She spoke simply. “Thank you for the things you’ve taught me.”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure that I taught you anything, Mena. It feels more like I just reminded you of things you already knew. You may have been born to wield a sword. Do not laugh. I’m not joking…”
He hesitated a moment. The deepening furrows in his forehead suggested he might have something more to say. He did have something more to say! The same sort of thoughts she herself had. She read it all on his face in an instant. Though it sent a trilling of excitement through her body, Mena moved before he could speak. She patted his arm and turned and jogged the last stretch to the compound.
Arriving back at the gate, she found Vandi waiting for her. The summons he bore was the one she had come to most dread. She was needed in the anteroom of the temple in little more than two hours. It could only mean that Maeben had taken another child. It was the fourth in less than two months.
She parted from Melio without a word, shutting him out of the compound. Inside, Vandi waited to one side as she stripped naked and stepped into her bath, scrubbing her skin furiously to remove the berry tint from her skin. Vandi watched her with his greenish eyes, his lips tightly clamped. He offered neither comment nor question, though he must have noted every detail of her disguise. He had even seen her hand her stick to Melio.
Mena scrubbed her face raw without actually getting all the stain off. But when she could take it no more she gave up. She and Vandi walked briskly to the temple, where he dressed her as the goddess. The makeup appliers lathered unguents on liberally. By the time they set her headdress in place she looked firmly within her role. Only then did she remember to slow her breathing and cool her body and think away the beads of sweat that threatened to smear her faзade. She thought back to her claim that she had not been afraid to fight Teto. It had been true at the time, she was sure. She tried to summon such courage again. Looking into the faces of grieving parents, however, was not something she would ever grow comfortable with.
She seated herself on the large chair in the anteroom of the temple. Vaminee stood in his usual place beside her. He tugged his robes snug and showed Mena his chin in profile, nothing unusual in that. Tanin, the second priest, took up a position at her left hand. He was not usually a part of these interviews. He watched her with an intense consideration that made her skin itch.
“Priestess, you may be interested to learn,” Tanin said, “that a delegation of foreign warriors arrived in Galat yesterday.”
Mena felt a need to reach out and steady herself, but she knew she was already seated, already steadied. Being careful to keep her voice neutral, blandly uninterested, she asked, “What do they want?”
“We thought you might have an opinion on them,” Vaminee said.
“How could I know anything about them?”
Neither priest responded.
“I-I’ve heard rumors that war may be coming to the foreign lands. If that’s true, perhaps these soldiers want our aid.”
“That may be true,” Vaminee said, “and it may not be true. They claim to seek a lost child and believe she may be living on Vumu. In any event, it’s none of our affair. I’ve told the foreigners nothing as yet. The goddess is displeased with the islanders. That’s all we need concern ourselves with. We must first appease Maeben. Then we will decide on a course for dealing with the delegation.”
This was meant to end the subject, but Mena had to know at least a little more. “The foreigners…what nation are they from?”
“How should I know?” Vaminee asked.
“They are pale,” Tanin said. “They have skin like pig flesh.”
An ugly description, but coming from Tanin it was hard to know its accuracy. “I should meet with them,” Mena said. “As Maeben, I mean…Perhaps it is Maeben’s wish that Vumu play a role in the world. If I see them while in the goddess’s garb I might understand what she would wish.”
“You’ve done poorly at that lately. The fourth child taken since-”
“That’s no fault of mine! I hate that the goddess takes children. I’d do anything to make her stop.”
Vaminee closed his eyes, head tilted slightly, the muscles of his jaw rigid with anger. “You forget yourself entirely, girl. I didn’t want to believe it, but it’s whispered that you’ve been playing about with wooden swords. Is this true?”
“Within the walls of my compound I’m free to-”
“So it’s true.” Vaminee exchanged glances with the other priest. “You must stop this at once. People talk, Priestess. You may do as you wish in your compound up to a point. You cannot dishonor Maeben.”
The curtain at the far side of the room parted, indicating that the grieving parents were about to enter.
Vaminee noted it but continued. “You will stop immediately. And your friend-yes, I know of him-will leave next week when the floating merchants embark. If he remains, he will suffer for it. And you will suffer for it.”
The procession stepped through the entrance. The two parents, flanked by lesser priests, moved forward slowly, with grief-drenched reverence. From the instant Mena saw the couple she felt her heart accelerate. It took her a moment to truly understand why. They stepped forward slowly, faces tilted toward the floor, hands held before them beseechingly. They seemed so very familiar. Their shapes and movements…she’d seen them before! It was the same couple she’d seen weeks before when they’d lost their baby girl. If her eyes weren’t lying…if it was really them…
“No,” Mena said. “Not them…I promised them the goddess wouldn’t take their second child.”
Vaminee snapped his head toward her. “Foolish girl! That promise was not yours to make. Look these two in the face and see the results of your false pride.”
CHAPTER
The cliffside resorts of Manil were amazing to behold. As black as the night sky, the basalt walls rose more than two thousand feet into the air from the sea swells, vertical all the way to their heights. Residences had been wedged into fissures up and down the expanse of stone. Some actually hung from protrusions, slung in place by intricacies of architecture Corinn could only marvel at. They were painted pale blues and violets, hung with banners that danced in the air’s tumultuous currents.
As the homes were playgrounds in which rich merchants mingled with nobility, the Akarans had never deigned to buy a property here, but others among the extended royal family had. A girlhood friend whose family had a holiday home at Manil had bragged that the lower floors were made of thick glass panes that provided views of the waves hundreds of feet below. She claimed she could step out of bed and walk across her room, all the time watching the paths winged by gulls beneath her feet. Corinn had never visited that particular villa. She had been wary of believing the girl, but the memory had lingered, enough so that she recalled it from the moment she set eyes on Manil.
To reach the estates from the sea, one docked within the protection of a gated port, hemmed in by great blocks that had been lowered to serve as breakwaters. One morning well into the Acacian spring, Corinn stepped from a pleasure vessel onto this stone pier, Hanish Mein at her side. The two climbed into an open-top carriage and began the switchback ascent up a series of ramps. Though she still tried, it was getting more and more difficult to hold to her aloofness. Hanish was constant in his attentions, more so recently than ever. In the weeks since Calfa Ven he had requested her company on every journey. And there had been several. He had somehow managed to get her to serve as a guide to the high circles of Bocoum. With carefully placed questions-during what must have been orchestrated moments of solitude-Hanish again and again got her to open her mouth and speak civilly to him. She still planted barbs in him when she could, but he proved more consistent with his courteousness than she could be at rebutting him.