28. Journal

Unable to sleep, I waited until Helena had reached some sort of rest and carefully exited her bed.

I found an empty bed and undid my braid.

In clean linens, I should have been able to sleep.

I had not been able to sleep in the cell the night before and I was exhausted.

I turned to my side, as I had been doing in Nyossa.

I had chosen a cot at the end of the small dormitory and so I faced the wall.

The lone candle still stuttered in its sconce so I was not staring into the dark.

This room may have been in the center of the keep, but it was closer to the Pikestully side and this wall was not made up of the blue bluff rock, but of stone and manmade precision.

I traced the patterns of the masonry with my gaze, trying to forget the spat I had just had with my husband-to-be.

I knew what it was to be unwanted by a husband.

I knew what it was to be a stranger in a strange land.

I had already danced these dances.

I knew the steps well.

My flight to Eccleston at the commencement of a cold winter had been harried, driven by terror and heartache.

I had borne the final betrayal from Thrush, one after another, charmed back into his arms and ultimately our bed with his handsome face and sugared words.

That last dagger in my back would not be forgiven.

It had been too deep a cut for me.

And so I, a woman of twenty-eight winters, with an education never really put to use, no marketable skills and little knowledge of the world, became a horse thief.

I had lived rough for three days and nights, praying it would not snow just yet.

On the end of the fourth day, I passed through the gates of Eccleston, claiming to be visiting an uncle in the city.

I was shivering, bundled in two dresses, a belt of coin tied against my ribs beneath, dirty and tired.

The breeding of my horse must have allowed me entry, for I looked the part of a beggar.

I was able to find lodging that first night in a rundown inn.

I sold Thrush’s pretty black dam for much less than what she was worth.

I had found an Agnes chapel and the priest found me work.

I cleaned the rooms in a university for nearly four seasons, bunked in that crowded boarding house and eventually talked my way into scribing.

I had met Helena and then Mischa and we had formed our family, welcoming Maureen to the scriptorium when she was thirteen.

I had worked my way into the role of head scribe and found better rooms.

I had survived that and made that life not only livable but happy.

I would this.

I had my scribe sisters and they, me.

A groove between the stones caught my eye.

Getting out of the bed, I reached a curious finger into it and found a slim book bound in a green leather.

The book was wilted, pages warped by damp and age.

I opened it and something sharp and small fell out, making a clang as it hit the rock floor.

I looked around, but no one had woken.

Bending down, I retrieved it.

It was a rusted skeleton key.

In the opening at the handheld end was a filigreed triangle with the point meeting the shank of the key, facing the bits.

I opened the book.

On the first page was the name ‘Gareth Pope.’ I turned that page and read ‘Mother wants me to be a soldier.

Father, a priest.

I believe he knows my secret and therefore, thinks I will face less adversity in the order of Mother Earth rather than the ranks of Tintarian black.

But here I am in my barracks, a soldier.

I am fast on my feet and not bad with sword craft, better with a spear.

Mother knows too.

But I believe she thinks perhaps the infantry will beat it out of me.’

Looking around, I realized that this dormitory could have been a barracks once, for new army recruits.

I flipped through more of the book.

It was clearly a journal of this man.

I turned on the bed so that the weak candlelight lit more of the book.

‘Two people of extreme importance I met today and both made a great impression on me.

One was Keturah, the archpriestess of Mother Earth.

She approached me in the training yard and told me she had heard that I had earth magic.

Who told her, I do not know.

I was so nervous in her presence, one of the most powerful people in Tintar.

She is a pleasant woman, wrinkly and inquisitive and I think I would enjoy her company.

I told her I wanted to pursue a military life and that with the goddess’s blessing, my earth penchant may even aid me in such service to Tintar.

She asked what my earth penchant was, reminding me that unlike the other three, earth had more specified propensities.

Was I interested in farming? Was I drawn to apothecaries? Did I like Horticulture? Dendrology? I told her that I liked rocks and she laughed and said stone magic was special.

And proceeded to tell me the story of the stone drakes, her bony arm thrown towards the sea.

Did I know, she began, that an earth Tintarian could, with the right sacrifice to Mother Earth, return the rock formations to their true forms, that of giant drakes who defended Tintar’s coast and capital city, the sea a mere pool to their height? I said yes, I was told the story as a child, that I knew it had been done once but that the goddess put her drakes to sleep because Tintarians did not sacrifice enough to her anymore.

It was a cautionary children’s tale about not showing the four deities their due worship.

I asked what the sacrifice was and she said I should join the order and find out.

Then she reminded me that all of the rooms and corridors inside the bluffs had been made by earth Tintarians who could move stone, that our very own keep was constructed by them, every chamber, every level, every hall.

She suggested I could be that powerful.

I told her she was exceedingly kind.

She bade me reconsider, gave me an adderstone on a leather thong and left the yard.

I wear it now.’

I looked towards my black dress laid out over the end of the bed, the hagstone in one pocket.

‘And also, at dinner, the crown prince of Tintar, Hinnom himself, came to my table and sat amongst us fresh infantrymen, his white teeth flashing in his rakish face.

He said he wanted to welcome us to the keep.

He is beautiful in a sort of sculpted way, the bones of him just visible beneath the skin.

His hair is a shiny black and he does not adorn himself as much as you would think a prince does.

I felt very country mouse, even in my new army clothes and polished breastplate.

The weight of that shield slung over my back is a strain on my shoulders and spine, but I know we infantry cut a fine figure.

But he, this celebrated scion of Tintar, with his substantial sea magic, having swum with sharks and emerged the victor, time and again, with his title and his looks, looked at me tonight.

He looked at me and smiled and, I would swear my life on this, there was hunger in that first look.

Is he like me, I wondered? Did women not entice? Did he also find the long, muscled legs of another man alluring? Did he watch the mouth of another man and wonder at how kissing him would be? Did he desire what I have desired since I was a youth, standing on the side of dances, wishing I could ask another boy and none of the girls?’

All of the lessons taught in Perpatane about coupling for any other reason than to have children washed through me.

Pleasure for pleasure’s sake was an affront to Rodwin, a holy man who had spent his life in contemplation of what it meant to be morally pure, who had meditated for winters on end, if his inane, frenzied writings were to be believed.

And because two men as a couple or two women did not result in a babe, that was outlawed in Perpatane.

Because Rodwin forbade that things like desire or a pursuit of love be satisfied.

Eccleston had decriminalized it as well as Tintar in recent winters.

But Perpatane still jailed any citizen caught in the bed of any but their spouse, particularly a coupling of two members of the same sex.

I read further.

‘I need not have wondered long.

The corridors full of infantry and servants as the dining hall emptied, Hinnom, in his plain black, out of the range of the sconces, unrecognized, pulled me into an alcove and kissed me.

He asked what must he do to get me into his bed? I was in awe of him.

He is so tall.

I could not speak and he kissed me again.’

I closed the journal.

Hinnom had no queen other than that of his stepmother, the dowager Modwenna, Peregrine’s mother.

Was that why? Was that why Tintar had done away with that law? Had Hinnom been the ruler to do it? Was that why his younger brother seemed to have almost as much sway as the king? The kingship would fall to Peregrine as the Shark King had no heir.

Sympathy for this Gareth filled me.

It is a terrible thing to be seduced by a seducer.