by Chad Huskins
Vaedris made sure she hung back with Drea, though, and touched her arm. Drawing Drea close, she whispered, “And what is your greatest wish for change, new-sister? Will you tell the priestesses?”
Drea managed a blush on purpose. “It’s already been such an auspicious year,” she said tactfully. “So many great changes. Your uncle’s slaying of the monster Fedarus has freed me from having to be the wife of a tyrant, and him taking me as a ward has brought me nothing but joy.”
Vaedris smiled. “So then, what else to wish for?”
“Blessed days, I hardly know. Perhaps only that Hyra does not undo all the good she has already done for me?”
Her new-sister gave her a look that might have been approving.
But as they stood in line, watching the Priestesses of Hyra approach, Drea found herself growing nervous. She would be expected to say something when one of the priestesses took her by the hand, but what would she say?
She was perhaps rescued when a man stepped in front of her. Drea looked up at the dark-haired figure, and blinked. “Daedron,” she said.
“I see you snuck away with my sisters,” he said, eyeing Vaedris. “You must be making fast friends, indeed, if Vaedris has already taken you into her confidence.”
“As the most junior sister,” Drea said, “I do as I’m told.”
Vaedris gave a wry smile. “I thought my sisters deserved to have their desires heard by the priestesses.”
“You might’ve checked with me first, sister,” said Daedron. “As the inheritor of House Syphen, it’s my duty to keep you.”
“Of course,” she said, bowing slightly. “Forgive my impertinence, brother. My enthusiasm ran away with me. It will not happen again. I was only eager to let my new-sister out for the evening.”
Daedron started to say something, but he was cut off by the distant roll of thunder. Everyone on the street looked up at the graying clouds.
“The augurs have predicted a fellstorm coming soon,” Daedron said.
“A fellstorm?” said Drea. “Surely not during such a great Festival.”
Fellstorms were dreadful things. Some said they were brought on by some old curse left over Drith, a magical storm created by an ancient sorcerer who had died and left the fiery, whirlpool lightning to plague Drith from time to time and burn down its houses.
“There hasn’t been a fellstorm in years,” Vaedris said.
“Let’s hope the augurs are wrong,” Daedron said. He stuck out both his elbows and allowed his sisters to take them. Drea and Vaedris each took one, and let him guide them through the crowd. “It’s been a while since anyone let you out to see a Festival, new-sister. How do you like it?”
“Very much. The energy of the crowd is always infectious.”
“You find public life agreeable, then?”
“I do.”
“Then perhaps Fedarus chose his bride well,” he said. “A good ruler will want a wife that doesn’t mind being seen.”
“You flatter me. But I think I would’ve made a dreadful wife to an Imperator.”
“Oh? How come?”
Drea did not answer.
“Forgive me,” Daedron said. “It isn’t proper to speak of the dead, especially one who was meant to be your husband.”
He’s still feeling me out, still curious if I’m loyal to Fedarus’s memory, or if I’ve accepted my place as oda Syphen.
“Do you know,” Vaedris put in, “I heard that Fedarus haunts the Split River. I hear his ghost is seen walking along the shoreline, sometimes on his hands and knees. They say he askes passersby, ‘Where’s my crown?’ Have you ever heard a story more dreadful, brother?”
“I admit, I haven’t. But I don’t think it’s—”
Suddenly, the crowd around them gasped. Drea, Vaedris, and Daedron all looked around, wondering what was the matter. Daedron, perhaps sensing danger, stepped in front of Drea and his sister.
But then, they saw where everyone was looking.
Walking down the Street of Guilds, emerging from a cloud of steam that had come leaking out of one of the pipes on the ground, and making her way towards the Temple of Hyra, was a dark-skinned woman dressed all in white. Her hands were out to her side, and she looked around with fretful yet curious eyes.
“Hyra!” someone shouted.
“She’s here!” someone else cried. “She’s come! Hyra’s come!”
