Brother Candle did not remind her that Kedle had spent little time with them in that room.
Socia said, “I wish Bernardin were here. But someone has to crack the whip in Antieux. So. Darling Kedle. Tell me everything. And don’t leave anything out, even if I already know.”
Brother Candle found the Widow’s tale uncomfortably candid. The woman knew neither shame nor remorse.
* * *
Bicot Hodier visited Brother Candle in his Metrelieux cell.
The Countess would not allow the Perfect to move in with the Archimbaults. She was ardent about keeping him close.
The old herald announced, “I’ll be leaving Khaurene. I thought the news might interest you.”
“At your age? Because of what happened before?”
“Not that. Not so much. But I do have religious motives.”
“I’ll miss you, truly. You’re a fixture of my Metrelieux.”
“I’m joining the Connecten contingent headed for the Holy Lands.”
Connecten contingent? Brother Candle could not imagine Connectens heading off to participate in a religious war after all that had gone on here for so long.
“I didn’t think you were the crusading type, Bicot.”
“I’m not. I’m the pilgrim type.”
“I see.” That made sense.
Brother Candle kept toying with the idea of a pilgrimage himself.
Hodier declared, “I have nothing here. The Countess will be better served by someone younger whose thinking approximates her own, so I’ll drag this old carcass east and lay it down in the land where God was born.”
“Who all is going? I might tag along.”
Hodier’s eyes waxed huge. The suggestion did not please him. “They’ll all be Brothen Episcopal. You’d have trouble fitting in. Why would you want to visit the Holy Lands, anyway?”
“You said it. That’s where God was born. We agree on that, whatever differences we have on what he said or meant.” And there was a huge one right there, the Perfect realized. Aaron was not God in flesh to any but a small cult of Episcopals whose heresies the Church suppressed as enthusiastically as it did that of the Maysalean Good Men.
“You’re teasing. You wouldn’t try that at your age.”
“No doubt. I don’t handle sea travel well. I still marvel that seasickness didn’t kill me during the Calziran Crusade.”
“I’ve heard tell.” Big, friendly grin.
“So, all best, from your God and mine, Hodier. Fair winds at sea and cool breezes after you arrive.”
One well-known fact about the Holy Lands was that the heat there was unbelievable. And the region swarmed with countless biting, stinging insects, some of which caused deadly fevers.
Thoughts of heat and insect miseries, preceded by deadly pitiless seasickness, as the price of admission to a cauldron of bloodshed, left the Perfect reconsidering even thinking about a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands.
* * *
Brother Candle did get away to Seeker services at Kedle’s home. She had inherited a sizable establishment from Soames, who had left no family to dispute possession. Archimbault-related Seekers had occupied, protected, and maintained the place while she was away.
Some had ambitions involving the property but lacked the courage to argue with the Widow. She installed a dozen Vindicated, then defied the world to challenge the propriety of the arrangement.
The Perfect did not know the full facts but believed that impropriety existed more in the minds of observers than in what happened in private.
The meeting was nostalgic. The local Seekers agreed that it had the comfortable feel of sessions in the old days. Brother Candle eyed Kedle, remembering her as a shy child who nonetheless worked up the courage to express her opinions to adults. She was more reticent now though the others showed more willingness to defer.
Her father suggested she speak. She replied, “After going the places I have, seeing the things I have, sinning as I have, I have no business speaking to the Seekers. I must find my way back to the Path first.”
Brother Candle clapped his hands gently. “Well said, Kedle. I, too, will defer to those who haven’t strayed.”
Someone accused him of attempted poesy.
“Think as you will. Right now this Seeker is far from Perfection. The rest of you go ahead. I will referee should the exchange become heated.”
Kedle told him, “You come help me in the kitchen.”
She began by busying herself with the teakettle. Little Raulet, having sneaked out of bed, joined them. He stood eight feet away and stared at his mother, not the least sure about her.
That saddened the old man. It said so much. It declared the rapidity of change. Kedle’s babes already felt closer to their grandparents, and to Escamerole and Guillemette, than they did to their mother. And Kedle seemed both ignorant of how to correct that and possibly disinclined.
Brother Candle wondered if it might not be possible to have her boys raised with Lumiere.
“Master, I am a bad woman.”
“Kedle? How can you say that?”
“I am a devil. A waste of flesh as a woman. It tears me apart but I can’t stand this.” She gestured, indicating her surroundings.
“Uhm?”
“The guilt. It hurts so much. But I can’t live this life anymore. If I stay here I’ll go mad. I’ll hurt somebody.”
“You’ll settle in. All soldiers have to adjust.”
“I’m headed for the block. I can’t stop thinking evil thoughts.”
“The war is over, child. You won.”
“The war with the monster inside me has only just begun, Master. This morning I caught myself trying to work out how to kill Raulet and Chardén so I wouldn’t have that responsibility anymore.”
Brother Candle was appalled. Was speechless, as she expected him to be.
She had confessed because she did love her boys enough to want them protected.
The Perfect felt the reality behind her fear. “The Instrumentality. Can you summon her? Can she help?”
“Hope? She never showed me a way.”
“Too bad, that.” Should he believe her? “I can’t call her, either.”
Kedle eyed what could be seen of his tattoos. “What is she up to with you, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Bernardin and I … I think her original scheme has passed her by. Things didn’t work out the way she expected. These snakes, and Socia’s ability to change shape, may just be useless afflictions, now.” He hoped they no longer fit the Instrumentality’s plan. “Hope is ancient compared to us but she’s really just a spoiled, willful, not very bright child enamored of the power of a woman’s body.”
Kedle nodded. “Willful, selfish, and self-important because she’s destined to survive beyond the Twilight. Though that whole mythology must have totally unraveled by now.”
Brother Candle did not understand so Kedle passed along Lady Hope’s explanation.
“I see,” the Perfect said, though the northern beliefs were no less confusing for having been explained by an insider.
“Hope had to go join up with the other Shining Ones. Something to do with the crusade. She never clarified what.”
The Perfect said only, “We should get back before the gossip starts.”
Kedle’s eyes widened. Then she laughed, but the mood fled quickly. “Master, I am truly afraid that I might hurt my sons.”
This was not the girl Brother Candle had known as a child. She could now be considered a minor Instrumentality, personifying the darkness at the heart of Connecten nationalism. “We can’t have that.”
“That’s why I brought it up, old man!”
Brother Candle sighed. Now she was angry. He did not understand. Something had warped her root nature. The twist had been slow, beginning long before it became evident, possibly even before her marriage and the time of exile on the Reindau Spine.
“I’ll talk to the Countess and your father. He may never understand. He only sees his little girl even when she shows up in bloody armor.”
He paused. Kedle did not need her father explained. She needed a way to come to terms with herself. The war between what she was and what she thought she was supposed to be caused pain that she expressed as rage against what might look like the source of her dilemma.