Heaven's Needle

by Liane Merciel

  “Then I’ll wait here for you,” the boy said, taking a blue-bound book from its shelf and settling onto a chair. “Good luck.”

  That earned a snort. She wasn’t the one who would need it.

  Thierras was, as advised, in his study. It was a bright and airy space, with quatrefoil windows overlooking the south gardens. Red and gold glass in the mullions threw sparks of color across the parquetry floor. The High Solaros was reading at his desk when Asharre came in without knocking, but he rose and inclined his head courteously. “Asharre. Sigrir. Light’s blessing upon you.”

  She didn’t return the greeting or the courtesy. They were alone, so there was no one to be shocked by her rudeness, but she wouldn’t have bothered feigning politeness if they’d been in front of the Midsummer dawn service at the Dome of the Sun. No doubt Thierras knew that, and had chosen to see her privately because of it. “Some boy said you wanted to see me.”

  “I did. I have a task I hoped you might consider.”

  “You don’t give me tasks. You gave Oralia tasks. I went with her.”

  “I am aware. I would not presume to order you. This is only … a request. A favor, if you will.” Thierras sat again, steepling his hands on the desk. The years had put a slight stoop in his shoulders, and his sandy hair was thinner and grayer than it had been when Asharre came to Cailan, but these things only added to his self-possessed dignity. His voice alone—patient, infinitely reasonable—could have calmed a battlefield.

  It had no effect on her. “Why should I do you a favor? You’ve done me none.”

  Thierras sighed. “Asharre. I share your grief. I will not trivialize it by asking you to simply move past it. Oralia was a bright soul, and her memory is not easily laid aside. But the needs of the living do not stop for our sorrows, and your talents are too valuable to let rust. You know this as well as I do.”

  Asharre didn’t answer. She’d kept in training, but only because it had been hammered into her so deeply that stopping would have been harder than maintaining the routine. It helped, a little, to work herself into exhaustion; then she didn’t have to think, didn’t have to remember. It held the memory of loss at bay. But she trained because it was a habit, not because she had any use for those skills. She stayed at the Dome, likewise, because it was habit, and because nothing had come to dislodge her from the simple inertia of grief.

  There was no place for her in the world. Not really. Not that she cared to find. The Celestians made space for her, letting her walk among the ghosts she hated but couldn’t let go. Leaving them—and she wasn’t sure which “them” she meant—would mean accepting herself as a solitary entity, and trying to make her way in the world that way, when all her life she’d been defined by her duties to another.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted that. She wasn’t sure she wanted a new charge either. Why, when she’d failed her last so badly?

  The High Solaros was undeterred by her silence. “You are sigrir,” he reminded her, as if she could have forgotten. His gaze lighted briefly on the blackened sigils that scarred her face from brow to chin in two vertical lines. “I know what that cost you.”

  “You know nothing of sigrir.”

  “I don’t know much, it’s true. But you might credit me with a little more than ‘nothing.’ I’ve read Gaodhar. Attentively.”

  “He was a summerlander.”

  “He was a scholar, and he married into the Skarlar. Your clan.”

  Asharre scowled, crossing her arms. “Giant’s Spear Skarlar, not Frosthold, and that before my grandfather’s day.”

  “Have the sigrir changed so much?”

  When she did not answer, Thierras sighed again and pressed on. “The point, if you will allow me one, is that I know it takes enormous dedication to become sigrir, and still more to bring a child safely from the White Seas to Cailan, particularly when you were a child yourself. It is a sin to waste such skill. You’ve had the winter to grieve. You may have the rest of your life to grieve, if you like, but I will not let you sit here idly while you do it.”

  “My ward is dead.” Her sister. The last of her family in this world.

  “There are others who need protection.”

  She did not unfold her arms. But she asked: “Who?”

