Justicar Jhee and the Cursed Abbey

by Trevol Swift

  Jhee performed a few abeyances to some of the Lesser Makers then turned back to the main grotto. So many eyes upon her. She must make them proud. First of all, she must find some accommodation with Kanto. The situation as is could not stand. She hoped the nectar of Tranquility Bridge’s and the time off the boat would do Mirrei some good. That would be at least one pressure taken off her. This move to the capital had everything strained to the breaking, least of all her tenuous relationship with Kanto. She jingled a few geld coins before the drum-beating effigy of Futou, Maker of music and freshwater, then bounced a few off his signature drumhead.

  Jhee knelt before the shrine. She prayed to her ancestors and the spirit of Miramar, Mirrei’s mother. She placed her hand over the inner pocket where she kept her letter. So many remembrances: the last sight as Miramar and her daughter sailed away after their semi-reconciliation; Mirrei’s tale of her standing defiantly on the beach with their sinking home behind her; the final message Mirrei delivered to Jhee. “Protect and honor my daughter.”

  “I will old friend. I will.”

  Jhee thought of poor Mirrei so ill and tired all the time. Hopefully, some time on land and the abbey’s miraculous nectar would do the trick. The doctors had initially diagnosed it as Fresh Lung Sickness. What happened when those from the saltier Outer Reaches moved to water with less salinity. There was, however, something else wrong. This did not seem to be typical Fresh Lung Disease. She seemed to get worse the longer they sailed. Jhee performed the last of her devotions to Pascoe and Lashae for Mirrei’s health.

  The prioress led her towards a different aperture. At the back of the grotto was a defaced wall carving of Toril, the War Maker. The Toril which lent this isle its name. Most of the body had gone with only the implements left to identify it. Scourge, quoit, dented shield, broken sword.

  A strong gust of wind tore the door from Jhee’s grasp before she could close it after her. Jhee held onto her cloak and reached for the door. Just then, a lightning strike flashed. A silhouette wearing an elaborate mask embraced a naked, one-armed man from behind. Jhee pulled the door closed. She thought better of what she had seen and opened it again. Jhee raised an eyebrow. So much for the celibate life. She always assumed such a vow was much easier said than done.

  “Allow me.” The prioress tugged the door from Jhee’s grasp before she could object.

  “The abbess informed me of your rules against fraternization. They apply amongst the clergy, yes?”

  “We are a celibate order.”

  “Do you impose a penalty for breaking that vow?”

  The prioress eyed Jhee and stepped back. “The vow is to the Makers and one’s self. The one who breaks the vow has already shamed himself. Who are we to impose additional sanction? The only distinctions we make are fraternization and seduction. One who induces another to break their vows or one who uses their position of authority to tempt the laity. These carry harsh penalty. I do hope the Justicar is not worried for the virtue of herself or her cohort.”

  “When I was closing the door, I thought perhaps I saw lovers at play. A naked man and another figure locked in an embrace.”

  “The Justicar is tired.”

  Jhee went back out into the courtyard and examined where she had seen the figures. The wall appeared solid except for a carving of the sword and bridge. She hurried back to where the prioress waited.

  “The building across the way is a storeroom with a blind wall. You must have seen the cloister ghosts.”

  “Ghosts? Nonsense.”

  “You would not be the first.”

  “I prefer your original assessment. I am overtired and a little ill.”

  “As you have it.”

  “Please, have the tub for a mineral bath brought to my room as soon as possible.”

  Jhee needed to clear her head. She had inquiries to perform, and she had no time for nonsense such as ghosts. “I hope our use of the Zodiac Courtyard won’t cause too much disruption. Does that courtyard have the same layout as this?”

  The prioress stumbled. “That courtyard has been off-limits as of late. Why do you ask?”

  “The abbess said my cohort and I could use it for meditation and arcane study because it was under renovations.”

