She settled at the reading table under the window and fished in her pack for the book she wanted. Laying it out in front of her, she spent a few moments studying the lioness on the cover before opening the tome, then she began to read aloud.
“The Goddess Chronicles: Being a True and Accurate Account of My Service to Seriena Since My Appointment as Protector General to Mother Church—Lord Vyncent Amberford. Volume the Fifth.
“Well, this ought to be entertaining, Bookend.” She smiled at the little white cat as it came nosing curiously into the room after her. “Have you read any of Amberford’s treatises? The man was a loon, but never dull.”
Thumbing past the title page, Elissa continued her reading.
Nonus 22, 1389:
Today I resume and reaffirm my quest to recover the Grimm Truth, and beg forgiveness from the Goddess for my lapse in faith. I allowed the years of failure, frustration, scorn, and ridicule to wear away at my resolve, before finally, ironically allowing Pontifine Celeste to convince me it had been madness all along—the irony being it was Celeste herself who held the missing key in the form of a lost missive from Miraculata Antonia of Grimm.
The very existence of the letter is incendiary, as it was clearly dated three weeks after her martyr’s death. Addressed directly to Emperor Marcus Lupus himself, the letter speaks of betrayal from within the church, and of Antonia’s intention to meet up with his legions at Torresangrienta. Success in carrying out that intent would have placed her at the site of the emperor’s famous last battle, more than a month after Antonia’s supposed death.
“Oh, my.” Elissa looked to the cat, wide-eyed. It just blinked at her from where it sat, so Elissa continued.
I have not confronted Celeste with my discovery. The fact that she keeps the letter so carefully preserved suggests that she seeks the Grimm Truth herself. Yet her refusal to acknowledge the existence of either the tome or the letter to me clearly implies she has some agenda other than simply reclaiming it for the good of Mother Church. Is she simply seeking glory of her own? Does she fear that the knowledge in the tome could undermine her own position? Or does she perhaps hope to find in it a weapon against her enemies?
In any event, two things are plain: I cannot trust Pontifine Celeste, and Miraculata Antonia did not die in the fiery siege that was supposed to have claimed her book of prophecies along with her life. For the glory of Seriena and Mother Church, I will not falter this time, and I shall find the Grimm Truth.
Elissa glanced over another page or two of the book, her brow furrowed, then she began to aggressively flip through the tome until she arrived at the last written page. She began to read again, but quickly faltered, and only mouthed the words silently for a few moments. Then her mouth fell open, and she was left uncharacteristically reading the page to herself.
“Oh, my go’ss!” she shouted at last. “Bookend, he found it! He found the Grimm Truth! And he…” Elissa frowned, flipping back and forth through the pages as if looking for more, even though she’d already determined that there was no more to be found. “And he…” At a loss for any more clues from the journal, Elissa rolled her eyes back and forth as if trying to peer into her own brain and track down some elusive memory that might help. “Bookend, I think he died.”
Elissa grabbed the book and hurried down the stairs as quickly as she dared, back out onto the main library floor, where she began pacing the aisles until she was able to zero in on a specific book. Dragging it off to the nearest reading table, Elissa spent a couple of minutes thumbing through it before finding a page that satisfied her, then left the book lying open as she laid out the journal beside it and turned to the last entry.
“See! See!” she jabbed her finger at the dates in the two books, then looked around as if expecting to find the little white cat sitting there, waiting to share in her discovery. “Bookend, you silly cat. Don’t leave me talking to myself!” Elissa bolted down the end of the aisle, where she spied her feline companion poking its nose into an aisle several rows down.
“Come on! You’ve got to see this!” Elissa took a deep breath and calmed herself enough to approach the cat in a manner calculated not to spook, then walked down and picked it up in her arms, stroking its ears as it purred. She carried it back to the table where she’d left the two books, and plunked the cat down beside them.
“Just like I said: Amberford died on the same day he wrote the last journal entry—the day he found the book everyone’s been whispering about these days.”
