by M. J. Scott
Sophie started to protest, then clamped her mouth shut. If she let Imogene finish, then she would know if the questions bubbling on her lips made any sense.
“What isn’t a matter for another time is that I am sure you could, if you chose, learn water magic.” Imogene looked at Cameron. “I don’t know about you.”
Cameron held up his hands. “I am perfectly happy being a blood mage, thank you very much.”
“You are no more a mere blood mage than your wife here is solely an earth witch. You share some of her power. You might not be able to be as strong at her arts as you are at your own, but you could perhaps learn a little.”
“Pardon me, but I’m not sure that learning a little water magic sounds sensible. Don’t water mages have to exercise complete control over their sanctii?” Cameron asked.
“If they choose to hold a sanctii, then yes, strength is required to exert one’s will at times. But not everyone rides such a line. Some water mages concern themselves with seeing and divination. And some with applying the things the sanctii teach us to improving the world around us. Those who make the fabriques and such.”
Cameron looked intrigued by that, but he shook his head. “Regardless, this is a moot point if we return to Anglion. We cannot wield water magic there, nor would we have time to learn any before we departed. I imagine the delegation would be keen to leave these shores quickly once we decide.”
“It would seem shortsighted to return to a place where you can only be a stunted version of that which you are supposed to be,” Imogene said.
“Perhaps,” Sophie said. “But Anglion is our home. Our families are there. And those are ties that cannot be easily dismissed.” She glanced up at Cameron. “But we were speaking of the sanctii. What does it mean if it did come because of me? Is it likely to turn up again? Is there any danger if it does?” The thought of a loose sanctii searching for her was enough to make a large part of her want to find some deep dark hole to hide in. There were just too many years of Anglion conditioning to overcome so quickly. An uncontrolled sanctii was a deadly one. Or so her instincts told her.
“It helped you—or Cameron—the first time. There’s no reason to think it means you any harm.”
“Then it could turn up again?”
Imogene’s mouth twisted a moment. “I’m not entirely certain. Unbound sanctii very rarely appear. So, really anything is possible.”
“And if I draped myself in pearls, will that discourage her?” Sophie asked.
“Maybe if you wore them floating in the middle of quite a large tank of seawater,” Imogene said with a wry smile. “It is true that the sanctii cannot cross large bodies of salt water, but the amount of salt contained in a pearl wouldn’t stop them. Despite what Anglion traditions might tell you. It’s the fact that your country is an island that keeps you safe from them, not the pearls your court is so fond of.”
That ruled out trying to figure out how to salvage what was left of Eloisa’s pearls to wear. “So you’re saying there’s nothing I can do?”
“Try to be boring. She might lose interest.” Imogene glanced at Tok, still perched on Sophie’s shoulder, her expression somewhat skeptical.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Sophie said. Given her current circumstances, she’d be perfectly happy to be boring. She just didn’t think it was likely to happen any time soon. Which meant, she supposed, that she needed to keep her eyes peeled for stray sanctii. And send a note to the Designys to ask if they could have another of her dresses finished by tomorrow.
Chapter 15
“Is there a temple nearby?” Sophie asked as Helene placed pins in purple velvet with measured care.
The clothier’s perfectly arched eyebrows lifted, her eyes widening. “A temple of the goddess?”
Sophie checked the habitual “what other kind is there”? Illvya, not Anglion. “Yes,” she said with an encouraging smile. She already knew the answer, having found a temple nearby on Cameron’s city map. But she wanted a simpler source if anyone asked how she had known where the temple was. It would be unwise to share how hard she and Cameron had been working to learn ways through the city. Besides, it would be interesting to know if Helene would help her.
Helene’s nose wrinkled as she slid another pin into the sleeve of the dress Sophie wore. “I believe there is a small one in the square near Isle de Angelique. By the hospital there. That would be the closest. But do you not wish to see the main temple near the palace? It is very beautiful. Much more elegant than any of the smaller temples.”
Elegance, apparently, was more important than what went on within the temple walls.
“Turn a little, please, my lady. Toward me,” Helene said before Sophie could reply.
Sophie obeyed the direction. “A small temple is all I need.” She wanted to understand more about how the goddess was worshipped in Illvya and ask about the history with water magic, as Madame Simsa had suggested, not to encounter whoever the Illvyan equivalent of Domina Skey might be. A small local temple was exactly what she needed. Now that her Illvyan was no longer a barrier, she could perhaps strike up a conversation with a devout or a prior. Find what she was seeking without drawing undue attention to herself.
“I just need directions.” She made a small circling gesture with her hand. It had taken some convincing to get Henri and Cameron to agree that there was no reason she shouldn’t go to the clothiers’ salon for this final fitting rather than have Helene come to her. She had no idea what might happen at the palace later that evening. This might be the only opportunity she ever had to get information from an Illvyan member of the goddess’ priesthood. Even though she had concerns about the envoys, if, in the end, Cameron wanted to return home, then she wouldn’t let him go alone. If she was to return to Anglion, then she wished to be as well-armed as possible. Including learning some temple history that she doubted anyone in Anglion would ever volunteer.
