Yesterday, he might have considered such a plan beyond even her, but in light of what Bereth had told him, he did not doubt it at all. R’shiel was not even her child. Which brought to mind another disturbing question. Whose child was she?
Tarja glanced back down the column wondering where Davydd and the others were. When they got to Lilyvale this evening, maybe he could invent an excuse to send the lieutenant on ahead. He had to warn Mahina that the instrument of her downfall was riding toward the Citadel while she unsuspectingly made plans for the future. He had to warn R’shiel that Joyhinia had traded her for the First Sister’s mantle.
And he had to find out why the Kariens wanted R’shiel so badly they were prepared to unseat the First Sister just to get their hands on her.
chapter 11
It was another week before Gwenell declared R’shiel was fit enough to return to her mother’s apartments. She was discharged with strict instructions regarding her diet, how much weight she was expected to gain, and the herbal infusions she was required to take daily to regain her strength. R’shiel grimaced when she saw the list. Gwenell was one of those physics who thought the worse something tasted, the better it was for you.
It was late in the morning, and Joyhinia was not home when R’shiel knocked on the door of her mother’s apartment. Old Hella opened it, pushed back a strand of wiry gray hair, and sighed mournfully when she saw R’shiel.
“Come in, then,” she said. “Your mother told me you’d be arrivin‘ today. It’s not as if I don’t have enough to do, without nursin’ an invalid.”
“I don’t like this any more than you do, Hella. I won’t be in the way.”
“Easy for you to say, girl,” the old woman grumbled. “I’ve already wasted a whole mornin‘ airin’ your room out. I’ve sent the wall hangin’s to be cleaned, so you’ll have to suffer the heathen creatures on the walls till they get back. I don’t know what your mother was thinkin‘, lettin’ you come here. It’s not as if I don’t have anythin‘ to do round here.”
Hella enjoyed being a martyr, a handy attribute when one worked for Joyhinia. R’shiel let her grumble on without interruption and carried her bag through to the room she had occupied as a child. She pushed open the door and looked around in astonishment.
The wall on her right glowed softly with the late morning Brightening, filling the room with gentle white light. Her bed, a large, carved four-poster, sat in the same position it always had against the wall. On the far wall, underneath the diamond-paned window beside the hearth, a matching dresser, polished to a soft gleam, stood unmoved from where it had always been. As long as she could remember, the wall on her left had been covered by a floor-to-ceiling tapestry depicting the stern countenance of Sister Param holding court with the first Quorum.
But now, the wooden frame where the tapestry had been nailed was empty, revealing the most astonishing scene R’shiel had ever seen.
A huge golden dragon, its wings outstretched, swooped down over a tall mountain range, where a white palace of impossible beauty sat perched high on the central peak. The wall was etched, yet smooth to the touch. The colors had not faded, despite the mural’s great age. It was as if the etchings were living images sealed behind glass. As she moved closer, the individual components of the illustration became clearer. What had at first seemed just a large landscape was filled with exquisite detail.
On the slopes of the mountain leading to the many-spired palace were figures of slender, naked, golden-skinned children, gamboling with small, wrinkled gray creatures amidst trees that seemed to have every individual leaf depicted in minute and loving detail. The closer she looked, the more complexity she discovered, the more the mural revealed. R’shiel thought with wonder that she could stand here for hours and still not take it all in. Were these the long dead Harshini? Were the tall graceful men leaning on the balconies and the black-eyed, elegant women the people of the lost race? Were the squat, ugly creatures supposed to be demons? She had expected them to be much more fearsome. She studied the dragon again, wondering how anyone could have conceived of such a creature, even in their imagination. A rider sat on the shoulders of the dragon, dressed in dark, velvety, skin-tight leathers, his dark red hair streaming out behind him, his expression rapturous. R’shiel smiled as she looked at him, thinking she would be wearing a similar expression if she had been riding such a glorious creature.
“Hope it don’t give you nightmares,” Hella said, pushing past R’shiel clutching fresh linen for the bed. The old woman looked at the mural for a moment and shuddered. “Damn, if that thing don’t give me the creeps.”