Drea took a step back, fearful. She didn’t know what to do. Neither, it seemed, did Vaedris, who just stood there with her hands clasped over her mouth, as if suppressing a scream. She probably was. As for Daedron, he relaxed, as though he’d known this was coming.
Then, all at once, Drea saw Saephis running towards the apparition. Saephis approached, saying, “Hyra…Goddess Hyra, you’ve come! Please, please let me whisper to you what I’ve—”
Hyra dismissed her at once. With the wave of a hand, Saephis was silenced. She looked stricken. Her face fell. She had been rejected by the avatar of Hyra herself. It must’ve been soul-crushing. She shrunk away, her eyes brimming with tears.
Drea backed farther away, trying to disappear into the crowd—
—when all at once, the dark-skinned woman turned her eyes on Drea. She felt her blood run cold. Was she truly looking into the eyes of a goddess? Was this truly Hyra walking the earth?
Priests and priestesses rushed out to greet her. Silently, they formed a circle around her, and tossed flowers into her path as she walked. Other people approached her, beseeching her for blessings, for wish fulfillments, for even a glance in their direction. But Hyra only saw Drea. She pushed past these people with nary a glance, and once she made it to Drea, she reached out quickly and snatched up her hands.
“Everyone else wants it,” the woman whispered. “Everyone else demands it. But only you fear it. Only you.”
The crowd had gone silent to view them together.
The woman leaned in closely, and turned her ear to Drea’s lips. “Tell me,” she said.
For a long, long moment, Drea could not find her voice. She could not believe she was holding the hands of a goddess. She felt her heart racing. Drea could see Saephis standing not ten steps away, looking at her with a mixture of confusion and anger. Hyra had rejected Saephis, but she had made a direct path for Drea.
“Tell me,” the woman said. Was she insane? Or was she truly the embodiment of Hyra?
“What…what do I say?” Drea whispered.
“Tell me,” the woman repeated.
Drea felt all eyes on her. Then, she did as her mother had always told her to do if she ever met Hyra. She spoke from the heart. “I…I want…” She took another breath, cleared her mind. She closed her eyes and thought of the thing she wanted most in the world.
“Tell me,” the woman insisted.
Drea saw it there. She saw the image in her mind’s eye. The thing she wanted most in the whole world. And like an anvil falling from the sky, the realization came out of nowhere and hit her with tremendous force.
“Tell me,” the woman said.
“I want Thryis,” Drea whispered.
The woman—Hyra—looked deeply into Drea’s eyes. “No. It’s more. Tell me.”
Drea shook her head. She was aware of the eyes of everyone on the street, all focused on her. Her own discomfort made her angry.
And when Drea was angry, she acted frankly, and spoke bluntly. “I want…control,” she said, the words out before she knew they were coming. “I want control.” She said it more emphatically. “I want control so that I can have Thryis. I want control so that I can have the things I’ve always wanted. I don’t want to be the tools of others anymore. I want control.”
It sounded selfish, but it also felt right.
The woman nodded once, and backed away. She looked Drea dead in the eye, gave her hand a squeeze, then turned and walked away. Hyra ascended the steps of her Temple, then disappeared inside. Her priests and priestesses followed quickly behind her.
The crowds slowly began chatteri
ng, and many of them gave Drea furtive glances. Then, a group of bards appeared, and one of them began a jovial tune on his lute. Another struck up a song. Tamborines and bells came next, and the Festival of Hyra quickly became a joyous occasion again.
Drea pulled away from the crowd, and soon found herself alone. She walked up the Street of Guilds, crossed through a giant cloud of steam and into the Avenue of Grocers, then onto the Avenue of Coin.
Distantly, Drea heard the bells ringing, letting everyone in Drith know that Hyra had finally blessed their streets with her presence, and that her Festival was over. Everyone could shut their windows and doors now, content that the goddess of change had given Drith her approval.
But the bells did not wake her from the strange sensation of floating. Drea had been hit with an odd fact about herself. She wasn’t sure how to feel about it. The avatar of Hyra had compelled her to speak what was in her heart, and she had done so.
