“Yes, even such a simple charm requires blood to make it so. It is the key to granting all blessings.”
Thoughtful silence fell among the party, until Rogger added his own bit of wisdom. “Well, in the jelly shark’s case, it was more a curse than a blessing.”
The ship suddenly lurched under them and canted to the port side. Delia fell against the door with a small cry. Tylar grabbed the edge of the wardrobe. Overhead, booted feet pounded across the deck, accompanied by muffled shouts of alarm.
“Seems we’re not out of bad luck yet,” Rogger commented calmly, still seated on the bed.
“What’s happening?” Delia regained her balance, though the floor remained tilted. “Has the miiodon returned?”
“Let’s pray not.” Tylar joined her at the door and forced it open. He stumbled out, followed by Delia and reluctantly by a barefooted Rogger. They climbed the stairs to the stern hatch.
Tylar was the first out. The smoky confines of the lower decks brightened to the fresh breezes of the open sea. The air smelled almost sweet.
But Tylar’s attention focused on the chaos atop the deck. The crew ran ropes and climbed rigging. Orders were shouted along with brittle curses. The frenzied activity bordered on panic.
A few steps away, Captain Grayl stood at his post by the great wheel, flanked by his two steersmen. All three men clutched their wheels, leaning their full weight to turn them farther.
“Another four degrees, damn you!” Grayl bellowed.
The Grim Wash listed to the port side. Clearly the crew fought to turn the ship, attempting to angle her sharply against the prevailing wind. But with the central mast and mainsail gone, it was a futile struggle.
Tylar crossed to the captain’s side. “What’s wrong?”
The captain’s face had purpled with the strain. “Tangleweed dead ahead! Have to avoid it, or we’ll be bogged down and trapped!”
Tylar shaded his eyes—and saw the danger immediately. Filling the ocean beyond the ship lay a mat of thick green vegetation. A smattering of stalky white flowers bobbed in the wind and current. He now understood the source of the sweetness to the air. Tangleweed was the curse of the Meerashe sailor. Such patches floated with the currents and tides. They were unpredictable and could snare careless ships, snagging them up and holding them for days until they could be chopped free . . . if they could be chopped free. Many ships met their end within the embrace of tangleweed.
Rogger spoke beside Tylar, his voice dry in his throat. “That’s no ordinary scrap of weed.”
Tylar glanced to the thief.
“That’s Tangle Reef.”
The captain heard Rogger and spat on the deck. “Turn this damn ship, you bastards! Now!”
“Are you sure?” Tylar asked.
Rogger bared his arm with the branded sigils. He pointed to one of the scars.
“Fyla,” Delia said, naming the symbol for the god of this watery realm.
Rogger lowered his arm. “I’ve already been here.”
Tylar shook his head at their cursed misfortune. At sea, they had hoped to avoid all the god-realms of the Nine Lands, to never touch soil. Now they had stumbled upon the one realm that had no land.
Fyla was a solitary and reclusive god. Even her own handmaidens and handmen were born here—which, considering the unusual nature of her realm, was not surprising. She and her citizens lived beneath the sea in a city formed from tangleweed. They were hunters, fishermen, and sea farmers. Their realm, like the weed in which they made their home, roamed throughout the seas of Myrillia.
Rogger said, “While I consider bad luck my constant companion in life, I must say that running into Tangle Reef right now is beyond pure chance.”
Delia nodded. “The gods are on the move. They know of Meeryn’s death and have joined the pursuit. Tangle Reef must’ve been sent to hunt you down.”
Tylar sensed his doom, a stony weight sinking deep into his chest.
Rogger continued. “We now know who sent the jelly shark after us.”
Tylar stared over to the carpet of undulating weed. The ship, tilted in a frozen turn, continued its plowing course toward the tangling trap, driven by relentless winds and current. The miiodon had been used to cripple them, herd them into the waiting tendrils of the tangleweed. Such was not beyond Fyla. The ocean was her domain, the creatures at her command.
Rogger sighed. “And if she uses a jelly shark like a sheeper’s mutt, there’s no telling what else might be waiting for us.”
