The Priest

The Falcon's Children, Chapter 16

This is Chapter 16 of The Falcon’s Children, a fantasy novel being published serially on this Substack. For an explanation of the project, click here. For the table of contents, click here. For an archive of world building, click here.

It was a bad, hot summer.

As snow melted and roads cleared with the spring, heralds went forth across the empire to confirm the news that birds and rumors had already carried far and wide — the betrothal of the princess, the beginning of an era of peace for Narsil and Bryghala.

The empire did not know quite what to make of these tidings. For some, especially fathers and mothers whose sons fought in the legions or as levies for the dukes, any promise of peace was welcome news. For others, especially those younger legionnaires who had fought in Brethony without receiving their full reward of lands or bounty, the news was a disappointment, a frustration or a mystery.

As households were divided, so were temples. There were priests, especially the more prominent and political, who accepted the promise of a new opportunity for mission work in Bryghala, the chance to advance the sacred revelation by diplomacy and suasion. But many others looked askance at bargaining with Brethon sun-worshipers, and sending the empire’s princess into heathen arms.

The malcontents soon had omens on their side. The late spring rains were heavy and there were floods around Lake Erona in the early summer. Then even as the Heart lords were being asked to send wagons westward with supplies for the lake country, there was an outbreak of the white pox up and down the Mersana, the worst in many years. It was contained in Argosa and Felcester, but in Cranholt the legions had to impose a temporary quarantine on the city, cutting off the river trade northward and southward for a costly month. The sickness reached even into the Duke’s Isle, claiming Alessa, the old duke’s steadying sister, and Cedrec his grandnephew and heir.

The docks at Cranholt had been open again for scarcely a tenday when word came from the east that corsairs were burning fishing towns in the shadow of Sheppholm and skirting the Darkfens to pillage villages near Darkhaven — the first time a Skalbarder lord had been so bold since Alsbet was an infant. It was not, in the end, a serious invasion, but it was a successful one; both the legions and the fenlords were caught flat-footed and the raiders were away to sea by the time the coastline was fully reinforced. And it was mirrored hundreds of leagues away by a spate of raids in the moor country, Kadoli and Maeonwy coming down from the prairies in greater strength than usual, forcing folk between Erona and Ysan to shelter inside walled towns while legions from Northmark tried to chase the raiders off before they burned too many farms.

It was all surely just coincidence, the raids and floods and sickness — unless you were inclined to look for signs of angelic displeasure with the rule of Edmund Montair. In inns and taverns that inclination seemed stronger than usual that summer, though along with the whispers against the emperor there were also whispers that some of the discontent was bought-and-paid-for by Jonthen Cathelstan, or maybe Eldred Gerdwell, or even by agents of Trans-Mersana or the corsairs or some other hostile power.

One of those honestly inclined to omen-reading was a certain Father Aldiff, in the shrine of Blessed Inderol in Rendale’s Dockside district. The priest’s popularity had not waned, nor his instinct for trouble. And a little while after word came down to his streets that her Highness Princess Alsbet was to marry Prince Maibhygon of Bryghala, Father Aldiff decided that the time had come to make trouble once again.

Alsbet heard it first from Aeden, who had it from a pair of farriers in the castle stables, one of whom had a cousin who ran a tavern along the part of the harbor where the grain barges were unloaded. This is the sort of thing that the Lord of the City should take in hand, don’t you think, Princess? Or the Lord of the Secretariat?

It was, and so she called Orfenn Rell to her again, and with him Enwold Gaddel, the the lord with the white face and sparse brown beard and clean-shaven upper lip who was responsible for Rendale’s streets and walls and harbor. They were polite and smiling, arranging themselves in her softer chairs while she sat in a high hard-backed seat and Gavian loomed behind her with his usual stern countenance. But they shifted uneasily and looked at one another out of the corners of their eyes when she told them what Aeden had heard.

“Well, Highness,” Gaddel said in his soft voice when she was done. “It’s a difficult matter, something like this. Been a long while since anyone preached against the crown from a Rendale altar … can’t remember a time, to be honest. And it’s a tricky business moving against the orders …”

“Tricky is putting it mildly,” Rell agreed. “You don’t want the spectacle of the throne coming in heavy-handed against a popular preacher. So when a local troublemaker starts up, I usually take it up with his order or the local archpriest, and make sure some kind of discipline is imposed. But it’s best to do it quietly.”

“Well,” Alsbet said, “ then why don’t we take it up with my cousin Ethred, seeing as he sits with you in council?”

The Lord of the Secretariat spread his hands. “We have, Highness, we have. I assure you, when this fellow gave the first of these sermons, I knew about it within days… you need have no fear on that score.”

“You knew?”

“Yes, yes — and someone in the temple was swiftly discharged to speak with him. To encourage him to choose another topic. And since then …”

“Since then what?”

