Her momentary glimpse of freedom ended: the mighty city disappeared as they stepped out of the gallery and into the next corridor. One of Qinnitan’s aunts had told her that Xis was so big that a bird could live its entire life while flying from one side of the city to the other, perching along the way to sleep, eat, and perhaps even start a family. Qinnitan was not certain that was true—her father had poured scorn on the notion—but it was certainly true that there was a world outside so much bigger than her own constrained circumstances, so much more vast than her march from living quarters to temple each morning and back again each evening, that she ached to be a bird, flaunting herself above a city that never ended.
Even fretful, chattering Duny at last fell silent as they passed into the great hypostyle hall, awed as they all were, every day, by the size of the stone pillars shaped like cedars that stretched up a dozen times the girls’ height or more before disappearing into the inky shadows beneath the ceiling. When she had first come to the temple, Qinnitan had thought it strange that Nushash should live in such a dark place, but after a while she had come to see how right it was. Fire was never brighter than when it bloomed out of blackness, never more important than when it was the only light in a sunless place.
At the end of the great hall the eyes of Nushash were opening even now as the temple’s oldest priest lit the great lanterns, moving more slowly than it seemed any human being could manage and yet still be alive, extending his long lighting-pole with the creeping pace of an insect that thinks it might be observed by a hungry bird. This priest was one of the only men Qinnitan and her fellow acolytes saw during the conduct of their daily duties. Despite the fact that he was Favored, and thus a reason far more compelling than mere age ensured he was no threat to a large congregation of virgins, Qinnitan thought the Hive Sisters must have picked him because he was old enough to be doubly safe. They certainly had not picked him for his skill and dispatch. He must have already been at his maddeningly slow work for hours this morning, she decided more than half the lanterns had been kindled. Their flicker exposed the looping lines of the sacred writing on the wall behind them, the gold characters of the Hymn to the Fire God glinting red with reflected flame.
Beyond the massive and ornately decorated archway lay the maze and inner sanctuary of Nushash himself, chief god of the world, the lord of fire whose wagon was the sun—a wagon bigger even than the autarch’s earthly palace, Qinnitan’s father had bragged, its wheels higher than the tallest tower. (Her father Cheshret was nothing if not proud of his employer.) Mighty Nushash crossed the sky each day in this great cart and then, despite all the snares that Argal the Dark One laid for him, despite the monsters that thronged his path, continued on through the night beyond the dark mountains, so he could bring the light of fire back to the sky each morning, thus allowing the earth and all who dwelled in it to live.
Somewhere beyond that archway glowered the great golden statue of Nushash himself, as well as all the endless corridors and chambers of his great temple, the chapels and the priests’ living quarters and the storage rooms so filled with offerings that a vast part of his army of priests had no other task except to receive and catalog them. Beyond that archway lay the seat of the fire god’s power on earth, and it formed—along with the autarch’s palace—the axis of the entire spinning world. But of course, girls like Qinnitan were not allowed into that part of the temple, nor were any other women, not even the autarch’s paramount wife or his venerated mother.
The procession of acolyte priestesses turned left down the smaller hallway, hurrying on softly pattering feet toward the Temple of the Hive of the Fire God’s Sacred Bees, to give it its full name. If the youngest Hive Sisters had not been waiting weeks for this day, it was at this moment that they would have first realized today was not to be like the others the high priestess herself was waiting for them, along with her chief acolyte. Although she was not as venerated as the Oracle Mudry, High Priestess Rugan was the mistress of the Hive temple and thus one of the most powerful women in Xis. That being the case, she was a remarkably ordinary and even kindly woman, although she did not suffer foolish behavior well.
High Priestess Rugan clapped her hands and the girls all fell silent, gathered in a semicircle around her. “You all know what day this is,” she said in her deep voice, “and who is coming.” She touched her own ceremonial robe and hood, as if to be sure she had remembered to put them on. “I do not need to tell you the temple must be spotless.”
Qinnitan suppressed a groan. They had been cleaning all week—how could it get any cleaner?
Rugan s face was appropriately stern. “You will give thanks as you work. You will praise Nushash and our great autarch for this honor. You will consider the monumental importance to all our lives of this visit. And most importantly, as you work, you will reflect on the sacred bees and their own ceaseless, uncomplaining toil.”
“They are so beautiful,” said the chief acolyte.
Qinnitan paused for a moment in her work to look at the great hives behind their clouds of smoky silk netting, vast cylinders of fired clay decorated with bands of copper and gold and warmed in winter by pots of boiling water set beneath the bulky ceremonial stands—one of the least enjoyable of the acolytes’jobs Qinnitan had more than a few burns on her hands and wrists where a spill had scalded her. The fire god’s bees lived in houses far more splendid than any but the most exalted and fortunate of men. As if they knew it, the bees were singing quietly, contentedly, a hum deep enough to make ears tickle and hair lift on the back of the neck. “Yes, Mistress Chryssa,” said Qinnitan, meaning it. It was perhaps the thing she liked best about the Hive temple—the hives themselves, the bees, busy and serene. “They truly are.”
“It is a wonderful day for us.” The chief acolyte was herself still a young woman, pretty in a thin-faced way when one learned to look past the scar that ran from her eye to her cheek. The scar made her the subject of much giggling speculation in the acolytes’ quarters. Qinnitan had never summoned the nerve to ask her how she had received it. “An entirely wonderful day. But for some reason, child, you do not seem entirely happy.”
Qinnitan took a breath, suddenly shocked and frightened that her strange mood should show on her face. “Oh, no, Mistress I am the luckiest girl in the world to be here, to be a Hive Sister.”
The chief acolyte didn’t look like she entirely believed her, but she nodded approvingly. “It’s true, there are probably more girls who would happily take your place here than there are grains of sand on the beach, and you have had the even greater good fortune of having caught the eye of Eminence Rugan herself. Otherwise a girl of your… otherwise you might not have been selected out of so many other worthy candidates.” Chryssa reached out and patted Qinnitan on the arm. “It was your clever tongue, you know, although you still need to learn when not to use it. I think Her Eminence has hopes you might be a chief acolyte yourself one day, which would be an even greater honor.” She nodded a little, acknowledging her own hard work and good fortune. “Still, it is a high, lonely calling, and sometimes it can be difficult to leave behind your family and friends. I know it was for me, when I was young.”