Page 110 of The Castle & the Cloister

“Fiametta Raeana,” Dolenza said, reaching out and taking Fia’s hand in her own, earth-stained grip. “I can never hear your fidelity oath. But I would hear your ascendancy oath gladly, and train you up as my successor. From the moment you arrived at this cloister, heavy with your child and vicious in your advocacy for her, I’ve been considering your fitness for the role. Oh, you needed to be stretched a little—pushed into a less narrow frame of mind. But time after time, you have risen to the occasion, working peace in the face of daunting odds, and emerging with your faith and devotion to this cloister intact. Do you think I’m unaware that Orden Inver would have offered you my place, and that you meant to refuse? I can think of no one else I trust more to assume the mantle of Matria when I choose to step aside.”

Disbelief colored Fia’s words when she spoke. “Well-informed as you are, Matria, you must know all that I did in Inverlyn. Things no daughter of Raea ought to. I killed a man on a pagan altar, and a soria as well. I brought about the deaths of others, in how I maneuvered the Priest into power. I spoke on your behalf and committed you to an alliance you may find unwanted or distasteful. I cannot possibly serve as Raea’s hands and voice after your time is done.”

“I know all of this,” Dolenza said. “None of it comes as a surprise. But I know this too—while you and the Inver court were housed here, I was sent a bloodborne dream every night, as a warning. In it, I saw Honoria plunged into new war, and the people used up as fodder. I did not accept the future laid out in that dream, and refused your oath in the hope that you’d return to Inverlyn and forestall what I witnessed. You were not part of the dream, only someone I believed I could depend upon. Now here we stand, with a new regent and an infant king on the throne. You’ve guided our nation well and taught the Invers they needn’t only follow the strongest or most brutal among them—that they can viewcunning and caution as strength, and a child as the potential for a brighter future. That’s something no one’s managed in two hundred years.”

“I don’t think I did all that,” Fia said, glancing down at the bright pods in her half-full basket. “If you could have heard the way the Priest spoke at Justus’s coronation, and the way the court received it—they hate our goddesses. And they hate us too.”

“Does your Priest hate us?” Dolenza asked. “Does he hate our goddesses?”

“No. He even bears Silith’s mark. But he must play the part, and I worry he will forget it is a role only, and not who he truly is.”

“As he leads, so may his people follow, rather than the reverse. There is hope for Honoria now like we have not known in a very long time. And perhaps hope for Caervallion, too, with Ariana finally at rest.”

Fia frowned. “I don’t see why Ariana should have anything to do with Caervallion.”

And Dolenza laid out the entire heartbreaking truth as Fia listened numbly. How Ariana had been sworn to the role of cultellus and given the lives of Orden and Afon by the Beloved Three. How, in the strength and purity of her belief, she’d striven to preserve those lives rather than end them, only to finally give in and put down the Inver king she loved.

“Her story is one to weep over,” Dolenza said solemnly, replanting a small bean bush which Celina had inadvertently pulled up by the roots. “We had considered—the other daughters of the Three and I—going as far as to remove Ariana ourselves, in order to deal with the Hand’s unwanted kings. But to harm or hinder a cultellus brings terrible retribution from the goddesses. That trouble is at an end, though, and Afon can be removed from power at last. Gwylen will do it handily—she’s tried so often over the years and chafed at every failure.”

Fia bit down on the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. Dolenza had not spared herself in the telling of Ariana’s tale. She’d been frank about her own complicity—how she’d pushed Orden hard toward the possibility of seizing the cloister, in order to force Ariana’s hand. So reluctantly, Fia met the Matria’s honesty with forthrightness of her own.

“Ariana Inver is alive. The Priest and I spared her, and sent her down the mountain paths. I’m not certain anyone could tell you where she is now.”

For the briefest moment, Dolenza went ashen beneath her dusky skin. But her discomfiture was gone so quickly, it was as if Fia had imagined it.

“We will have a more difficult road to walk, then, in the coming days,” Dolenza said, “and I will need a strong successor by my side more than ever. Still, I will not force your assent. If you feel yourself unfit and refuse the role, we’ll find a place for you. You’ll be a soria in all but name, and part of our life here. But I want you as my intendant. I see no impediment to that.”

