That was all there was left of her now.
She sat up, her tense muscles protesting.“Morning already?”As though on cue, the air shivered with the scent of petrichor, of sea breeze.With their temporary home being located beneath the acolytes’ building – what the priests called the undercroft, although Ami sardonically called it the building’s taint – the air here always smelled damp, but this was different: hydromancy, and a strong dose of it.
The new warden was tinkering up in the altarhouse.
Ami shivered.“When d’you think he’ll be finished?”
“Hopefully soon.”Lina folded the quilt aside and stepped into her boots.“Go up and ask.”
“Oh, imagine!”Ami shoved her playfully as she moved past.“Have you seen him?He looks like he’d knife someone for asking the time.”
“He’s a Mahina.I wouldn’t put it past any of them.”
Ami threaded her arm through Lina’s and wove her around the hundreds of cots and waking people.The air trembled again on the stairs leading up to the refectory, making them both pause, look up.Kai Mahina worked from dawn to dusk every day, adding to his ward, amending it, perfecting it.During his off times, according to some of the otherCaelosi, he had been a holy terror, pacing around the isle at all hours of the night and snapping at any who spoke to him.
That was neither here nor there to Lina.As long as she never ran into him, and as long as his ward kept Castor out of Oseidos, she was happy.
Few of their fellows had beaten them to the refectory, although some of Oseidos’s residents dotted the airy space, already bright with soft dawn light.Lina flinched, glimpsing one of Lady Ione’s seleneschals perched cross-legged at a table and picking sleepily at a bowl of porridge.The woman – Cynthia – wore her uniform more casually than the other seleneschal, sleeves rolled up to her elbows and tunic half-buttoned, but the knives sheathed at her thighs put Lina on edge.Even when she caught Lina’s eye and waved.
Tensing, Lina waved back.
Ami tugged Lina with her to a table brimming with cloth parcels of food set out for theCaelosi.“Have you seen your very posh new friend since the other day?”she whispered, handing Lina a parcel before grabbing one for herself.
“Can she please beourfriend?”Lina hissed back, both of them bowing their heads to the young acolytes behind the counter who had prepared the food.“I don’t think I can handle the pressure of being popular without explanation.”
“Without explanation?”Ami scoffed.“Please don’t be dense.I was getting my godsdamned leg reset and even I saw how Lady Ione looked at you.”
“You’ve been reading too many romances,” Lina retorted, flushing.“I’m like furniture to someone of her status.”
Ami smirked knowingly but said nothing else.
Early sun gleamed above them as Ami steered Lina out the door and into the chilly morning air.She grinned as she hurried ahead, although Lina didn’t miss the wince of pain as Ami’s foot glanced off a raised cobblestone.Oseidos’s head healer Mikau had mended her broken leg, but the ceiling beam that had fallen on her had hurt her so severely that Mikau said it was a miracle she could walk at all.
Another weight of guilt on Lina’s shoulders.
They carried their food out past the beach to a short pier jutting into the sea, where they could take off their shoes and cool their feet in the water.The cloth parcels on their laps opened up to reveal sandwiches, smoked fish and crunchy greens on fresh crusty bread.
“I’ll say one thing,” Ami mused, peering into her sandwich: “since Lady Ione’s come down to the taint – ”
“Pleasestop calling it that.”
“ – the food’s been class.”
That was a fact.Just a few short days after meeting her, Lina had trudged up the steps to the refectory to find Ione biting the head off the Oseidos priest who had taken charge of the living arrangements for their herd of visitors.
“They haven’t even any privacy,” she complained, wagging her finger up at the man nearly a foot taller than her.“At least hang some curtains between their cots.And this!”She indicated the counter laden with bowls of thin, room-temperature soup, fortunately not noticing Lina sidle out of her line of sight.“This is hardly hospitable.Is this how you would want to be treated?”
“But – Lady – ” the priest wheedled, shrinking.“It’s a matter of funding – ”
“Funding!”Ione shot back, appalled.Beside her, Cynthia gazed out the window, one hand twirling a knife; River, on Ione’s other side, looked to be patiently waiting to leave.“Since when are we short on money, with how much Saros manages to cajole out of his veritable sea of philanthropists?”
“Lady – ”
Ione waved a hand at him.“Oh, take it from my coffers if you need it.Gods know it’s just sitting there.”
She’d made to leave, then, but stopped in her tracks to see her audience of one.Ione squinted, leaning forward on her toes, and beamed when she realised who it was.
River lowered his head and murmured something that made Ione’s expression fall.She issued him a reproachful look.
