Selfish is the Heart (16 page)

Merriment laughed and tucked her arm through Deliberata’s again. “Ah, I’ve known Cassian to slam a few doors in his time.”

“Sister,” Deliberata chastised gently, never taking her gaze from Annalise’s face, “one must not speak ill of Master Toquin, for without him, we’d be left to tend much for which we have not the skill or patience.”

“Perhaps not the skill,” Merriment replied with another small laugh, “but certainly we might be considered as having more patience.”

Deliberata did not laugh. “Tell me, Annalise, how are you finding Master Toquin’s instruction? Do you still feel you were placed incorrectly?”

Annalise looked at the other woman and wondered what she’d seen, what she thought she knew. “I find him most thoroughly knowledgeable in the Word of the Book.”

Deliberata inclined her head. “Most well. Come, Annalise. Merriment and I were about to take a turn around the gardens before afternoon services. We should love to have you join us. The fresh air will do wonders for your constitution.”

The command, worded as a request, might have been denied if Annalise knew how lightly Deliberata would take such refusal. Since she didn’t, she nodded and smiled. “I’d love to join you. Thank you.”

“I find a brisk walk in the fresh air wipes away all the cobwebs and brings a new outlook upon any situation.” Deliberata offered Annalise her other arm.

Annalise took it. “I suppose a new outlook is not something to be disparaged.”

Now, finally, Deliberata chuckled. “No, indeed, it is not.”

 

 

N
o matter how many days had passed since he’d been the one on the beemah, facing the Book and speaking for those who could not, Cassian ever remembered how it had felt to be there. Now he made it his practice to watch not from the chapel but from the small side room that had long ago been built to accommodate visiting luminaries. Not that he equated himself with persons of such importance they required a special room, but because he knew for a fact the room itself had not been blessed for such a purpose in so long a time he felt no hypocrisy in its use.

None questioned his use of the room instead of his presence in the chapel, because none knew. Or none had, at least not until the Marony woman had discovered him there.

She was a burr, ever-snagging.

He could not stop thinking of her.

She challenged him, and though he didn’t want to enjoy being so challenged, he did. Most of the women who sought the Order of Solace were intelligent—they had to be, to pursue their craft. Many were beautiful, if not classically at least with some feature or presence or attitude that made them lovely. Scores of women had passed through the Order in his years and more than one had turned his head.

Not a one of them had ever struck at him some other place.

She did not, could not know, not unless she could look inside his mind and divot out the truth. He’d seen the look in her eyes when he’d snatched the letter—a foolish, childish gesture forced by some emotion he wished not to name. She thought him arrogant, mayhap cruel. It would be better if she did.

But even now he could recall the tone of her voice and her lifted chin. How her eyes had flashed with fury she’d been strong enough to keep from spilling over. She had tight rein on herself, a restraint he admired but that had only moved him to taunt her into an outburst.

And for what? So that he might bring her before the Mothers and demand punishment? It would take more than a disagreement for them to turn her out, particularly when he’d been the one to urge it forward. He’d had no good reason for taking her letter and naught to defend himself with should Annalise decide to level a counter-accusation.

She thought him cruel, at the least. Cassian watched his once-brothers move about their tasks, their words falling over and around him. Across his lips, silent. He listened to them speak for him, who would not.

He’d not always been known as fire-headed. In boyhood, Cassian had fended off his share of jeers and attacks from bullies who’d assumed his quiet demeanor meant he was vulnerable. Since he’d never fought in return, his reputation as soft grew.

Calvis, on the other hand, had never stood still long enough for a blow to hit him. Those who believed he shared his brother’s temper as well as his features discovered swiftly enough the sting of Calvis’s biting wit and the harsher bite of his fists. Woe to any who harmed those he loved, for Calvis was protectively, fiercely loyal.

He was quick to fury and amusement both, easily led to laughter and passion. Cassian could only ever watch his brother in every pursuit—a fight, a kiss, joke. Calvis loved and was loved. Cassian, on the other hand, was most often forgotten.

