Page 138 of Sokâr

I knew it would fail, but I cannot help but try again and again. I don't understand. Why was I given this power if I cannot make use of it to help these people?

Is making a gown and breaking a ward all I am good for?

If I cannot save a child, what use am I as Sokâr?

The healer returned, and Auryn tried to keep her face set in a mask of neutrality. The floor dipped beneath her feet as she stood, and it took focus to keep her breathing steady, so the healer wouldn't notice anything amiss.

They moved from one sickbed to the next. A man restrained to his cot begged them to kill him with clumsy hand signs. A young woman had gouged her own thigh open with a temple spoon and stared at the wound. Another had jumped from the high tier the day before, and the Attendants were still scraping the remnants from the temple gutters.

'Prayers are sometimes not enough,'a greying Priest signed to her, wringing her hands. 'So the Priests now listen. That is all. No salve touches this. No chant eases it.'

“Have you seen any improvement?” Auryn asked, her voice raw.

The woman’s mouth curved downward as she signed, 'The ones who die quickly.'

Ah, but they don’t tell you, do they? How they let them jump. How they untie them at night and hope they slit their own throats just so they’ll stop screaming.

Auryn’s fingers curled into her sleeve, her teeth gnashing together.

"Do you have sufficient Reskala guards here to keep the Solutus away?" Auryn asked.

The healer's expression soured.

'They came in the night three days past, just after Moonfell. Took nearly twenty of the adults. Several children.'

"Why wasn't His Quintessence informed? Three days past? He would have bolstered the Reskala assignments here."

The healer hesitated, wringing her hands together.'We thought…no one would come, Your Radiance. We could not fight them…the Priests locked themselves in the sanctum, and the other healers—'

Auryn placed a hand on the woman's shoulder. The healer looked down at her, pain in her eyes.

"You are not expected to fight. The laws of this city," Auryn glanced at the woman's neck—at the Batcher number showing just beneath her collar. "The laws of Doctrine state that you are to receive protection. Sanctuary. We will speak to His Quintessence of this oversight."

The woman fell to her knees, and before Auryn could stop her, she took the hem of her skirts and kissed it. Auryn froze. The nausea returned in full force.

"Please don't—" she choked out.

'Your Radiance,'the healer signed.'If it wasn't for you, for the Writ of the Ninth Lattice, for the way Your Radiance comes to comfort the sick and help us…the Sokâr is the only one who sees…the only one who would protect us.'

"This isn't true. The Resh'Agar fights for you. For all of you."

'We see. We serve,'the healer signed, but there was no truth in it. Only fear. And there was no way to change that, not now—perhaps not even in a decade.

No one knew Kailorien as she did. No one saw the exhaustion that shadowed his every step. So, she said nothing more on the topic. But she did help the woman to her feet, feeling better when she towered over her once more.

I've done nothing to deserve such reverence,Auryn thought.Not a single thing.

She stayed for hours. Sitting beside the sick. Praying. Hoping.

It was the children—the sight of them—that nearly broke her every time. The innocents. Those who should have had entire lives ahead of them. She sat with them the longest. Reading aloud to a small circle — none of whom understood the words, but clung to the cadence. She lit the sacred flames at each corner of the temple herself. Helped mop more blood and waste from the floor.

Tears burned in her throat, but she did not cry.

Not until her feet reached the marble path outside, and even then, she swallowed them.

A Reskala approached and signed. Clipped. Formal.

'Does the Sokâr return to the Rising?'