Flustered, Taul stared at her, eyes and mouth wide, caught in mid-demand. “Yes, high matron, but you know this. I’m certain you do.”

Yes, she knew it on paper. But now she really knew it. She could see it. He babbled again, and she raised two fingers to silence him. More than two would invite Maunyn to slice his throat.

“A real tender?” she asked. “You sat the womb for a night?”

Taul nodded.

“And you, Matron Lor’Toshtolin?” she asked. “Do you have the gift?”

Ryldia’s high cheeks flushed dark gray. Not for a cycle had Ilor’Hosmyr’s matrons walked through the fields or the dusky mazes of the ancient trees. These days, such gifts were the purview of valley priestesses. Mixed breeds. Nomads, even. Yes, blush black as coal, black as the earth whence you’ve come.

Gishna chuckled at her silence. “Yes, of course you can. A remedy for your broken heart? And yet you are not the daughter of nomads or lesser folk. No, I know your line very well.”

Her mind’s eye recalled the canvases nailed to the scriptorium walls. Both Taul and Ryldia’s lines reached back to the founding. What about those little marks the seer made by the names? Was one for tenders? Scribbles, he’d say. Notes for himself. Of no consequence. The discards….

“Tell me about the orchards, Taul,” she said. She’d speak informally now. Fencing with this man would only produce his bloodied corpse. “I hear they are ailing.”

Maunyn groused. He’d been telling her for years. She’d been so cunning, so focused on solving this one problem, the one that mattered most, that she’d not seen the whole. I’ve taught you everything I know, the seer would say. But the decisions were hers, and she’d chosen, again, not to focus on the real problem. Had he ever defined it clearly, fully? He’d suggested, letting her guide the discussion. What did he really know? What was it really, this taint? It was not something she could beat into submission, not rip out by the roots.

Roots.

“Lor’Toshtolin oversees…” the Toshtolin consort started, prattling on about the number of pears produced, contracts, wealth.

She stifled the urge to raise her voice. “No, tell me of the orchard.”

“Are those fresh wounds on your hands?” Maunyn asked. “Have you undergone the test again?”

Gishna glanced up at Maunyn. He was gaining respect for this unimpressive young consort.

Taul considered what to say.

“Oh, I see,” Gishna said, wagging a finger at him. “Your matron doesn’t know what you’ve been up to.”

Taul looked down at his consort’s feet, who remained still, composed. Fine stock that one, but enormously burdened.

“I had to try again, high matron,” Taul said. “I needed to see if I still had the gift.”

“Risking your life. Risking your house,” Gishna said, fixing her gaze on Ryldia’s face. “And do you?” Gishna asked. “Have the gift?”

He showed her his hands and said, “I have completed the trials six times. I am a master. I’ve delved deep into the land you claim. Show me the marks of anyone within earshot. Are there any? What are we without this? You replace us, move us about, but can any of these people restore our legacy? Your legacy?”

He said it calmly and she suffered his insults. She was within her rights to kill them all, but there was truth here that eluded her, teased her from afar. She couldn’t let it go to the fire heap just yet.

“What else did your trial tell you?” she asked.

“Without tenders, the orchards will fail.”

“But that could mean many Hosmyr deaths in those black pits,” Julissa said. “Will you tend the funeral pyres?”

He didn’t blush this time; instead, his jaw hardened. It was a good question, and Gishna was proud of her daughter for asking it. It was the seminal Mornae question: was power worth the effort, especially if it meant death?

“If the orchards fail, Hosmyr is doomed,” he said. “The Mornae are doomed.”

“I think you are three thousand years too late,” Gishna said.

“No, high matron, we aren’t dead yet. But who will turn the tide of this decline? Picking hairs and taking children, to what end? To control this so-called taint? And when it is gone? Then what? What will be left?”

His voice rose, far too strident in a high matron’s presence, but perfectly acceptable in a matron’s. A consort shared his mind unvarnished, without guile, clear and true. Sometimes even children speak words straight from the goddess. The chamber grew still. Had this tender uttered a divine word for them?

Maunyn stiffened, but his hands remained relaxed, his thumbs hooked in his belt. It had been a long time since they’d heard such truths.

Taul opened his mouth to say more, but she halted him with two raised fingers. Ryldia rose then and poured her more tea, placing the saucer in her hands like a dutiful daughter. Taul had more words building up, his lips bunched up tightly, about to spew more, but Ryldia touched his arm and he let out a hissing breath, his venom depleted.

“Thank you, dear,” Gishna whispered as Ryldia sat.

Gishna leaned back, motioned to her daughter, and Julissa asked more questions about the Yatani and why Taul believed they held the key to survival. Such a foolish notion to allow nomads onto their land, especially when they were already invading the south valley. She battled the notion, but it refused to leave her. The Yatani had a gift on the same axis as the seer’s. A gift which, when melded with the Dark, had shaped the east valley. Oddly enough, this gift confounded her seer—or he’d recognized it and purposely rejected it, not because of the taint or her agenda, but for another reason. To keep them from ruining their appearance? If that was the case, the seer was playing into their need to appear Mornae.

“Vanity,” she muttered.

They turned to her, but she waved at Julissa to continue. Her daughter nodded, acknowledging her mother’s need for reverie.

Thensil’s lessons came together in Gishna’s mind. Her ancient ancestors had come from different Alcar districts who’d never mixed for a reason. When they entered Vailassa, they’d thrown off all strictures, claiming their freedom. The taint had gained strength, and the Dark made it worse! It amplified all their powers, including the taint. Then they discovered the Yuleh, the Yatani’s long gone ancestors. They became a remedy and an aid on their ascent to the gleaming Dark. The seer must sense their quality, but not have the power to comprehend it—or he did and, again, chose not to reveal it. She didn’t want to think he’d deceived her. She needed him and the valmasin.

Julissa’s voice rose as the young consort once again threatened them all with discovery. As if he wasn’t one of them? As if such a revelation wouldn’t devour his house as well?

“I am duly chastised, Prime Consort,” Gishna said, raising a finger to halt Maunyn’s attack. Is this how Joumina felt with her young champion? Reprimanded? Humbled? “I alone bear our failures. Like Zeldra’s rot at my very core.”

She placed her matron’s ring, ridiculously large on her emaciated hand, against her chest. Before they could ask for what they truly desired, she would throw herself before the beast’s maw. They’d not know it, but she’d give them a future like the one she wanted for her own daughter.

“I have something to propose to you,” she said.

They both stiffened, ready for a threat, or worse.

“If we guarantee Lor’Toshtolin’s position,” she said. Julissa bowed her head once. “If we had a way to tell you when to try again for an heiress. Would you wait if we had a way to strengthen you?”

She stared hard at the young matron, hopeful she’d agree.

“If you are unwilling to wait, I will get you a girl,” Gishna said. “I take on the offense. What’s one more, neh? Of any lineage you desire.”

The young matron remained calm, unmoved. “I will wait, high matron.”

Her consort’s eyes welled with tears. He was the emotional one, the one truly taken with love. The matron, on the other hand, was true to her role and loyal to her lineage. Gishna hoped Julissa was paying attention.

“We are as sisters,” Gishna said, a term she reserved only for the other high matrons. “Yes, valley sorcery is the answer. I see that now. That is what we need to succeed. Even if the crater rejects us, we have the valley.”

She’d given each what they needed, and they responded with Mornae pride. Even Julissa shimmered with newfound energy.

Yes, she marveled. This is how Joumina felt with her champion. Revived! Young again! Should she thrust herself down into the tender’s pit and see how it judged her? She chortled and coughed. They waited as she drank more of the tea.