When I requested things—maps to plan an evacuation, buckets and sand to fight the fires, food, bandages—they were brought to where I wanted them put, with at most a questioning glance toward Taran, who lurked a step behind me as I limped through the City. Either they were familiar with him from his time as the Peace-Queen’s envoy and thought this was all Genna’s will, or they were so used to obedience that they’d follow anyone’s orders.
What nobody would do was plan with me for a war that would soon return.
The Summerlands were eternal and inflexible. If I dragged a wheelbarrow through a lawn, the rut was gone by the next morning.If I cut back branches hanging too close to flammable roofs, the trees were just as verdant within a few days. The food didn’t rot, the dishes were never dirty, and the City rejected barricades the way it did potholes and broken floor tiles.
It did something to the people who lived here too. Gave mortals immortal life, but made them a part of the fixed idea of the place—the Allmother’s plan, I supposed. No one could imagine that anything could change; no one tried to change anything.
A doe-eyed ghost in Genna’s golden vestments convinced me that it was no use pressing Genna’sprieststo act.
“Elantia?” I gasped when she shyly presented herself one evening at the laundry.
I’d last seen the queen’s daughter bent backwards over Death’s altar, that terrible day at Ereban. Her body burnt like an offering, then vanished.
“Teuta said you were here,” she said, head bent and hands clasped. “I had to come see for myself.”
She had been four years younger than me when she died, but she looked even younger now, her heart-shaped face soft and childish. I’d only known her a little: a vocate in Wesha’s temple not because of her abilities or inclinations but because the daughters of the nobility got a reputation for chastity by sheer proximity to maiden-priests.
“How are you alive?” I asked, grabbing her by the shoulders to feel her solidity.
The girl gave me a forced smile. “I don’t really know. I remember being called to the front of the temple at midsummer, the fire—not much else, really.”
“Is anyone else—the others who died at Ereban, Wesha’s priests? Are they here too?” My heart began to pound.
Elantia gently shook her head. “No, just me. I didn’t even know what happened until the other priests came from over the sea. I just woke up here, in Death’s temple.”
Hope died hard for being only a few moments old. Of course not. She had been sacrificed, like Wesha sacrificed me, while all the others at Ereban had simply died. I’d overseen their funerals, sent their bodies out to sea.
But my mind still raced at the possibilities.
“Nobody knows what happened to you. I mean, they all know what happened at Ereban. But nobody came back—oh, Maiden. We have to get word to your mother somehow. We need to get youhome.”
She was the heir to the throne and the reason the queen’s anger at the gods had never been quenched. If she came back…
Elantia fitfully smoothed her dress, face still lowered. “I’m a priestess of Genna now.”
I made a noise of startled dismay. A royal daughter might take Skyfather’s vows, or even Death’s, but not the Peace-Queen’s. Genna’s priests could marry, but mostly wed other peace-priests—the demands of Genna’s service left little of a life to spare for other causes.
“Nobody knew what to do with me. A mortal sacrifice. It hadn’t happened in hundreds of years. Some death-priests said I ought to belong to them, like I was a goat someone had brought as an offering.” Her mouth twisted. “Genna said I could choose whose vows I’d take, but I had to take someone’s.”
Genna’s kindness looked a lot like greed to me. My hands curled into fists.
“You know that your mother…that the queen—” It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her how the queen had pulled down all the temple walls and destroyed the sacrificial altars to every god in vengeance for her slaughtered child. It was becoming harder and harder for me to say she’d been wrong to do it.
The princess squirmed. “Is my mother well?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to be gentle. “Though she still grieves foryou. I last saw her a few weeks before I came here. She’s rebuilding the port at Lubridium as the new capital.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Elantia whispered. She gave me another forced smile. “I’d be happy to help with whatever you’re doing here, even though I’m not a very good singer. I never could get any of Wesha’s blessings, and I’m not much better with Genna’s.”
I put my hands on my cheeks. It shouldn’t be up to this girl to defend the City from Death. Where was Skyfather with a quiver full of lightning bolts? Where was Lixnea in her silver chariot?
Genna couldn’t buy an end to every war with one of her children.
“If anything happens, you just run. In the opposite direction of any danger,” I told Elantia.
She nodded weakly, and I directed her to one of the groups that was packing supplies into smaller bundles.
Taran had decided that I could be trusted to go to Genna’s laundry on my own, or more likely decided that Genna’s priests could be trusted not to report my attempts to foment insurrection, so I had to stomp back across the City to find him.
