Page 64 of The Castle & the Cloister

“If you require anything, or wish for a guide, there is a bellpull here, beside the door,” she said. “We’re happy to serve you. Or, if you wish to make yourself free of the cloister, you’re welcome to do so. If you reach forward, you’ll find we’ve made an accommodation for you.”

The Priest put out a hand. There was the bellpull, and beside it a bundle of cords, each of them with a small metal disc tied to its end.

“Each disc is embossed with a number and an initial letter, indicating the room its cord will lead you to,” Aurelia explained. “One and an R for the refectory, two and a G for the gardens, three for the laundry, four for the chapel, and five for the sea path. The cords are marked with knots at intervals as well, grouped in the number that corresponds to their destination. A glass bead to one side of each group of knots indicates your heading—if you touch it after the knots, you’re traveling to the cord’s end destination. If you touch it before, you are returning to this room. We have no locked doors, and you’re welcome to explore the grounds and buildings at any point, but this will, perhaps, make it easier for you to navigate. Your guidelines run shoulder height through the cloister—we heard you have a similar contrivance near the ground on the mountain, but we have children to consider, and they’re prone to tripping. Better for the older among us to bow our heads while passing through a doorway or two.”

“Thank you,” the Priest said, and meant it. “And thank your Matriafor her consideration. I didn’t expect the sorias to go to any trouble on my behalf.”

When Aurelia spoke again, she sounded amused. “It isn’t trouble. It is both our joy and our duty to serve, and to afford those within our walls every opportunity to flourish. You don’t strike me as someone who thrives on dependence.”

“I don’t? Shocking,” the Priest answered, slipping easily into a new degree of familiarity with the even-tempered soria. Aurelia let out a soft laugh, and the Priest was flooded with a sense of gratification. Gods, he liked the woman in spite of himself, just as he liked every other soria he’d met. There was some perverse desire in him that made their devotion and their edges and their rigorous standards, their good humor and their stubbornness and their high-minded ideals, all nigh irresistible.

“Nevertheless,” the Priest said, in an attempt to cover his feelings, “thank Dolenza for me, for making the arrangements.”

“She didn’t,” Aurelia said. “A note came to us from the castle, requesting things be laid out for you just so. All we did was follow the instructions we were given.”

He should have known. “Then I’ll thank Ariana myself. It’s like her, to consider everyone and everything.”

“The queen is a paragon, and I don’t doubt she would have done such a thing if there weren’t so much on her mind. But it was Fia who sent word and explained what was required. She was most specific. Besides petitioning the cloister for a soria’s role, she’s asked for nothing since coming here, so we were happy to oblige her.”

It would have cost Fia, the Priest knew. Both the request itself, and the sending of it. He was all but certain, given her upbringing, her ignorance about the book and the timekeeper in his cell, as well as a number of things she’d said on the road, that the postulant could neither read nor write. The cloister would remedy the situation once she became a soria, but she’d have had to ask someone to write the note for her, and Fia was prideful as they came.

Beneson. That’s who she’d have enlisted, and why the Priest hadn’t heard of her making arrangements for him beforehand. The boy was more discreet than the dead, sometimes.

“If you wish to thank our postulant, as you expressed a desire tothank either Matria Dolenza or the queen, you’ll find her in the refectory,” Aurelia said in an unreadable tone. “I should imagine she’ll be there an hour or two yet—Miriel is a favorite with both the cloister children and the sorias, so Fia will find it hard to get away quickly. Or would you prefer I send up bread and wine?”

“No,” the Priest said quickly. “No, I’ll come down.”

“Good.” Aurelia’s smile was audible once again. “I thought you might.”

Not long after, the Priest emerged from his borrowed room. Cooler, in fresh clothes, and with the dust of the road no longer clinging to him, he felt an unfamiliar sense of well-being. It was, he realized with a shock as he followed the cord marked for the refectory, the sensation of safety. He was letting his guard down. Indeed, it seemed impossible not to, in the cloister’s accommodating and convivial environment.

But he was no soria. No hapless Corrinian forced to wander in search of a nonexistent haven. No carefree farmer or merchant. He was an Inver, in a place that still stood in opposition to his family, his court, his faith, his very existence. The Priest tried to bear down on that renegade, dangerous feeling of wellness, and found it very hard to crush.

Beneath his hand, the cord came to an end, coupled with the impression of a large, echoing space opening out before him. A few low voices murmured, scattered across the refectory, but it seemed predominantly empty at midafternoon.

“Priest,” Fia said from his left, and he went to her. The Priest ran two fingers along the surface of a long table as he walked, and sat when Fia took his hand and guided him onto a bench at her side. There was a child in her arms, and he could tell from its small noises that it was Justus, not Miriel. Another young, precocious thing climbed onto his lap and began to make gruesome faces out of his features, by moving them with her hands.

“Eyes,” the older child said solemnly, pulling the Priest’s mouth downward into a frown.

“No eyes, actually,” he answered with equal gravity, and put out his tongue. The girl giggled, a high-pitched, delighted noise.

“That’s your niece, Celina,” Fia said. “She marked her third summer a few weeks ago. Neither Ariana nor Orden want to see her while they’re here, but I thought she should at least meet her little brother.”

There was a listless quality to Fia’s voice the Priest had never heard there before, and a hoarse roughness. She sounded as if, in the brief time they’d been parted, she’d beencrying, not gently but fiercely—the sort of tears that brought a sick headache in their aftermath and left you feeling entirely spent.

“Fia,” the Priest said, shifting Celina onto one knee so that she fit comfortably in the crook of his arm. The child, evidently accustomed to a cloister full of friends rather than a court full of enemies, happily leaned against him and began to toy with the hem of his sleeve. “What’s gone wrong? And where’s Miriel?”

“She’s over there,” Fia said. “Across the room with Soria Beatrice and a foundling girl called Maya.”

“Not with you?”

Fia hesitated, her brief silence laden with both hurt and anger. “No. Not with me. I thought I’d be away three days, but it’s been nearer two weeks. And Miriel… she doesn’t want me any longer. Apparently, she’s not fond of strangers at this point, and I’ve become a stranger to her. Soria Beatrice says it won’t last, now I’m back, but…”

Her voice trailed off.

“Gods,” the Priest said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yes,” Fia said, more defeated than he’d ever known her to be. “So am I. But at least Celina and I have something in common now—family that’s passed us over.”