The Lord of the Secretariat sighed unhappily. “Well, nothing. Or not enough. The words are less brazen, but the sermons have continued. There is some clerical politics, as always — the priest is only there because the temple gave the shrine over to the Browns, as a sort of mutual favor, and so Ethred doesn’t have the official authority required to remove him. He has sent to the chapterhouse in Mabon in the hopes that the Browns can reassign him, but that will probably require someone from the Abdielans to come in person …”

“Surely,” Alsbert said coldly, “this kind of nonsense can be expedited when a priest is preaching treason.”

Lord Enwold looked deeply uncomfortable. “If we wished to arrest Father Aldiff for treason, your father’s laws might permit it — though according to the reports I have he is circumspect in his language, as if he knows the letter of the law like a schoolman, which some young priests do. But as … as you know, highness, our empire has long made advertisement of its liberties, in drawing men of talent northward. Your own captain Gavian” — a hopeful gesture in the direction of the soldier, carved from stone behind her — “is a testament to what we gain by this … by, ah, not having inquisitors who swoop down and spirit men away should they speak ill of the emperor in their cups, or who sniff out treason in sermons given in obscurity …”

“Our own capital is hardly obscurity. This is not some hedge priest. I will not have my father called heathen in Rendale.”

“Well, but that’s the other detail, though,” Rell said. “Dealing with a hedge priest is also easier, because it stirs up only the hedges, if you see what I mean. In Rendale — well, this city has always been placid, always been loyal to whoever holds the throne. Another difference from southern lands, where a prince can be toppled by a mob in the streets. Never happened here, thank the angels. But it has also been a rule of your forefathers to go gently in Rendale, to enforce the laws gently — and especially in Winter’s Town and Dockside, among the folk who work the boats and the mountains, who know the lakes and rivers and the gold roads well, who could easily make trouble for the Exchequer should they be so inclined. And if these folk like this priest well, if he is popular — well, I am not saying he must not be removed, only that waiting to see if his order can manage it with a lighter touch …

“And if they do not?” Alsbet said. “What if by leaving him alone, to say what he wants, he ends up stirring up a riot all by himself? You’ll feel foolish then, won’t you?”

Gaddel grimaced. Rell sighed. “Have you even spoken to your father about this matter, princess?”

That even grated more than the sigh, and the princess stared at him, hating him, wondering if the priest was right, if she was being sold to heathens to satisfy some half-mad dream of her father’s dotage.

“Have you informed him?” she said sharply. “You are his council. If you wish to take it up with him, you may. But House Gaddel and House Rell do not rule in Rendale; we the Montairs do. As a Montair I ask you to ensure that treason is not preached in our city. It is Fifthday now; there may be no more sermons till the new moon. That gives you, our cousin Ethred, the temple and the brown priests ample time to see my will satisfied — by whatever means you deem best.”

They stared at her for what seemed a long time before they bowed their heads and promised to do their best.

The Ladyhawk was cutting an apple into pieces using a thin knife with a serrated edge and a white handle. Beside her at the table Reffio was eating a small chicken, roasted and seasoned and now dismantled on his plate, a pile of bones with clinging bits of meat from which he selected one piece, then another, then another, in each case taking them delicately to his mouth and sucking at them until the little bones were bare.

Gavian sat with them, having refused food but accepted a small metal cup of cider. It was always apples in the north, apples to eat and apples to drink and apple pies all through the autumn and the winter. The berries here were small and tart, a brief summertime pleasure — blueberries from Ysan, blackberries growing wild around High House. But nothing like the spilling-over he remembered from Antiala, the ripe strawberries and peaches all through the long summer months, the soft pears stewed together with nuts and rice, the specialty of the kitchen in the inn his parents kept. Once in a great while a shipment of citrus made it this far north, packed in the ice that went south in blocks from the Heart’s ponds and then returned back north in tiny close-packed fragments. But those crates usually went straight to noble tables. Gavian had tasted an orange twice while supping with Alsbet, but never otherwise.

Still the cider cooled him a little. It must have come from some deep cellar to taste so fresh in this heat. The Ladyhawk had a fan she flicked from time to time. Reffio’s head was beaded. Gavian wore hard leather instead of mail, but that was tight and hot enough.

“The truth is we don’t care for this prrriest either,” said the mistress of the House of Birds. Her blade neatly separated the apple’s skin from flesh. “The truth is that your prrrrincess’s marriage is not the first instance of him causing us all a certain trouble.”

“I like priests,” said Reffio, letting a denuded bone fall to join the others. “Always have. No fools, most of them. They know human nature pretty well, they understand what a fine line it is between the man you see who looks all upstanding and proper and the sort of work we do. A real fine line, meaning often no line at all if you look at what the proper man has going on beneath the surface. Priests know it. Everyone likes to beat their breasts and say oh, we’re all sinners but most people don’t mean it. But priests hear so many sins and secrets, they know that everyone ought to mean it. They know the difference between what goes on in some fancy merchant’s house up the hill and what goes on Dockside, or in this house, is like the difference between one of our ladies painted and one of our ladies washed. All the same person underneath.”