8
CHRISMFERRY
DART SCRUBBED THE STONE FLOOR WITH A HORSEHAIR- bristled brush. Her knuckles were raw, both from the rough surfaces and the stinging lye soap. Her simple shift of rough-spun wool clung to her damply. Sweat rolled from the tip of her nose.
Laurelle fared no better, in the same shapeless dress, hair in a drab bonnet. Using both hands, she scrubbed her brush across the stone floor of the Graced Cache. Though little more than a drudgery maid, she seemed content in her new role.
They were handmaidens-in-waiting.
This was their duty. To perform chores, lowly though they may seem, that not even the highest nobles of Chrismferry would be allowed to observe. Like now, scrubbing the floor of the Graced Cache, a vault that contained and preserved all of Chrism’s repostilaries.
“In this manner,” their matron had extolled, “you’ll know your place here. While you were raised high by the touch of an Oracle, chosen from many, here in the Lord’s castillion you are mere servants. You must never forget your place.”
And so, on their knees, they learned this first lesson.
Pupp was their only company here, sniffing about the floor, his molten body aglow in the dim chamber. He kept near Dart’s side, perhaps wary of the power and wealth in this room. While Chrismferry was a rich city, grown fatted over the four millennia since its founding, its true wealth lay here.
Here was the heart of the city.
Dart sat back on her heels and wiped the sweat from her nose with the back of her hand. She stared across the vast vault.
The Graced Cache was located deep underground, where the quarried stones of Chrism’s castillion became natural limed stone. Its ceiling hung unusually low. Even Dart had to keep her head bowed from the roof.
“The better to know your place,” Matron Shashyl had instructed. “To honor what is stored here with bended back.”
Still, despite the low ceiling, the Cache did not feel confining. Its space covered an area larger than the central courtyard of her old school. Most kept their voices whispered because of the chamber’s unnerving habit to echo and amplify. It was as if there were a ghost haunting the room, mocking their words.
The Cache reminded Dart of a wine cellar. While there was a certain dankness to the air, a pleasant sweetness lay beneath it, like the spirits distilled from aged wine casks—though no barrels had ever been rolled into this vault.
All around, rows of ebony weirwood shelves marched to the four walls of the subterranean chamber. Resting upon the shelves, small crystal repostilaries glittered in the torchlight, like a thousand stars in the night. The Cache was divided into eight areas, each representing one of the eight blessed humours of the god they served, a god neither Dart nor Laurelle had yet set eyes upon.
“What are you thinking about?” Laurelle asked, shifting closer to her. The ghost in the room echoed the word thinking, bouncing it back and forth.
Dart noted Laurelle’s eyes flitting about, attempting to follow her fleeing word. She kept her own voice a breathless whisper. “I was wondering when we’d be granted an audience with His Graced, Lord Chrism.”
Laurelle sighed, a flicker of a smile. “I hope soon. But I expect it won’t happen until those who we are to replace have faded completely.”
Dart nodded. They were indeed handmaidens-in-waiting. The two handservants, representing blood and tears, those whom they had been chosen to replace, were ailing but not yet gone, and continued in their duties, as was their honor.
In the meantime, Dart and Laurelle were placed under the daily tutelage of Matron Shashyl, the matron superior of the handservants. While not a Hand herself, she had served the castillion for over five decades and it was said only Chrism himself ever questioned her or went against her wishes. She personally instructed Dart and Laurelle in the finer points of their specific duties and oversaw the practices of the proper rituals. Some lessons had already been taught to them back at the school, but much had not.
“I wish Margarite could see all this,” Laurelle said.
Dart surprisingly felt the same way. Though Margarite had mostly been cruel to her at the old school, the girl would have been a welcome reminder of the only home she had ever known. Alone here, strangers to the castillion, Dart and Laurelle had grown much closer together. They even shared a bed in the dormitories; apparently it was rare to have two handservants-in-waiting arrive at the same time. Still, Laurelle clearly pined for the crush of friends that had always surrounded her.
