by Anna Steffl
Arvana trudged to the driver. She didn’t have to be a useless woman, standing and watching. That had never been her lot. “I’m going to drive. You help Lord Degarius.”
The coachman stared.
“Don’t worry. I won’t run over you.”
Still red-faced and heaving frosty breaths, Degarius motioned for the coachman to join him.
Arvana climbed to the seat. It’d been forever since she’d had a team in hand, but she knew the commands intuitively. She hoped the Sarapostans had the good sense to train their horses the proper way. She glanced backward. The men were digging the snow away from the wheels. She took the reins and titled her head back. The snow seemed to come from one point directly above, not very high up. Flakes landed on her cheeks and lips, released their bursts of cold, and then melted. She used to think snow was beautiful, the Maker’s breath.
That all changed twelve years ago.
Her feet stung with cold and her hands numbly grasped the shovel; freezing wetness had long ago soaked through her gloves. But she’d cleared the snow down to the crunchy brown stalks of dead grass. She planted the point of the shovel in the ground and with one boot on its top edge, put her weight into breaking the frozen soil.
The shovel dug in a finger’s width.
With both feet, she jumped onto the shovel.
The ground wouldn’t give. It had to!
Her breath a heavy mist, she thrust the shovel repeatedly, trying to chisel into the unyielding earth, but it kept hitting the dirt with a dull thud.
She flung the shovel away, dropped to her knees, and clawed at the bits of loose snow and dirt. The gloves were too thick, so she pulled them off. Her hands were raw from the friction of shoveling with wet gloves, so she dug with her nails that she had kept so lovely smooth to play the kithara. She dug and dug, but the hole wasn’t even big enough to bury a coffee cup.
What was she to do? Her father had been dead three days. She teetered sideways and fell on her side into the bank of snow she had shoveled from the plot.
Cold through and through, she turned her face to the sky. It was the purest, unending blue. Dear Maker, was there not a place for her there? It was so vast, clean and peaceful, and she was so dreadfully tired of the tiny house and the unspeakable smells and sights within. Surely she had suffered enough, chipped away the soiled parts of her spirit, so that it was so light that the Maker would lift her into that beautiful oblivion where her father must be. The rigid corpse in the house wasn’t he. But no one lifted her. She just grew colder and a realization crept into her with the cold. She hadn’t done enough yet to get rid of the guilt of going on the sleigh ride. And her care of her father hadn’t been pure. She wished him to die because of his misery, but also her own.
“Get your shoulder up under the chassis,” Degarius called to the driver.
Arvana blinked the snow from her eyelashes. She peered over the side of the coach. The driver had taken his place.
Degarius began, “One, two...higher...higher. Now.”
With a gentle shake of the reins, she started the horses forward and the coach moved. The men leaped out of the way. The bigger back wheels dipped into the rut but cleared it. They were free.
The driver, doing a high-stepping jog through the deep snow, and a slogging Degarius came alongside.
She engaged the brake and halted the horses.
The driver nodded his thanks. “Cheer up, miss. Not much farther. I’ll have you safe and warm in no time. Need a hand down?”
The driver offered his hand, but Degarius edged him aside and put his hands to her waist to steady her on the step. It was a trivial matter, who helped her from the step, but the strength in his hands made her feel as if she weighed nothing. Why was it that all her sacrifice had not brought her a fraction of the joy his calloused hands had? Had it been worth so little?
“Lord Degarius,” the coachman called, “the snow’s easing. Look ahead.”
The flurrying snow faintly veiled a dark spire whose point disappeared into the low-slung clouds.
“The Worship Hall,” Degarius said, and let go of her waist.
She had to tell him.
“You did a fine job of driving,” Degarius said as they settled in the coach. It seemed preferable to talk about anything other than what loomed just ahead.
“I had to use the Blue Eye.”
“What?”
“This morning after you went down for coffee, that Gherian officer, the one with a missing eye, came in while I was dressing.” Her hand went to the collar of her coat, to the place where the relic would be.
