6
The Compound
Lumin Cycle 10152
Blast
them to the Core!
How dare they?
Even though they were balled into tight fists, Mia Jayne was sure her shaking hands betrayed her fear and rage. Standing before the Order of Vis Firmitas, she found no solace in the rough-hewn walls of the chamber; the dim yellow glow of the gourds resting in their sconces; the somber, coarse robes; the craggy faces; and the multitude of inscrutable eyes that bored into her from the dais at the front of the room. She felt exposed by those eyes.
One of the clerics, an older man with grizzled blond hair, pale skin, and hawkish features, openly sneered at her. Hate emanated from his cold blue eyes. They were pale, almost colorless. She swallowed hard, but the challenge of it lodged in her throat. The silence was large and round in the room.
Mia grimly scanned the crowd of faces in hopes of catching Cedar’s eye. She frowned softly; he wasn’t there to provide friendly reassurance. She focused the fire in her gut and her gaze back to Dominus Nikola.
“You must be mistaken, sir.” Although she attempted to keep her voice calm but firm, she was quite certain she was failing miserably. “My father is gravely ill, to be sure, but such claims as you’ve asserted just now are entirely outside the realm of possibility.”
Dominus Nikola, the oldest of the assembled clerics—a withered, stooped-back man with piercing gray-blue eyes as clear as Mia’s favorite pond and disheveled silver hair that jutted at seemingly random angles—turned Father’s letter gently in his hands. He stood from his great chair on the dais, his height imposing even given his sloping shoulders and advanced age.
“Miss Jayne,” Dominus Nikola said, his voice soft, with the slightest rasp. It was a low voice that weighed each word carefully and deliberately. It was a voice that commanded attention. “I assure you that the contents of the letter as I have described them to you are accurate in all respects.”
Mia’s eyes narrowed in response. “Then, pray, let me read it myself.” She held out her hand.
Father had sealed the letter with a sap mark, and she had respected the mark’s intent. It was galling that Dominus Nikola felt he could use the existence of the mark of privacy against her.
“That won’t be possible, Miss Jayne. The letter provided specific instruction in that regard.”
Mia’s composure slipped, and her attempts to collect herself gained no purchase. “So I’m to believe my father traded me for succor, and now I’m yours to do with as the Order commands?” she asked, her voice shrill. “I’m an adult. My service isn’t his to give.”
The room was silent except for their voices reverberating along the walls. The group of eyes shifted back and forth at their exchange.
“That your service is yours alone to give is certainly the way of it. That your father wishes succor is also the way of it.” He paused to scratch his ear thoughtfully. “No person can choose for you. The path is yours alone to take. Be that as it may, it’s the Order’s choice whether to provide the succor, and the only payment for such that you’ve brought to our doors is your person.”
“What is this organization that it requires payment to assist a dying man who is reaching to you for aid? Perhaps you
are
monsters, as Father led me to believe.”
The Dominus smiled softly at her words, his eyes clear as pools yet unreadable. “Ah, but your father would request charity from us where each person among those here serves a role of import. To send one of our own skilled clerics on a journey to your father to administer a speculative treatment when such person is sorely needed among us and to in turn leave you with no ascertainable competencies to fill such a valued role is charity indeed. To expect more is foolhardy, and your father is no fool.”
“So I really have no choice then?”
“One always has a choice, Miss Jayne.”
It was done.
Mia’s limbs moved woodenly and without input from her brain. A voice on the edge of her consciousness advised her to pay closer attention to the gravelly voice barking nearby. Brother SainClair, the sneering, hawk-faced cleric from the Great Hall, shoved her brusquely along the maze of carved stone passageways. He marched along the dim corridor deep in the depths of the stronghold and pointed gruffly at various doorways, each identical. Mia was fairly certain the noises he made weren’t actually words. SainClair was clearly just as unhappy with their present situation as she, but Mia was under no illusion that this fact created an alliance between them.
