“You are a cruel woman, R’shiel.” She liked Georj. He was almost as much a brother to her as Tarja. “Maybe you should order him to the Arena.”
“Georj!” Tarja warned. “I’ve already told you no.”
R’shiel looked from Georj to Tarja and back to Georj again. “What?”
Georj took R’shiel’s arm conspiratorially. “Well, you might be too young to remember, but back in the
good old days, before Tarja publicly called Trayla a fatuous bitch, he was the undisputed champion of the Arena.”
“I remember,” she said, before turning to Tarja, wide-eyed. “Is that what you did? You called Trayla a fatuous bitch?”
Tarja glared at them, but did not deign to answer. Georj tugged her arm to get her attention back. “Well now that he’s back, he has a duty to regain the title. Ever since we heard he’d been recalled, Loclon has been bragging about how he can beat Tarja. He’s issued a formal challenge and your uncaring brother has refused it. The honour of every captain is at stake here.”
R’shiel knew of Loclon, a slender young lieutenant with lightning-quick reflexes. He had been the talk of the Citadel all summer.
“I said no, Georj!” Tarja snapped. “Cajoling R’shiel isn’t going to make me change my mind, either.”
“Why not? Are you afraid he’ll beat you?”
“No! I’m not afraid he’ll beat me. I’m afraid I’ll
win
, and then every half-witted, glory-seeking Cadet in the Citadel will want to take me on. I’ve done my time in the Arena, R’shiel. I don’t need to prove anything.”
“Why don’t you just take the challenge and lose, if that’s what you’re worried about?” she asked with somewhat contrived innocence, knowing full well the reaction such a suggestion would provoke. “Just let him beat you.”
Georj looked horrified. “Lose? How could you suggest such a thing, girl?”
Before she had a chance to answer, the Probate who had served the drinks earlier appeared at the doorway. She glanced coyly at Tarja and Georj before turning her attention to R’shiel.
“Sister Joyhinia wants you to come inside, R’shiel,” the Probate said pleasantly, although her smile was meant for the Defenders. R’shiel was surprised she had been allowed to spend even this small amount of time with Tarja.
She glanced at the officers and shrugged. “I have to go.”
“Poor little Novice,” Tarja sympathised. “Can’t ignore an order from mother now, can we?”
“Do you think if I called Mahina a fatuous bitch, I could get myself banished from the Citadel, too?” she asked under her breath.
The Envoy had moved away from the circle of women surrounding the First Sister and her mother, and was standing, half-hidden by a column on the other side of the room, fondling a rather startled looking Probate.
R’shiel suspected her mother pandered to Lord Pieter’s appetites for her own reasons. Morality and sin were hallmarks of religion and the Sisters of the Blade never practised anything that smacked of religion. The hidden artwork throughout the Citadel was concealed because it offended the Sisters to see the gods depicted, not because they cared what carnal activities the heathens were engaged in. Good government was based on law and commonsense, not some heathen notion of morality. In R’shiel’s opinion, Lord Pieter had crossed even that generous line and it
was simply a sign of Medalon’s fear of offending Karien that no one remarked on the man’s outrageous behaviour.
R’shiel, with Tarja and Georj close behind her, approached her mother. She was listening with interest as Sister Harith complained about the growing number of heathens.
“It is time for another Purge,” Harith was suggesting loudly.
“I agree they are getting out of hand again,” Joyhinia remarked, which made Jacomina nod enthusiastically in support. Joyhinia could suggest running naked through the Citadel and Jacomina would probably nod enthusiastically in support, R’shiel decided. “The rumours of a demon child have flared up again, too. But a Purge?”
Mahina glanced at the Sisters and shrugged, unconcerned. “The demon child rumour has been around for two centuries, Sisters. We should pay it as much attention now as we have in the past.”
“But this time it seems to be really taking hold,” Harith remarked. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it reached all the way to the southern border.” She glanced past R’shiel at Tarja. “You’ve just come from there, Captain. Have you heard anything?”
“I heard a crazy man ranting about it. But nobody took him seriously.”
“There! You see?” Harith announced, her point proved.
R’shiel wondered what rumour they were talking about. The goings-on among the few miserable heathens left in Medalon were not something that reached the ears of a mere Novice, even one as
privileged as R’shiel. She leaned towards Georj and whispered, “What’s a demon child?”
Mahina heard her and answered her question. “According to heathen legend, R’shiel, Lorandranek, the last king of the Harshini, sired a half-human child. They call him the demon child. He is supposed to have a great capacity for destruction.”
“All the more reason to hunt him down and kill him,” Harith added.
Mahina chuckled. “Hunt him down and kill him, Harith? This child was supposed to have been sired by a man who was last seen two hundred years ago!”
“But we don’t believe in the gods, therefore logically, such a child cannot exist.”
Mahina laughed. “Well said, R’shiel! And we are not going waste valuable resources sending the Defenders out to hunt down this non-existent child. The rumour will die down as it always has.”
