Mayhap she needn’t try so hard, she thought as they both got up and merged with the crowd leaving the dining room. Mayhap this might happen on its own, should she cease to push so hard for it. In the hallway they both paused, Cassian’s destination in one direction and hers in another.
“I shall see you this after, yes?”
She heard the inflection of her own voice in his and found it so charming she wanted to weep again. “Yes.”
“Annalise.” Cassian said her name slowly without looking even once at anyone passing by them to see if they might be listening. “Are you sure you’re well?”
“I’m most well, thank you. I’ll see you later. Go, now, else your students rebel and begin reading ahead in the texts.”
“I find there little to suggest that is at all likely,” Cassian said.
Annalise laughed. “You never know. I’m not the only novitiate who knows obscure bits and pieces of the Faith.”
Cassian made a face. “Have I heard you aright? You are admitting to being the same as any other?”
This could not go without response; Annalise poked his chest. Hard. “I take affront at your tone.”
He captured her hand before she could poke again, but whatever retort he meant to give was swallowed when a cool feminine voice interrupted them.
“Your mercy, Master Toquin, Mistress Marony. Annalise,” said Deliberata with a small smile that revealed naught, “I’ve some letters for you.”
In an instant, the warmth of his fingers vanished as he pulled away. Cassian gave the Mother-in-Service a formal half bow and one to Annalise. When he straightened, the teasing light in his eyes had vanished.
“And I must be away, as Mistress Marony so aptly pointed out to me.”
“May the Invisible Mother keep you,” Deliberata said.
“Today and all your others,” Cassian replied after a hesitation. “Anon.”
Both women watched him walk away. Deliberata spoke first. “Do you still feel you are too advanced for Master Toquin’s instruction?”
“I . . . no, Mother. Actually, I’ve found Master Toquin a fine instructor.”
Deliberata smiled. “Finer than you’d suspected?”
“Yes.” Annalise paused, not eager for the older woman to question further. Not from shame on her part, certainly, but out of respect for Cassian. “He’s a man of impressive intellect.”
“And a fine-featured face never hurts.”
Annalise laughed. “Yes, Mother, I suppose a handsome man is always more a pleasure to be around than an ugly one.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Ugly men seem to have their own charm. Mayhap it’s because they’re more used to pleasing than expecting pleasure. It makes it ever so much more satisfying to provide it.”
“You speak of patrons?”
Deliberata’s laugh belonged to a much younger woman. “Oh goodness, child. Not necessarily. It’s been a good long time since I’ve had a patron, as I’ve made it my service to attend here at the Motherhouse. It’s been far less time since I’ve taken a lover. Walk with me. I’ve your letters in my office and would give them to you at once.”
“Yes, Mother.” Annalise fell into step beside her. She wanted to giggle at the older woman’s frank admission, but held back. When she was old and wrinkled and gray she hoped the idea of taking a lover would seem no sillier than it did to her now, even though it might to someone else.
They chatted of inconsequential things on their path to the same tidy office to which Annalise had been first admitted upon entering the Motherhouse. Inside, Deliberata pulled open a drawer and removed a packet of letters bound with a rough cord. She handed them across the desk.
“They were delayed in their delivery, it appears. The man brought them this morning from town.”
“Thank you, Mother.” Annalise tucked the letters into her palms and placed them against her belly.
Deliberata smiled. “Do you know how much you’ve improved since your arrival here, Annalise?”
This was not what she’d expected to hear. “I . . . have?”
“The young woman who arrived upon my doorstep several months ago would have fallen upon those letters like a dog tossed a bone with meat still on it.”
Annalise looked at the letters. “I thought it would be unseemly for me to tear them open to read in front of you and dismiss our conversation.”
“It’s been quite some time since you’ve heard from anyone at home, and I’m fair certain you’re eager to read what they’ve sent. I’d have understood if you preferred the company of their words to mine.” Deliberata sat with her hands folded on top of the desk and gave Annalise another smile.
“I was being polite.”
“It’s more than being polite. I’ve known you to be spirited since your arrival, but never rude.”
