Our Lady of the Islands

by Shannon Page

  The cell which had seemed so incommodious her first night there now felt quite comfortable — almost peaceful, even. Amazing what a difference the absence of torture made.

  Sian sat on her rough mattress and smiled ruefully at the thought.

  Exhausted after her ordeal, she had collapsed onto the thin mattress and lost consciousness almost as soon as they had dumped her back into the cell. It had taken her until well into the morning to recover her equilibrium and start thinking coherently again. Though her wounds were healed, her body and mind — her very spirit — was still carved with the memory of injury. She’d cringed each time she’d turned over in the night, anticipating pain that was no longer there. The fear, the helplessness at such wanton cruelty — these things would surely leave scars in places beyond the flesh. For a very long time.

  Beyond simple relief, Sian now felt no small amount of chagrin at herself for not thinking to mention her family connections sooner. She had never been the sort to think that way, but clearly she would do better to remember such advantages in the future, and to use them.

  All that mattered to her now, however, was knowing that Lod’s superiors would finally realize what a horrible mistake they had made, and …

  And what, exactly?

  Release her, with apologies and monetary reparations and an emerald brooch for her troubles? Perhaps a ride home in a golden dhow, with banner-men and criers proclaiming to the world how badly the Mishrah-Khote had blundered?

  Certainly not.

  The Mishrah-Khote would not want the ruling family, much less the general public, to learn that they had hastily tortured even a minor member of House Alkattha. How could they turn her loose now, even quietly, without fearing that Sian might announce their misstep wherever she chose?

  No, they would need to assure themselves, somehow, of her silence.

  Sian shivered in the dimly lit cell.

  Might these healing priests kill her to protect themselves? Or would they merely keep her locked up here forever? On some pretext of guilt, of course. As Lod himself had pointed out, the Mishrah-Khote could still very easily prosecute her for ‘spiritual fraud’ … never mind that her powers were real. In fact, far worse that they were.

  Was her guilty verdict inevitable then — because of their mistake?

  And how much did her family connections really matter anyway? Her cousin Escotte, the all-powerful Census Taker, had been friendly enough whenever they had met, but such encounters had been more and more infrequent as he had become more powerful. It had been several years since she had last seen him. Would he even notice if she vanished from the world? She had never even met the Factor, or seen him close up, except once, at the crowded reception following his installment as Factor two decades past now.

  Arouf, at least, would certainly raise an inquiry …

  Or would he?

  They had parted very badly. He had not come after her. He had been angry and frightened, and … quite clear in his disdain for these very family connections — as soon as they had seemed more liability than advantage to him and their business.

  Could nearly thirty years of marriage be worth so little?

  No. Surely he would calm down eventually and begin searching for her. Even if he no longer cared for her at all, they were legally and financially entangled. At the very least, he would require her to help settle up their business holdings, their property. Their home.

  Sian bit back tears at the thought of losing … everything. She did love Arouf. Yes, she did. But it struck her that her grief came most keenly when she thought of leaving her house.

  She lay back on the prickly mattress, trying not to surrender to despair.

  Morning crept toward early afternoon, and still no one came to feed her — or for any other reason — leaving her ever more certain that the reprieve she had so briefly assumed was not coming after all. And she was so hungry again. This power, god-given though it may be, certainly consumed an awful lot of energy.

  It was at least another hour before Sian at last heard footsteps outside her door. Food at last, she thought.

  There was a quiet jingle, and her cell door opened, revealing only one priest this time — a fellow she had never seen before. Save for the keys in his hand, however, he carried nothing.

  Sian rose to her feet. “No gruel, even? Am I ever to eat again?”

  The priest gave her an embarrassed look, then, oddly, stepped inside the small cell and closed the door behind him. He glanced around, perhaps searching for a place to sit, though there was only Sian’s mattress.

  He sighed and shook his head. “Domina Kattë, I am so very sorry.”

  Sian trembled with sudden fear. “What do you mean?” Was he here to quietly dispatch her? Was this how they were going to solve the problem she presented?

  “I mean … I just … You have been treated very poorly by us. Now, and in the past.” He glanced around again — reluctant to look her in the face, it seemed. “I … do not suppose that you remember me.”

  “I do not. Were you one of those who brought me here last night?”

  “No.” He looked abashed. “We met when you were just a girl. Your mother was ill … I was still in training when she came, with you, to the temple. Hers was the first Benevolent Healing ritual I had ever attended.”

  “Oh, well then perhaps you also recall that there was no ‘healing’ — benevolent or otherwise.” Sian was startled at her own sudden vehemence — the amount of pain such memories could still arouse in her. “We did all your foolish rituals and paid all that money, and she died anyway. Terribly.”

  “I know.” He had the grace, at least, to look very sad. “It was … I have never forgotten that experience. Or your grief that day. I felt … We failed you all so badly, and I couldn’t understand …” He fumbled into silence for a moment, then said, “It was that experience which awakened me. And broke me as well. My faith in our gods remains absolute. But since that awful day, my faith in the fallible men who intercede with them has been … much less so.”