“Indeed,” the Ladyhawk said. “But this one, this father …”

“Aye, this good father thinks himself a real Saferana, here to scourge Mandor clean of all its fleshpots. Not a priest but an inquisitor. And not an inquisitor who’s just a stickler for the law, those you can work with, but one who thinks he’s here to pass judgment on everybody’s soul. Like he thinks we aren’t all foul and dirty the same way if you bring our sins into the light.”

“He has made trouble with our girrrrls from time to time.”

Reffio nodded. “And other kinds of trouble too. Doesn’t have a lot of friends up in the Temple, I’ll pledge you that. But at the same time he does have a lot of friends hereabouts. Folk who go the shrine like him. He’s liked on the streets. Friendly, always moving, always a smile when he isn’t giving you the high-holy lecture. Tells a bawdy joke pretty well, I’ve heard. Not a simple character. Which is part of what makes him trouble.”

Gavian took a mouthful of cider, washed his gums with it, and swallowed. “What if you throw on a light on him? What turns up?”

The big man settled back in his chair, dropped his lids over his eyes for a moment, and gave his head a disappointed shake. “Not enough to help. No girls that we know of, no boys either. Drinks a little but without a weakness for it. Last post had the same pattern — stirred things up, made some powerful enemies, local people liked him, no scandal. I haven’t gone back to whatever village he came from, haven’t had the reason, but I doubt I’d find a girl he put in a family way or an old widow he defrauded.”

“Isn’t there a rrrrumor that he was in the legions?” the Ladyhawk interjected.

“That’s not a crime, last I looked,” Gavian said.

Reffio chuckled. “Surely, not, captain. And yes, he might have been a legionnaire, that’s one story that’s told. But what then? It just makes him better liked – the soldier who heard the angels’ call, like Blessed Herceras, but still has a soldier’s way about him. Unless he left the legions after massacring a tent full of babes, it's not something useful for your purposes.”

“So what is useful?”

“We-e-e-ll … if you wait a bit, if your princess waits a bit, he’ll certainly be moved. Your council may be useless in some ways but it can surely see to that. Might not be till the autumn but they’ll learn from their mistake and pack him off to some remote shrine this time, where his sermons won’t go much further than the local pigs. So the question for you, captain, is whether that’s enough of a punishment for pissing all over the House of Montair and your princess’s marriage. And how the folk listening to his sermons will remember him.”

“The things we don’t like about him will mostly be resolved by a trrrransfer,” the Ladyhawk said. “But for you it might be another matter. This isn’t some steward gossiping. Letting the orders just move him, and maybe it tells people that a prrrrriest can get away with trrreason.”

“Seems to me like that’s exactly what it tells people,” Reffio said easily. “But I’m just one man, maybe your council sees it different.”

A man who killed a priest didn’t just put his own soul at risk, Gavian knew — he risked bringing down Azriel’s curse on every man in his company or army. Killing the innocent was bad, certainly, but such things happened in war, and innocence was in the eye of the beholder, even where women and children were concerned. Killing priests or sisters, though, was like spitting in the eye of the avenging Archangel, begging for a strong dose of misfortune to be visited on every man around you.

And yet — priests could be executed, same as other men, if they committed the crimes of ordinary men. At least one archpriest had been beheaded for treason in the cleaning-up after the Fraternal War, he remembered — in Magebridge, after the city had finally opened its gates to the usurper. Of course everything in that war was wickedness and usurpation, but nobody recalled that execution as especially wicked, it was just of a piece with all the other purges, no different from the attempt to arrest his own group of officers, the headsman’s blade that might have claimed him too. And clearly there had been no special punishment, no specific judgment from the archangels on the false king for giving orders to execute their priest. Or at least no judgment yet …

“Thinking hard, are we, captain?” Reffio said, and Gavian shook his mind free of southern memories and said, maybe too sharply:

“Why don’t you tell me what might be done instead. Meaning not just the simple bloodthirsty answer, but the answer that doesn’t leave folk who love him now thinking of Father Aldiff as a blessed martyr, and the House of Montair suspected of slipping him a dagger in the dark.”

“Ah,” said Reffio, and the sound had a dreadful satisfaction. “A fine question. But is our cautious captain finally willing to contemplate … full measures?”

It was treason to preach against his princess, she had deemed it treason herself, and he served her, by every fearful oath there was. To kill a man for treason, even a priest, was not a crime, not a sin, just a way of doing service to oaths taken before the archangels themselves.

Those were the thoughts that justified him as he set down his cider, met the huge man’s satisfied gaze, and said:

“Contemplating, yes. But tell me what they are.”

