Seeing nothing, she unfastened the strap about her neck and poured water from the leather pouch. Then, figuring that it would be best to be prepared, before bringing Kessligh anything of value, she undid the pouch. It took a while, as the fastener string was tied with tight knots. Once opened, there was another bag made of silk. She undid it and pulled out a hard, round metal disk. Even this far from the dockside houselights, the glint of gold was sharp.
Expensive, then. It didn't excite her particularly-if she'd wished nothing but wealth in her life, she'd have remained in Baen-Tar and been a proper Princess of Lenayin. It was a Verenthane star, she realised. A star had guided Saint Tristen to Mount Tristen, and in the blazing light of that star, the word of the gods had been proclaimed to him. Stars marked the holy path, and such stars had eight points, for justice, truth, love, brotherhood, and…and…damn, she forgot. All archbishops had a new star forged upon appointment, and each star became a unique signature of that man's life and order. The stars of the saints were legend, and said to be imbued with powers granted to those saints by the gods themselves.
This star…she peered at it closely, trying to discern its features in the dim light. This star had eight shallow points, the spaces in between encrusted with precious jewels. It was smaller than some, fitting within the hollow of her palm. It had a slim, gold chain, to be worn about the neck. And it had writing on the back in a circle about a central gemstone-a ruby. The writing looked to be in some Bacosh language, most likely old Enoran. She knew a little, as much of the Torovan tongue borrowed from Bacosh religious terms, and thought she could make out a couple of words…
And her heart nearly stopped. No. No, surely not. Surely the priest had not given her that one? Had that little, smiling, bearded man gone completely and utterly mad?
“Dear Lords, it is.” Alaine leaned over the table, staring at the golden object on its surface. His narrow face was pale beneath falling curls of dark hair and he made the holy sign to his forehead repeatedly. Gerrold had not left his chair, his eyes were troubled, but not reverent. “It is the Shereldin Star. The holiest of the holy. The gods favour us beyond measure.”
“They unleash upon us a calamity,” Gerrold said sombrely. “This will cause upheaval through all Petrodor. Through all Torovan, in fact. We must give this back.”
“Give it back?” Alaine rounded on his elder companion. “Good gods man, can you not see what a gift this is? This is the first and oldest of the Verenthane holy stars, forged upon the founding of the Enoran High Temple in the presence of the first saints! The single most sacred object of the faith! With this, we can rally the faithful to our cause! We can instruct the priesthood to leave off their foul war. We can be certain that the will of the gods is with us, and we shall surely be victorious!”
The meeting was held on the second floor of the Velo Family household, Alaine and Gerrold had each brought two supporters. Sasha sat on a bench behind Kessligh, with Bret. She wore a change of clothes from her room, and a borrowed pair of boots. Only the nine people in this room knew of the treasure that had fallen into their laps. Or ten, if one counted Mari. Kessligh had told him, for courtesy, and invited him to be present at the meeting, as head of the household. Mari had declined, and looked ill and gone to his room to pray.
“The archbishop will say this was stolen,” Gerrold replied. “He will call us thieves. He will mount a holy war on Dockside to retrieve it. He will unite all Verenthanes against us.”
“No,” said Kessligh. Of all three leaders, his expression was the most unreadable. “Father Terano told Sasha that the archbishop plots with Patachi Steiner.” Those who knew the priesthood well had recognised the small, bearded priest from Sasha's description. Father Terano Maerler. Patachi Maerler's brother, no less. Sasha now doubted if he would be killed for his actions. To kill the holy relatives of lower families was one thing, but Father Terano Maerler's death could turn the dukes to Maerler's side in the Maerler-Steiner conflict.
“It is unclear whether Father Terano acts from divine outrage,” Kessligh continued, “or if he is merely a partisan, furthering his brother's interests. Either way, it seems clear that all power was accumulating to Patachi Steiner's hands. The archbishop was with him, the obstacles within the priesthood were being removed. The archbishop has declared that he shall not rest until the Shereldin Star has been returned to its rightful place in the Enoran High Temple, following the liberation of Enora and all the Saalshen Bacosh from the serrin. It is the symbol of this crusade, the rallying cry of the holy army. If Steiner becomes the leader of this crusade, with an army of Torovan at his disposal, he shall become a ruler of Petrodor unlike Petrodor has ever seen, answerable only to the archbishop, and possibly not even to him. Father Terano gives us the star to remove Patachi Steiner's authority to raise that army. There is no way that Patachi Maerler will help Patachi Steiner regain it. I think he'd rather we keep it. Better it lie in neutral hands than opposing ones.”
