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Verna pulled out a volume and opened it. “Well, I know that Prelate Annalina appreciated having you around all those years.”
“Oh, yes, many years, it was. My, my, many years.”
“A Prelate, I’m coming to discover, has precious little opportunity for friendship. It was good that she had yours. I’m sure I’ll find no less comfort in having you around.”
Millie mumbled a curse at a reluctant bit of dirt. “Oh yes, we had many a talk late into the night. My, my, but she was a wonderful woman. Wise, and kind. Why, she would listen to anyone, even old Millie.”
Verna smiled as she absently turned a page in the book, a volume on the arcane laws of a long dead kingdom. “It was so good of you to help her, with her ring and the letter, I mean.”
Millie looked up, a grin coming to her thin lips. Her hand had actually stopped wiping. “Ah, so you’ll be wanting to know about that, like all the others.”
Verna snapped the book closed. “Others? What others?”
Millie dunked her rag in the soapy water. “The Sisters—Leoma, Dulcinia, Maren, Philippa, those others. You know them, I’m sure.” She licked the end of a finger and rubbed it on the bottom of the dark woodwork, squeaking off a spot. “There might have been a few more, I don’t recall. Age, you know. They all came to me after the funeral. Not together, mind you,” she said with a chuckle. “You know, each alone, their eyes watching the shadows as they asked the same as you.”
Verna had forgotten her pretense at the bookcase. “And what did you tell them?”
Millie rung her rag. “The truth, of course, same as I’ll tell you, if you’ve a mind to hear it.”
“Yes,” Verna said, reminding herself to keep the edge out of her voice. “Since I’m the Prelate now and all, I think I should hear about it. Why don’t you rest a bit, and tell me the story.”
With a grunt of ache, Millie struggled to her feet and turned her sharp eyes on Verna. “Why, thank you, Prelate. But I’ve got work to do, you know. I wouldn’t want you thinking I’m a slacker, seeking to work my tongue instead of my rag.”
Verna patted the wiry woman’s shoulder. “No fear of that, Millie. Tell me about Prelate Annalina.”
“Well now, she was on her deathbed when I saw her. I cleaned Nathan’s rooms, too, you know, so that’s when I saw her, when I went to Nathan’s. The Prelate trusted no one but me to go in there with that man. Can’t say as I blame her, though the Prophet was always kind to me. Except when he would go off about something or another, yelling, you know. Not at me, understand, but at his condition and all, being locked in his apartments for all those years. Takes a toll on a man, I suppose.”
Verna cleared her throat. “I imagine it was difficult for you to see the Prelate in such a condition.”
Millie put a hand to Verna’s arm. “Don’t you just know it. Broke my heart, it did. But she was in her usual kind humor, despite the pain.”
Verna was biting the inside of her lip. “You were telling me about the ring, and the letter.”
“Oh, yes.” Millie squinted, then reached out and picked a bit of lint from the shoulder of Verna’s dress. “You should let me brush this out for you. It doesn’t do to have people think…”
Verna took the woman’s callused hand. “Millie, this is a bit important to me. Could you please tell me about how you came to have the ring?”
Millie smiled apologetically. “Ann told me she was dying. Said it right out, she did. ‘Millie, I’m dying.’ Well, I was in tears. She had been my friend for a good long time. She smiled and took my hand, just like you have it now, and told me that she had one last task she wished me to do. She pulled her ring off her finger and handed it to me. In my other hand, she put that letter sealed with wax and imprinted with the sunburst off the ring.
“She told me how when her funeral was going on, I should put the ring on top of the letter, on the pedestal I was to take in there. She told me to be careful not to touch the ring to the letter until just at the end, or the magic she had put around it could kill me. She warned me several times to remember to be careful not to touch them together until I did it all proper. She told me just what to do, in what order. So that’s what I done. I never saw her again, after she gave me the ring.”
Verna stared off out the opened doors to the garden she had never had time to visit. “When was this?”
“That’s a question none of the others asked,” Millie mumbled to herself. She stroked a thin finger back and forth across her lower lip. “Let’s see now. Quite a while back, it was. It was way back before the winter solstice. Yes, it was right after the attack, the day you left with young Richard. Now, there was a nice boy. Kind as a sunny day, he was. Always smiled at me with a how-do-you-do. Most of the other boys don’t even see me, right there before their eyes, but young Richard always saw me, he did, and had a pleasant word for me, too.”
Verna only half listened. She remembered the day Millie spoke of. She and Warren had gone with Richard to get him through the shield that kept him bound to the palace. After they passed through the shield, they went to the Baka Ban Mana people, and took them all to the Valley of the Lost, their ancestral homeland, a homeland they had been driven from three thousand years before in order that the towers that separated the Old from the New World be put up. Richard needed their spirit woman to help him.
Richard had used unimaginable power, not only Additive Magic, but Subtractive, too, to destroy the towers, and cleanse the valley, returning it to the Baka Ban Mana before he went on his desperate mission to stop the Keeper of the dead from escaping through the gateway and into the world of the living. Winter solstice had come and gone, so she knew he had succeeded.
Suddenly, Verna turned to Millie. “That was almost a month ago. Well before she died.”
Millie nodded. “That seems about right to me.”
“You mean to say that she gave you the ring almost three weeks before she died?” Millie nodded. “Why so long?”
“She said she wanted to give it to me before she slipped any further, and wouldn’t be able to say good-bye to me, or be able to give proper instructions.”
“I see. And when you went back after that, before she died, did she slip as she thought?”
Millie shrugged as she let out a sigh. “That was the only time I saw her. When I went back to see her, and to clean, the guards said that Nathan and the Prelate had left strict orders that no one was to be allowed in. Something about Nathan not being disturbed as he tried his best to heal her. I didn’t want him to fail, so I tiptoed away, quiet as I could.”
Verna sighed. “Well, thank you for telling me, Millie.” Verna glanced at her desk, and the waiting stacks of reports. “I’d best be back at my work, too, or everyone will think me lazy.”
“Oh, that’s a shame, Prelate. Such a warm, beautiful night, you should enjoy your private garden.”
Verna grunted. “I’ve so much work to do I’ve never even poked my nose out to look at the Prelate’s private garden.”
Millie started toward her bucket, but suddenly spun back. “Prelate! I just remembered something else that Ann told me.”
Verna straightened her dress at her shoulders. “She told you something else? Something you told the others that you forgot to tell me?”
“No, Prelate,” Millie whispered as he scurried closer. “No, she told me, and told me to tell none but the new Prelate. For some reason, it’s been completely out of my memory until this moment.”
“With all the rest, she may have spelled the message, to make you forget it for all but the new Prelate.”
“That could be,” Millie said as she rubbed her lip. She looked into Verna’s eyes. “Ann would do things like that, sometimes. Sometimes, she could be devious.”
Verna smiled without humor. “Yes, I know. I, too, have been on the receiving end of her manipulations. What is the message?”
“She said to tell you to be sure not to work too hard.”