“But you cannot deny that the number of heathens seems to be on the rise,” Joyhinia pointed out. R’shiel recognised that feral gleam in her mother’s eye as Joyhinia neatly manoeuvred the First Sister into making a public blunder.
“I don’t deny it, Sister. It is a matter of great concern to me. But I have to ask myself, what have we done to make these people turn from the Sisterhood? Does the fault lie with our administration? We should clean up our own house before we start looking at others.”
Joyhinia bowed to the First Sister. “By your words you demonstrate the wisdom worthy of a true First Sister, Mahina.”
The older woman nodded in acknowledgment of Joyhinia’s eloquent compliment. R’shiel glanced at
her mother and shuddered. She knew that look, knew that venomous, bitter gleam better than anyone. Joyhinia despised Mahina. R’shiel sipped her wine as she watched the elder Sisters and wondered how long it would be before there was another funeral, another public Burning, and another First Sister. She caught Tarja’s eye and thought he was wondering the same thing.
R’shiel straightened her tunic, checked that her fingernails were clean, and smoothed down her braid before she knocked on the door to her mother’s rooms. The spacious apartment on the third floor of the Sisters’ main residential wing had ceased being her home from the day she put on the Green. Not since she had been sent to the Novices at twelve had she returned without requesting entry. There was still a room referred to as her bedroom in the apartment, but it was bare of any personal touches. Visiting home was as warm and welcoming as visiting one of Brodenvale’s well-kept inns. But she didn’t really mind—one of the advantages of being a Novice was that it meant she didn’t need to live at home. It was perhaps the only reason that she had never done anything serious enough to get herself expelled.
The door was opened by old Hella, Joyhinia’s long-suffering maid, who stood back to let her enter with a barely polite curtsy. Joyhinia was sitting by the fire, an open book on her lap. The room was uncomfortably hot. Although the bitter winds of autumn had begun to swirl through the streets of the
Citadel, today had been unseasonably warm. Joyhinia preferred the heat. She looked up, closing the book carefully.
“You may go now, Hella.”
The maid curtsied and let herself out. Joyhinia studied R’shiel’s new grey Probate’s tunic for a moment before looking her in the eye.
“Well?”
R’shiel shook her head. This ritual had been going on for years now. Every Restday, when R’shiel arrived for their weekly dinner, Joyhinia met her with the same question. At first, when R’shiel was younger, Joyhinia had asked the whole question: “Well, have you had your menses yet?” As the years dragged on and nothing happened, the question had become abbreviated to a short, impatient, “Well?” She had seen every physic in the Citadel and none could give her a reason why she had not begun her cycle. All her friends had reached their time before they were fifteen. R’shiel had just turned eighteen, and although she had every other physical sign of womanhood, she remained amenorrhoeic. She wished Joyhinia would stop asking her.
Joyhinia shook her head impatiently at her reply. “Grey is not your colour,” she remarked, placing the book carefully on the sidetable. “You looked much better in the Green, with that red hair.”
“I shall try to become a Sister as fast as I can, mother. Perhaps the Blue will suit me better.”
Joyhinia either didn’t notice the edge in her voice, or chose to ignore it. “If you applied yourself, there is no reason you couldn’t get through the two years as a Probate in one,” she said thoughtfully.
“I was joking, mother.”
Joyhinia looked at her sharply. “I wasn’t.”
“Shall I pour the wine?” R’shiel walked to the long, polished table which was already set with dinner, and picked up the decanter. It was time to get off the topic of her academic progress. That route could lead to awkward questions R’shiel did not want to answer.
“So, have you moved into the Probates’ Dormitories yet?”
“Last Fourthday. I’m sharing with Junee Riverson.”
Joyhinia frowned. “Riverson? I don’t know the name. Where is she from?”
“Her family come from Brodenvale. They started out as fisherfolk on the Glass River. Her father’s quite a wealthy merchant now. She’s the first in her family to be accepted into the Sisterhood.”
Joyhinia shook her head. “I’ll have you assigned to a room with someone more appropriate. The daughter of another Sister, at the very least.”
“I don’t want to be moved. I like Junee.”
“I really don’t care what you like, young lady. I’ll not have you rooming with some river peasant from Brodenvale.”
“We are all equal in the Sisterhood.” At least that was what the Sisters of the Blade espoused.
“There is equal, and there is
equal
,” Joyhinia replied.
“If you interfere with my rooming assignment, everyone will know,” she pointed out, handing Joyhinia her wine. “There is already a suspicion that I have only succeeded so far due to your influence. If you change my room for a better one, that suspicion
will become fact.” To be more accurate, the suspicion was that were she not the daughter of a Quorum member she would have been thrown out of the Novices long ago, but Joyhinia didn’t need to be reminded of that.
Joyhinia glared at her for a moment, before relenting. “Very well, you may stay with your pet peasant. But don’t come crying to me when you can no longer stand her screeching accent or her infrequent bathing habits.”