“Then why not give it to Patachi Maerler?” Gerrold asked. “If Patachi Steiner is so power hungry?”
“What, and let the holy warriors rush to Maerler's side instead?” Alaine said. “Don't be fooled just because your beloved Rhillian has befriended him, Gerrold-he'll be every bit as bad as Patachi Steiner, given the chance. Perhaps worse.”
“I agree,” said Kessligh. Alaine gave him a look that was part surprise, part wariness. Gerrold looked down, his lips pursed. Kessligh took his seat and gestured for Alaine to do the same. There was an eerie silence in the little room, as though a great weight made even the air feel heavy. “We will keep it. The archbishop may not even know where it went.”
“Try keeping that a secret around here,” said Bret.
“Word will spread soon enough,” Kessligh agreed. “We will let the archbishop and Patachi Steiner decide their next move. There may be a falling out. We shall see.”
“Wait, wait,” said Alaine with an intense smile, leaning forward in his chair. “Hold on just a moment. You're not giving the orders here. Just because your girl got lucky enough to sneak away with this doesn't suddenly make you the ruler of the Nasi-Keth.”
“I didn't sneak,” Sasha snapped. “I swam. Father Terano gave it to me, and told me to give it to Kessligh. He said specifically that the archbishop feared Kessligh. He did not say that the archbishop feared Alaine Endaran.”
“Yes, well Father Terano is not Nasi-Keth,” Alaine retorted, “and as far as I know, he doesn't get a say! Besides, for all we know, you've lied about it anyway-how you got it, what Father Terano said, if anything, all of it. Maybe you were in league with Maerler and his priest all along!”
“Maybe if you were a slightly bigger fucking fool, we could put a cap on your head and watch you dance for entertainment.”
Alaine came out of his seat at that, his eyes wide and angry.
Sasha remained seated, glaring, knowing that he'd never get past Kessligh anyhow.
“You watch your tongue!” Alaine blazed at her.
“Anytime, anywhere,” Sasha said darkly. She let the implication hang. They would not let her fight Liam. Now, surely they would not let her fight Alaine. She thought them cowards, and they knew it. She was not above using it to advantage.
“Alaine, sit,” said Gerrold, his eyes shut as if suffering a headache. “She has a coarse tongue, but you did accuse her unfairly. How you could expect anything else in reply is beyond me.”
Alaine sat, reluctantly mollified. Gerrold's views did not find universal appeal within the Nasi-Keth, but his age and manner made him a figure of respect nonetheless. If only, Sasha thought tiredly, he had a few more interesting ideas than just following Saalshen's lead in everything. The man loved the serrin to excess.
“The star will stay here for now,” Kessligh said calmly.
“Why here?” Alaine retorted.
“Because moving it elsewhere will cause disagreement. I submit that we all agree not to move it anywhere. This stretch of dock is one of the most defensible, and the neighbours are all
devout Verenthanes and loyal friends to the Nasi-Keth. If it pleases everyone, and should the moment arrive when word has spread, we can call a priest. Father Berin is a good man, and sympathetic to our cause. We could consult with him about the keeping of the star. He is neutral in our disagreements and will not play favourites.”
Gerrold nodded slowly. “Father Berin is a good man. Though I submit we should call on him immediately. He will not betray us-he is the last one to call down any trouble on our heads, he loves his flock too dearly.”
Sasha left the men to their debate and climbed the rickety staircase in the hall. Before the nearest door, she paused. Raised her fist to knock on the door, and paused again, her heart beginning a hard, unpleasant thumping. She had slept little last night and her head remained filled with Alaine's irritations. Perhaps this was not the best time.
But then, some things simply could not be put off. She knocked. When there was no reply, she turned the latch. No sooner had the door creaked open a handsbreadth, there sounded a vicious, snarling growl from within the room. “Tashyna!” came the irritated reply. “Tashyna, no.”