If they’d not shared a womb, they’d never have been friends. Cassian knew it deep within his soul, though Calvis would ever deny it. Calvis’s arm ’round his shoulders, his knuckles rasping along his scalp, the slap of his brother’s palm on his back while Calvis’s laughter rang all ’round them—these were things Cassian knew he’d have been denied if they weren’t brothers.

“Shite and bollocks,” Calvis had said the first and sole time Cassian made mention of it. “Shut your mouth, brother, else I shut it for you.”

It had been late, the room dark, Calvis’s breathing heavy from indulgence in worm and herb. The stink of a brothel wafted from him so that even in the darkness Cassian could tell without hesitation his brother’s position. He could hear the thump of Calvis’s boots being flung to the floor.

“You think because I didn’t ask you along that I don’t like you?” More thumping. A stifled belch. The tang of herb drifted across Cassian’s wrinkled nose. “I know you overwell, brother, that’s all. I know you’d take no pleasure from the company of whores and the sorts of men who join with them.”

Cassian, in his bed, had turned his face to the wall and drawn the covers up high. “Go away, Cal, you’re drunk.”

“Oh, oh, oh.” The sound of bare feet slapped the floor, coming closer. “Oh, brother dear, such condemnation in your tone.”

“I condemn you not, but go away.” Cassian dug deeper into the bedclothes.

“Have you, little brother, ever been drunk? Methinks the answer is no, but you’ve ever been one to surprise.”

Cassian had, in fact, overindulged on sweet tumbleberry wine once the summer before. It had made him sick enough to pray for unconsciousness, and he’d not repeated the act since. “It’s late, and I—”

“You,” breathed Calvis as the bed settled and he crept close, “have to be up early for those bedamned devotions. Yes, little brother. I know your bent.”

“Don’t call me little.”

Calvis laughed and a fresh waft of herb-scent drifted across to tickle Cassian’s nose. His brother’s weight, the heat of his body, pressed him. Cassian, bound tight by the blankets he’d pulled up so high, couldn’t move. With Cal at his back and the wall at his front, he could only twist a little.

“As the elder brother, I can call you whatever I like.”

“By no more than a moment or two.”

“By the span of four or five good convulsions, according to our dear mother, from whose womb we were ejected. And I should think that dear woman would know the length of time between my first greeting to the world and thine, brother mine.” Cal snuggled close, his chin biting into Cassian’s shoulder. His arm slipped tight ’round his brother’s waist. “Be not angry with me. Next time I shall ask you to join us, I swear.”

Cassian wriggled in the blankets and yet could not break his brother’s grip. Not without much struggle, anyway, and past experience had taught him such an effort would be useless. They were matched in strength and size, but Calvis would ever be the stronger in his desire to win.

“Go to sleep, Cal. In your own bed.”

“But why? When I’ve found myself in yours?”

“Because it’s late and you snore when you’ve been drinking.” Cassian wriggled again, harder, to get past the blankets at least, if not his brother’s arm.

“So do you. Snore when I’ve been drinking.” Laughter and hot breath caressed the space between them, until Calvis said seriously, “Let me stay. The hour, as you said, is late and I’m fair busted. Would you have me walk to my room in such a state? Waking the house? Subjecting our blessed mother to her beloved son in such a shameful state?”

“Mayhap you shouldn’t have gotten yourself into such a state, if you’re so ashamed of it.” Argument was futile, Cassian knew, as was denying his brother what he wanted.

Cal’s chin bit deeper as his nose pressed Cassian’s neck. “I am ever shamed over what I do.”

This was the first time Cassian had heard such an admission, and he made no comment. Cal’s breath grew softer, deeper, slower. His arm relaxed, though it didn’t release him.

“Next time,” Calvis said quietly, “I will ask you, brother. If you so wish. But I know you. You’d gain no pleasure from such jaunts.”

That Calvis was likely correct in his assumption served naught but to twist Cassian’s determination to be included the next time. “You think me less a man than you?”

Cal’s arm tightened. His mouth sought the flesh of Cassian’s throat, where he bit once, just lightly. “No, little brother. I know you to be much greater. Much, much, greater.”