Thryis…
Eventually, a hand grabbed her elbow, and spun her around. It was Daedron, and he was looking at her most concerned. “Drea, are you all right?”
She nodded numbly.
“Once the bards started, I turned around and you were gone. What’s wrong?”
“I…I just…”
Daedron smiled. “You’re a little stupefied, yes?”
She nodded.
Daedron chuckled. “Well, don’t get too caught up. It’s all part of the game.”
“Game?” she said dubiously. “What game?”
“I probably shouldn’t even be saying this,” he said, looking around to make sure that no one was within earshot. “Every few years, the Senate feels that the Festival of Hyra needs to be, eh, livened up. So a girl is hired—typically a foreign girl, so that no one local recognizes her—she’s hired to come walking up to the Temple of Hyra dressed as the goddess herself. It gives the people the impression that Drith is on the right course, and that its leaders are doing well by the city.”
Drea just looked at him.
“ ‘The Ninth Precept: Religion is useful to controlling the masses.’ It’s a little secret my uncle once told me. As I said, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but you looked shaken.”
Drea nodded numbly. “Oh. Yes. Of course. How silly of me to think that she was…” She trailed off. But the truth was, it didn’t matter if the dark-skinned woman had been an actress or not. What mattered was what truth she had revealed to Drea by her own lips.
I want Thryis. What did that sentence even mean?
Later, when they were back in their carriage and headed home, Drea noticed that there was little talk between the sisters. Indeed, it seemed a pall had fallen over their sisterhood. Drea caught Saephis staring at her more than once, her face a mask of enmity.
Once they were home, all the doors were shut by the slaves, and they returned to their weaving. Their clothroom remained tomb-quiet, and no one spoke of the Festival except once, near the end of their session, when Daedoris finally blurted out, “What did you say to her?”
Drea looked at Daedoris. She felt the eyes of the other two ladies on her, as well. Suddenly, a line from The Way came back to her. Distill the Glamour. That was the First Precept. The Glamour being the image you wanted to project to the world, the way you wanted to be perceived in order to achieve your goals. All the other Precepts were meant to support this Glamour.
“I said the only thing I could think to say,” Drea said.
And she left it at that.
The three sisters looked at her for a moment, expecting her to elaborate. When elaboration never came, they finished up their weaving, and put all their work away. As they were leaving the parlour for the day, they heard thunder, distant but powerful.
“It sounds like the augurs may be right,” Vaedris said. “A fellstorm is brewing.”
That night, Drea sat by her window again, staring up at Janus—her sister moons were nowhere to be seen. “Off hiding someplace, are we, ladies?” Drea said. It was something her mother used to say whenever she looked at the sky and found one or more of the moons missing.
Drea heard scratching. And chirping. The sparrows that had made a nest in the eaves were making a lot of ruckus tonight. Sounds like a fresh batch of hatchlings, she thought.
She worked a bit more on Thryis’s portrait, then went to bed. She dreamt of the Charred Temple, but the Man was not standing in the window. Where was he? The dream didn’t let her know.
But her dreams did bring her back, once more, to the familiar empty street where she had killed the boy. Drea relived it all over again. She and Thryis sneaking out of their houses, the older boy spotting them in the alley—he had been a member of the Bunch, the gang of homeless kids always looking for trouble.
In the dream, he knocked Drea down. Thryis tried to defend her, but was knocked down. When Drea stood back up, her hand went to a table. They were near the Street of Wares, and some knife-seller had forgotten to take all his goods in for the night.
Drea’s hand found the blade…
The boy turned back to kick her again…
Drea tackled him, and without realizing it, the blade—
The dream ended before she saw the moment of the boy’s death. It always ended there. And, as always, Drea was left with guilt. She knew what happened any time she let go of her anger. She knew what she was capable of…
The next day, she met Osween and Ustus out on the gazebo, for the wind had died down and it wasn’t so chilly outside. They began with her harp lessons.
