by Sharon Shinn
Deana had never been anything but kind to Ellynor. She looked stern and ascetic, but she had a charming smile, and her natural expression was happy. All of the novices liked her.
Just a little magic. Just enough to clear the lungs, ease the breathing. Deana had been sick so long. Just enough magic to heal her.
Ellynor brushed her hands across Deana’s cheeks, across her shoulders, down her rib cage. Her fingers were hot; she felt the moonstone flaring against her wrist. All the candles in the room seemed to flicker, as if a shadow had passed over them, and then the room returned to its normal brightness.
Deana’s face loosened and her breath grew deeper. She stirred and turned on the mattress but did not wake.
Rosurie did, though, about an hour later. Ellynor had just leaned over her cousin’s bed to see if she could detect any change in her condition, when Rosurie opened her eyes. Ellynor watched Rosurie gather her thoughts, remember where she was, and take stock of how she felt.
“How long?” Rosurie asked.
“Six days.”
“Just past full moon,” Rosurie whispered.
Ellynor smiled. “Yes.”
“I think I’ll be strong again in a few more days. At the half moon.”
Split Moon Daughter. Like Shavell and Darris. Like the dedicants. Ellynor leaned forward and kissed Rosurie gently on the cheek. “I’ll be happy to see you improving.”
Happy because, when you are well again, I am leaving Lumanen Convent.
THE next day was both much better and much worse, because it brought Justin.
Ellynor had slept till noon, then, still yawning, joined Astira in the kitchen. After giving Astira the update on Rosurie, Ellynor said, “Sorry I haven’t been any help the past few days.”
“Well, it’s not like you weren’t helping somewhere!” Astira exclaimed. “Anyway, Semmie worked with me, so it’s not like I had to do it all myself. I even had a little free time.”
She said the last sentence so casually that Ellynor had to ask. “Free time to do what?” She knew, though. “See that boy? That guard?”
“Daken’s not a boy,” Astira said significantly, and then they both started giggling.
It felt so good to laugh, to smile, to spend a moment thinking about something other than her constant heavy burdens. But Astira’s news was not truly so lighthearted. “Astira!” Ellynor hissed. “Don’t do anything to get yourself in trouble. I don’t think—I don’t know that the Lestra will be lenient if the rules are broken.” She still hadn’t had the nerve to tell anyone about her midnight journey that had ended in death and conflagration. She was afraid the other novices wouldn’t believe her—or that they would think the Lestra had done the right thing. Her dreams, when she was able to sleep, were still haunted by flames and cries for mercy.
Astira was looking more sober. “I know. But how would she punish me? Would she banish me from the convent? Some days—some days I’m not so certain I would mind that.”
Ellynor glanced around, just to make sure no one was listening at the doors, but they were entirely alone. Still, they moved closer together at the great center table where they were standing, chopping bushels full of vegetables for the evening soup. “Do you think about leaving?” Ellynor asked in a low voice. “Going home?”
“I do,” Astira replied, just as quietly. “But I wonder. Does anyone leave the convent? Not since I’ve been here. Would the Lestra let me go?”
“Would she come after you if you left in secret?”
Astira nodded. “And what would she do to me then? I don’t think—I mean—perhaps I’d be confined to my room—I don’t think she would beat me. I don’t know. She wouldn’t—I mean—I don’t think it would be anything worse. I’m not a mystic. She wouldn’t burn me.”
Very carefully, Ellynor turned her head to give Astira a sideways stare. “The Lestra burns mystics?” she repeated. As if she didn’t know. But mostly just to hear it confirmed. Mostly to hear what Astira would say.
The other woman nodded. “That’s what Daken told me yesterday. She goes to their houses and sets them on fire. There was one place—a mansion in Nocklyn, I think—where she was invited to come. The lord had found a mystic on his property and he wanted the Lestra to take care of the old woman. They built a bonfire and burned her at the stake.”
Ellynor had to try twice to swallow. “And that is—what do you think of that? I admit I’m shocked.”
Astira looked undecided. Her dissatisfaction with convent life was warring with all the principles she’d learned during two years in Lumanen. “She was a mystic,” she said at last. “But that is a terrible way to die.”
Ellynor drew a breath as if to reply, but she didn’t have a chance. There was a quick knock on the back door, and a convent guard stuck his head in. “Packhorses here with a delivery,” he said shortly. “I brought them on back to unload.”
“Good,” Astira said briskly, laying aside her knife and a ball of lettuce and drying her hands on a towel. “We’re out of almost everything.”
