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Tadek huffed. “Fat chance getting a whole afternoon free before, oh, next week, maybe the week after. The dedicates and temple aunts all have their hands as full as we do, what with the festival, and everybody gets sopiousright after a holiday. The temples will all be booked up for unburdenings and blessings and the like, and you know how they are—they won’t give you preference just because you’re the prince.”
“Damn.”
“Just wait a couple weeks. Unless it’s urgent.” He looked interested again. “Is it urgent?”
“It is not a matter of life and death, no,” Kadou said carefully.
On the fourth day, Evemer decided to stop torturing himself alone. He woke just before the sun, as he usually did, but rather than running sword drills until the sun burned off the dew from the leaves, he walked through the cool, damp air, all grey with mist and the first glimmerings of dawn, out through the lush gardens of the Gold Court, through the paved walkways and parks and buildings of the Silver Court, to the Copper Court, dense with the servants’ quarters, the cadet halls, the fringe-guards’ garrison, the core-guards’ dormitories, the butteries and storehouses and stables and training grounds, the workshops and laundries and dungeons, the cadet academy, and—most crucially for Evemer—the Grand Temple.
He walked in. The floor of the first room was a great, open expanse below a bogglingly vast dome, the giant porphyry statue of Sannesi looking out kindly over the whole. There were already a dozen people sitting on the rugs before her, scattered through the room and moving quietly through the positions of prayer. This close to a holiday, the temple would be packed by the time the sun had fully risen.
He continued around the perimeter of the hall and through the door at the back into a second chamber, equally large but much darker. No jewels of light falling through colored glass here, no glimpse of the bright sky through the oculus in the center of Sannesi’s dome.
Usmim’s hall was somber, the light through the slit windows watery and dim. The floor was bare stone, the walls unadorned. There was no one there but him. He sat on the floor and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long—perhaps ten minutes. A hand touched his shoulder and he looked up to see a wizened old woman in simple temple robes. She smiled down at him. “Good morning, and sorry to interrupt,” she said, her voice low and soft. “I’m one of the temple aunts. Do you need anything? Or shall I leave you to prayer and contemplation?”
“I was wondering about an unburdening. I’ve never come for one before,” he said.
“Many people find the experience to be quite healing and refreshing to the spirit, as you probably know,” the aunt said. “We will look together at any guilt or fears you feel, examine together the trials Usmim has sent you. Or we can just talk together for a while. Would that help you?”
“I don’t know.”
She tilted her head toward the back of the chamber. “Perhaps a cup of tea while you think it over?”
He nodded and got to his feet. His legs were already stiff and cold from sitting on the stone floor. She led him out to an area enclosed by high stone walls, overgrown with ivy and climbing roses. The grass was thick and soft, still jeweled with dew, and there was a blanket already laid out, and a teapot on a burner of coals. It was quieter and smaller and more wild than the neatly manicured palace gardens. “I have my own little contemplation here most mornings,” she said, gesturing for him to sit at one side of the blanket. “So you arrived just in time for the tea to finish.” She poured a cup for each of them and settled back, apparently very happy to sit in companionable silence with him.
“What should I call you, Aunt?”
“My name is Aunt Mihrimah,” she said instantly. “And yours?”
“Evemer.”
“By your uniform, one of the core-guard, I take it?”
“Yes, Aunt Mihrimah.” He could have told her right then and there. He had spent enough time in contemplation already that he had the list of his troubles assembled and ready to declaim.
“As you consider how you’d like to proceed,” she said gently after a few moments of silence, “I will remind you that nothing you say here leaves this garden. You won’t be punished for any of it, and I doubt that you can even begin to shock me. I am here to take your burdens, not add to them.”
He nodded and set aside his cup, placed his hands flat on his thighs. “I have many things that burden me, Aunt Mihrimah.” She drank her tea quietly and waited for him to continue. He took a breath, and began at the beginning. “I have been contemptuous of my lord, the prince. I have resented my assignment to his service. I have questioned Her Majesty’s wisdom and judgment. I’ve found flaw with one of my fellow kahyalar when it was not my place to do so, and I have disliked him. I believed gossip more than my own two eyes. I have been stubborn and inflexible. I have lacked the strength to defend myself and I required my lord to do it for me. I have killed people as I defended him. I have required rescue. I have been a burden on my lord in a thousand ways. And I married him,” he added, because he felt like at this point he might as well come entirely clean.
That was the only thing that gave the aunt pause. “You . . . married whom? Prince Kadou?”
“Yes. Or he married me. To save my life. It was complicated. We’re going to get it annulled, of course.”
“I see. Well! Which of these shall we start with?”
“I don’tneedto talk about any of them,” Evemer said. He suddenly felt very silly, coming all this way just to blather about himself. “Do you have the ability to annul marriages? Ka—His Highness will be wanting someone discreet.”
“I do,” she said. “But you mentioned being a burden on the prince. Do you ever find yourself concerned with how much space you take up around other people?”
Evemer sat up straighter. “Of course I do,” he said stiffly. “Will there be any paperwork for an annulment?”
“Mm, all right. We can get that topic out of the way first, if you’d like. No, there’s no paperwork. It will take several hours, with both of you here, either at this temple or whichever of the shrines in the palace complex you find convenient. Another location is workable, if absolutely necessary, but I prefer solemn occasions to be held in a place of solemnity. Oaths are important, as I’m sure you’ll agree, even if it was just an oath of convenience in a moment of desperation. Or so I imagine—you said it was to save your life?”
“Yes, I did. Thank you for the information. I will be sure to tell His Highness.”
“Send word whenever you would like, and I will be sure to be ready for you, though timing might be tricky with the upcoming holiday. Do you have any other questions about that topic?”