“You’ve found a better rhythm today,” Ustus commented, moving his hands gracefully through the air, imitating her movements. It looked like he was controlling invisible puppets with invisible strings. “There’s a better fluidity, don’t you think, Osween?”
“It’s sufficient,” was all the governess said.
Drea had to admit she was feeling far more expressive than usual. Something had opened up inside of her, some new chamber that had been holding her secrets. She played so mellifluously that Ustus even applauded her—it was the first time anyone had ever done that.
“That’s enough for today,” said Osween dismissively. “You may go, Ustus.”
“Yes, Taja Osween,” said the man, departing and humming the song that Drea had just been playing. “So very nice to see one’s instructions being heeded,” she heard him say as he left.
“Now, girl,” Osween said. “Come sit in front of me.”
Drea did as ordered.
“Show me what work you’ve done with sketching and charcoals.”
Drea removed a cloth that she had pulled over her portrait of Thryis.
“Hm,” Osween said. “Hm.” She shook her head. “Hm.”
Drea sat quietly, awaiting her criticisms.
“When I said that you should concentrate on your subject and not overcrowd your frame, I thought you understood that what I meant was to begin again, with a new subject and a new approach.”
“I’m sorry, Taja. I misunderstood.”
“Clearly. And why do you waste your time on this piece? Why continue to focus on it?”
“The artist follows her muse. Her heart. Isn’t that so?”
Osween snorted. “Yes, but the heart often wants checking. For if the heart is allowed to do as it pleases, it can mean the downfall of the rest of the soul. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, you know?” She cast her dark eyes on Drea. “I suggest you focus on sketching something more mechanical—such as gears and machines, or cloth, or still-life—something to focus your mind on symmetry and the physics of the world.”
“Yes, Taja.”
“And do not waste your time thinking on this girl any longer,” Osween said. “She’s from your past, and your past is dead. Am I understood?”
Drea did not answer. For the first time, she was compelled not to answer.
Osween grimaced. “Am—I—understood?”
Drea bit the inside of her cheek, thinking.
“Did you not hear m
e, girl—”
“I heard you!” she growled, flashing a resentful eye at the hateful old woman. “I heard you.” Drea took a deep breath, calming herself. Keep it down. Keep the anger down.
Osween smiled briefly. “So, there it is. The famous Kalderus rage coming to the fore. I confess that I thought it would’ve revealed itself before now. I heard what you did to that boy on the Street of Wares.” A needle of ice went through Drea’s heart at the mere mention of the incident. “Oh yes, girl. I know what the boy did. I also know he didn’t deserve what was done to him. By you, if the rumors are correct—”
“They are, Taja,” Drea said. “I assure you, they are correct.”
“You killed the boy, then?”
“I did.”
“And your father pulled some favors to get you off the hook?”
“He did.”
“He claimed it was self-defense,” Osween said. “But you shouldn’t have been out that night, so it was at least partially your fault.” She glanced at the portrait. “Or was it her fault? The way I understand it, it was Thryis Ardenk that convinced you to leave your house that night.”
Drea said nothing.
“Well, it doesn’t matter now. It’s in the past. Speaking of your past, I took the liberty of telling our servants that Thryis Ardenk is no longer welcome in this house.”
Drea’s eyes went wide. “You…?”
“Yes. And I’ve already sent a messenger to tell her she’s not allowed on the premises. You don’t need the distraction. It’s best you look towards the future, and not be reminded of your shameful past. Your studies would only suffer from frequent visits. Am I understood?”
Drea was apoplectic. Angry to the point she could hardly speak.
There came a distant peel of thunder. It was a particular kind of thunder, booming and even metallic, one that foretold the fellstorm the augurs had predicted.
Drea just stared at the old woman. She said nothing. Her hands, though, which were usually cupped in front of her in polite respect, were balling into fists. This did not go unnoticed by the governess, who glanced down at those fists and then looked back at Drea. “You are dismissed for the day.”