“It’s beautiful.”
All the years she had slept in this room she had never suspected the mural was there, although she had seen other etchings and other murals in more public places throughout the Citadel. Usually such artworks were painted over, but some of them had a surface that simply refused to take the whitewash. Those were covered with heavy, concealing tapestries. It was almost mandatory to accept a dare to sneak a look at the images of the forbidden Harshini depicted behind the tapestry in the Lesser Hall, which listed the virtues of the Sisterhood in dry, formal stitches. But she had never before seen a Harshini mural in the full light of day. Guilty glimpses of pale murals by torchlight were nothing compared to this.
“Beautiful?” Hella snorted. “It’s wicked! Look at those heathens! Not one of them is doing a lick of work. Just lollin‘ about naked or fornicatin’ like animals.”
R’shiel had to study the mural for quite a while before she discovered the couple Hella referred to, through one of the tall windows in the palace, locked in an explicit embrace that made her blush. She wondered how long Hella had studied the mural to find them.
“Well, I’ll try not to let it distract me,” she promised.
“See that they don’t,” Hella warned, tugging on the sheets to tuck them in. She finished making up the bed and straightened her back painfully. “There! Now you get yourself unpacked, and then we’ll be seein‘ about lunch. You look thin as a broom handle. I don’t know about young girls, these days. In my day, you took what food you was given and gladly. And you didn’t starve yourself till you looked like a refugee, neither.”
R’shiel wanted to tell Hella that she had done nothing of the kind, but there didn’t seem much point. As she left the room, still muttering about what it was like in her day, R’shiel crossed the room to the dresser and picked up the silver-backed hand-mirror that Joyhinia had given her on her twelfth birthday. It had never left this room. Such a gift was too valuable to leave lying around in the Dormitories, where girls of less noble breeding might be tempted. Or so Joyhinia had claimed.
She looked at her reflection, a little surprised at how thin her face was. Gwenell had prescribed a number of infusions to cleanse her liver, claiming her skin was yellowing, a sure sign that her liver was not functioning properly, and no doubt the reason for her inexplicable aversion to meat. R’shiel couldn’t see it herself, but one did not argue with Gwenell and hope to win on matters relating to the human body. The black circles under her eyes had faded a little, but her violet eyes seemed darker than normal, almost indigo. It was no doubt a sign of her failing kidneys, she thought grumpily. Or perhaps a sign of irregular bowels. R’shiel was heartily sick of the whole topic of her health. She actually felt better than she had in months. Her headaches had vanished, her appetite had returned, and everything seemed clearer, sharper than it had before. The prospect of spending another four weeks until Founders’ Day, recuperating under the watchful eye of her mother and Hella, was extremely depressing.
“R’shiel!”
She sighed at the sound of her mother’s voice and placed the mirror carefully on the dresser. No doubt Joyhinia had returned to the apartment for lunch. That she might have come home to check on her daughter, to assure herself she was well, did not occur to R’shiel, anymore that it would have occurred to Joyhinia.
Now that she was home for every meal and her mother was no
longer compelled to set aside time for her daughter, dinnertime in Joyhinia’s apartment became an informal meeting of her cronies. Hella was given the evenings off, and R’shiel served her mother’s guests, as befitted her status as a Probate, albeit a temporarily inactive one. The most frequent guest was Jacomina, who would sit in silence and listen to Joyhinia list her endless complaints regarding Mahina’s mismanagement of the Sisterhood and Joyhinia’s plans to correct things, once she was First Sister. Much of Joyhinia’s rhetoric sounded as if she were rehearsing for a public forum.
One evening, soon after R’shiel arrived, Harith joined the small gathering. She appeared uncomfortable to begin with, gulping down her first glass of wine with indecent haste. Joyhinia wisely kept the conversation on mundane, everyday things all through the main course and dessert. Not until the women took their wine and moved to the armchairs around the fire, did Harith finally seem sufficiently at ease to discuss the reason for her visit.
