The Temple

by Jean Johnson

  Pelai rubbed her brow, frowning. “Right, right . . . sorry, I forgot you didn’t know what I’ve been up to—I have a lot of prophecies to keep track of, and I don’t even know them all. I don’t know how the librarians manage it . . .

  “Anyway,” she said dismissively, lowering her arm and returning to the topic at hand. “One of my fellow Guardians elsewhere around the world has had a reliable, um . . .”

  He waited a few moments after she fell silent, then prompted, “ . . . Umm?”

  “It’s sort of a visual way to foresee the future,” she tried her best to explain. She wasn’t in her early twenties anymore, and couldn’t stay up all night without consequences. Struggling to focus, Pelai rubbed at her brow again, dropped her hand to her mouth to smother a yawn, then continued, folding her arms across her leather-clad chest. “And, well . . . he spotted an intermittent demonic invasion happening. Coupled with various prophecies from around the world, and it seems that we can do some things to thwart it, but we’re not completely sure what we have to do . . . and . . . uh . . .”

  Again, he waited, then raised his brows.

  “And that does it. I am out of energy,” she complained, as much to herself as to him. “My head is swimming from exhaustion. The rest of this can wait for tomorrow. I had very little sleep last night, I got woken up and had to cast magics for several hours, and then had to run a full day on top of everything else. I feel forty-one, not thirty-one, right now. Bordering on fifty-one.” Unfolding her arms, she shifted forward on the couch, gathering the energy needed to rise. “Since I don’t have to discipline you harshly in Menda’s eyes, tomorrow is more than early enough for figuring out the rest of this. I’m going to bed now.”

  He nodded, accepting the break in their conversation. “I could use some sleep myself. And maybe it will give both of us more clarity on how, exactly, to handle all of this. . . . Ah . . . where do I . . . ?”

  “The farther you go from my presence, the more drained you will feel from your powers being suppressed under my chokehold,” Pelai reminded him. That was how Disciplinarians kept wayward mages leashed. He would be able to travel up to a couple of miles from her presence, but no farther than that. And so long as the Disciplinarian kept his powers capped, a Disciplinarian would always be able to tell in what direction and how far away a penitent had fled.

  “Suppressed? But you said you don’t have to keep me under . . . oh. Right,” Krais corrected himself. He rubbed at his own tattooed brow. “It’s been almost a year since I was around any of your kind. Any Disciplinarian who touches me will be able to determine if my powers are being suppressed. Even just a brief pat on the arm will be proof of whether or not you’re doing your full job, and my father will check to make sure I’m being punished. I must accept the punishment of having them suppressed . . . and Menda knows I do accept.”

  “You only have to accept suppression up to a point. I can selectively allow you access to certain levels of magic, or to certain tattoo spells,” she pointed out. “It’s an advanced technique not every Disciplinarian can master, but I have. It’s a requirement to be in the top twenty-five of the ranks. I’d do it now, but I’m too tired to concentrate.”

  “That’s right,” he agreed, smothering his own yawn. “I remember Father saying that’s why he picked you to be Second Disciplinarian over Doma Belaria; she hadn’t mastered it at the time, though she has since. That, and he knew you were a possible pick for the next Guardian, so he was hoping to entice you into thinking and acting as a fellow Partisan by giving you a . . . a high rank under him.”

  His second mid-speech yawn triggered another of her own. “Mmhmm . . . but you keep yawning, and this isn’t getting us to bed. You can have the choice of sleeping on this couch down here, on the felt matting on the floor if you want to punish yourself a little . . . or you can share my bed if you want a soft, broad surface. Chastely,” Pelai added, leaning forward to gather up boots and socks. “I do like your new self, Puhon Krais, but let’s save the sexual pleasure for your mandatory punishment sessions.”

  Cheeks flushing, Krais opened his mouth, then caught his breath, biting his lip against any sort of comment. Or rather, specifically, any sort of protest. Pelai rose to her feet and nodded, acknowledging his determination.