For a time, Fia and Dolenza were silent, working side by side. Between them, Celina discovered that the beans she pulled were good to eat, and had several of them in quick succession. Fia thought of the mountain, and of the Priest and Justus. If she was not there to guide their course, who might they become? She thought of the cloister, of her daughter and the sorias. If she gave up the role of Matria, who else might rise to it, and how might Miriel and the children of Raea be used by Dolenza’s successor? Would they be spent in the pursuit of peace as Ariana had been, viewed as acceptable sacrifices on the altars of the Beloved Three? She thought of Honoria, still embroiled in war, and Caervallion, tormented by Afon’s reign. She thought of Corrin, slowly falling to pieces. As she did, heat and light grew in her, and whether they were wrought of sunlight or of flame, she could not be sure. In the end, it did not matter. What mattered was how she used them.

“Yes, Matria,” Fia said suddenly. “I’ll make my ascendancy oath. But I warn you, my judgments will not always align with yours, and there are conditions to my acceptance. To begin with, half the cloister’s incaendium powder must go to Silas Inver for the Progenitors’ War. He won’t hold the throne without it if Gileta does not renew her ties and trade with the Invers, and he will need it as a threat to keep Afon in check, even if Song Royale does ally with us again.”

“I would not have chosen you to succeed me if you gave way to my will in all things,” Dolenza said with equanimity. “As for the incaendium, consider it done. It will not be the first time Raea’s house has taken sides in a war with the hope of ending it more swiftly or forestalling other conflict. Is there anything else?”

“Miriel.” Fia looked over at her little golden daughter, and her love for the child was a cloister of its own. Indomitable, unchanging, andbrilliant in its potency. That would never alter, no matter what other cares took root in Fia’s heart. In many ways, Dolenza had achieved her goal. She had widened the scope of Fia’s consideration and the number of her affections. But in this, she had failed. All that Fia did still proceeded from this one perfect font—the love she bore for Miriel, and her desire to see her daughter grow up in a better and brighter world.

“Promise me that for as long as you are Matria, you will keep Miriel set apart from any scheming and politicking. She must be untouchable, no matter who would seek to use her or how effective a tool she might be. I will not serve as your intendant otherwise, and I claim the same promise for Celina. Ariana’s children are as good as my own, and while the other two are beyond my influence, I will have this for my daughters. For Miriel Raeana and Celina Inver.”

“A fair bargain,” Dolenza conceded. “And no less than I asked for my own children and spouse when I made my ascendancy oath. I trust in time you will come to see every child under the cloister’s roof as yours, and sacrosanct, just as I’ve done.”

“Your children?” Fia asked in astonishment. “I’ve not heard a whisper of you having a family, Matria.”

Dolenza smiled in her placid, enigmatic way. “No. Only Aurelia knows of them, and now you. You choose to protect your dearest one by keeping her close. I choose to protect mine by keeping them far from the business of Raea’s house. I won’t deceive you, Fia—I plan to pass Raea’s mantle to you as soon as you can bear up under it. My family has been everlastingly patient over the years, but I should like to enjoy my grandchildren and our land while I’m still possessed of my full strength and wit. I’ve been on the watch for you for a long time.”

Celina tugged at the hem of Fia’s sleeve, wanting to be held. She lifted the girl and settled her as she issued a warning. “I’m entirely unschooled, Matria. It may take a decade for you to prepare me to assume your role. Someone with more learning would make a quicker successor.”

“It will take the time it takes,” Dolenza answered, unbothered. “I’ve accepted your terms without argument. Now let me hear your oath.”

“At once?” Fia asked in surprise. She gently warded off Celina’s reaching hand, as the small girl attempted to pat her face with fingers caked in earth.

“Yes. It needn’t be anything formal—this business is between you and I and our goddess. Swear to Raea that you’ll take my role when I’m gone, and work on behalf of peace, and that will be enough.”

So on her knees among the vegetable beds, with an Inver child in her arms, Fia became intendant of the greatest house of the Beloved Three.

“By Bright Raea, goddess of my mark,” she said, “I swear to learn what is necessary, and someday take the place of the sun’s servant, Dolenza Raeana. As the goddess’s voice and hands, I will be a steward of peace in Honoria and beyond. If I fail in my oath—”

Fia faltered. Her gaze caught on the children around her, growing strong and glad and clever in the rarefied atmosphere of Raea’s house. She ached for Justus, protected from his own conniving people only by the fragile threads of the Priest’s and Nikolau’s devotion. She imagined Ellimere, being raised as Ariana had been for a devotion so costly it could kill. She thought of the young Corrinians scattered across the Hand or left in their failing homeland, bereft of security or safety. She considered the child she herself had been, and the brutality of her earliest years.

Dolenza was both right and wrong. Fia did not need time to see every one of them as sacrosanct, and worthy of her fiercest defense.