“Happy to, captain, happy to. But also, it occurs to me that we’re just a day from the next tenday — maybe before any hasty decisions are taken, you should honor the archangels with a visit to their nearest shrine?”

“In your company?”

“Ah, maybe not, maybe not. I honor the archangels in my own way, but I’m a bit too well known in the good priest’s territory, folk might doubt that I had pious intentions, you know? But some of my birds will be there, so if we reconvene afterward I’ll know what you’ve seen, I won’t be relying on your eyes and ears alone.”

Still tasting the apples, Gavian nodded. It was good to take a breath and look around before you undertook a serious business.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll honor the archangels, and see this Father Aldiff for myself.”

It was a real crowd that gathered in the shrine, that was the first thing you noticed. Not just the grandmothers and widows, the families with children, the occasional old man and the scattering of penitents that Gavian usually encountered on his own intermittent visits to the city’s shrines. No, this was enough of a throng to fill the central space and crowd back around behind the pillars, hiding crumbling walls behind stirring, shifting bodies, with more than a few tough-looking Dockside types, sailors and laboring men, mixed in among the faces.

From his place near the back, wrapped in a ragged cloak with the hood pulled up, he recognized a handful of women from the House of Birds, and he wondered which of the scattered younger faces belonged to Reffio’s flock of little birds, and whether Rell or the Temple had sent someone to report this time. Certainly the shrine had an air of expectancy rather than just devotion, a tension that reminded him of visits to the playhouses in Antiala, the eager crowd before the show.

And Father Aldiff was a showman. There was no hymn or chant before the service, no slow entry with an acolyte: Instead he seemed to materialize at the altar, the orisons rattling quickly so that nobody had time to get bored, his whole manner inviting participation, infusing the prayers with a seriousness rather than a dreamy piety, and calling attention to his strong voice, his sharp gesticulations, the hint of humor in his words. Even without the brown stripe you would have known him for an Abdielan — the brown priests were streetcorner preachers, market-square haranguers, trained to seize an audience by whatever means lay readily to hand.

The reading for the tenday was from the Histories, the Book of Kings. It was the Sin of Airilion, the High King who lusted after the wife of the heathen prince of Azania, and persuaded the Mage Ambrisis to disguise him as that prince so that he could ride to an assignation and play her husband in the bedchamber. The reading ended abruptly — and then in the fulness of days she bore a son and named him Cazahel — but even the impious knew what came next: Airilion’s bastard was raised as a prince of Azania, raised to worship their heathen gods, then eventually the boy Cazahel was brought to Mandor as a hostage after Azania’s defeat, where he became Airilion’s favorite, over and above his trueborn sons, setting in motion rivalries and jealousies that led to the deaths of Airilion and Cazahel alike, the first-ever failing of the Testing by Airilion’s son Varidion, and a terrible war between Mandor and Azania … which only ended with the Conversion of Abuzel, whose honored place in the cycle of readings was still two months away.

“You all know this story,” Father Aldiff said after the reading was done, the holy books were put away, and he had ascended the creaking, splintered rostrum. “You all know this story. Even if this is your first time inside a shrine in many a year. Even if you haven’t been shriven since childhood. Because it’s been put into so many songs, so many stories. I’ve seen it in mummer’s farces in the summer fairs, I’ve heard it played on harps before a winter fire, I’ve even read it — hard going, that! — retold by three different poets. The love of Airilion, the beauty of Mizena, the enchantments of Ambrisis, the tragedy of Cazahel … such a romance, so much for maidens to swoon over and young men to admire.”

“And why? Why? Because we can’t help making a hero out of Airilion. Oh, the holy books call it a sin, priests like me tut-tut — but we’re with him, aren’t we? A love so great it overwhelms everything! A secret enchanted journey through the dark of heathenry! A child so handsome and noble, it has to be a sign the angels smile on the couple after all! And yes, tragedy at the end of it — but what a romance! What a song!”

“I won’t ask you to let go of that, brethren. But for today, for this season, I want you to look on Airilion not just as a man, but as a king. And not just any king, but your own king. Imagine that your own king acted as he acted — what would you make of him? What would you say of him? As a man, with a man’s longings, he is sinful but altogether understandable. But as a king, holding the lives of all his subjects in his hands, accountable to the archangels — how should he be judged?”

Even if he wasn’t at service every tenday, Gavian had stood in many shrines for many sermons, and only in the hot days before the fall of his king in Antiala had he felt this, this — what was it, the feeling in the crowd? If nothing else, an utter absence of indifference.

“I’d think well of any king who beds two queens!” A shout from the back, not so far from Gavian. A shocked murmur from the regular shrinegoers, the pious; a scattering of laughs and hoots from the fringes.