  “Your ongoing submission to the Goddess is duly noted . . . but your father will be expecting to see you covered in bruises and welts, and to sense your magics being suppressed. So . . . since you haven’t grasped your dominant-but-bottom nature before this point . . . I think I shall make your ‘punishment’ a series of sessions teaching you how to understand, accept, and even appreciate your true nature.”

  “Ugh.” Krais muttered, rubbing at the frown creasing his brow. He didn’t actually protest, but it was a near thing.

  Pelai arched one of her brows at him. “Your father doesn’t have to know that you’re enjoying your ‘punishment’ sessions, Krais. He only needs to see the results of them having taken place.”

  “Is that part of telling the ‘synod’ lies?” he asked, rising. “And may I presume I am free to use the refreshing room, and so forth?”

  “I don’t know if it is included in that part or not,” she told him. “Hindsight has better vision than foresight or midsight. But yes, you can use the refreshing room. There’s one down here, and one upstairs between the bedrooms.”

  That had him frowning while he followed her as she padded barefooted toward the stairs. “You said bedrooms, plural, but you mention only your bed . . . ?”

  “The other room is currently being used for storage. It will take a day or two to tidy it and set it up with a bed for you,” Pelai told him, flicking the hand not carrying her boots and socks dismissively up the stairs. “So you’ll just have to pick the couch down here, which is not very broad and not very long, or sleep on the floor with only a kneeling mat, or share my bed. Which is sized big enough for three people to sleep without touching.”

  “Why that big?” Krais asked her.

  “Purrsus,” she explained succinctly, before expanding a little. “The current Elder Librarian, Anya’thia, once told me—this was before her elevation—that, at least according to the writings of several dozen observers throughout the centuries, housecats have always possessed the mystical power of being able to occupy far more of any bed or other lounging surface than their diminutive size should allow.”

  “So you had a large bed made?” Krais inquired. “Specifically to make room for your pet?”

  “So I kept the large bed that was left behind by the previous Disciplinarian to occupy this space,” she corrected. “Purrsus showed up about a month later, just as I was getting used to the freedom to sprawl when I sleep. He cured me of all that sprawling, too, so I shouldn’t accidentally kick you in my sleep. I might do so deliberately if you think sharing it is license to stray beyond the rules I’ve laid down.”

  “I don’t stray without clear invitation . . . and I’m glad I made friends with him,” the eldest Puhon brother murmured mock-gravely. “He has far more right to share the bed with you than I do, after all.”

  “Don’t get too sassy. I still haven’t flogged you tonight,” she pointed out. “I’m tired enough to skip it, but I could change my mind.”

  “Well, technically I’m not protesting anything,” Krais reassured her, lifting his hands in surrender. “I’m just going to point out that you’re very tired, and might not be able to land your blows with the precision such a punishment would require.”

  “Clever, but right now, flattery will just get you yawned at.” Opening the door to her bedchamber and the wool-stuffed pallet on its raised slat-board platform, Pelai gestured at it, and at the floor. “You can sleep on the bare floor in here, or on the far side of the mattress. If you push me or kick me out of bed, I will flog you and make you sleep on the floor.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he promised mildly. Very mildly, compar
ed to his old personality. “And even if I did, I’ll change the dream right away.”

  Pelai decided she actually liked him like this. Relaxed enough to jest, rather than full of pride and excess stress.

  “Get yourself ready for bed, Penitent. I’ll loan you a set of sleeping clothes, and we’ll pick up more of your things tomorrow,” she added, crossing to her wardrobe and pulling out a strip of bleached linen for the fresh fundo he needed, along with an abbreviated version of a taga for the sleeping tunic that went over it. Everyone in Mendhi wore the garments at night, regardless of gender. Unless it was exceptionally hot and muggy in the summer, when only the fundo would be worn. “I presume your gear was taken from the ship to your father’s house?”

  “It was . . . and thank you for the sleepwear.” Accepting the items, he took them with him to the refreshing room tucked next to the smaller storage bedroom.

