“The light was cold, like ice against my neck, that’s when I realized someone also had their hand against my chest. It felt like the mother was sending freezing water through my veins. Her voice was brittle, crackling hard, telling me I was going to be enlightened by her instructions and inspired to obey. She assured me what she was saying was true: we were in the ice-covered wastes of the poles and were never coming out. We had been there for weeks on a sheet of barren ice. Look around, she urged me, and see nothing but the wild, frozen desert, it would dispel any doubt. She told me to feel my split lips and the dead flesh of my frostbitten fingers. If I listened, she told me, I could hear Callias crying, begging me for help. And she was right; Callias was weeping.
“She assured me what she was saying made perfect sense, his suffering was unnatural, as we were both going to die of exposure. I was cruel not to do as he asked and end his life. It was my duty to follow his order, her order, and accept direction. She convinced me it was better Callias should succumb to my skills than the weather. It was what he was begging me for, and he was certainly begging. I could hear him pleading for mercy. She told me to see his abject form prostrate before me, and through the harsh white of the storm, he was there. He was imploring both God and me to save him.
“He was distraught and the desperation was wrenching when I agreed, assuring Callias I would kill him. He begged stronger and I struggled against weakness to crawl beside him. He was sobbing and the mother told me to hear his command to act swiftly. I would strangle him in my arm. It would be mercifully fast and painless, a simple constriction of the blood and he would be gone. But then there was a knife pressed into the frost damaged flesh of my hands. Heat from the handle began to return life to my fingers and my mind. The mother urged me to end his pain quickly, but I was confused and getting angry. I would never use a blade on someone I loved. I had been fully prepared to kill him, but not hurt him.
“I was saying, ‘Wait, wait, everybody hold. This is not right.’ Then blustering fury as the storm unleashed driving spikes of ice on the wind. I felt the force of the gale knock me back. I could hear whispering on the wind and wanted to demand whoever was there to come forward, but my voice and my body were gone; ethereal and without form, there was nothing to respond. Then Callias started shrieking about wolves, something with fangs and claws, some animal tearing him apart, and all the while there was whispering, two voices whispering through a piercing wind, snarling beasts yapping, Agatha was screaming, the light was everywhere, stabbing, freezing my eyes blind. I had the knife and was cutting back the dogs. I began to feel the heat of their blood on my hands, warmth that spread to my mind, making me wonder why the nuns were on the ice, backing across the empty waste of the poles. Agatha was screaming hysterical denial while hiding the parchment back in her robes, sobbing for another chance, swearing all forms of eternal allegiance until the guards burst through the door.
“It was still so very bright and I was squinting to see, but you can imagine what I saw. The cuts on Callias’s body were deep and precise and certainly mine. The mothers were silenced, the storm was over, and the sickness had seized me. I knew I had acted out of madness, but I was desperate to prove to myself I was not responsible, that I had been controlled, somehow hypnotized by their voice, but this was also insane. If it had not been for the last words of Agatha, I might have killed myself, but before the guards could haul me away, while the mothers tried to silence the raving sister, Agatha, desperate to escape what they had in store, tried to appease again by weeping, ‘I vow my voice to the destroyer.’ Her voice, not her life—the warrior’s greatest gift—but her voice.”
~~~~~~
The sound of the fire dominated the room as each person remained silent in their own thoughts. The General’s outrage was divided. In his mind played the video of Sister Agatha before the King’s Security Council, too deranged to give evidence of what she had witnessed, wailing from the ruins the same as he had heard ripped from Sable’s tortured body. Also playing in his mind with clarity, as though it too had been recorded, was his father’s skilled hand killing Callias while the murmuring of the Cloitare controlled the blade. But the sharpest image came from his memory, one of Sable whispering to the King.
The memory brought him to his feet, stalked him across the floor to escape his own hostility, and then turned him to accuse her. “And you used the same cursed voice to manipulate Remy.”
