Solace Arisen (7 page)

Rorke? Why Rorke? Nils knew the words to the vows. He began them in his mind, reciting the first passage, but when he came to the second, the words disappeared as if they’d been rubbed out from a wax tablet and only vague gouges were left were the letters had been. As he tried to decipher them, he heard Rorke already speaking, pronouncing the words with relish, and Sibelian mumbling the promises to provide home and hearth.

Sibelian finally rose.

“You know that she will die a fiery death,” the sovereign said. “Spare her from it. Use your sword.”

The plaza was so quiet that Nils swore he could hear the
swoosh
of the sword leaving the sheath and the
crunch
of it piecing into the bodice of the hay-stuff effigy. A wad of gagging phlegm rose in Nil’s throat. He’d seen many executions, but the first had been Breena’s—a mercy killing. As Alenius’s best friend, he stayed at his side when he stabbed Breena to put her out of suffering from the burns. To this day, the thought of it made his stomach sour. He coughed and spit.

“Ah, Nils. Bring us the torch,” said Alenius. “The woman must burn. It is her fate.”

In the thrill of hearing the sovereign acknowledge him, Nils forgot the twisted emotions of a moment ago. He drew himself up as tall as his bent back would allow. He was still above Rorke; the sovereign needed him. A Fortress Guard presented Nils with a long torch. Not trying to lean too heavily upon his cane, he shuffled to the effigy and was about to touch the torch to the hem of the woman’s dress when the sovereign said, “Give it to Rorke.”

As the fire spread from the dress to the stuffed sackcloth body, Alenius felt all the dread he feared. The burned wine and pissing had momentarily taken his mind from the memories he knew the burning of the effigy would ignite. As it burst into flame, making an orange glow against the sunset, he remembered Breena’s suffering. He had steeled himself somewhat against it. He knew Breena insisted on burning the effigy because she understood the pain the flames represented and wanted to see it visited upon their enemy. What he hadn’t been able to anticipate was her test of Sibelian’s loyalty, how it brought back the guilt he felt in killing her with his own knife. He had done it just as much to end his own suffering as hers.

My love
, Breena said,
I have always only thanked you for taking my life. It was hopeless. Perhaps it was wrong of me to remind you of that time
,
but I had to know Sibelian was with us. It was for his own good. With no heirs, the common people of Gheria will never begrudge him his position. We must do everything to ensure that he is respected as viceroy.

He will be respected when we show ourselves divine.

Still, many of the cabinetmen will plot against him. He’s not full-blood. There’s only one solution.

What is that?
Alenius asked.

Kill the cabinetmen and their tradition of privilege. Poison their wine at our feast during the Winter Solemnity.

Only a few cabinetmen object to him. Why poison so many who support him?

What do you value more? The approval of seventy-five cabinet men or the love of a million commoners. They despise the cabinetmen.

Alenius hesitated. The cabinetmen contributed huge sums that supported the army and the Forbidden Fortress.

My love, with the world at your disposal, why do you need the gold of men who fancy themselves your advisors? You need neither their coin nor opinions. You will be benevolent to all.

Yes, Breena, I will be.

To all except your enemies.

Two weeks later, near Verdea Crossing

“
U
rsatka mig
.” Miss Nazar said excuse me in Gherian and gingerly dismounted for the third time that morning. Her accent was decent, and she had readily learned the words Degarius offered.

Heran Kieran halted to take her horse’s reins. “
Some do omskart
.”

Degarius cringed. The monk might be a man of peace, but he butchered the Gherian language by insisting on using the same cadences as Anglish. Degarius had tried to make him hear the differences dozens of times. It was useless. If they went into Gheria, Kieran was going to have to pretend to be mute.

It was Miss Nazar’s idea for them to learn Gherian. Until he was certain he could overpower Kieran, he had to pretend he was going along with the plan of them going into Gheria as a paltry threesome force. As taxing as it was to work with Kieran, an unexpected benefit was that it somehow made speaking with Miss Nazar easier. Not that she spoke to him often or unnecessarily. She was too proud. There’d be no pleasantries aimed at warming his affections; she was the kind of woman who wouldn’t bear being dismissed twice.

But now, she’d asked to be excused, again. Unattended illnesses, like diarrhea, could grow worse and stop their progress. So much for insisting that she was never too ill to ride. Well, she was still riding, but it was taking forever with these frequent stops. “Perhaps you should take something,” he called after her in Anglish so she would be certain to understand.

She stopped and turned. “Take something?”

“What did your apothecary send,” he asked Kieran. “Miss Nazar is ill.”

She lowered and shook her head. “It’s not illness. Because I wear breeches, perhaps you forget I’m not a man. How am I to say it?” She spiked the toe of her boot in the dirt, blurted, “It’s my time,” and darted into the woods.

Degarius pulled his hat to the top rim of his glasses. What kind of blockhead did she take him for? Breeches did nothing to disguise she was a woman; they made it more obvious, gave exact shape to what he’d only imagined. When she was out of sight, he groaned.

Kieran said, “It’s normal for a woman who’s not with child.”

Degarius groaned again. “I’m aware, Heran.” It was beyond imagining that a chaste brother ventured to teach
him
of women.

Upon returning and remounting, Miss Nazar asked, “What’s the Gherian term for a woman’s time?

“
Dien efin
. Moon blood.” Degarius’s face went hot.

“Your knowledge of Gherian is comprehensive,” Kieran said.

For once, Kieran said something Degarius was glad to hear—a change in subject. “I learned Gherian at the age where children are curious about life.”