  Knowing he would have to strip and wrap the Mendhite-style loincloth without magic, Pelai muttered the cantrip that removed her leathers, and a second one that gave her a fresh underwrap and the thigh-length taga suitable for sleeping. And a pair of cloth bracers to cover her control tattoos. They were faint, and closely matched to the color of her skin, but it helped to further hide them so that no one could attempt to copy them. Not that the tattoos would work at more than half-strength without the blessing of the Goddess to back them up, but rules were rules for Disciplinarians.

  Most Disciplinarians. Pelai wasn’t too sure about Krais’ father. Readied for bed, she pulled back the sheet and thin cotton blanket that were suitable for this time of year, and separated out one of her three large pillows for him to use. It would be annoying to not have all three to cuddle for support as she slept on her side, but it was only for a night.

  Tomorrow’s punishment could begin with him rearranging the storage room so that he could sleep comfortably in there, rather than in here. For now, she simply lay down on the half of the bed she preferred, wriggled onto her side with one pillow under her knees, the other under her head, and tried to get comfortable without the third to clutch to her chest.

  Pelai woke, disoriented. Something felt . . . wrong. Wrenched, and empty. Breathing deep, she shifted—and gasped, scrambling back, when her warm, firm pillow mumbled and shifted, too. A pillow far too warm to be stuffed with duck feathers, and yet far too large to be Purrsus.

  “Zakah!” she ordered. Squinting against the abruptly bright lights, she heard an oddly deep whine from . . . the man in her bed. The man she had been using as a body-hugging pillow. The man who, with his tangle of black hair and tattooed sun-brown hide, was none other than Krais, son of Puhon Dagan’thio, Elder Disciplinarian. Her penitent.

  He whined again and shifted his nearest arm over the eye not mashed into his borrowed pillow. Then nuzzled into arm and pillow, trying to burrow away from the glare of the mage lamps. That . . .

  . . . That is remarkably cute. Sitting on her hip, propped up on one palm, Pelai lifted the other to her lips to try to hide her smile. Arrogant was her usual go-to word for the eldest Puhon son. Annoying was another. Handsome, oh yes, especially with the muscles she could see in his arm, in his back, in the rounded rump under the bedding and his borrowed sleeping taga . . . but cute?

  Well. Menda knows that Puhon Krais just has hidden depths all over him, these days . . . Wait, why did I wake up? Did Krais wake me . . . ? Pelai frowned in thought, and rubbed at the sleep sand caught in the corners of her eyes. I . . . felt a jolt. A sense of loss . . . and then like a great wind washed over me, billowing all around. I was already dealing with part of it, but now it’s all blowi—

  “Tipa’thia!” she gasped, and fumbled out of bed, tossing the blankets aside. That prompted another grumble out of the man in her bed, but Pelai ignored it. She grabbed for a fresh set of leathers before realizing she could get into them with magic, disoriented by her need for sleep and her alarm at what must have happened. “Sartorlagen!”

  That apparently woke up her charge. Pushing up on an elbow, squinting her way, he asked, “Doma . . . ? What’s wrong?”

  “I think Tipa’thia passed. Come or stay. It’s your choice,” she added, a bit distracted by the mix of instinct and the need to probe at all the power pushing at her. It did not whip and whirl like the wild energies of the Vortex; the Temple Fountain felt strong but tamer. Not placid exactly, but less turbulent. Stronger, though. Stronger than it had been yesterday. Stronger than all the times she had practiced with a portion of the Fountain’s magic passed to her.

  Krais uncurled himself from the bed, knuckling sleep sand from his own eyes. “I’d need my kilt.”

  Spotting his where he’d left it on top of a chest, she snapped her fingers to clean it, and snapped them again, adding in the dressing-spell, along with a firm visualization of how the garment would fit around those lean hips. Thankfully, he had come to her wearing a pre-stitched kilt, a practical sort of garment that buckled around the hips. Not the careful hand-pleating and belt-draping of a more formal garment, the kind left unstitched so that every detail of the brocade could be admired. She even included sandals.

  He grunted, reached back, touched his rump in an odd gesture, and nodded. The reason came out of his mouth. “Thank you for not giving me a fundo-wedge.”