For all love! A guilt unlike anything he’d ever known, a pain worse than the slash that had scarred his chest, buckled him over. He bowed his head to his knees. Why had he left her? Into his snow-covered knees he asked, though he loathed to hear the answer, “What did he do?”
“He was going to blind me. I stopped him.”
“He didn’t touch you?”
“No. He’s dead.”
Degarius raised his head from his knees, but still unable to look at her, fixed his gaze out the frosty window. “I’m glad.” Glad the bastard was dead. Glad she didn’t show Kieran’s misplaced contrition over the deed. Not yet. Who was he fooling? The ghosts never went away. Not even the ones who got what they deserved. The horror of what happened to her and what she had to do would follow her all her days. Or perhaps for only another handful of hours.
“But, the man in the hood, Alenius, he saw us,” she said. “The soldier was wearing his uniform. He knows we are in Gheria. I should have told you sooner, but we can’t stop.”
Willing his captain’s sensibilities to direct him, he said, “When we get nearer, get on the floor and cover yourself with a blanket.”
“I’m sorry. Are you angry?”
“The soldier could have been anywhere in Gheria. Perhaps they’ll think we are on the front.” But Alenius would bet every one of his newly minted coins on them coming to the Fortress, Degarius knew. The guards would be waiting for them. For her.
A PRAYER FOR ABSOLUTION
Forbidden Fortress
The coach ground to a crunching stop. The guards on the bridge spanning the river that ran around the Fortress had called for them to halt. They signaled out Degarius. Miss Nazar was on the floor, covered by a blanket. He closed the door quickly.
They didn’t move to look inside, yet.
He’d always imagined triumphantly crossing this bridge as a general on horseback in company of a Sarapostan standard-bearer. Instead, here he was pretending to be a cabinetman waiting to be inspected by a pimply-faced guard and wondering how in the hell they’d ever get back out of the Fortress if they managed to get in. Lookouts dotted the ramparts. There was only one gate in the thick, high wall and it opened to this bridge over a river that hadn’t frozen yet; the snow disappeared into its swirling dark current.
“Paper,” the guard said.
Damn it. When did Gherians start carrying papers? Most couldn’t read. The clan mark was standard identification. “What?”
“The invitation to the dinner in the Atrium. You’re a cabinetman, aren’t you?”
Thank goodness he hadn’t yet volunteered himself as a cabinetman. The missing paper would’ve doomed them. “I’m here for the Solemnity.”
“Come alone?” The guard glanced inside the coach.
“Marriage is one wrong I don't need to confess to the Eternal Master.”
The guard laughed. “Show me your mark, then.”
Degarius slipped his coat from his shoulders, loosened his collar, and bent forward so the purplish-blue prickling of a thistle on his neck showed.
The guard peered at the tattoo so long that Degarius began to feel uneasy. Had the old fellow who’d done it forgotten something? “The weather’s breathing down my back,” he said, hoping to sound like a great man irritated that a soldier should be thorough with him.
The guard let go of Degarius’s shirt, but he had to wait, his head still bowed,
while the guard shouted to a cohort of at least two dozen soldiers shivering and stomping through the snow at the foot of the bridge. Damn it. The guard wanted a superior’s approval.
A man with a feather in his hat came and probed the tattoo with his gloved finger. “It’s an old-style mark,” he said. “Where do you come from?”
“Of course it’s the old-style mark,” Degarius said. “I’m an old man from near the border. It’s the first time I’ve come for the Winter Solemnity. Look at the weather and treatment I get.”
The feather-capped guard nodded. “You brought the weather with you from the south. Go on.”
Degarius shouted to the driver, “Go directly to the Worship Hall,” and climbed into the coach. They’d made it. Once inside the Worship Hall, hopefully no one would be on the lookout for her since they’d cleared the gate.
Once the carriage had passed beyond the wall and made it to the plaza before the Worship Hall, he peeled up the edge of the blanket. “It is safe to come out now.”
She clambered to the seat.
“Getting to Alenius won’t be as easy as we thought. We have to use the tunnels,” he said. “The cabinetmen have special papers for the dinner.”
