Page 37 of The Castle & the Cloister

“What does she say?” he asked the woman, speaking Honorian for courtesy’s sake.

“That there’s room for us in Vesper, and the Matria at Raea’s cloister can arrange passage.”

The old man’s eyes clouded over. “Vesper? It’s so far. And they’re atwar, with Honoria. How can we find safety in a place like that?”

“I know, Adda, but what other choice do we have?”

He shook his head. “Too far, Elora. How would we know when it’s time to go home?”

Swallowing back bitter words, Fia turned to her mule. She’d heard this a thousand times before from Corrinians seeking refuge at the cloister.They all held on to a vain hope that someday, Corrin would be secure again. None of them wanted to stray too far, for fear of missing their chance at a return.

Fia could not understand it herself. She’d shaken the dust of her birthplace off her heels with relief, and it would give her no sorrow to hear the entire village had burned to the ground. But she could not say as much to people in desperate straits. So she patted her mule’s warm withers and prepared to lead her on once more.

Before Fia could leave the Corrinian encampment, though, something about the lone traveler on the road caught her eye. She could see it was a woman—Caervallin, by her dress and her close-cropped hair. That was a rarity in Honoria, although not unheard of. But as Fia squinted, she recognized that hawkish profile, and the canny gleam in the Caervallin woman’s eye. She’d seen her only a day before, in the audience hall at the castle. Gwylen, she’d been called—a diplomat of some sort, emissary for the Caervallin king.

Suspicion pricked at Fia as she stood behind the shield of her sturdy mule and watched the ambassador dismount and duck into the roadside inn. Surely, Gwylen ought to be on the mountain preparing for the coming negotiations, not down here at a stopping place meant for tradesfolk and peddlers.

“That gray cloak,” Fia said, pointing to where the Corrinians had hung some of their washing over pine branches to dry. “Could I borrow it?”

The Corrinian woman’s eyes narrowed. “Twelve copper carvers and you can keep it.”

Fia pursed her lips. It was nonsense, the Honorian belief that all Corrinians and all those marked by Lyria were gentle and generous folk. If anything, necessity had taught them to drive a harder bargain than anyone else on the Hand. “Eight. I’ve barely got more than that, and I don’t have time for this.”

“Eleven,” the Corrinian woman said staunchly.

“Don’t make me say nine,” Fia warned. “We’ll settle at ten and you know it, so take your coins and give me the cloak.”

Satisfied, the woman brought Fia a patched and faded homespun garment, deep-pocketed and with a voluminous hood.

“I’ll give you another three pennies to watch my mule while I’macross the way, but that’s really all I’ve got,” Fia said, shaking out her coin purse for emphasis. She’d been given an allowance of travel alms by Matria Dolenza—an unexpected wealth to Fia, who’d seldom even held a coin before arriving at Raea’s cloister. Accepting her offer without a word, the Corrinian woman took the mule by its bridle and led it away to graze.

Pulling the cloak about herself, Fia hurried across the road. She covered up any sign of her unmistakable postulant’s kirtle, and drew the hood over her head. Just outside the inn door, she kicked off her shoes, rubbing her feet in the dust. She could at least pass for a pilgrim on her way to Raea’s cloister now, rather than one of Dolenza’s women.

Satisfied with her thin disguise, Fia pushed the inn door open and stood blinking on the threshold of its crowded public room. For a moment she thought she’d lost the ambassador—that Gwylen had gone up to a private meeting place on the second floor—but then she caught a glimpse of a shorn head at a table near the back.

Slowly, Fia skirted the room, keeping close to the walls, and scanning the seated patrons as if she was searching for someone else entirely. She’d only passed three tables when a prosperous-looking merchant in his middle age reached out and dropped a number of coins into her hands.

“For your journey, mother,” he said piously.

Fia pinned the merchant with a glare. “Do Ilooklike your mother?”

“What… no,” the merchant stammered. “Forgive me, I’m unused to seeing pilgrims so young.”

“Oh, is faith a province belonging entirely to the old, then?” Fia asked.

The merchant fumbled with his purse and pulled out two more silver coins, valuable enough that Fia had never seen their like before. “Of course not. My mistake, good sister.”

“I’m not your sister, either, but I thank you for your beneficence,” Fia told him, somewhat mollified by the sudden addition to her nonexistent personal finances. “May Blessed Raea smile upon you.”

“Thank you, good sister,” the merchant murmured, and Fia fought the urge to roll her eyes.

Several more patrons offered her alms, though she took them quickly and with less argument. At last, she reached the table just behind the ambassador’s seat and slipped onto an empty bench unnoticed.

Or so Fia thought. The moment she’d settled, Gwylen spoke.

“Don’t turn around, postulant. Stay just where you are—I want a word with you. Pretend to be praying, as you answer me. That pilgrim guise you chose is more useful than you knew.”

“What do you want?” Fia asked gracelessly, placing both hands over her heart in the posture of a petitioner. Prickles of discomfort were rising along the back of her neck. She’d thought herself the master of this encounter, and finding Gwylen had been aware of her all along—indeed, seemed to have sought her out—was unnerving.