Idleness.Rage made her breath catch, made her imagine, not for the first time, smashing her wineglass into his grinning face.She envisioned the blood, the horror.Finally, finally showing them what the woman Ione could do, if not the goddess Menon.
A hand wrapped around hers – River, not-so-subtly escorting her to the door – and Ione schooled herself.Breathed, smiled.Someday, when Menon’s power manifested, Ione would do that and worse to the Archpriest.Humiliate him, banish him, something slow and satisfying.But until then, the other high priests and even her own parents had far, far more loyalty to their Archpriest than they did the weak mortal shell Menon chose.
“Failing Menon’s timely intervention,” Saros called sweetly after her, “the new warden will arrive this week and we’ll all have a little peace of mind.Try to make a good impression.”
Breathe, smile.A flash of teeth.Ione was weak, an ornament, a symbol.But even the weakest, prettiest lionfish had venom enough to kill.
Ione had always been sun-sensitive, which was fitting, if annoying.She blinked back tears, half-blind as her seleneschals dragged her across the plaza outside the altarhouse, each reflective white cobblestone like needles in her eyes.The heat cooled and dimmed, signalling that they were safe beneath a wisteria pergola.
“I don’t know how you two deal with this,” she grumbled, pulling the sleeves of her silk robe to cover her hands.
River let her thread an arm through his.“Welcome to summer.”
Cynthia walked ahead, one hand reaching to brush the violet flowers above them.“It’ll only get hotter,” was her contribution.
They followed the shaded path between buildings, nodding or curtseying to lower priests and acolytes bustling through.To all but Saros’s inner circle, Ione was just House Artem’s only daughter, a veritable princess due to her bloodline but as mortal as anyone else.A safety precaution as well as a shield for Saros’s pride: better that everyone thought of Ione as just another priestess, and not the reason they all continued to hurt and grieve.
The path opened to a busy market street lined with stalls.As far as temples to Menon went, Oseidos was huge, sprawling over most of its isle and containing not only the main altarhouse but dozens of smaller shrines, shops and homes, and a wealth of picturesque water gardens.The market was quiet today despite the density of the crowds, countless whispers droning like insect wings.The sun felt too hot, mocking, and Ione fought to hold her head high as River and Cynthia steered her through the throng of apprehension.
Once or twice she smelled ash, heard murmuring about Caelos.
“They burned brighter than the sun,” someone hissed to their companion beside the fishmonger’s stall.“Hundreds of them, like comets.”
“Crashed right through the ceiling,” someone else said.There was an eagerness to their tone, fear mingling with the excitement of sharing a lurid tale.“Half the dormitory,gone.”
“I was reading about this fish the other day,” Cynthia cut through the anxious murmurs, her tone falsely cheerful.“It’s called a coelacanth – ”
“Thank you, Cynthia,” Ione said, not missing River’s quietOh, gods.“I don’t need you to distract me.”
She’d meant for this.She wanted to hear the dread ringing out in her home.Wanted Menon to hear it, to react.
The acolytes’ building loomed at the end of the cobblestoned path, a three-storey, enormous circle of apartments surrounding an inner garden that rivalled the size of the shrine’s altarhouse.The front gate hung open, and although Ione couldn’t see much of the inner atrium from here, she heard the rumble of voices, hundreds of frightened people waiting to be healed, counted, placed.
She hadn’t realised, until Cynthia nudged her, that she had halted before the gaping doorway.A chilled breeze blew, making the trees above shudder; loose leaves cartwheeled past them into the passage, seeming to draw them in.
The brief darkness of the passage opened up to a bright, walled courtyard, the ceaseless sun overhead beating onto her shoulders.Priests and healers darted back and forth, poking and prodding at their new charges.Ione tried to pick out the features of the newcomers, commit them to memory, but at this distance she saw only the faint shapes of bodies.She smelled the smoke on them, the unwashed blood, the heightened fear.They huddled close, clinging to one another in their grimy, ash-grey clothes; now and then the high, shrill cry of a frightened child rose above the exhausted chatter.
Ione touched her fingertips to her heart, her neck, searching for her own pulse.For Menon’s.All this suffering, and not a hint of divine fury within her.Nothing but her own shame, her own self-loathing.
What was wrong with her?
“Lady Ione, what brings you here?”came a voice, startling her – Mikau, her healer, a hand on her shoulder.They leaned in, brown eyes dulled from overwork, and whispered: “Your Holiness, you shouldn’t be here.It’s all very…” They sucked in a breath.“tense.”
Another child sobbed nearby, wailing for his mother.
“I need to see it,” Ione murmured back.“All of this is my doing.My failure.”
Mikau pursed their lips and nodded, leaving her in favour of seeing to an elderly woman.
River squeezed her hand, not reacting when Ione withdrew.She felt eyes on her, ponderous, and looked down at herself.At her clean, unmarred dress, the soft grey silk a cruel parody of the dirty clothes the people of Caelos wore.What were they thinking of her?Was she, to them, some wealthy priestess’s daughter come to gawk?
“Ione.”River, fingertips on her arm.“This is enough.Let’s return to the altarhouse.”
She whipped her arm back.“Noneof this is enough,” she hissed.“None of it – not until Menon – untilI– ”
Cynthia leaned into her line of sight.“You don’t look well.Maybe – ”
Ione strode through them, head high, eyes straining for more haunted faces, more evidence of her failure.The suffering of her people.