“I even miss Matron Grannice,” Laurelle sighed. “She was so kind. She once read to me when I was fevered . . . do you remember that?”
Dart felt tears well in her eyes. She wiped them brusquely. The matron had been as close to a mother as she had ever had. Now she would never see her again. Dart’s defilement would not long go unnoticed here. She would surely be banished . . . if not worse. She felt a sudden urge to blurt out her fears to Laurelle, to unburden her heart. If there was anyone she could trust . . .
“Laurelle, can I tell you something?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. The next spilled out in a rush. “Something you’d swear to tell no one else.”
Laurelle shifted closer with a rustle of skirts. “What is it, Dart?”
She reached a hand to her friend. Laurelle grasped it, her eyes bright in the torchlight.
“I . . . the day that I was sent to the rookery . . .”
Laurelle squeezed her fingers. “After I teased you,” she said. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget myself and do silly things to make the other girls laugh. I shouldn’t have. It was mean and petty.”
Laurelle’s brow crinkled—not in shame, but with a weary knowledge of her own foolishness. For a moment, Dart saw the woman her friend would grow into: sharp-eyed, with a keen mind and a beauty that would weaken men. Dart suddenly felt too small to speak.
“What is it?” Laurelle encouraged softly.
Dart opened her mouth, ready to confess all.
Then a crash and tinkle of shattering glass startled them both. They swung around.
Dart spotted Pupp, balanced up on his hind legs, nosing one of the upper shelves. A broken repostilary lay at his paws. She watched him sniff at another vessel, setting it to rocking.
“No!” she cried out and leaped to her feet.
Her exclamation was taken up by the ghost and echoed throughout the room. Pupp glanced at her, eyes squinted in chagrin, tiny brass ears tucked back in shame. He lowered himself to the floor. She hurried to him and shooed him back from the shelf, keeping her motions hidden by her skirts.
Laurelle joined her. She stared down at the broken jar and the spilled humour. “How . . . ?” She glanced around the room nervously. “Why did it fall?”
“We have to clean it up!” Dart declared, panicked. “If Matron Shashyl finds out . . .”
“But we didn’t do anything wrong,” Laurelle said, just a girl again, one who was convinced that the world was just and fair.
Dart knew better. “I don’t know what knocked the jar off the shelf. Maybe a groundshake.”
“I didn’t feel—”
“Maybe a small one, too mild for us to notice, but enough to rattle one of the repostilaries.”
Laurelle nodded, needing to believe something besides the mischievousness of an echoing ghost.
“But will anyone believe that?” Dart crossed back to their abandoned bucket of sudsy soap and brushes. “What if nobody felt the groundshake? We’ll be blamed.”
Laurelle’s eyes grew round.
“Perhaps even cast out for such an abuse.”
Her friend covered her mouth with a small hand. “No!” she whispered through her fingers. “My father would flay me . . .”
Dart recognized the true terror in the other’s eyes. From the time Laurelle was a babe, her family had groomed her for this position and would not tolerate any other role for her. Since their arrival here, Laurelle had received a single congratulatory letter from her parents, along with a small basket of snowy lilies. Dart had read the note. Though it was mostly kind, there was an undercurrent of disappointment. Laurelle had been chosen for one of the five lesser humours: tears. That night, Laurelle had shed many of her own tears, weeping at her failure, while pretending they were a joyous out-pouring.
Dart had not been fooled. Looking at the raw fear in her friend’s eyes now, Dart wondered if being an orphan was truly the worst outcome for a child.
“We’ll clean it up,” Dart promised. “None will be the wiser. There are thousands of repostilaries stored down here.”
Dart bent and carefully picked up the shards of glass. The tang of yellow bile, the god’s water, wafted. At least it hadn’t been his blood, the most valuable of all the humours. She dropped the sharp bits into the sudsy water, hiding Pupp’s crime. She would cast the broken pieces out when she dumped the bucket.
Laurelle steadied herself with a deep breath. Again proving her inner strength, she dropped to her knees and set about cleaning the spilled humour and rinsed the brush in the water.
