by Callie Bates
I’ve come instinctively to Elanna’s favorite place. The late-afternoon light slants, buttery and gold, through the white-framed windows; long shadows stretch over the palace lawns.
The greenhouse appears deserted; Guerin Jacquard, the royal botanist and Elanna’s old friend, does not emerge with his usual preoccupied air. So I sink down onto a stool beside the potting table. I feel as though a fist has been driven into my gut. I can’t stop seeing Teofila’s face, her silent scream. It was terrible enough knowing I’d failed Eren and Caeris. But it’s far worse knowing that I’ve failed her, too.
“Your Majesty?”
It’s a man’s diffident voice. I startle.
Someone is approaching through the plants; he evidently followed me into the greenhouse. “I do apologize for tracking you down like this,” he’s saying, “but it’s the perfect opportunity for us to talk.”
I rise, blinking away my preoccupation. “High Priest Granpier.”
“My lady.” Armael Granpier, the high priest of the temple to Aera, bows and straightens with a smile. He’s a small, twinkling, middle-aged man with thinning hair and robust good humor undiminished by the trials of the last months. The people elected him minister of religious affairs, and since the first refugee sorcerers began to arrive in Eren, he’s taken it upon himself to house and feed them at the temple. He dresses plainly in a robe of dark-blue broadcloth; the long white tunic beneath it and the narrow cloth fillet banding his head mark him as a priest.
I manage a smile in return. “You found me with remarkable alacrity.”
“Indeed, Your Majesty, as luck or the Good Goddess would have it! I had word that your retinue passed by and rushed up here.” He glances swiftly around the greenhouse. “It seems we are alone.”
“I’m glad you did.” I pause, unsure how to deliver my news, which may upset Granpier even more than the others on account of his work with the foreign sorcerers. “How are the refugees faring?”
“As it happens, that is why I’ve come to you. I wondered if you might accompany me to the temple.” He lowers his voice. “I find myself at a crisis point. Our accommodations are overflowing. Food has grown scarce. I will continue to take in all who come to me, but their quality of life is rapidly decreasing. As we both know…” He sighs. “This is not a topic that my fellow ministers find particularly moving.”
“I’m terribly sorry to hear it.” Though it’s nothing less than what I expected—the last time I was in Laon, Granpier warned me that he was running out of space. “I think you don’t give the other ministers enough credit. Juleane Brazeur and Lord Faure are keen to put the refugees to work.”
“That is, in fact, the other reason why I came.” He looks at me, serious. “Two refugees have come forward to volunteer on the front.”
Two sorcerers are willing to fight for us? I glance around the space Elanna once inhabited, swallowing back the hope that pulses in my throat. This could make the difference on the front. It could be what saves us from Tinan and Paladis.
“I’ll come with you,” I say. “Let’s go now. As it happens, I have some news for you, too.”
CHAPTER SIX
My back protests at the idea of getting into a carriage again, so Granpier and I walk the short distance to the temple, a retinue of palace guards trailing after us as dusk begins to settle over the city. While we walk, I tell him about the murdered refugee.
“You believe it a threat?” he says. “Not a murder out of fear and ignorance?”
“Perhaps both. But the farmer didn’t know anything about the dead man; none of the villagers seemed to. It was on land that belongs to the Rambauds.”
“The…” Granpier casts a surreptitious glance around the street. “My lady, I think it would be wise for us to wait and speak of this privately.”
I nod. His alarm is reassuring, in a way; obviously I didn’t make up the potential danger. I change the subject, projecting my voice just a little. “It’s a lovely evening, isn’t it?”
“That it is.” He positively beams. “Spring at last!”
It is lovely. The air holds a hopeful smell, and even in the lavender dusk, Laon’s wide avenues are brighter and cleaner than those of Barrody. The people, who aren’t accustomed to seeing queens tramp on foot through the city, take no notice of me or High Priest Granpier, but have great interest in the guards—all men, since I ordered my mountain women to rest. Girls flick their skirts at them, and lads call out, “How can I get a hat like that?” One of the guards self-consciously straightens his decorative helmet with its white-plumed crest.
Our route takes us toward the river; the temple lies at the heart of the city, not in the aristocratic neighborhood surrounding the palace. The streets narrow, and soon the domed roof emerges through the sea of sharply angled slate. Granpier, who’s kept up a comfortable chatter, tells me that the Paladisans built the temple during their brief rule, basing it on the great old buildings of Ida—and even going so far as to import marble from Vedelos. I suppose they thought a more beautiful edifice would assist with their conquest, but they pulled out of Eren before the temple was even finished, leaving their language and their gods behind, along with a fair number of colonists. This is why the Ereni language borrows so much from Idaean, Granpier tells me: centuries of rapport.
“Or blind subservience,” I suggest.
He chortles. “Perhaps. Yet I think the Paladisans had much to offer, in their way. Where would we be without their culture, their philosophers…”
“Largely Idaean,” I note; Ruadan educated me well in the frustrations of other conquered peoples.
