Solace Shattered (25 page)

Nan’s dear face filled the small circle of Arvana’s vision.

“Speak,” his grandmother’s spirit urged.

“You must take me to Musette, to Solace.” Arvana’s words came only with effort. Her tongue was a weight in her mouth. “Tonight.”

“I wish I could,” he said. “But I have to get to Sarapost. You understand.”

No? Arvana’s eyes burned to cry, but there they were too dry for tears.

He put his arm around her back and propelled her to stumble forward. “Come on, I have to get you to Lady Martise’s. You must leave in the morning, just as you planned. I’ll send someone to Solace for you.”

His grandmother’s spirit swept along at Arvana’s side. “What did he say?”

Arvana shook her head no.

“Speak for me!” the spirit cried. “Speak!”

“Lina says...” Arvana’s tongue stumbled over the guttural Gherian words. When she finished, she sensed that Nan had stopped walking. She strained to see his face. She didn’t understand what she’d said in Gherian except that sometimes the tone was endearing, sometimes scolding.

But Nan looked like he understood.

He looked like he’d seen a ghost.

En route to Solace

A
ri’s head, cradled in the crook of Degarius’s arm, jerked and jostled with the bumps and sways of Lady Martise’s open one-seater, but she didn’t wake, hadn’t stirred in hours. One of her hands, which he kept in his, never grew warmer. He released her hand, nudged up his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose. Damn, this couldn’t be happening. She must be in shock. But, what in creation could account for the strange Gherian words she had uttered.
Nani,
only his grandmother had called him that,
she will die if you leave her. The blessed light of Assaea is her life. Take her to the superior, and you will be rewarded a thousand times over. Before I died I told you to look in Stellan’s chest in the attic for my journals. Remember what you read. It will show you the way, and you will avenge me!
Perhaps Degarius had mentioned once that his grandmother called him Nani, but Ari didn’t know Gherian or about the chest in the attic. What struck him, though, convinced him to take her to Hera Musette, were the words about reading the journals. His grandmother had asked him to do it on her deathbed, and he never thought to mention it to anyone or to read the journals. She was crazy at the end, mistaking him for his grandfather, so Degarius thought the request not really made to him. As for the words Ari said about dying and Assaea, they made no sense. One didn’t die from shock, though she was so cold. “Is there a blanket in the back?” he asked Hera Musette.

“There’s no blanket, soldier. Only our bags.” In preparation for their planned early departure, the Solacians had already packed their meager belongings. Even Ari’s kithara had been waiting in the upstairs hall.

Feeling he had to do something, he wrapped his cloak around her.

The horses slowed to a trot. “Why are you slowing?” he grumbled. The moon was on the verge of setting. Then, they’d have to go slower until sunrise, which was still must be an hour away.

“Don’t tell me how to drive, soldier,” Hera Musette said. “There’s an inn ahead, and we need to water the horses.”

Despite telling himself that no one had reason to suspect, he peered backward into the night and listened hard for pursuing horses. Nothing. He’d entrusted a note to one of Lady Martise’s servants to deliver to Fassal at the Coming of Age party, which surely had gone on long into the night. It was the perfect alibi—far better, in fact, than waiting until morning to leave as he originally planned. It gave word of his intention of taking Ari with him to Sarapost after escorting her to Solace to properly renounce her vows. An elopement would cause no suspicion. Fassal could vouch for his longstanding sentiments. Degarius would lose a day or two by going to Solace, but still would be reporting to Sarapost, as the letter from King Fassal commanded, at his earliest convenience. Ari would see him made general in the grand ceremony. Then, until combat began, she would stay with him. The rigors of camp life would be nothing for a woman accustomed to austerity.

He scanned ahead. The dark, angular shadows farther on must be the inn. Hera Musette drove around back to the well and water trough. She handed him the reins and descended. No lights came on at the inn. Even if they did, their being here only supported the note he’d left Fassal.

When the horses finished drinking, the Solacian took one of the carriage’s lanterns, climbed in and said, “Let me see the dressing.”

He hunched forward. He could have told her that the dressing she’d applied was fine, but he didn’t want to agitate a woman who already knew too much. When they’d reached Lady Martise’s home, Ari had spoken a few disjointed words to her fellow Solacian—the prince was dead and she and Nan must reach the superior tonight. He wished that Ari hadn’t mentioned Prince Lerouge, but there was no undoing the revelation. She hadn’t said how the prince died, but Hera Musette had noted his back and hastily cleaned and dressed it. At least having the wound tended was for the best.

Hera Musette plucked his blouse open at the neck. “It looks well enough. You were lucky your shoulder blade kept it from being worse.” Next, taking Ari’s wrist, she palpitated for a pulse. “Thready and shallow.” Hera Musette grimaced. “Solace is another hour.” She slumped into her seat, grabbed the reins, and snapped them against the horses’ rumps. “You should pray, soldier. Or do you think she doesn’t need your prayers? A Solacian, a good Maker’s woman. I warned her, I did, and I thought she heeded me. After he went away to Orlandia, I thought it ended. But no, I was wrong. And with so much at stake!”

“What do you mean?” Degarius asked. “What was at stake? What ended?”

The Solacian pursed her lips and shook her head. “You’re a grand fool if you can’t guess jealousy is why the Prince of Acadia put a knife in your back. She was his miss.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Hera Musette again snapped the reins. “His miss.”

The Solacian was lying. She was a bitter, homely woman who resented her sister’s choice. Degarius’s jaw twitched. How dare she make such an accusation? His Ari wouldn’t think twice about that bastard Lerouge. Degarius had seen what it cost her dear, sweet spirit to love him,
only
him. With her kiss, he’d felt his every better sentiment returned to him double. The Solacian
had
to be lying. He drew his cape tighter around Ari and in a deep growl said, “Go faster.”

