“Nilis Gradindaughter,” he said.
“Nilis Keeper,” she said. “She has left the tar and severed her connections with Gradintar and Gradinblood.”
“Nilis Gradindaughter. The Agli Brell and the Center of Cymbank demand you leave this place and return to the House of Gradintar. If you fail to heed this most serious demand we are required to remove you by force and confine you in the House of Repentance.” His speech finished, the formal words gabbled with as little expression as if he were calling the roll at payday, he stood at ease in his leather and metal, a big blocky man, worn and scarred and so closed in the limits of his profession that he was inaccessible to her or anything outside it, or so she thought as she listened to him speak.
When he finished, she answered him with as much formality. “No, I will not come.” This was ritual, not conversation.
The Decsel accepted her words, nodded his bony head as if this were a thing he’d expected, as if he were used to this sort of lack of reason from those who did not have his clearly drawn map of possible actions. He took a step toward her, a look of astonishment on his leathery face, a clown’s gape almost, ludicrous almost, in contrast with the strength and hard-worn look of the rest of him. He shifted back a little, felt at the air in front of him with large knuckled hands. It was as if he swept them over a sheet of, glass. He backed off farther, sent one of his men forward with a brief quick turn of his hand. The guard charged at Nilis, rebounded from the barrier, hitting it hard enough to knock himself off his feet. Another sharp-edged, economical gesture. The man unclipped his sword, saluted his decsel, dropped into a crouch and drove the sword’s point against the barrier with all the strength of his body. There was no sound but the point struck the barrier and went skating up it as if he’d jammed it against a slightly curved wall of greased glass. The guard stumbled and would have fallen, but the decsel caught the shoulderstrap of his leather cuirass, dragged him onto his feet and shoved him back at the rest of the men.
Long spatulate thumb pressed against his lips, fisted fingers tight beneath his chin, the decsel stood contemplating her. He dropped his hand. “There is no way we can reach you, Nilis Keeper?”
“I don’t know. I suspect not.” She was as astonished as he was by the events just past.
He gazed at her a moment longer, his face as impassive as before, then he raised his hand in an abrupt, unexpected salute, wheeled and strode out. His men saluted her, each in his turn, and followed him out.
When the rhythmic stumping of their feet had died away, she began shaking. Her mouth flooded with bile. She swallowed, swallowed again, pushed herself onto her feet, hitched up the robe so it didn’t drag along the floor or trip her. She started shaking again, not from reaction or cold (an icy blast was pouring through the open door), but from a sudden consuming anger. She stared up at the face, unable to speak for a moment, then she gathered herself. “Why?” she shouted at the face. “Why?” she repeated more calmly. “Why let me go through all… Why let me betray…” She stumbled over the word, but bitterly acknowledged the justice of it. “Betray my own blood. If you can do that,” she waved a hand behind her, sketching out the wall that had protected her, “if you can come to me and show me what you did, if you can chase off the Agli and the guards, why why why is all this necessary, this death and misery, the battle that’s coming, more death, more useless, wasteful… Why? You could have stopped it. Why did you let it happen?’
There was no answer. The face in the stone was a stone face, the chisel marks still harsh on the planes and curves of it. She quieted, the futility of what she was doing like a lump of ice in her stomach. Her own hands had shaped the face. Shaped it well. An intense satisfaction warmed her, smothered for the moment the other emotions. It was good, that carving. She knew it. And knew then, above and beyond whatever being Keeper required of her, she’d found her proper work. With a little laugh, a rueful grimace, she pushed sweaty strands of fine brown hair off her thin face, then went to fix herself some lunch.
For the rest of the afternoon, she puttered about, unable to settle at anything. Her first joy, her contentment-these were shattered. Her relationship with Her of the tower was so much more limited than she’d hoped; like everything else she touched, this too crumbled away and left nothing. For the first time she realized just how much she’d been hoping for… for love… for a felt love, and instead of that she was a tool in the hands of Her, as much as the chisel was a tool in her own hands.
The old poisons came seeping into her blood again, the anger, frustration, resentment, envy, self-hate, rancor, outrage. She recognized them all, old friends they were, they’d sung her to sleep many a night. Now and then she felt herself welcoming them, cursing the forces that had driven her from the comfortable sense of righteousness that had spread through her and sustained her in the first days of Soдreh’s ascendancy. At the same time she couldn’t avoid seeing the ugliness of what she’d been and of what she’d helped to create. Anything was better than that, even the desolation that filled her when she thought of the years ahead of her, the unending empty years.
Late in the afternoon she went back into the Maiden Chamber and stood looking at the carving. The lowering sun painted new shadows on Her face and it seemed to Nilis that She looked at her and smiled, but she soon dismissed that as more dreaming. She gazed at the face a long time, then looked down at her hands. The quiet came back into her, her own quiet. The years might be long, but they wouldn’t be empty. She had a lot to do, a lot to learn. It wasn’t what she’d hoped, but it was a lot more than nothing.
As the days turned on the spindle, offerings began to appear beneath the Face. More robes. Sandals. Food. Candles. Flasks of scented oil. A beautiful Book of Hours, something someone had saved at great risk from Soдreh’s Purge. Reed mats. Bedding. Tapestry canvas. Packets of colored wools. Wool needles. And what delighted her most because it answered her greatest need, another book saved from the Purge-The Order of the Year that named the passages and the fкtes, the meditations and the rites proper to each fкte.
In the evenings she sat in the kitchen sipping cha and studying the Order. Her days she began to organize about the Hours of Praise. She needed the order this ritual gave to her life, especially since the long drive to clean the shrine had come to an end. Between the chants and meditation she did what she could in the Court of Columns, but it was too cold to stay out long. She scraped at the paint she could reach, what was under the snow would have to wait for spring. When she couldn’t stay out any longer, she sat in the Maiden Chamber and worked over the tapestry canvas, sketching the design she wanted, then beginning to fill in the areas with the wools, no longer impatient and fretting, working until she was tired of it, moving into the kitchen and trying again to bake a successful loaf of bread, spending some time in the schoolroom, cleaning out the thick layer of muck and rotting leaves, the drifts of snow. The door was off its hinges, thrown into the room. She struggled with that, got it outside, managed to rehang it, though it dragged against the floor and had to be lifted and muscled about before the latch would catch. She put the room in order, piled the broken furniture neatly after looking it over to see if she could somehow repair it. She shut the door and left that too for the coming of spring.