“I’m Iona,” I told them when it was clear I wouldn’t be able to draw a larger crowd. “A couple of you knew me when I was called Iona ter Wesha. I was in the high temple at Ereban on the day Death destroyed it.”
I didn’t lie to them at all, even if I didn’t tell the full truth. I described the rebellion without my own part in it. I told them I’d followed Taran to the Summerlands, even if I was vague on the details of timing. But I was very exact when I described what I’d seen at the Shipwright’s palace: mortal priests, sacrificed to restore the power of the youngest Stoneborn.
The day after the massacre at Ereban, I’d given a report to the queen. I’d only ever seen her from a distance before, and I was probably still in shock at the time, because I didn’t recall being afraid of her. She already knew her daughter was dead, but she hadn’t known the exact details, and I’d recited them the way I would have accounted for the facts of a failed surgery.
She went willingly; I tried to stop them; everyone is dead.
These priests of Genna were familiar with my mode of recounting, and they grimly absorbed my words without question until I was done, just as the queen had. But while the queen had risen from her throne to call for someone to bring her a sword, the priests shuffled their feet and waited for me to say more after I said that Death would see them all dead in his bid to rule the world again.
“Does the Peace-Queen know?” Teuta finally asked me when our stare-off lasted more than a few seconds.
“Yes, Taran is telling her right now,” I said impatiently. But Genna hadn’t done anything to stop Death from making a wreckage of the mortal world. “What areyougoing to do? I don’t know how long we have before Death is free again.”
“What can we do?” another priest asked skeptically.
I looked around the crowd at a loss. I’d expected a little more initiative from priests who’d once led Genna’s cult in the mortal world.
“Does nobody here remember the Great War? What the mortal priests did to survive back then?”
“In Lixnea’s cult, maybe,” said Teuta, shaking her head. “Nobody here is that old. After Taran was born and Genna wouldn’t name his father, Skyfather expelled all her priests in retribution.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. One terrible god’s evil at a time, but perhaps all of them, one day.
“We’ll start planning a defense, then. With Skyfather’s priests too. Anyone else in the City.”
It should have been easier to imagine it with dozens of fully trained priests than the handful of scared, injured children I’d started off with after Ereban, but the lost acolytes that had formed the core of our army had been a lot more eager to do what I told them than this group seemed to be.
“Iona,” Teuta said, voice firm. “You know that we take a vow of nonviolence as well as obedience. We’re not fighters. It’ll be up to the Stoneborn to protect us.”
I saw movement from the stairwell at the room’s entrance. Taran, slipping in the back. I froze, wondering how deep I was in trouble with him, and Teuta’s face asked the same question, but all he did was lean against the wall and cross his arms over his chest to watch.
“So, what will you do when Death comes looking for more lives to put on his altar? Just die?” I asked the peace-priests again.
I was sympathetic to their divided loyalties, to the shackles of their immortal vows, but there was always space, within those, to decide who to be and what to do.
“What areyougoing to do?” Teuta tossed it back to me with a nervous, sidelong glance at Taran.
I firmed up my mouth.
“The same thing I did last time,” I warned them both. I took a step back, wiped my palms together, and sang the chant:
Hail Death, who kindles flame.
Fire dropped from my hands to the stone floor without incident, but Genna’s priests buzzed with muffled protests at my casual violation of the ancient taboo against invoking the blessings of a god who was not my patron.
Genna’s vows required them to do no violence, but if they could help a maiden-priest remove a diseased organ, they could light a backfire to deny Death fuel in his war. If they wanted to survive, they would.
“And that’s enough for tonight,” Taran announced, marching through the crowd to cut the chatter. “Teuta. Always a pleasure. Glad you’re looking well.” He hooked one arm around the back of my neck and began to drag me toward the exit.
“Practice that blessing. I’ll come back tomorrow,” I tried to tell Teuta, but I wasn’t certain she heard me before Taran muscled me into the stairwell.
24
“You couldn’t waituntil after dinner before engaging in some light sedition?” Taran asked once the wet evening air was between us and Genna’s priests. He didn’t sound too angry at me, so rather than answer directly—if you think that was light sedition, wait until I really get going—I ignored the second part of the sentence and asked, more hopefully, “There’s dinner?”
He hadn’t taken his arm off my shoulders, though it was as much companionable as punitive as he steered us back toward Wesha’s old quarters.
“Yes, I have acquired our dinner, at great risk to myself, becausemypriestess doesn’t cook.”