“Stay still, my lady. This will only take longer if you keep moving. And you need this dress tonight, do you not? Every minute longer it takes me is a minute less for my seamstresses to complete the changes.”
Helene’s voice held an edge of irritation. Which, given how unflappable she had seemed on the other occasions Sophie had encountered her, might just be a measure of how tight the deadline for the dress was.
“Yes. I’m sorry.” She froze back into position even though her arms were starting to ache. “But the directions?”
“You are not expected back at the Academe?” Helene asked. She paused again in her pin placement, brow wrinkling.
Had Helene been instructed to make sure Sophie didn’t go anywhere else in the city? Goddess, she hoped not. She thought she could convince her escorts to let her stop at a temple, pleading devotion to the goddess. That was an argument that was difficult to deny amongst mages. From what she’d learned so far of Illvyan religion, earth witches were the most open with their belief in the goddess and the source of their power, but blood mages worshipped, too.
She needed to understand how the goddess’ Illvyan adherents felt about their Anglion counterparts. Imogene had called the Anglion Temple corrupt, intent on retaining power over the people. Sophie didn’t want to believe it was true, but Domina Skey had not scrupled to use Sophie’s powers to heal Eloisa, even when it had drained Sophie near to breaking. Certainly her anger with Sophie and Cameron seemed to be due to the fact that Sophie could not be fully bonded to the goddess, which denied the temple whatever use of her power they might have had if the ritual had been completed as usual. It might have even led the Domina to try to kill Sophie. If anyone in Illvya could understand what threat Sophie might represent, it would be someone of the goddess’ priesthood here.
But preferably someone with no need to play politics. The relationship between religion and the crown seemed more distant here, but it was unlikely that the two were completely severed. Not if many of the mages still worshipped the goddess.
She resisted the urge to rub her forehead, where a headach
e was setting in. If she moved, all she would achieve would be a torso full of pinpricks.
“No,” she said, realizing that she hadn’t answered Helene’s question. “Not immediately.” She smiled encouragingly, hoping to soothe whatever was concerning Helene. “The address?” she prompted again when Helene placed another pin.
Helene’s shoulder lifted in a tiny motion that clearly meant something along the lines of “it’s on your head,” but then she rattled off a short set of directions.
Sophie had no trouble following the rapid-fire Illvyan, though she had taken care during her time at the salon not to reveal her improved language skills, making sure she still spoke slowly—not such an act when Henri had obviously been telling the truth when he said her comprehension would improve faster than her speech—and tried to keep her previously bad accent in place. She intended to let that slip a little in time. People would expect her Illvyan to improve when she was surrounded by the language so she should be safe if she let the pretense go gradually.
By the time Helene had completed her pinning and tucking on both dresses and Sophie was safely back in her own clothing, she was beginning to worry that the appointment had taken too much time and that her escorts would refuse her request.
But they didn’t. They only nodded when Sophie said she wished to take an offering to the goddess, and when she repeated the address that Helene had given her, the carriage trundled off again. It didn’t take very long. Soon enough the horses pulled to a halt and the taller of the two mages accompanying her opened the door and helped her out.
Sophie found herself facing a fairly nondescript red brick building, snug between two very similar structures. It was nothing like the temples back home which ran to marble and bronze and vaulting size, but there was a quartered circle inlaid in brass on the dark wooden door so she had to assume she was indeed in the right place.
The blood mages escorted her to the door but didn’t follow her in when it swung inwards in response to one of them laying his hand on a brass plate beside the door, causing chimes similar to those in the Academe to sound from within.
Sophie entered slowly, expecting to be confronted by a brown-robed servant of the goddess. Instead she appeared to be alone. So who had opened the door?
She walked farther into the building and the door swung closed behind her, making her start. The room appeared to be some sort of entrance hall. Small. Painted white. Empty beyond the pair of lamps hung from the ceiling and another door marked with the quartered circle in front of her. But plain or not, it clearly sat above a ley line. The power hummed beneath her feet and made the floor glow. She stared at the door. In or out. There were no other options.
Out left her without answers.
In left her with . . . well, that remained to be seen.
As she pushed the far door open, a waft of spice and salt grass and sage came from the room beyond. The scent was as familiar as the smell of her mother’s perfume. For a moment it induced a wave of homesickness so fierce that she thought she might burst into tears. Or worse, sink to the floor. But the sensation eased after the first eye-stinging minute and she tried to clear her mind of any thought of home as she passed through the door into the temple itself.
It was bigger than the façade of the building had suggested, not overly wide but running deep. Though, as far as Sophie could see, no other worshippers occupied any of the wooden benches. The ceiling was high, not domed like the temples of Anglion, and constructed from white-painted wood and plaster rather than bronze, set with panes of stained glass forming four quartered circles high in the ceiling. Each centered around a small opening to allow the smoke from the earth fires to escape.
Multicolored beams of light speared down from the glass, illuminating each of the fires. Three were small offering fires, complete with bundles of salt grass piled high in baskets in front of them, the nearest not far from Sophie, marking the beginning of the aisle to the altar, the other two set off to either side about halfway down the room. At the far end, near the altar, a larger earth fire burned, the flames a familiar medley of blue and green and orange from the salt-soaked logs that fed it.
