scent of kith predominated.
He kissed Ryldia on the forehead, but she didn't acknowledge him. House members murmured that she'd gone the way of a failed priestess. What if she started swaying, drooling, lost forever?
And then what?
A different death ritual would take place. Some matrons allowed such women to continue, cared for perpetually until they died of natural causes, but not Hosmyr's high matron. She'd decreed ring-to-chest while sitting on the Hosmyr throne that no such woman could live in her domain. A house must cut such a woman loose to wander the goddess-path forever.
Killed, she meant.
He suspected houses did just that. The risk was too great that word would get out that a house was harboring and caring for such a priestess, but perhaps some with the means might do the opposite. He'd never in all his years pondered the idea, and now it faced him square on.
As he departed Ryldia's apartment, he said to her attendant, “Do not allow anyone in but yourself, those closest to your matron. And my brother, Balniss, of course.”
She bowed once, and he left. He didn't want to, but he realized sitting in the room, watching her fade, did no one any good. An uncomfortable fire had burned in his gut since receiving his mother's dire message. Ryldia and her house were not merely a tree, as she'd suggested. He couldn't simply allow it to perish. He must try to tend it under their laws and traditions.
And so, he would seek the goddess.
He took the Talurian Road through Halkamas, the City of Blossoms, all the way to the Great East Road. Puul trees lined the wide thoroughfare, a point of pride since no other city maintained such an extravagant display. Petals were falling, the last flowering of the year, and they speckled his boots white and blue and lavender. Nowhere else, in all the crater, did the puul grow so tall or abundantly. At the junction, the road opened onto a wide thoroughfare, one of four maintained by Ilor'Daushalan. Their soldiers patrolled it and manned guard stations at quarter mile intervals. The temple spire, a thousand feet tall, with its massive globe caught in a kithaun claw, loomed over the center of Vaidolin. It was always there, no matter where you stood, but here on the wide road with an unobstructed view, he felt vulnerable. Nestled at its base were the temple grounds and across from it, on the southwest side, sat Isilayne, the kith-walled academy where the Mornae's first knights had trained.
He passed the bridge spanning a wide, deep chasm which joined Halkamas to the temple district's plateau. He should have gone to the temple directly, but he hadn't built up the courage for that yet. It was Daushalan territory, and according to his brother, the first high house paid each diviner who worked in its precincts. Yes, it was better to try in Halkamas first. Wouldn't his wise high matron provide for her own people? Surely there was a bounty here as well. Determined, he walked down the street, avoiding looking up at the gigantic globe.
Near the junction with the Great South Road, next to Isilmyr, was the Vailuriath, the largest public sanctuary in Halkamas. Its buildings sat small in the temple's shadow spire but sprawled wider. On the east side were the small schools where acolytes and apprentices of all kinds learned the basics of trade and managing a house. Houses with sufficient wealth tutored their young within the safety of their estates, but Taul, like all those of Lor'Nevtar, sent theirs to the small schools. A cycle ago, their main purpose had been to prepare the young for entry to the academies or their trials. Now it was the primary school for trades. He'd learned to keep accounts there before returning to the east valley to continue his education as a tender. Then six seasons at Isilmyr, at the end of which he'd sat in a cohort ritual and received his ribbon. He never called himself a knight.
