The Well of Prayers

by Anne Boles Levy

  And this was worse—so much worse. I thought of the shopkeeper again, so convinced he’d been fixed up and made right, thanks to some nonsensical hocus-pocus, waving his arm like new. Maybe he had been cured, and maybe, like many, he’d be back in a few days, complaining of aches and swelling all over again and wondering what he’d done to deserve Nihil’s ire this time.

  Would I ever be able to rip the Temple out of our lives? Or cram any sense into Amaniel?

  But what good did it do to argue? She had her mind fixed on this. I wouldn’t dissuade her by yelling at her.

  “Well, isn’t that grand,” I said. “Don’t hex anyone.”

  Amaniel scoffed. “That’s such an obscene waste of Nihil’s theurgy.”

  “And what isn’t? Look, what do you know about that warehouse where they keep all our contraband? The items the soldiers seized?”

  A wide, wild-animal look on Amaniel’s face told me she likely knew even less than I did. “They kept it all? All that stupid, useless stuff? I’d have thought they’d burned it.”

  “Me too. They’re calling people to accounts for it all. Hanging people.” I pointed to a wisp of smoke on the horizon. The pyres were dying out for the day and didn’t seem like much any longer. I’d hoped she could imagine it being much, much worse. “See?”

  “That’s the price for perfidy, Hadara, as well you know. Nihil sows doubt and reaps …”

  “What about your needlework? They have it locked up somewhere. Didn’t the high priest himself tell you it was a graven image?”

  I cherished the shocked look on Amaniel’s face, but her reaction turned weirdly sour. She scowled and turned away. “I’m hardly in the same category as those people. You should hear some of the things I’ve learned about.”

  “Then you know about all this?”

  She shrugged. “A little. The Azwan says it’s his sacred duty to go over our contraband, item by item. I just didn’t think he meant it literally.”

  “Oh, like he could’ve meant it metaphorically? Honestly, Amaniel.” But I had a sudden hope. “Then you can work on changing Reyhim’s mind, while I get Babba to close the warehouse or something.”

  “Not if Nihil lives a million years,” she said. “We aren’t worthy to intervene with the Azwans. And no, that doesn’t mean I like it. It’s just … just that …”

  “It’s just that you want to join the people who kill people because they don’t like a few pictures?”

  “Stop, Hadara. Stop. I … I need to think.” Amaniel chewed her lower lip and glanced back at the horizon. “The convicted are getting a proper funeral, at least. They’ll go back to the Soul’s Forge if it’s really that bad. Won’t they?”

  The Soul’s Forge. Where the unworthy went for reclamation, or whatever myth was current.

  I gaped. Not one word came from my open mouth. What words could even exist? My sister was absolutely fine with the idea of a pyre burning for much of the day.

  She shook her head, pursing her lips. “Oh! You. You! Are making me doubt. Stop that! You’re not supposed to have these doubts either; you’d promised Babba and everyone else who’d listen.”

  She had me on that one. “Alright! I’ll stop doubting.” For now, I told myself. I needed to get out of here, I needed to change the topic, I needed to forget much of today had happened.

  “Anyway, I have something very certain and factual and truthful to show you,” I said. “But we have to get it past the guards. Are you going to turn me in and send me to a pyre?”

  Her eyes rested on my text, still tucked under my arm.

  “Why do you have that?” she asked. “It looks very big and impressive. Is it from the Customs House? Did a merchant bring it? Babba must’ve loaned it to you. Why you? Is it poetry? I love poetry, too, you know. And it wouldn’t get you sent to the pyre, unless it was heretical. That was a joke, right?”

  Her words came rapid-fire, as if she were trying to assess the danger aloud, until she ended dismissively: “Besides, I know you, you don’t care about religion enough to be heretical.”

  “Shh … it’s anatomy,” I countered. “From Leba Mara. It’s completely sanctified, but maybe not the sort of thing the guards might appreciate.” I glanced up toward the many sentries and wondered if I should sneak it up my dress. That would likely only spark more attention, not less. “I’ll show you once we’re on the other side of the gate. It’s beautiful, it’s … I can’t describe it. Anyway, there couldn’t be anything in that warehouse worth dying for, understand? This is all about that precious Reyhim of yours wanting to show everyone he’s the big boss.”

