And murdering innocent acolytes. Is that why he had come here, to this empty place? To seek a sign from the goddess?
He pulled his coat closer around him as he entered the sanctuary proper and slid behind a stone pillar. Like most Mornae buildings, it was tall rather than wide, its smooth walls climbing to the heavens. Above him, mosaics, dulled by time and neglect, depicted a summer night sky during a tenday. During the goddess-dawning, the dome would become clear like glass, and goddess-light, bright and all-consuming, would fill the space and worshippers.
A shape huddled beneath the dome, in a circle of black stone tiles.
For a moment, Ren thought he saw the tingle of a familiar shadow, an amateur’s effort. Yes, indeed, it was the man who’d been following him.
Relief washed over Ren. It hadn’t been his master tailing him at all, but a… merchant? That’s what the man’s clothes said to Ren: simple, respectable. Solid upper middle rank. His hands were on the mend, though, wrapped in the healer’s silks. Curiosity drove him closer to the man until he could hear his mutterings. Prayers should be private, otherwise your weakness spilled out everywhere. But something about the earnestness of the man’s tone and the heaving slope of his back told Ren that this must be a good prayer, worthy of hearing.
Was Ren the goddess’s herald sent to listen to and then favor the poor man? Ren the Benevolent slid between the pillars closer to the man.
“Great Goddess,” the man said softly, “what have we done to offend you? What can I do to atone?”
Ren frowned. Why did Mornae, even of this higher tier, think the goddess had anything to do with their offending or amending? Shadows wisped at his fingertips. Herald of the shadows and the Dark, Ren was certain that it was his fate to set this man right—and not just him, but the lovely acolyte he’d accidentally sent to the goddess—so he drew even closer, just a few paces away, and listened.
The man was now talking to himself, muttering and cursing. A child lost… the second one. His consort was an empty vessel. Ren almost sighed. Such a common story unless you were one of Maunyn’s matrons. They always seemed swollen with his seed.
The merchant seemed so earnest and… Ren had almost forgotten. The man had been following him. What might he have seen? Did he weep for the acolyte? Ren squinted, suddenly angry. This man was just as blameworthy for that crime. If he hadn’t chased Ren, the acolyte would still be alive, and he wouldn’t have lied to his master about the ampule. An insatiable curiosity filled him too. What did the man know, and more importantly, what to do with the sudden sympathy he had for him?
He thought of Maunyn’s interrogation days before and him commanding them all to search out the assassin. His lord had said the high matron was terribly upset, and wanted the killer found and executed in front of her eyes. It might have sounded overdramatic, except Maunyn said it with the same unfeeling voice as always. The dogs were in the Outer City. Kiseyl hounds never forgot a scent. Shadows and illusions had no effect on them. They were closing in on him, surely as the goddess rose every ten-day.
He should gather his things and head south. He’d heard of great cities to the far south. He could live in the shadows… like a god.
Yes, he could flee now, or he could kill this man just to be sure.
He sighed and his shadow-shell undulated, trapping the sound. The shell held him like a womb that he wanted to escape.
The man rose, making five ritual prostrations, the kind the high born Mornae used to make to their matrons on special occasions. Some still did it in the valley. The fervent, the ones that wholly expected to return to the Mornae’s former glory. The Zauhune champion was famous for doing it. Ren’s teacher had been dubious about the matter. This is our time, and they had theirs, he’d say.
The murdered acolyte’s face bullied into his thoughts. Across the sanctuary rose a statue, the rays of dawning sun which cut across the jagged crest of the crater in slivers lining her perfect form in orange. The Voice, the goddess, some said. Guilt, like a stone, sank into Ren’s gut and churned there.
He pressed a fist into the column, recalled the Benthrae boy and the poor slob whose face he’d pummeled only last week. So many wrongs, too many to count. It’s not like he’d offended nomads and barbarians. No, he’d been a viper in his own nest, to his own people.
“Goddess above, what have I done?” he asked.
His shadow-shell fluttered, and the praying man turned, looking for the source.
Ren should be the one prostrating, wringing his hands, pulling out his hair in anguish. He used her gifts but gave her nothing in return, and what did he do all this for except to seek the favor of the cruelest, coldest man he knew? When Maunyn learned that his own man had killed the acolyte… Ren shivered just thinking about it.
He could do one more thing; one last, final, absolutely pleasing act to assuage the goddess’s wrath. The shell darkened in response. Do it, it seemed to whisper. The pale clay face of the acolyte, lips pouting and almost blue, spoke to him. A surety welled in him, absolute and perfect, just like the tall, long-legged statue across the way.
Did they have to make her so lovely, so irrefutable? Who could deny her?
The man had left while he wrestled with his thoughts. The sun was up now, and the crater was silent as a Yatani’s tomb.
His skull tingled with warmth like he lounged in a scented bath. Another face came to mind then: that strange, flat-faced boy with the beady eyes. No one in that house cared for him. He stood alone, forgotten. His own matron mother—if she was his mother—had looked at him with a sinister, hateful eye. Someday they’d trade him or sell him or… Maunyn’s cast off. Just like Ren. Thoughts of his own boyhood, so desperate for his family, stripped away from them to pay off a debt that was a fabrication...
Rage replaced guilt.
The acolyte, the Benthrae boy, the stolen children, the broken faces, the bullied and bribed, the dead dropped into gorges… Hosmyr was to blame. He could make his ultimate act one of justice as well. He’d take his last stab at the house that had brought him misery and reward one of those it had seen fit to punish.
Ren the god at last.
44
Zaidra seemed pleased, though it was difficult to tell. Gishna’s steward had picked the absolute best pears from every crate. Only thirty percent had met the standard. There were bigger things than pears in play, though. Unlike Joumina, Gishna came prepared to soften Zaidra Vakayne.
She wouldn’t let Zaidra bully her. Not this day; not when it was clear Zaidra was not what everyone thought. Gishna twitched her head left and right, trying to find a window on the world she could gaze out of. The white had claimed most of her vision now, though.
“Really, now, Gishna,” Zaidra muttered, as if she should put herself out of her misery. “Is the assassination of an acolyte in broad daylight—in a sanctuary school, no less—your idea of peace?”
“I’ll not toss myself out of the highest tower,” Gishna said, “if that’s what you think. That’s not something Hosmyr matrons do.”
Zaidra seemed to shrivel. Matron Vounia, from the time between the first and second accords had tossed herself from a Vakayne tower for reasons now forgotten to time. Zaidra looked tired… exhausted. If the girls were hers, it could explain her rapid decline. But she had been pregnant, that much Gishna knew. She’d wafted the air around Zaidra and briefly tasted the pregnancy. It was a Hosmyr talent, quite unused these days, to gauge growth, to touch the living power. Kandah had helped her enhance it to do more than just read. Soon it would be the only way she could experience the world.
She sighed with a rattling breath.
“I’ll not settle anything for my daughters,” Zaidra said. “Though I have many offers.”
“And you must appease your blood houses,” Gishna reminded her. “It is Kiseyl’s right, is it not?”
Kiseyl had given two sons to Vakayne since the Fall and received nothing in return.
“I’ll decide what is their right,” Zaidra said. “They’ve no claim.”
How could she say that? Something was very wrong within Velkamas. Gishna’s spy had reported a secret consorting between a Kiseyl priestess and a Zashtrin squire. This was Zashtrin’s second act of defiance, bypassing the order of things, bypassing their high matron… and yet Zaidra did nothing. There was only one way to understand this: Vakayne’s bloodhouses were in rebellion.
“A deeper union between our houses would benefit all,” Gishna said. “It is time, don’t you think?”