Elissa scooted up on the table beside the cat and put her feet up on the seat of the chair. “Right. This is big. You and I both know the cats are in charge, so maybe you haven’t bothered following the gossip, but scripture has always said that a second human empire would eventually arise under the banner of Seriena.
“The Angelis has convinced all the Serinian kingdoms that the time is at hand. Now they just have to sort out who’s going to be emperor, which seems to be a nightmare of a job. And by that I don’t mean difficult—though I’m sure it is—I mean the kind of nightmare where certain noblemen have already met very…disturbing ends over the matter. We’re talking the kinds of stories that Sister Adalva is probably clawing her way back from the grave right now in order to write down.
“Obviously, you’re already thinking that someone killed Amberford over whatever’s in the Grimm Truth, and that was a hundred and fifty years ago—before anyone was talking ‘empire’. The kicker is the reason the Grimm Truth is on everyone’s lips right now: They’re saying that one of the prophecies Miraculata Antonia wrote down in it declares Seriena’s own choice to lead the second empire. Every king this side of the mountains wants to get his hands on it in order to prove he’s meant to be the undisputed holy emperor—or else to quietly burn it if he discovers it’s filled with ‘lies’.”
Elissa sighed heavily, stroking the cat’s ears as she stared blankly at nothing in particular. “You know, Bookend, I couldn’t care less who’s emperor. None of them can really muck about with the church. I’m much more concerned with the not-getting-dead thing that seems so hard to do for people who get caught up in this stuff. So let’s keep this our little secret, okay? I’m going to go put it on the stack of books set aside for the miraculata and just pretend it showed up there as mysteriously as it showed up in the garden. She’ll know what to do when she stumbles across it.”
Elissa smiled a little as her eyes came back into focus. “Thanks for the advice, Bookend. You are a wise, wise cat.” She hopped down from the table, re-shelved the reference book, and headed off toward the sorting room with the journal in her arms. Just as she was about to disappear around the corner, she took a step back and held up a finger to her lips as she tried to catch the cat’s eye.
“Remember: ssssh!”
The cat just sat grooming its paw until Elissa had gone, then cocked its head listening, its tail swaying like a metronome keeping time with the sound of the postulant’s retreating footfalls—until precisely at the count of ten, when the cat suddenly tensed. Then it disappeared like a flash through the library, headed in the direction of the garden.
CHAPTER FOUR
She Doesn't Kick Puppies
Somewhere out in the abbey, a bell was tolling as Keely paused to tuck a telltale lock of silvery hair back under the hood of her borrowed postulant’s robes. She peered into the south reading room of the library and upon finding the chamber empty, she slipped inside for a proper look around. A few books had been left scattered carelessly on tables about the room, but only one table held enough of a stack to require a proper search.
The other tables could be dismissed at a glance as not holding the book she’d come looking for. All that remained then was a quick scan of the stack on the last table to find her target—the journal with the distinctive lioness on the cover—buried four deep in the pile. She grabbed it and a couple of the other books for good measure and turned, quickly heading back for the door.
“Oh, hello. Are those for me, little si
ster?”
Keely hesitated just long enough at the unexpected appearance of Miraculata Cosima for the cherubic woman to reach out and take the armload of books from her.
“Yes. These should be excellent. Thank you,” Cosima smiled as she inspected the titles on the two books that had them on the spine.
“Actually,” Keely interjected hastily as she reached to pull the journal back out of the stack, “just those two. The abbess was wanting to see this one herself.”
“Sorry,” Cosima grinned apologetically, tilting her head to have a look at the face under the cowl. “I don’t believe we’ve met, little sister.”
“No, I…But, the abbess…” Keely held up the book meaningfully, managing to half-obscure her face in the process.
“Oh, right. Don’t let me keep you.”
Keely curtsied out respectfully and breathed a sigh of relief as soon as she was out of sight, then scurried off in the direction of the garden door. She passed a couple of priestesses hurrying the other way, but they strode on by with barely a nod of acknowledgment.