Sable faced the room with a weariness greater than a sleepless night could explain. “I did not convince him of anything false. I am safe and competent in this world. And I did not do it lightly. I will pay the dearest price for it.” She explained to Orson the presence of the drugged soldier in his house.
“Ah, pet, you’ve made my son distrust you.” Orson patted the rug. “Come sit beside me and let’s see what we can do to fix this.” To his son, he explained, “Sable plays a very poor game of strategy. There is not a pawn on the board she will not sacrifice the queen to save.”
“Which is the same as surrendering the King.”
“Do you hear?” Orson’s wry question was aimed at Sable. “Perhaps you will accept this as true now you have the conclusion of two strategists on the matter.” He watched her sink fluidly to the carpet at his side, facing him with such obvious fatigue, his criticism was gentle. “Did you ever win a single game relying on defensive tactics over strategy?”
He knew the answer and she would not argue her protection of the pawns.
Orson dispassionately continued, “You reveal yourself so my son is not the least surprised to hear what the Cloitare can do with their voice. In making known your greatest strength, you choose the life of your friends over the life of the King.” When Sable turned to deny it, he asked, “The first tenet?”
Do not get caught. Sable closed her eyes.
“Is the King aware of what you’ve done?”
Stubborn silence kept her head bowed.
To his son, Orson said, “I doubt we have time for us to sit here all night while I outwait her, so you answer: Does the King know?”
“I intend to tell him.”
“You will not.” The directive was firm, but Theo’s expression showed the matter was not settled. “Whether she is deserving of it or not, he must trust her.”
Theo choked on his first response out of respect for his father. Pacing back across the wood floor to the rug, he looked down on them both. “Explain to me why.”
“It was never meant to come to this,” Orson addressed Sable, “but, for whatever reason, it has.” Then to his son, “There is a war coming and she needs to be by his side.”
“The war will get no closer to the King than it already has.”
Orson was dismissive. “Your wars with Alena and other sovereign states scarcely threaten the King’s life. There is a much deadlier war coming.”
“And I will be the one to defend the King.” He could no longer hide his ire.
“Before it’s over, I am sure you will.” Orson studied his son. “You’re under the misunderstanding I trained Sable to protect the King. Master Aidan trained her for that. I, the master strategist, trained the Mawan to eliminate the threat before any defense of the King need be made.”
The General stepped back from the admission. He felt the couch touch his legs and dropped as the realization weakened his knees. He looked at Sable kneeling in deference to his father, both hiding scars deeper than the skin, mutually driven by more than just a grudge against the clergy, each dangerous enough alone but here they were united, a whispering assassin under the direction of an experienced strategist with the common goal of destroying the Cloitare. It was well beyond mad, and he felt responsible for them both. He remembered Sable pooling blood on Remy’s carpet, dead certain she was right, looking to him for approval, and he understood now it had not been her insanity alone that night swinging the axe.
~~~~~~
With his son’s path corrected, Orson spoke to Sable, “Now, pet, show me what it is you hide from me.”<
br />
Theo’s eyes were still fastened wide in alarm on him when Sable’s expression joined them. In the next instant, she hid her panic by staring into her lap.
Orson chuckled at them both before pouring more voški into his tumbler with his braced hand and holding his other open for Sable’s secret.
“You’ll feel a damn lot better if you take that.” He pushed Theo’s still untouched drink toward him.
His son took the glass and sank back into the leather while Orson flexed his fingers and looked surprised to have an empty hand. They both watched Sable check her appearance, reviewing her clothes, looking for something of importance.
Orson laughed. “Have you been away from me that long? You think maybe I speak of something in your pocket?”
She abandoned the effort to find an object to offer and instead became very still, hardly breathing, waiting, feeling trapped.
With pity, he ended it. “Give me your hand.”
The hopeful tension he might get it wrong dropped from her shoulders. She closed her eyes and forced herself to comply.