It is a curious question, though. Eren and Caeris separated into different kingdoms centuries before the Paladisan conquest; and while Caeris clutched tight the old ways and beliefs, Eren was always leaning south toward Ida and the great cities on the Two Seas, incorporating language and beliefs even before the conquest. Maybe, in that way, the Ereni have been more forward thinking than we’ve ever been.
The temple is certainly a building of Paladisan splendor, its white walls glowing in the twilight, and its façade dominated by a massive colonnade, each pillar capital carved with leafy abandon. They never built the arcade that was supposed to dominate the square, but the area around the temple still has a certain pristine look, albeit filled with doves and pigeons who scatter as we walk. Two square wings emerge from either side of the temple’s central dome. Granpier gestures to one on the right-hand side.
“That wing has always been reserved for the poor or any who needed sanctuary. But now we’ve people sleeping in the main temple, and in the administrative rooms on the other side…The novices are trying to make the best of it, but you can tell it discomfits them.”
“A good learning experience?”
“Yes, certainly. Many of them are learning Idaean—and the true nature of charity.” He winks. “Come inside.”
A novice is standing in the vestibule, shifting from foot to foot; she’s obviously been waiting for High Priest Granpier, for she rushes up to him the moment we top the steps. Her red hair is bound back by a fillet, like Granpier’s, and she wears a simple cream-colored robe knotted at the waist with a length of green cloth. Tasseled wooden prayer beads hang from her left wrist. With her open, rounded face, she appears younger than I have ever felt. I still find the novices strange. In Caeris, a young man or woman might offer several years to a temple before marriage, but most of them still live at home and attend school or university at the same time. Priests and priestesses likewise live among the community; our town midwife at Cerid Aven also led ceremonies at the temple. But Granpier’s novices come to him after school, and some of them have taken vows like his, that wed them to the priesthood for life.
“We don’t have enough barley for supper,” the girl is saying, “and the carrots have run out, and Desmond says—”
“A moment, Felicité.” Granpi
er holds up a hand with a smile, and the girl whooshes out a breath. She must be about my own age, and even though I’ve been crowned for several months, it’s strange still when he gestures to me deferentially. “First, greet our guest: my friend Sophy Dunbarron.”
I’m so glad he didn’t call me the queen that I smile, too.
The girl blinks rapidly. She makes a sort of bow, and I nod back.
Granpier turns to me. “Many of our patrons have been unable to give money these last months, and some refuse now that we’re taking in the refugees.”
We enter the temple. I’ve only been here once before, at my coronation. The coffered dome seems to float overhead, an oculus shedding light into the room. There is a reflecting pool, mirroring in perfect stillness the simple statue of the goddess Aera—herself a Paladisan import, though they claim she’s like the Caerisian goddess Anu. The statue is another item the original builders ran out of money for; instead of marble and gilt, she’s carved of old, blackened wood. A blue cloak swaths her carven shoulders, a gift women in the city make for her every year.
“Go find Demetra and Ciril,” Granpier tells the novice. He gestures to the far side of the chamber. “As you see, quarters have grown so crowded that some are choosing to sleep out here.”
Looking past Aera, I notice them now. People sitting on bedrolls against the far wall, talking; parents crouched beside children, playing games with cards and dice. Several faces have lifted toward us, curious, but there’s a kind of hollowness to their eyes that tells the truth of what they’ve endured to get here.
A lump swells in my throat. My mother and I once took refuge in a temple, though only for one night, because not even temples were safe from the crown’s soldiers. It was a simple wooden building, and I remember falling asleep with the glow of candlelight washing the beatific face of the goddess Anu.
Granpier leads me over to the refugees. They regard us doubtfully.
I step forward, holding my hands open, as if this gesture of welcome can extend to all of them. It’s at moments like this that I feel like I’m playacting at being queen. Who am I to welcome these people to Eren, a land where one of their own has already been murdered by unknown hands? Yet now it’s more important than ever that I do greet them. Ruadan used to instruct me to say hello to everyone I met with as much genuine warmth as I could. People don’t ever remember the words you say, but they remember how you made them feel when you said them.
“I’m Sophy,” I say, first in Ereni and again in my fumbling, self-conscious Idaean. “Know that you are very welcome here. We intend to do everything we can to help you.”
Some of them still look confused and wary, though others nod guardedly. High Priest Granpier leans forward and says, in much better Idaean than mine, “This is Sophy, the queen of Eren. She’s been on the front and has only just returned to Laon, and this is one of the first places she came.”
A few faces soften at that, but not all. I suppose I wouldn’t trust so easily, either—especially if they have any idea their fellow refugees are being killed on Ereni lands. I twist my fingers together. I’m not going to tell them about the murdered sorcerer, not yet. “I’m sorry you’ve had to flee your homelands,” I tell them all. “I promise I am doing everything in my power to ensure you don’t still have to live in fear.”
A woman steps forward. She’s about Teofila’s age, dressed in a ragged gown that must once have been fine, and there’s pity in her eyes. She seems to see how young I am, how much I’m struggling. “We are making our home here, as best we can,” she says.
“Please,” I say to her, “tell me how you came to be here, if you’re willing.”