  She didn’t—couldn’t—know Reyhim might also be her grandfather. That was another secret I had to keep, this one under Mami’s orders.

  Amaniel frowned. “What if I told the Azwan you said that?”

  “You’re horrid, you know that? You’re going to help me with Reyhim, and you’re going to help me get this book past the guards so I can show it to you.”

  “Why should I? And why are you bossing me about?”

  My breathing got all raggedy, and I rubbed sweaty palms on my work smock, which I’d forgotten to remove. I was taking too much out on Amaniel, and it was backfiring. Why should she help me? She had nothing to gain from helping me sneak a possibly naughty book past the Temple’s humorless enforcers. Once again, I hit up against the stubborn reality that her ambition to be a priestess was a normal one to have; my opposition, however well-intended, would only ever be seen as misguided, at least by most people, including our parents. I sighed.

  “I’ve only ever wanted to be useful,” I said at last. It was true. “And you’ve only ever wanted to be the best. Can’t you trust me this one time?”

  “I’ve always trusted you.”

  I blinked. “Really?”

  “Yes. You do always want to help people. It’s going to be your downfall, I think. It’s why you go out into those Nihil-forsaken swamps. Or used to. And I think you’re going to make the best healer our city’s ever seen, if you don’t get yourself arrested. So, alright, I’ll help. And I cannot wait to see what’s in your book, even if it’s not poetry.”

  Amaniel accepted the challenge with a smirk and slid her arm into the crook of my elbow, as if that would somehow hide my bulky cargo. “There’s a way through. By the gates there’s that one guard.”

  I looked toward the gates and shrugged. “What one?”

  “The half-human one,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”

  Half … human?

  That couldn’t be. There’d been only one. I’d called him a half-brow, a slur, like calling him some sort of mongrel between human and Feroxi. The man who belonged to that term was dead of a Gek poison, which he’d gotten while in the swamps trying to protect me. I turned, time itself slowing while my eyes honed in on the target, his helmet gleaming above the crowds jamming through the Ward gates. He was just a bit shorter than the other guards, the helmet peaking just a little less in front, the skin on his arms bronze instead of pale.

  “How can that be?” I breathed.

  I gripped Amaniel’s shoulder, suddenly unsure of my knees. The whole courtyard spun. How was he alive?

  One of the Azwans had told me he was dead. Valeo’s comrades had confirmed it. He was dead.

  But he wasn’t dead. He was standing there, grim-faced, at the gate.

  Not in a shroud on a pyre in flames. Not ashes scattered to the winds. Not a distant memory of a man who’d said we couldn’t have been friends in any case, and then agreed we were.

  Who had lied?

  4

  This isn’t love,

  It’s a hard, gray rain,

  On a broken, brown land;

  Everything bright is dark today.

  This isn’t love,

  It’s a long campaign,

  And a bitter last stand;

  Everything won is lost today.

  This isn’t love

  It’s a slow, dull pain

  With no
healing at hand

  Any good feeling has bled away.

  —from “This isn’t love,” a popular song

  Valeo was as broad and massive and imposing as I remembered. Every pore on my body seemed to come alive at once, as if the air raced through every part of me and I were a sieve, full of holes through which the wind could blow, feeling every speck of dust, every jot of moisture, nerves on fire, prickling with a mix of joy and terror and pure fury.

  I wheeled on Amaniel.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” I shouted. So much for trust and helpfulness and all that. “You kept this from me.”

  “Kept what from you? That some big, thick-skulled guard was standing there, like all the other big, thick-skulled guards?”

  “That he’s alive! Valeo’s alive!”

  Amaniel held a hand to her eyes and peered over at him from across the courtyard. “Why, yes, he is that. So you remembered he has a name besides ‘half-brow’?”

