And by a tight leash, the nuns had yanked him around those first years. When the Cloitare presented the newly discovered Queen Mother, his Bound Bride, to the masses that filled the capital, he had no choice but to go down on his knees before them too while his advisors looked on in unified rage, not yet strong enough in their positions to defy the Cloitare. In the eighteen years since, they had all become masters of their designated crafts, but Remy had also witnessed the clergy twist the people into an aggressive fanaticism, praying for his marriage to a girl he suspected, against the emphatic opposition of his advisors, was not in collusion with the nuns.
~~~~~~
Remy had summoned the memory constantly in the months after he learned of her disappearance. It had happened during the weekly meal Sable shared with him and his table. When the mother that accompanied Sable had her attention drawn away, Sable had tapped his foot with hers and then given him such a look of desperate warning, he had continued to stare at her openly even after the mother had spotted the insurrection.
He had held her back after the meal, had demanded the mother leave, threatening with escalating anger until he had frightened the mother and everyone else from the room.
Once alone, Sable must have thought he could not hold the mother off for long because she asked quickly and directly, “How was your grandfather killed?”
It was so quintessentially Cloitare, so utterly without tact, Remy should not have been surprised, yet he was. Dispelling the fury required to force the mother to depart, his answer was blunt, “He was slain by his confidant and guard.”
“Why?”
“The man obviously went mad.”
Sable considered it. Without guile or judgment, she asked, “Do you believe this?”
The infamous act had happened when his father was thirteen. Callias Clement’s master strategist, guard, and dearest friend had cut him down in his private rooms. The reason was never clear. Two Cloitare mothers and a sister had watched it happen, but such was the speed and skill of Orson Feridon, they could do nothing to prevent it. Alerted by the hysterical screaming of the sister, the guards had charged the room. Still clasping the knife used to kill the king, the guards found Feridon heaving sick on the floor and two mothers shielding the eyes of the terrified sister, whispering words to settle her distress. None of this could be disputed.
Feridon had not fought apprehension, but because of his mastery in combat, he was taken into custody with an electronic compliance shackle on his wrist. If he fought, the guards could drop him to the floor in writhing agony, rendering him harmless.
Feridon had been taken to the city prison while word of the king’s death spread rapidly around the capital. Then, when the mob descended to tear the traitor apart, he escaped.
Orson Feridon had never been caught. His motive remained unknown. But the prison surveillance video of his frenzied self-mutilation to free himself of the shackle went some ways to verifying his madness.
The mothers swore he had turned without warning, and such was the violence of the attack, the witnessing sister had gone out of her head. Remy did not doubt that either. He had seen footage of the nun wailing loud and inconsolable before the King’s Council. She was never able to answer a single question, possibly never understood anything that was asked, and then weeks later, she too was dead. The Cloitare said it was grief.
Erria was rife with conspiracy theories when the Ministry of Clergy stepped in as the Council of Regents, functioning as the governing body until his father reached an acceptable age to take power. Remy never thought his father had completely thrown off their influence. There was a subdued, compliant manner about his father toward the Cloitare that Remy despised and had sworn never to emulate.
At question was whether Remy believed the story of the master strategist’s sudden madness. Ultimately, Remy was undecided. He had never been given a credible reason not to believe. And while Berringer voiced nonspecific suspicions about the role of the clergy in Callias’s death, Remy accepted very little without evidence.
How, Remy always asked his master strategist to imagine, could three nuns kill him with Berringer in the room? The question would make Remy smile and his friend dismiss the idea. Now, Sister Sable, dressed in the Cloitare robes, was questioning him in much the same way.
He said to her, “I will accept what the facts offer.” And then questioned, “Why are you asking?”
“I ask because the facts are …”
He could not imagine why she paused. Her eyes were pale orbs of cold blue, showing neither emotion nor motive nor pupils. The Cloitare Stare was unsettling enough on its own, but the topic made her positively morbid. He expected the long pause to lead to a revelation, but instead, she simply confirmed, “... the facts are Feridon killed him. But why?”
Remy stopped himself from saying the word that came to mind and stared at her with controlled impatience.
“You were going to answer madness again. Do you know the cause of it?”
Sable waited for an answer until Remy warned, “I will not be baited. Continue.”
“Was he always mad? I’ve read he was a respected military strategist. I’ve also read he was loved by the army. And I’ve heard soldiers don’t love mad generals.”
Remy realized this was the most he had ever heard her say, and it was thoroughly patronizing.
She looked to the floor. “I do not mean to be condescending. There are satisfactory answers to all questions, but to find these, I need help.”
He had a dozen questions, but first, “Why are you looking?”
She met his gaze to tell him, “I believe the order means you harm.”
Blessed hell. Such extreme words, yet the cold Stare of the Cloitare denied any concern. Remy could not conceal his dismay.
Misinterpreting, she responded, “I have no proof to offer. The mothers have become distrustful and prevent me from learning.”