In short order, the floor was clean, all evidence scrubbed away.
“We mustn’t tell anyone,” Dart warned.
“Our secret,” Laurelle answered. The last word was echoed by the ghost. It seemed all were in agreement.
With her heart finally calming, Dart glanced over to Pupp. He had his tail tucked low, nose close to the floor. She took a moment to frown at him. How had he knocked the jar off? Was it just another of those chance pushes into this world? Like when he had nipped at Laurelle? But he had done such things only when he was agitated, worked up, and protective of her.
She stared at her hands, remembering the one other time, when her blood had allowed her to touch him. She shied away from that memory and glanced back to the empty spot on the shelf. It made no sense. Unless it had something to do with the power contained within the repostilary, the Grace-rich humour.
As she pondered the mystery, a booming voice called out to them, one not even the ghost dared to mock. “Maidens! Please put up your buckets and brushes!”
Matron Shashyl.
“She knows,” Laurelle bleated in panic.
Dart shushed her with a stern look. “She’s just here to collect us.”
Without windows, time ran strange down here, but Dart was sure it was about the end of their morning shift. That meant a short meal of bread and hard cheese, washed down with a bit of tea and honey. Then it was on to their lessons for the remainder of the day.
Laurelle stood on shaky legs, clutching her brush to her bosom. Dart collected the bucket, knowing that Laurelle would be unable to carry this burden, while Dart was well accustomed to the weight of secrets by now.
She held out the bucket for Laurelle to toss her brush into the water. Their eyes met. Dart read the plain relief in her face.
Laurelle touched Dart’s fingers. “You’re the bravest girl I know.”
Dart took no pride in the praise. She knew the true source of her courage lay not in a stout heart, but in simple despair. With no way of knowing how long her impurity of flesh would remain hidden, she took each day with a roof over her head and a warm meal in her belly as a blessing. But it could not last. She knew this.
She led the way with the bucket and brushes. What did it matter if they were caught? She could only be banished once.
Dart wended the way through the shelves, trailed by Laurelle and Pupp. The light from the pair of torches grew brighter as they neared the door.
/> A dark shadow filled the threshold.
Matron Shashyl was a large woman, with a substantial bosom and wide hips. There was nary a bit of flab to her, though. Her legs were as stout as a draft horse, and her face could easily be mistaken for the same in the dark.
“Hurry, girls. We’ve a big day ahead of us.”
Laurelle curtsied as they reached the door. Dart tried to repeat her smooth motion, but with the bucket unbalancing her, it came out more as a bumbled parody. She came close to spilling the bucket’s sloshing contents upon Matron Shashyl’s shoes, exposing their crime.
Matron Shashyl didn’t notice, clearly excited. Her cheeks were flushed as she turned away. “We have so much to do! Neither of you are ready!”
Dart sensed a twinge of misgiving.
“Ready for what, Matron?” Laurelle asked, following her out.
“You’re both to be presented to Lord Chrism!”
“When?” Dart gasped, almost dropping the bucket again.
“This very night!”
Dart tasted nothing of her midday meal. It may as well have been made of paste and sawdust. She ate it nonetheless, for it was surely the last meal she’d be offered here.
Laurelle picked at her bread like a nervous crow. She lifted her cup of tea, then set it back down. She didn’t seem to know what to do with herself since Matron Shashyl’s announcement.
“We’re going to meet our god,” Laurelle said for the hundredth time, followed by her usual sigh. “I may just faint . . . simply swoon away.”
Dart kept quiet and poured more honey into her tea. She couldn’t seem to make it sweet.
The girls had been served their meal on the grand southern terrace that overlooked the walled Eldergarden of Chrism. It was one of the oldest botanicals in all the world, or so they had been told by Jasper Cheek, the magister who oversaw the castillion grounds and towers. “First seeded and planted when Chrism chose this spot for his grounding,” Jasper had said with pride. “He was the first god to marry himself to the land and share his Grace with all. His own hand laid the first seed, watered with his own blessed blood.”