  “I received a letter last week. The solaros in Carden Vale wishes to retire. He is an old man, and in poor health; it is past time I let him lay down his burdens. The town will need a new solaros. I’ve decided to assign two young Blessed to the post. Falcien and Evenna are ready for their annovair.”

  Asharre nodded. Oralia had been given a similar assignment after completing her training in Cailan. The Celestians believed that it was important for one blessed with the goddess’ power to serve a year or two as an ordinary solaros, learning the rhythms of village life and developing an understanding of the people they were meant to serve. The Knights of the Sun did not always serve the annovair—their gifts were often needed too urgently else-where—but all the Illuminers did, teaching and tending the commonfolk and learning from them in turn. The annovair strengthened the bond between the faith and the people. For most, it was a happy memory. Oralia had delighted in hers.

  Was that why he wanted her to take this assignment? For the memory of her sister’s happiness? Asharre narrowed her eyes, wondering, but Thierras’ face revealed nothing.

  “The mountain roads are wild and infested with bandits,” he continued. “I don’t anticipate serious trouble, but I would like my Blessed to reach Carden Vale safely. Heradion will escort them, but he is young himself. I’d feel more confident if you went as well. Would you be willing to accompany them?”

  Asharre did not answer quickly. She had grown tired of her ghosts, yes, but traveling with newly sworn Illuminers might reawaken them as easily as it put them to rest.

  What was the harm, though? It would not be an especially long journey, or a hard one. She could always leave if she wanted; she was not beholden to Thierras or his goddess. And there was nothing to hold her here. “I’ll go.”

  “Thank you,” said the High Solaros.

  Heradion was waiting by the great doors when she left the study. He followed her out wordlessly, warned into silence by the look on her face. Outside the Dome Asharre hesitated, unsure whether she wanted to go back to the gymnasium or into Cailan. The city was not hers, would never be home, but it was familiar and, at the moment, she wanted to be away from Celestians.

  “I knew her,” Heradion said, unexpectedly, as Asharre stood undecided on the street. The dying sunlight caught his hair, brightening it almost to the fiery copper of Oralia’s. “Your sister. Not very well, but we met a few times. She was years ahead of me, but the Burnt Knight was my hadriel and they were friends. It was a blessing to have known her.”

  That was more than she wanted to hear. “I need a drink,” Asharre muttered.

  “I know just the place.”

  THE WHITE HOUND, SHE HAD TO admit, was a good choice. Located near the city’s north-facing Sun Gate, it was far enough from the main road to avoid travelers’ dust and clamor, but close enough to draw their custom. The inn was two stories of whitewashed stone topped by glazed blue tile. Its window boxes were bare but for frosted dirt, but later in the year they would hold fragrant basil and mint.

  Asharre had stopped in a few times, but, as Blessed were forbidden wine or beer and she disliked being parted from her sister, it had been a year or more since she’d darkened its doorstep. “How did you know this place?” she asked as they approached.

  Heradion shrugged. He was not as young as she’d initially guessed. Closer to twenty than fifteen, if not a little older. “Rich friends.”

  She wasn’t in the mood to deal with a crowd. “Will they be here?”

  “Doubtful. We only come here to play cards, and it’s not Godsday.”

  Asharre snorted. “You play cards on Godsday?”

  “Best time to do it. All the pious people are at services, so there’s no one to look down their noses at you. I’
m not Blessed; I’m allowed my sins. And I must say, right now, a tall mug of Tarrybuck brown sounds like a good one.”

  “Agreed.”

  Only half the common room was full. This early in the year, few merchants were on the road, and farmers were busy turning the fields before spring planting. They had their choice of tables, so Asharre picked one that commanded a view of the door and set her chair’s back to the wall. It was a little chill so far from the fire, but the hearth was crowded and she had a good cloak. She tossed a silver shield to the nearest serving maid. Even at the White Hound’s prices, that would keep them in ale for the night.

  “Not the friendly sort, are you?” Heradion commented as he took the chair opposite. “Seems like the only way you could get a table farther from the crowd is if you carried it outside.”

