by Victor Poole
Ajalia looked around her as she walked; the temple was a strange building, but very beautiful. There were many small chambers on either side of the hall, and they opened with wide archways into the hall. Each room was filled with gorgeous carvings; Ajalia saw that much of the stone within the temple was dirty and smudged, as though it had been cleaned clumsily in the darkness.
The priest led the way through an antechamber, and then into a long hall that was filled with candles.
"We are not supposed to bring lights into this sacred space," the priest murmured to Ajalia, when she saw the rows of candles, "but there are so many of us now who could not see."
Within the hall, the ceiling stretched all the way up to the very top of the building. The medium-sized room that Ajalia had first entered had had a normal ceiling, but this room ran enormously high, and looked as though it included three floors within its spacious height.
Gathered in the center of the room, surrounded by wax candles, and turning now to stare openly at the priest who led Ajalia and the others into the room, was a group of about twenty people. Most of them, Ajalia saw, wore the same brown priestly robes, but a handful of women stood mixed among the rest. One of these was the same girl, Sharo, who had helped Minna to bear the rug for the old man, Tree.
The priest, when he had led Ajalia towards this group of strangers, sped up, and melted quickly into the mass of brown cloaks, as though he hoped to escape notice among the cluster of his brothers. Ajalia saw that Minna's friend Sharo was regarding the reddish-haired young woman with suspicion and dislike.
"I've come to see Sharo," Ajalia said, and Sharo glanced unhappily at the rest.
"Is it Tree?" Sharo asked, as though she expected to be given some minor summons. Her eyes went again to Minna, and Ajalia was sure that Sharo was puzzled by that young woman's presence in the temple. Daniel, Ajalia saw, seemed to pass without notice. She wondered if Daniel had ever come into this temple before.
"Come with me," Ajalia said, and Sharo, after glancing questioningly at the priests, and receiving no sign, stepped forward. Ajalia turned, and went back the way she had come.
"It is faster," a priest called out at once, "to go the front way." Ajalia turned. She saw all of the priests watching her with something like fear in their eyes, and like respect. She looked at them, and she wondered if what the priest said was a test of some kind. She raised her hand, to show that she had heard, and then continued on the way she had begun. A murmur of approval rose gently between the priests; Ajalia wondered what would have happened, if she had agreed to go out the front entrance. She thought of the long hall she had walked into, when she had first been in Slavithe, and of the carvings of horses that had filled up the walls that were splashed with sunlight.
"There is a false entrance," Daniel whispered to Ajalia, when they had left the chamber. "It is long and dark, and it ends in a box of stone. No one can get in or out that way."
"Why?" Ajalia asked. Daniel grinned, and shrugged.
"The priests keep a lot of secrets," he said.
"And the biggest secret," Ajalia whispered back to Daniel, so the girls would not hear, "is that they have no power." Daniel's mouth quivered in an irreverent smile. He glanced at Minna and at Sharo, and pressed his cheeks into a firm grimace.
"You're in a lot of trouble," Daniel told Sharo, shifting the basket of stones on his hip. Sharo looked scornfully at Daniel. The shining walls of the temple shimmered on Sharo's dark hair, which, like Minna's was tied below her shoulders in a knot. Sharo clearly did not count Daniel as a person worth talking to, because she walked quietly behind Ajalia with her lips pressed together.
When they had all come to the medium-sized room that Ajalia and the others had first come in, Ajalia heard Minna's feet stop. She turned, and saw that Sharo had pulled at Minna's sleeve, and had leaned close to the girl. Sharo saw Ajalia watching her, and she blushed.
"I wanted to ask Minna how she got in," Sharo told Ajalia. "She isn't allowed," Sharo added, as if justifying herself. Ajalia looked at the inside of Sharo, and saw a gleam of white light over her heart.
"You have the white brand," Ajalia said. Sharo dipped her head, a faint smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
"Yes," Sharo said. Ajalia drew up a cord of light from below the earth, and twisted it, in her mind's eye, in front of the girl's face. Ajalia watched Sharo's eyes, which did not move to follow the curving green. Daniel was watching what Ajalia did, his face shrewd. Ajalia was sure that Daniel knew she was testing the powers of those she met now, to see what they could see and do. She was fairly sure now, that Daniel would prove receptive to the lights from the sky. She was sure that the boy would prove to have a white brand, when she had put the light from the sky into his being.
