Page 32 of The Castle & the Cloister

The sphere fell still, and the spymaster’s hands dropped to his lap. “Still no sign of her.”

“And Afon? I suppose he’s sprouted wings and flown out of the castle without a trace, as well?”

“No.”

Orden turned, something in Lucian’s voice setting off a warning in him. “Whathashe done, then?”

“Brought up whores from the lower city, after he left the banquet hall. One of them’s dead, and the bawdy house she came from is demanding recompense. Their matron’s one of your petitioners.”

A ring of crimson began to scintillate at the edges of Orden’s vision, as always happened when Inver rage built in him. But he prided himself on his ability to control and channel that fury, unlike his father and elder brother, who had been mastered by their wrath.

First, make a conquest of yourself, was Orden’s credo. Then, of the world at large.

He had managed the first, more or less, and was still trying for the second.

“Summon the Priest,” Orden said abruptly. “I want to speak to him about this council, and about my son. We’re going to name the boy before all Honoria and before our visiting guests, and I want such a spectacle that no one present will be able to deny our supremacy.”

It had been Orden’s first instinct to hide what he held most dear from Afon. Caervallion’s king made no secret of his lust for everything Ordenpossessed, and so he had thought to keep his family safe and out of sight. But he had forgotten the heat of Ariana’s hidden fire.

Let her shame Afon again, and shame every last member of the court who’d be gossiping about the blood she’d shed. Orden’s people loved high drama, and so he would give them just that at the prince’s naming ceremony, with Ariana as its centerpiece. The gossip would still, the council delegates would see Orden’s power and Honoria’s future on display, and the people would think well of him and his queen. To that end, he’d invite everyone to the naming—the entire populace of Inverlyn. The Priest would have a fit, but Orden had made up his mind. His people would all be present, and they would watch Ariana show her true strength, as she offered a blood sacrifice to the god of war.

As Orden purposed, so it would be. He was king, and it was high time Honoria danced to his tune.

IX

The gods have spoken, and the word they have sent down to me is this: no longer will their minor blood sacrifices come at the expense of their worshippers. Rather than the blood of a petitioner, they require the blood of their Priest, shed by the one who wishes their favor. Let the Invers be conquerors in this, as in all things, for it does not become our people to spill their blood needlessly, even before the gods.

—A RELIGIOUS RULE OF THE NINTH PRIEST

I knew as soon as I saw Gwylen that someone would try for Orden’s life this summer. But I didn’t expect it to be so soon.” Ariana spoke softly to the Priest from where she stood at the hearth goddess’s altar, while the Priest busied himself with tending to the other three. It was always so when she came down to his sanctuary—at her request, he remained nearby, but occupied, so that they might murmur their secrets while appearing to do no more than pray. “She’s no ambassador. Do you… do you know what she truly is?”

“Afon’s right hand,” the Priest answered. He sat before Mortis’s altar, crushing herbs for incense. When the mix was ready, he would add a pinch of incaendium and a splash of aqua vitae, and the herbs would purify and compress into ember-like shards, fit for offering to the Inver pantheon. “She’s a spy and assassin and whatever else is needed, as faras I can tell. Like Lucian, only better at her job, because it seems she’s disappeared. No one’s laid eyes on her since the first few hours of the welcoming banquet.”

“She’s—” Ariana fell silent for a moment. “Well. It doesn’t matter. When I saw her I knew there would be trouble, and I was sent a warning by Dolenza too. I went to Orden’s rooms last night because of it, and he’d been drugged—nothing that couldn’t be passed off as the aftereffects of a night of drinking, if need be, but I wasn’t able to wake him, no matter how I tried. While I was there, one of Gileta’s women got in, with a silk garotte.”

The Priest swore under his breath. The alliance between Honoria and Song Royale really was going to break, then. Vesper would be a bloodbath, and the very idea of it turned the Priest cold. Orden had never been to Vesper, nor Gileta, nor Dolenza—none of the players in power who made their decisions with little regard for the tens of thousands of ordinary folk toiling and dying there. But the Priest had been to the frontlines and spent years embroiled in the horrors of Honoria’s longest war. Vesper’s brutal front was the last thing he’d ever seen.

“What did you do?” he asked Ariana finally, and could hear her breath catch. The Priest thought briefly of telling her of his own confrontation with Lucian’s footpad, but it seemed unnecessary. The trouble had been dealt with, and it would only pain Ariana that he’d taken a life to protect their interests.

“I dissuaded her,” the queen said.

“Just asked her to leave, was that it? And she said,Well, of course, Majesty, if you’d prefer I not assassinate your husband, I can go.”

“Adda.” Ariana spoke his title as a reproach. The Priest could hear his new nephew grizzling in the queen’s arms. She made a small shushing noise to the baby and the cavern’s ghosts began to hum ever so softly, an ancient cradle song. The infant prince quieted.

“You know what they all think of me,” Ariana said. “That I have whored myself out to your clan and your gods in exchange for whatever scraps of power Orden allows. Gileta may like me a little, now and then, but everyone on the Hand believes I’m a wretched apostate, capable of anything.”

The Priest waited. He found silence was often the best response when others wished to unburden themselves to him but struggled to find the words.

“I put Orden’s dagger to our son’s throat.” The admission left Ariana’s lips devoid of any feeling, and the Priest’s heart ached. He knew her all too well—her gentleness, her faith that still gleamed like a muted star, her stringent ideals. Such an action would have cost her greatly. “I swore to Gileta’s woman that I would kill the baby if she didn’t leave, and bade her warn her mistress that Orden is not to be touched. It may be permissible to kill a man bloodlessly for rekindling a war, but Silith would not look well on it if an innocent’s death was part of the bargain.”

The Priest’s mortar and pestle had fallen still, though he sat surrounded by the scent of bitter herbs. “I’m sorry. That was a hard thing, little queen.”

She was rustling about behind the hearth goddess’s altar, adding fresh shards of incense to the brazier and a few drops of lavender oil. The Priest kept oil of lavender on hand for those who wished to make an occasional clandestine offering to Raea, and it was a testament to Ariana’s unsettled frame of mind that she chose it now, when she scrupulously avoided any vestige of her old practice under better circumstances.

“It was. And it means Gileta has no intention of treating with us. We’re going to lose any trade with her. And Vesper…” Her voice trailed off.

“And Vesper,” the Priest repeated.