Arriving at the garden door, she tugged at the handle, only to find that someone had locked it since she’d let herself in that way just minutes before. She muttered a curse under her breath at the horrid timing and doubled back toward the front doors of the library. With the most direct avenue of escape cut off, she deliberately slowed her pace. Impatience now could only draw attention to herself—and for a change, that was something she wanted to avoid.
At a window just before she reached the doors, movement in the courtyard outside drew her eye. She looked up to see a flood of priestesses and postulants pouring out of one of the buildings, all very much in a hurry as they scattered in every direction. Keely smiled at the sight of fortune turning back her way, and pushed open the doors to lose herself in the throng. No matter what had sparked all this off, she couldn’t have asked for a better hiding place than a crowd of people in too much of a hurry to even look at each other. She was even able to break into a bit of a run, and no one spared her even a first glance, much less a second.
Around the library Keely ran until she reached the garden gate—but even before she stepped through it she could plainly see that the garden was plagued with holy women rushing back and forth along the little cobblestone paths that wound among the flower beds. Keely hurried over to the alcove where she’d first tossed the book over into the abbey, and settled back into a corner, where she waited for a moment’s privacy in which to toss the book back out into the street. Climbing over the wall herself with the book in hand remained out of the question.
“You there! Girl!” a stern-looking older priestess snapped, stopping just outside the alcove to glare at Keely. “What do you think you’re up to, standing about like that? The wall can hold itself up. What is it you’re supposed to be doing?”
Keely held up the book defensively again, but the priestess just continued to glare at her, clearly expecting some more explicit explanation.
“The abbess asked for this,” Keely stammered.
“And she asked for delivery by way of hide-and-seek?! Quit lurking in the corner and go! If she asked to see it now of all times, you’d best have it to her five minutes ago. Run!”
“Yes, sister!” Keely ducked out of the alcove just ahead of an angry swat and dashed out the garden gate. A few paces into the courtyard, she glanced back over her shoulder. The glowering priestess had already parked herself in the gateway, intent on seeing Keely properly off on her made-up errand. “Do you know where…?”
The priestess jabbed a finger toward a building across the compound, and Keely took off running again, desperately scanning for any other way out as she re-prioritized haste above subtlety. The next time she felt confident she could reach the street with her prize before anyone would have time to interfere, she’d do it even if the whole abbey was watching.
Up the steps and into the appointed building, Keely ran between marbled columns and aging statuary as she dodged a steady stream of other robed women. As soon as she was sure she was out of sight of the garden gate, she ducked over to the first window she could find to orient herself and plan a path to the outer wall of the abbey. The chosen window looked out over the front courtyard, with the main gates clearly visible, but reaching them looked like it would be a trick. Though serene by comparison to the chaos that Keely had just stepped away from, the front courtyard of the abbey was still well-occupied.
First visible was the abbess that Keely had ostensibly come looking for, sedately descending the steps from the main chapel in her flowing golden robes. Flanking her came half a dozen sober-looking women in the silvery robes more typical of the clergy, and flanking them in turn came a handful of young women in postulants’ robes.
The half-dozen representatives of the Inquisition present only came into view when Keely stepped right up to the window. The four black-robed priestesses among them had just dismounted in the courtyard and now waited impatiently to turn the reins of their horses over to the approaching postulants.
Keely was already muttering expletives under her breath when her gaze fell on the fifth member of their company, and the pure cognitive dissonance of him made her stomach churn. The tall, broad-shouldered man wearing the black-and-red livery of a knight of the Inquisition was just stepping down off of a spirited-looking horse. His long, dark hair framed a stern but handsome face with a neatly trimmed beard.
“Now that,” Keely lamented quietly to herself, biting her lip as she studied the man, “is a real waste.” Had she seen him in other clothes, another context, she’d have jumped at the chance to cast such a man as Hero. “I could have got worked up over you, sir,” she sighed, “but the ‘professionally sadistic zealot’ outfit totally kills the mood.”