And with that, the bastard had fallen asleep, immovable and stinking, and had snored the night through while Cassian lay awake and trapped.

T
here had been times when Cassian took great joy from discussion of the Word and the Law. The Book had been everpresent in him. It had led him to every path. It still did, he thought, catching sight of the leather-bound text on his desk. He didn’t need to open its pages to quote it word for word. He wished he could forget, sometimes, but never could.

“I fail to understand,” he said now, “how you could have grown to such an age and have found such faith as to seek a position in the Order of Solace, yet be so unknowledgeable about the contents of a very basic passage.”

Wandalette cleared her throat and blinked rapidly. The sheen of tears gave her away, and Cassian kept his sigh locked tight in his throat. He didn’t want to make her cry, but the bedamned chit would insist on allowing emotion to overcome her. He told himself it was a lesson she needed to learn and best taught by him rather than a patron, but it nevertheless left him with a churning in his belly that had naught to do with hunger.

“Well?”

“Sir, I . . . my parents weren’t of the Faith.”

He studied her. All around, the other young women had paused in their scribblings to watch him test their novitiate sister. Annalise, the only one sitting in the back of the room, glanced up at the pause in his reply but looked away again, her pen moving smoothly over her parchment. She wasn’t studying, and he could only guess at what she was writing.

Since the day he’d taken her letter, neither had made any pretense that he had anything to teach her, or she anything to learn.

“Not of the Faith. They didn’t practice? Or they didn’t believe?” Cassian focused on Wandalette again.

She swallowed hard and spoke in a voice thick with tears. “Not of . . . nor did they believe . . . I mean, sir, they didn’t practice it nor allow its practice in our house.”

Cassian had heard of such folk, though few. Even those who didn’t have a heart-deep belief in the Faith most often at least celebrated the holidays. “And yet here you are.”

“I wanted to make a difference, sir.”

“Tell me, Wandalette, why you’d seek to make such a difference in the Order of Solace? Why not take up nursemaiding, instead? Why not raise a family yourself? Surely the birth and raising of children would make a difference.”

Void take her, now she was weeping. He hadn’t meant to force her to tears, only an answer. He scrubbed at his face in resignation, palm over his eyes so he could gain a breath or two without having to look at her distress.

“I had a vision.”

From the back of the room, Cassian heard the sound of a chair scrape. He looked from behind his hand. Annalise was staring, too.

“Of the Invisible Mother?”

“No.” Wandalette shook her head. “Of her sons.”

“In your vision she had more than one?”

Cassian had heard many tales of visions. He believed those who’d seen them believed in their veracity as firmly as he understood not a one of them to be genuine. The Holy Family had gone away, never to return for any amount of solace provided the world they’d left behind. He’d never heard of a vision that was not of the Mother.

“I know the text says there’s only one.” Wandalette gestured at the book in front of her. “I’ve read it front to back, sir. I promise you. But why does it not say she had two sons? Twins.”

His gut twisted on the word. “No text states Kedalya had more than one son with Sinder.”

Annalise spoke. “There are commentaries that say she had more children. After the first.”

Wandalette looked back and shook her head. “The boys were twins. I’m sure of it. And Sinder’s sons.”

There
was
a little-known commentary that stated much the same—that after Kedalya had left the forest and her god of a husband, taking their son with her, she discovered she was again with child. That the sons she bore after leaving were twins, identical in every way but for the fact that one was a murderer and the other a victim of his brother’s anger.

But how could one such as she, not even raised in the Faith, know such a story?

“Nonsense,” Cassian said in a voice that brooked no dispute. “Read the text in front of you for the answers. When you’ve mastered this level, you might move on. But know you it takes years if not a lifetime to fully understand everything and not a man yet who’s been able.”

“Perhaps it’s not a man’s place to be able,” Annalise said from her seat at the back, “but there’s naught to say a woman is incapable.”

“I don’t want to know everything!” Wandalette cried, alarmed. “Must I know everything to serve? Must I be a scholar of the Faith to be a Handmaiden?”