  “I’m not in the mood for company.”

  “I hope that doesn’t last. I don’t love the sound of my own voice quite enough to want to listen to it all the way up to Carden Vale and back.”

  “I could gag you, if that would help.”

  “Ah, the lady has a sense of humor! I’d begun to wonder.”

  So had she. There’d been little room for laughter in her life before Oralia died, and none after. She had almost forgotten what it was like. The simple pleasure of a good ale shared with friends was not one Asharre had often enjoyed; she had no gift for words, much less the aimless chatter that summerlanders seemed to love. But Heradion had an easy manner, and a stock of stories from growing up with three troublemaking brothers on a farm, and he did not seem to mind that she said little herself. She drank and listened, and once in a while she laughed.

  Finally, Heradon pushed his empty cup aside. “Enough about me. Will you tell me a little of yourself?”

  Asharre shrugged, gazing into the last of the ale sloshing about in her chipped mug. She wasn’t drunk, but three tankards of Tarrybuck brown and the evening’s conversation had left her with a pleasant muzziness. “What do you want to know?”

  “What do you want to tell? I don’t mean to pry. It’s just that if we’re to travel together, it would be nice to know something about my companion. Beyond your formidable skills with a sword, of course.”

  “Not that formidable.”

  “You’re too modest. I’ve seen you in the yard. If I had a third of your talent, I’d hie myself off to Craghail and fight a Swordsday melee. Win myself a princess, a fortune, and the right to bore my listeners senseless with bragging until I was a graybeard.” He grinned. “Well, I have the last already, but it’d be a good deal more impressive if I’d won something first.”

  “They don’t give away princesses anymore.”

  “No? I suppose it’s back to hard work and humility then. Curses.”

  She grunted and finished her drink in silence. Then Heradion suggested: “Tell me about your scars. What do they mean?”

  Her first instinct was to refuse. The marks of a sigrir were not something to be discussed with summerlanders. She had never done so before. It was a fair request, though, and he was right: if she was to travel with these people, they should know something about her.

  Asharre traced her scars with a fingertip. “That I have bad luck.”

  “All scars mean that. Take this one here”—Heradion touched a crooked white line across the back of his wrist—“that was a spot of bad luck, thinking Merilee’s brother was joking when he said he’d cut my nose off if I tried to kiss her. Fortunately for me he was drunk and his aim was bad. I suspect your story’s more interesting than that.”

  She managed half a smile. “I had a different sort of bad luck. My mother had no brothers. She bore four daughters, but only one son. He died of fever when I was eight. My father was killed in a raid when I was twelve. After that … after that there was not much choice, really. Among the White Seas clans, women have little privilege. They cannot defend the family’s honor in feud, cannot hold property … cannot do many things. Someone had to negotiate my sister’s marriages, and there were no men left in the family. So I became sigrir.”

  “Siegrar?”

  She corrected his pronounciation, emphasizing the second syllable. “Sigrir. You have no word like it. ‘Honorable virgin’ might come close. Among the tribes it is an ancient custom, although one that is fading. I cut my hair, swore never to marry, and took the brand; then I was allowed the rights of a man. I was thirteen.”

  “That’s why you have those scars?”

  “That is why I have this one.” She touched the center sigil etched on her left cheek, just below the eye. The ridges were old and familiar under her finger; she had worn the mark for more than twenty years.

  “What about the rest of them?”

  “Those came later.” Asharre’s mug had gone empty. She leaned back in her chair. The happiness seemed to have drained out of the evening; a great weariness had settled in its stead. “Most sigrir take only the first oath. The clans do not feud as they once did. It is not necessary for most girls to fight, only to handle property and find good husbands for their sisters.”

  “What was different for you?”