He expected to push back the bangles to find some mark of suicide on her wrist, but instead he was stopped short by the X cut indelicately into her palm. He was staggered. It took all his will not to show it, and the only reason she didn’t feel his horror was she was too busy willing herself to be calm to spare him a thought. He said, “Your other,” and confirmed there were two.
He had seen it before. Sister Agatha had been marked a traitor for helping him. She had readily surrendered her hands to remain Cloitare, telling him the ritual for being cast out was far worse. But Orson could not imagine Sable would freely kneel to receive any Cloitare judgment.
“Did you accept the salt willingly?”
“No.”
“Did Master Aidan do this?”
“No.” She frowned at the idea.
Orson was sharp with anger, “Then why did you allow this to happen? Was my training for nothing? Have I wasted my time on you?”
“Father—”
“Theo, be quiet.”
Orson was surprised to see her face soften with pity, as though she were preparing to comfort him.
“I was in the train wreck last year in Alena, that is how Master Aidan found me. I was too hurt to escape.” She did not want to continue, but he was showing no tolerance for the delay. Taking her hands from his, she unfastened the wide bracelet, but before letting it slip, she grimaced one more look of sympathy and then extended her bare wrist.
He studied the scar for meaning, knowing it was an electrical burn, thinking perhaps she had been wearing a metal bangle when hit by lightning, but then she said simply, “Compliance shackle.”
No punch to the gut could have winded him like that. He quickly clasped her wrist to cover the damage, as though he could deny it had happened. He remembered, and he knew for her to have scars, her memories would be worse.
“I couldn’t fight them with it on.”
Of all the things for her to say, as though he needed to be told. Orson pulled her head onto his shoulder to keep her from saying anything else, to give him time to regain composure.
When he could speak, he whispered with hatred, “Aidan?” and his fingers relaxed to grip her wrist like a sword.
She tightened in defense, drawing back. “No. He would never. He was unaware.”
“Unaware.” Orson did not believe this.
“He was,” she insisted. “From my first memories, twice a year Master Aidan would go someplace distant where I could not feel him, as though he ceased to exist. Before he left, he locked me in a cell.” Sable tried to make it sound acceptable. “Both to protect the mothers from me and me from the mothers. They were meant to stay away,” she bit the words with malice, “but they did not.” She prepared to put the bracelet back on, but Orson would not release her hand.
“For what did they find you at fault?”
Sable struggled to speak through her sudden rage. “Mother Vesna claimed I was an imposter.”
Worried by the mania that pinched at her eyes, the General slid his glass to the end of the table and leaned forward.
But she was familiar with his every restraining action and turned on him further enraged, “I never accepted any title until I did so for Remy,” then back to Orson, “so it’s rather fucking rich they put a blade to my hands for their convictions.”
“And now that you have accepted the title of Queen Mother, what does Vesna say?”
Sable stopped breathing. When she resumed, she was removed and cool. “Vesna is dead.”
Orson smiled and looked pleased. “Despite the shackle, you managed to strike.”
Exhausted by the fast range of emotions, she dropped her head with guilt. “No. I went back.”
Before he could speak the harsh look on his face, Theo began to explain, “She went back to save—”
But Orson cut him short, “I can’t figure out if you want to kill her or defend her.”
“I did go back to save them,” Sable told the General, “but I took the axe for Vesna. There was no place in the whole of the world she could have hidden from me that night.” She turned again to Orson. “Vesna gave me plenty enough reasons to want to kill her before the shaming began, but once it started,” Sable rolled a growl in her throat with the memory, “she really put herself into it. She’d already done a slow carve on my hands, but because I wouldn’t offer them to the salt, she laid on the controller for the dozenth time until the shackle left me weak enough for the mothers to pry open my bloody fists. Vesna took pleasure in doing it first, but every last mother in the convent filled my hands with salt.”