  “I see. If you have no truck with ghosts, I should think that would be the last place you’d dally with arcane forces.”

  “Because a young novice fell to his death there?”

  “The young novice died there during the first tremor. Even before that, there have been reports of strange voices, tiny footsteps, the laughter of children, music and whispering in the walls. No one goes there anymore except Mr. Anshu, the animal handler.”

  They emerged on a residential hallway more warmly lit with glow globes than anything Jhee had seen in this place thus far.

  “This is yours. We gave you the biggest, most comfortable rooms we could manage in the circumstances. No insult to your station.”

  “No insult taken.”

  4 The Feast I

  The Two Deaconesses

  Jhee collapsed in a chair, favoring the bridge of her nose. Her sinuses had now become stopped up. Ghosts. Stuff and nonsense. Shep removed her shoes and massaged her feet while Kanto brushed her hair. The rooms, though plain, had an antechamber and a tea nook with tea service. She eyed it, wishing for nothing more than a hot cup and her conch. She had nearly drifted to sleep when the mineral bath arrived.

  Dari whined from a small bed by the bookcase and writing desk as Jhee lowered herself into the tub. She reached over and gave her a reassuring pat. A little lamp and communication device supplemented the bare overhead glow lights. Kanto and Mirrei had already set up stools near the small window to work on their crafts. The bed while a decent size would not be comfortable for four.

  Jhee yawned. “This many people in a bed. It’s simply uncivilized.”

  She opened her eyes at the silence. Her spouses had fixed her with expressions fit to kill. She remembered the conditions they had to sleep under on the yacht. She hunkered down in the tub.

  “I’ll take the floor,” Shep said. “You all thrash about too much anyway.”

  He dug out their nightclothes and a bedroll.

  Jhee shook her head and yawned. “Evening robes, if you will. We’ve been invited to a hundred-year-feast in the main hall.”

  Kanto set down his lute and pushed Shep aside. “Let me. Why didn’t you tell us sooner? We could have been preparing.”

  “In the confusion, it slipped my mind. I must attend. The rest of you are free to refuse if you are not up to it. Bring me something more formal.”

  “Formal wear for ascetics?”

  “This cloister boasts the presence of Lady Bathsheba as a court official in residence.”

  “An Imperial tutor?” He touched his hand to his chin in thought. “No. No. No. Our most formal attire is with the rest of our things on the way to the capital. Our more formal attire buried in the luggage.”

  He whipped out the robe he and Mirrei had made. “Yes, yes. Dry enough. This will have to do. I’ll patch and clean it as best I can. We’ll do that. A former member of the court, attire should still be simpler. As befits a humble official such as yourself in setting such as this. Your breaking it in the other night, will only serve to make them seem more modest and humbler.”

  Jhee offered no input and let him and Mirrei work while she soaked as best she could in the tiny tub. Kanto and Mirrei splashed each other with water, depriving her of the blessed silence she craved. She pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “I made this sweet-smelling mint poultice to clear your head, denbe. I swear by it.”

  Mirrei knelt and presented her the poultice.

  “A fair sight she’d be meeting the vizier with that on her head, denye,” Kanto said.

  “Scrape barnacles.”

  “Lick glass.”

  “Enough. Both of you,” Jhee said. She regretted her sharp tone when Mirrei looked away abashed. Kanto gave Mirrei an accusing glan
ce.

  “Put it under a head wrap,” Shep said. “No one will even notice.”

  Jhee took the poultice and let her hand linger on Mirrei’s who smiled. Mirrei faced Kanto self-satisfied. He proceeded to do up Jhee’s head wrap and robe unbothered. He punctuated the finishing touches with a smug expression of his own. The feast felt more inviting all the time.

  The poultice did indeed make her head feel clearer. She reflected on what she had seen earlier. She slipped away to summon Bax via conch. Outside the rooms, she confided what she had seen.

  “One arm, but no blood, Justicar? Distressing indeed.”

