Page 23

“Go, Kai!” Theo wailed, pointing to the slope in the opposite direction of the Folke.

Kai’s gaze sailed back to Theo, to the pale-faced priests barely moving beneath the bridge. They weren’t even reaching for their weapons. They already looked dead, and Kai slapped a hand over his mouth instead of drawing his dagger.

This was goodbye. His friends. His Priesthood. His family.

Theo.

Kai turned and raced down the riverbank, leaping behind a rock and peeking back to watch.

Folke swarmed the priests, yanking them to their feet and binding their wrists. Theo’s sword was ripped from his belt, he was smacked upside the head and forced to the ground. Kai’s chest pumped, his breathing rapid as the priests were roughly dragged up the bank.

Two Folke stayed behind, one of them pointing with a gloved hand toward the rock where Kai hid.

Kai took off up the slope and sprinted into the street. Pounding Folke boots sounded behind him as he darted around the Temple of Boreas, peering through rows of carriages on the road toward the entrance of the Mother City prison. The prison where Ryn had just been. He climbed onto the roof of a parked enclosed carriage and leapt up onto the balcony of an inn.

“He’s up there!” a Folke shouted, but Kai didn’t look back to see how close they were. He barged into a room, making a young couple scream and spill their tea as he sprinted over the bed, slipping through the window on the other side. His hands were slick with rainwater when he grabbed a metal beam and slid back down to the street. He crossed the next road, shedding his cloak, scanning everyone and everything for something new to wear, dropping his only source of warmth for a horse-drawn carriage to trample.

He ducked into a narrow alley where muted sunlight didn’t reach, and he pressed himself flat against the wall as a pair of Folke raced by. His breathing was loud in the empty alley—he threw a hand over his mouth to stifle it. The cold brick bit at his bare arms, the moisture in the air making his white tunic sticky against his skin.

There was nowhere in the Mother City he could hide. No one would help him in his state. He had no allies left. The horrifying realization settled in as he turned to march down the alley, keeping his hand in place. He almost screamed when someone appeared beside him.

A woman’s shape, his height. Gray hair peeked from beneath her hood, and two inches of a green hem stuck out from her coat. She pulled a pink hooded cloak from beneath her arm. Kai blinked at it, at her.

“It’s a priestess’s ministry cloak, Mordekai. Put it on.” Her unique, rough voice was one Kai recognized from only a few encounters. The High Priestess pulled her hood back a little to shoot him a look like a mother might give an unruly son.

Ordinarily, Kai wouldn’t be caught dead in a priestess cloak, something fit for maidens, not men. But he grabbed it, opened it, and he threw it over his head, the pale pink hood falling into place just as Folke appeared at the end of the alley, peering in.

Geovani linked her arm through Kai’s and began walking, casually, so slowly that Kai thought his heart might burst. The Folke rushed down the alley right past the ‘maidens’ and slipped out the other side.

“You have a bug in your ear, did you know that?” Geovani asked like she was on an afternoon stroll, and Kai looked at her like she was crazy. He lifted his free hand and stuck a finger in his ear to fish for the bug, but he found none.

“I’m not sure what it means yet,” the old bat went on, “but I think I’ll figure it out eventually. Maybe it’s the reason you can never hear the truth being told to you. You might want to get that little insect out of the way though if you want to hear what’s really going on.”

Kai shook his head slowly. He’d heard enough rumours about the High Priestess to assure him he shouldn’t argue with her now in fear she might cause a scene.

He inhaled a deep breath through his nose, attempting to calm the thundering in his chest that rivalled the storm. He scanned the streets from beneath the pink hood, searching for a glimpse of the priests as High Priestess Geovani led him toward the Navy Road. He and Geovani walked like that for several minutes as Folke rushed around in pairs and triads, knocking on doors and invading sacred temples. Finally, after a long stroll, they came to a place Kai had never been to before, mostly because he’d avoided it on purpose.

Geovani released Kai’s arm and led the way up the stairs of the First Temple. She swung open a large wood door and went inside where Kai could vaguely see flickering candlelight. He looked over his shoulder before he followed. Then he charged in after her, coming into a large sanctuary with worship pews and multitudes of shelves lining the walls.

“Wait,” he said. “Have you heard anything about my cousin? Did you know she was deployed?” he asked.

Geovani slipped out of her coat and hung it up on a set of hooks. She shook out her messy gray hair before reaching back and closing the temple door, sealing them in dim light filtered through dirty windows and a sort of serene silence Kai hadn’t heard since his days working in the Priesthood Temple.

“Adassah is a frequent subject of our prayers here,” the High Priestess said. “We were informed when she was deployed. But no, I have not heard from her or Heva since they left.”

Kai looked around the temple again, this time taking in the tapestries on the far wall of old Adriel history he’d studied over the years, ancient books high on the shelves, and a large space with study tables. Candles were lit around the room, and with the wooden doors shutting out the wind, warmth that Kai had been long deprived of inched over his damp flesh.

He spun when he heard a noise behind him, his hand flying to the dagger at his hip. He nearly pulled it out until he saw two priestesses in green and pink staring up at him with wide eyes like they’d never been this close to a man before. He released a heavy breath.

Geovani reached around and slapped his hand, making the dagger fly out of its sheath and tumble over the floor. “We don’t use those types of weapons here, Mordekai. If you’re going to live under my roof, you’re going to have to fight wars my way.” The old woman stretched and yawned, then did a series of twists. Her back cracked in several places.

Kai blinked. His gaze sailed to his dagger, half-hidden beneath a pew. “That dagger is my last blade. I lost my sword to the river three weeks ago.”

“Good.” Geovani nodded. “Very good.” She pointed to a particular door down a stretch of hallway. “You can sleep in there. We’ll start our lessons in the morning.”

“What lessons?” Kai folded his arms. He glanced toward the large wooden exit he’d come through, but there was no way he’d survive out there with so many Folke searching the streets for him. It was ice cold outside anyway.

“As I said—if you’re living under my roof, you’ll fight your battles my way, Priest.” Geovani flashed him a smile that made him certain she was courting lunacy.