Page 59 of The Castle & the Cloister

“No.” Ariana raised herself up enough to kiss him, soft and lingering on the mouth. Her lips were cool and featherlight, as if he kissed a spirit rather than a woman of flesh and blood. Worry bit Orden deeply, and heresolved to speak to the nurse about her cures. If she could restore Ariana to full health, he’d reward the postulant richly.

“If you wish to go, we go,” Ariana said against Orden’s mouth. To lend truth to her words, she slipped over him and out of the bed to stand barefoot in her long white nightdress. “Call my currus,” she ordered imperiously. “The Inver queen is ready.”

A laugh burst out of Orden, dispelling the last evil effects of his night of intemperance. Ariana’s humor shone out so rarely, and when it did, it was like sitting on a spring hillside, marveling at a sky that glittered with an exuberance of stars. With one sinuous movement he got to his feet and swept her up into his arms.

“The Inver queen has my heart now and forever,” he said as she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him. “I am her servant, to do as she wills. It has been so since our first meeting, and will be until my last breath.”

Ariana said nothing, but when she turned her face up to his, he saw what he had at that very first hour—awe and adoration and tenderness. No one had ever loved him like Ari, though she did not voice the sentiment. No one had ever deserved more from her king. And so he would gift her a goddess, drawn into his own power and pantheon, for her to worship with that same perfect regard. His gods were not right for her—he’d seen it last night when she stood before them with the mark of sacrifice on her gown. In their place, he would make her a deity melded together from the old and new, wrought of Raea’s brightness and the Invers’ heat. That doing so would unite his fractured nation was only an added benefit.

Of first and foremost importance was safeguarding and pleasing his queen.

With every beat of his courser’s hooves, Orden’s resolve strengthened. He’d led his illustrious party down from the foothills to a lavish encampment prepared by Glora and a bevy of servants who looked to be on the verge of apoplexy. This second morning, they’d come out onto the flat, fertile expanse of the Solis Plains, where the air hung as hot and heavy as the olives and lemons on their trees and the grain on its stalks. Ordenhad seen a fair amount of Honoria, visiting his nobles and their holdings to arbitrate disputes or listen as his favor was courted. But he’d never had cause to visit the plains before, even though they spread out upon his doorstep. Everywhere he looked was an embarrassment of riches, the place ripe and fecund as an unwed Inver maid in her twentieth year.

That his forebearers had left such wealth untouched within their own borders was beyond foolish. The cloister could not possibly be so formidable an obstacle—if Dolenza proved less amenable than she seemed, Orden was sure he could enact a bloodless coup there, or perhaps order Lucian to undertake a few quiet, untraceable assassinations. In all likelihood, the latter would be best even if Dolenza was agreeable. Sooner or later, she’d need to be replaced with a Matria of Orden’s choosing, so it might as well be done at once. There were a few Inver nobles who eschewed court to hide the humiliation of goddess marks; perhaps one of them would serve the purpose. Then he would have the pleasure of giving the cloister to Ari, and leaving the plains as a legacy for Justus, in addition to vanquishing Afon and adding Caervallion to his holdings, with Corrin as a protectorate between them. The throne and the kingdom Orden left his son would be far different than the ones he’d claimed. Justus’s rule would be easy and prosperous, and with the wealth of the plains to support him, the boy might even become the king who won the Progenitors’ War.

If Orden didn’t beat him to it.

The strength of his new vision glowed within the king. He did not even mind the spectacle he saw when he looked back, of Gileta and Afon walking side by side, engrossed in some earnest conversation. The Caervallin king had schooled his warlike features to attentiveness, and as she spoke, Gileta occasionally touched his arm lightly. It was clear from the pleased expression on her face that she was confident of her ability to draw Afon back into Silith’s proper fold. The women Afon had brutalized over the years were clearly of no consequence when it came to the machinations of the Beloved Three, Orden thought darkly as he watched the Imperatrice courting the Caervallin king.

Gwylen stalked behind Gileta and her master. What she thought of their burgeoning friendship, Orden couldn’t say. The woman was a cipher, her expressions and mannerisms entirely unreadable. Just as she’descaped Lucian’s notice in vanishing from Palace Hill, she’d returned without being observed as well. The spymaster was still chafing over it, which pleased Orden greatly, even as it annoyed him to have Afon’s emissary prove the craftier.

Beyond the delegates from Caervallion, Ariana’s currus jolted along, pulled by a fine set of four heavy draft horses. It was an uncomfortable mode of conveyance at best, and Orden fretted constantly over his fragile wife, trapped within the currus’s baking confines as she bled. Corrin’s Arbiter and Arbitress walked in the shadow of the currus, speaking in low, impassioned tones. They seemed to be addressing both each other and Ari—if they were badgering her about aid for Corrin, Orden would see them put in their places. Honoria’s coffers were strained enough, and there would be lean times ahead before Caervallion fell.

Within hailing distance of the queen’s currus, Dolenza’s postulant rode astride a mule. The Priest walked beside her—Silas rarely left the mountain, and when he did, he never rode, saying he did not trust creatures who were able to see what he could not. He moved assuredly, one hand sweeping the ground with his phelamon wood cane, the other resting ever so lightly on the top of the nurse’s practical, roughly made shoe.

