Page 3 of The Castle & the Cloister

Dolenza gave Fia a long-suffering look. “Honestly, Fia, you may be the only person in Honoria who hasn’t heard the story. Did you keep yourselfintentionallyignorant before coming to us?”

Fia tried not to glower, and failed. “If I had anything to wager, I’d bet no one else from my village has heard of Celina Inver, either. We didn’t get a lot of news, Matria, at the end of civilization. We knew there was a king somewhere—couldn’t escape knowing it when his pressers ransacked the village every year searching for able-bodied folk to conscriptinto his army. But not one in two of us could have told you his name, or where our people were sent. All we knew was that they left and never came back.”

Outside, Celina fell and scrambled back up, her small face scrunched in determination. Her hands were coated with dust, which she wiped onto the unbleached linen of her apron. Then she carried on until the contents of a particular garden bed drew her attention and she stopped, distracted by the opportunity to uproot a melon vine.

“Celina is goddess-marked,” Dolenza explained. “The day after the Invers held her naming ceremony, Wise Silith the Moon set her emblem on the child. Which makes her one of us, Fia. Someone marked out for fidelity to the goddesses, whether she chooses to follow that path or not. Orden Inver was furious and wouldn’t have her in his sight. So she was sent here.”

Fia’s free hand went to her own goddess mark—the sunburst at the nape of her neck, which had appeared there in her tenth year. The Invers, with their younger gods, did not tolerate worship of any of the Beloved Three save Raea. If Silith the Moon or Lyria the Stars chose you for their service, you were expected to cleave to Raea, if you wished, in substitution for your intended goddess, or to renounce the Three altogether and live faithless, or as a devotee of the Inver gods. The last was certainly the choice the Invers would prefer, but few goddess-marked made it.

“Why would the king send his child to Raea?” Fia asked in confusion.

She shivered in spite of the late morning heat. Just the idea of being parted from Miriel wrenched at her, leaving her breathless and filled with helpless anger.

“It was the strategic choice,” Matria Dolenza said from where she stood, studying the small girl in the courtyard, just as Fia was doing. “The Invers have been skirmishing again with Caervallion in the north, these last few years, and Caervallion remains faithful to Silith’s worship in name, even if their practice has grown corrupt. If they were to gain control of Celina, with her mark—”

“They’d bring her up in their ways and seek to place her on the throne,” Fia finished for the Matria. Though Dolenza often chided Fia for her ignorance, since coming to the cloister she’d learned a great deal, helped along by a ready mind and a knack for discerning the temperamentsand motives of others. “A child both Inver enough for Honoria’s nobles to accept, and Silithien enough to offer fealty to Caervallion.”

Dolenza nodded. “So here Celina Inver stays. She is safe. She is well looked after. And Bright Raea is powerful enough, even in her latter days, that no one will risk insult to her by spiriting away one of her fosters.”

Fia moved Miriel from one hip to the other. It had not escaped her notice that the cloister was a power to be reckoned with. She’d known before that it was famous and prosperous, and that all of inland Honoria ate through winter thanks to the wheat and saltfish that came from the Solis Plains—and by extension, from Raea’s halls. What she had not known was the degree to which the cloister seemed to rest at the heart of every significant trade agreement made in Honoria, or how Dolenza served as a confidante and advisor to most of the country’s merchants, and a good half of those who came from elsewhere.

“Is it Raea people fear risking insult to, or is it you?” Fia asked mildly. She had not learned true deference yet, or when to hold her tongue. Neither skill had been needed to survive life in the mountains, and so she had not bothered cultivating them. She’d tried, since coming to the cloister, but it was slow going.

Dolenza went back to her desk, frustration finally evident in the set of her shoulders.

“I will not hear your fidelity oath this morning. In fact, I’m sending you away,” she said abruptly. “But not for long. And not with your daughter—Miriel will stay here with us.”

Hot, unreasoning fury pooled in Fia’s belly, breathtaking in its intensity.

“Never. I go nowhere without my child,” she snapped. She fought the urge to tighten her hold on Miriel, instead shifting her grip so that the baby rested with her chest against Fia’s own, her head up, wide bright eyes taking in the world that served as a constant source of wonder. Fia could not help herself—she pressed her cheek to Miriel’s first, then her lips, drinking in the child. Her sweet smell, her softness, her innocence, the way she looked first to Fia regardless of who else was present. Miriel saw only good in her mother, as no one else had ever done. It broke Fia’s heart and mended it all at once, setting a great, wild desire in her to be worthy of that perfect regard.

“If you wish to join this cloister, you will do as I say.” There was stone in Matria Dolenza’s voice, but at Fia’s stricken look, she relented. “You’ll be back before you’re even missed. A three-day errand, with Miriel safe among my sorias, doted on and as well cared for as if you were here yourself. Then when you return, I’ll hear your fidelity oath with a glad heart.”

“Miriel’s a nursling yet,” Fia protested. “How will you feed her, Matria?”

Dolenza smiled, the expression a calculated one. “What’s good for the goats is good for the goddess. She won’t go hungry with plenty of fresh goat’s milk on hand, andIwon’t be swayed. If you wish to remain here, you’ll do as I ask.”

“A three-day errand?” There was bitterness in Fia’s grudging tone. She should have known things had been too simple since she left the mountains and crossed the expanse of the Solis Plains. Now her ill luck reared its head once more.

“A three-day errand,” Matria Dolenza assured her. She took up the letter she’d been writing when Fia came in and held it out. With considerable reluctance, Fia accepted it. “A mule is already waiting for you. Soria Beatrice will take charge of Miriel. You’re to travel to Inverlyn and deliver this note into the hands of our little foster Celina’s mother, mistress of all Honoria.”

Fia’s bitterness turned to disbelief. “I’m to deliver a letter to the queen?”

“Yes, Fia,” Matria Dolenza said firmly. “You are. And you’re to be swift about it. While I keep the souls in my care safe from dire news as often as I may, trouble is brewing in Honoria, and no one will remain ignorant of it much longer. Orden Inver has tired of toying with Caervallion and has declared his intention to overthrow their king and claim their capital come harvest time. If he has his way, every last soul in Honoria will serve his lust for conquest before the end.”

Once more, Fia pressed her face to Miriel’s, this time searching for some sense of reassurance. Misgivings rose strongly in her—she’d fled the mountain village she was born to because it was a place of deprivation and cruelty. The Inver capital might be known for its excess, but cruelty was the same anywhere, regardless of its trappings. Even Fia’s backwater upbringing had not kept her ignorant of the viciousness of the Invers and their court.

And she knew all too well the ravages of war.

Before her, the cloister’s Corrinian fosters played. They served as a living testament to the Invers’ brutality, for it was Honoria’s king who’d razed Corrin’s green fields seven years back, while clashing with Caervallion on land that belonged to neither of them. Corrin had never recovered, and perhaps that was the source of Dolenza’s determination to aid the small country in every way possible: Whatever blame could be placed for Corrin’s agonizing decline, a great part of it lay at Honoria’s doorstep. Or rather, at that of her Inver rulers, to whose capital Fia was now being sent.

“Three days,” Fia agreed. She could manage the errand, if it meant a soria’s appointment waited at the end. “And not a moment longer.”

II

A PREVENTATIVE FORTHOSEWHODWELL INDARKNESS

Mix one crock of new goat’s milk with the crushed blooms of twelve paschalflowers. Consume twice daily to stave off the softening of the bones and pains brought on by withholding oneself from Bright Raea’s regard.