“Really?” Miraculata Cosima asked as she calmly stepped up to lean against the windowsill next to Keely. Cosima studied the man for a moment herself. “From here it doesn’t even look like the mood’s seriously injured. Perhaps just had the wind knocked out of it. Shall I put in a nice word with Sir Riordan for you?” Cosima grinned impishly.
“No!” Keely blurted out before she could compose herself again. “I mean…” She stopped and furrowed her brow. “You’re not upset about the ‘sadist outfit’ crack?”
“No point getting worked up over the truth, little sister,” Cosima shrugged as she returned to looking out at the courtyard. “The Inquisition wages war on demons and witches so that the rest of us don’t have to—but war is a cruel business, and letting it turn you cruel is too often the only way to survive it. So I count my blessings that it’s not me down there dressed in black, but you’ll never catch me pretending that the Inquisition is ‘nice’. I’m quite sure our man Riordan isn’t, anyway.”
“And her?” Keely asked of the last member of the company, a slender priestess in flame-red robes who Riordan was just helping down from her horse. From this distance she looked quite lovely—in a severe, no-nonsense sort of way—but Keely could make out enough gray in the woman’s dark hair to guess her for middle-aged, so the distance was probably flattering her a bit.
“Do I really have to tell you about Jane Carver?” Cosima asked, glancing sideways at Keely. “The Grand High Inquisitrix?”
“Ohhh…” Keely left her mouth hanging open as the little sound of realization trailed off. “She doesn’t really go around kicking puppies, does she?”
“Goddess, no,” Cosima shook her head, waving a hand dismissively. “She stabs them.”
“Right,” Keely said, defensively holding up the book in her arms. “I’d better just get this…”
“To the abbess?” Cosima raised an eyebrow. “That’s one meeting you don’t want to interrupt, little sister. Besides, we both know that the abbess isn’t really expecting you or that book, either one. I’m fairly certain you haven’t hurt anyone, and that you don’t intend to, though, so let’s make a bargain. I’ll take you for a nice, quiet cup of tea where we can talk while this craziness blows over. You�
�ll tell me what you’re doing here and why you’re so eager to get that one particular book out of Belgrimm Abbey.
“In return, I’ll not only walk you neatly out the front gate with me, I’ll cover to make sure that no one knows what you’ve done for—shall we say—at least three days? No more muss or fuss, and no worries about getting tangled up with the Inquisition.”
“I don’t know what…” Keely started, but cut herself off at the sight of Cosima’s resolutely crossed arms and incredulous expression. “Yeah. All right. But…” A sudden shiver ran down Keely’s spine, and she turned back toward the courtyard to find the red-robed inquisitrix staring determinedly up at her. Even from this distance, there was no mistaking that those intense eyes never flickered toward Cosima as they held Keely’s gaze.
“Don’t look away from her, and just listen,” Cosima murmured quietly as she turned to smile and wave cordially down at the High Inquisitrix and her entourage. “Keep eye contact like you’re trying to stare down a barking dog. It’ll buy you a few seconds. I’ve got enough connections she can’t simply walk all over me, but unless you’re accustomed to being asked round to dinner by kings and high pontifines, the worst thing Jane Carver can do is notice you exist.”
Cosima continued to smile down at the gathering as more heads turned to see what the High Inquisitrix was looking at. All of them focused in on the miraculata in gold and pink—who greeted each with a little wave—ignoring the fake postulant standing frozen beside her. Between waves, Cosima slipped a key off her belt and discreetly slid it across the windowsill until it was nearly touching Keely’s fingertips.
“That should open any door between you and the street. Please don’t do anything to ever make me regret doing this for you. Now I’m going to pretend to send you down there so she won’t rush to send anyone up here. The moment you’re out of her sight, run, and don’t look back for at least three counties. Take the key if you’re ready.”
Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1) Page 4