  “You! This. I don’t. Oh!” I was so angry, I couldn’t speak. There was room only for rage. “You have no idea, do you?”

  She shot me a quizzical look. “Well, now I guess I have an idea. But it’s you who never told me—your sister! You had feelings for him. I tell you everything.”

  That was true. I’d kept one secret too many, perhaps. I shook my head and my anger, at least toward Amaniel, dissolved. “I’m sorry. I’ve missed him so much.”

  “Well, there he is,” she said, nodding in his direction. “Just don’t forget to hide your book …”

  But I didn’t hear her. I was off. My lungs struggled to keep pace with my feet as I took off without even thinking of what I was doing, where I was going. I tugged Amaniel behind me and executed one of the clumsiest curtsy-bows I’d ever performed without toppling over, the book tucked under my arm. “Your Highness.”

  Why hadn’t he tried to find me? Why hadn’t I known he was alive?

  Would it be immodest to hug him? Or hit him?

  I was so happy! And frustrated. Who’d kept his not-being-dead from me? S’ami? Valeo’s comrades? How many people were in on this conspiracy? And why?

  Valeo only glowered at me through the slots in his helmet. His deep voice carried an icy tone. “Hadara of Rimonil.”

  “You’re alive.” I almost reeled from a whole new set of emotions ripping across me. With all that had already happened, plus the heat that suddenly seared across my face and down deep into me, I felt as though I’d been turned upside down and shaken. My common sense dropped right out of my head. “I can’t believe it! You’re alive.”

  “Have been for some time,” he said. “All my life, in fact.”

  “You’re not dead. You’re very, very alive.” The day’s earlier horrors were already forgotten. What else could crowd the sight of the bloody sick ward from my head?

  “Good of you to notice. Move along, please.”

  “I’ve thought of you.” My heart must have been loud enough to hear across the bay. “I’d heard you were dead. I heard the tonic didn’t reach you in time.”

  His gaze narrowed and he lowered his face to eye level with mine. I stared, terrified, into the two fierce, brown dots that had become his eyes. “You heard wrong.”

  His icy tone was cooling me off quickly. I’d been telling myself for two six-days that I was too busy to mourn a man I’d barely known. And here, all I wanted was to dance around him, and all he wanted was for me to move along. I was more confused than angry, and suddenly embarrassed. How many people had seen me flinging myself at him? I’d just made a complete idiot of myself.

  Oh, but he was alive!

  Amaniel performed a much lovelier version of the curtsy. “Please, great guardian of—”

  “Move.” Valeo cut her off and waved us past.

  A stream of people filed behind us, moving us halfway across the square in front of the gates. I slowed then and Amaniel stopped to ask what was wrong.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “How did I offend him? Why didn’t I know he lived? Amaniel, how come he didn’t come find me?”

  Maybe he hadn’t known that I’d lived. He’d been on his deathbed—correction, sickbed—the night I’d been taken to the altar for sacrifice. Maybe he’d never heard … oh, nonsense. The whole island knew. How could he not know?

  Amaniel waved a hand as though my unhappiness was a mist she could dispel.

  “It’s just poor upbringing,” she said. “Not all the guards are decent men, obviously. Anyway, don’t waste another thought on him. I’m still annoyed you didn’t tell me you liked him. That’s so not like you! Especially when I can fix you up with someone so much better. I’m meeting lots of handsome seminary students who are wife-hunting.”

  Oh, how awful—seminary students. I couldn’t imagine a worse fate, except maybe being tied up with rocks and tossed in the bay. “I don’t want anyone—”

  Amaniel scowled at me. “Hadara, he ransacked our house and was rude to us. I mean, after you insulted him, but still. And he made me angry with you, so that Babba smacked me. Remember? It was always his fault, you know. Are you just being contrary? You’re like that sometimes.”

  “Amaniel! I thought he was dead. And he’s not!”