  “Oralia … the youngest of my sisters was Blessed. By Celestia.” The smoke was stinging her eyes. Asharre rubbed it away irritably. “The Frosthold Skarlar live in the true north, close on the shores of the White Sea. We keep to the old ways. Split Pines Skarlar do not even have sigrir anymore; they have taken to summerlander customs, and are barely worthy of their clan name. In the true north it is different. We still have wildbloods and white ragers.

  “There is—there has always been a great enmity between wildbloods and the servants of your goddess. The wildbloods believe that there are only a few souls in the clan strong enough to join them. When such a child is called to Celestia as Blessed instead, that is a theft from our faith: a strong soul, one that should have belonged to the old spirits, leaves our people for a foreign temple—and, to the wildbloods’ way of thinking, is turned against them. For this reason they hate Celestians. I remember once, when I was very young, they took a solaros in a raid against a summerlander village. The warriors brought him back with them to die in the snow, far away from his goddess. All the children were called to watch.”

  It had been the first death she’d seen, and it remained one of the ugliest. They had broken his teeth and smashed his face into a slimy red pulp. Unable to scream, the priest had moaned instead: a hideous whistling sound that lasted long into the dark and echoed in her nightmares. In the morning he was silent, and the meat of his face was black with mosquitoes.

  An old memory. She put it away, as she had done a thousand times before. Heradion was still watching her, waiting for the end of the tale.

  “If she had stayed there—if what she was became known—Oralia would have ended like that priest. She had to go south. But I knew that it would not be easy, that many might try to stop us. So I learned to fight.” Her fingers traced three more sigils in a line down her right cheek. “Sword, spear, axe. This one, for reading the stars and the waters as dragonship guides do. This one, for tracking and trapping prey in the snow. So that we would not get lost on our way south, you understand, or starve as we traveled. For every man’s secret I wanted to learn, there was another scar to take.

  “I might have had more, but by then Oralia was losing control of her power. There was no one to train what she was. So we left. In time we came here, and she was able to become what her goddess wanted her to be.”

  “That is an extraordinary sacrifice,” Heradion said quietly.

  “It was a long time ago.” She shrugged. The preparation was the easy part; it was the journey that had been hard. And she’d failed in the end anyway. “I was sworn as sigrir already. There was no reason not to use the privileges of the oath, and no sacrifice in it.”

  “Some might disagree. All the same, it will be an honor to travel beside you. Although, I hope, we won’t have anything half that dramatic on the way to Carden Vale. A couple of cowardly bandits with sticks for swords m
ight do. Maybe an old toothless dog.”

  “No taste for adventure?”

  “Adventure’s the story you make up after the fact. You just get us there nice and boring, if you please. I’ll embroider on enough ‘adventures’ to make Rwen the Dragon-slayer blush … once we’re all safe back home.”

  4

  It was raining when Corban returned to Cailan: a late-summer downpour that washed over the streets and whipped the Windhurst River into a gray churn. The dockhands cursed the storm for making their work more difficult, but Corban was glad for it. As long as the rain went on, there would be fewer people in the streets, and fewer curious eyes to see where he took his blackfire crates.

  There were a few porters waiting by the wharves, their heads bowed against the weather. Corban flipped a silver shield to a big fellow whose eyes were dull under his dripping hood. It was a generous payment, just shy of extravagance, and it caught the porter’s attention at once.

  “Greensmoke Alley,” Corban told him, naming the crime-ridden warren where the city’s alchemists and apothecaries plied their trade. It was a dismal neighborhood. Few who could afford to live elsewhere wanted to stay near the odd sounds and odder smells that accompanied the alchemists’ work, and dark rumors abounded about kidnappers who stole people off the street to sell for necromancers’ experiments. Ridiculous as such stories were, they terrified the gullible.

  The porter either didn’t believe such things or was willing to brave them for the silver. He grunted in acknowledgment and hefted two of the blackfire crates waiting on the pier. Corban carried the third himself, cradling it close to his chest as he splashed through the crooked streets toward the safe house he’d chosen.