Our Lady of the Islands (51 page)

D
ead.

Sian’s very thoughts seemed frozen in mid-turn. The young guardsman who had said the word stared miserably at Arian, clearly awaiting some response. But she no longer seemed to have a voice either. Even the god’s young priest looked blank with shock.

Dead?
It … wasn’t possible. What had all of this been for? What was
she
for now? The god … The
GOD
had done these things to her — to all of them — just to
save this child!
… Hadn’t he? And now … The child was
dead?
… An
hour
ago?

“It can’t be,” the young priest whispered.

Sian wanted to whirl at him and demand some explanation.
What’s happened to this god of yours? Where has he gone, now that it counts? Was he ever there at all — or are you just some lunatic, as I supposed, out beating random women just because you think … because you DREAM of some ‘new world’ where there are gods to make things come out as they ought to?
But Sian could still not make her body move, much less find breath with which to fill such words. And the gift she had … That
was
real. But for what now?

“Take me to them,” Arian said at last, without expression, or even much inflection.

Seeming relieved to turn away, the commanding guard and his detail fell into formation before them and started down the hallway.

As Arian followed, Sian discovered that her legs could move after all, if more of their own volition than at her behest. Steps later, Reikos was beside her, tucking his arm beneath hers, taking her cold hand. But she could barely feel him, could not even turn to look, so rigid was her body. So …
dead
. An hour ago. While she’d been sleeping in the litter.

Anything at all could have made the difference. If she hadn’t taken time to heal Rothkin’s mother — or those injured men along their route. If she’d not had to have a bath at Maleen’s house, or taken time to eat so much there. Or argued with Arouf.

They’d have been here in time.

Should she have known? Had she not tried hard enough to satisfy this god? After all?

Weeks to get here
. One
…
hour
…
late.

Ahead of her, Arian walked straight-backed, taking measured strides. As fixed as a porcelain figurine. Unflinching, even as it shatters.

Down two more hallways, then up a short wide flight of stairs, into yet another hallway, this one carpeted, which made their passage even more surreally silent. It was lined in windows facing east, through which Sian could see the multitude below, chanting to their god. About their
Lady of the Islands
…

They stood packed around a great sundial that she hadn’t seen from down there in their midst, ringed in only slightly damaged flowers. No one had thought the sundial worth destroying, she supposed. Just then, the sun itself broke free of clouds on the horizon, flooding the hilltop with its radiance, and causing the sundial to cast a sharp-edged shadow on the hour.

Sian’s eyes shied from blinding brightness, only to find the sundial’s stark shadow everywhere she looked now — its ghost burned on her retinas, slow to fade.

What did you bring me here for, if not to heal her son?
she pled silently.
To stand uselessly and grieve with her? To take away her pain? Have I been through all of this to be nothing but an elaborate anesthetic? Is that pain not all she has left of them now? Should she be deprived of even that?

At the sunlit hallway’s farther end, the guards lined up to flank a double doorway, three to either side. They stood at sharp attention, staring straight ahead as Arian walked between them, the doors pulled open for her by the guards beside it. She stopped there, though, and turned back to Sian, her face still all but empty. “Can you …” she trailed off, as if afraid to finish.

It took just seconds for Sian to realize what she was trying to ask. “I don’t know,” she replied, thinking suddenly about the chicken from the dockmarket. “I’ve had no real cause to try …”

“Will you … now?” asked Arian.

Sian nodded. Trembling. Not just because she feared to learn what it was like to share someone else’s death, but, even more, because she feared to fail. She turned back to face the priest. “Can you help me do this? Have you any kind of … power?”

He stared at her in obvious distress. “I have no power but the god within me. And that only sometimes. What he might or might not do now, I have no way of knowing.”

“Then, if you will both come with me …” Arian said, trailing off again, as if afraid to voice this last, unlikely hope aloud.

“With permission, my lady, I will await you here,” Joreth said quietly.

“As will I.” Reikos glanced uncertainly at Sian. But she knew he was right. No matter the outcome, this would be … intensely private, she suspected. For Arian, if not for her.

Arian turned and went inside now, followed by Sian, and then the priest.

Beyond the door, a high-ceilinged, brightly sunlit room was elegantly gilded, with warmly colored parquet floors, and exquisite floral murals on three of its walls. The fourth wall faced east, filled with large, elaborate windows that looked down on the same sundial and its attendant crowd. The room’s delicately sculpted furnishings, tastefully arranged, were empty. There was no one there.

“They are in your private chamber, my lady,” one of the guards outside said quietly.

Nodding, as if he’d see it, Arian walked toward an open threshold on their left, where a woman suddenly appeared, drawn by the guard’s call, perhaps, in elegant black silks which exaggerated the paleness of her strawberry blonde complexion. Her eyes went wide when she saw Arian. “Oh, my lady!” she exclaimed, running to embrace the woman without any apparent confusion about who she was. “I am so sorry, my lady! But so glad you are alive!” She was in tears now, as was Arian. “I was afraid we’d lost you all.”

Lucia
, Sian thought. This must be Arian’s other maid.

Arian, pulled back from her, wiping at her eyes. “Has there been any word of Maronne?”

Lucia shook her head. “What happened, my lady? You both just disappeared.”

“I will tell you,” said Arian. “But first …” She glanced back at Sian, turmoil in her eyes. “Lucia, this is Viktor’s cousin, Sian Kattë.”

“Oh! The healer!” Lucia gasped quietly. “If only …” She fell abruptly silent, seeming to realize that she ought not to say what all of them must know too well already.

“And this gentleman is a priest,” said Arian, not quite meeting anyone’s eyes.

“From the temple?” Lucia frowned. “Is your … trouble there resolved then? We could certainly have used a few more of you earlier.”