There were footsteps and the door pulled open a little…and there, sullen-eyed and swollen-faced, was her sister Alythia. Sasha stared. This was not the Alythia she knew. There was no life in her eyes, no confidence, no sparkling flash of self-importance. The left side of her face was swollen and she had a cut on the right side of her mouth, perhaps a knuckle long. Her hair fell in tangles and she looked out at her long-lost little sister with only the barest hint of recognition.
“What do you want?” she asked, sullenly.
Sasha nearly lost her temper immediately. She'd been planning to make an effort, to be nice, to try consolation, and now Alythia gave her this. She swallowed it with difficulty. Alythia had always had that knack. “To come in would be nice,” Sasha suggested.
“So you can laugh at my misfortune?” Alythia muttered. “Go away.”
“Laugh? For the spirits’ sakes, Lyth, who around here's been doing any laughing lately?”
Alythia looked uncomfortable. She looked at the floorboards for a moment. Then, “Wait a moment, I'll get the wolf.” And she disappeared. Sasha blinked at the empty space, trying to put that last phrase into some kind of logical context. It didn't work. The universe, she concluded, was taking a turn for the absurd.
Sasha waited, then pushed open the door.
Alythia's room was much like all the others in Mari Velo's house-brick walls, two small windows overlooking the docks from the third floor, and creaking floorboards. There was a simple bed, upon which Alythia now sat, her legs folded to one side. She wore a plain dress, such as Dockside women wore, with no adornment whatsoever. Beneath her right arm, grey-brown fur bristling, was a Lenay timberwolf.
Sasha moved very slowly to the room's one chair and sat. Kessligh had told her about this, too. Kessligh hadn't found it any easier to conceive than she did. The wolf watched her, ears flat, front lip edging back in the beginnings of a snarl. Snarling at her, while protective of Alythia. If she'd ever imagined this scene in her youth, she'd have surely imagined it around the other way. Obviously this wolf was very confused.
“She's very pretty,” Sasha observed. “She's about…oh, five months old? Maybe six?”
“I think.” Alythia tightened her arm about the wolf, protective and comforting. The wolf relaxed a little, more comfortable now that Sasha was sitting.
“Her name's Tashyna?” Alythia nodded and gave her a surreptitious look. Sasha smiled, with genuine humour. “I remember. Master Islyll. He never liked me.”
“He had to put up with you,” said Alythia, as if that explained it.
Sasha refrained from retorting with difficulty. “She slept in here last night?”
Alythia nodded.
“She's housetrained?”
“No. I cleaned it up.” With no grimace, or sense of great horror. Another amazement. “I think I'll try and teach her though.”
Sasha shook her head. “You can't do it, Lyth. That's a full-blood wolf, they just don't train. And even if she were a dog, she might be too old now anyway…I mean, look how big she is. Five months! I'm amazed she hasn't started tearing things apart just for fun-they do that, you know. You're not the first Lenay to try and domesticate wolves, it's never worked. Even half-breeds are hard.”
“Aye, well maybe I'll surprise you,” Alythia said shortly.
Sasha shook her head. “It's not about you, Alythia, it's about the wolf.”
“Of course it's about me,” Alythia snapped. “It's always been about me. You never liked me, you've never missed a chance to attack or humiliate me, you gleefully ruined my wedding send-off from Baen-Tar! Well, are you happy now? I'm a widow, at twenty-two summers. Does it please you?”
“I didn't come in here to fight, Alythia,” Sasha said coldly. “You can fly off into your selfish fantasies all you like, but believe it or not, I've had problems of my own to attend to. I've been trying my best not to think about you at all, and generally, I've been succeeding.”
“Fine,” said Alythia, her lip trembling. “Just fine. You can go now.”
“No,” Sasha said firmly. “I can't go. I live here, a guest of the Velos. Now you do too. It's not right that we bring our private arguments under their roof. They're proud people and they deserve our respect.”
“I just watched my husband and his family butchered before my eyes!” Alythia's wide eyes were incredulous. There was a horror there, of depth and substance previously unknown to the most glamorous princess of Lenayin. “You're telling me to just forget it!”