R’shiel was not fool enough to gloat over this minor triumph. “I promise I shall suffer the consequences of my foolishness in silence, Mother.”
“Good,” Joyhinia agreed. It was odd how her mother only ever seemed truly pleased with her when she was able to outwit her. “Now let’s eat before the roast cools.”
R’shiel took her place at the table as Joyhinia lit the candles from a taper. The walls had dimmed to about a quarter of their daytime luminosity and the candles did little to light the room. R’shiel waited until her mother was seated before she lifted the domed silver cover off her plate. It was roast pork, accompanied by a variety of autumn vegetables. The pork was tender and pale, and smothered in rich gravy. The sight of it made R’shiel’s stomach turn.
“What’s the matter?”
R’shiel glanced at her mother, wondering if she should say something about the meat. It smelled off, but then most meat did these days. Then again, she was probably wrong. She had warned her friends about eating meat that she could have sworn was rancid, only to find they considered it perfectly sound.
“Nothing,” R’shiel replied, picking up her fork. “It looks wonderful.”
“It should,” Joyhinia grumbled. “It took enough effort to arrange. You would think I’d asked for some exotic Fardohnyan seafood dish, the way the cooks carried on when I ordered pork. You’d better eat every bite, or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
With a grimace R’shiel cut into her meat. They ate in silence, R’shiel forcing down every swallow. Joyhinia appeared to be enjoying the meal. If there had been even a hint of taint on the meat, she would have sent it back to the kitchens with a blistering reprimand for the cooks.
Finally, Joyhinia put down her fork and studied R’shiel across the table. “Jacomina says you missed class three times this week.”
“I wasn’t feeling well.” Having her mother’s closest ally as the Mistress of Enlightenment was proving rather uncomfortable. Mahina had never reported half the things she got up to. “I’ve been getting headaches. They seem to get better if I rest.”
“Have you seen a physic?” Joyhinia had no patience with illness or invalids.
“I hadn’t thought a headache worthy of a visit to a physic.”
“Well, see Sister Gwenell if they continue. You can’t afford to be missing classes.”
“Yes, mother,” R’shiel replied dutifully. Missing classes was the only thing her mother seemed to care about—not if she might be ill. Annoyed, R’shiel pushed her unfinished meal away and said the one thing guaranteed to aggravate her mother. “Have you seen Tarja, recently?”
“Your half-brother does not choose to visit with me, nor I with him. I suggest you adopt a similar policy.”
“But he’s my brother.”
“Half-brother,” she corrected. “However, that is irrelevant. Tarjanian is a troublemaker and you would do well to disassociate yourself from him.”
“That makes it kind of awkward for you, doesn’t it? A woman in your position? It’s a good thing I toe the line.”
Most of the time
, she added silently to herself,
and then just barely
.
Joyhinia’s expression clouded with annoyance. “Don’t presume to threaten me, my girl. I’ve no need to remind you what will happen if I hear of you misbehaving again.”
“I’ll make certain that the next time I misbehave, mother, you don’t hear about it,” she promised with a perfectly straight face.
Joyhinia sipped her wine and studied her daughter critically. “You will push me too far one day, R’shiel. And I can assure you the consequences will not be pleasant.”
R’shiel knew that look. A change of subject was in order.
“Why is the Karien Envoy here?” she asked. Politics was the one topic she could rely on to divert Joyhinia.
“I’m surprised you have to ask. He’s here because we have a new First Sister. He wants the treaty between Karien and Medalon re-affirmed.”
“Oh,” R’shiel said. Any first-year Novice could have worked that out, but for the time being, her shortcomings were forgotten.
“He’s also here to observe the Sisterhood,” Joyhinia continued. “He wants to assure himself that we are not wavering on our policy of suppression of heathen worship. He wants Mahina to initiate another Purge. He’s lobbying members of the Quorum to support him. Harith is already on his side. Francil won’t care one way or the other, so long as it doesn’t interfere with the running of the Citadel. If I can be talked around, Jacomina will follow and he’ll get what he wants.”
“Isn’t a Purge a bit extreme? There can’t be that many heathens left. It hardly seems worth the effort to rid Medalon of a few scabby peasants secretly worshipping trees or rocks, or whatever it is that they hold divine.”
Joyhinia frowned at R’shiel’s impudence. “I see our new First Sister has her supporters. I hope you don’t espouse such sentiments publicly, R’shiel. You must never forget that you are my daughter.”
“Don’t worry mother, there’s no chance of me ever forgetting that.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I’ve done everything I could to make your life as easy as possible, R’shiel. I expect you to return that consideration, one day.” Joyhinia’s face was hidden by the goblet, so it was hard to read her expression, but R’shiel had a bad feeling that Joyhinia already knew exactly how she expected R’shiel to repay her.
R’shiel also had a very bad feeling that whatever Joyhinia had in mind, she probably wouldn’t like it.