  Sian glared him, still struggling with her anger. He was roughly her age; so, too young to have been one of the pompous old asses who had tended her mother. If he was in training … then it came to her. “The acolyte!”

  “Ah. You do remember.”

  “You were … kind to me.” Now it was her turn to look abashed as she recalled the awkward boy — hardly more than a child — who had tried to comfort her that day. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t recall your name.”

  “I am called Het now. Father Het.”

  “Well, thank you, Father Het.” Sian sat back down on the mattress, calming a bit, but not enough to offer him a seat beside her. “For your apology. Even now.”

  “We are not all so monstrous as you must believe. I have always wished there were some way to make amends for our failure with your mother.”

  “Well, if you are looking for some way to help me, I am awfully hungry — they’ve given me nothing since breakfast.”

  He looked pained. “I will see what I can do. Though, from what I’ve heard, your case is … complicated.”

  Sian snorted. “I imagine it is. I’ve been sitting here thinking about some of those very complications.” He seems a decent sort. How much more harm can it do me just to ask? “Are they going to kill me, do you think? Or just lock me up forever as a heretic?”

  “I am not in the innermost circles of power. Nor even those adjacent to them. But I can scarce believe that they would …” He fell silent and looked at the stone floor. “I do not know, Domina Kattë.”

  “An honest answer — from a priest.” Sian felt her heart fall. “Now there’s a miracle.” She studied him again. “You’ve been in the temple since boyhood, yet still achieved no rank? How long does it take to rise here?”

  “My path has not been smooth.” He gave her a rueful smile. “They tell me I am stubborn, and excessively inquisitive. I am slower than most to truly understand the mysteries of our gods, yes? B
ut, as my faith is pure, my superiors promise I will amount to something some day.”

  Is your faith pure? she wondered. “Will you be in trouble for speaking with me?”

  Het sighed. “Oh, very likely.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  He leaned back against the wall. “There is whispered talk of you throughout the temple, Domina. It is said that you are a heretic, and guilty of spiritual fraud.”

  “My healing power is real, you know.”

  “That is also being said.”

  “So, what do you think?”

  “I try not to think anything without gathering what evidence I can on which to base my judgments.” He gave her a wry smile. “One of the many failings that has slowed my rise to rank here, no doubt. I have simply come to offer a long-overdue apology, and to learn the truth. For myself rather than from others.”

  “I see.” She sighed. “How much more will it take to convince you all?” She got to her feet. “Have you some injury or affliction that requires healing, Father Het?”

  He looked startled.

  “Is that not what you’ve come for? Like all the others? Proof?”

  “Lady, I did not mean …” He shook his head, almost frantically. “I am fortunate to be in very fine health at present. I just —”

  “What sort of evidence am I to give you, then?” Sian asked. “Have you come here to examine my spiritual scholarship — my creed? If so, I might as well confess right now that I have none at all. I have always been a simple woman without any spiritual ambition. As I’ve been telling everyone I’ve met here, I never wanted this power. I do not want it now. Yet, somehow, my touch heals, Father Het. That is my apparent crime, and all the evidence I have to offer you.” She was so tired of explaining this. Of having to.

  “Well, I guess I do have … a bruise of sorts,” he said. “From stacking lumber near the refectory. The temple is in constant need of renovation. I often help with —”

  She waved him silent and beckoned him closer, wanting to have it done. “Show me.”

  Awkwardly, he lifted the hem of his robe to expose his shins, one of which was heavily abraded, stained dark purple and green across a patch of seven or eight inches.

  “A bruise of sorts?” she asked in grim amusement. “That must have hurt.”

  “A stack of timber fell. On me.”

  “Well then.” She bent and reached toward his leg. “May I?”

  He nodded.

  Sian barely registered the smell of ginger anymore. And after all she’d been through here, the dull ache that now throbbed through her own right shin seemed hardly worth notice either.

  A moment later, she took her hand from his leg, and stood up to find him staring down, open-mouthed, at his now all but unblemished shin. He looked up at her with an expression of intense dismay, stepping backward to lean against her cell door, as if the leg she had just healed could no longer be trusted to hold him up.

  “Are you well?” she asked.

  “It is as I feared,” he murmured.

  “That’s an odd sort of thanks.” She went back to sink onto her humble mattress. “Does my evidence displease you for some reason? Did you hope I was a fraud?”

  “No, my lady,” he replied. “My displeasure is not with you.” He gave her a searching look. “Please understand, my whole life has been defined by a deep desire to be of service to the gods. But with every passing year, I find myself in greater fear of what new crime we may commit against them next. In you — in this — I find all such fears confirmed. I am truly sorry, Domina. For all that you have suffered at our hands. For all you may yet suffer. Rest assured, I will beseech the gods on your behalf.” He turned to go, grappling the ring of keys back out of the pocket of his robe.

  “Wait!” Sian leapt to her feet. “What do you mean? What further suffering do you expect for me?”

  Het stood gazing at the keys in his hand. Finally, he bowed his head, his shoulders slumped, and he turned around to face her with a look of such exhausted resignation that she found herself wrestling with an urge to comfort him.