“They found out you weren’t a cabinetman and let you through?”
He recounted the exchange.
“And I was worried they’d find out you were a Sarapostan,” she said.
He rubbed his gloves together, pleased that they’d made it through the gate. “I’ve been mistaken for a monk and a cabinetman, but no one has yet to mistake me for a Sarapostan.” She smiled until he added, “Even you mistook me for a good man.”
“I wasn’t mistaken,” she said.
“You’re naive.”
“Not anymore.”
Thinking she referenced last night, the glimmer of good humor faded. “That alone should change your mind.”
His back to the wind whipping across the open plaza in front of the Worship Hall, Degarius slipped a purse into the driver’s pocket. “Go to the livery and get me three excellent saddled horses.” It was the only plan he could contrive. “Tie them with the coach. We might need to leave in a hurry.” He turned to Miss Nazar. “Ready?”
He offered her his elbow to cross the patch of snow to one of the cleared paths leading to the Worship Hall’s immense arched entry. She took it. How in all hell could he take her in? Yet, he kept walking until they joined the meager queue of pilgrims who’d braved the weather.
They passed through the arched door. Once inside, they were detained in a smallish entryway. The scent of a heavy, spicy incense coiled through the squeeze of people.
Were they checking people? Looking for a woman? She must be worried. He pressed his elbow to his side, giving her arm a squeeze of assurance. A gentle pressure returned the gesture as if she were reassuring him in return.
His glasses fogged and his coat made him uncomfortably warm. Reluctantly, he released her arm to take off his glasses. He opened his coat and cleared the lenses with a handkerchief. After putting them back on, he saw the reason they hadn’t been allowed to enter. The pilgrims had paused for a procession of clerics wearing luxurious blue robes and carrying gold-framed portraits of the sovereigns. In pure, high voices, they chanted a litany of names. “The eunuchs are praying for the sovereign’s ancestors,” Degarius whispered in answer to Miss Nazar’s questioning look. “Their breath is wasted on the last few rogues.”
After the clerics passed, the pilgrims pressed into the main hall.
“Oh,” Miss Nazar said. She was looking at the clerestory windows, yellow and clear prisms embedded in lacy black webs of lead and to the ceiling, a vaulted span painted the blue of the midday sky, but studded with gold-leaf stars in the pattern of the winter constellations. At the ceiling’s center was a stylized sun circled by two rings of words. She pointed to it. “What does it say?”
“The outside rings say, ‘To carry your spirit to spring, make it right with the Eternal Master before winter.’ The inside says, ‘Prayer does not change the One, it changes the one.’ ”
Something in her face changed. Her expression, so full of a yearning, cut to his core. It was the look he’d fallen in love with, the one that made him believe her words that he was a good man, that there was something redeemable in him. During their journey here, he hadn’t seen it once. Had his anger blinded him? Or had she lost it, along with so many other things and only found it again, here. Maybe there was something redeemable in this place his ancestors built. Maybe at first it was only meant to inspire and give hope during the long Gherian winter. How could the Maker have let it be turned to such dark purposes as Lily Girls, eunuchs, and the raising of The Scyon? Or as Kieran would ask, how could the Gherians?
Degarius followed her gaze as it drifted down to a woman carefully holding a smoldering incense stick away from her grasping child as they made their way to the lines of curtained stalls set up for confessions. Something about the woman and child made his chest heat. Must the Maker throw in his face what was to be denied them?
“If we have time, I want to make a prayer,” she said.
“Now?”
“A prayer for absolution, as the others make. It’s what they’re doing, isn’t it?”
“What sins can you have?” he asked, incredulous. She was good. “Not the soldier at the inn.”
“That wasn’t of my choosing.”
Then he remembered last night. Just as he suspected, she regretted it. Though he shouldn’t have left in the morning, he didn’t want to see the look of penance, didn’t want to feel the blame for what happened between them. She hadn’t looked at the mother and child with the same thoughts he had.
“Do we have time?” she asked, breaking into his bitter thought.
