Page 2 of House of Dusk
She forced herself to take a breath before speaking. To make the words mild as milk, like a proper ashdancer, scrupulously paring away the ire, the pain, every baleful emotion. “Sister,” she said. “Sister Sephre.” Then she looked, very meaningfully, at the fallen basket.
Timeus crouched at once, retrieving it. “But you did fight in the Maiden’s War, didn’t you?”
This time it took three breaths to still herself. The heat in her palms flared.
“One of the other novices said you were in the seventh wing,” Timeus went on, not waiting for her reply. Or perhaps she nodded. She wasn’t sure. Her body seemed to belong to someone else. “Part of the final assault.”
Smoke burns her nose, not quite masking the stench of decay.The bodies lie crumpled, bloodless, in soft heaps like dirty washing. Her ears aren’t used to the silence. No more clash of swords,no shouts and screams. Only the hum of the flies. And once, horribly, the wail of a baby. It stops before she can find it.
Done. Gone. Over.
Flames flared at her fingers, clear and bright and relentless, burning the memory back. She knew they must be snapping in her eyes as well, by the way he cowered before her. “I said I’m an ashdancer now. But apparently minding your tongue is just one more thing you’re bad at.”
Timeus opened his mouth, then closed it, looking utterly aghast. Ducking his head, he began collecting the fallen leaves while making distressing snuffling noises that he was clearly trying to muffle in the sleeve of his new habit.
Furies’ tits,she cursed silently.Are you happy, now? You made him cry.A few questions from an overly curious youth shouldn’t shatter her like this. That life was over. She was Sister Sephre, who tended to herbs and brewed tinctures and would spend the rest of her life here at Stara Bron, where she could do no harm.
Aside from utterly destroying a perfectly fine batch of spindleroot with her self-indulgently dramatic gesture. She was staring mournfully at the contents of the mortar, burnt beyond any good use, when a woman came skimming into the workshop, the sleeves of her gray tunic embroidered with yellow flames, like Sephre’s own.
“Sister Beroe,” Sephre greeted her, relieved. “Have you come for Brother Timeus?” It would be just as well if the boy went elsewhere. One more failed apprentice.Failed apprentice? Or failed master?
“No, sister, for you.” Beroe frowned at the still-smoking mortar. “The agia has need of you.”
Sephre hastily dumped the burnt spindleroot into her compost pail. “Is it her chest again?”
The agia had been vigorous well into her seventies, even leading the procession of tombs the previous autumn. But lately she’d been bothered by pains in her chest, and a shortness of breath that troubled Sephre.
“No. They’ve found another body.”
Another. Sephre counted back the days. That would be the third this month. Forty-seven in total. That they knew of.
“Like the others?”
She could feel Timeus watching. No doubt his overlarge ears were quivering. She remembered all too well how novices gossiped. Perhaps they’d already heard the rumors. A pattern of mysterious deaths scattered across all Helisson was ripe fodder for eager minds.
“Yes.” Beroe’s eyes were bright. Fates, she was practically quivering. “Snakebite.”
Timeus gave a muted squeak. Sephre ground her teeth. “Timeus,” she said. “Please go fetch a ewer of water from the well.”
She waited until the boy departed, then cut her gaze back to Beroe. “If that boy has nightmares, it’ll be your fault.”
Beroe blew out an impatient breath. “That boy took the same vows as you and I. He knows it’s our duty to guard the holy flame. To cleanse the dead. And to destroy any creature of the underworld that dares trespass in the mortal realm.” She brandished the words like a banner.
Sephre swept the smooth wood of her worktable, catching up bits of leaf and stray twigs. She added them to the compost pile, then dusted her hands together. She had known people like Beroe.Known them? Youwerethem, she chided herself.So eager to fight for a cause that you didn’t question it. Until it was too late.
“What does Agia Halimede want me for?”
“She wishes for you to examine the body.”
“The corpse is here?” Her voice crackled.
“Yes. The girl was from Tylos.”
This was the first time it had struck so close. Stara Bron was the largest of the ashdancer temples, the oldest, its flame the most renowned, having been seared into the mountainside by the Phoenix herself. But there were others in bustling cities, in humble fishing villages, even in the windswept Scarthian plains and the shattered isles of the old empire. No doubt still others burned across the sea, though the Idrani kept their secrets too well for anyone to know for certain.
Centuries ago, there had been ashdancers guarding nearly all of them. But the cataclysm had changed much. There were barely fifty ashdancers at the temple, and only half that stationed outside Stara Bron now. It was from them that the earlier reports had come. Brother Itonus had sent the most recent firespeaking, from the shrine in the royal city, telling of a merchant found dead in his library. But Helissa was a five-day journey to the south.
Tylos was barely fivemilesfrom Stara Bron. Sephre remembered stopping there, nine years ago, dipping up cold water from the village well, wiping the dust from her face and hands, trying vainly to make herself presentable, clean and pure, the perfect postulant.