  “Domina Kattë, do you have any idea what a dilemma you pose for the Mishrah-Khote just now?”

  “Some,” she said. “They were careless enough to torture an old woman without first bothering to find out who she was related to. I’ve already realized how difficult it may be to keep that mistake a secret now.”

  Het shook his head. “That is the least part of it, my lady.”

  Sian arched an eyebrow. It got worse?

  “Our order has been losing power and prestige ever since we failed to support Alizar’s move to independence,” Het continued. “The gods we serve here have not chosen, for many centuries at least, to make themselves known so dramatically as some do now on the mainland. We are more and more dismissed here as a quaint sideshow, yes?” He issued a quiet humph that might have been grim laughter. “This problem has grown much worse for us since the Factor’s son fell ill. We healed him very handily at first. He was all but recovered when he suddenly relapsed, and worse. Now, we have no real idea what ails him, and nothing we can do has much effect, though none of us knows why.”

  “I have heard the rumors,” Sian said.

  Het sat down at last, on the grimy flagstones by the cell door, with his back against the wall. “I know you have ample cause to doubt us, my lady. But, truly, we are often quite able to heal even very serious afflictions. None of us can understand why that power has failed us so mysteriously with Konrad. Yet we are all badly tainted by the failure.”

  “Wait,” said Sian, as the realization hit her. “Might this not be the very reason I have been given such a gift just now? To save the Factor’s son?” She threw her hands up in frustration. “What am I doing here, like this, when I might have the power to —”

  “Power given you by whom?” Het interjected wearily.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps it really did come from the gods. Does that matter? I can do what I can do. Have I not proven that sufficiently?”

  “I misspoke,” Het said. “I doubt that such a power can have come from anywhere except the gods — whatever some of us might rather believe. But what I should have asked you was, through whom was this power given?”

  “The Butchered God’s …” Sian fell silent as the rest of the understanding dawned. “Are you priests really all so petty that you’d let the Factor’s son die just because the gift I bear has come sealed with someone else’s brand?”

  “Not all of us, no,” Het replied, looking miserable. “But I do suspect it would be very hard for those entrusted with the preservation of our order and its ancient legacy to send a woman, un-anointed and un-anointable by the Mishrah-Khote, to the Factor, ostensibly blessed with healing power by a god the temple has tacitly disavowed, through a fugitive priest we have publicly accused of fraud, to succeed at what all the Mishrah-Khote’s best healers have been unable to do.” He gazed up at her. “Surely, you can see as well as I, Domina, how many nails such an event would likely pound into our already closing coffin — all at once.”

  “So I am being kept here because I might be able to heal the Factor’s son?”

  “I … have no idea what will happen, my lady.” Het rose to his feet and pulled the door open without turning back to look at her. “I have lost all faith in my ability to predict what other men may do. Even my own brothers. And I have no power here in any case. I’m sorry, but I must go now. I will do my best to see that you get a meal, as soon as possible.” He pulled the door shut behind him. “And some more comfortable accommodation, if I can,” he called softly through the door as keys jingled once more in the lock.

  None of that will matter now, she thought, listening to the hasty pat of Het’s receding footsteps. Not if what you say is true.

  The light through Sian’s tiny window had begun to pink toward evening before she heard keys in the lock again. Her cell was quite dark, the hallway nearly as dim as her door swung open to reveal yet another monk �
� a bit more portly than the last. She hung back, wary, until she saw the tray of food he carried.

  “Finally!” Sian exclaimed, just holding herself from rushing to the door.

  “Sadly, none of this is for you,” the monk whispered, managing to close the door behind him with one foot as he entered. “Your food will be provided soon, though.”

  “Father Het?” Sian asked, trying to reconcile the voice she recognized with the plump figure she did not.

  “Keep your voice down,” he said, coming to set the tray down on her straw mattress. “In fact, don’t speak at all.” Before she could think of what to say to this, he straightened and lifted his robe to tug at something heavy underneath it. It took her another moment to recognize the second robe he’d wrapped around himself under his garments. “Put this on.” He held the robe out to her as it came free. “Pull the hood as far down as you can and still see where you’re going.”

  “Why? What is happening?”

  “Did you not hear the bells? It is the temple’s dinner hour. There’s no other time of day or night when everyone is likely to be more distracted.”

  “But … What are we doing?”

  “First, we are going down the hall together to serve the guard on duty his dinner.” Het rearranged something else he’d stashed under his robe. “Motuque is an old friend of mine. Let me do all the talking there. You have taken a vow of silence. Understand?”

  “No,” she said. “I mean, yes, but —”

  “Do you want to leave here?” he asked, sharply. “Or would you stay and throw yourself upon the mercy of our brotherhood?”

  She began fumbling into the heavy robe. “But why am I going to serve dinner to the guard, of all people?”

  “Because it’s the last thing he’d expect an escaping prisoner to do. When he and I have exchanged the usual pleasantries, and his meal has been eaten, you and I will head back to the refectory — or someplace very near it — with the empty tray. If all goes well, you’ll have been fed and gone for hours before anybody here thinks to check on Domina Kattë.”