Karis isn’t all right.
His mind is utterly blank, and his lungs lack the breath to answer her. He can’t move his limbs, and even if he could, he wouldn’t know whether to hug her back or push her way. Yes, he missed her. Yes, he wanted to see her. But not like this. Not here, not now.
The room brightens. Lanterns turn up and Radiance shines as the paladins cast search spells. But Karis’s vision still swims with shadows.
“Move aside, squire, give him some space.” That’s Tanner’s gruff voice. Stazie releases him and steps back, her eyes red. Tanner steps in and grabs Karis’s shoulder, looking him up and down. “Are you hurt, boy?”
Karis shakes his head.
“That’s good. That’s real good.” There’s genuine relief in her eyes, and Karis knows he should feelsomethingin response, instead of this blankness. Her hand falls from his shoulder, and she asks, “Where’s Vizia? Someone tipped us off that he was here.”
Oh.
Karis finally feels something. A sharp splinter between his ribs. The remains of something fragile. “Ronan’s gone,” he says dazedly, realization cresting. “He’s already gone.”
He left me behind.
***
The trip back to Ostaris takes only a few days. The Radiant Order has fast horses, and Captain Tanner puts him on one of the spares. He gets another squire’s spare tunic too, a little too broad in the shoulders. Poor fit never bothered him when he was borrowing from the Locksmiths, but it bothers him now.
At the first opportunity, he unfastens his earring and hides it in his pocket. When Captain Tanner asks him to find Ronan, he touches his empty earlobe. “I need a focus.”
Karis tries not to think about someone else’s fingers on his earlobe. Someone else’s breath in his hair. He concentrates on the hope that Riverwatch inn was too chaotic for anyone to notice the gold and lapis behind his messy hair.
Unlikesomepeople, he isn’t a traitor. He never considers turning the Locksmiths in.
His luck holds out. Tanner sighs, but doesn’t look as disappointed as he expected. They ride alongside each other, on the wide clear road to Ostaris. “The important thing is that you’re safe.” Which is kind of her to say. “We’ve been worried sick about you the past few weeks. Archpriest Neradt wanted to turn the entire country upside down.” Which is very weird of her to say.
Karis has been wondering about that since he spied on Neradt in Fort Tarhaeg. “Really? Why was he looking so hard for me?”
She looks at him a little funny. “He doesn’t personally recruit many squires to the Radiant Order. It’s only natural he’d take a special interest in your training and wellbeing.” She adds with a chuckle, “You didn’t hear this from me, but we’re all under strict orders not to let you out of sight.”
Karis loosens his fingers on the reins, not wanting to communicate his unease through his mount’s behavior. He says casually, “I didn’t know about that.”
“He used to ask how you were doing every time we spoke.” Captain Tanner hesitates uncharacteristically and lowers her voice. “I don’t like getting wrapped up in clerical politics, but I’ll say this. It’s good to have the Exalted Circle’s favor. Vara willing, you’ll keep it.”
Karis doesn’t know what to say, and she doesn’t seem to expect an answer. They continue riding in silence.
Vara willing.
Glancing sideways at Tanner, Karis wonders if she knows that Radiant Vara is not at all willing to be bound to this manmade order. He doesn’t think she does—she has a strong sense of duty. He wonders what she’d do, what any of the faithful paladins riding with them would do, if he told them.
Lock me up as a traitor and a heretic, most likely.Karis holds his tongue and rides on.
***
The Bright Cathedral is aptly named. A gold and white swan of a building, it soars above the eastern flank of Ostaris. Smaller buildings flock around it to make up the Church of Vara’s center of power—living quarters for priests, the headquarters and barracks of the Radiant Order. The spires and domes appear ethereal. Effortless. Yet even with craft-witches’ magic, the cathedral and its satellites took twenty years to fully finish.
Inside, the luminous opulence astonishes the eye. Gauzy white drapes and banners, sunbeams painted in gold along the walls. Marble so white it glows when the light catches it. Pale wooden pews line the central chamber, large enough to seat two thousand. The angled aisles lead to a raised dais with a pulpit. Behind the pulpit, raised another level, is a white marble altar cloaked in cloth of gold.
Karis is perhaps the least reverent paladin to ever set foot in the Bright Cathedral. A lifetime of Radiant Vara’s snark in the back of his head rather diminishes the glamor of worship. But even he usually loses his breath as he crosses the cathedral threshold.
Not because of its beauty, however.
Whenever he enters the Bright Cathedral, there’s a sudden silence inside him. A cold loneliness he doesn’t feel anywhere else. Here, where the Church of Vara and the Radiant Order are at their most powerful and exalted, Karis can’t feel or hear Radiant Vara at all. He always thought it was strange. Knowing what he knows now, he thinks it’s suspicious.
He’s never felt this acute absence anywhere else. Not other Varan churches, not Songbird’s Bower or all the Maizan and Sephinian churches he’s visited. Since all of Vara’s silences have to do with being bound, could the Bright Cathedral be uniquely important to the binding? He’ll have to suggest this to—