Father Aldiff grinned, and lifted his voice to return the volley. “Aye, you might. You might think you’d be glad to have such a king, setting an example for rakes like yourself! Except that when the king plays a game like this, a game of conquest” — a hard stress on that word – “his people don’t just get to stand and admire and brag that they have such a man upon their throne. No — you know the story, so you know that the price of Airilion’s lust, his conquest, was long and bitter years of war. Blood and death, blood and death, for all the ordinary folk, the ordinary sons, who bleed and die in war.”

His voice dropped a little. “You know I’ve seen it, brethren. Maybe you’ve seen it to. Blood and pain and suffering, the cry of the wounded, the cry of the widow. War is necessary, sometimes it’s the will of heaven, but to ask a woman’s son, a man’s brother, to die just to satisfy your lust for something the angels gave to a different rule, just because you aren’t satisfied with what you already possessed … that’s not a noble story, brethren, that’s a story of wickedness, a story of a king who doesn’t really love his people, who cares far more for his own desires than he does for their lives and limbs, their bodies and their blood.”

The crowd stirred, thrummed. Father Aldiff paused for a long moment, and then said:

“A wicked king, brethren. A wicked king indeed.”

He dropped his head as if in prayer. Still, the silence, until he raised his face again, a seared expression, flashing eyes.

“So our king conquers without justice, and leaves ordinary folk to pay the price. But then things grow worse, for what is the price of his conquest, his desire for heathen things? A child, brethren — a beautiful child, loved by the archangels, blessed by them, favored by heaven with every grace. But because of the king’s sins, because of his crimes, this child is given to the heathens, set apart from the true revelation, cut off from the nourishment of orison and sacrifice. And everything that follows for that child, all the tragedy to come, flows from this beginning: A king condemns the child of his loins to exile among heathens, exile in a distant land.”

Then the priest lifted his eyes and hands together, as if suddenly thinking of something, or receiving an unexpected illumination from Mithriel above. “And yet say this much for our wicked king, brethren. Say this much for him: At least the exile of his child, flesh of his flesh brought up in heathenry, was not his own deliberate choice. His fault, yes. The consequence of his sin, yes. But not his own choice, not something he willingly chose for that child when other choices, better choices, were ready to his hand. Not something he willed, not something he desired – something imposed, a punishment, not something he did with full knowledge and intent.”

“How much worse, brethren, if he had chosen it! How much worse the sin, how much worse his judgment and his fate, if he had sent his own child to a heathen land, a heathen destiny, a heathen family! Maybe the entire High Kingdom would have fallen, maybe the archangels would have withdrawn their blessing, maybe the empire of such a king would have been torn down and given to another.”

Thrum, thrum, in the crowd. A current, an energy, that prickled Gavian’s skin like the air before a thunderstorm.

“Maybe. But that isn’t for the likes us to know. All we know is that what happened to Airilion was enough, sufficient to his sin, sufficient punishment for taking what was not his, for letting his own child be given over to heathens in a far kingdom. The price was his own death. The death of one son. Another son dead as well, judged unfit to rule. The rule of Mandor given to his cousin’s son, taken from his line. All punishment enough.”

“And so this is what should be remembered in your heads, people of Rendale, for as long as your heart recalls the Airilion of all the lays and legends: That the archangels will deal justly with a wicked king, in that age and every age there is. That no ruler, no king or duke or emperor, however powerful, is safe from the angels above him – from their certain judgment, from Mithriel’s swift sword.”

The thrum was strong now, the energy crackling, and the image of the sword gave Gavian a sudden vision of the shrine as a blacksmith’s armory, and the priest was a smith playing at swordmaking, melting the metal, seeing it bubble under his heat, sluicing it into a sword’s shape, ready to harden into a weapon if he chose …

“Now brethren,” Father Aldiff said, the cooler voice of ritual returning, “let us make a good and fitting sacrifice unto heaven.” And just like that the liquid metal was poured back out of the sword shape, back into its pool — still simmering, but not forged, not a weapon, not just yet.

The smoke from the two sacrificial doves, slain and burnt by the priest’s practiced hands, was still in Gavian’s nostrils when he reached the wharf where Reffio stood casually in a patch of Dockside shade, chatting with an Argosan merchant with a forked beard. Just as casually the huge man disentangled himself from that conversation and contrived to make a quick, all-but-invisible observation:

“Heard the good father was bold in his exposition of the scriptures, captain.”

And Gavian, making the turn back upward to the Castle, answered:

“Full measures, Reffio.”

Four days later Lord Rell came to see the princess again. “Good fortune, highness,” he said when they were arranged across the table from one another, Gavian as usual at her shoulder. A faint glitter of high-summer perspiration touched the spymaster.

“Go on,” she said. “I welcome good fortune when it comes.”

“The business of the priest has taken an unexpected turn. I had hoped to have the troublesome Father Aldiff removed. I wrote to the chapterhouse in Mabon, asking them to send a party of brown priests to treat with him. But last night by a happy accident the priest was called to his reward.”

