Heart Fire (Celta Book 13) (19 page)

“Thanks.”

“To our positions, Excellencies,” ordered Custos.

As the Chief Ministers went to their stations outside each end of the arms of the cross, she and Antenn were left in the center. The architect held himself a little stiffly, as if he’d been injured and not quite Healed. A spellshield surrounded him. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you hurt?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said. His jaw flexed.

She knew he lied.

The ministers read, and walked, and chanted through the ceremony, and Tiana caught her breath at the solemn beauty of it. Simple. Awesome. Standing here, it seemed as if she could
see
the inside of the building form around her, towering columns, beautiful stone floors, incredible stained-glass windows . . . and then she realized she was picking up the images from Antenn’s mind as he visualized the rite taking place in the finished cathedral.

When the men formed their square in the center of the cross—the intersection—she caught Antenn’s eyes and hummed along with the chant and responses. From the ministers’ gazes, she thought that they, too, were swept up in Antenn’s vision.

With a last Word that echoed on the wind, sped away from the four quarters to the rest of the world, the ministers fell silent, the illusion of the building thinned to nothingness.

Foreman clapped his hands. “Good.” He smiled at her. “Excellent. I don’t think it needs any tweaking. Your mother and you are to be commended.”

Tiana curtseyed. “Thank you.”

Custos checked with the others, then turned to her and Antenn. “Before we leave, we wish to give you something,” Custos said. Each of the men reached into a pocket of his tunic, then handed her thick papyrus envelopes sealed by his ring. One of the missives had her name inscribed on it in fancy handwriting; two others were addressed to High Priestess GrandLady D’Sandalwood and High Priest GrandLord T’Sandalwood.

Chief Minister Foreman stared at her with a hard gaze. “Formal invitations to the ritual, though we’re still discussing the exact day and time, but soon.” As he said that, she felt an irritation rise in the ministers and knew the discussion might have been, or was, heated. “We wish you to hand-deliver these.”

Tiana nodded. She’d hoped to translocate them to the proper desks and head straight from the plateau to TQ to move in. Plush glider or not, her energy and Flair were being depleted by this job, and she was ready to rest a little and settle into her temporary home.

“Let’s be off.” Foreman moved to a spot that Tiana recalled from the vision would be a small teleportation area for staff and held out his large, workman hands to the others. They arranged themselves around him and linked hands.

Just before they teleported away, an inner
push
forced Tiana to say something. “I . . . I . . .” She didn’t know whom they’d hired to do the spellshields, figured it wouldn’t be the best since that was a FirstFamily woman . . . and felt it
should
be the best. They all stared at her and she ended up saying, “We need to make sure all is safe.”

Only the architect stiffened with offense, which was good, the others just nodded or shrugged and disappeared.

With a scowl, Antenn turned to her, opened his mouth, shut it, and gestured shortly to her glider. “I teleported here and would appreciate a ride back to the Temple with you. I can get to my office from there.”

She didn’t know how much Flair it took to keep up his unusual aura spell but agreed. During the trip, he kept his distance in the backseat of the glider. He didn’t say anything, but she believed he was thinking hard . . . and simmering.

The glider swept through the Temple grounds and up to the northern portico. She and Antenn exited.

Still scowling, he asked, “Just what do you think you were doing back there?” He waved in the direction of the cathedral. “Are you trying to delay or kill this project?”

S
tepping aside as the glider cruised away to the garage, Tiana turned toward Antenn. “What I said wasn’t that bad.”

“No, but there’s a pattern of negativity on your part.”

She flung her arms wide. “I’ve done everything I’ve been asked. I took the job as liaison, I’ve
been
a good liaison. I worked with my mother—all night—to create the ritual I gave to the Chief Ministers this morning. I’ve moved out of my own home to live here where I’ll be ‘more available.’” She ended with enough bitterness in her tone to make her eyes widen.

“You’ve done what you were asked,” he repeated flatly, his expression closed. “But only what you were asked. Admit it, your superiors pressured you into this job. You didn’t—don’t want it.”

“I
do
! Wasn’t
I
the one to offer a solution to that problem yesterday morning?” Waving her hands, she said, “There’s just something in the air.”

He seemed to vibrate with tension. “Building this cathedral is a priority for me.
The
priority, the most important thing in my life right now. It’s a big commission and a boost to my career, but more, the cathedral will stand long after I’m gone. Designing this shows that I am a contributing member of our society—” He stopped, took in a breath, but his darkened gaze remained fixed on hers. “The Chief Ministers yearn for this, as do the members of their church. The High Priest and Priestess want this.” He opened and closed his hands. “I want this.”

She squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and spoke a few revealing truths of her own. “My goals aren’t that different from your own,” she said. “You are judged by your brother’s murderous reputation. I am judged for my mother’s religion—a religion that was also supposedly associated with the murderous. I want to be judged by my own actions.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“And don’t use that freezing voice on me.” He pointed at her, rudely. “Our situations aren’t the same. My brother
was
murderous. He killed. He died. Your Family were only accused of being murderous, and weren’t in fact.” He paused, stepped back to lean against one of the fluted stone pillars of the portico, and crossed his arms. “And what are you going to do about it?”

Her mouth fell open. “What?”

“You’ve let that fligger GraceLord T’Equisetum get away with ruining your Family. For years. Shouldn’t you be doing something more active?”

She’d planned on it . . . once. Even though her father hadn’t wanted to press the issue, and no one else in the Family seemed to care once they’d been offered the custodianship of the secret sanctuary. What had happened? Had she accepted what the man had done?

Her breathing went unsteady. “What am I going to do about it?” she repeated softly, more to herself than him. “No, I haven’t accepted what he did to my Family. That he influenced the NobleCouncil to condemn us, take our title and wealth and estates away.” She whispered under her breath, “That he had someone rile up a mob against us.”

His eyes narrowed and she didn’t know if he’d heard that or not. In a stronger tone, she said, “But I’ve put it behind me.” She rubbed her temples, met his hard gaze “Revenge is not something a priestess is supposed to yearn for.”

“What about justice?”

Chin jutting, she answered him. “Yes, I want justice. But my father, who was a judge, didn’t want to go after it . . . there were reasons . . .” Each and every one of her Family had promised not to reveal the location of FirstGrove and the BalmHeal Residence, and it they’d been questioned,
where
they were staying would have been asked and they couldn’t answer without breaking a vow. Nor had they wanted Lord T’Equisetum’s hatred following them to BalmHeal, endangering the special place.

“I had my career to think of,” she said, instead. She’d started with the Temple that same year, been accepted into the charity program and moved into a full apprenticeship after she’d proven herself.

Antenn rolled a shoulder. “Um-hmm.”

Standing straighter, she said, “I put it behind me, only wanting to prove—”

“That you were as good as everyone else. Yeah, that we have in common.”

Did his lip curl slightly? She was trained to read nuances; was he disgusted at the
events
that had shaped him? Or at himself? Or
her
?

She couldn’t help it, she felt that expression was aimed at her. That he judged her inaction.

“We were firebombed out of our home! We—I—had to recover.” Just as she was being given too little time, now, to recover from all the recent changes in her life.

He gave her a crooked smile. “Now there we have something in common.”

She gasped. “You were firebombed!”

“That’s right.”

Goggling, she backed up to a bench flanking one side of the double doors and let her knees fold under her, dropping her with a little jolt to the marble seat.

He pushed away from the pillar and crossed to stand in front of her. His smile had faded to lips set in a compressed line, his brows angled low, and his whole aspect seemed darker. “How’d you get out in time?”

“I . . .” She gasped again, couldn’t seem to catch her breath, as fog clouded her mind. Another person had lived through what she’d gone through! Someone not her Family who could understand the crash of glass, the whoosh of fire, the horror, the fear, the—

He hunkered down in front of her, stretched out his hands, and then dropped them. “Sorry. Forget about the question.”

Her brain gave her one word and her lips formed it. “You?”

“Years before you, when I was a kid, younger than you. We . . . Pinky my Fam, me, and my cuz Trif Clover, retreated to a corner of a room. I curled around Pinky, and Trif—she was bigger than me then—covered me. Straif T’Blackthorn and T’Ash saved me.”

“Trif Clover. Circles and circles,” Tiana whispered.

“What?”

“She was kidnapped by the Black Magic Cult, the cult
they
said my mother and other Intersection of Hope members belonged to.”

He shook his head in a rueful manner, stood, then sat beside her. “Yeah, odd how life circles around.”

Tiana took a shuddering breath and shook her head. “I can’t forget about your question. You’re right. We should have demanded justice.
I
can demand justice.”

“Can you prove GraceLord T’Equisetum riled up the mob against you?”

He’d heard her!

Her scalp had heated with all this thinking. Her heart quivered in her chest with all the feeling. She lifted her hair from her neck, sifted her fingers through it. “I don’t know. I think . . . I’m sure T’Equisetum made speeches in the NobleCouncil against us, even went down to the Commoner Council to vilify us.”