He did nothing to mask his growing confusion. “What are you trying to learn?”
“It is important that I know what the prophets first called me. The realm should hold its own handwritten copy of the revelations. I must ask you to find for me the dates each of my titles appeared in writing and tell me what was written.”
Taking her by the arm, he tried to bring the conversation under control by guiding her into a chair. “Tell me what has happened.”
But she stiffened against the intended direction. “It has become obvious to me the Cloitare are evil. By extension, their designs are evil.”
The declaration from the face of someone so young made her appear harsh, and had he believed in anything preternatural, he would think her colorless eyes demonic. He studied her, searching for any signs of empathy or emotion.
Possibly realizing the image she presented, she drew in a breath and softened her features. Raising her heart rate to expand her pupils, her face flushed warm. As if none of this had been presented to him before, she moderated her voice to explain, “They thirst for this union with such desperation neither you nor I are relevant. They have their own unknown objective in sight and their ambition does not include you. It scarcely has room for me.” The impenetrable facade practiced by the Cloitare was gone, replaced with fear. “Can you refuse to wed me?”
He had not meant to laugh, but he had meant his reply to sound light. “I could, if you’d like the walls painted in my blood.”
She had not considered it before, but she saw it plainly and was horrified.
Regretting the attempt at levity, he tried to mitigate his words. He took her hand, surprised by how cold it was, but patted it regardless. “This has all been expected. You have nothing to worry about.”
Stepping away from him, she shook her head in unhappy frustration. In an instant, her pupils constricted and she disappeared behind the order’s blank face. Before leaving, she made the demand, “Have for me the titles.”
But the following week when she next joined them, she was numb and senseless with fatigue. When he spoke to her,
she mumbled incomprehensible answers to the family pin in his jacket, as though the red-jeweled eyes of the bull could understand.
After the meal, he tried to hold her back again. He started to shout away the mother, but then Sable’s face filled with such distress, he feared for what might happen behind the double doors and stopped.
The next meal was the same.
Then, at the third meal, still dazed, she tapped him on the foot and nodded. He held her back with all the drama and more that accompanied the first night. The attending mother was joined by three more that had been waiting in the corridor. It had taken him, punctuated by the sharp orders of Berringer, many minutes to force them out. Girard had pulled the girl to the far end of the room, promising her, “It’s a small confrontation. Do not be concerned, there is nothing to fear.”
When Remy turned, Sable was warning the spy chief, “For all that is about to befall me for this treachery, let it not be for such lies.”
The implication of abuse made them all solemn. Girard and Berringer turned to the King to start.
“Sit,” he told them. “We will not be rushed.”
~~~~~~
It was gratifying to hear doubts harassed her relentlessly. Her thoughts were exact and unforgiving of sentiment. She questioned the veracity of free will, divinity, and destiny. She could not make the three fit cohesively and the mothers would not answer her questions with the candid realism she required.
“But you are a theist?” Catherine pressed.
“There exists a god, if god is the name you wish to give it, but it is ignorant,” she told them. “As real as light, it is energy, but not intelligent. It can be manipulated, but it cannot be reasoned with.”
“So the prayers people offer?” Catherine had hoped to hear her say prayers were useless.
But Sable’s blank face creased with confusion. Catherine could read her lips as she sounded out the puzzle, turning it for clarity, “Prayers people offer. Offer.” Her eyes tightened on the word. “Offer. Offered prayers. Offering prayers.” The word ceased to have meaning. She asked aloud, “What do they offer?”
And when Catherine looked stumped to know, Sable answered, “I am unfamiliar with this practice.”
Catherine leaned in on the girl. “But you do pray?”
“I have.” It did not sound common.
“To God?”
“Obviously not. I have explained it as ignorant.”
“Then to whom do you pray?”
“To the One.”
The three glanced at each other. “The One is God, is it not?”
“The One embodies god.”
Catherine sat back. Religious ambiguity annoyed her unlike anything else, and she could not discern in the pale singular shade of Sable’s eyes if it were deliberate. She shifted away from the abstract, asking, “The Revelations of the Prophets, what did you want to know?”
“I want to know the titles as the prophets predicted on the day it was written.”
“Why though?”
Whatever invention Sable was creating in the silence, Catherine was eager to judge the nun’s ability to deceive.
Sable said, “Perhaps a title has been misrepresented. Perhaps the prophets never wrote of a Cloitare bride.”
“It matters very little whether we could prove that at this point.” Catherine shut it down to see where Sable would go next.
“Such a disclosure, or one like it, could stop the union of clergy and realm.”
Girard did not expect to laugh.
And Berringer could not prevent his disbelief from sounding harsh. “Do you have any idea of what is happening in the world?”
With the relentless gaze of the Cloitare, Sable studied him for understanding. When he looked away, she said, “I have never been in the world.”