The fires were so exactly like the ones from the temples she had known in Anglion she was at the basket set before the closest of them and lifting one of the bundles before she knew what she was doing. She cradled the dried grass in her palm gently, inhaling deeply. Salt and sage and the incense spices in the oil added to the bundles. A smell woven deep through the memories of her life. She breathed it again, greedily.
She hadn’t realized how much she had missed it until now. The scent and the comfort of the rituals she had grown up with. Even if her relationship with the temple in Anglion had been strained since her Ais-Seann had gone wrong, that didn’t mean she didn’t still believe. She held the bundle closer to the flame, then realized she had no blade to complete the sacrifice. There was no sign of an offering knife.
“May I be of assistance, my lady?”
Sophie started as though she’d been slapped, jumping half a foot, then whirled to see who had spoken.
“I am sorry, I startled you.” The woman who spoke was dressed in temple brown but her robes were an unfamiliar style. More fitted. Shaped like a narrow-skirted dress with a long over vest of some kind rather than an actual robe. The collar sat high around the woman’s throat, a bronze quartered-circle brooch marking its center.
Her skin was nearly the same color as the dress, her hair a few shades darker still. She was older than Sophie but not old, and her eyes, a tawny kind of amber unlike any Sophie had seen before, held a friendly expression. The ley light around her also seemed to hold a faint amber tint. Or it could have been a trick of the light. The ley light was faint enough that Sophie could see that the domina was touching the ley line—though that might be difficult for a domina in a temple to avoid—but also that she didn’t seem to be actively using any power.
“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Sophie said, offering a smile and then a neat curtsy.
“I would not usually interrupt you at your devotions. But you seemed to be looking for this.” She held out her hand, palm up. On it lay a simple silver blade, the polished metal reflecting glints of the colors falling from the glass above.
Sophie reached for it. “Thank you.”
“We cleanse the offering knives several times a day,” the woman said as Sophie stretched to pass the knife through the flame.
That didn’t seem to require a response, so Sophie focused on the flame instead. She nicked her finger with the blade, dripped the blood on her bundle of salt grass, and with an unvoiced prayer that she and Cameron would survive all this, tossed it onto the fire. The flames flared blue and green from the salt grass and the oils anointing it and then subsided back to orange. She spent another minute staring into their depths, as though they might have some wisdom to offer. Finding none, she turned back to the woman who might be able to satisfy some of her questions.
“I have not seen you here before, my lady. Are you newly arrived in Lumia?”
“Do you know everyone who comes to the temple?” Sophie countered.
One side of the woman’s mouth lifted. Sophie got the feeling that her attempt to avoid answering the question had not gone unnoticed.
“Many of them.” The woman gestured at the empty room. “We are not so fashionable just now. The earth witches remember our great Lady but amongst those without power, well . . . .” She shrugged. “But I have not introduced myself. I am Domina Gerrard. I am in charge here.”
In charge but tending the offering tools herself? Now there was something Sophie couldn’t imagine Domina Skey doing. And this woman looked young for a Domina. But this was a smaller temple, so perhaps that was to be expected. “It is good to meet you, Domina,” Sophie said with another bobbed curtsy. “How many serve the temple here?”
“Only ten,” Domina Gerard said. “The priors and devouts rotate between the grand temple and the others here in Lumia. Domina Davide a
nd I are here permanently. Perhaps we shall come to know you, Madame . . . ?”
“Mackenzie,” Sophie said and then fought the urge to curse. She hadn’t wanted to announce herself as Lady Scardale, but Mackenzie was hardly an Illvyan name. At least she didn’t think it was.
The Domina’s eyes widened slightly but Sophie had no idea whether that was because she thought the name unusual or because she knew who Sophie was. “You are welcome in the Lady’s house.”
Well, if she knew who Sophie was, she was not immediately disapproving.
“Thank you.” Sophie hesitated, unsure how to proceed.
“Would you like me to leave you to your devotions, or were you hoping to speak with someone?” Domina Gerrard said.
Well, one probably didn’t become a domina without being able to read people a little. “I had a question,” Sophie admitted. “Do you have time to speak with me now?”
A nod. “I have an hour or so before I need to prepare for our evening devotions.” Domina Gerrard glanced around the empty room. “As we are alone, we can speak here if you are comfortable. I doubt we’ll be interrupted. But we have other, more private rooms within if you prefer.”
The thought of retreating deeper into a strange building—a temple—was not appealing. Goddess only knew what wards might lie within. She had no doubt the blood mages were waiting for her at the outer door. She didn’t want to be farther from their aid should she need it. Not that she had any reason to think that Domina Gerrard meant her harm, but Domina Skey had taught her to be wary.
“I am happy to speak here. It’s a beautiful temple.” She gestured toward the ceiling. “The glasswork is lovely.”
Domina Gerrard smiled. “Thank you. It is not as spectacular as some, but I am fond of it.” She moved over to the nearest of the wooden benches and settled on it.
