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But first, the time had come for Dalton to pay a visit to the ailing Sovereign. The time had come to act. He would do it that very night, before the feast planned for the next day.
As hungry as she was, Ann was not looking forward to being fed.
She had long since been staked to the ground and the grimy tent erected around her, so she knew it was getting to be about that time. An any moment she expected a burly Imperial Order soldier to storm in with her bread and water. She didn’t know what had happened to Sister Alessandra; Ann hadn’t seen the woman in well over a week.
The soldiers disliked the duty of feeding an old woman. She suspected their comrades made sport of their domestic duty. They would come in, grab her hair in their fist, and push the bread in her mouth, packing it in with stubby filthy fingers, as if they were stuffing a goose for roasting. As Ann tried to swallow the dry mass before she choked, they would start pouring water down her throat to wash down the bread.
It was an unpleasant experience, one over which Ann had no control. As much as she enjoyed food, she was coming to fear it would be the end of her.
Once, the soldier who came to feed her had simply thrown the bread on the ground and set a wooden bowl of water beside it, as if she were a dog. He seemed proud of himself in that he had shown her disrespect and saved himself considerable trouble all at the same time.
He didn’t realize it, but Ann much preferred that method. After he had his laugh and left, she could flop on her side, squirm close, and eat the bread at her own pace, even if she didn’t have the luxury of wiping off the dirt.
The tent flap opened. A dark shape stepping in blocked out the campfires beyond. Ann wondered what it would be: stuffed goose, or dog-eating-off-the-ground. To her surprise, it was Sister Alessandra, bringing a bowl giving off the aroma of sausage soup. She even had a candle with her.
Sister Alessandra pressed the candle into the dirt to the side. The woman was not smiling. She said nothing. She didn’t meet Ann’s gaze.
In the dim candlelight, Ann could see that Alessandra’s face was bruised and scraped. She had a nasty cut on the cheekbone below her left eye, but it looked to be on the mend. The relatively minor wounds seemed to be a variety of ages, from old and near healed to freshly inflicted.
Ann didn’t have to ask how the woman came to be in such a condition. Her cheeks and both sides of her jaw were red and raw from the stubble of countless unshaven faces.
“Alessandra, I’m relieved to see you… alive. I feared greatly for you.”
Alessandra raised one shoulder in a gesture of feigned indifference. She wasted no time in bringing a steaming spoonful of sausage soup to Ann’s mouth.
Ann swallowed before she had time to savor the taste, such was her hunger. But just the warm feel of it in her stomach was solace.
“I feared greatly for myself, too,” Ann said. “I dreaded those men were as likely to kill me as get the food stuffed in me.”
“I know the feeling,” Alessandra said under her breath.
“Alessandra, are you… are you all right?”
“Fine.” She seemed to have retreated to an emotionless place.
“You’re not badly injured, then?”
“I’m better off than some of the others. If we… if we get hurt, a bone broken, or something like that, Jagang allows us to use our magic to heal one another.”
“But healing is Additive Magic.”
Sister Alessandra brought the spoon to Ann’s mouth. “That is why I’m lucky; I’ve no broken bones, like some of the others. We’ve tried to help them, to heal them, but we were unable to, and so they must suffer.” She met Ann’s gaze. “A world without magic is a dangerous place.”
Ann wanted to remind the woman that she had told her as much, that the chimes were loose, and magic—Additive Magic anyway—wouldn’t work.
As Alessandra fed Ann another spoonful, she said, “But I guess you tried to tell me that, Prelate.”
Ann gave a shrug of her own. “When people tried to convince me the chimes were loose, I at first wouldn’t believe them, either. We have that in common. I would say that as exceptionally stubborn as you are, Sister Alessandra, there is hope you could one day be Prelate.”
Alessandra, seemingly against her will, smiled with Ann.
Ann watched the spoon, with a chunk of sausage, linger in the bowl. “Prelate, did you fully expect the Sisters of the Light would believe you that magic had failed and that they would willingly try to escape with you?”
Ann looked up into Alessandra’s eyes. “Not fully, no. Although I hoped they would trust my word, having always known me as a woman who values truth, I knew the possibility existed, so great was their fear, that—whether they believed me or not—they would refuse to leave.
“Slaves, slaves to anything or anyone, despite how much they abhor it, will often cling to that slavery out of fear the alternative would be insufferable. Look at a drunk, a slave to liquor, who thinks us cruel for trying to get him to abandon his slavery.”
“And what were you planning in the event the Sisters of the Light refused to abandon their slavery?”
“Jagang uses them, uses their magic, the same as he uses yours. When the chimes are banished magic will return and the Sisters will have their power back. Many people will die at their hands, no matter how unwilling are those hands. If they refused to cast off their slavery and leave with me, they were to be killed.”
Sister Alessandra lifted an eyebrow. “My, my, Prelate. We are not so different after all. That would have been the reasoning of a Sister of the Dark as well.”
“Just common sense. The lives of a lot of people are at risk.” Ann was famished, and eyed with longing the spoon holding the sausage as it hovered above the nearly full bowl.
“So, why were you caught, then?”
Ann sighed. “Because I didn’t think they would lie to me, not about something so important. Though it would be no reason to execute them, it will make the onerous but necessary task a little easier.”
Alessandra finally fed Ann the spoonful of sausage. This time, Ann made herself chew it slowly so as to enjoy its flavor.
“You could still escape with me, Alessandra,” Ann said in a quiet tone after she had finally swallowed.
Alessandra picked something from the bowl and cast it aside. She stirred the soup again.
“I told you before, that would not be possible.”
“Why? Because Jagang tol
d you so? Told you he is still in your mind?”
“That’s one reason.”
“Alessandra, Jagang promised you that if you took care of me, he wouldn’t send you out to the tents to whore for his men. You told me that was what he said.”
The woman paused with the spoon, her eyes brimming with tears. “We belong to His Excellency.” With her other hand, she touched the gold ring through her bottom lip—the mark of Jagang’s slaves. “He can do with us as he wishes.”
“Alessandra, he lied to you. He said he wouldn’t do that if you took care of me. He lied. You can’t trust a liar. Not with your future or your life. That was my mistake, but I wouldn’t give a liar a second chance at harming me. If he lied about that much of it, how much else is he lying about?”
“What do you mean?”
“About how you can never escape because he is still in your mind. He is not, Alessandra. Just as he can’t get into my mind, he can’t get into yours for now. Once the chimes are banished, yes, but not now.
“If you swear loyalty to Richard, then you will be protected even after the chimes are banished. You can get away, Alessandra. We could do our grisly duty with the Sisters who lied and chose to stay with another liar, and then escape.”
Sister Alessandra’s voice was as emotionless as her face. “Prelate, you forget, I am a Sister of the Dark, sworn to the Keeper.”
“In return for what, Alessandra? What has the Keeper of the underworld offered you? What has he offered that could be better than eternity in the Light?”
“Immortality.”
Ann sat watching the woman’s unflinching gaze. Outside, men, some of whom had abused this helpless five-hundred-year-old Sister of the Dark, laughed and carried on their nightly amusements. Smells, both fair and foul, drifted in and out of the tent: sizzling garlic, dung, roasting meat, burning fur, the sweet smell of a birch log in a nearby fire, stale sweat.
Ann, too, did not flinch from the gaze.
“Alessandra, the Keeper is lying to you.”
Emotion returned to the Sister’s eyes.
