Page 22 of The Castle & the Cloister

“Tell her that I give my word to see her daughter is at peace. Tell her that if I had a mark, I would swear by it.”

Ducking low, the postulant pressed a kiss to Ellimere’s forehead. “May the Blessed Sun guard your going, Priest.”

It was a relief to him to hear his title. Somehow he could not have borne it if she’d called himPatria, referring to him as a father in Honorian, as Ariana did in the Corrinivar tongue, or as other Corrinians sometimes did. The Priest did not want to hear her speak with that sweet and perfect trust he received without merit.

He stood and waited until the last echoes of the postulant’s footsteps had faded entirely, before lifting the crock of goat’s milk and setting out for his cell. Ellimere had begun to move more insistently, her tiny face turning repeatedly toward him, and what served to nourish a Priest would have to do for this small daughter of the stars. Afterward, he would see about a naming ceremony, held before the gods with no one but himself and his infant niece in attendance. He’d do that much for her before sending her off to a cloistered life.

In his time, the Priest had found ways to dissipate gambling debts, halt unwanted marriages, supply ender’s herbs to women in dire straits, and create new lives for those who wished to disappear. This, however, would be his first attempt at smuggling an infant out of the castle. He could havedone without the challenge. He especially could have done without it being his brother’s child, on the day of Afon’s arrival in Inverlyn, no less.

First and foremost, he wished to recognize the child and claim her before his own gods. The postulant bestowing a name on Ellimere set a prickling sense of urgency in the Priest—it was unsafe to speak a name for the first time so easily, rather than properly and with an offering. Doing so all but pitted the child against the gods, claiming that she would forge her own way, and fight against any fate they sought to place upon her. Or so the Priest had been taught, and half believed on his more pious days.

This was by no means the first clandestine naming he’d undertaken. His own existence was proof enough that the Inver court was rife with bastards. Several times a year some high-ranking man or woman would come to him with a babe in arms and the request that they be recognized before the gods, if not among their peers. Every time, it caused the Priest to wonder what his own long-ago naming ceremony had been like—if he’d even had one. Who his mother was, he’d never known. He had no memories of any woman who might fit the role, only of the brawling Inver nursery, and the full story of his origin had, in all likelihood, died with his father.

So he wanted to do things properly for Ellimere. Even if it never mattered, even if she spent her life as an untouchable daughter of the stars, he wanted to be sure she received the birthright every Inver child was entitled to. Perhaps someday, in spite of the tranquility she was being sent off to, it would serve her well.

Accordingly, he stood on the altar rise, laying out the tools he would need, with Ellimere nestled in a bundle of blankets nearby. A newly sharpened knife. A strip of linen for his arm after the offering had been made. A small brazier filled with tinder and coals, and a patch box to strike a light and imbue the named child with Inver fire. Newly made shard incense, to carry the gods’ favor to the child on columns of bitter smoke.

The Priest wondered briefly what the worshippers who’d come before him had used in their offerings. Not the other Priests—the Inver mode of worship had not changed much since their rise to power—but the sorias. Surely there had been no knife. But had there been fire? Had there beenincense or scented herbs? Had a lone devotee ever come before Silith, as he came before his gods, or was their worship always in company? Were they always a chorus, as death had rendered them?

He wondered, too, what was happening above him, in the corridors and receiving chambers of the Invers’ stolen castle. Afon must have arrived by now. The Priest had never met the foreign king, though he knew him by reputation, and by the obscene and one-sided correspondence Caervallion’s ruler insisted on maintaining with Orden. Orden occasionally read the Priest fragments of the letters before burning them on Tyrus’s altar, as if he could draw poison from his soul by doing so. Even the Priest was left furious over the way Afon Caervallin spoke of Honoria’s queen, and a small part of him understood his brother’s bullheaded insistence on taking Caervallion to war yet again. He’d have done so himself if a rival spewed such venom about someone who held his heart.

Perhaps by now the two kings had attempted to cut each other down. Perhaps there was fighting above, blood running once more through the mountain passages, staining the halls where sorias had died. Or perhaps Ariana’s strange knack for steering the Invers away from their more violent instincts had prevailed, and there was no more than conversation and idle pleasantries passing between the assembled nations. But no—of course she would not be on her feet yet. This summer, Orden must stand alone. For a fleeting moment the Priest found himself wishing he involved himself more in Honoria’s politics and had a place and a voice at the council.

Instead, he turned back to the task at hand with a grim sigh.

“Tyrus, god of war,” he began, because it was so often Tyrus whom tradition required him to invoke. “A son of yours steps forward now, a child of blood and blade and flame.”

“Priest,” a faint voice said from below the altar rise. “I should like a word.”

Annoyance flared up in the Priest. He’d thought himself alone—had gone so far as to recall and commission Beneson to keep watch over the single publicly traveled corridor that led to the cavern sanctuary. It was the first time the boy had ever failed him, and worry followed hard on the heels of irritation.

“Does this word warrant interrupting me at my duties?” the Priest asked, his voice harsh.

“You may be the judge of that.”

The speaker drew closer, ascending the stone platform and coming so near that the Priest was confronted by the smell of him—sweat and refuse and the sickly sweet scent of jessim, a powdered tree sap many in the court used as a stimulant. The temperature rose ever so slightly, too, as the unwanted visitor set a torch into the altar bracket.

“Name your request,” the Priest said. “I’ll add it to my list of petitions to bring before the gods, though it may take a week or two for me to reach yours. Ours is a greedy, unsatisfied clan.”

“Yes,” the speaker said. “I’m aware of those traits. I possess them myself, in good measure.”

“Admirable.” There was nothing of either approval or disapprobation in the word when the Priest spoke it. Let this inconvenient religious seeker wonder where the Invers’ holy representative stood on the subject of their people’s habitual and bottomless desires.

“I’ve always thought so,” the speaker continued. “And in order to attain some of my loftier goals, I took on a position several years ago, working for someone you know well. If you are the king’s right hand, my patron is surely his left.”

“Lucian,” the Priest growled. “Of course you’re one of his.”

“Admirable,” the speaker echoed, with an audible smile. “They did tell me you’re the cleverest of the brood Orden grew up with. Pity he let you live.”

“Invers don’t believe in pity.”

“Foolish, then, that he allowed you to survive. Particularly in light of some of your more… clandestine activities.”

“I suppose you intend to tell me what unscrupulous behavior you believe I’ve been indulging in.”

“Well, where should I begin?” the unknown spy said. Try as the Priest might, he could not place the voice. “Perhaps with your lesser transgressions. How you helped the wife of one of our prorexes slip her unwanted child, or how you assisted Marchio Garus Inver in fleeing the country, to escape debts he owed the crown.”

“The use of ender’s herbs is not prohibited by our laws,” the Priestanswered evenly. “Nor is helping a friend arrange travel. I had no knowledge of the extent of Garus’s debts.”