“Have you never connected to the network?” The Cloitare shunned any technology invented after its inception, but still it seemed unreal that a teenager would have absolutely no exposure. Catherine knew at the private girl’s school she attended all manner of banned material found its way into the dorms. Pulling out her phone, Catherine lit up the screen and handed it to Sable.
Sable took the phone and, with her full attention focused on it, waited for it to do something. When the screen darkened again, she handed it back, saying, “I am unfamiliar with it.”
Berringer threw himself back in amazement.
Girard laughed again, saying, “It is terribly overrated. You’re not missing a thing.”
Sable’s posture stiffened with caution. “We agreed to speak the truth.”
The spymaster acted with charming guilt. “So we did. You are missing a great deal. It boggles the mind, really.” She turned to the King. “If you’ll permit, I will answer her question.”
“Explain to her what she wants to know.”
Girard exhaled and tried to hold Sable’s eyes steady. “Succinctly, the clergy secured a very bloody throne for the Clementyne Dynasty four centuries ago with the understanding a future king would wed a nun. So, as to your concern that a Cloitare bride was not foreseen, allow me to dispel that notion. The title of the Bound Bride was likely conceived the day the Clementyne Dynasty went to the clergy for help, or near enough to it. Not to offend, but what was portrayed as divine revelations had already been agreed as business behind closed doors, written with all the pomposity and flourish the public knows today.”
Sable quietly considered it before asking, “By what names am I known? Tell them to me as they were written on that day.”
Knowing the titles were the issue that troubled the nun, Girard began to answer slowly, giving first, “The Bound Bride,” and after a long pause, “Queen Mother,” and as though she could hardly remember, “Mother of All,” waiting to gauge Sable’s reaction.
“Nothing else?”
It was not what Girard had expected, but it was telling. She would get the final title from the girl, but before Catherine could answer, Berringer shut the door with, “Should there be?”
Sable ignored the question to ask the Colonel another. “When did the Master and Mentor appear in writing?”
“Same time.”
“What else can you tell me?”
Berringer regretted getting involved. He looked to Catherine for help, and Girard turned away, smirking at the absurdity of it before she could think to answer. Pressing in on the girl incredulously, Catherine stressed, “With over three hundred million adherents, the Cloitare are the predominant religion in Erria, and after six centuries of growth, they are vying to be the third largest religion in the world. The Cloitare have two walking, talking god-like prophets alive at the moment, making the Revelations of the Prophets one of the most searched titles in the world. You are, I assure you, more than I can explain in one night.”
Berringer did not intend to mock. “You’ve just been living at home with mom and god, haven’t you?”
“Enough,” Remy censured them both. To Sable he asked, “What were you expecting?”
“Something different.” But when the three looked expectant to hear what it was, she so substantially shifted the subject, it remained lost. “Kings can be killed. Orson Feridon is proof that no one can ultimately be trusted.” She shook her head and held up her hand for patience. This was not the way she wanted this to go. She started again. “The convent here in the palace has a vast library recording everything from the beginning of the order. As the—” she stopped short before offering, “the Bound Bride,” but it was obviously distasteful, “I should have full access to the collection. There is a vault which is meant to be locked.” The unaffected mask of the Cloitare was showing anger while she searched for how to proceed.
Catherine suggested, “You read something you shouldn’t?”
“Yes,” that was it exactly. Then she leveled them with, “They know the location of Feridon.” The reactions around her were pronounced: every back straightened with a sudden intake of breath. Sable corrected, “Well, they did know, perhaps they still do, bu
t I doubt I will ever get the chance to return to the vault. My trespass has made the mothers distrustful.”
“Where was he?” Girard asked. Remy leaned forward in expectation while the Colonel held his breath.
Sable’s demeanor no longer resembled a nun’s, and the traitor’s whereabouts were not what concerned her. She dismissed it as inconsequential, saying instead, “Perhaps because they were ruling as a regent council, the mothers did not share this information with anyone outside the highest clergy. It does beg the question why. Why would they protect him in such a way?” Sable laid all her attention on Remy. “It is written they sent two mothers to his location and it is written that he killed them. Yet still they kept their silence.” Sable expression was severe. “Do you begin to comprehend what I say?”
Remy was deep in angry thought that this could be true. “It raises a number of serious questions.”
“There is only one answer of importance.” Sable waited until his focus was solely on her. “The Cloitare are evil.”
Remy would not defend the order, but he wanted to know, “What makes you think so?”
She parted her lips and nearly told him before a terrible memory escaped her mouth as a strangled denial. All at once human, she dropped her head. “Please forgive me. My loyalty is not so much divided as dividing. This is every bit a betrayal I am committing, but I have been told repeatedly I must protect you. Yet I would ask you to tell me, any of you, what is more dangerous than the Cloitare? What could the King possibly need protection from if not the order? You see where I lead?” She addressed Berringer, “If he does not marry me, there is nothing to protect him from.”
Sister Sable (The Mad Queen Book 1) Page 4
