Making Peace, page 12
I mulled that over for a few steps. “What you’re saying is she isn’t distant to you, she’s more like a friend.”
That ‘friend’ part almost made him stumble, but he recovered quickly. “M-more like, an honored family member. A favorite grandmother, perhaps. You spend your time with family, yes? So do I. Except this family member can follow me and meet me even in the worst places.” His face hardened up for a moment, and I remembered his anguished reaction to the murder scene in the First House.
Tavel stopped in the middle of the street, which took me by surprise because we were standing in a residential district. He gestured to a house and walked toward it. Confused, I followed him up the steps and through a wooden door, neither of us knocking.
Pure sunlight streamed into the long entryway hall through skylights, warming the wooden floorboards under our feet. Religious paintings and candles covered every wall and table, dozens of faces looking back at me depicting the same face again and again, a face from my childhood. The room itself was a shrine to the Lady. Paintings of an armored figure, mixed in with an overwhelming amount of paintings of the beautiful woman in more feminine garb. Here, then, they celebrated both of her aspects: the gentle, nurturing Lady and the armored warrior Valkyrie.
Tavel knelt with eyes closed in the middle of the foyer, his hand clutching the sword at his side, lips whispering a soundless prayer. I copied his posture and tried to remember a prayer from my childhood. After a minute he rose, and I waited a few heartbeats so he wouldn’t think I was just paying lip service. We went through a door to the right at the end of the hall.
The next room looked like it had perhaps once been several rooms inside of the house, but the walls had been knocked out to accommodate a larger concept. Low candle light reflected off rough oak pillars, knotted and bumpy but polished to a gleam by years of evident care, which held up the ceiling. Pinewood pews ran along the left side of the room, but the right side stayed open to allow access to banks of candles. In amongst the candles were small sketches of faces or scraps of paper with names and prayers scribbled on them. A woman in the middle of her life, her shawl pulled up over her hair, stood weeping at one of the candle stands. An old man stood comforting her.
The room held very little in the way of wealth. I remembered temples I had seen on Garden, temples the grand ladies and gentlemen of the upper class attended in their finest clothes. I wondered how many would turn up their noses at this place, perhaps call it an affront to their Lady to be worshipped in so shabby a place. And yet, it was tended with such obvious love. The worn floors betrayed not a spot of mud apart from that which we brought in with us. Someone obviously worked day and night to make sure Our Lady was not neglected and that her children had a comfortable and clean place to draw near to her. How many of those fine temples back home, with their golden doorways and painted ceilings, felt cold and empty?
The one luxury was someone’s homemade attempt at a stained-glass window at the far end of the room. It stood behind a stone statue and caught the sun so colored light filtered in. If I squinted, I could make out the vague shape of multi-colored birds flying around a flowering tree, against a blue sky.
An older woman approached us. She was dressed in flowing pink robes with a dark blue kerchief over her hair, tied loosely at the base of her neck and left hanging down to the middle of her back. She had the exact same hazel eyes, bronze skin, and curly golden hair coloration as Tavel, extremely common in Tiers. She surprised me by kissing Tavel on the cheek. He returned the gesture, and she clasped his face in her hands, drawing him close. They shared a smile, then he turned to me. “Bel, this is my mother, Mabel. Mother, this is Bel. He’s writing about us.”
I sketched her my best bow, and she clasped my hand. “Welcome, Bel,” said Mabel. “I hope you find peace here.”
I didn’t know how to reply to the frank sincerity I saw in her eyes, so I just thanked her. She turned and went back to cleaning away spent candles. Her deft hands took care not to disturb the bits of paper from the faithful.
Tavel approached the altar. A woman was kneeling on a cushion, crying quietly. He went to one knee beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She sobbed and leaned toward him, and he spent a few minutes whispering something. She nodded several times throughout. I saw her clasp his hand as he rose and heard a tiny, “Thank you.”