As the horses sped, he looked searchingly at the woman in his arms. His Ari. His gaze fell on her locket. He remembered seeing it at bonfire night during the future-telling game they played. When he looked into it, she was all he could think of. His future. What he most deeply longed for. He couldn’t say it aloud, could hardly say it to himself. What had she seen when she looked into the open locket’s blue stone? Had she loved him even then and been fighting it, too?

Wait.

He had just seen the locket again. Prince Lerouge had it.

Why in all hell did Lerouge have her locket? Degarius’s mind went numb.

Sarapost House, Shacra Paulus

“Prince, wake up,” a servant said close into Fassal’s ear, drawing him from a dream in which Jesquin’s gown had just slipped into a silky circle around her ankles and she was beckoning him with a sultry come-hither look.

Eager to resume the dream, Fassal drew a pillow over his head. “Go away.”

The servant poked Fassal’s shoulder. “Redcoats are here asking for the general.”

Fassal curled to the wall. “He’s not here.”

“They insist on seeing you.”

Fassal propped himself on his elbow. “Fine.”

Wearing last night’s wrinkled coat over his nightshirt, Fassal lumbered downstairs. Caspar and the smell of coffee greeted him. At least a servant had sense to brew it. From the slits of his sticky-lidded eyes, Fassal acknowledged the redcoats in the dimly lit sitting room. “To what honor do I have this call?” he asked the officer, although he wished the man to the devil for waking him before breakfast. The party had lasted until the wee hours and entailed the drinking of an enormous amount of wine that left him with a proportionately painful headache. “Caspar, down.” The beast was jumping on the officer. The brute only obeyed Degarius. “Take him away,” he called to a servant. “Coffee?” he asked the officer.

The officer declined. “When was the last time you saw General Degarius?”

“Last night at the party.” Fassal took a cup. The fortifying taste of the coffee took the edge off his annoyance, but did little to wake him fully.

“Do you know where he might be?” the officer asked with a brusqueness that broke through Fassal’s lethargy.

“Has the war begun?” Fassal asked with sudden acuity. “Is the army marching?”

“No sir. But, do you know where he might be?”

“Getting married.” Fassal smiled. His own engagement had finally prompted Degarius to make up his mind. That is how it often was with engagements. One man’s happiness inspired another’s.

The officer presented a silver brooch. “Do you recognize this?”

Fassal turned over the pin of a buck’s head. “It’s Degarius’s Valor in Service medal. I am sure he’ll be much obliged to have it back. Where did you find it?”

THE END

Solace

P
ale light crept into the bottoms of the gathering room’s east windows and into Superior Madra Cassandra’s consciousness. It would be a fine day for travel. In a moment of amused reflection before calling the sisters sitting behind her from their meditation, she noted that the high windows were designed to let in light but not the distractions of the courtyard outside. They did little, however, to deter inward distractions. But today, perhaps, it was allowable to be distracted. Last night was Princess Lerouge’s Coming of Age Ceremony and today Musette and Arvana would be coming home. The duty with the relic was over. Hera Arvana’s letter, announcing she’d made Lerouge champion, had come two days ago. What a mercy that Hera Arvana had fulfilled the Founder’s duty within the time allotted and before the draeden made any show of force.

Madra Cassandra lifted the small bell that rested on the wide arm of the Prioress’s Seat, a heavy chair whose back was to the assembly so that she, as the other sisters, could face the Founder’s icon during meditation. She rang the bell once, and it chimed so pure and clear in the confines of the room’s stone walls. The sound would be lost in the wider world. So was the case with her soul. It had found within these walls its place to sound most pure and clear. She folded her hands and began to say aloud the closing prayer she had said thousands of times. Knowing it by rote, she ceased to hear her own chanting as she strove to feel the harmony made by the voices of the hundred women with her in the gathering room.

Illuminate our souls with Your Light,

You, in whom all is possible,

Dark and Light.

Judge and Forgiver,

Mother and Father,

Pour upon us that which in you is Love.

Use us for the purpose that your Wisdom chooses.

Draw us closer to you every moment of our life

Until in us is reflected your Joy and Peace

As it was in the Founder and the shacras.

In the silence after the prayer, the superior made her own petition for Prince Lerouge. She raised her gaze to the Founder’s icon, and her heart went out to Hera Arvana. This duty had been a trial upon her protégé, but surely, by fulfilling her purpose, she was closer to joy and peace.

Over the muffled rustling of a hundred women trying to rise quietly, came the creak of the gathering room door, breaking the superior’s concentration. An unsettling feeling overtook her as she gripped the arms of the chair, pushed up, and took the cane resting against the seat edge. Over the back of the Prioress’s Seat, she saw a frazzled Hera Musette and the unsettled feeling turned to dread. What was so urgent to bring Hera Musette back so early in the day...and to violate the solemnity of the morning meditation?

“Please, you must come.” Hera Musette’s usually forceful voice came out in a plea so thin it nearly died in the air before it reached the superior.

In the hall, before the superior had time to ask why she had come at such an hour, Hera Musette blurted, “Forgive me, I know he shouldn’t have been admitted beyond your offices, but I had him take Hera Arvana to her cell.”

“Him?” the superior asked. “The prince?”

“Maker have mercy,” Hera Musette said, then sighed. As they went through the halls, Musette alternately answered questions and told a story that brought the superior lower with each word until it ended with, “I pray we aren’t too late for the last blessing. Surely she’ll be far from the Maker without it.”