Rakel opened a cupboard and took out a small familiar red mat embroidered with her family pattern; it was old but very beautiful. Emere washed his face as he was instructed, but continued watching her as she unrolled the mat. Like he used to, when they were young.
“Bar the doors.”
As Emere secured the doors, Rakel took down a black head covering from the shelf and wrapped it around her head, kneeling on the mat. Emere knelt next to her. On the cupboard was a small statue with two arms stretched upward. The same wooden statue he had seen when they lived together as travelers. A form with no face, and indistinct clothing, if any. It was unclear, even, whether it was a youth or an elder, man or woman. But that was inevitable, as the Ebrians had never met their god.
Rakel placed her hands on her knees, bowed her head, and recited an Ebrian prayer in a low voice. Emere could only just about make simple conversation in that language, but because he had lived with her for so long, he could recite this prayer from memory. A simple prayer, wishing for the peace and prosperity of a family. But just as the prayer of Emere’s memory had ended and he was about to stand up, more words came from Rakel’s lips. A prayer he had never heard before. He listened closely, but the only thing he could understand was his name, which appeared several times.
In all those years he had known Rakel, this was the first time that he had prayed with her. He didn’t know what to say to the Ebrian god beyond the simple prayer he had memorized, so he just sat with his head bowed for the remainder of Rakel’s prayer. But listening to her words, he found himself calming down.
Rakel stood. Emere stood up with her, then moved aside so Rakel could roll up her mat.
“What did you say in the prayer just now?” he asked.
Her face was somber as she placed her mat back in the cupboard. “A prayer is a conversation between the Nameless God and myself. You shouldn’t ask me that.”
“But I can recognize my own name.”
“… I asked them to guide you,” Rakel relented. “I told them that you seemed very confused right now and that you could use help.” Rakel took off her head covering, stashed it back in the cupboard, and fastened the lock.
He had to ask her, then, the question he had never asked her before.
“Does your god ever speak back?”
“Never.”
“Then how do you know your god is real? Arlanders worshipped their dragon like a god, and the Tythonians had a god of thunder and lightning. You’ve heard how many people say that the Ebrian god does not actually exist. So why do you risk arrest by the Office of Truth like this? Why do you pray, with all the bother of barring your own door?”
“Emere,” Rakel said softly, “do the Arlanders still worship the dragon? And what happened to the thunder god of Tythonia? What of the Tree Lords of your Kamori? How many people did we see in our travels who actually continued to worship their gods?”
The first thing the Empire did in their invasion of a foreign land was to destroy that land’s objects of worship—nothing thwarted the recalcitrance of a newly conquered province better than that. So, provincials following their old ways were rare, and those who admitted to it even rarer.
Rakel stood up straight. “But our god still exists. As long as we believe.”
While she put away the mat, Emere cleaned their bowls, lost in thought.
Rakel then left to make a house call, leaving Emere alone.Watching Septima’s chest rise and fall with her breath, he murmured, “You had faith in Cain and this is what he brought you. Do you not regret it? Even when nothing is promised you?”
Septima did not answer. All she did was breathe.
Emere sat by her and listened to the rhythm of her inhales and exhales. The earlier explosion of emotion made him tired and his head hurt. He closed his eyes. He wanted to dream. Whether of Cain or the fake Loran, he wanted to meet them and have them tell him that this was what they wanted him to do, that these were the choices before him, that his long wait would have not been in vain—he wanted them to reassure him so.
The sound of the door opening woke him. Rakel entered, taking off her coat.
“I told you to bar the door.”
“… You said no such thing.” Emere stood up, and Rakel put down her medicine bag and came up to quickly check Septima’s condition.
She turned to him. “You said you would do anything I asked of you, right?” Her eyes were shining. She looked exactly as she had when they had first met.
Emere nodded. “Anything.”
“It’s dangerous. I’ll understand if you refuse.”
She looked more expectant than worried. What Rakel wanted, of course, was not refusal.
“I’ll do it. What is it?”
Rakel grinned. “I just went to see someone in our congregation. Well, after I saw the patient.”