“I…damn, Alythia, I never said that!” Sasha held up her hands helplessly. “Why do you always confuse everything, always turn it into an attack on me? On something I did wrong, on something I should have done differently…”
“I don't care a pile of shit about you!” Alythia screamed. “Get out of this room! NOW!”
Tashyna lurched backward, frightened, ears suddenly back and snarling in Sasha's direction. Sasha sat very still. Alythia sat on the edge of the bed, breathing frantically, agony etched wide-eyed on her face. Pain seemed to claw at her throat, constricting it, making the tendons stand out. Sasha had never seen Alythia like this. Alythia's tantrums and tempers were nearly as famous as Sasha's own, but they were always of the minor kind-something someone had said to her, something someone had or had not done, a wine cup spilt, a thread frayed, a mess left uncleaned. Now her eyes had witnessed a horror so great, it seemed she was unable to even sob.
For the first time, it occurred to Sasha what the past night must have been like for Alythia. Shut in this room, sleepless, with only the wolf for company. Reliving the horror in the dark, over and over. She had that look, sleepless and stretched thin, her hair a mess, her nerves jangling. One remark could set her off. Much like the frightened wolf, snarling at everyone, insensible to considerations of friend and foe.
“Alythia,” Sasha said quietly, “you're scaring the wolf. Please don't. I don't want to get eaten.”
Alythia looked across at the wolf. Immediately Tashyna stopped growling and whined. She lay flat on the bed, grovelling. Sasha blinked in amazement. Alythia recovered her breathing, slowly. Hands rigid like claws began fidgeting in her lap.
“She thinks you're angry at her,” Sasha observed. “They feel your emotions. Don't give them an emotion you don't want them to have.”
“I know that,” Alythia muttered. She held out a hand. Tashyna licked it, then crawled into Alythia's lap and began to lick her chin. Alythia hugged her, and held tight while Tashyna squirmed. There were tears in her eyes. Utterly unexpected, Sasha found that there were tears in her eyes too. Two lost, frightened souls. Somehow, they were perfect for each other.
Sasha took a deep breath and tried again. “You know that the little Halmady girl is alive?”
Alythia nodded, face half buried in Tashyna's thick fur. “Elra. How is she?”
“Well. Errollyn cares for her. There's no more roo
m in this house, so she's several houses down, the Giana Family. They're good people.”
“I heard she was burnt.” Hoarsely.
“Only a little. Errollyn thinks she'll be fine.”
“I saw a maid burn alive. In your Nasi-Keth attack. They threw things that burned. She screamed for a long time. I started running just to get away from the screams.”
“I'm sorry,” said Sasha. “Kessligh told me what he did. He doesn't have enough people, Lyth. He had to use burning bottles, otherwise you'd all be prisoners of Patachi Steiner.”
“You weren't there.”
No, Sasha nearly said, I was almost drowning in the harbour off Besendi Promontory, hauling the holiest Verenthane artefact. But she didn't.
“Lyth…look,” she began instead, “we're not really talking here, are we.” She said it as a statement, not a question. Alythia stared blankly at the base of a wall, somewhere to Sasha's side. Tashyna settled into her lap-the front half that could fit, at least-rested a wolfish muzzle on Alythia's knee, her eyes warily on Sasha. “We're just talking at each other, not to each other. We have too much history. But all that history belongs in another place, in another time. It doesn't do anyone any good here, certainly not either of us, not Tashyna, and sure as shit not all the poor folk here who'll have to put up with our bickering.
“We're both very stubborn people, and we can both be very difficult. I think I've grown up a little, I'll be the first to admit I can be a pain in the neck sometimes. But…I don't know, can't we just draw a line under everything that's been written in our history to this point, and start something new? That old history is getting pretty stale.”
“I tried to help Gregan,” Alythia said faintly. Her eyes remained fixed on the wall, but she was seeing only her memories. “I had a sword, but I hadn't any clue how to use it. There were so many soldiers. They had a…a big ram of some kind. They knocked the main gate down. There were hundreds of them. Gregan organised a defence of the main floor, and then the upper storeys when they fell, but…but they climbed through the windows when the stairs were blocked. They were prepared, I think. Some had ropes.
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