As her mind sank down inside itself, Brother SainClair and the featureless caverns faded away.
“Are you even listening at all?”
The demanding bark ripped through the foggy haze of Mia’s memories.
“Ah,” she said, struggling to retrieve SainClair’s words from the ether.
“I thought not,” he said. He stopped abruptly and spun on his heels to face her.
Mia almost collided directly into his chest.
His already cold blue eyes narrowed further. “I don’t understand what you’re doing here.”
“Ah,” she said again, sliding her eyes downward to look at her belt.
“You were full of grand words earlier,” SainClair said, clocking her on the shoulder, “but you have none for me now?”
“I…um…I’m not sure what you’re expecting.” Mia cringed at the sound of her stuttering.
Brother SainClair smiled slowly and malevolently, his teeth large and wolflike. “I don’t understand why you’re here among us,” he repeated slowly. “This isn’t a game, girl. This is no place for frauds or pretenders.”
“It’s not as if I had a choice…” Mia said. Her voice trailed off as she spoke.
“Were you not privy to your own conversation? You did have a choice. You just weren’t thinking. I still don’t think you’re thinking now. And I fear you aren’t much of a thinker at all. You don’t belong among us. It was unacceptable for Nikola to even entertain this ridiculous enterprise.” He practically spat the last sentence at her, his eyes glittering. “You’re a fraud and a pretender and a useless one at that.”
“Apparently the Dominus disagrees with you,” she replied with as much steel as she could muster.
“Well, unfortunately for you, going forward, I’m the one you’ll have to impress,” Brother SainClair said. He grimaced through clenched teeth. “The tour’s over. I’ll see you to your quarters.”
Mia stifled a yelp as he grabbed her upper arm and dragged her along. She tried to remain stoic, but she winced when he wrenched her around the final corner to a hallway that looked identical to the one they’d just left. A large wooden door was set into the carved stone of the wall, and it looked like every other door they’d passed.
“Does the Order not believe in signage?” Mia said in a low voice.
“My lady,” he said, and opened the door. With an exaggerated, deep bow and withering look, he shoved her through the door into a capacious room.
The low chatter that moments earlier had filled the room ceased immediately, and fifteen pairs of eyes swung around to face in her direction. Uncomfortable, Mia grew self-conscious at the abrupt gazes.
“The newest acolyte,” announced SainClair unceremoniously to the group. “Someone find the pretender a bunk.”
With that he stalked out.
Mia surveyed the barracks where Brother SainClair had deposited her. It was large and dim and carved of solid stone, much like, as far as she could tell, every other room in the Compound. This particular cavern room—for that was what it was—was carved smoothly at the ground level then rose into a rough-worked dome ceiling that yawned upward into the dimness. It was lined with bunks, ten on each side, with an additional five along the back. The center of the room housed a large wooden table fashioned from elder hardwood.
The fifteen pairs of eyes studied her closely, and her face flushed hot at the scrutiny.
In no time at all, they’ll be calling me “red ghost” or something else equally unflattering
. At that glum thought, Mia took the opportunity to return the stares.
The assemblage was a motley collection, composed of males and females. There were children as young as perhaps twelve cycles, ranging to adults older than Mia. Short, tall, skinny, meaty, light, dark, brown…
Cedar! A jolt of surprise then anger at seeing him among the acolytes instead of the clerics coursed through her system when she recognized his face, which shared an equivalent look of shock at seeing her standing before him. From there, their emotions diverged. His large dark eyes softened, their thick lashes crinkling at the corners, and a small smile pulled at this mouth. Mia’s eyes narrowed, glowering, but she tried to keep her mouth neutral. Scowling at everyone would make a great first impression.
“Mia,” Cedar said, coming forward, apparently unsure what she was doing here. He clearly wasn’t the only one. “Joining us, are you?”
