Page 6 of The Castle & the Cloister

“She put us in herebecausewe’re early. Said you’d know what to do with us.”

“Us?” The Priest’s displeasure was growing. “I thought it was just one of you this time.”

“No. There are three more. She said to tell you that it couldn’t be helped—that she had no choice. And she said that once you found us, you’d be all right with it. There will be many more, too, in the weeks tocome—most of us who are left in Corrin are leaving or planning to do so, now your brother intends to make a battleground of our land again.”

That last was spoken as a reproach—blood and blades, the Priest hated how full of their own virtue Corrinians could be. Even with their sad little country in ruins, left destitute by Honoria and Caervallion’s last battle and ravaged by plague, they were a proud and self-righteous people. The only Corrinian the Priest had ever much cared for was Orden Inver’s queen, and when she’d come to him and implied with the utmost delicacy that she’d like his help in a clandestine endeavor—the moving of her countrymen along secret roads through Honoria’s capital—he’d agreed without hesitation. Firstly, because of the regard he had for his sister by marriage, and secondly, because any chance to flout Orden’s authority was welcome to him.

“Well, I have no choice but to be all right with it, and to get you on your way. How would it look, after all, if someone from this court found a flock of straying Corrinians in the Inver Priest’s cell?”

“We’re not enemies,” the man said staunchly.

“No,” the Priest answered. “But that doesn’t mean you or yours are welcome in Honoria. And as I don’t make the laws, if you don’t like the way things are, you can march out of this cave and into the castle to protest before the king himself.”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t presume to correct you. We’re grateful for your help, of course.” The man sounded repentant now, and that irked the Priest more than his prior self-righteousness. Trust a Corrinian to back down any time you pushed at them the slightest bit. That’s what came of worshipping a goddess who ordered you to die for peace, if need be. Lyria of the Stars seemed no better than the Invers’ war god to the Priest—both demanded an allegiance that too often led to death.

Well, the Priest had it in him to live, gods and goddesses be damned.

“Show me your marks, so I know you’re not trying to double-cross me,” he demanded.

The man who spoke for the group hesitated. “Show you, sir?”

“Just step up and tell me where your wretched mark is.”

A slight movement of air before him signaled the Corrinian’s approach.

“Left forearm,” the man said uncertainly.

The Priest pushed up the sleeve of the man’s loose shirt and ran deft fingers along the skin of his inner arm. There it was—the slick, hairless impression of a constellation of stars, etched into the Corrinian’s flesh. Almost like a burn, though it was said goddess marks brought no pain with them when they appeared.

“Hm,” the Priest said. “Now the rest of you.”

“Forehead,” a young woman’s voice said.

“Wrist.” A woman again.

Then, a third woman, “Base of the throat.” But this time as the Priest felt for her goddess mark, his fingers brushed the neckline of her kirtle as well.

Were he not used to seeing the world by touch when necessary, the threads of embroidery adorning the woman’s kirtle would have felt like no more than that—just a tangle of decorative work. But as the Priest touched the embroidery by mistake, the realization of what it was flashed through his mind.

Silver stars, sewn onto cloth of midnight blue.

“They’resorias?” the Priest said in disbelief, addressing his comment to the Corrinian man who spoke for the group. “You broughtLyrien soriasto the Inver sanctuary? To me, and at Her Majesty’s behest? Do you think the two of us don’t risk enough just by allowing the most insignificant of your landless and troubled people to pass through this place? If the king found daughters of the stars hiding in my chambers, he’d cut off my hands and feet and hang me, still living, from the castle wall. He’s never yet weathered such a betrayal—his wrath would be a terrible thing.”

A soft intake of breath came from one of the sorias, and the Priest felt a stab of perverse satisfaction. In the face of aggression directed toward the holy women, their escort seemed to find his spine.

“I was led to believe,” the Corrinian man said firmly, “that you aid our people not out of the goodness of your heart, but out of a desire to undermine your brother the king. Does harboring these women not fulfill that goal?”

“Please,” one of the sorias interrupted, her voice young and tremulous. “Can we speak to the queen? There’s something I must tell her—”

The Priest turned to her fiercely. “You cannot.”

“But wh—”

“Because she’s laboring to bring the new heir to the Inver throne into the world. Childbed has always proved a dangerous place for her—she may die on it yet.”

The admission sounded raw and furious, even to the Priest himself. Inwardly, he cursed these Corrinians with their intolerably strict goddess and their gentle ways. What sort of people kept themselves intentionally defenseless and did nothing to ward off the ill will of others? The most punishing of trade sanctions had been leveled upon them by Honoria and Caervallion, both greedy to see the little country crumble and to pick over the spoils left once it did. Caervallion hardly even bothered to disavow its raiding along Corrin’s northern border anymore. Yet Corrin took each new measure in silence and gave no one what all the continent of the Hand waited for—a reason to annex the small nation at its heart and levy prodigious tolls along the merchant roads that crisscrossed Corrin’s now barren fields.

Or, in the case of Honoria and Caervallion, an opportunity to acquire the perfect staging ground from which to deploy one’s army against a sworn enemy.