“As you know, I’ve little patience with your schemes normally, Joyhinia,” she began, staring into the flames to avoid meeting the other woman’s eyes. Joyhinia and Jacomina remained silent. R’shiel cleared the table as quietly as possible, afraid that the clattering of dishes would draw attention to her presence. For once, this looked like being interesting, and she did not want to be banished to her room. “But this time, I fear you may be right.”
Joyhinia nodded solemnly. “My first care has always been for Medalon, Harith.”
“Perhaps,” Harith remarked, rather more skeptically than Joyhinia would have liked. “But as you know, Sister Suelen, the First Sister’s Secretary, is my niece. She brought something to my attention that I find disturbing.”
“Much of Mahina’s administration is disturbing,” Joyhinia agreed. “Exactly what has she done that causes you concern?”
Harith took another gulp of her wine. “I think Mahina is planning to declare war on Karien.”
Joyhinia looked astonished, although R’shiel suspected she was acting for Harith’s sake. “I believe Mahina capable of many things, but I doubt she would deliberately provoke an armed conflict with an enemy so much stronger than us.”
“Jenga has had several meetings with Mahina in the past few weeks,” Harith told them. “One of which included that sly little bastard Garet Warner and your son, who, I might add, has not been seen in the Citadel for weeks. Rumor has it he is in the north already.”
Joyhinia leaned back in her chair and rested her chin on steepled fingers.
“R’shiel!”
“Mother?” she replied, startled to be included in the conversation.
“Did Tarja say where he was going when he visited you in the Infirmary?”
The question surprised her. Was Joyhinia keeping tabs on her? “He said he was doing a survey of the northern border villages for Commandant Warner.”
Harith nodded with satisfaction. “There! What did I tell you!”
“That hardly proves she’s planning to start a war, Harith.” Joyhinia was enjoying this rare chance to be the voice of moderation.
“No? Then why has she got detailed plans, costs, even troop numbers and plans for a civilian militia, sitting on her desk?”
From where R’shiel stood, gently stacking the dishes on the small cart, ready for their return to the kitchen, her mother looked to her like a hawk about to swoop down on an unsuspecting rabbit. “Are you certain of this, Harith?”
“I’ve seen them myself. She plans to create a civil militia to bolster the Defenders and move a good half of the troops to the northern border.”
“King Jasnoff will take that as an act of war,” Jacomina pointed out with alarm.
“Perhaps Mahina already knows that.” Joyhinia looked at the two women closely, gauging their mood. “I have just learned that Lord Pieter is on his way back to the Citadel. King Jasnoff of Karien is unhappy with the upsurge of heathen cults, and these demon-child rumors refuse to go away. Mahina’s lenient attitude toward the heathens is just as dangerous as her plans for war.”
“Who would have thought a mouse like Mahina would turn out to be a warmonger?” Jacomina smirked. Both Joyhinia and Harith looked at the Mistress of Enlightenment in annoyance.
“She has to be stopped. If she continues on this course, she will destroy Medalon.”
“I wholeheartedly agree, Harith, but such a course of action could be considered treason, if not handled correctly.”
Harith’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Mahina must be impeached. Legally, openly, and without any doubt that the Quorum is in full agreement. If not, the Defenders will refuse to swear allegiance to the new First Sister. Mahina would be quite within her rights to have us hanged as traitors.” Joyhinia seemed to be deliberately trying to frighten her cohorts. Maybe she wanted to be sure now, before this moved from discussion to action, that her coconspirators would see this through to the bitter end.
“Then we need Francil,” Harith said.
“Francil will never agree,” Jacomina scoffed.
“She will if you give her what she wants. Everyone has their price, even Francil.”
“So what is her price?” Harith asked.
Joyhinia shrugged, smiling coldly. “I have no idea, Harith, but believe me, I intend to find out.”
