Sarai recovered, offering a smile that drooped at the edges. “Is there nothing in the north that can stop this?”
“One can’t till a barren field for grain, Petitor Sarai.” Dalvia’s voice was surprisingly timorous. Her dark eyes met and fell from Sarai’s like someone unused to being perceived and discomfited by it. “The capital has everything. So, I thought it might have hope too.”
The gentle way she said it forced a ragged breath from Sarai. “The south is greedy with its hope, Clanlady. Don’t letthemcheat you out of a high price.” She cast Verentia a sidelong glance and left, flinching only slightly when the Inquisitor called after her.
“One among us has indeed made an ill-fated bargain, and it isn’t the Order!”
The now-raging Cleric clearly believed the same.
“Make no mistake this country faces a war from within. The ungodly have wrested power from the righteous.” He furiously pointed at Kadra. “Weinnocents pay the price. Despite the Order attempts at conversion, the north has always mocked our devotion to the Elsar. Now, they’ve sent Pestilence herself to decimate us! A plague? No. This isevilwork. Our brethren have been left madness-struck!” The Cleric swallowed and turned pained eyes onto the crowd.
If the gods ever toss him aside, the stage’ll take him.Her nails dug into her clenched palms.
“We never saw such turmoil under Tetrarchs Aelius and Tullus. These usurpers have tried to convince us of their right to rule, but they cannot veil the divine truth. We have strayed from goodness. Only the High Elsar, in their infinite love, can save us,” the Cleric insisted. “And all they ask is that we reject the Dark Elsar. That we destroy those who threaten the natural order and sow division, distraction, and debris in our great country. Our enemies will be our neighbors and countrymen, but if they can purgetwoTetrarchs, we can purge them!”
She recoiled when cheers rang from the crowd and burgeoned into a battle cry. Her tongue froze to the roof to her mouth, ice water sluicing in her arteries as she beheld a country in freefall. This would spark civil war, and there was nothing she could do. She had no answers, no cure. Only the ugly certainty that the Cleric had one thing right.
This was no plague.
“Boil beetles alone don’t explain this,” a voice confirmed behind her.
Silvus seized her shoulder in a steadying grip when she started and slipped on a patch of ice. She twisted out of it, and his silver eyes followed the motion with mild curiosity.
“Do you travel in packs?” she asked tightly with a glance at Verentia and the warmongering Cleric.
Masked as usual, he tilted his head. “A bitter feeling, isn’t it? Powerlessness.”
“What would you know of powerlessness?” she bit out with more venom than she’d intended.
“You might be surprised.”
She closed her eyes at the even way he said it.Right. He’s a northerner too.Shame stifled her anger. “I’m sorry.” She registered his start of surprise. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. Ideological differences aside, it can’t have been easy to climb up the Order.”
“It wasn’t.” An air of bafflement laced his brief pause as though he’d surprised himself by admitting it. “Eleven years ago, I lost everything. I had no talent at lightning magic, and the Academiae had no place for me without coin. The Order was my best chance at power.”
She watched the Cleric spew vitriol. “Has it been worth it?”
“It will be.”
“Then, I hope the knowledge warms you at night when the land goes to shit.” She made to stalk past Silvus, but he cut into her path. She halted a handspan away, glaring up at his strangely taut features.
“So, you resent my choices and not me,” he mused.
“I don’t know you well enough to resent.”
“You don’t know them, and you care about their deaths.” Silvus considered the blood-soaked marketplace. “Why?”
She stared. “Who wouldn’t?”
He dipped his head, eyes slitting in disbelief. “Do you see yourself as benevolent, Petitor Sarai? Any aspirations to Sainthood?”
Anger gathered in her throat. “Only to basic decency, though I suppose the Order wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh, I understand a savior complex when I see it,” he murmured. “Childhood neglect, a hunger to fix chaos and a delusion that love is earned through sacrifice. The afflicted give endlessly, usually to their own detriment.” He transferred his attention to the mob like she was no longer worthy of it. “Petitor Sarai, you’re tragically boring.”
Every arrow found its mark. Pierced through, she swallowed, swamped by a fury so all-encompassing that her vision swam crimson. “Do you havenothingbetter to do—”
“I don’t. Who are you saving?” He languidly stepped forward, edging her boot with his. She stumbled back. “It isn’t yourself—half the country despises you. It isn’t the south, given the madness you’ve brought here, and itcertoisn’t the north, which you’ve scarcely glanced at since becoming Petitor.”
