Finally, Arietta nodded. “You make a good point about Kleef,” she said, trying not to sound resentful. “It may be that the soldiers draw their inspiration from him.”
“Or from both of you,” Joelle said, sounding more supportive than convinced. “Why not? A woman charging into battle has a way of making men ignore their own fears.”
Arietta flashed a grateful smile. “Perhaps,” she said. “But Malik is right. It was foolish of me to assume the soldiers were responding to me, when Kleef has always been the one leading the fight.”
“It was?” Malik looked distressed rather than surprised. “And you are not troubled that you’ve been such a fool?”
“I’m a bit embarrassed, naturally,” Arietta admitted. “Perhaps inspiring soldiers isn’t one of my Chosen powers, after all. But better to have my error corrected than have my friends laughing at it behind my back.”
“No one was laughing,” Joelle said. “Because it doesn’t matter. You’re honest, devoted, and courageous. Those are the things that make you a worthy companion.”
As kind as they were, Joelle’s words hit Arietta like a kick to the stomach. She was trying to reassure Arietta about more than a mistaken assumption about her powers. Joelle was trying to tell her that she didn’t need powers-that she still mattered without any.
“You think Malik’s right, don’t you?” Arietta asked. “You think that I don’t have any other powers-that I’m not Chosen at all.”
“What I think is that we wouldn’t have made it this far without you,” Joelle said. She smiled, and that almost reversed the growing hollow in Arietta’s stomach-almost. “Besides, it’s not for me-or Malik-to say who Siamorphe’s Chosen are.”
“But we all know Siamorphe is the goddess of noble rule,” Malik said quickly. “So, would not her true Chosen be able to command obedience?”
Joelle scowled at Malik. “Since when do you know how gods think?”
“It is only common wisdom,” Malik said. Keeping his gaze fixed on Arietta, he raised the arm in the sling. “And you could not even stop the oaf from breaking my elbow.”
“I keep telling you it’s not broken,” Joelle said. “And, considering what you did to Arietta, you should consider yourself lucky.”
“What I did is of no concern,” Malik replied. “The oaf still attacked me, and Arietta could not command him to stop. If she is a Chosen of Siamorphe, then I am a Chosen of Tempus.”
Arietta barely heard the rest of their argument, for her head was spinning and her pulse was pounding in her ears like a drum. She had no doubt that, having failed to avenge himself by pushing her off the citadel walls, Malik was now trying to destroy her by other means.
But that didn’t make him wrong. Arietta should have been able to command Kleef to stand down after the attack, but it had been Joelle who had finally calmed him down. And Kleef was a loyal Cormyrean, dutiful to a fault. If she could not command him, even in the heat of the moment, then Malik was right-she did not carry the divine power of a Chosen.
Which shouldn’t have surprised her, really. Arietta had never received the kind of vision Joelle had described, or been charged by her god with some impossible mission the way Malik had, or even found herself in possession of unexpected blessings as Kleef had. She had simply been a dutiful young girl who embraced the worship of Siamorphe as the obligation of every Cormyrean noble, then done her best to live by the goddess’s teachings. After she revealed that she occasionally saw Siamorphe in her dreams, the temple priests began to flatter her and indulge her with special favors, which only increased in extravagance when her father rewarded their attention with frequent donations.
By the time she reached the age of eligibility, she believed only a Chosen of Siamorphe could be the subject of so much adoration and special treatment. When the temple priests did nothing to disabuse her of the notion, the rest of the congregation accepted the status as fact, and Arietta had begun to dispense wisdom and advice to her peers as though she were a true Chosen of Siamorphe.
What a fool.
Arietta could see now that the priests had only been afraid of losing her father’s lavish support, and they had been willing to let her deceive herself and the rest of the congregation rather than tell her the truth. She could not help imagining them in their opulent refectory, toasting her folly with free wine from her father’s vineyards. And that was not the worst of it. Surely, many of the other noble families had seen through the charade. How many of them had been snickering up their sleeves each time the priests mentioned her father’s latest gift, how many of her peers had been biting their cheeks as she held forth on their duty to Siamorphe?
More than she cared to know, Arietta was certain.
Realizing the argument had fallen silent, Arietta looked up to find the eyes of both Joelle and Malik fixed on her. Joelle’s brows were arched and her mouth drawn into a sympathetic smile. Malik looked smug and triumphant, as though he had just emerged victorious in the bitter rivalry that only he seemed to truly understand.
Arietta swallowed hard, then looked him in the eye and said, “It seems I find myself once again indebted to your candor, if not your tact. Thank you for dispelling my illusions.”
“Think nothing of it,” Malik said. “I’m only doing what is best for our mission.”
Arietta responded with a tight smile. “Rest assured I’ll do the same.” Hoping for some privacy to compose herself, she made a show of glancing at the leathra vines coiled in the sand next to Joelle, then said, “It looks as though we’re running low on lashing cord. I’ll go cut some more.”
No sooner had she stepped off the raft than Malik appeared in front of her.
“There is no need to trouble yourself.”
He reached inside his robe and withdrew a large coil of greasy gray cord. The stuff stank of death and decay, and it looked more like fish intestines than rope.
“A gift from Myrkul.” Malik tossed the coil on the pile of leathra vines, then sneered, “That is what a real Chosen can do.”
Joelle picked up the rope and made a sour face, but continued to hold it as she turned to Malik.
“You’ve made your point,” she said. “Now, either help finish the raft, or I’ll use this rope to drag you along behind it.”
Malik’s expression remained victorious. “There is no need for threats.” He withdrew his arm from the sling and said, “All you had to do was ask.”
He dropped onto his back and slinked under the deck to help Arietta place the oarlocks, and an hour later the raft was complete. They foraged an early highsunfeast of chufa roots and currants, made a set of long tridents for spearing fish, and then finally launched the raft.
Despite the crudeness of their materials, the raft was both stable and sturdy-due in no small part to the skills Arietta had developed as a ten-year-old, when her beleaguered father had finally assigned his best shipwright to help her build her own canal raft. That craft had been fitted with a great many luxuries that this one lacked, including a canopy, a rudder, and a foot-operated paddlewheel. But she had never forgotten the care the shipwright had taken in fitting each piece and making certain that the lashings were secure without being inflexible. By the time Arietta and her companions had been on the river twenty minutes, they felt secure enough in their work to take turns sleeping on the deck.
The river was gentle and swift. Aside from the occasional island or stretch of riverbank, the water filled the gorge from wall to wall. Occasionally, Kleef had to row them around an eddy or steer them away from a waterfall plunging down from above. But generally, the travel was easy, and Kleef had little to do but watch for river hazards and enemies skulking on the canyon rim.
Arietta passed much of the time sitting on the front edge of the raft, watching for fish and holding a trident poised to strike. But her mind was elsewhere, and she missed a chance at a big carp because her thoughts were consumed by Malik’s revelation that she was not Chosen. She was angry at the temple priests for encouraging her self-deception, angry at her father for using his wealth to encourage their behavior, angry at herself for being such a fool. But most of all, she was angry at Siamorphe for rewarding her unwavering faith with cruel mockery. Arietta had lived her entire life by the tenets of the church, donating vast sums to the local temple and refusing to consider any suitor who did not share her faith. She had preached the canon of noble obligation to her peers with a condescension that could only be described as overbearing, and she had imposed on her parents a code of behavior they clearly could not accept.