She stepped outside, and Ellynor followed—and then came to an abrupt halt there in the winter-bare garden.
Justin. His back to her as he began unstrapping bags and bundles from his horse. Returning as he’d promised. Refusing to stay away.
She had never been so glad and so distressed to see anyone in her life.
THEY met outside shortly after midnight, just as they had before. This time she went running to him, her feet soundless and her body without a shadow as she raced past the garden, across the compound, and straight toward the barracks. He could not see her but he must have heard her, for he threw his arms open and took her in a ferocious hug when she flung herself at him from the darkness. She was crying; she could feel the sobs wracking her shoulders, and sense his immediate, intense concern. But she could not speak, she could not explain. She just clung to him and wept.
His arms around her body made her feel safer than she had felt in more than two weeks.
“Quiet, quiet, that’s right, tell me what’s wrong,” he whispered, kissing her cheek, pushing her hair back from her face. “I’m here, I’ll help you, whatever it is. It’s fine. It’s all right.”
Eventually she calmed enough to speak. By this time, he had pulled her down to the ground with him so that she was sitting on his lap with his arms around her waist. This was how she always seemed to end up in her encounters with Justin, she reflected.
Not so good. Not so good if she was going to be able to leave him behind.
“What happened?” he asked.
Her breath caught on a near hiccup but she refused to start crying again. Which tale to start with? “A couple of weeks ago. The Lestra asked me to accompany her and some of her soldiers. To help them find the way because I see so well at night.”
“Does she know why your night vision is so good?”
“She thinks I’m a Dark Moon Daughter. Someone who is strongest on the night of the new moon.”
He snorted. “I’d wager that’s true, but not for the reasons she thinks.”
“So I led them—where they wanted to go. But I didn’t know—I mean, I knew it was strange to make a trip like this in the middle of the night, but I thought—I hadn’t guessed—”
“You went to the house of a mystic,” he said. “And burned it down.”
She was so astonished that she lifted her head to stare at him. “How did you know?”
“I witnessed the soldiers doing just that a few weeks ago. I didn’t know Coralinda Gisseltess ever accompanied them when they went marauding, though. Must have been someone she especially disliked.”
Still wide-eyed, Ellynor shook her head. Justin had seen such a thing for himself and been able to endure it? Had he witnessed worse abuses in his life if this one left him so calm? “I think it was just some old woman living by herself in a cottage miles off the main road. I can’t imagine how the Lestra even found her, let alone came to hate her.”
“You have to leave the conv
ent,” Justin said.
She nodded. “I know.”
He took a moment to be pleased, but then wasted no more time. “You can go with us tomorrow. Slip out the gates before we leave in the morning and wait for us a few miles down the path. We’ll take you the rest of the way to Neft.”
She shook her head. “I can’t just yet. Rosurie—my cousin—oh, Justin, she’s had this religious fit of some kind. She’s been practically catatonic for days. Last night she finally woke up, and she talked a little, and she ate breakfast this morning, but I don’t feel easy leaving her. Maybe in a few more days.”
“Let’s make a plan,” he said. “You tell me when you think you’ll be ready to go, and I’ll be waiting for you. I can be right outside the convent gates if you want, or farther up the road if you think that’s safer.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t be close! Someone will see you.”
He gave her a careless grin. “I’ve spied on the convent before and no one noticed me. But we need to pick a spot. If I’m in hiding and you’re—” He made a gesture over her head. “Disguised—well, we might miss each other.”
They discussed landmarks along the forest trail, eventually agreeing on a particular bend of road near a major deadfall that they both remembered. “When?” Justin asked again.
Ellynor took a deep breath. She was afraid to do this, but she was more afraid not to. “In five days,” she said. “Five nights. I will leave around midnight. No one will realize I’m gone for at least six hours, maybe a whole day.”
“I’ll be there. But if by some chance I’m not—” He debated for a moment. “There’s a man in town named Faeber. He’s the magistrate. Runs the local guard. Keeps order, basically. I think you can trust him. So if something happens—if you leave the convent sooner than you plan, if for some reason I’m not at the rendezvous, if you get to Neft and you need help and I’m not around—go to him. You can usually find him at one of the taprooms, just talking to people.”
“What does he look like?”
“Somewhere between fifty and sixty. Not as bulky as me. Gray hair. Always looks like he just got up from sleeping in his clothes. Smart, though, if you get a chance to study his face.”
Justin had studied his face, Ellynor was positive about that. Justin made it a point to pay attention to everything, everyone, in his immediate vicinity. “Faeber,” she repeated. “I’ll remember.”
