Page 15 of The Castle & the Cloister

“At least let the new prince be washed, then,” another attendant said. She cradled what Fia assumed was the child. Children? It was all a muddle. What, by Raea’s love and light, was Ariana evendoinghere? “Perhaps you could feed him yourself, if he was clean and sweet-smelling.”

“I won’t hold him. I won’t touch him,” Ariana answered imperiously. “Lyria will never stop punishing me for my faithlessness to her, and Iwon’t have her judgment fall on my son as well. But this one, at least, can’t come to further harm.”

A squat man with heavy jowls drew closer to the queen, and Ariana glanced a warning at him.

“Stillbirths happen, Majesty,” the man said, his voice even and reasonable. “You’ve suffered difficulties before, and birthing two children at once is always harder. Can you not be grateful the new prince survived and give the princess to me? You think well of the Priest—he’ll ensure what’s left of her is ushered out of the world in such a way that it honors our gods.”

The look the queen shot the man was venomous. Fia felt an echo of it at her core, for the same ferocity rose up in her when she thought of misfortune befalling Miriel. She’d never seen anything as pure and vicious as Ariana, who had once been a daughter of the stars and now, through some twist of bitter fate, had become this terrified, bloody queen who sat with arms wrapped around her dead child, refusing to give her over. It woke an answering fury in Fia, shot through with grief.

Ariana Inver fixed her eyes on Fia, and fathomless sorrow shone in her gaze.

To lose a child. And to lose a child like this, in a shuttered, smoky room, with unconsecrated blood staining every surface. It should not be so. Fia’s skin crawled just thinking of it.

The living child in the attendant’s arms—Honoria’s new prince—began to wail. As his thin, reedy cry echoed from the corners of the room, silent tears tracked down the queen’s face. And when all the attendants turned their attention to the babe, Ariana mouthed a single word to Fia, while the very look in her eyes was an act of supplication.

Please.

That word was Fia’s undoing.

Suddenly, Matria Dolenza’s insistence that she leave her own darling daughter behind and travel to court made terrible sense. The Matria had offered no explanation to Fia, just told her to pack her bag and be off, though there were any number of sorias who might have made the trip more conveniently. And now here was the true reason for her departure—this stricken queen, so devastatingly afraid and alone at the heart of the mountain. Fia had not thought Soria Aurelia recognized herfrom her service in Corrin after the battle summer. Or if so, she was certain the soria had been too busy to notice much about her when she’d tended the maimed and dying. Aurelia, evidently, had been watching. She recognized Fia upon her arrival at the cloister. And she recalled the small, bright friendship that had sparked between Fia and a young woman who had somehow become mistress of all Honoria.

This was no three-day matter. Fia understood it was not just a letter Matria Dolenza intended for her to deliver to the queen. It was Fia herself. Even the manner of service expected from her was clear.

Still unnoticed by anyone save Ariana, Fia seethed. She shut her eyes and thought of Miriel back home—yes, home, she would say it—and of how the oldest sorias would pass the baby back and forth between themselves, all trying to outdo each other for the sake of a smile from the tiny girl. When Miriel laughed, their faces split into a thousand delighted wrinkles. They never tired of her. Little Ortestra, they called her. Little sunrise, though Fia had named her daughter for the sea.

Even her birthing had been a matter of peace; a rite to Raea the blessed sun.

But Fia remembered, too, the words that had passed between herself and Matria Dolenza, when the hearing of her fidelity oath was postponed.

Is there no one else you care for? No one else for whom you want—what is it you said? Peace and security?

You’ll think me very hard-hearted, I’m sure. But no. To me there is no one else.

Not hard-hearted. Foolish, perhaps. Ignorant of the world. But those things can be remedied. A loveless heart cannot.

This was a test, then. Of the state of her heart—its openness and fitness for devotion to Bright Raea.

“It’s like a furnace in here,” Fia said briskly, stepping forward and adopting the tone Matria Dolenza used with uncooperative merchants. “Don’t you think Her Majesty and the new prince might want a breath of fresh air?”

“All Inver children are born by firelight,” one of the court ladies answered, sounding shocked and indignant as she finally took notice of Fia’s presence. She looked like one of the empty-headed songbirds that sang overloud in the cloister’s olive trees before dawn—all dressed ingarish yellow and green, with nodding feathers in her hair. “Who are you, anyway? What are you doing in here?”

“She’s one of Dolenza’s brood,” the thickset man at the queen’s side said dismissively. He was a physician, judging by his air of authority and the perfunctory way in which he felt for Ariana’s pulse. “Brought a letter or some such for Her Majesty. Well, will you give it to her and be on your way or not, girl?”

Fia bristled and hid her annoyance behind a sharp-edged smile.

“This Inver child’s been birthed already,” she said. “Do they live their entire lives by firelight as well, or are they ever allowed a glimpse of the sky?”

The physician scowled at Fia and reddened alarmingly as she crossed the room and threw back the curtains, only to find locked shutters behind them.

“The prince isn’t meant to see the sky until he’s been blessed by our Priest,” the physician croaked. “His Majesty doesn’t want the mistakes that were made with his firstborn to be repeated. From now on, his children will be inured from birth to the wiles of false goddesses.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about false goddesses,” Fia said, still brisk, still aggressively cheerful. “All I know is I’ve been sent up from Raea’s cloister to bring a blessing for the child and to offer my services to the queen for a few days. Consider it a gesture of goodwill, from one power of the land to another.”

An elderly, pinch-faced attendant with a severe profile and hair piled high on top of her head sniffed. “What service can you possibly offer that none of the court women are able to provide?”

“I’m the wet nurse you’re in want of,” Fia answered flatly, keeping her voice emotionless to hide the way her heart ached. “Matria Dolenza thought the queen might prefer me, until she and the prince have got to know each other.”

“Oh, thank the gods,” the attendant holding the babe said. “I don’t care where you’ve come from, so long as you’ll take the child and feed him.”