  “It would not be a fresh injury. I’ve seen few enough monks here. A man missing an arm should not be too difficult to notice.”

  “Is your ladyship sure it’s not ghosts? The servants and the laity say evil forces are at work here.”

  “Likely of a much more mundane cause. Investigate the storeroom then contact me after the banquet.”

  Jhee joined Pyrmo and the senior clergy at the high table above the other clerics in the banquet hall. In accordance with sacred geometry, six hallways radiated off the principal, vaulted room. Two exits featured barred doors. The lesser clergy ate separated by gender at long tables and benches surrounding a central stage. A Professed read scripture aloud from the pulpit. Gallery boxes flanked the main eating floor. All save for one was empty. Two men in merchant dress, one younger, one older with a goatee, watched the performance unaccompanied.

  “Justicar, I hope you had time to reflect and refresh yourself,” Pyrmo said.

  No sign of her household whom she had left to quibble over what to wear and whether to attend. She intended only to stay long enough to meet the vizier and put her mind at ease about the recent deaths.

  “Again, Abbess, I must thank you for your hospitality. My household is a bit unsettled and may make their way here shortly. We have had a trying journey.” A quick glance at the table revealed nothing but clerics. The Lost Makers’ place at the table had a setting but no chair. Abbesses sometimes invited anyone who called the abbey home from highest deaconess to lowliest servant to fill the seat and to share the abbey’s inner workings with them. A custom, households such as her family, also followed when she was younger. “Will the vizier be dining with us tonight?”

  “She sends her regards. She has chosen to spend the evening convalescing from injuries received in the quake. She asks that I pass along an invitation for tea in her quarters after the banquet.”

  “I would be most honored.” As lovely as tea sounded, the invitation doused Jhee’s notions of a short evening. “I chanced a visit to your most impressive courtyard and shrine. Would that I could have seen it in full light of the sources.”

  “Bah, this weather,” Sister Serra, the traditional figured cleric to Jhee’s left, said. She drained the contents of her cup then thumped the cup on the table. “It stunts the plants. If we don’t get enough dry time and strong light soon, the Tranquility Blossoms won’t produce enough nectar for this season’s demand, let alone next.”

  A Prospective put a fresh pitcher of wine in a central location. Sister Serra reached for the pitcher only to have the gaunt cleric to Pyrmo’s right, Sister Elkanah, remove it.

  “Then perhaps you should partake less of it,” said Sister Elkanah. “Seminar attendance is down too. With all this disruption we are also not making enough from cafeteria and visitors’ fees to pay the upkeep on the reliquary.”

  “Or the greens houses,” Sister Serra added.

  The abbess took command of the pitcher and placed it in front of her, sloshing some on the table. Jhee considered the pinkish tinged elixir. Tranquility Bridge’s healing nectar wine: one of the reason’s she had been so keen to visit.

  “May I?”

  Jhee pointed her cup at the pitcher. The abbess filled Jhee’s cup herself. “Be my guest.”

  As wine connoisseurs past had instructed her, Jhee held the cup in front of her nose and swirled it to allow the bouquet to tease the palette before she drank. She tipped the cup to her lips. Delightfully sweet and flowery with the slightest peach tang. She made a satisfied sound. “The famed Golden Tranquility wine. I read of its refreshing and curative properties during my study of healing draughts. The descriptions do not do it justice.”

  The abbess winced. “And now the wine argument.”

  “Our Select blend,” Sister Serra said with pride. “Named after the golden span connecting this structure to the main isle.”

  “To give such flattery is almost as much of a sin, as to receive it,” Sister Elkanah said.

  “Netherwise, the Justicar is most welcome,” the abbess said.

  Jhee imagined her face bore a similar expression when the dispute over the poultice broke out.

