“Holiness,” Jorah cautioned as Ione let the water fall and stepped up onto the rim of the fountain.“You must learn to shut out these distractions.”
She supposed immolationwasdistracting, although that wasn’t quite what she would call it.
A sunbeam speared the clouds above, but despite its warmth, Ione shivered.She closed her eyes, searching past the fetor of smoke and pyromancy for the soft, post-rains scent of her own people’s water magic.An indication that they had fought back, that perhaps not many of them had died while she stood here suffering Jorah’s monotonous commands.
“Holiness– ”
Saros’s dogs were only good for barking.“You’re excused, Jorah.”
“Not until you finish meditating.”
The heavy moon door leading into the altarhouse creaked open.Ione relaxed, hearing the footsteps of her seleneschal guards.
“What timing,” she said.And to Jorah, “Thank you for today, Jorah.Do you need help back to your flat?Your knees make this awful noise whenever you stand, I’ve noticed.”
She issued him a cool look, her shoulders back and head high.Dignified, queenly, even in just a white cotton bathing robe.She wasn’t much now, but the threat of what she would someday become earned her this small victory: the old man bowed in half and, knees crackling, lumbered gloomily into the dark hall.
Once he’d gone, River, her head seleneschal, rushed to help her down from the rim of the fountain.Which was kind, really; lowering oneself from a knee-high height could be extremely dangerous.Ione flicked a bubble of water at him, smiling and wishing he’d smile back.Even Cynthia stood out of the way, playing nervously with the sleeves of her indigo soldier’s uniform.
“Tell me, then.”Ione sucked in a breath, steeling herself.“The smoke – is it Caelos Shrine?Is it… very bad?”
Cynthia lowered her head, her short brown hair casting a shadow over her face.
River rested his offhand on the hilt of his rapier – a near-constant anxious tell – and said solemnly, “Around half the shrine.”
“What?”Ione lurched, and maybe it was lucky that River was there, because he righted her before her knees buckled.
Half of Caelos Shrine.She had imagined a smaller number, twenty, fifty, one hundred before the rest evacuated.She had, to her shame, made that more palatable.
Five hundred.She held a trembling hand over her heart, grief filling her.Guilt.
Gods damn you, Menon.She pressed harder into her sternum, reaching, sensing.Feeling nothing but her own racing heartbeat.
She was born with the Moon Goddess Menon’s blessing, worshipped by the high priests and raised as the saviour of Menon’s disciples.Ione was a beacon of hope, a harbinger of peace for her people – and of the end of times for the Sun God Sowelan’s cruel apostles.
But Menon’s divine grace did not come with instructions.
You’ll learn how to wield Menon soon, her father always told her, like summoning a goddess was one of the more awkward aspects of puberty.
The potential is there – you just have to apply yourself, her mother said, like Ione didn’t train every day for the past nineteen years to become the holy, earth-flooding weapon she was destined to be.So far, she had succeeded in killing a spider, and that was with a rolled-up parchment.
Saros, the Holy Archpriest of Menon’s sect of moon-worshiping traitors, had long ago stopped preserving Ione’s feelings of inadequacy.Their dislike of one another was mutual: Saros hated what he called spoiled brats, and Ione hated disgusting old men.If it wouldn’t have embarrassed him, made him look like a poor leader, Saros might’ve given apostasy a go.
“Well, then.”Ione flitted past River and Cynthia to the basket of clothes she’d left beside the breakfast table.“I suppose I’ll make an appearance.”She let her bathing robe slip from her shoulders to the flagstones, not minding her nakedness – her seleneschals had seen her naked tonnes of times, and anyway, her body was only a shell – and lifted the dress she’d chosen for today from the basket.The oyster-grey silk sheath and matching robe weren’t especially mournful, but they were plain and would do for now.
“Please don’t fight Saros today,” River said behind her, a tad desperately.“With the mood he’s in, you’ll probably lose.”
Ione pressed her eyelids shut and breathed, swallowing the hard lump in her throat, the deep, honest despair for the people whose lives were lost.She imagined them running, fighting.Burning.
She summoned instead a dazzling smile, her only weapon until Menon awoke and, she could only hope, bequeathed her with a very sharp ice spear.“Oh, but it’s so fun,” she complained.“And I’m alreadysucha disappointment.”
River groaned, giving in and coming to stand beside her as she shimmied into the dress.His dark brown hands, a stark contrast to Ione’s long white hair and near-translucent skin, reached around her shoulders and swept her hair out of the way, letting Cynthia lace up the back of the dress.
Her own hands still shook as she combed her fingers through her damp hair.“The people who survived,” she whispered, gazing out to the sea beyond her courtyard walls, “are they still in Caelos?”
Cynthia moved in her periphery.“The shrine’s a deathtrap now,” she said.“Ceilings collapsed, part of the dormitory fell into the sea – totally uninhabitable.”
Cynthia was not one to mince words, even when sometimes Ione wished she was.“Thank you,” Ione sighed.“I feel much better.”
