Soliz’s foyer was as grand as Oseidos’s stateroom, three storeys high and crowned by a great, golden door flanked by staircases leading to the upper floor.Its elegance was rendered even more imposing by the fact that there were no other pilgrims around at this hour, nor guards, nor priests.Their footsteps echoed and the rain dripped from their hair and clothes in noisy splashes; River removed his cloak and folded it over one arm, hiding the crest.He sent Ione a disgruntled look and she shrugged, helpless.She couldn’t exactly dry them off right now.
The altar room down an adjacent hall, too, was devoid of people.Ione made a show of looking around, oohing and aahing at the ceiling painted to look like the sky at twilight, at the colourful tiles and carved panels, before leaving a few coins before the blindingly gold statue of Sowelan.The woman snapped her fingers and in an instant a dozen candles at Sowelan’s feet lit themselves.
“Are you… a priestess here?”Ione asked.
She smiled, ghostly in the flickering light.“Oh, aye.Good few decades now.”
“Do you happen to know – ”
River squeezed her shoulder, sending her a desperate, silentPlease shut up.
The woman left them to their prayers, said she had to illuminate the other altars.Ione closed her eyes after she departed, counted her retreating steps until she could no longer hear them.
Her heart was fit to burst when they were finally alone.“All right,” she whispered, striding past River into the hall.“Help me explore.”
“Oh, sure,” River grumbled, hand on his rapier.“Upstairs, downstairs.D’you think they have dormitories here like in Caelos?We’ll try every door.”
Ione ignored him.She knew Lina’s magical signature now – could she search for her, somehow, by it?Cast her awareness as far as she could, her own magic like fishing line, and hope that Lina recognised her and pulled?
She grimaced, annoyed by a fleeting wish that Kai was here.He had a godsdamned ward for everything, there was probably one for this.
Another bright, wide room splayed out at the end of the hall.Ione lifted her monocular but stopped short, her pulse spiking.Footsteps.Many of them, somewhere in the room ahead, ringing out in the silence like bones rattling in a grave.
“What?”River whispered when she physically turned him around.He twisted to look back, but Ione drew him with her, head down.
Walk, she urged herself: Don’t run.Don’t draw attention.Don’t –
Blinding heat burst in front of them, a ceiling-high wall of fire that set them both scrambling back.
And behind them, more footsteps, nearing.Stopping.
“You really are as white as the moon.”
She could barely hear the voice over the blood pounding in her ears, the blistering roar of the flames.A priest with dark hair and gold-threaded orange robes lifted a hand in greeting, and behind him stood a smattering of guards.And the old woman, her face lowered like this was all rotten luck.
“Good intuition, Austra,” the priest said, patting the woman’s shoulder.“Your family will be well rewarded.And your shrine, kept safe from these traitors to the First Light.”He smiled at Ione, his focus razor-sharp.
“Ione Artem,” he said, deceptively warm.“Menon’s Rejected, accompanied by what I can only guess is the new Menon’s Holy Seleneschal.”He opened his arms.“Welcome to Soliz.”
The guards edged forward, and so did River.
“Careful.”The priest dropped his arms.“Most would at least bow to its Archpriest, but I’ll forgive you your transgressions if you tell me what two rats from Caelos are doing in the House of the Sun.”
The Archpriest.The word barrelled through her, turning her stomach.His black eyes trained onto hers, piercing and superior, crinkling with his self-satisfied smirk.
Rigel.
The hall was too narrow for River to fight comfortably.The guards, each in light armour and armed with daggers, were better suited to the small space.Ione squeezed her eyes shut, accosted by images of that night: so much fire, smoke, pain.Death.She could almost smell the reek of blood, even now.
She laid a hand on River’s wrist.
“Stand down, River.”
He obeyed.River too understood their position, something she should have been grateful for – anything to keep them both alive – but she only felt bleaker.
“I am no threat to you,” Ione said, her face heating when one of the guards sniggered.“Nor am I in any way connected to my old shrine.”
“Is that so?”At Rigel’s mark, the guards advanced.
