Page 54 of The Castle & the Cloister

The Priest fell back and seated himself on a wickerwork chair beside the door. While she washed, Fia stole glances around the room, unable to help herself from taking an interest in how the Priest had fitted it out to suit his particular needs.

The walls were bare, but Fia’s feet sank into a thick sheepskin rug that took up most of the floor. A mélange of herbal scents filled the air, and a few bundles of drying plants hung from the stone ceiling above the set of drawers. Fia suspected if she was to open the compartments, she’d find more herbs and curios stuffed inside. A strange book sat on the stand beside the Priest’s bed—though Fia could not read, she recognized the title as being in Honorian, but had never seen anything like the raised pattern etched beneath the Honorian script. Near the foot of the bed, an unrecognizable contraption sat on a stand. It was an odd device of clockwork gears and slowly dripping water, with little bells suspended from the sides of a round, blank face.

“What is that book?” Fia asked. “The one with the strange symbols on its cover?”

“An herbal,” the Priest said. “Left behind by Silith’s daughters. It’s written in a mode that can be read by touch, as well as in the common way.”

“And that machine? The one with the bells?”

“A timekeeper. Another inheritance from the sorias. I found it in one of the cells, slightly damaged, and made a few repairs.”

Fia frowned. “How can you track time without the sun? They use a dial and shadows to mark the hours at Raea’s cloister, but it doesn’t help on a cloudy day. Before I arrived there, I hadn’t known you could do even that—in my village, there was no time marked besides tracing the passage of the Beloved Three in the sky.”

“This marks their passage, too, in a way,” the Priest said. “It must be set with the help of time told from a sundial, and after that, the water’sebb and flow keeps the hours. When each hour passes, the face revolves and a bell is struck—they’re all different in size and composition, so the hour can be told by their varying sounds.”

“Oh,” Fia said flatly, in a voice that clearly expressed her lack of understanding or interest in the precise mechanisms, but acceptance of their functionality. “But… however it works, it allows you to tell the time without seeing?”

“Yes.”

“Odd. As far as I know, the vigils Silith’s daughters kept would not have lasted long enough to require such things.”

The Priest nodded. “I’ve often wondered if they had a soria or even a Matria at some point, who lacked sight as I do. The pathways carved into the cavern floors were already here when I arrived.”

“A blind soria,” Fia said thoughtfully. “It could be. Or perhaps somehow, they knew you were coming.”

The idea was clearly not one which had occurred to the Priest before. Fia could see she’d caught him off-guard by the way he fell entirely still for a moment. But when he spoke again, it was as if she’d never managed to disturb him.

“May I ask you something?” the Priest said.

Fia looked down at her hands—she’d managed to rinse most of the blood away, but it had stayed on her skin long enough to leave a slight stain. When she’d left the Corrinian plains after tending the wounded and dying with Ariana, her hands had been stained for days. This shouldn’t last, though, not if she washed well.

“Do you have soap?” Fia crushed lavender into the water as she spoke, and the scent of it grounded her. “Only it can’t be made with lard, like most of what I’ve found on this mountain is.”

“Top-left drawer,” the Priest said.

Opening it, Fia found several rows of precisely cut goat’s milk soap, scented with paschalflower and illien spice. It seemed strange, to use something that smelled so strongly of the Priest in one of Raea’s rites, but there was no rule against it. Lathering her hands, Fia dipped them in the laver, taking care not to spill a single drop of pink-tinged water.

“Ask, then, if there’s something you’re wondering,” she said.

“You told me you haven’t made your fidelity oath yet.” The Priestshifted in his seat, that same slight frown of discomfort Fia had seen on him earlier returning. “Will what you did tonight prevent you from doing so?”

Fia let out a short, disbelieving sound as she dried her hands thoroughly. “Why should you care?”

“I shouldn’t,” the Priest said. “And yet I do.”

With memory of the sacrifice weighing heavy on her, Fia found herself unable to torment him over the answer. “Raea’s daughters are permitted to spill blood in order to save a life or to heal, and I think what I did falls under that allowance. Perhaps some would argue it doesn’t, but my Matria is a liberal interpreter of Raea’s strictures. I don’t think she would set herself against me in this.”

“Have you ever taken a life before?” the Priest asked.

Setting the linen towel aside, Fia lowered herself onto the edge of his bed. It seemed unbearably inviting, despite its customary inhabitant—she hadn’t slept more than three hours at a stretch since Miriel was born. In some ways, she’d grown used to the perpetual gritty eyes, the mental fog and heaviness of body. In others, it was all as agonizing as it had been in the first weeks after Miriel’s birth—as if she was slowly unraveling inside for want of sleep.

“I killed and gutted animals in the mountains. And I was at the aftermath of the battle summer in Corrin—Raea’s people put me to work in the convalescent tents, where I severed ruined or rotting limbs, mostly. Tonight was not unlike that, in practice.”

“But in spirit?”

Fia shrugged. “I’ve never avoided the difficult or the necessary for the sake of my own comfort.”

What she did not say was that she had threatened and hurt people before. She’d even killed, although not with a knife. Fia could not bring herself to speak of some of the things she’d done, and tried day after day to put out of her mind. It was a losing battle, but she had no intention of surrendering.