"Your master, Tree, is dead," Ajalia said, turning to the open doorway, and passing through the silvery shimmer. Daniel followed Ajalia, and Minna came next. Ajalia got to the bottom of the narrow steps, and then waited for the others. Sharo, she saw, had stopped dead within the room, and was standing with her lips parted, a set of lines in her forehead. Sharo hurried after Minna, and Ajalia saw that her hands were opening and closing, as though she were readying for a fight.
"How did he die?" Sharo asked, keeping her voice light. Ajalia turned to the girl, and folded her arms.
"Why?" Ajalia asked. "Did you know he was likely to die?" Sharo's face turned a little green.
"No," Sharo said. Sharo looked quickly at Minna, who met her eyes steadily. "We didn't know anything, did we?" Sharo asked the other girl.
"She's already made friends with Isacar," Minna told the old man's girl. Sharo's eyes opened a little more, and Ajalia saw that the skin around her nostrils tightened, and grew white.
"I don't think things will go well for you," Ajalia told the girl, "if you try to run away." Sharo looked sharply at Ajalia; it was plain that the girl had just been considering flight.
"Well, none of it was my fault," Sharo said, "and anyway, he's dead now." She looked defiantly at Ajalia, who smiled. Sharo's expression faltered a little in the face of Ajalia's apparent good cheer. "Why is she smiling?" Sharo asked Daniel and Minna. Daniel looked up at Sharo with stern eyes, and Sharo bridled a little. "Who are you?" Sharo demanded, glaring at Daniel.
"He is the head of my house," Ajalia said, "and as for me, lately they are calling me the sky angel." She still did not know what the sky angel was, but she had seen enough of the way people looked at her when they said it to know that it was a term the Slavithe all recognized, and that they all felt fairly deeply about. Sharo looked at Ajalia with a funny twist in her mouth.
"You aren't the sky angel," Sharo told Ajalia. "You can't be."
"Well, she is," Daniel said stoutly.
"She can't be," Sharo said. "It's impossible."
"Why?" Minna asked. The green-eyed girl was watching Sharo with an expression in her eyes that Ajalia thought indicated that Minna was seeing Sharo clearly for the first time. Minna looked rather as though she had been used to admire Sharo, and was seeing now that there was not as much there as she had thought.
"Because I'm the sky angel," Sharo said. She looked again at Ajalia, and a thin line was between her eyebrows. "I'm sorry to disappoint you," Sharo said kindly, as though she were letting Ajalia down from some expected treat, "but the priests have already chosen me. I'm to be the one who brings the cloud spirits down again."
"That's nice," Ajalia told the girl. She put a hand behind Sharo's lower back, and pressed her into walking into the sunlit street. "Now tell me what Tree was planning to do with the explosives in his room."
Sharo, who had begun to walk with some complacency beside Ajalia, turned to look at her.
"How did you find those?" she asked in a small voice. Ajalia smiled brightly at the girl.
"Tree tried to blow me up with them," Ajalia said. Sharo's feet faltered; she tried to stop, but Ajalia pressed her forward.
"But why would he do that?" Sharo asked. Ajalia thought back to the scen
e in the receiving room of the Thief Lord's house; she tried to remember if Sharo had been present for the whole scene between Delmar and the gathered people. Ajalia turned as she walked, to see Minna's face.
"Did Sharo leave the receiving room early," Ajalia asked Minna, "in the Thief Lord's house?" Minna glanced at Sharo, and then nodded.
"After she knew for sure that the Thief Lord and his wife were dead," Minna half-whispered. Her eyes went again to Sharo, and she seemed to wince, as though anticipating a blow. "She's supposed to tell the priests things that happen," Minna told Ajalia in a low voice.
"Yes," Sharo said, sounding like a fat hen, "I'm their outlet to the outside."
"You mean they wanted you to spy on Tree," Ajalia said, "and you called that spying magic."
