Page 15 of House of Dusk
“But the Embrace is a blessing only the agia can bestow. Or deny.” Beroe watched Sephre closely.
Thatwas why. Because knowing gave Beroe another tool to manipulate her.
“I’ve seen it, you know,” said Beroe.
Sephre looked up from the milky waters, unable to help herself. She knew nothing of the specifics of the rite. “That little boy a few years ago?”
“No. Brother Dolon.”
“Brother Dolon was Embraced?” That was a surprise. She had thought the man as much an institution at Stara Bron as Halimede. It was impossible to imagine the archives without his broad smile, his bushy brows arching with enthusiasm over even the smallest and humblest research request. A dozen questions crowded her tongue.
“It was well before the war,” said Beroe. “You know I came very early to the temple, of course. I may be the youngest of the yellows, but I’ve carried the holy flame for nearly twenty years. I served my novitiate under the agia herself,” she added, with a proprietary smirk.
Sephre considered privately that Halimede was fortunate that Beroe was a woman and not a hound, or she might well find herself pissed on. Claimed as territory.
“So what, then?” Sephre demanded. “You’ll give me the Embrace if I help you become agia?”
A tinge of crimson colored Beroe’s cheeks. “It’s not about wanting to be agia. It’s about what’s best for Stara Bron. Can you honestly tell me you don’t see the signs? That something terrible is coming? I’m asking you to help mestopit. To be the hero you say you are.”
Cheers battering her ears. Her hands full of flowers. Someone slapping her on the shoulder. And inside, her soul screaming, her hands raw and rough from washing, and yet they never felt clean.
Before she knew it, Sephre was sloughing herself out of the water, shivering on the tiled floor, steam rising from her skin and her hair slithering around her shoulders. Her breath came too quick. She snatched a towel from the pile nearby, wrapping it round herself. “I never said I was a hero.” She spun on her heel and quit the room.
• • •
When Sephre first arrived at Stara Bron, the slow, steady routine of prayer and chore had been a relief. She did what she was told. Chopped carrots. Lugged pails of water. Sang first rites every morning with the bright dawn stinging her eyes.
So when they sent her to the garden to dig out stones, she did that too. Dug deep, until her spade turned up a dark, rich loam. And then, for no reason at all, she sank to her knees in the soft earth, tears sliding down her cheeks and pattering the soil like rain.
She wept until her breaths softened to small gasps. And there was Sibling Abas kneeling beside her, holding a tiny horn cup to her lips, full of something sharp and pungent that unlocked the tightness in her chest. Teeth chattering, bones aching, she asked them what the draft was.
Come into the workshop. I’ll teach you how to make it.
And that was that. Abas never asked why Sephre wept. Which was good, because Sephre didn’t know herself. Her body was an alien thing sometimes. An untamed beast that could turn wild at the smallest thing. The scent of burning cedar, a pool of rainwater if the light caught it at the wrong angle, even just the cold smoothness of a metal ladle against her palm.
Over time, she’d learned to quiet the beast. To creep past it, so it would not wake. She came to value the peace of the herbarium, the calm steady work of tending the plants, seeing that dark, deep soil birth new life.
Then came the morning just over a year ago, when Sephre found Abas slumped among the herbs, the scent of crushed mint and lemon balm stinging the air. Not dead, thank the Fates. But the elder ashdancer never fully recovered, developing a tremble in their legs and arms that made their old work impossible. They retired to the infirmary, and Sephre found herself responsible for the herbarium.
But that didn’t mean Sibling Abas had lost interest in their former domain.
“Have you trimmed back the nettleswift?” they asked. “Ah, that’s it. Thank you, child.”
Sephre bent her head to hide her chagrin, scooping up another bit of ointment and rubbing it into the leathery sole of Abas’s foot, feeling the tightness relax beneath her fingers. She hadn’t been a child in over three decades, but she supposed someone nearly twice her age had the right to call her that. “Yes. And I put up the dartgloss. And I’ve got plenty of spindleroot ready for winter chilblains.”
Abas snorted. “And you don’t need some old goat telling you what to do anymore, I suppose?”
Sephre bit the inside of her lip. Abas looked more amused than insulted, but regret stung her. “That isn’t...I just don’t want you having to worry. Your garden is doing well.”
“I’m more worried about my apprentice.”
Abas had always seen her so clearly. “Your ankles feel a bit swollen,” she said. “I’ll bring some of the nettle tea next time.”
“You think if you ignore me, I’ll forget I asked?” asked Abas dryly. “My memory isn’tthatfar gone. And I’ll always have an ear for you.”
Her love for the old ashdancer stabbed sharply. That had always been Abas’s gift. Letting her be. Letting her speak, rather than telling her who she was and what she ought to be. A part of her wanted desperately to tell them about her day, but equally, she didn’t want to burden them with her fears.
She cleared her throat, rubbing the last of the salve into Abas’s instep. “It was just...a hard day.”