For a moment she thought he was describing some courtier’s maneuver. Then it became clear. “He’s dead?”

The spymaster’s tone managed to be perfectly relaxed yet strangely pregnant. “It appears that Father Aldiff was not the man of virtue that he appeared to be. He frequented a street in our city where certain favors are sometimes exchanged. The favor he requested being denied, he turned violent. His companion appears to have stabbed him in self-defense. A great tragedy, of course. Also, of course, the ruin of his reputation.”

“You’re saying that a … prostitute killed the priest, Lord Rell?”

“A prostitute? I would not make such a definite imputation, highness. Also I imagine the folk in Father Aldiff’s district have known priests who sought such favors, and might even be understanding of that weakness, normally that is. But in this case, the companion who rebuffed him and stabbed him was quite definitely a young man. One who appears, alas for the course of justice, to have quit the city since the incident. But there were witnesses to the aftermath, and the body was found in a position of … compromise.”

The light from her windows fell across his face, making his normal pallor look like jaundice. Her stomach felt as sickly as he looked. She strove to discipline her face.

“That is unfortunate.”

“Well. For the poor sinner himself, no doubt. For your crown, and your expressed wishes, it seems a case of a providential outcome intervening to prevent an uncomfortable removal. Would you not agree, highness? Would you not say that it serves as a kind of fulfillment of your wish?”

There was pressure in his tone but also a note of insecurity, as though he wanted something from her but wasn’t quite bold enough to simply ask for it. But she understood his implication. How could she not? She had talked of treason. The penalty for treason was death. That was what … fortune had delivered.

“I would say that I am grateful to have this matter resolved, Lord Rell. And sorry for the people of his shrine. And I appreciate your effort to be of service in this matter — even if events took a different course.”

“I live only to serve the crown, your highness.” Was her answer enough for him, enough for whatever acknowledgment he sought? There was a moment’s hesitation, but he seemed to decide that he had gone far enough, and he bowed himself out, leaving the princess alone with Gavian.

“Do we think that he had … that he had Father Aldiff killed?” Alsbet said, looking back to her captain, fighting through the tension in her stomach, the strangled feeling in her throat.

Gavian’s face bore a stern sort of serenity. “He certainly wishes you to think that he did, without actually being willing to claim the credit. Which means that you shouldn’t simply give him the credit, princess. Maybe Gaddel acted, or dropped a hint to unsavory powers in the city. Or maybe it really was a coincidence. This Father Aldiff wouldn’t be the first priest tempted by those sort of sins.”

“It was not an accident,” she said. “Don’t treat me like a little girl. I commanded it, didn’t I? Someone did it for me. One of my loyal servants. Maybe it was even you, Gavian.”

When she left the chamber Aeden was waiting just outside the door, in the anteroom with its books and maps, as he often did to let her talk over conversations. But she only said, “the priest is dead,” and then went quickly through that room, through a passage, and into her own apartments, where she surprised a maid at cleaning, dismissed her, and collapsed on her bed, trying to keep her mind from picturing the body of Father Aldiff of Mabon, the first man she had ever ordered killed.

She spent the afternoon alone, missed the evening meal, went to pray for a while in the chapel, came back to her chambers and drank more wine than usual. In the morning her head ached but she had some clarity of purpose.

She sent a very specific message to the sisterhouse, which brought her Sister Temperance and Sister Fidelity by noontime, and gave Gavian specific orders, which brought two men of the Queensguard to her chambers as well. The blue sisters accepted her purse and her instructions, and departed with the soldiers. Alsbet summoned her maids and was dressed for a normal day as mistress of the castle — a day of cool propriety, occasional warmth, perfect self-control.

No one will know you, Fidelity told herself all the way from the sisterhouse down Great Way to Dockside, with Temperance beside her and the two men in legion cloaks and swords swaggering behind. She was sweating inside the veil, but its mesh was her protection, along with the cowl and if it came to that the tonsure. She could go back to the streets where she had walked barefaced under Reffio’s protection more than a year before, and all anyone would see was a blue cloak and an indistinct white face beneath the dark net. All anyone would see was a sister, and no one would ever imagine that a sister could have been an apprentice at the House of Birds.

But still she was terrified. Terrified and also guilty: Father Aldiff had been the only person in all those months who cared about her fate, and now he was as dead as her father. Was there some thread connecting this death, too, to her? Or just some curse, mysteriously acquired, that she was destined to impose on people as she passed through life, and someday it would be Temperance who would be found dead and bloody, and she would be called to look upon their corpse and wonder what sin was being punished here, what strange justice being served?

The shrine was as she remembered it, save that someone had scrawled in red paint a word that she now could recognize, and blush at, just beside the main doors. A boy was scrubbing at the graffiti as they passed through into the cool shadows, the sunbeam filtered through the high rose-shaped window with its colored glass and jagged crack, the old stone and pillars and hard floor where she had knelt and prayed so many times.

