I automatically opened my mouth to sing the benediction for new mothers, but I stopped before the first note. Not because I was being dramatic about not singing after Taran died. I would have done it for the girl’s sake. But the guard had noticed the three of us, and his stare was hard and unfriendly. No god’s blessing would be tolerated at the queen’s residence.
I still tried to conjure the appropriate look of maidenly serenity before passing the baby back.
“She’s beautiful,” I said in lieu of the blessing, and the girl seemed satisfied when she bowed and walked to the other side of the petitioners’ courtyard.
Tell me, nightingale, do you actually believe all babies are beautiful, or is that just something you say?
No, I’m being polite. I actually think that baby who peed on me needs to focus on his personality.
Good thing our children won’t have to worry about that.
I’d promised to bear Taran ten humorless redheaded brats if he tempted fate in that way, but he’d only laughed and said he wanted eleven.
Lost in that memory, I didn’t realize I was staring after the sleepy baby and her mother until I felt Hiwa’s hand curling into mine to squeeze it hard. My sinuses burned as I tried to keep myself in this time and place.
I could be terribly angry at the little acolyte of Gennasometimes, but she was the only person whose presence I could always tolerate. She never seemed surprised when I cried or didn’t cry, ate or didn’t eat, argued with the queen or looked out at the sea for hours. She would have been a good peace-priest, if she’d ever finished her training.
Maiden-priests trained to treat the dying as well as the young, and a month after Taran died, I woke Hiwa up in the middle of the night, convinced that I had a growth in my lungs from all the smoke I’d inhaled. I couldn’t breathe correctly. Couldn’t get enough air. I felt the tumor jabbing into my spine and leeching into my bones, and I knew it would kill me if I didn’t teach someone how to cut it out, because everyone else who knew how was dead now.
Hiwa didn’t even bother with the blessing that would have disproved it. She just put a hand on my chest and matter-of-factly said,no, that’s grief.
I might sometimes be furious that Hiwa was forcing me to be here, but at least she never expected me to be anything but sad about it. We sat in understanding silence until a second royal guardsman came out and said that the queen would see us now.
I knew assoon as the guard announced me that the queen would say no. JustIona, notIona ter Weshaor evenIona Night-Singer, which the queen had been the first one to call me. The mood at her court had an ugly undercurrent tonight, sullen and hungry, and they looked at me when I limped in like they hoped I’d provide them some amusement, musical or otherwise.
I’d declined several invitations to perform on the kithara here, and I sensed another would not be forthcoming. Not that I’d be missing the hospitality. Cheap pitch torches were already accumulating soot on the beams of the high ceiling and fouling theindoor air, because the queen spent every spare coin on imported grain for her people, and oil for lamps was not in the budget.
I’d been in here before, when the royal residence was still a temple of Genna, Peace-Queen, Taran and Hiwa’s patron goddess. The queen had plastered over the erotic frescoes and cut down the sacred fruit trees, and her wooden throne sat where a statue of Genna had once loomed over the sacrificial firepit, but she’d made no other improvements.
From the queen’s sour expression, she knew she ruled a country in decline, and her residence was only a symbol of it. This wasn’t a temple of Genna when it was constructed—from the high peaked ceiling, I knew it had once been a temple of the Allmother, probably constructed before the Great War three hundred years ago. But hardly anyone worshipped the Allmother even before my rebellion; other temples had offered more tangible blessings, and it was hard to maintain gratitude to the Allmother for giving birth to the gods we no longer saw or for building a paradise across the sea that only a few mortal priests would ever visit.
We stopped building new temples at all once Death came to rule us. We never had enough time or money left after making the sacrifices he demanded. But now that he was gone, there was still nothing to spare, even for the queen.
Despite the mood and the queen’s grimace, I tried to talk to her like I used to. I had once thought I was a pretty convincing speaker, because I did, after all, convince her to join me in the rebellion that ended Death’s rule over the entire country, but ever since Death fell on the cliffs, she seemed to wish I would disappear.
Well, me too, but I still had people I was responsible for.
Taran was dead, but there was still work that I was required to do.
My proposal tonight was designed to avoid all her previous objections to my plans: I would take the other acolytes with me to theruins of Ereban, and we’d restore the barracks at the temple of Diopater, which had been the least damaged among all the major structures. The old royal palace there was charred rubble under six feet of mud, and the rest of the population had fled, so we’d be alone. The other acolytes and I would only use the blessings of the gods per the strict instructions of the throne, and we would accept no new students.
It was far from the picture Taran had painted of our future. Once Death relented, he thought all the priests would come back from across the sea, we’d rebuild the ruined temples to the other gods, and we’d be prosperous and peaceful again. Maybe he could have talked the queen into that: all I’d done was convince people to riot and fight and burn, but Taran could charm anyone he ever met, from the queen down to the lowest pot-boy. He would have led with a smile and a compliment and got the queen laughing, while I’d come in with a new limp and resentment.
Taran, this should have been you, not me.
The queen told me no.
When I was done speaking, she sat up in her throne, her winged eyebrows lowered, and made her announcement.
“I cannot allow anything in the shape of a temple to be rebuilt. The gods have left the world to us, Night-Singer. We should leave their blessings to them. Let their names and their prayers be forgotten, as they have forgotten us. I want that to be my legacy.”
She wasn’t really speaking to me but to the crowd, because not everyone agreed. Some of the nobles here had been religious loyalists who’d fought on Death’s side until it looked like we were winning. Some of them still worshipped in secret. Some of them had fled abroad at the start of the rebellion to live in gentler lands with gentler gods, and they were unimpressed when they returned to find our country barren and torn.
The queen would only get angrier if I pointed out that I hadacolytes who could sing the blessing of rain for our parched fields or blessings over metal to forge tools to rebuild the ruined cities, or that I myself was the last living person who could treat complicated childbirths or infectious illnesses. But I couldn’t make her look weak in front of her court, so I threw myself on her mercy instead.
“I’m only asking for the sake of people who fought in your army for three years. I’ve sent home everyone who still has family, but that leaves dozens of us who only know temple life. What are we supposed to do?”
My voice wobbled when I spoke. My thoughts rarely marched beyond the next moment anymore, but it finally sunk in as I was standing there that I might truly fail at this too. The queen might be stubborn enough to see her country starve. I might be cursed to live long enough to see the people I’d tried to save brought even lower than they’d been under Death’s tyranny.