Tavel moved past the crying woman, walked straight up to the feet of the stone statue, and knelt again, this time going to both knees on cushions provided for that purpose. I did the same, though while he closed his eyes, I looked up at the statue of the Valkyrie Saint. Someone had painstakingly sculpted her face from rough stone. I mostly recognized the features from their vague resemblance to the pictures in the entryway. The stone itself was too cheap and brittle to be able to take much careful detail, but one thing did shine through: an expression of deep love on her face. It was the same expression I had just seen on Tavel’s mother’s face when she had looked at him. And, I realized, when she had looked at me.
We knelt there for some time, perhaps half an hour, until I gradually became aware of a sound. Metal clinked against metal in a sharp, rhythmic sort of way. I looked down and saw Tavel’s hand grasping his sword hilt, knuckles white, blade rattling in its sheath. His eyes were closed but his lips moved in a fevered way, pouring out words and sometimes drawing back over his teeth in a snarl. He looked to be in terrible pain. I touched his shoulder and he drew in a sharp breath but did not open his eyes. Gradually, his shaking subsided and his prayers grew less frenzied. At last, he opened his eyes and turned to me. The pain smoothed away and his eyes appeared clear when I looked into them.
“You all right?”
He nodded, then turned back to the statue, gazing up at her face. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with it, Bel. All the ugly stuff we see.”
I can understand that, I thought. Unwelcome images of half-remembered nightmares tried to intrude, but I pushed them away.
Tavel went on. “I remember Our Lady is right here: not just in this temple, but also when we go out in the world. It helps to come home, though.”
I thought he was speaking metaphorically, but then I remembered how literal he always was. “Home? You live here?”
He nodded. “It’s my family’s house. My grandfather converted it into a temple when he bought the house fifty years ago. I got to grow up here.” He pointed to an alcove to our right, tucked behind a tall fern. “I took my first oaths right there when I was seven years old.”
I looked back at the statue. “So when you say family member…”
“I mean literally, yes. I grew up right here at her feet. I heard her voice speaking to me out of her scriptures when I was still in my crib. I knew her commands before I could spell my own name.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes. The old woman had stopped sobbing. I heard Tavel’s mother saying something to her. They went through another door, leaving us alone in the chapel.
I heard a quiet sob and looked over at Tavel. Light through the stained glass window painted his upturned face with red and blue and made precious gems of the tears rolling slowly down his cheeks. I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t think of anything less idiotic than Why are you crying? so I said nothing.
His throat worked, swallowing hard. Eventually, he solved my dilemma and broke the silence for me. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted is to serve her.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “You do, Tavel. I’ve never seen anyone serve her with all their heart, like you do.”
He shook his head. “But it’s not enough. Terrible things keep happening. And they shouldn’t. They really shouldn’t.”
There was nothing to say to that. He wasn’t wrong.
“I want to protect her people. I want everyone to be okay, to be safe, and to know her like I do. Better than I do. But no matter what I do, I can’t protect them.” Tavel lowered his face until he was hanging his head, tears dripping off his lashes onto the fists clenched in his lap.
“Maybe you aren’t the one meant to protect them, Tavel. Maybe you can only protect the ones right in front of you, your family and your friends. You can’t take responsibility for everyone in the world.”
He shook his head, his voice rising. “I should, though! I should be able to! I should be strong enough!”
I leaned away, taken aback by the intense passion in his voice.
“I can’t stop the killing, or the raping, or the slavery, or any of the brutality.” He swallowed and took a deep breath. “But I can stop the ones who do it.”
Tavel turned to me. “The people who do these things must be brought to justice. Complete justice, not the bureaucratic kind where they serve some time and then go out and do it again. And not the kind where they pay a fancy lawyer to get them off with a slap on the wrist. We need to make sure the rape and murder stops completely.”
“I don’t disagree, but I’m not sure I like the sound of it when you say it like that. Do you mean murdering them?”