Though it was the afternoon and not a usual hour for prayer, there were quite a few people in the shrine — a cluster of kneeling figures, mostly women, up close to the altar where a motley of flowers had been heaped, and then a group of men standing around casually near the statue of Mithriel, with the air of a crowd gathered for a fistfight or a race.

Their belligerence did not extend to a confrontation with soldiers, though: They spoke politely to the Queensguard men and directed all four of them, legionnaires and sisters, through the door on the far side of the shrine that connected to the priest’s house, which was really just a low stone extension out the back, with a sleeping room upstairs and a large downstairs room, empty except for a long heavy table, a sacristan, and atop the table Father Aldiff’s corpse.

Whatever wounds he bore on his body were hidden in white wrapping, and his bearded face looked calm, its skin too pale for life but its expression identical to sleep.

The sacristan was a man Fidelity remembered: short and bug-eyed, with silver thatch for hair and an overspilling gut, and a face blotchy now with grief. He spoke to them cautiously until he understood their errand, and then when they gave him the gift and the princess’s message he seemed baffled and began to weep.

“It must be spent on the work of the shrine,” said Temperance. “Her highness orders it expressly — she wishes us to return before Winter’s Eve, to see whatever use you’ve found for it. Is there a council for this shrine? They must be told of it.”

“A council?” the sacristan said in a trembling voice. “A council? Raguel love you, sister, no, there’s no one to sit on a council here, and nothing for them to decide. The tithes that come in put food on this house’s table, they feed the good father and my poor self, and whatever remains goes out to the beggars every tenday. Father Aldiff sometimes talked of laying some funds aside in the temple, when the tithes were good, and they were better with him here than otherwise, but they always ended up going out for someone’s troubles — there’s never a shortage of troubles here, sister, always sailors going crippled or girls needing help or mothers falling sick, I’ve never seen so much coin as this but I could spend it all in a tenday if I just gave it out to anyone in need …”

The soldiers had drifted back to the door, leaving Temperance and Fidelity close with the silver-haired man. His hand held the purse tentatively, as a child might hold a small animal that it suspects will bite. Temperance took his other hand, and pressed it over the bag of coins.

“Listen,” she said, in her gentlest voice. “If there is no council then I know you will do well with this. Or you can wait until another priest comes to decide how it might be spent. But I think you might spend something on the shrine itself, make repairs at least, something to show us when we return, so that we can tell her highness that the money didn’t vanish. Does that sound like something you can do?”

The sacristan looked from Fidelity to Temperance, from veiled face to veiled face. “Do you know they don’t want us to have a funeral?” he said, his voice almost a whisper now. “The temple’s orders — the shame of it, they want me to put him in a pauper’s grave. Dead in his sins, they say. Betrayed his vows, they say. But I don’t believe it. I’ve known bent priests in my day, he wasn’t such. Found his body in Winter’s Town, they did — he never went there, I know that, nobody there knew him, I’d stake anything on that. And the people here, you saw them” — a gesture back toward the shrine itself, the purse jingling with his wave — “they don’t believe it either. Oh, plenty will, the sort that only came on feasts, the sort that always sneer at holy things. The story will take root with them. But if you really knew him, for those that listened to him — and that’s a lot of people hereabouts — well, they won’t believe it. They know it isn’t true.”

Unable to help herself, Fidelity asked: “What do you think happened, then?”

The sacristan shook his head. “He preached too boldly, we all knew it, he made enemies, all the way up to the Castle he made enemies …” Then he broke off, as if suddenly realizing what he was saying. “Now, listen, I didn’t mean, I’m just a poor fool here, don’t go back and say you’ve heard me talking nonsense.”

Temperance, still reassuring: “We don’t know anyone in the Castle save the princess herself, sir. We’re just here to offer charity, not carry tales. There’s no gossip in our order, Jophiel forbids it.”

“Well, bless you then, don’t pay any mind to me, I’m just grieving, just saying things I shouldn’t in my grief — and when I said the good father made enemies it wasn’t just the high and mighty, he preached against all the vices, the whoremasters and thieves and all the rest, could have been all sorts who wanted him brought low. All sorts. All sorts of wicked men don’t like a holy priest.”

Reffio glided through Fidelity’s thoughts. But even he must fear the seven hells; even he would not kill a priest. And priests could have secrets, too. Just because Father Aldiff had cared about her, just because he made himself beloved, didn’t mean that he couldn’t have his secret lusts.

The world was a net of sins and secrets, threads and strands she couldn’t follow, running off into the dark.

But when she looked at the priest’s dead face it seemed to be reproaching her.

