The enclave started to shift, legs passing us by as their pledges concluded. Waiting until any lingering folk had moved on, he snuck a little closer to my side. “Will I get a chance to feel the full force of your maw this day?”
I shot a fugitive glance over my shoulder. More had ascended. We didn’t have long.
“Mother caught us staring.” I was as disappointed as he. Demetri never failed to calm me after a penance, and this one had me feeling all wrong. “She’ll be suspicious this night.”
He tutted. “But Ashara, you must return to the guild…you’ve left the miller’s wife’s commission behind, and it needs to be done by the ‘morrow.” Silver-tongued as ever. “How else is her husband to wipe his arse without embroidered cotton and lace? Idleness is certain to earn you penance.”
My mother must think me the most forgetful seamstress in all of Thromarra. Seldom was there a Seventh Day where I hadn’t left some project misplaced. Not since our parents hadforbidden us to meet those eight cycles past, even with his sister Adelaide as chaperone. They were right to do so. To be alone together risked more than a tongue. It was foolish, really, to gamble with fate, our bodies the wager.
“When the clock strikes six turns, before supper, I may have time to retrieve it.”
“Sage choice, m’lady. I’ll get the fires burning to keep those needling fingers warm.”
Another descended beside us, muttering parables under his breath like spells. I rose to my feet, cupping my hands towards the statue, as was custom. Demetri did the same before slipping into the swell of the crowd, but not before giving mygluteus maximusone last pinch. Oh, he’d definitely earnt himself a strike for that one. A hard one, to the groin, since apparently it had commandeered his wits.
Before I reached my mother, two acolytes emerged from the doors, and my stomach dropped. Clasped in their bony, white hands was the owl, one of its sides matted with blood.
Don’t look.
For if I looked, I’d see the doors whilst lying in my cot, behind the veil of my lids when I closed them to sleep: the owl, the tongue, the fingers, the hands, thewombs, all strung up like May-Day bunting.
Against my better judgement, I looked anyway. Stretching the poor thing wide, they splayed its wings on the wood, nailing them down, one after the other—a mockery of its motion in flight. My teeth clenched with each hammer, the air feeling thin. It screeched. Oh gods, how it screeched and flailed, feathers drifting to the floor in a brown and white flurry. Shutting my eyes, I did what most do when life becomes dark: I begged for some light. Not fromHim, neverHimfor mercy, but from the Other—the one who governs what comes after werender our duesand return our blood to its Maker.
Other, kill it quick. Let it die. Kill it now and let it take wing in the beyond.
Green as my dress, I eventually turned, making my way towards where my mother was waiting beyond the gates. The owl’s mournful wails followed me, its agonised hoots tolling like bells. I’d see them tonight, my penance for looking, as I lay trying to sleep: the owl that dared to defecate, alongside the tongue that dared to laugh.
***
“Perhaps Capriche’s blessing doesn’t extend to the bowel movements of fowl,” Demetri mused, swigging from a flagon of ale—“Just a flying visit to the tavern, darling.”—the liquid sparkling in the firelight. “It seems his ability to predict the future is solely reserved for the weather and if the wheat will sprout. Though I can’t recall the last time he got that right, either. Didn’t hedivinewe’d have flooding last phase? It’s been nothing but sun for an age.”
I prodded the small fire with a pincer, turned orange with rust. The smith’s yard was littered with abandoned tools, its shingled roof more sky than slate, open to the rains. No one came here, and it was but a stone’s throw from the guild. I would be home before my mother suspected anything was amiss.
“He made good on his prophecy of an outbreak of pox. Mother wouldn’t even visit the baths.” I eyed Demetri over the flames, his mouth swollen into an obscene pout and his hair a scandal of curls. A kiss and a wandering hand or two each Seventh Day was our ration. I dare say it was worth it—to wait so long between touches left us starving, pawing at each other like animals knowing we had but a turn. I chewed on the tender swell of my lip, recalling how his breaths had filled my mouth only a few short moments ago, his air my air, his spit swirled with my own. An ache, deep in my core, grew harder to ignore, the addictive feel of him in my hand, in mymouth, no longer enough. But we’ddrawn lines in the ash of the blacksmith’s dead furnace, and it would be unwise to cross them.
“Ashara, dear.” He passed me the flagon, but I waved it away. She’d smell it on my breath—breath that was already laced with the salt of him. “When isn’t there pox in winter? What about four phases past when he tripped on his cloak? The Blood God didn’t see fit to allow him to foretell that, either? I’m surprised it wasn’t flayed, seam by seam, and pinned to the doors. Such a turncoat, after all.”
He laughed at hisexceptional wit, and I laughed too, picking at the burn-riddled rag he’d laid out like a rug. I thought of the owl and wished it dead. Then I thought of Adelaide and wished her alive. If the Blood God had but an inkling of mercy, perhaps the latter would be granted.
Undeterred, Demetri nudged the flagon to the closed purse of my lips. I batted him away, readying to knock it from his hands, but as I steadied his wrist, I caught sight of his jacket, and the white tunic blooming from its side.
“Demetri, your sleeve!”By the pits. I dragged his arm closer. “It’s ripped.”
“Snagged on a nail.”
Lie. I waited, brows raised.
“Caelius tore it,” he finally admitted. “Trying to remove my hand from his throat.”
“Wh—”
“By the Other, Ashara. Are you my mother or…”
I may have fussed like one, but we were the same age. Born on the same day, same hour, despite different mothers.Ordained to be offered at the same time, too, though at least later than his sister.I squished the thought like the flea it was, though it always continued to bite.
Eight cycles left.
I itched with the knowledge of it.