  “HAH. Da. Raaaaah.” Amaniel got that annoyed tone in her voice she reserved for when I was being extra stupid in school. “Hoorah, he’s alive. He’s still a thug. And only half human! I could ask the Azwan of Ambiguity to make some proper introductions to the right sort of men, but you have to be a lot nicer to me. A lot nicer.”

  “So I should forget that Reyhim was the one who ordered our homes ransacked?”

  Normally, the sight of my sister’s face darkening would make my day. But I didn’t have much fight in me right then. I needed a laugh the way some folks need a cool drink. My insides fluttered and flitted until up was down and inside out. Besides, I’d pushed her far enough for one day—and myself, too.

  “Never mind,” I said. I pulled her aside and opened the book. “Take a look.”

  I found the page with the part of a man’s anatomy I wasn’t supposed to know about until The Talk. I wondered if Valeo’s looked like the one in the book—hairy and ugly. I’d seen him in a loincloth and that had nearly sent me reeling, even though he’d been feeble and dying.

  Amaniel took one glance and threw both hands over her mouth with a squeal. “Oh, you can’t possibly think Babba has one of those. It’s disgusting.”

  I grinned. “It looks like a crane’s neck, only all plucked.”

  “The poor crane.”

  That brought fresh peals of giggles from both of us.

  A shadow fell over the book. A walking tree must be behind us, from the size of it. A familiar voice growled from the tree-man shadow. “Is that the proper respect for what makes a man, a man?”

  I snapped the book shut on Valeo’s hand as he reached for it. “I’m going to be a healer,” I said. “Besides, it takes more than that to make a man. You have to be nice to ladies.”

  “I will when I find one. Give it over.”

  We’d stopped, and a sea of people parted around us, continuing on their way toward the bridge. He was as I remembered him, glaring and beady-eyed even from deep within his jut-browed helmet. I stood my ground.

  He’d lived and hadn’t told me, hadn’t contacted me or sent word or anything. I hated him every bit as much as I’d once nearly panted at the thought of him. Obviously, I’d been misled about his dying, and he’d probably wanted it that way. What else could I assume? He had so much to apologize for.

  “It’s perfectly chaste,” I said. “I got it from the sick ward.”

  His meaty hand didn’t budge from within the thick book. “Give it over or I’ll rip it in half.”

  I let go. Valeo whipped it open and glanced back and forth between the offending page and the two of us. I feigned indifference. Hairy and ugly. Just like the rest of him. “I’m really glad to see you’re well, Your Highness.”

  “I’m First Guardsman Valeo and no
thing else,” he said. He waggled the book under my chin. “I could arrest you for this.”

  “I swear I haven’t done anything.”

  “You possess contraband.”

  “It’s as I told you.”

  “You’re not a healer yet. It’s therefore forbidden. You want to argue the point before an Azwan?”

  “Oh, please.” I was on firm ground on this one. “My sister just came from an Azwan’s side and this is all fine by him.”

  Which, in a way, wasn’t totally a lie, since the Azwans had arranged my apprenticeship.

  A big shoulder edged in front of me, about two or three fingers-width from my nose. I could bite Valeo, he was so close. I might have to if he didn’t give my text back. How could I have mourned him for even half a moment?

  Valeo grunted at me. “You’re bluffing,” he said.

  “You’re annoying.” I should be afraid of this big baby and his pointy toys. His daggers and swords remained sheathed, however, and his neck was turning a brownish red as he frowned, his chin crinkling. The heat in my own cheeks gave away the flush I knew was creeping over me, as well. But I’d seen Valeo’s same look on Babba whenever he was losing an argument with Mami. So I did as she did: I planted my feet, dug my fists into my hips, pursed my lips, and waited.

  I was going to get that apology.

  “You listen.” Valeo hovered over me, malice emanating from every finger-length of his oversized frame. “I’m doing you a favor. You thought you could just stroll past the sentries with that thing?”

  “It’s called a book.”

  “My people were writing books while yours were splotching handprints on cave walls.”

  “Touchy, touchy.”

  Amaniel piped up from behind me. “Please, pious Guardian of Nihil’s Person. We’re so grateful for your vigilance, we swear.”