“Listen,” the sacristan said. “Listen, I can tell you this, we’re going to have a funeral. One of these coins will be spent on the funeral, the princess should know, you can tell her that much. If we don’t the people will never come again, the shrine will stand empty for a year, no bit of paint on it will matter. We won’t have the black priests, it won’t be proper, I’ll have to say the litany myself, it won’t be what he deserves, maybe the angels won’t accept it. But we can’t wait for whatever new priest they send to decide, not this time of year, the body needs to go in the ground with this heat. And there’ll be a crowd for it, and we’ll put him in the little yard here, and there’ll be a marker where folk can see it, and if the Temple doesn’t like it they can send the red priests down to dig him up and strip me of my key. I don’t think they will, they just want to go back to forgetting about us. But listen, since it won’t be proper-like, and since you’re here, I’d feel better if — can you sing? Just here, quiet-like, I won’t get a crowd, but folk will know — just a little of the litany?” He was near tears again, biting at his lip. “I heard you sing it in the temple when the last emperor passed, so many years gone, never forgot it. I’ve tried to sing it, Father Aldiff would try to sing it, when we buried folk here, but it’s so beautiful in a woman’s … in a woman’s voice, in a sister’s voice. Will you sing, just for a moment, and then I’ll let you go?”

They exchanged glances through the veil. “We’re new-made sisters,” Fidelity said. “I don’t know the deathwatch that well outside of the choruses …”

“No, we can do it,” Temperance said firmly. “We’ll just sing the chorus, and I’ll know the descant pretty well, and that will serve. It will serve. But good sir, can you say the aris vata first? It wouldn’t be right to sing without it.”

The sacristan’s face acquired a strange sort of dignity. “Of course,” he said, “of course. And I can light more tapers, we need one at each corner, please sisters, just give me a moment …”

The tapers were lit, the room soon felt warm and close. “Should we …?” Fidelity asked, touching her veil tentatively. There was no screen here for them to sing behind.

The sacristan saw the gesture. “No, no, we’ll do this. We’ll do this. I’ll say the aris here over the body and then I’ll go out, I’ll go into the shrine and pray and you can be uncovered here, I don’t want you to have to sing through the veil, but if I go out surely that will be fitting enough, yes?”

So after he said the ancient blessing over the body he bowed and left them, and the soldiers followed him to stand guard outside the door. After an awkward moment they pulled back their veils and began together, starting with the chorus instead of the parts, botching the harmonies a time or two, skipping sections here and there, but singing most of it, enough of it, koritabiri in predicista, koritabiri in fruvendis ala, iestifir Azraelis, iestifiri tenebrendis, while the candlelight burnished Father Aldiff’s face and made the scene more dreamlike than all her dreams of him.

When finally they went out of the room, veiled again, the perspiration thick underneath their robes, the scene in the shrine was like a stage frozen in mid-scene — the sacristan stretched out before the altar amid the kneeling women, the men standing silent now, their murmurs stilled, their heads bare and bowed.

She realized that their voices had carried out through the shrine, and for a moment, maybe for the first moment since she had entered the sisterhouse, she had a sense of the power that they held close within their order — power that could go out into the world and bring stillness, even holy awe, to anyone willing to receive it.

Then she saw him, saw Reffio — his head like an archpriest’s cap, his bulk an extra pillar in the shadowed nave. Just an observer, like the first time she had seen him in the Snow Goose, his knowing eyes brushing the scene, brushing her …

… except that this time they brushed right past her, seeking something worthier of their attention. A blue sister, a veiled woman, what did she matter to Reffio? She had been wrong to be terrified, right to come — as a sister she was invisible, and the holy power of her order was also a power that kept her safe from the wicked eyes of men.

They went out from the shrine, from shadows into light and heat, leaving Reffio still contemplating, Father Aldiff’s flock sorrowing, the body of the priest still lying between the candles wrapped in white. Going back up the streets to the high parts of the city, back through the door into the coolness of the sisterhouse, felt more like going home to Fidelity that it ever had before.

But that night she dreamed about the lake and the island and the ruined city once again.

“A gift from the Castle — that the shrine and its people might not suffer for the sins of those the angels put above them,” Aeden quoted to Alsbet a few days later, when she was about to sit down with the steward and Gavian to consider the guest list for a late summer feast. “The message made quite an impression — the poor sacristan quoted it back to me, like he was afraid if he didn’t know it by heart I’d take the coin back. You didn’t tell us that you were taking an interest in the city’s poorer shrines. I’m still helping the chamberlain with his accounts, Lord Marfwen didn’t seem to know of it, it took me a little time to discover where the missing gold had gone — and what message went with it.”

“A message with many meanings,” her captain said softly. “Maybe more meanings than wisdom would dictate …”

“I’m not sure that I like the wisdom I am gaining,” Alsbet said. “Nor do I think my private charity relevant to the matter at hand.”

That was the last they spoke of it. At the shrine they had new plaster on their walls and new paint on their statues, and in the autumn a new brown priest who nobody much liked. The gossip in the Dockside taverns sometimes rose to Lord Rell’s ears, but he did not bring it to the princess.