As Founders’ Day drew nearer and with it the start of winter, the frequency of tense and furtive meetings in the apartment increased. Blue-robed sisters came and went, often looking up and down the hall nervously before they entered to ensure they were not observed. Joyhinia displayed a disturbing lack of trust in her daughter, so R’shiel was excluded from the discussions. But she overheard enough to know that her mother was planning to denounce Mahina at the annual Gathering following the Founders’ Day Parade, with the aide of the Karien Envoy.
R’shiel wanted no part in the plot. As Mistress of Enlightenment, the First Sister had educated hundreds of Novices, Probates, and Cadets – R’shiel and Tarja included. Mahina was a popular figure, particularly among the Defenders. She had championed the cause for Cadets to receive an education equivalent to that of Probates.
Torn between loyalty to her mother and her affection for Mahina, R’shiel didn’t know what to do. Short of going to Mahina and warning her personally, she could think of no way to foil her mother’s plans – and even that notion proved a futile hope. Joyhinia was well aware of R’shiel’s sympathy for Mahina’s policies and had obviously taken precautions. Hella seemed to be under orders to ensure that she remained cut off from the outside world and watched her like a fox sitting outside a chicken coop. Junee and Kilene were turned away when they came to visit. There was no way of getting to the First Sister, no way of warning her. Even a note would be subject to Suelen’s scrutiny. R’shiel fretted over her helplessness. It burned in her gut like a bad meal.
In spite of Joyhinia’s schemes, R’shiel recovered her strength quickly, gained a little weight, although not nearly as much as Sister Gwenell would have liked, and began to feel almost like her old self again.
Almost. Some things were not quite the same. For one thing, she had grown even taller, as if her menses had triggered one final growth spurt. She had always been tall for her age, but now she could look many of the Defenders in the eye. Joyhinia did not seem to notice, although she only came up to her daughter’s chin. R’shiel wondered if her height came from her father. Jenga was a big man, and she guessed she was as tall as he was now. She had not had another bleeding, but Gwenell did not seem concerned about it. These things took time to settle into a cycle, the physic had assured her when she came to visit under Hella’s watchful eye. R’shiel fervently hoped her next cycle would not be as spectacular as the first.
Strangely, her skin had retained the golden cast it had acquired during her illness, despite the herbal infusions. Gwenell was far more worried about it than R’shiel was. She felt fine and did not think, as Gwenell grimly forecast, that her liver was in imminent danger of collapse. However, she drank the b
itter herbal tea each day to avoid a well-meaning lecture, if nothing else.
As Founders’ Day drew nearer, R’shiel became aware of something else that she could not even explain to herself, let alone Sister Gwenell. It happened the first time when she was sitting by the fire, waiting for Joyhinia to come home. She had dozed off in the warmth of the room, which was stuffy and overheated. Hella had come in, fussing about something or other. R’shiel opened her eyes and glanced at the old woman, startled to discover a faint shimmering light surrounding her, fractured with pale red lines and swirling with dark colors. She blinked in surprise and the vision disappeared, but she had seen it again, on odd occasions, about other people. She could not explain it or control it and was quite certain that if she mentioned it, Gwenell would produce another evil-smelling concoction to cure her of the spells.
But even more disturbing was something so intangible that she wondered if, like the auras she imagined around people, she was just inventing it. It had begun as a gentle tugging that caught her unawares as she was about to fall asleep one evening to the muted voices of Joyhinia and Harith plotting the downfall of Mahina in the other room. It was a feeling that someone or something was waiting for her, calling to her. A feeling that there was something just out of her reach and that if only she embraced it, it would make her complete.
The notion had grown steadily stronger in the past few weeks, until R’shiel had to consciously force herself to ignore it. It made no sense. Finally, R’shiel decided that it must be the result of her inability to prevent Joyhinia’s coup. Mahina may not be ruling Medalon the way Joyhinia liked, but she did not deserve to be unseated for it. Harith was, perhaps, genuinely concerned, but Joyhinia’s power grab was entirely selfish. Jacomina simply followed along in her mother’s wake. Francil, whom R’shiel had always considered the least corruptible member of the Quorum, had sold out for the promise of immortality.
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