  Pelai quirked her brows at him, blinked—and then remembered. Right. Siblings. “I take it your brothers did that to you a lot, growing up?”

  Krais snorted, amused. “Foren did it to me two afternoons ago, when I woke him so he could be up in time for the nightwatch shift on our ship. Gayn did it to him the previous day, and to me three days before that.”

  That got her to fold her tattooed arms across her leather vest. “And how many times in the same span of days did you do it to them?”

  Without flinching, he admitted, “Two or three times. I’m sure you did the same with your siblings . . . at least, I think you have siblings, right?”

  “Yes, I have siblings, but we gave up doing that sort of thing in our early teens. My parents were strict about quelling misbehavior,” she said, gesturing for him to follow her out the bedroom door. “We are family, and are meant to get along with each other, not pick at each other.”

  “My parents encouraged competition. I think I like yours better,” he murmured.

  Purrsus trotted up to Pelai when she reached the ground floor. She gave the cat a few strokes, but patted the feline in dismissal after just those two. It wasn’t until they were outside on the garden paths, navigating by the little crystals that lit the gravel just enough to see which way to go, that she realized something. “Damn . . . Family Day is in three days. And though you are a penitent in the eyes of the law . . . and worse in the eyes of your father . . . your crimes were not any sort of abuse aimed at your family. You are permitted to visit them for at least half the day on Family Day each week. Will your father expect it?”

  “I’m not sure. He might expect us to stay and be beaten on Family Day. Now, my mother will be the one expecting us to visit,” Krais told her. “She will complain to him if we don’t, and he will order you to have us appear . . . and he will most likely examine us to make sure we have been punished. Now that I think about it . . . he would be clever enough to avoid mentioning us needing to visit. He will just let Mother do the demanding, and just inspect us silently while she interrogates us on what we’ve suffered so far.”

  “Under the guise of family obligations,” she murmured, agreeing with his assessment. Smothering a yawn, Pelai added, “Clever. So when does your family usually meet on Family Day? Mine never meets in the mornings or midday. Bread still needs to be sold in the mornings, if not always baked on a Family Day,” Pelai added. “They still rent space in the ovens for those who don’t want or have the room to do their own baking. That means we usually meet for supper.”

  “So it’s basically up to you to show up on time?” Krais asked.

  “My brother and sis
ter work with our father in the family bakery. But both Mother and I have other jobs,” Pelai stated. “And Isel has a fellow she’s courting; he works as a tailor’s assistant, so she often goes with him to his family’s gatherings at lunch—Isel is the middle child of the three of us, and Paham is the baby.”

  That made Krais frown in confusion. “Wait . . . I thought you had two sisters and a brother. That there were four of you, not three.”

  Pelai shook her head. “No, it’s always been just the three of us. But I can see your confusion. Paham realized he was male when he was twelve, and petitioned the Healer-priests to help him change. The petition was granted, and they finished the last of the transformation spells five years ago, when he turned seventeen.”

  “Ah, good. I’m glad he’s fully himself, now,” he murmured, and fell silent, thinking.

  “So . . . when does your family meet for Family Day?” Pelai prompted after a moment.

  “We usually meet for luncheon,” he told her. “Mother’s family meets for breakfast, and sometimes we go with her, but the one we’re obligated to attend is our own parent’s.” Krais walked beside her, thinking for a few moments. Finally, he said, “Perhaps you should come with me, so you can demonstrate your disciplining of me? It’s not common for an outsider to come to Family Day, but it’s not actively discouraged. Father has invited other Disciplinarians to attend, and Mother the occasional librarian friend.”

  “It’s a thought. At the very least, I’m glad Family Day is not tomorrow . . . or later today, technically,” Pelai added, squinting up at the night sky. Sister Moon lay shrouded somewhere to the east, but Brother Moon glowed behind a thinner veil of clouds halfway to the west. “Am I ever going to get a good night’s sleep, at this rate?”

  “I don’t know,” Krais murmured. “Wait—someone’s coming on the path.”