She responded with her best contemptuous look, trying to indicate that she didn’t much wish to speak of her circumstances at the moment. This gesture was also intended to convey that she didn’t much care for his hyperbole or his company.
“Us? I rather thought from your—what was it?—important work, you’d be off doing something important.”
His brown cheeks flushed rosy at the implication, and he cleared his throat. “Ah, yes, well, all service to the Order is important, no?” He directed the question to an older acolyte.
While clearly surprised at being addressed, the man nodded solemnly.
Cedar turned back Mia and smiled warmly. “Things went well with Dominus Nikola then?”
It was her turn to be embarrassed. “Where am I to sleep?”
From his vantage at superior height, he surveyed the large room. “It looks like the bunk behind Taryn is free.”
“Yes, well, which bunk would that be?” Mia asked, suddenly very tired.
Cedar moved away from her, down the left side of the room. She followed him slowly, lugging her lapin bag and pack, and surveyed each bunk as she passed. By this time, the other acolytes—that thought was still very odd to her—had returned to their chatter, and small groups whispered quietly among themselves. Here and there, she caught some of them glancing at her from the corners of their eyes. Whether it was her Hackberry garb or her translucent skin and bright-red hair that drew their looks, she couldn’t tell. It could just as equally have been her newness.
The bunks themselves were constructed of stone. Each had a stone pallet set against the wall at thigh height as well as a raw wooden shelf attached to the wall above each bed—if one could call them that. An alcove designed to house a gourd or some other light source was set into the wall below each shelf. At the head and foot of each pallet was a short wall that stood no taller than Mia’s chest and extended maybe three arm lengths past the side of the sleeping pallets.
They were small cubbies, but each acolyte had taken great care to personalize his or her space. One had a colorful quilt made of exotic fabrics Mia had never seen before, cozily laid over the austere mattress. An extra-thick mattress overstuffed with something soft and cushy graced another acolyte’s bunk. Some people had pinned up drawings, possibly of family, others letters, still others scraps of colorful cloth.
Most cubbies had books neatly stacked on a narrow shelf. Some had trunks or chests stowed below the bunk or tucked along the sides of the low walls. There was even one alcove with a narrow desk made of a heavy, orange wood oiled to a shine. It was stacked with open books and a quill and paper. Apparently many of her new bunkmates had arrived under markedly difference circumstances than she had. Mia sighed.
After a laborious trek to the back of the large room, they arrived at an empty bunk. It wasn’t a particularly well-lit portion of the barracks and abutted the back corner. In both corners, where the clerics couldn’t fit bunks, they’d placed a series of bookshelves that rose almost to the ceiling. The shelves towered over the acolytes and required a ladder to reach the top shelf.
“Well, here we are,” Cedar said, and made a noise with his throat to signal Mia’s attention.
She looked at the referenced alcove then turned back toward the shelving in the corner. Anyone climbing the ladder would be able to see right to her bed. She was about to say something when she realized with a rising sense of panic that anyone could walk past and see her or walk up to either wall and peer directly over, ladder or no. Privacy was no longer a luxury she enjoyed.
Cedar must have caught her staring at the ladder and mistaken her interest for that of the books. “That’s just the basic collection for acolyte study,” he said. “The Order has quite a large archive, greater than even this room. It’s only one level up. I’ll take you to see on the morrow.”
As it was, Mia had never seen so many books in one place in her entire life and had trouble picturing the archive Cedar had described. Although she was a voracious reader, her access to reading material had always been limited by her circumstances; living in the rural hammock of Hackberry, she hadn’t been exposed to a great many books. Over the cycles, however, she had built up a small collection, mostly by trading for them, whether for repair services, manual labor, or whatever she could forage in the wild.
There were also a few books that had traveled with her and
Father over the cycles. Father used to read them to her when she was a child. He wasn’t overly interested in reading—he was much more concerned with ranging, hunting, and building—but he had taught Mia to read and made sure she had access to books whenever they crossed their path.