"I did not," Sharo said sharply, her eyes flashing. "I know what magic is. I can feel things," Sharo boasted, looking infernally pleased with herself, "just as the men can. That's why I'm the sky angel," she told Ajalia. A trace of generous pity creased Sharo's features, and she regarded Ajalia kindly. "You can't do real magic," Sharo told Ajalia, "because you're a foreigner. Who told her about the sky angel?" she asked, turning a little to Minna. Minna's face was impassive; her eyes were beginning to harden.
"She's more important than you will ever be," Minna informed Sharo. "The new Thief Lord sponsored her, and called her his little bird."
Sharo's face turned pink, and then white. She wiggled her lips, as though she were holding back a speech, and then took a refreshing breath. Her features smoothed out.
"Where's Delmar?" Sharo asked. She sounded as though she had a right to know, and she looked at Minna with all the hauteur of a mistress commanding a child. Ajalia concealed the smirk that began to drift over her cheeks. Daniel, she saw, showed no such restraint, and snorted loudly. "What?" Sharo demanded of the boy. "I have a right to know about Delmar," Sharo said loudly. "The priests have promised him to me."
Ajalia could no longer hold in the burst of giggles that spun out of her. She couldn't help herself; the idea of Sharo, with her long black hair and smooth freckled cheeks, commanding Delmar to come before her and be wed, made her want to sit down on the ground and laugh.
"What is so funny?" Sharo asked with dignity. Ajalia made no effort to control her mirth.
"Delmar's a little old for you," she told Sharo, who looked to be little older than fourteen. Sharo's eyebrows hardened, and her cheeks grew taut.
"You're not being very respectful," Sharo said coldly. Daniel had opened his mouth, but Ajalia caught his eye, and elbowed him a little. Daniel's face broke into a smirk; Ajalia saw that he would go along with her for now.
"Delmar told me he'd come to the dragon temple," Ajalia told Sharo. "I'm going there now."
"Then I will accompany you," Sharo said decidedly. She had not been so confident, Ajalia thought, until she had heard that Tree was dead, and until Ajalia had mentioned the sky angel.
"Was it your idea," Ajalia asked, trying to look properly sober, "to hide the heart stone in the open like that?" Sharo frowned.
"I don't know what you mean," Sharo said. They were walking along a wide sunlit street, and Minna was watching the ground pass beneath her feet with a look of some concentration on her face. Ajalia wondered what Minna thought of the light that had burned recently within her; she wondered how aware Minna was of what had happened to her, both when the shadows had infested her body, and when they had been driven out with the white light. When Ajalia looked at Minna, she noticed suddenly that a bare white sheen was beginning to grow out in a shell over the green-eyed girl's chest. Minna, Ajalia thought, was getting her white brand back.
Ajalia smiled again, and turned to Sharo.
"Tell me more about what the priests will do for you," Ajalia suggested. Sharo, who had looked very like a guilty child before the sky angel was mentioned, now looked more and more at ease. People in the street around them, when they saw Ajalia coming, parted respectfully around her, much, Ajalia remembered, as they had parted for Delmar's mother. Ajalia glanced at Sharo, and saw that the girl was becoming thoroughly convinced that the people were parting to make way for her. Sharo's eyes grew gradually bright, and her chin lifted. A satisfied smile teased at the corners of her mouth, and her fists, which had been clenching a little when she'd come out of the temple, had relaxed now into long, elegant lines. Ajalia was sure that Sharo was trying to stretch up, to make herself tall and graceful. Ajalia could see a kind of tension in Sharo's elbows, where she was stretching up towards the sky.
When Ajalia had asked Sharo about what the priests had told her, Sharo's lips had begun, once more, to work gently from side to side. Ajalia was sure that Sharo had kept many secrets, and that the girl was now trying to decide how much of her story to reveal.
"I can't tell you everything," Sharo said finally. "There's a lot that even Delmar doesn't know yet," she added importantly. Ajalia swallowed a smile; she tried to imagine how Delmar would look, when he was confronted with this child bride. "I had to work for Tree," Sharo said, "because the priests thought he might still have secrets about the witches. He doesn't," Sharo said dismissively, "and I keep telling them that, but they wanted me to watch him anyway."
Minna was looking quizzically at Sharo now; Ajalia suspected that Minna had known some of what Isacar had said, about the witches managing tenements with help from Tree.
