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He hesitated. “I want to say I don’t,” he answered honestly. “I couldn’t wait to get away. The place where I grew up is so small. There’s nothing to do but fish or work in the mines or spend all day trying to scratch a living from the land. But the city—” He gestured uncertainly. He didn’t have the words to explain. “It has things I never knew I’d want to know about,” he ended lamely.
“And yet sometimes you lie awake and miss that old life so much your ribs hurt,” she said softly. “Is that it?”
“It’s the small things I wouldn’t even have said I’d noticed,” he said. “The way the waves sound at night when everything else is quiet and you can hear them. The way the air feels so heavy against your skin. There’s a coshichi bush outside my mother’s house—it’s the first thing to bloom every spring when everything else still looks lost and dead. Big purple flowers that smell, I am not lying, like vinegar. How could you miss something like that? But they don’t have any coshichi bushes in Corcannon. Spring arrives here before I even remember it’s coming.”
“Ah, those details are very specific to the place,” Villette said, nodding. “Smells and sounds—you couldn’t import them the way you could import a piece of clothing or a type of food.”
“So that’s what I miss.”
She tilted her head. “What about the religious rituals? Don’t they worship Zessaya on the islands? Don’t you miss her?”
He grinned. “Well, I was never as observant about Zessaya as my mother wanted,” he said. “But I promised her that I’d at least wear my chazissa every day.”
Villette looked intrigued. “What’s that?”
He slipped a finger under his collar and pulled out the short leather cord hung with a charm about half the size of his thumb. “It’s a representation of the goddess in one of her poses,” he explained. “If you want protection, you pick a pose where she’s holding a shield. If you want peace, you pick the one that shows her holding a sleeping baby. There are twelve of them.”
“And which pose do you favor?”
“The one for courage. She’s holding a spear and looking fierce.”
“May I see it? Can I hold it?”
“Sure.” He slipped the cord over his head, untied the knot, and let the charm slide free onto her outstretched hand.
She held it up to the pale moonlight, turning it this way and that. “It seems like it’s made of carved stone—is that right?”
“Cherloshe,” he said. “You can find it all over the islands. And only in the islands, or so I’ve heard. People say cherloshe rocks are the bones of the goddess.”
“It looks like there’s a little loop at the top, carved from the stone itself, and that’s what the cord goes through?”
“That’s right. You never use even the smallest scrap of metal on a chazissa.”
“Really? Why?”
He laughed. “Because Zessaya hates Dar, of course, and Dar is the goddess of the mountains and the ore mines.”
“So I suppose the people who worship Dar never use cherloshe in any of their rituals.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I’ve never been in a Darrish temple.”
“Neither have I,” she said. She was still holding his chazissa, turning it over in her fingers as if trying to feel how the stone carver had rendered the serious features and flowing robes. He didn’t know how to ask for it back. “So you’re a Zessin man working in Cordelan’s temple and you wear a chazissa. Does that bother your fellow guardsmen?”
“I thought it might,” he answered honestly. “But a lot of the guards are from Chibain and Marata, and they carry Darrish amulets, and nobody seems to care. It’s like as long as you’re willing to say that Cordelan is the supreme being, you can worship any other god you like.”
“Oh, that is so very much in line with Cordelan’s philosophy!” she exclaimed. “Bow down before him! Show reverence to the high divine and his favorite priests! Acknowledge them as your masters, and then all will be well. But just once say you don’t believe in them and you don’t consider their word to be law—well, then, you will be crushed into dust beneath their feet.”
Brandon stared at her. “Is that what you did—defied them?” he asked. “Is that why you’re here?”
“It’s one of the reasons,” she said. “I refuse to give such a selfish, arrogant god complete power over my life.”
“What are you going to do?”
For an answer, she popped the chazissa in her mouth.
And swallowed it.
Brandon was so astonished he could only stare. Villette turned away from him, struggling for breath, possibly choking on the small figurine. He leapt to her side, prepared to pound on her back to make her spit up the charm, but she pulled away violently. “Water,” she gasped. “On the table.”
