She sat there for some time, too tired to move, too tired even to think, just sat there, hands folded in her lap, staring at the open empty door.
After a while she thought about the door being open, about the gate to the court of columns being off its hinges. Anyone can walk in on me any time. She twisted her hands together and her mind ran on wheels as she tried to think of a way to bar the door; the hooks had been torn from the wall when the rest of the damage was done; the bar had vanished. Then she remembered the Agli’s face as he touched her, as he tore his hand away. This is Her place, she’ll protect it, protect me. She rubbed at her thighs. But the first Agli, mine, the clown doll-he got the other Keeper out and no one’s seen her since. She didn’t protect her. She was afraid again-and found herself on her feet, glaring across the room. Then she thought, I’ll wedge the bedroom door so I’ll be able to sleep without starting awake at every sound in the night. If anyone tries to break in, that will give me warning enough to put on a robe and comb my hair. She smiled. Face the world clothed and neat.
Nervous, she wandered through the sacred rooms, looking about, remembering the place as it once was-and would be again if she had any say. She lingered in the meditation room, a small cubicle, bare and cold now. Tapestries worked by tardaughters and Keepers in warm, bright wools used to hang from the walls, scenes from the chants, lively with flower and beast. The flags had been covered with rush matting, thick and resilient, woven in the Cymbank pattern, complicated but beautiful. Her memory added the faded gold of the dried rushes, catching the light and changing hue as the pattern of the weave changed direction, as the sun changed position outside the small round window set with clear though wavery glass. Scented berrywax candles had filled the room with tart green sweetness. Like village girls and tie-girls, she’d made vigil here when her menses started and here crossed the line from girl to maid. Here she might have made her marriage vigil too, that was a dream as empty now as then, though for other reasons. Looking at the room with remembering eyes she acknowledged her love of it as it was, sighed for the familiar beauty now ashes enriching the earth of the grove.
She drifted back to the Maiden Chamber, stood looking at the oval emptiness, remembering with a clarity almost painful the face of Her she’d seen in the tower. She closed her eyes and began exploring her own face with her fingers, trying to feel how eye was set beneath the brow, how cheek was flat and curved at once, how it made a sudden turn on a line slanting down from the outer corner of her eye past the corner of her mouth. She explored the complex curves of nose and mouth, touched herself and tried to visualize what touch told her about plane and curve and distance and groped toward a slow comprehension of the bites she was going to make in the stone.
She picked up the mallet and chisel, balanced them uncertainly in deeply uncertain hands, then got heavily up on the chair seat. She stared at the stone, then ran the fingers of the hand holding the chisel back and forth across the hollow she’d smoothed as best she could. She was afraid. She couldn’t do it. She’d only make a mess of it like the mess she’d made of her life. She tried to fix in her mind the face she remembered. For a shaky moment she remembered nothing, not even her own face. Then the image came back, strong as the feel of the stone under her fingers. She set the chisel against the stone; trembling until she didn’t know if she could control it, she lifted the mallet. Steadying into a kind of desperation, she struck the first blow.
The light was gone and she was trembling with fatigue when she surfaced. She felt dizzy and uncertain as if every movement had to be made slo-ow-ly, slo-ow-ly, or she would shatter. She shivered. The Maiden Chamber was very cold, the fire was gray ash, the last tints of red had left the little bit of light coming through the tinted glass rounds. She stepped very carefully down from the chair, her hand pressed hard against the wall to give her some sense of balance. She sat heavily, staring down at the mallet and chisel in her lap. After a moment she uncramped her fingers, wincing as the chisel rang musically against the tiles of the mosaic. It was no way to treat tools but she couldn’t think much now, just react. After a minute, she gathered herself and grunted up onto her feet and went slowly back into her living quarters.
Morning light poured with lively vigor through the stained-glass window, the lead strips holding the glass rounds painting a lacy tracery on the stone. She knelt by the fireplace and scraped the ashes into one of the gift bowls then laid wood across the dogs and used the striker to start a new fire. It was very early and very cold in the room, her breath bloomed before her and took a long time to fade. The cold struck up from the mosaic floor, up through her knees, her thighs, her soft and quivering insides. Without looking at what she’d done the past day, she went back into the kitchen for hot cha then shoved her feet in the old slippers she’d brought with her, entirely disreputable but warm.
Cha mug clasped between her hands, she went back to the Maiden Chamber, walking with her eyes fixed determinedly on the floor until she stood before the chair, then she forced herself to look up.
Five hours of hard cautious work, much of it done blindly, trusting the feel in her fingers and what the stone told her hands as its vibrations came up the chisel at her. Five hours’ work gazed back at her. The face she’d seen in the tower, blocked into the stone, carved simply but with great power, all the fussy little touches melded into strong simple lines. A woman’s face with an inhuman beauty, slightly smiling. It wasn’t finished, there was a need here and there to take away a jarring bit of roughness, the hair to be shaped out of the rough mass she’d left for that, the last polishing and oiling to bring out the grain and beauty of the stone. She looked at what she’d done and almost burst with joy. Gulping at the cha, she tried to calm herself but could not. She strode away from the face, paced back and forth across the room taking large mouthfuls of the cha until there was no more left, set the mug down, scooped up the chisel, impatient to get started on the finishing.
But when she looked at the battered blunt end of the chisel, she swore and nearly threw it at the wall. She tried to pull herself together. She was shaking, driven, but she forced herself to calm enough to set the chisel on the chair and walk away from it, going out of the room to fetch the hone from the pantry.
She sat on the floor in front of the fire, her robe hiked up to mid-thigh, and began the tedious process of repointing the chisel, working slowly and carefully, not stopping until she had perfection greater than she started with, knowing she must have the discipline this took or any touch she gave the face would be the start of ruin; slowly she began to take pleasure in the stroking of the stone across the metal. Stone over the steel, caressing it, wearing it away. Stroke and stroke and stroke, touches of loving care. As she worked, she sang softly a Maiden Chant, the calm on the face she’d carved growing within her.
Late in the afternoon, when she was putting the last touches on the flaring waves of hair framing the serene face like ripples of running water, she heard the tramp of boots, the clatter of metal against metal. Another visitation. She sighed, put her tools on the floor, then seated herself on the chair, knees together, robe pulled decorously down to hide her scruffy slippers. Her hands folded, she waited, tense and frightened though she hoped she didn’t show it.
The Decsel marched in, his men following and fanning into an arc on either side of him as if she were some unpredictable and thus very dangerous beast. She waited until he stopped in the middle of the room, his face uninterested, indifferent. She’d never seen that face change much, not when he’d taken her mother and sisters and Teras to the House of Repentance, not when he’d overseen the cleansing of Gradintar of all Maiden symbols, not when he’d handled the culling of the ties or read the proclamation of Floarin declaring Tesc Gradin anathema and outlaw. He obeyed his orders punctiliously and stamped on nothing, finding his pride in doing well whatever he attempted though she’d never thought him especially devoted to Soдreh.