The cord scratched at her palms while the corners of the letters poked her, too. Letters, three of them, and from who? One from her parents, perhaps a sister or two? Was there a letter there from Jacquin?
She’d not written him in more than a week and should not have felt guilty for it. After all, beyond the first letter he’d sent, he’d not bothered to send another.
“It is more than being polite,” Deliberata said again. “It’s about finding a certain level of calm, Annalise. A certain way of being, so that no matter your eagerness to accomplish a task, you maintain the ability to assess all aspects of the situation and decide your course.”
“It makes me no less eager to get to the letters, Mother, pleading your mercy.”
Deliberata laughed. “Child, there is little to be done for such excitement as comes from something as special as a letter from loved ones far away. I would never prefer you to lose that joy. But I am well pleased to see how you handle yourself, and it. It shows me somewhat about you.”
“Which is what?”
“That you are becoming a Handmaiden.”
Fire and ice both split her at the same moment. Annalise swallowed past a sudden lump. “Mother?”
“Few arrive here with it instilled inside them. And, unlike some of my Sisters-in-Service, I’m unconvinced it can be taught to those who have no skill for it. There is somewhat special about being a Handmaiden, as you well know, Annalise. Somewhat beyond a manner of speech or deportment. Many leave the Order before taking their vows. I thought, I truly thought, you’d be one of them.”
Guilt still plagued her, that Deliberata should have so seen the truth Annalise had tried to hide and yet now was no longer certain applied. “Your mercy, Mother.”
“No need to apologize to me, child. Some have it. Some do not. Some want it. Some think they desire a life of Service and yet discover they cannot stomach it.” Deliberata waved a hand. “We are all called to serve the Invisible Mother in ways we are never granted the ability to imagine. It’s not up to us to discover them. We must rely on Her guidance to lead us to Her, and it may not be in ways we anticipate or even like.
Annalise held the letters closer to her stomach. “Mother, I think I should tell you something.”
“Your vision. The one you had in the forest. The one that sent you to us.”
Annalise swallowed again at the memory of the lie. “My vision.”
“Your description of it was quite compelling, as I recall. I’d never heard one quite so detailed, or vivid. You must have put a lot of thought into it.”
Fortunately, the Mother-in-Service had a chair on the other side of her desk, because when Annalise’s knees gave out, she sat so suddenly she’d have hit the floor had it not been there to catch her.
“You know? You know I . . .” She still could not quite bear to admit a lie. “Embellished?”
“My dear, do you think you’re the first young woman ever to seek sanctuary among us who’s not been a true seeker of service? My goodness, I myself came to the Motherhouse to escape a particularly domineering mother and passive father, neither of whom had my best interests at heart, or so I believed in my youth. Still believe, actually.” Deliberata shook her head, mouth pursing for a moment. “Many come to us with reasons that are less than pure.”
“I plead your mercy. I’ve done what’s requested of me. Most of the time.”
“Ah, you’ve chafed at much we’ve asked of you. Take no shame in it. Some who come to us have no quarrel with time spent on their knees, and yet are never granted a patron.”
“I should not have come on false pretense.”
“Was it?” Deliberata looked at her.
Annalise opened her mouth to say yes, but stopped herself. “Was it not?”
“Did you truly go into the forest and fall to your knees in front of an image of the Invisible Mother created in the bark of a tree, which then spoke to you in a voice so terrible it caused your ears to bleed? Did She truly tell you to seek the Motherhouse and devote your life to service? Did She blind you for a day and a half, from the rise of one sun to the set of one moon, and cause Her name to be raised on your flesh in wheals of crimson?”
“No, Mother.” Listening to it now, Annalise wished she’d not spent so much time on the craft of the tale. Compared to what Wandalette had said in class, Annalise’s story was overblown and ridiculous.
“Ah. But does that mean that your vision was a lie?”
“None of that happened, Mother.”
Deliberata raised a finger. “Sometime you might feel the need to confess your reasons, but I am not to play the part of your confessor. Tell me where you came up with the idea for that story.”
“I made it up.”
“All of it?”