Orden raised an eyebrow at that. He recalled seeing the two of them appear on the altar rise together the night before, and it was deeply unusual for the Priest to show familiarity of any sort. Orden’s half brother was notorious for keeping an empty bed—rumor had it he’d only been given the role of Priest on the condition he be made a eunuch. Which was nonsense, of course. Orden had done no more than any other king instating a new Priest, and required only a painful, month-long course of ender’s herbs. Such a treatment did not diminish potency, though it did induce sterility. So the Inver rulers ensured their Priests had no interest in building dynasties of their own, and in supplanting the reigning king or queen’s rightful bloodline.

The Inver Priest and Dolenza’s lackey. A strange pairing indeed. Orden knew Silas well enough to be sure this was not some ploy to gather information, or a maneuver in pursuit of power. He was not so confident of the wet nurse. Ariana seemed attached to her, but that meant little—his queen was overly generous and attached to Orden himself. Ari’s judgment could not wholly be trusted.

Accordingly, at the midday halt, Orden tethered his courser and walked through the irritation that was a royal procession at a standstill. Without all the nonsense of palanquins and provisions and servants, he’d have reached the cloister in a day. With the claptrap required of a king, they’d need three days for the journey at their swiftest, though an arrival on the fourth morning was more likely.

Striding through his traveling court and wandering council, Orden sought out the wet nurse. She was seated in the shade of the currus along with Ariana and the Priest. It was strange seeing the three of them together—Orden felt something like vertigo, or like the earth shifting beneath his feet, and then the moment was gone. Ari languished on a camp bed thick with pillows, wilted by the heat and terribly pale. The Priest sat beside her, saying something low and reassuring, and the nurse had drawn a little apart. Orden’s son slept in her arms, and he swelled with pride at the sight of the baby. Justus seemed a handsome, well-made child to him—the boy would be a worthy successor to the united Honoria Orden intended to leave behind.

“I want to speak to you,” Orden said abruptly, his shadow falling over the nurse. She glanced up from the prince’s small, peaceful face and frowned.

“Shall I bring your son?” the nurse asked. Fia, that was her name. She was plain, but there was something compelling about her, nevertheless. She did not carry herself like a soria, nor yet like a workaday Honorian. She had the look and posture of someone used to living under threat, which piqued Orden’s interest.

“No,” Orden said after a moment’s consideration. “Leave him with his mother and his uncle. Then follow me.”

They’d made their halt in a small pine barrens. It seemed a likely place, where the baking heat of open farmland was marginally lessened. Lucian had informed Orden that a river ran through the barrens to the east, within a few minutes’ walk of their brief encampment. Many of the guard had gone to it, taking the royal party’s horses for water. Orden led Fia toward the river now, but cut farther south, to avoid the guards who could be heard talking and joking through the trees while tack jangled and horses pawed at the water.

The wet nurse followed at Orden’s heels, silent and capable. He wasn’t sure yet what he’d ask to try to sort out her character and motivations. But before they’d reached the river and he’d made up his mind, the woman spoke, low and warning at his back.

“I think your chief physician is killing Ariana.”

Orden stopped abruptly and turned to her, in the middle of the sparse pine woods. A humid breeze stirred the branches overhead, which made a sound like whispers, and a resinous smell rose up. There was little undergrowth, only a thick carpet of dead needles. They crackled dryly, and Orden thought that the whole place was a tinderbox. Someday, it would go up in flames, leaving only another field enriched by charcoal.

“What?”

Fia shifted her weight and squinted, as if she doubted the wisdom in speaking. “I can’t be sure if it’s by accident or design. But he is killing her. Every evening I manage to staunch her flow of blood and restore her a little, and every morning he undoes whatever progress I’ve made. It could be incompetence, but if that were so, I believe Ariana would have gained ground by now, rather than continuing to fade. I’ve tried watching, but he’s sly. I can’t be sure if he injures her in some way when he examines her insides, or if he applies some manner of unguent to draw out the blood. And Ariana doesn’t know—she goes beyond herself when he puts his hands on her, to a place where she cannot feel and he cannot reach. She says she does so because he reminds her too much of her losses, and I think he may have caused those too. I’m not certain, mind you, but it doesn’t sit right with me. And I haven’t much in life, but what I do have is a sense for danger. I wouldn’t be here without that.”

Orden understood her better than he’d ever admit. The sense she spoke of was the same thing that had sparked within him whenever his elder brother Carian or his father Darias was near. He’d seen his eventual death in both their eyes, and chosen to live. Day after day he chose to live, but he did not want life without Ariana. She was everything good and fine and pure to him—the higher cause he worked for. To hear she’d been coming to harm and he’d neither known nor protected her was like an arrow to his chest.

Red began to limn his vision, as his pulse picked up and what feltlike a choking hand closed around his throat. Orden’s father and older brother had called such fits the hand of Mortis, god of death and judgment, and abandoned themselves to their influence entirely. Orden himself believed only that he had inherited a powerful and vicious temper, and that a ruler who would conquer anything outside himself must first conquer what lay within. He won some battles on that front, and lost others. Only time would reveal the winner of the war.

“Do you see the river through the trees?” Orden asked Fia, pointing to a silvery gleam of water. “Go fetch the physician. Bring him to me there.”

There was a rushing in his ears, and his hands were beginning to tremble with pent-up energy. He wanted to give way to it—to destroy something. No. To destroysomeone.