“A moment, since we don’t have dinner plans.”
Like the other pilgrims, she lit an incense stick from an oil lamp. Shielding her glowing stick from passersby’s drafts, she peeked under curtains to find a vacant stall.
Degarius followed her visually. When she closed the curtain, he threaded through a pack of boys twiddling their fingers while cataloging their menial transgressions.
At the booths, a man left the partition next to Miss Nazar. He held the drapery open for Degarius. Without knowing exactly why, Degarius entered and stood looming over the kneeler and the trough of spent incense. It was wrong to listen to an intensely private prayer, but he couldn’t help himself. She was going to repent lying with him. He crossed his arms and thrust his hands in the fur sleeves of his coat.
Her voice carried through the thin wooden panel dividing them. In a steady litany, she spoke names of family and friends. She even asked for the health of the son of the Gherian general who’d stopped them at the crossroads. She mentioned Lerouge. She was actually praying for that bastard. Her voice dropped low, and Degarius strained to hear.
“Those are my prayers. It was always easy to entrust others into your mercy. Yet, I stopped praying even those simple prayers after what happened to Solace. The words I spoke for Kieran’s passing were said only by my lips, not by my heart. I stopped believing you had mercy for anyone. I forgot that your mercy is not for our bodies but for our souls. I forgot that prayer cannot change your already fully merciful heart, but changes ours, opens ours to mercy...and the gift of mercy that others give. I wholly gave you my youth, my heart, everything a girl had to give the one she loves. You were too big, too powerful for me to hurt. I thought you’d never leave me. Then, after I’d given you everything, I thought it was you who gave me the awful task with the Blue Eye and trial after trial with Chane. I stayed true to you through that, but you didn’t bless me with the peace I’d sought for so long...and one by one, the few things in my small circle of life were taken from me. The kithara. Nan. The Solacians. And I loathed you as I loathed Allasan. I hated him leaving me alone to care for my dying father because he couldn’t stomach the horror. I couldn’t even dig the grave. I chipped at the frozen ground until the insides of my glove
s soaked with blood. His body lay in the bed for three days until I had to bury him in the snow. Three days! Oh, Allasan. How could you leave me to that then return home and tell me that you couldn’t stand the sight of me? How?
“Allasan, I am no better than you. I’ve never been. I couldn’t forgive you as you couldn’t forgive me.”
Her tortured voice trailed to nothing. Degarius burrowed his fingers under his hat and deep into his hair. His dear Ari.
“Yet here, Maker, I’ve finally heard your invitation for me to return to you. In the beauty of this place, I felt you tug at my heart. It wasn’t you who put the task of the Blue Eye upon me or took the kithara. It was the superior. It wasn’t you who murdered the Solacians. It was Alenius. It wasn’t you who took Nan from me. That was doomed from the start because of who we were. Forgive me. You gave me the fortitude to endure what Allasan could not. What a mercy that was! All along, my trials have been of my own making. All along, you have given me permission to serve you without bitterness, but I kept my anger inside so long to punish myself, to punish Allasan. And it only made my soul a black, displeasing thing. I’m afraid soon my life will end, and I’ll have given you nothing worthy in return for it. Now, I send my prayer on this sweet smoke in hope that my life, as it burns away like the incense, will send up something pleasing. How am I to serve you? It isn’t this task with the Blue Eye. You’d not ask anyone to take the lives of others in order to be your shacra. I do this because men have given me no choice.
“Once, I thought I could serve you as a Solacian. Then I dared hoped being a wife would be noble. I was foolish, hoping that despite everything, Nan loved me as I love him. My stubborn heart is your gift to me, but I keep using it to cling to those things that bring me sorrow. It won’t let Nan go. Forgive me for trying last night to make my time with him something it wasn’t. I must be grateful for what he is—courageous. Is there nothing he fears? I know he won’t leave me to this task alone. He is no Payter or Allasan, and it gives me peace, faith, to know that your goodness exists not just in death, but here among us. It is why I loved him from the start.”