He frowned. “No, not murder. I don’t mean we should be like them. But we can’t just leave brutal people walking around free to hurt the vulnerable people, the ones who rely on others to keep them safe. If we’re stewards of her world, then we need to keep her people safe. Sometimes that means killing the wolves to protect the sheep.”
“Aren’t they all her sheep, though? Even the wayward ones? Isn’t there room in her heart for forgiveness?”
He nodded. “Yes, of course. But sometimes compassion means ending a person’s ability to hurt others when they can’t stop themselves. Even you did it, Bel, when that man came to kill you.”
I wanted to say that was self-defense, to plead my case. But I suspected he’d say there was no difference between defending myself in the moment and defending one of his numerous helpless innocents. I looked down at my hands resting in my lap. Light spilling through the window stained my right hand a deep red. Uncomfortable, I hid it under a cushion.
“I… don’t know if I can agree with you right now, Tavel.”
He nodded, looking up at Saint Katherine’s face. “That’s okay, Bel. I know it’s right.”
CHAPTER 19
WE WERE BACK in the First House again, Sen and I on patrol up on the third story. We walked the halls, checking room to room. Windows were locked, doors were locked, everything was in its proper place. Captain was upstairs in a meeting with the Hegemon, discussing security changes to be made in the First House.
Motes of dust danced in the morning sunlight flowing in through the beautiful open windows to our right, and our footsteps echoed loudly in the wooden tunnel that was the main hall in this wing of the House. Sen stretched languidly as we walked, arms over his head. “I could get used to this, you know.”
I glanced at him and smiled. “Quiet duty?”
“Mmhm. That, and…” He trailed off and grinned, gesturing at one of the serving girls we passed. She was stretching onto her tiptoes to dust the frame of a portrait of some forgotten ancestor. All her straining was pulling the skirt of her blue maid’s uniform up to reveal more skin than I felt comfortable staring at. I smacked Sen across the chest and he grunted, but went right on grinning.
We turned a sharp corner and I ran smack into another serving girl. I had a split second to register a pretty face and dark black hair, though she couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen. With me being so much larger, she got the worst of the bump, and her feet went out from under her. Sen caught her around the shoulders and managed to stop her from falling, but the tray of tea she had been carrying went crashing to the floor. The teapot and cups exploded into shards all over the hallway.
“Woah! I’m so sorr—“ I started to say, but a high-pitched wheezing sound coming from behind her closed lips cut me off. Her eyes widened to a terrifying size, the pupils dilating. Her hands clutched each other at her throat, and she began backing away from us like we were predators. Her eyes kept darting to the broken pieces on the floor, and each time she saw them her inward scream got louder until I thought she was going to burst. Then the sound suddenly stopped and she started gasping, “No. No. No. Nonononono,” like she couldn’t stop herself.
All at once she turned from us and ran, not straight down the hallway but toward one of the open windows ten feet away, a window we hadn’t yet reached during our rounds. I didn’t understand what she was doing, but Sen did. He lunged after her and made a furious grab, screaming as loudly as she was, but she put on a burst of speed and hurled herself through the window and out into open space. I saw her close her eyes and stretch out her arms, like she was going to fly away. She started to fall, head pointed toward the ground. Seconds later, there was a rending, crunching sound three stories below.
Sen and I hit the windowsill hard with our bellies and looked over, both of us hoping to see a miracle. But of course there wasn’t one, only a broken little body forty feet below us, arms spread wide. A pool of blood was already spreading across the stones. I heard Sen rasp a breath beside me but I didn’t look at him, didn’t want to see his expression; it would only be the same horror I could feel carved into my own face.
We made our way downstairs as fast as we could and approached the broken girl. I could hear other women in the House asking what that sound was, what had happened. Almost all women’s voices, I noticed for the first time, but that wouldn’t really sink in until later.