“I am not from the temple, my lady,” the priest said awkwardly.

“Oh?” Lucia looked from him to Arian in clear confusion. “Then where …
Oh!
” She glanced toward the windows, wide-eyed again, then back at the priest. “You are … their leader?”

“Their … liaison, if anything,” he answered, self-consciously. “The god sometimes speaks through me, but I do not speak for him. Nor am I anybody’s leader.”

Lucia’s eyes grew even wider. “Are you here to …” She raised a hand to her breast, her gaze leaping to Sian. “Can you still … heal them?”

“I don’t know. But I am here to try.”

“Come then!” Lucia turned back to the doorway. “Quickly!”

They followed her into the next room, which seemed some kind of office, or parlor, with a desk and many bookshelves. Lucia passed through this without hesitation, toward another open doorway at its far side, calling softly to someone beyond that, “Aros, your sister has returned, and brought the healer with her!”

“Aros?” Arian called out, walking faster as they came around a corner. “You are safe!” As they entered what was obviously her bedchamber, she stopped as if against a wall of glass, her face crumpling as she brought both fists up to her mouth.

Before them, on a high, wide bed draped in coverlets of gold and purple silk brocade, lay two bodies, side by side. The first had belonged to an older man with bushy, salt-and-pepper eyebrows and short-cropped, steel-gray hair. It wore smudged and dented armor, bloodied at several of the torn joints across his torso, despite the effort someone had clearly made to clean most of the gore away. Beside him lay a young boy in a simple white silk nightgown. His head was all but without hair, his waxen, nearly colorless features, skeletal. Of the two, Sian would have assumed that he had been dead far longer. Days, if not weeks already.

At the bed’s far side, a pale man of medium build with long blonde hair tied back in ribbons, wearing silks of blue so dark as to be nearly black as well, stood staring in something like horror at Arian. “Where have you been?” he asked her, sounding bewildered. Hurt.

“I have been trying to get back here, Aros.”

“From where? They would tell me nothing.
Me.
Your
brother.
” He shook his head, looking wounded, as if they had no greater tragedy to deal with. “They lied to me for days. They all said you were in seclusion here, though clearly you were not. I thought we had come to some … better understanding. Were you lying to me — even then?”

“We were trying to avoid this war, Aros,” Arian said. “There was no time, and it was crucial that no hint of my activities got out.”

“To
me
?” he asked.

She stared at him in equal disbelief. “May I have a moment, please, to …” she looked back down at her dead son and husband, “to deal … with this?”

Her brother fell silent, still looking sullen and offended. Sian wondered if he’d already had time to absorb this tragedy, or was still in too much shock, perhaps, to fully register the fact, or … simply didn’t care? Her own heart was breaking, and she had never even met either of these … “My lady, may I?” she asked.

“Please,” Arian whispered without looking up from them. “Please, please, please …” she begged someone softly.

The Factor’s body was closest. And looked … more salvageable. Sian went to it, surprised at how much fear she felt. Of death. Both his and her own, suddenly. What would
this
feel like? If she didn’t do it now, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t lose her courage altogether.

She drew a deep breath, released an even deeper sigh, then she thrust her hands onto his own, as there was no other bare skin but his face for her to touch. She shut her eyes and braced herself …

But nothing came.

It felt no different than laying hands upon a table, or a stone. There was simply … nothing there. Nothing there to fear. Nothing there to heal. Nothing left. To do.

The chicken … must not have been fully dead. Or dead for long enough, perhaps …

She turned to Arian. The truth must already have been clearly visible, in Sian’s eyes or body language. Arian’s face collapsed altogether as she lost her struggle for control.

Sian stood aside as the Factora-Consort of Alizar ran to throw herself across her husband’s body, sobbing without any pretense of restraint. “I’m so sorry, Viktor! That I wasn’t here! That you had to fight alone! Oh … my husband … I will never … never forgive myself … for what … I …” Her sobbing became too convulsive to allow for speech. She wept and wept, utterly alone, it seemed, despite the other people in the room. There was no way for anyone to join her where she was. That much was immediately clear, though Sian cried too now, for Arian more than for the dead she’d never known.

Lucia wept as well, gazing helplessly at her mistress’s suffering.

Tears streaked silently even from the priest’s eyes.

Only Aros’s eyes were dry. Though he once again looked horrified by what he saw, after a moment focused on his sister’s display of grief, his gaze started darting elsewhere: to Lucia, to the priest, finally to Sian. “There were no priests,” he told her. “Viktor had them all kicked out. While everyone was lying to me. So there was no one left to treat him. Do you see? There was nothing
I
could do. For either of them.”

His breathing had become extremely rapid. He seemed …
terrified
, Sian realized. Did he think he needed to explain all this to her? Who was she to judge him? Why should he care what she thought? Especially now. He reminded her of Arouf. So self-absorbed. At such a moment.

Aros’s gaze darted to the Butchered God’s priest next. “You’re a priest, aren’t you? Can’t your gods do something?”

The priest seemed as bewildered as Sian was by his manner. He shrugged helplessly, looking desolate. “I can do no more than you. I am only human.”

“You’re not from the temple, are you?” Aros replied scornfully, almost as if he had forgotten his sister entirely. “Those bastards would never have said anything so modest. Whose priest are you then? What useless god do
you
serve?”

The young priest’s face hardened suddenly. He seemed … to age. To change before Sian’s eyes. She’d seen this face on him before. Just once. And suddenly she feared, both for herself, and for Aros, however repugnant he might seem. She backed away now, having suffered this god’s attention one too many times already.

“
I am the god whom you call Butchered,
” the priest said gravely, in a voice both his own, and yet somehow not quite human anymore. Yes. Sian recalled that voice. The memory chilled her to the bone.