  The fare they ate was a good deal more elaborate than Jhee would have expected of a cloistered order. A circumstance owed either to the occasion or Sister Serra’s evident joy and delight as an epicure. Rosemary mutton with roasted vegetables met everyone’s approval save Sister Elkanah. She eschewed more sumptuous dishes opting instead for boiled potatoes, scrod, and a bowl of thin leek soup.

  From what Jhee gathered, Sister Serra ran the farming operations. A horticulturist with a traditional figure, reddened cheeks, and bloodshot eyes, she laughed easily and frequently. While, the slimmer, more severe Sister Elkanah presided over the archives and reliquary. If the prioress’s look was one of permanent dissatisfaction, hers was its complement, somewhere between disinterest and disgust. Fresh scratches graced her wrists. She pulled down her sleeves at Jhee’s notice.

  “I question the need for this banquet anyway and its taste. Our founding coming as it does so near the anniversary of the massacre. No wonder the spirits are roiled,” Sister Elkanah said.

  “I should rather think it’s the Mist World in retrograde. The current trines of the moons with the fourth planet. The last time they were in this position was on the eve of the massacre. This configuration is known to unleash malevolent energies upon the worlds. More than enough to account for our recent tragedies,” Sister Serra said.

  “Speaking of tragedy... Abbess, about the arrangements for my pupil and I, might we change them to another courtyard? I heard a Prospective died in the courtyard you’ve been so gracious to lend us. His ghost may not be the only one which haunts this place.”

  “Someone’s already been telling you tales of our infamous cloister ghosts, have they?”

  “The prioress mentioned it after I saw a strange sight in the courtyard. I thought perhaps it might be some form of residual or echo. The spirits perhaps of the more recently dead. You’ve had more than your fair share of suffering both distant and not. I’m not the superstitious sort myself, but it may do well not to chance the whirlpool of fate by cyphering there.”

  “I’ll see what we can do.”

  A small choir took the pulpit to perform a religious hymn. After which, Sister Elkanah read a selection from Dallighere’s Descent to the Trench. The lower clergy and Professed alike sat fish-eyed and gape-mouthed from its elaborate depictions of the torments of the wicked on their way to the Irreparable Place.

  “Are you, also, a practitioner of the healing arts, Justicar?” Sister Serra asked.

  Jhee’s marriage cohort made their entrance dressed modestly. A Prospective showed them to gallery boxes nearest the high table without separating men from women; a courtesy of the abbess no doubt. They seated Mirrei first who curtsied then finger waved at Jhee. Kanto and Shep gave polite bows to the high table. Shep’s bow was perfunctory and straightforward. Kanto’s had an extra demure flourish. Their box faced that of the merchants.

  “A dabbler. It’s become an obsession of late. My wife has the real talent for it.”

  “Then we must give you a cask of Tranquility Gold for your journey, so you can have a proper sample for study.”

  “Much obliged, Sister Serra. I couldn’t accept such a gift, especially if, as you say, you may not have enough to meet demand.”
<
br />   “I insist.”

  Jhee licked her lips. If the fruits of her investigations or future study of the wine did not yield harvest, this made the stay worth it. Healing properties or no, sips of this guaranteed a more pleasant remainder to their journey. “Very well, then. Allow me to offer a gift in exchange. Consider my skills in jurisprudence and investigation at your disposal for the length of our stay. We’ll, also, pay the standard rental and materials fees along with a donation equivalent to the market value of say two casks to your repair fund.”

  The abbess’s eyes brightened, while the prioress and Sister Elkanah leaned in. It reminded her of feeding time at the aquarium.

  “Your patronage will be greatly appreciated. Saheli’s generous heart outmatched the abbey’s resources. She had instituted increased alms for the refugees. Unfortunately, we don’t have the resources to continue it.”

  “Thank you, Abbess.”

  “Nonsense,” Sister Serra said. “Have it with our compliments.”

  The prioress frowned. Jhee decided not to argue the point further here. She began a mental tally anyway and would check the market value of the casks later.