The garden the serving girl had fallen into was walled in but expansive. Flowers bloomed in planter beds everywhere. She had fallen onto a wide stone walkway, neck twisted at a terrible angle. She must have struck the ground head first, and she could not have survived. The one eye visible to me was empty, staring into nothing. Blood was pooling around her head.
I took her wrist and checked for a pulse, because what else do you really do? While checking, I noticed something.
“Sen.”
He heard the tone in my voice and didn’t ask, just hunkered down and looked. I turned the girl’s tiny little wrist over in my hands. The skin bore bruises, barely fading, in the shape of four fingers and a thumb. The other wrist was marked the same. We looked at each other. I had never seen his eyes so hard and so angry.
“Keep watch,” I said. I could see he didn’t need me to tell him twice.
I stood and looked around at some of the first people to arrive. Mostly young girls in maid outfits, but some members of the First House as well. They were collectively appalled, some staring and whispering, others running off to fetch people.
The housekeeper, Marsa, arrived very quickly, as was her job with any emergency. I grabbed a handful of her uniform as she hurried toward the scene and dragged her back into the House. She kicked, protested, and tried to fight me off, but my muscles had been hardened by training and she had no chance. No one stopped us as I dragged her away, either too distracted by the crime scene or perhaps used to seeing servants dragged around.
I shoved Marsa into the first empty bedroom I found, the door ajar and the owners having hurried out to see the commotion. I followed her in and slammed the door behind me. My footsteps thundered as I stalked toward her, but something in her body language stopped me. She suddenly looked very small and very afraid. I didn’t know what to make of that. It wasn’t in me to enjoy making a woman feel afraid, so I didn’t advance any further. It took me a moment to realize how angry I was and how that was probably coming off to her.
“You remember me, right? Belkan. With the Keepers. What is going on in this House, Marsa?”
She flinched and looked away from me, but her eyes kept darting back to my face like she was afraid I’d pounce if she didn’t check in with me. She shook her head, not speaking.
“That girl, she dropped a tea set. It broke, and it seemed to set her off. She killed herself over a damned tea set, Marsa.” I walked diagonal to her and she shrunk away, but I was only making for the bed. I sat down on the mattress, legs spread wide, elbows on my knees. I leaned way down and let my eyes study the woodgrain on the floor, but I wasn’t really seeing it. I wondered if she’d bolt and I hoped she wouldn’t, but I had never held a woman captive and I wasn’t going to start now. I waited. I could hear her breathing with short, sharp intakes, but two minutes went by and she didn’t leave.
Still studying the woodgrain, I decided to dig just a little. “She had handprints on both wrists, Marsa. Not downward, like you’d hold them to keep her still while she’s standing. Reversed, and on the inside, like they were held and pushed backward onto something.” She still didn’t say anything, but I saw her shoes move one hesitant step toward me.
“On a bed, maybe,” I said.
Marsa’s feet froze and her short breaths stopped completely.
I looked up at her. Sunlight through dozens of tiny windows threw lines of light and dark across the room, painting bars across Marsa’s face, as if I was looking at her through the door of a prison cell. Her eyes swam with tears, sunlight dancing in the flickering waves, but she let none of them spill over. Still, she didn’t say anything.
I decided to try one last time. “What is going on in this House, Marsa?”
She wouldn’t speak, but she shook her head one more time, sadness etched into her face. Etched into delicate features, mature but still beautiful, beautiful as all the girls selected to serve in the First House. “Oh, Belkan,” was all she said. We looked into each other’s eyes, saying everything she couldn’t, until at last she turned and walked out.
CHAPTER 20
THE HOUSE GUARD took over duties with the girl’s body. Captain took one look at our faces and sent Sen and me back to headquarters for the rest of the day. Her blood had stained my clothing when I’d checked her, and we both reeked of sweat from the stress of the situation, so I didn’t really mind the chance to change and maybe bathe.
We got back to find headquarters mostly empty, except for Cora sweeping the entry hall.
