Page 71 of The Castle & the Cloister

The Priest shifted, hesitating. “I am afraid I only know one of their songs. I’m unsure of the words, or the appropriateness for the occasion.”

“Raea will understand,” Fia said, powerfully curious to hear which song he knew.

But when he began, she realized she should have guessed. The Priest hummed, in a mellow, easy baritone, and within four notes it was apparent that he offered to Raea the Silithien hymn for the dead.

Gileta and Gwylen exchanged a charged look, their attention on the altar and those before it growing electric. Fia did not like to have them inspecting the Priest as though he was a knot for them to unsnarl or a difficult riddle to be solved, and so she stubbornly joined her voice to his, humming the melodious counterpoint to his eerie hymn, the Raean canticle for a new day. When they’d finished, the Priest stepped back in surprise.

“I didn’t know there was a melody that fit together with that. It sounds less unnerving here, and with a second voice.”

“There’s a third part as well,” Gileta said. “Most of our songs are made for three singers. But the two of you do nicely as a pair.”

“They do,” Gwylen said slyly. “I think they might accomplish great things together, if given the opportunity.”

“Now you make your petition,” Fia told the Priest, choosing not to bite at Gwylen’s broad hints. “In silence, or aloud, whichever you prefer.”

For a moment, his head lowered and his lips moved, though she could not make out his words. Then the Priest turned to Gileta and Gwylen.

“My ladies. Just what service is it you have in mind for Raea’s postulant and I?”

Gwylen watched the Priest, but Gileta kept her eyes locked on Fia as she spoke in her lilting Song cadence. “I wish to commission the Priest to kill his brother, and for the postulant to keep Ariana from interfering while it happens. Afterward, Silas may take the Inver throne.”

When the Priest answered, his reply was not at all what Fia expected. Rather than stiffening, he seemed to grow easier. “I see. Do you believe yourself the first to ask me to undertake such a thing?”

Gileta shrugged. “Of course not. But others would have sought your assistance out of a desire for their own advancement, to lay their own claim on Honoria’s throne. I offer that throne to you as a blood price. All I seek is your brother’s death—nothing else.”

“Fascinating. And what exactly would Fia stand to gain from all this?”

For the life of her, Fia could not read the Priest’s true response to Gileta’s suggestion. His shield of cynicism and dry wit was impenetrable in present company.

“I’m sure I could prevail upon Dolenza to offer a soria’s role—” Gileta began, but the Matria’s imperious voice rang through the chapel.

“You certainly could not. It may be Silith’s favorite hour for scheming, but I’ll thank her followers not to do so in the sanctuary of the sun.”

Dolenza swept across the chapel, resplendent in her disapproval, immaculate in her Matria’s garb.

“Imperatrice,” she said with icy courtesy. “I believe your retinue has already left my cloister. If you tarry much longer, you will lose your goddess’s light on the road. Ambassador, your king has become enamored of my newest soria, Beatrice. I’ll thank you to stay by his side and ensure mydaughters remain untouched by your sovereign. Should he lay the barest finger on them, I will hold you personally accountable for it.”

Fia watched without surprise as the two moon-marked women melted away, taking their leave with murmured words and smiles cast backward at herself and the Priest.

“Think on my offer,” Gileta said. “I make it in earnest, and what you might carry out would be a great service to the Hand.”

Dolenza dismissed them both with a haughty flick of her wrist. If Fia had thought it was unsettling to be caught in Gileta and Gwylen’s company, it was far more so to find herself skewered by Dolenza’s gaze, while standing before Raea’s altar in company with the Invers’ Priest and the Invers’ heir.

“Silas,” Dolenza said at last. “Raea has appreciated your attentions since arriving here. She accepts this latest gift in the spirit with which it was offered. I would speak to my postulant alone now.”

Beneath and behind the altar, Fia felt something singular. The Priest reached out and traced a finger across her palm, the gesture a question all but spoken aloud.

You’re all right? You’ll face no reprimand because of me?

“It was my pleasure to guide your worship, Priest,” Fia said with bland neutrality that she suspected he would parse rightly.All right. Unsure. Please go. “I bid you goodnight.”

With a nod of acceptance, the Priest departed. Fia could not help the way her gaze trailed after him, or how it pricked her a little to see him walking through the midnight cloister alone.

“Fia,” Dolenza said with unexpected warmth. “I’ve hardly laid eyes on you since your return. But I’ve been kept busy with our guests, as I expect you’ve been with Miriel.”

The postulant said nothing, because she didn’t trust herself to speak. Her sunny, even-tempered daughter was proving every bit as stubborn as Fia herself, refusing to let go of the unprecedented and deep-seated dislike she’d taken to her own mother. Miriel clung to the sorias, or to a Corrinian girl called Maya, and if Fia so much as drew close to her, the golden-curled baby set to shrieking her displeasure, growing red-faced with a potent combination of fear and outrage. The sorias tried everything theycould think of—bribing Miriel with sweet morsels of fruit, or favorite toys, or having Fia do the same. Nothing made a difference.

So Fia bit her tongue, knowing if she spoke to Dolenza, all her words would come out sharp and accusing. She knew, too, that it was senseless to blame a child or a Matria or a goddess for Miriel’s querulous rejection of her, yet shewantedto blame someone. It might lessen the hurt of her homecoming a little, to turn her ire outward rather than inward.