Sable was quiet, swallowing fury. Trying to diminish the effects of her words, she assured, “After a few handfuls, I couldn’t feel it anymore. It no longer hurt. It was the nerve of it that infuriated me. And hearing Neither to give nor receive a hundred times is incredibly trying.” Sadness tempered her anger. “I couldn’t believe Mother Isabelle would do it. She was my only hope to stop the ceremony. I kept watching her approach in the line, hand full of salt, thinking she would bring her voice of reason to the affair, that she would intercede as she had always done, but she wouldn’t look at me, and when I realized she was going to bow to Vesna’s will, I couldn’t speak to even ask. Of all the mothers I didn’t want to find me at fault, it was Isabelle, so I fought harder to get off my knees, trying to push back from the altar, but there were far too many mothers pressed against me. For all the energy exerted, I managed only to get my hands into fists, and for a moment, I thought it was the pain of splitting open the cuts, the salt, and fresh blood that made me scream, but it was Vesna. Every time I could get my hands closed, I did, and every time Vesna laid on the controller with greater frenzy. Isabelle didn’t wait for the mothers to open my hands; she dumped the salt over the struggle, and when I had enough strength to look for her, she was hiding deep behind the initiates in the corner.
“After the mothers, the sisters circled through and we went through the whole cycle again: me refusing to accept guilt and Vesna going happy with the controller; me screaming and then someone dumping another handful of salt in my hands. I had my head on the altar trying to collect my wits when there was a break in the rhythm. I knew a sister was before me and I thought she planned to emulate the mothers and wait until she had my attention. The audacity,” Sable spoke through her teeth, “the pure nerve, it filled me with greater hate than I had managed for any of the mothers. I lifted my face expecting to see a future mother, someone ingratiating themselves to be accepted, but instead it was a nun on the verge of tears, and I heard the salt she held drop to the floor.”
Sable looked to the General and said with poignancy, “Amele.” She struggled with her voice to tell Orson, “I didn’t know her. She had trained in her youth somewhere else, but she said to me, ‘I came as your sister to welcome you home, not to hurt you.’ Vesna demanded she act in accordance with the clergy’s judgment and the bowl of salt was pressed at her, but s
he refused to take any. Then down the line of waiting sisters, salt started dropping to the floor in succession. Amele turned to beseech the remaining sisters to follow her lead, asking, ‘If she denies guilt, who are we finding at fault?’ and more salt dropped. I had the briefest glimpse of deliverance, but then Vesna demanded, ‘Quiet,’ and the mothers descended on Amele. I was terrified for her. I said, ‘Sister, just take the salt and give it to me,’ but she returned, ‘I believe you are innocent,’ and over us both the mothers were rumbling, ‘Obey.’ They had her surrounded, trying to force her to take the salt, bending her hand up to pour it into her palm, but she kept fighting to throw it off. I was begging, ‘Please, just take it and give it to me,’ but she was crying, ‘I cannot hurt you,’ and then to the watching sisters, ‘This is sacrilege,’ and all the while the mothers were commanding, but Amele wouldn’t yield. It was chaos that seemed unending until she threw them off and sank to the other side of the altar to grab the knife, meaning to lay it into her own hands in solidarity with me. I was horrified and said without thinking, ‘For the love of night, not yourself, stab Vesna.’ She rose fully dedicated to following my instructions, but the floors shook with the combined voices of the mothers dropping her to the ground, and with her they took all of the nearby sisters. I was swearing I had controlled her, but the mothers had heard and knew I hadn’t. She was damned. She was damned the moment she dropped the salt to offer me salvation, and I returned it by pitching her into the flames. They hauled her out of the assembly hall and then pressed the salt on the sisters down the line that had dropped it. Three more refused to take part, refused even though they knew the punishment would be severe. They too were being dragged from the hall. I warned Vesna, ‘If you hurt them, I swear upon the darkest night, I will kill you,’ but she was unconcerned, telling the row of sisters to continue.
Sister Sable (The Mad Queen Book 1) Page 27
