Page 14 of The Lost Reliquary
As he begins to leave, I step in front of him. “Oh no, you can’t crack that particular nut halfway.”
He stares, studying me. But whatever he’s thinking, it’s locked away tighter than the corpses surrounding us.
“Yes,” he says finally, the word tight and curt. “I think Innara is dying.”
Avatars die. It’s what they do. What all humans do. It might take a heck of a lot longer when they are fused with a divinity, but even that doesn’t grant immortality. It’s anticipated. Planned for.
Unless something unexpected happens.
“You saw the blood,” he continues. It’s not a question.
“I noticed.” Maybe I’m not the only one who has been pondering the particulars of what we don’t know. “Buttheydidn’t seem concerned.”
“And yet… Innara has been Tempestra’s avatar for over a century.” His words are cool, entirely analytic. “She was chosen after the battle against the Green God, after Enoch.”
“I sat through the same history lessons you did.”
“Do you actually remember them? If you exclude the avatars involved in the battles between the gods, where they were more likely to be ‘damaged,’ Innara is approaching the end of their average life cycle.”
Oh.“You think Tempestra-Innara is weaker than they usually are. And you think the heretics think that too.”
“Killing a god isn’t easy. If I were planning to try, I’d want to make sure there were as many factors in my favor as possible.”
I arrange a suitably concerned expression on my face and smile on the inside. If Tempestra-Innara was weak before, I have an even better chance now. Except…
The elation fades. The Goddess can take another avatar. But while they might be able to bond with anybody, they won’t. Most burn out quickly, which would leave Tempestra vulnerable again; only a suitable avatar connects with divinity in the right, harmonious way. How, why… not knowledge shared with the likes of us Potentiates. But the search normally takes time. Time, Nolan is clearly thinking, Innara may not have. And that I have to hope she does. Because there’s one thing Idoknow about the taking of a new avatar: The Goddess will go intoseclusion right after, in order to fully cement the fresh bond. I have no idea for how long; when Enoch was traded for Innara, it was a matter of weeks. But Tempestra-Innara emerged into the world as the last of their divine siblings, triumphant, without a single known threat that might stand against them, even in a fragile new body.
If Innara were not the stronger, safer option still to weather a second attack, the Goddess would have immediately swapped avatars. But as soon as they find a better replacement, that will change. Which is bad for me. A new, fully minted avatar could easily surpass whatever power the reliquary blood imparts, closing what window of opportunity I had.
We need to find the reliquaryfast.
“Innara is not our concern, though.” He turns away. “Lumeris can protect the Goddess for now. Our goal is to secure the reliquary, pull the heretics up by their roots, and salt the ground so they can never try something like this again.”
Not exactly a priority to me, but I nod. “Try not to sound so enthusiastic about our little team up.”
He sighs. “And here I was beginning to think you could manage to speak without being frivolous.”
A Cineri pounds on my door at dawn, much to my dismay. Not that I’m not used to rising early; training began before sunrise at the Dawn Cloister. But I am sleeping in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar place for the first time in a very, very long time, and for some reason, it agrees with me. After a simple, silent dinner with Nolan and the attendants in a simple, silent dining hall, we retired, and I was asleep within minutes of lying down on my utilitarian yet surprisingly comfortable cot. Maybe it was the sheer weight of Cineris’s dark silence that did it, the necropolis sharing a taste of what it had to offer, but I am so startled out of slumber by the attendant’s banging that it takes a solid minute to remember where I am.
When I finally gather myself, a pair of horses are waiting in the courtyard. They are lovely creatures, broad-chested chestnut geldings with dark manes and tails. Soldier’s horses, because that’s the fictionwe’ll be playing—blades for hire, making our way between contracts. I jump to claim the horse with a white star on its forehead, though I doubt Nolan would have cared either way. He certainly doesn’t object, and as we managed to be cordial enough yesterday, he even adds a faint nod of acknowledgment as he mounts. The Cineri have already readied the animals with our supplies, so there’s nothing for me to do but follow suit.
Then…
I stare at the gate. The last few days have been, to say the least, odd. And yet, they played out in familiar spaces, padded by familiar ritual. But not today. Today, my sickles are strapped to my back as usual, but I wear a stranger’s clothes. Dark fitted pants, a matching collared coat tapered at the waist and trimmed with gray embroidery… common garb, but so different from the Cloister uniform that it is as if I’ve been stuffed into the skin of some unfamiliar beast. Gone is my fancy gold reverie, replaced by a simple lump of flame-shaped lead. Nolan is dressed similarly, transformed from Potentiate into a figure that could be found on any street in Lumeris.
He doesn’t look the least bit uncomfortable.
The Cineri take our lack of orders as a cue to open the gate. They creak. Or maybe it’s something in me. Before yesterday, I had never been inside Cineris. But it was an anchor point, a part of the world I know. Beyond it… still the Goddess’s world, but not in the way the Cloisters and Lumeris are. And for a brief moment—no, more than that—I hesitate to leave that familiarity behind.An opponent you don’t know is more dangerous than one you do.Did Prior Petronilla say that? One of our other instructors?
As I search for that marble of memory, my horse shuffles beneath me. Chuffs. He’s impatient to get started.
And then, suddenly, so am I.
After Cineris, the plan gets a little less straightforward. As far as anyone outside the surviving witnesses knows, what Emmaus did was a demonstration, targeting the devotees gathered to witness his execution. Brutal, effective, but not the least bit suspect. No one, not even ourabsent blood brethren, is to know that it was actually an assassination attempt against the Goddess, and especially not one that was almost successful. Which means the official-yet-still-secret story is that Nolan and I are on the hunt for the heretics who were working with Emmaus, and definitely not any mysterious, previously unknown reliquary that could be used to try to commit divine murder again.
We have exactly one lead: Andronica captured Emmaus after tracking him to a house not far from Belspire, a city a six-day ride from the Cathedral. The owner of the house was also arrested, but not deemed worthy of execution by the Goddess, so they got shunted off to be dealt with by the authority in Belspire, also known as the distinguished elder Arbiter Gottschalk. Nolan and I carry a letter of introduction from the Senior Arbiter who’d been in tow when Tempestra-Innara showed us the reliquary. It’s encoded to read like a normal note of recommendation; only Gottschalk will be able to read the true message, which will give us access to the prisoner.
I don’t relish that task. Not because of any squeamishness about interrogation—their lot is cast, and if they have information that will help me, I’ve got years of Cloister training that will help me get it. But if the prisoner is still alive, there’s only one reason for it: They’re going to face the Arbiter’s special brand of judgement.ThatI’d rather not think about. Even without my special little secret, the thought of someone rifling through my mind to determine how much I love the Goddess turns my blood cold.