They exchange reluctant glances, but all the same the woman begins to speak. “We come from Omira. The provinces in the west of Paladis.” She tells a story of generations of her family hiding their magic, of an aunt carted off to the Ochuroma and a cousin drowned in his own backyard in a fit of local justice, when people blamed him for a bad harvest. She says it seemed like their family was cursed. But then they heard about the rebellion in Eren, and the Caveadear waking the land and declaring our nation a safe haven for sorcery. Her sister’s children were just growing into the first stirrings of magic. They thought they could bring the children to a place where they wouldn’t have to hide. Where they wouldn’t always have to fear death. Where they might at last shake their curse.
“So we bought a cart,” she says. “We left behind everything we couldn’t carry, except for the dog.” It lies snuggled against one of the children, watching me with bright eyes. “We walked all the way to Tinan, and across Tinan. And then we realized soldiers were patrolling the border—looking for people like us.” She glances back at her family. “A fisherman took pity on us. He said we could take his boat across the Ard, for a fee. So we gave him everything we had—the rings my mother had given me. My husband’s fine coat. The last of our food.”
Her daughter says, “There were almost too many of us for the boat—eleven people. My brothers and I had to swim behind. But we made it.”
“They walked all the way here,” High Priest Granpier says softly. “Almost starving.”
The refugee woman says robustly, “We could have drowned, like the people who have come to Eren across the Tarican Strait. The patrols could have found us. But none of that happened. We’re here, together. We have food at last. Blankets.” She gestures to the bedrolls. “But all our belongings are in Tinan. We do not speak Ereni. The Ereni don’t trust us. We don’t know where to go.”
I’m aware that the novice has joined us along with two new people, but I don’t turn to them quite yet.
“What did you do, in Omira?” I ask. “You must have skills we can use here.”
She nods. “I am a dyer. My brother and his son are carpenters.”
“We should find employment for you, then, and real beds. You’ve slept on the ground long enough.”
She smiles, but it tells me she doesn’t quite believe me.
I will find a solution—even if I have to take on my entire cabinet to do it. I nod at her with all the confidence I can muster. “Thank you for telling me your story.” I glance at everyone else. “I should like to hear all of your stories, and what your skills are, and how I can help you now that you are here. I am so glad you’ve come.”
High Priest Granpier coughs delicately, and I turn to him and the novice with the two new arrivals, a man and a woman. The man is older, with graying hair and a thick neck, a certainty about him, and the woman a few years older than me, perhaps thirty, her black hair gathered into a sleek knot. She stands quite still, her hands clasped before her, her long, capable fingers locked around each other.
“My lady, this is Ciril Thorley and Demetra Megades.”
They both incline their heads.
I offer them a smile. “I’m Sophy Dunbarron.”
“They both wish to volunteer their services at the front,” Granpier says in Ereni, and again in Idaean, then Tinani.
I look the two of them over, wondering if there’s any chance I can get my more traditionalist ministers to accept even one of them, much less both. Of course, the radicals will want me to recruit everyone, even the children, even the people who have been sleeping on the floor and crossed the strait in a rowboat. The traditionalist ministers will definitely find Ciril threatening, while Demetra is so tranquil looking they would probably not take her all that seriously.
“We are, of course, grateful that you want to help,” I say in Ereni, which Granpier translates into Idaean. “Though we would never demand it of anyone. Can you tell me what skills you have, and how you might help?”
Ciril nods. His hands, I notice, are also thick and square, corded with veins, and his nose has been broken more than once. There’s something about him that might unnerve even witch hunters. To my surprise, he answers me in accented Ereni. “I will make it rain on our enemie
s day and night. I will strike them down with lightning. Make them perish in floods.”
“You’re Tinani,” I say, my thoughts ticking. This fellow’s magic sounds similar to Elanna’s. If he can restrain himself from wantonly killing everyone in Tinan—his own people!—he might be able to use some of her same tactics on the front.
He inclines his head. “Yes, I come from Darchon.”
That’s Tinan’s capital, and our frequent trade probably explains how he knows Ereni. I study him, uncertain. I don’t know this man. Do I really dare to entrust him with the truth about Elanna’s capture, and the defense of our kingdom? “You would fight for us against your own people?”
He meets my gaze levelly. “I would fight for justice for people like me.”
I suppose that’s fair enough. I turn to Demetra. She’s tall, almost my height, with winged eyebrows and an aquiline nose, olive skin, and her shoulders are broad and capable. She wears an elegant striped gown, its skirts somewhat crumpled; a white cloth is draped absently over her arm. “And you?”
“I’m a midwife,” she says, tugging at the white cloth, and I sense tension underneath her placid exterior. “I come from Ida. I’ve healed many women and babies, though they did not know it. I thought if I can do so for women in childbirth, I could do the same for men at the front. I have three children of my own. I don’t wish to see them beaten down and forced to hide like me.”
She glances at the other refugees as she says it, as if willing them to step forward and declare their willingness to fight. But none of them do.
“We can certainly use your skills,” I say, trying to hide my disappointment. Of course a healer will be a tremendous asset, but she won’t be able to approximate El’s abilities. Which leaves Ciril, unless someone else comes forward.