Our Lady of the Islands (32 page)

Arian’s new cell was even smaller and shabbier than the one she’d shared so briefly with Sian. It smelled of septic damp and pungent fungal growth, and didn’t even have a pallet. She lay in darkness now, upon the floor, reviewing all the things she’d gotten wrong in life — beginning with this doomed attempt to do Hivat’s work for him. Not that Hivat had ever offered to try rescuing Sian himself. Only warned against it — as had Viktor. Should she have listened to them?

She still wasn’t sure.

She knew very well that telling Duon who she was might avert her execution. But she had no way of knowing what use he might make of her instead, against Viktor and the Factorate. There was also some slim hope that Escotte had betrayed Sian and her ‘maid’ without realizing, even then, who that maid had been. If so, this secretive surrender of her life might still purchase Viktor and his nation time to bypass an instant plunge into civil war. She might get
one
thing right, at least, before the end.

The soft glow through a slit of window, high up in her cell wall, told her dawn had come. Maronne would be waking soon, expecting their return, if she had not already been discovered. Arian closed her eyes against the scenes that followed, though there was no real light to see by anyway. She worried for Viktor without her — not just this morning, but for all the years of mornings she hoped he still had ahead of him. Had he realized yet that she was lost? He must have, she supposed. And Konrad. Her poor Konrad. If they allowed Sian to heal him —
oh, please, any god that may be listening to me still, let them get her to him soon
— she dared hope against all hope that he, at least, might still live long enough to be Factor in his turn someday … Or, better yet, something much less terrible than Factor.

This thought led her back to Viktor. She had ruined him, of course. She saw that now. Not during these past few awful weeks, but years and years ago. She shook her head, letting tears fall freely. Who was there to see now? What would it matter anymore if someone did? The exercise of power had never come easily to Viktor, as it had to her. She could have helped him learn it. But she had been no more willing to allow him the risk of error, or its consequences, than she had ever allowed them to herself. Instead, she’d spent their years together making sure he never made mistakes … or learned … or dared to try to learn.

She’d kept her husband sealed inside his fear of failing her — and thus, infantilized him.

Arian had come to see this not long after being healed by Sian. Something inside of her had shifted in those awful, wondrous moments of transformation. She’d been left rearranged, in all sorts of ways that she was still just starting to sift through. Most of which would have to go un-sifted altogether, she supposed, if she was to die soon. All she knew so far was that some lifelong …
rigidity
… had melted beneath whatever touch had mended all those broken bones and lacerations. Had that touch been Sian’s? The Butchered God’s? She had no idea. But in some way she still could not name, it had left her less afraid — of everything. Even death.

She’d always thought she knew so much. Now she knew how much she’d never known. With only hours left, if that, to apply the insight. How could any god so kind have timed his gift so cruelly?

She heard something in the darkness. An intermittent, grinding sound so soft, she thought it might have been imagined. She sat up and listened, straining her eyes against the dark, suddenly imagining rats, or who knew what other crawly horrors snuffling toward her. There was a footfall to her left. She twisted round to look that way, quite sure she hadn’t made it up. “Who’s there?”

“A friend,” somebody whispered.

Her gaze swiveled toward the sound. “I have no friends here. Show yourself.”

“You must be much more quiet, please.” A patch of shadow moved against the other shadows. “I am a friend of Sian Kattë’s. Perhaps she mentioned me, yes?”

“She may have,” Arian said more quietly, recalling Sian’s allusion to more sympathetic priests. “She did not give me a name, though.”

“No?” the whisper answered. “Clever woman. I am reassured to hear it.” The darker patch of shadow came a little further into what scant light now drifted from the slit of window high above. “Can I trust you to be as circumspect?”

“If you knew me, you would have no need to ask. But yes.”

“Then my name is Het,” the shadow said, its form rustling suddenly and shifting in the darkness. A moment later, a small orb of pale blue light erupted less than five feet off, revealing a face both lined with age and youthful, topped in thinning, light brown hair under a priest’s hood drawn halfway back. “
Father
Het, my lady. At your service, it would seem.”

“Why call me ‘my lady’?” Arian asked in alarm.

Het looked nonplussed, then shrugged. “It is a courtesy. What would you prefer?”

“Freda. That is all the name I need.”

“Very well then, Freda. Shall we go to see if we can find Sian, now?”

“
What?
Go where?” She saw him smile, seeming to enjoy confusing her. “How did you get in here?”

“I am a passionate collector of the temple’s lost places and hidden ways.” He grinned. “It is knowledge any renegade as troublesome as me has frequent cause to need, yes?”

“Then … you’ll help Sian and me escape again?” She hardly dared rekindle hope.

“Not escape, no, sadly.” His smile became apologetic. “The temple is too closely watched these days for that. My fault, I fear — in part, at least. But you and Domina Kattë can easily be hidden here inside our grounds until news of your latest escape grows stale enough to allow for relaxation of our current vigilance. Then I’ll help you all the way to freedom.”

Arian heaved a disappointed sigh. “How long might that take, do you suppose?”

He shrugged again. “From what I hear in certain circles, the alternatives are hardly thinkable, dear Freda. Especially for you. Am I misinformed?”