“Because pylor, the paralytic drug that was used against the Black Magic Cult victims, was found on your premises.”

She couldn’t read his tone, either. Something about this man skewed all of her senses. She said, “Incense with pylor was found in our house, yes. You’ve seen yourself that such incense is a part of Intersection of Hope rituals, and not in any amount that would hurt a person. How would a minister do his job if he was paralyzed? And at that time, pylor was an ingredient in many incense sticks that most people had in their homes.”

“So the case that you were part of the Black Magic Cult was—”

“Never made. We, my mother, was never charged, but the ruin was done all the same.”

He cocked his head. “Why?”

She chuffed a breath, glared. “Because my father is—was—a judge, and my mother was—is—a SecondLevel Healer. Both professions demand a pristine reputation.”

“You think?”

“Yes. I know.”

Again he shrugged. “Rather like a priestess. Yet here you are.”

She’d sat up straight and tense and hadn’t even realized that had happened, had lost the sense of her body, and not in a good way as in a meditative trance. “You’re right.”

“And you can still fight for justice. If you want. I can’t. I can’t even fight for mercy for my lost brother.” A short, jagged gesture. “He’s dead. His memory is defiled by his angry deeds, his murders.”

Her jaw set. “Yes, I can try to get the estate back . . .” She blinked away stinging tears. “We didn’t have a Residence, and we teleported away as soon as we could, and those watching through the windows saw us, so they left the place alone.” She gulped. “I haven’t been to the house for years.” Swallowing, she continued. “I think GraceLord T’Equisetum had plans for it to be given to a . . . friend . . . of his.”

“An ally.”

“Yes.”

“Huh.” He stared off in the distance a moment as she gathered herself to turn over the idea of how to go about seeking justice at this late date.

Then, slowly, he said, “And if you follow up on what you just said, getting justice against him for his past hurt of you and your Family . . .” His breath went out; he paused, inhaled, and said, “You could occupy T’Equisetum on another front than the cathedral, distract him from our project.”

“What?”

“He’s a member of the Traditionalist Stance movement, and already murmuring to his friends about the cathedral. Started immediately after the press conference. Straif has heard that. Equisetum might even call his own press conference.”

Shock rattled through her. “Your cathedral. You did say it was your highest priority.”

“I think I just laid that out.” He frowned. “Not my cathedral.
The
cathedral.” He shrugged a shoulder. “I told you it was my priority.”

“But my bringing up old wrongs by GraceLord T’Equisetum would distract him.”

“Probably.” Antenn shrugged. “But it would be good for you, too.”

She vibrated with rage. “You’re using me for your own ends.” She found that her hands trembled, so she stuck them in her sleeves and sank into her balance, grounding herself.

“What! No.” He appeared confused. “Not really.”

“No? Or not really?”

At that moment Lucida Gerania strolled up, glanced at them. Her lips curved in a half smile, her brows lifted. “Problems?” she purred.

Spine straight, Tiana said, “The Temple teaches us to be serene.” She managed not to spit it out, knew that under her flash of rage was a deep hurt, a wound that shouldn’t be so deep but was. And now here was her rival to see her struggle with her temper, but she ignored Lucida though anyone with training would feel the vibrations of her outrage. Since Antenn scowled, she thought he might, too. Her fingers cupped her opposite elbows too hard and she loosened her grip, her mind already sliding into a mantra to settle down . . .

“The Temple also teaches us to let the Lord and Lady deal with those who have harmed us . . . because they
will
be dealt with, and to focus on the now and the present.” She turned to Lucida, modulated her voice. “Isn’t that so, FirstLevel Priestess?”

Lucida flushed a little and stood straighter herself, the smile wiped from her face as if embarrassed to be caught enjoying Tiana’s discomfort. She inclined her head. “Yes.”

Slowly Tiana inclined her head to Antenn. “I must deliver the envelopes. I’ll see you later.”

Much later, as
later
as she could humanly manage. She walked away from him, through the doors, and didn’t look back.

*   *   *

A
s she finally put the items she had in her office to rights, with some help from her in-Temple friends, she brooded until she made a decision.

The architect had angered her, but his words were the truth. It had been easier for her just to live as an example, be passive, than to work to clear her Family’s name. Though she also recognized another truth: the Priests and Priestesses of the Celtic religion on this planet should be as whole and stable as possible, so they could counsel others. And she’d aimed for that.

But she
did
have a pocket of inner fury, one she’d thought she’d worked through and drained off during the years but had really just tamped down . . . Well, she
must
have drained some of it off, but unfortunately she found too much anger remaining.

Because there had been no justice.