"I told the priests that I wanted to marry Delmar next year," Sharo said, "but now that the old Thief Lord's dead, and Tree too, I won't have to hide who I am anymore. I wasn't going to tell you that I was the sky angel," Sharo continued, "but you seemed to think that you were the sky angel. And you just aren't," Sharo added.
Daniel had begun to swirl his fingers through the red stones again; he had a look of intense disgust on his face, as he listened to Sharo talk.
"What about you?" Ajalia asked Minna. Minna jolted a little, and looked up.
"What about me?" Minna asked. Ajalia saw that the light white shell was slowly gathering thickness; soon, she thought, Minna would have a brighter white brand than Sharo had.
"Did the priests have special plans for you as well?" Ajalia asked. Sharo laughed loudly, her voice braying like a nervous filly.
"She's not special," Sharo said bossily. "She's only Minna." Minna glanced with sharp dislike at Sharo, and then turned her eyes to Ajalia.
"No," Minna said quietly. "They never wanted me."
"That's because you don't have a white brand," Sharo said, "like I have. Women don't have the white brand, usually," Sharo told Ajalia. "That's why I'm the sky angel. The priests are going to teach me real magic. They wanted to wait," she said, "until Tree was out of the way. I thought I would have to wait for years," she added with a sigh, "but now he's gone, and I can learn now."
"Why wouldn't they teach you magic before?" Ajalia asked. They were drawing near the back way to the dragon temple; Ajalia was determined to take this back way now, and get into the dragon temple without passing before the Thief Lord's house.
"The priests didn't want Tree to know," Sharo said. "I'm a secret," she said importantly.
"Well, you aren't a secret now," Ajalia told her. Sharo beamed.
"I know," Sharo said. She glanced at Minna, and at Daniel. "You seem like you understand," Sharo told Ajalia in a lowered voice. "I'm really tired of hiding everything. It's hard," she said, "to be so important, and not to be able to tell anyone."
Ajalia was watching impatiently for the turning towards the dragon temple; she began to ask herself if she ought to disillusion Sharo now, or if she ought to get more information out of her. Ajalia was sure that when Sharo knew about Delmar, and about his affection for herself, that the girl's secrets would molder within her, unspoken.
"Daniel," Ajalia said to the boy. Daniel's eyes cleared, and he looked at her. "I want you to choose a trustworthy boy," Ajalia said, "and give him a little money. Send the boy to Delmar, and tell him to make sure Delmar eats regularly. Whether or not he asks," she added. "Especially,"
she said, "if he doesn't ask for food." Daniel smiled a little.
"I know what you mean," Daniel said, and he darted ahead.
"Minna," Ajalia said. The green-eyed girl looked up. She still looked as though she were absorbed in her own thoughts. "I have offered Isacar employment in my house," Ajalia said, "and I make a similar offer to you. Will you work for me now?" Minna's eyes widened a fraction; she glanced at Sharo quickly, and then nodded eagerly.
"Yes, miss," Minna said.
"Call me Ajalia," Ajalia said. "All of my servants do."
"Yes, Ajalia," Minna said at once. Ajalia smiled at the girl.
"Do you know the dragon temple?" Ajalia asked. Minna gestured ahead.
"It's just up there, around the corner," Minna said.
"There are three girls that live there," Ajalia told her. "Find Clare, and tell her your name. That boy who was with me is Daniel," she added.
"Daniel's in charge," Minna said at once. Ajalia smiled with pleasure.
"Good girl," Ajalia said. "Beware of the girl named Ossa. She will try to make friends."
Minna glanced again at Sharo, and then pressed her lips together in a line.
"Yes," Minna said.
"Can you read?" Ajalia asked. They were coming to the corner now. Minna said that she could read, and Ajalia sent her on ahead to the dragon temple, to find Clare. "Now you and I can speak freely," Ajalia said to Sharo, who smiled.
"I'm glad you got rid of Minna," Sharo said. Dislike of this dark-haired girl was growing steadily in Ajalia's breast; she did not want to think of what Minna had had to put up with from this girl. "Minna isn't like me," Sharo confided. Ajalia had slowed her walk; she moved now across the street that lay before the dragon temple. She wanted to give Minna time to get up the stairs at the end of the hall before she and Sharo entered the main hall.
Sharo examined Ajalia closely.