“I’ve always thought it’s a pity that learning the meaning of words usually does little to give them value, or to guide one morally through life.”

Another barb at him? The brother was looking at Miss Nazar, not him. Funny, he’d assumed there would be sympathy between them because of their backgrounds. Was this about how easily she’d learned Gherian? Or because she’d spent her time in Solace learning Old Anglish—then resigned. Of course, Kieran didn’t approve. He probably blamed her for what happened at Solace, too.

“One uses words, Heran,” she said, “both internally and externally to frame moral questions. How can one do so without awareness of their meaning?”

“In the moment of truth, we find words teach one nothing,” Kieran said. “Who hasn’t acted solely on wordless, primal feelings and urges? In such cases, the state of one’s moral center determines if the resulting action is good.”

What in all hell was that about? Had the blasted superior inflicted this man on them as a punishment for that one moment Lerouge found them in? Had Miss Nazar told the superior about that, too? At least in his case, it had come from an honest feeling, even if it was only pity. Well, the monk and Miss Nazar could argue all they wanted about theology when he left them at Ferne Clyffe.

Verdea Crossing

Town—beds, baths, and a few hours break from the saddle. Even as a girl Arvana had never ridden so much.

Just ahead, Verdea Crossing lay like a patchwork blanket before the Black Top Mountains. They’d surely overnight in an inn. The superior had returned a portion of Arvana’s novitiate’s fee and added a fair sum for the others. Her purse held plenty of crowns to pay for beds and hot baths. What a treat it would be to peel off the road-weary tunic, soak off the week’s worth of dirt and moon blood, then slip into a bed. But as they neared the town gate, Degarius tucked all his hair under his hat and stashed his glasses in a pocket. Her small pleasure of anticipating a good night’s sleep dissipated. This was no treat for him. He worried he’d be recognized. They’d avoided any settlements so far, but they needed supplies and the tunnel at Verdea Cross was the fastest, easiest way into Cumberland.

He rubbed his bearded chin. The beard
did
go a long way as a disguise. The redcoats would be looking for a blond man. The beard was reddish and made him look older, worn. Or perhaps the grimace from squinting was what aged him.

The people gathered at the gate, including three redcoats, looked at them as people always look at monks—wanting to stare but embarrassed to be noticed doing so.

Inside the gate, houses of rough-hewn timber lined the street. Keithan had been from Verdea Crossing. He might have grown up in one of these very homes. His parents could be living here still. What remembrance of him would console his parents? She couldn’t tell them how he’d rescued her from the stream at Summercrest and taken Chane away. Perhaps the best she might offer was that he was like a brother to her. The idea of finding his parents, however, had to remain only an idea.

A warm, yeasty smell interrupted the thought. Her mouth watered.

Degarius’s eyes squinted even harder. “Do you see a bakery?” he asked Kieran.

“Ahead, on the left.”

They tied the horses to a post. Degarius divvied the supplies each should procure. To her disappointment, except for the apples and bread she was to get, it was more of the dried foodstuff they’d already been eating.

With two long loaves in her backpack, she left the bakery and bit into a bun she’d bought for herself. Nothing tasted as good as plain bread with a hard crust and airy center. As she let a bit of crust soften in the roof of her mouth, she looked into the next-door shop’s window. A delicate blue caught her eye. Among the fancy chemises and pelisses hanging on display was a robin-egg-blue nightgown. After wearing for three weeks men’s leather-seated riding breeches that were now terribly stained, the gown would be something clean and fresh, even if just for one night. Though it didn’t make sense to buy it, it seemed somehow essential. But a monk couldn’t buy a nightgown. Ah, but she was a monk on a hant-marking mission. If asked, she’d say the nightgown was a gift for the wife of the Cumberlandian headman who allowed their mission in his lands. She tucked the rest of the bun in a pocket and resolved to enter, but she stayed where she was, looking at her face’s reflection in the window. Had Nan once loved this person, but didn’t anymore. The thought made her stomach, though filled with bread, feel empty. She took the bun from her pocket and bit into it as she resolved to go inside.

Funny, it took courage to enter. She was going to fight The Scyon, but hesitated at entering a shop? No, only this kind of shop. She never had occasion to pick a pretty chemise or nightgown for herself. In Sylvania, by the time she’d grown old enough to have such clothing, she simply began to use those left behind by her mother from the drawer her father never opened. At Solace, one was given a plain, coarse undershirt, then tasked with making one to replace it for the storeroom. She wasn’t in Sylvania or Solace.

Inside, surrounded by beautiful women’s intimate clothes, she felt as out of place as if she were a man, or a child peeking at her mother’s things. The shopkeeper, a girl only a few years beyond Jesquin’s age, thankfully was tatting lace and seemed determined to keep at it rather than decide what to say to a monk, giving Arvana the leisure to inspect the gown without interrogation. As she touched the finely woven soft cotton of the blue nightgown, she remembered secretly opening the drawer and trying on her mother’s lace-trimmed chemises and nightgowns when her father and Allasan were in the barn. Though the sleeves hung far down past her hands and her tiny body was lost in the draping fabric, she envisioned herself as a grown woman, the mysteries of her body tantalizingly only half-hidden by the thin layer of fabric. The blue nightgown wasn’t as transparent as her mother’s or as frilly with ruffled lace about the sleeves, but it was pretty in its own way. No one would see her in it. She had the coin for her own room. She pointed to the gown and in her deepest voice asked, “How much?”