He was silent a moment, thinking. “Will you feel safe going back to Neft? Is there someplace you’d rather have me take you?”
Her heart broke—he does not want me to stay with him— at the same time that she felt incredible relief. She would not have to tell him, she would not have to explain to him, she would not have to try to push him away—
But he was still speaking. “I can’t leave Neft, not right now, not for more than a couple of days at a time. But in a few weeks, I will. I can come to you wherever you are—at your father’s house, if that’s where you want to go. Anywhere. I’ll come for you.”
Now she felt a different kind of pain in her heart— exhilaration, he loves me, and terror, he could die. She put a hand to his chest and looked up at his dear, stubborn face. “I’m not sure you can, Justin,” she said softly. “My family—they won’t accept you. I told you that before. They won’t accept any outsider. They would never let me be with you. They would find a way to prevent it.”
He peered at her in the darkness, instantly concerned. “They would hurt you if you tried?”
She shook her head. “They would hurt you.”
He laughed. Laughed. “Well, maybe. If enough of them came at me at once. But I’m pretty hard to subdue.”
“Justin, you don’t understand. I’ve been stupid—careless— I should never have encouraged you, I should never have let things go this far. I’m not free to love you, my family would never let me. I never meant to—but I haven’t been able to stop myself—and it’s been so sweet. So sweet. This time with you. But I can’t be with you, I can’t, not once I go back to my family. I’ll understand if you’re angry, if that means you don’t want to help me leave the convent after all. I don’t want you to think I’m using you, I don’t want you to be hurt. But I can’t put you in danger like this. I can’t keep seeing you. Justin, I’ll— you’ll die. If I don’t let you go.”
When he spoke, his voice was very quiet, and of all the things she’d thought he might respond to, he picked the one she had not meant to say. “You’re not free to love me,” he said. “But do you anyway?”
She stared at him helplessly in the dark. His jaw was set, his mouth pressed in an unyielding line. It was impossible not to realize, as she sat within the circle of his arms, how powerful he was. This was not a man who would run from a fight, who would—because she feared for him—give her up. This was not a man who had allowed himself to desire too many things. Those few possessions he owned, those few achievements he had attained, he had acquired because he had pursued them relentlessly.
To turn him away, she would have to lie.
She was not able to lie.
“I love you,” she whispered. “But it makes no difference.”
It did to him. He crushed her in his arms, kissed her with a hunger that left her bruised and breathless. Somehow she was neither afraid nor sorry. She kissed him back, wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, giving herself up to a fearful ecstasy. Nothing mattered except this man’s arms around her. Nothing and no one else in the world existed.
Oh great, oh kind, oh terrible Mother, if her brothers killed him—
Or if he killed one of her brothers—
She wrenched her mouth from him but did not try to scramble away, and they sat there a moment, both of them panting, staring at each other. “I can’t let this happen,” she said, an undertone of desperation in her voice. “Justin! You don’t understand, but this is too dangerous.”
“We’ll talk about it in five days,” he said. He might be breathless and strung with passion, but he was unperturbed by her dire warnings. “When you’re safe in Neft—or on the way to wherever you want to go. When we’re safer than we are here, at any rate.”
“Nothing will have changed by then,” she said, shaking her head. She unlocked his arms and rose reluctantly to her feet. With an athlete’s grace, he stood up beside her.
“Everything’s changed,” he said cheerfully. “You said you love me.” He kissed her quickly before she knew what he was intending. “I love you, Ellynor. Whatever you’re afraid of, I can handle. But I want you out of here first. One set of problems at a time.”
“There are too many problems,” she whispered, but he laughed.
“Maybe not,” he said. “It will be an interesting day when we tell each other our secrets.”
She wanted to talk more—she wanted him to leave right away—she put her hands on his arms and kissed him. Then kissed him again. Pulled back, walked a few steps away, went flying back into his arms. Three more kisses and then she really did leave. She was sure he would wait another ten minutes before going to the barracks, another fifteen, in case she changed her mind and returned.
But she couldn’t have even if she’d wanted to. She was only halfway back to the kitchen door when she saw a shape moving cautiously down the path. She had drawn a veil of darkness around her and so she was not particularly worried about being seen, but she stepped into the brown grass so that the man walking toward her wouldn’t collide with her invisible form. He was a convent soldier, solitary and secretive, and as he moved closer she recognized Daken, the young man Astira was sighing over. So perhaps there was more than one secret romance being conducted on this particular night.