Page 33 of The Castle & the Cloister

“Better if we let them have Orden, perhaps,” the Priest said wryly, and Ariana let out a shaky, tear-choked laugh. “Just… anyone who wants him. Gileta. Gwylen. Afon. The Vesperins. What a lot of trouble we go to for a man neither of us likes.”

“I can’t,” Ariana said, and there was despair in the admission. “It isn’t in me to give him up. And you know we’re both alive because of him. You’d be dead in a moment if anything was to happen to Orden, and I—I owe him so much, yet he holds none of it over me.”

The Priest resumed his work, grinding the pestle down harder than was strictly necessary. He did not like to hear of Ariana’s obligation to his brother, whom he hated more than half the time and could not understand the rest.

“I know it’s pointless asking, and I’m sure you’ve already tried,” the Priest said. “But can’tyoustop Orden from pursuing this madness? Tell him you don’t want another war—he’d make a conquest of the sky and bring you Silith herself as a prisoner if you asked him to.”

“I’ve tried.” There was a hint, the faintest hint, of impatience in Ariana’s carefully modulated voice. “I’ve coaxed, I’ve cajoled, I’ve begged him on my knees. He only tells me it must be done, and someday I’ll understand.”

The baby let out a small, fractious noise, followed by a gusty sigh from the queen. The Priest heard a whisper of fabric, and then the prince feeding.

“Where’s the nurse?” he asked.

“Gone.” The Priest had never heard Ariana sound so bleak before. It must have been an appalling disappointment, to have the help of a soria and then lose it. “Despite what she said in the audience hall, she never meant to stay.”

“I’m sorry,” the Priest said again, helplessly.

“It’s not—” Ariana began, but the Priest raised a hand for silence, and she fell still at once.

“Someone’s coming.”

The queen began to intone a prayer to the hearth goddess, while the Priest continued his work with renewed focus. Before the new arrivals had reached the altar rise, he knew who it would be. The Priest recognized them by their rustle of silks and smell of strange incense. Even without that, there was the way the ghosts of Silith’s murdered daughters began to faintly chant a welcoming hymn.

“Imperatrice,” the Priest called out, getting to his feet as Gileta and her retinue approached the altars. “How good of you to honor the Inver gods with your presence.”

During the reign of Darias Inver, the Priest’s father, there’d been no alliance between Song Royale and Honoria—that had been Orden’s doing, within months of taking the throne. Orden had courted Gileta as assiduously as he might have wooed a bride, convincing her of his intent to rule in a different vein than his forebearers had done. No wonder, then, that Gileta radiated anger as she climbed the altar rise and approached the Priest.

“Silas,” Gileta said, coming to a halt before him. “Still alive in this den of vipers, I see.”

It always sent a shock through the Priest to hear her use his name. No Inver did, out of deference to his role. It seemed unbearably intimate, and Gileta, he suspected, knew it put him on edge, and took pleasure in doing so.

“Alive and well,” the Priest said with a bow of his head. “Has it occurred to you that perhaps my survival in a lair of serpents is the result of being one myself?”

Gileta let out a low laugh and took his face in her hand. The Priest stilled and did not resist as she turned his chin, presumably in order to search for some unknown quality, though what she was looking for the Priest could never guess.

“Not a viper,” Gileta said at last. “Not like the others. A salamander, perhaps. A creature born of fire and fit to survive it, but lacking a serpent’s venom and malice.”

“I’ve malice enough for the both of us,” the Priest said honestly. “And some left over, besides. Would you care to make a blood offering to our god of war?”

“Silith’s daughters have spilled enough blood before that altar to last until the world crumbles,” Gileta answered. “Though Caervallion would turn our goddess into no more than a facsimile of your heathen Tyrus, with his lust for battle and death. Do you know what I awakened to this morning,Priest?”

“Your attendants’ prayers for peace, and for Afon to rejoin the moon’s proper fold?” the Priest hazarded.

“A woman’s body, marked with the Caervallin bear, which someone dumped upon the doorstep of my guest chambers. No doubt to remind me of Afon’s barbarism. Not that Honoria lacks its share of that—is your child well this morning, Ariana? Enjoying his mother’s love, and her protection from the dangerous games of court?”

The Priest bridled. He did not like to hear Ariana bated. Never had done.

“I will thank you not to disturb the other worshipers in my sanctuary,” he warned Gileta, voice flat as he moved to Mortis’s altar to putaway the tools he’d been working with. “Orden defers to my judgment in all matters religious, and so I am able to permit you access to this cavern for your own rites. It would be a shame if I was forced to revoke that access.”

“So the salamander truly does have some venom,” Gileta said with an audible smile. “What could we make of you, Silas, were you more than a Priest?”

“A corpse,” the Priest said bluntly. “It is only my role and my brother’s protection that keeps me alive among my own people. Now, will you honor Silith, or not?”

With a gracious gesture, the Priest offered his altars to Gileta and her retinue. She swept past him, the air stirring with slight warmth and the lingering scent of incense as she and her followers scattered themselves across the rise. For a moment that seemed to stretch on forever, silence fell in the cavern sanctuary.

Silent worshipers.

Silent Priest.