Essalieyan Chronicles 04 - The Weapon (3 page)

“We have been ordered to protect her,” the Mother’s Daughter said carefully. “We serve the Mother,” was the perfectly reasonable reply.

The child stirred. Emily began to shift her weight from side to side, her arms around the child. The warm child. She, Mother’s Daughter, would bear none. Had never thought—until this moment—that she might find solace in the act.

“We have no experience in raising children,” Iain told them all. But his eyes were now upon

Melanna. “The Mother has not seen fit to grace us—”

“No,” Melanna said. “I will
not
do this.” She turned from them and strode out of the small common room, her hands in tight fists.

Iain watched her go. “Mother’s Daughter, is this wise?”

“Wise? No.” Her arms tightened briefly. “It is not wise. But less wise is refusing the Baron’s request. Inasmuch as he can be, he is fond of this child. I believe…he was fond of her mother.”

Amalyn snorted, and Emily frowned. “She is but three years old. If she is her father’s daughter, she is also her mother’s. We cannot judge her. And she is no son; she is merely a daughter, and without value.”

“He has shown himself to be without mercy when the children of others are involved.” She knew. She remembered. “And will we show ourselves to be, at last, a church made in

his image? The Mother will turn her face from us, and without her blessing, without her power, what then can we offer the people?”

“Justice.”

“We are not the followers of Justice,” the Mother’s Daughter said firmly. “Nor of

Judgment.”

“Melanna will not accept her.”

Mother for ten years. Perhaps this is her test.”

* * *

But she had not been truthful with her priests, and this was its own crime. She took the girl to her room and laid her in the small bed, staring at her perfect child’s features, at a face which would change, again and again, with the passage of time. Would she be beautiful? It was impossible to tell.

She had prayed for a child. But
not
this one.

What will we do with you, Veralaan? What will you become to us?
She understood

Melanna’s desire. She felt no like desire; death was not her dominion.

But she had in her hands a child born to power, a child born with the blood of Barons in her veins. It was true that the Mother’s Daughter had never become involved in the politics of court

—why would she? Between one contender and the other, there was only the difference of competence; there was no difference of desire or ambition, no intent to change, merely to own. What matter, then, whose hand raised sword, lowered whip, signed law?

But here: here was temptation.

It was not only Melanna who was to be tested, but also Emily Dontal, the child who had become woman in the streets of the city, on the day that Lord Halloran had become Lord Breton, Baron of the Eastern Sea.

A child was unformed, uneducated. A clean slate.

And upon such a slate as this,
so much
could be written. She had not told her most trusted servants the words of the Witherall Seer.

Mother
, she thought.
Guide me
. And she lowered her face into shaking hands, because it wasn’t a prayer for advice; it was a prayer for absolution.

* * *

The child would not eat for three days. She would drink milk and water, and Iain informed the Mother’s Daughter, with increasing anxiety, that he was certain she shed them both with the volume of her tears. Those tears had ceased to accompany loud wails, desperate flights toward the door; they became, instead, the silent companions of despair. She did not like the robed men and women who ruled the temple; she did not acknowledge the men and women who labored in the Novitiate. She was not allowed to sit when the congregation gathered, but Iain was certain she would take no comfort from the hundreds of strangers who made a brief home of the pews

either.

In the end, it was Melanna who took the girl in hand; she was not gentle. Not with the child, and not with the slightly anxious men and women who gathered around her, almost afraid to touch her unless she had finally exhausted herself and lay sleeping.

“You’d think the lot of you had never laid eyes on a child before!” It was custom to lower voices when exposed in the cloisters. Melanna often flouted custom when in the grip of disgust, and as she had come late to the Novitiate, she was often forgiven this flaw. “I can understand her, at least—she’s just been abandoned by her only living parent. The rest of you?”

“It’s not our custom—”

“And when the Mother grants us
her
child, what then? Will you leave all the cleanup to me?”

“Melanna—” Iain began again. He retreated just as quickly, his hands before his chest and palm out in the universal gesture of placation.

“You’re a man,” she snorted.

He had the grace to roll his eyes when she wasn’t looking, and she the grace to pretend she wasn’t actually looking. “Damn you all. I’ll take her.”

* * *

Daughter of the Mother, and not daughter of the god of Wisdom, Emily Dontal observed. It had taken two weeks, a mere two weeks, before Melanna intervened. Emily had intended to allow it, for she wanted Veralaan to feel isolated, and she could think of no better guardian than Melanna in that respect.

And for a while, it worked. But it was a short while.

* * *

She came upon Melanna in the smallest of the chambers used by the Novitiates for quiet contemplation and prayer. As Melanna was no longer a Novice, she was surprised to come upon her there, but not nearly as surprised as she was when Melanna looked up, and the dim lights of the brazier shone across her wide cheeks.