“Yes. From the commentaries and texts I knew.”
“You took bits and pieces and put them together to make your own?”
“Yes, Mother.”
Deliberata’s girlish laugh rang out again. She clapped. “Delightful. But ask yourself, Annalise. How did you know which bits to choose? Which to put together? How did you know how to weave that particular tapestry?”
Annalise thought about it. “I don’t know.”
Deliberata raised a finger. “Do you not think She had a hand in it?”
“The Invisible Mother? Kedalya?”
“Yes. Do you not think perhaps She led you to decide this path, no matter what reasons you thought you had? Do you think it possible She led you here, Annalise, to devote yourself to service so that you might do your part in bringing about the Return?”
Annalise had not, in fact, thought any such thing, but there in the Mother-in-Service’s office, anything seemed possible. “Do you think that’s what happened?”
“Perhaps it’s not so important what I believe, as what you do.”
Ah, there was the rub. Annalise’s belief had gone away long ago. Stolen or lost, mayhap just forgotten.
“Think about it,” Deliberata urged. “You might be surprised to learn that even a made-up story of bits and pieces is a true vision, after all. Go on, now. Read your letters. Go to your studies.”
And Annalise, unexpectedly obedient, went.
One letter was indeed from her parents. All was well at home. Several of her sisters were with child. They were proud of her, of Annalise, for taking this path and hoped that when she took her vows they would have a chance see her before she left the Motherhouse. One from Allorisa, filled with bragging of her new life.
And the third, the final and thickest letter, the one that made her fingers tremble to open . . . was from Jacquin.
Chapter 17
A
nnalise?” She wasn’t looking at him, and Cassian realized how quickly he’d become accustomed to her attention now they’d declared the truce. “Have you something to add?”
She’d had her head bent over her desk, still at the back of the room, and now didn’t look up even at the sound of her name. As one, the other novitiates turned. Concerned, Cassian made his way down the aisle to stand before her. Was she truly unwell, the way he’d thought earlier?
“Annalise?”
She looked up then, her eyes tinged with pink in a too-pale face. She wet her lips before speaking. “Your mercy, sir. I was distracted.”
He looked to the desk, to the text, closed. To her journal, also closed. She had a letter spread on the polished wood, her hands flat over it. She’d smudged the ink onto her fingertips and must have touched her forehead with them, for a smear of darkness marred her dusky skin.
“Are you unwell? Ought I send one of the girls to fetch a medicus?” He touched her shoulder, wishing instead to put the back of his hand to feel for fever but too mindful of the eyes of so many.
“I’m fine.” She cleared her throat.
Her eyes said otherwise.
“You are all dismissed,” Cassian said.
Annalise’s eyes widened. Her mouth thinned, clamped tight on some protest he would refuse to hear. The class murmured, texts closing, papers shuffling, chairs squeaking.
“Now,” Cassian said in the voice of thunder that had never let him down.
“Sir, should I fetch a medicus?” Wandalette asked from his elbow.
“No,” Annalise said.
“No?”
She looked at Wandalette, then Cassian, then at the letter on her desk. “No. I’m well, truly. I think perhaps I ate somewhat that disagreed with me. That’s all. Truly, Wandalette, you need not fret.”
Wandalette made a doubtful noise, then looked at him. “Well, you’re with the master, and I suppose we know he’ll make sure you’re taken care of. So if you’re sure.”
Her simple acceptance—that he would take care of Annalise—set him back a step. “Go, please.”
Wandalette nodded. “Yes, sir. Annalise, I hope you feel better.”
Cassian stood straight and tall without bending until the last novitiate had filed from the room. Then he pulled a chair toward her, so fast the legs scraped curls of wax from the floor. He sat, knee-to-knee. He took her hands in his and chafed their chill.
“Tell me what has you so distraught?”
“Not distraught,” she told him. “I am quite undone with joy.”
She looked as far from joy as the Void was from the Land Above. He squeezed her hands again and settled them onto her lap. She blinked at him, her eyes bright, but no tears sliding down her cheeks. For that he supposed he ought to offer gratitude.