She shook her head. “I do not mean to sound unappreciative. It’s just …” She sighed again, and gestured at the tiny cell — all the smaller for his light to see it with. “You have some way to get me out of here?”

“Of course. The same way I got in.” He beckoned her to follow him, all of six or seven steps, into the lowest, farthest corner of her little chamber. There she saw a large block of perforated stone grating lying beside the darkened gap it had been removed from.

“You moved this so quietly?” Arian asked, astonished. “I can’t believe it’s here at all! Has no one else discovered it and escaped?”

“It is much easier to lift from below,” he said. “And even if you could have pried it out yourself, it would have done you very little good to crawl down there without this too.” He held up a blackened key. “There is a sturdy gate at each end of the drainage this leads into.” He beckoned her to follow, scrunching his arms and shoulders inward as he slipped the rest of the way through.

All Arian could see now was a ghostly suggestion of the hole itself, where Het’s pale light still shone a little from below. Groping toward it, she too wound her robes more closely around her legs, and lowered them into the gap. She felt nothing beneath her feet.

“Come further,” she heard Het urge softly from below.

Bracing her hands against either lip of the opening, she lowered herself almost to the waist, and still felt only air beneath her. Then Het’s hands grabbed her feet, and steered them toward a narrow bar. There was a ladder, though it was positioned awkwardly. With his help, she found the next rung, and the next, and after just a bit more squirming and yet another rip or two in Freda’s once-neat dress, Arian was through and standing next to Het in several inches of revolting, smelly water. She managed not to gag as he climbed back up to retrieve the grate and set it back in place above his head, then came back down, with his little light, and beckoned her to follow. “It smells better in a moment,” he assured her. “But from here on we must be completely silent except for very urgent need, yes?”

She nodded, waving him on impatiently.

For all its unappealing qualities, this drainage tunnel had awakened an idea in her mind, though she would have to wait until he told her it was safe to speak again before finding out if it held any promise.
I’m sorry to keep judging you so hastily
, she silently informed whatever deity kept doing her these favors.

Escotte had done this to her. To them all. Her own cousin. Family. What did that word mean? Sian had assumed she knew once. Hadn’t even thought to wonder. Then …

Then there had been daughters who would not believe you even though you’d raised them from the very seed. Husbands who filed legal complaints against you just as soon as your misfortunes threatened to be bad for business. Cousins who did not think twice, it seemed, about handing you to murderers.

Family.

The god’s young priest had told Sian that she was destined to heal what was broken. But, so far, it seemed that all she’d done was break whoever she came near — just as she’d been broken by the priest. Her family, scattered; Reikos and Pino wasting in a dungeon of their own; Maronne, abandoned to the mercies of Sian’s monstrous cousin; and Arian des Chances, Factora-Consort of all Alizar … hauled off to the temple executioner. All because they’d come too close to Sian. Did this new god do anything
but
butcher? When would the
healing
begin? Sian shook her head, wondering if even Konrad would be healed when the temple finally let her touch him — or just arch his back, cry out, and die. Was all this just some celestial joke? This Butchered God merely some sadistic comic?

The darkness of her cell was nothing to the darkness pooling in her heart. She sat staring down at where her
gifted
hands lay folded in her lap. Would she lose this gift at last when she had finally healed Konrad? And, if she did, would the temple still think it cost-effective to support a permanent guest with no useful skills they could exploit?
I’ll be following you soon, I think, dear Arian
, she murmured to the empty air. Sian was not afraid. Just tired. And so very, very hungry. Death would solve both problems very handily — and a host of others. All at once.

Keys rattled — almost frantically — at the lock to her cell door. Sian looked up dully, hoping they’d decided just to kill her too.
Let’s just get this over with
, she thought, waiting to see which face bad news would be wearing now.

There was no flood of light as the door swung open this time. The hallway seemed almost as dark as her cell. She could barely see her visitor.

“Sian Kattë?” he whispered harshly. “Are you here?”

“What’s happening?” she asked, wondering why he hadn’t simply brought a light.

“Come! Quickly!” the man whispered urgently.

“Why?” Was it time to heal Konrad already? In such secrecy that even light could not be risked? “Are you —?”

“It is Het!” he whispered. “Hurry! Before someone comes!”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, leaping to her feet, her inner darkness instantly eclipsed. “
Oh, you’ve come!
” She rushed toward the door as quickly as she could with so little light to see by. “I have a friend here — somewhere —” she began, but Het shushed her fiercely into silence, fumbling for her hand, then dragging her behind him, out, and down the dimly illuminated hallway, around a corner, and through the open doorway of yet another darkened cell. He turned to close its door behind them just as soon as they were in. Only then did he pull out one of his little globes of pale light and start herding her before him toward one of its grimy corners.

“Are we —?” she tried to ask, but again he shushed her.

Not until they got there did she see the displaced stone grate lying beside the darkened gap. “Down,” Het whispered, rushing past her to wriggle through first. When his head had vanished, Sian gathered her robes and did her best to follow. Halfway in, Het’s hands found her dangling, unshod feet and guided them toward a rung ladder so offset that she might never have found it by herself. Moments later, her toes touched down inside some kind of wet, unpleasant tunnel. As Het brushed past her, climbing back up to replace the grate above them, Sian turned and peered into the darkness, trying to make out their surroundings.