Even in the darkened shadows of the room it was clear that her eyes were reddened. She lifted shaking hands and made to rise, and the Mother’s Daughter gentled her by lifting her hands in denial.

“Why are you here, Melanna?”

Melanna said nothing.

The Mother’s Daughter waited, and after a moment, she drew closer. Melanna was upon her knees; she had surrendered the advantage of height. Of more.

She said, “I wanted the Mother’s guidance.” Emily nodded.

“The child—Veralaan—” “I know it is difficult—”

“No, Mother’s Daughter, you
don’t
.” Her voice broke. “My son was older,” she added. “Older than Veralaan. I thought—” She lifted her hands to her face again, callused hands.

“If it is too difficult a task, Melanna—”

But the woman shook her head and rose. “I can manage her. She’s just a child.” Her tears had dried.

The Mother’s Daughter watched her go.

* * *

But she came to understand, as the days passed, what the difficulty was. It was not in caring for the child of the man she most hated; it was the child herself. Although Veralaan was still quiet, sullen and easily frightened, she understood that Melanna had been appointed her caretaker, and she clung to Melanna whenever they were together. Melanna would extricate herself as she could, bending to free the folds of her robes from the three-year old’s fingers.

But she would stop, spine curved, as the child spoke; no one else could hear what Veralaan said. Melanna would speak harshly in reply; harshly and loudly. The child would cringe. But she would not let go; once dislodged, she reached, again and again, for the comfort of this angry

attachment.

* * *

When Melanna almost missed dinner for the first time—and it would have been a disaster, because the Priestess supervised the chaos that was the kitchen—Emily Dontal
knew
.

Melanna came late to the kitchen, Veralaan in the crook of her right arm. It was the first time that she would carry the child with her in her many headlong rushes from one place to another, but it was not the last. She tossed young Ebrick off his stool without ceremony, paused to criticize him for removing half the potato along with the peel, and then set Veralaan down in his place.

The child started to cry, but the tears were quiet.

“Veralaan,” Melanna said, shoving her hands through her hair, “I
don’t have a choice
. If I

leave this lot to cook, we’ll be eating dirt and burned milk for the next three days!”

Veralaan nodded, folding her hands together; they were small and white. But she still cried. “Hazel, what do you think you’re doing with that? The milk will just cake the bottom of the

pot! Pay attention! Veralaan, we can go back upstairs when I’ve finished. I won’t forget the rest of the story. But I—EBRICK!”

Emily had never seen her quite like this, and watched in silence from the safety of the door. Veralaan said something, and Melanna bent to catch the words. Her face froze a moment,

and then she smiled, but it was a tight, tight smile.

“Yes,” she told the child, lowering her voice. “His mother finds him, and brings him home.” Small hands were entwined in the fabric of the older woman’s robes before she’d even

finished her sentence. “Veralaan, I’ve told you a thousand times not to do that. Not where people can see you. These are the Robes of the Mother; they’re to be treated with respect.” She was

busy prying those robes from small fingers as she spoke; it was a losing battle.

In the end, she sighed and hefted the child again in her right arm, lodging the bulk of her weight against her hip. She turned and resumed the marshaling of her beleaguered forces, carrying Veralaan as if she were some sort of precious mascot.

* * *

“I don’t understand it, Iain,” the Mother’s Daughter said, over the same dinner. “What don’t you understand?”

Had they not been quite so isolated, she would have guarded her tongue; she was the Mother’s Daughter, and inasmuch as she could be wise, she was expected to personify wisdom. Given that there was
already
a god that did just that, she thought it a tad unfair.

“Melanna.”

He was quiet for a moment, which was often a dubious sign. At last he put his knife down and pushed his plate an inch forward. “Emily,” he said quietly. Her name; a name he almost never used.

She met his gaze and held it. But he did not look away. Had she desired it, he would have. Or maybe not, she thought, as his expression continued to shift.

“Was that not your purpose in giving the child to Melanna to foster?”

“What purpose?”

“She will never have another child,” he said quietly. “The injuries she sustained made it certain.”

“I know. I was there.”

Grave, now, he said, “You have given her the only child—save perhaps one, if we are blessed—that she will ever be allowed to raise in peace.”

“I gave her,” Emily replied coolly, “the daughter of the man responsible for the slaughter of her family.”

“Yes, and so, too, did she see the child.”

“And she cared so little for her son that she could—”

“That is unworthy of you, Mother’s Daughter. Worse, it is a thought unworthy of the Mother.” Not since she had been in the Novitiate had he dared use that tone of voice on her. It brooked no argument, allowed for none; he was rigidly certain.