A Crown for Cold Silver Page 11

  Would that devils were responsible for our weakness, Zosia thought as she crawled back onto her mat. Would that there was somebody, anybody, anything else to blame for her lot. In the morning she would find many likely candidates, with Queen Indsorith of Samoth at the top of the list, but for now, squinting in the glare of sleeplessness, she could only twist deeper into herself, into her responsibility for the death of Leib and his village.

  “My village,” she whispered in the dark, “my village,” but she never quite believed it.

  CHAPTER

  12

  It was late spring when Sister Portolés’s transgression at the village of Kypck truly caught up with her.

  In the meantime, she had been lashed by Father Eddison as soon as she had led the cavalry back down the valley to rejoin the main force of the Fifteenth Regiment, the charred corpse of Sir Hjortt she had recovered from the ruins of the mayoress’s house lashed to the back of his horse. She had fully expected this. She had been lashed again by the regiment’s acting colonel once her clerical superior was done with her, which, again, she had both anticipated and welcomed. Finally, she had lashed herself in penance on every new moon since, but she had prayed to avoid any substantial probing into the particulars of that nobleman’s ignoble death in a remote mountain town. Alas, it seemed a well-connected young colonel could not burn to death on a war nun’s watch without a full inquiry taking place.

  The summons came the week after she finally returned to her cell in the quadrant of Diadem’s central Chainhouse known as the Dens. The Fallen Mother saw through the selfishness of Sister Portolés’s prayers, and so the summons, and as the anathema read the letter in the dimness of her cell she nodded to herself. She deserved this, just as Sir Hjortt had deserved to die in the fire. Just as Portolés had judged him, now, too, would she be judged. Everything happened. Not for a reason, mind, for the Fallen Mother was beyond the need for justifications, but everything happened.

  Sister Portolés set the summons down on her penitence bench and prepared herself to enter the Crimson Throne Room of Diadem. Her ablutions took the better part of the day, all of the hair on her body, and the odd patch of skin when her razor found resistance. Better to lose a little flesh than leave behind a trace of what she had been before this day. To be before Her Grace was to be reborn, and what babe comes to its mother already dressed in fur? A babe worthy of the pyre, not the teat.

  Too late, she thought to call on Brother Wan, thinking he might be persuaded to sin with her one last time, the way they used to, but this was the thought of Portolés, anathema and sinner, and the penitent nun who crouched naked in the cell slapped herself across the face. Hard. And again. And now she wanted to see Brother Wan more than ever, so she stuck out her tongue and pinched it between her fingers, digging into the ridge of scar tissue that marked where the church had made her almost human when she was but a fledgling monster. She could no longer recall the tastes of the wind, of the night, but she could well remember the tang of blood and hemp as the papal barbers had sewn her forked tongue together.

  A knock at her door. This was it, then. Rising, she dropped the black robe included with the summons over her stocky frame and went to meet her fate. Except instead of an escort to her judgment, it was a far more welcome visitor.

  “Oh, Portolés.” Brother Wan gazed up at her in the doorway. The pocked knot of flesh where his nose and upper lip should be, where his beak had been, trembled with emotion. “I would have come as soon as I heard about the summons, but thought… you might wish to come to me. Shall I go? I shall go.”

  “Temptation,” growled Portolés, wondering if the Fallen Mother or the Deceiver had put this penultimate obstacle in her path. Not really caring either way. Kissing her brother-in-chains right there in the hall of the Dens, kissing him until her file-dulled teeth knocked against the wooden ones the church had given him, and then pulling him into her cell. They tripped over her penitence bench, came down with limbs tangled, and for what must be the final time rooted their hands beneath one another’s vestments, groaning prayers together between kisses as they worked one another to forbidden rapture.

  Employing only their hands did not betray the letter of the law, true, but as Brother Wan had always told her when they were done and he was regretting his weakness, their actions certainly ran against the spirit of it. He was correct that a lesser sin is still a sin, which only prompted Portolés to argue that that was all the more reason for them to consummate the greater evil their bodies craved. Everything happens, she would breathe in the humid darkness, but he always stopped her before she could damn them both.

  When they were growing up together in the Dens, he had always set an example for Portolés to aspire to, and his ability to know her heart even better than she knew it herself had no doubt saved her from many a graver sin. Since becoming an attaché to Cardinal Diamond several years prior, he had soared to such lofty reaches in his piety that he had rebuked her every suggestion that they resume their discreet meetings. That he had come to her this last time filled Portolés with the buzzing ecstasy that she only ever seemed to attain through committing a new sin; what did it say about her that frigging Wan was so much more exciting, now that he was so much holier?

  “What happened out there?” Wan whispered as they lay together when they were both finished, Portolés licking her fingers clean. “The clerks are saying all sorts of horrible things, and Cardinal Diamond—”

  “Pray for me, brother,” said Sister Portolés, kissing her fellow anathema on the cheek and smoothing her robe. She had to go, now, or she would tell him everything, and she cared about him too much to burden him with more of her sins. “That’s what we always used to do, after.”

  Giving Brother Wan a final sad smile, she went to meet her queen and, holier still, her pontiff.

  Sister Portolés had only been inside Diadem’s Jewel once, when she had been called by Abbotess Cradofil for enlistment in the Imperial military, and on that occasion she had been surrounded by a thousand other novices in the parade grounds on the bottom level. Now she walked alone—as all mortals truly are in the eyes of the Almighty Matron—up winding stairs carved into the ossified corpse of the volcano that housed Diadem, moving from the city below to the castle above. Daunting a journey as it would have been were she only meeting her pontiff, the knowledge that the Crimson Queen would also be present filled Portolés with terror.

  It was not the ferocious reputation of Queen Indsorith alone that terrified Portolés, but the anxiety that stemmed from not knowing exactly how solid the ground was beneath her feet, now that another political seismic shift had settled. For most of her life Portolés had been taught that Queen Indsorith was second only to Pope Shanatu in the eyes of the Fallen Mother, and after praying to the Black Pope every novice turned her prayers to the Crimson Queen and her royal castle in the old capital of the Serpent’s Circle.

  But then the Burnished Chain had declared Queen Indsorith a traitor to the Fallen Mother, and in the ensuing civil war Portolés had fought the forces of a woman she had once worshipped… only to have Pope Shanatu declare a truce, restore the queen to grace at the Council of Diadem, and then promptly retire from his post, with his niece succeeding him as Black Pope. As if matters weren’t turbulent enough, after the reconciliation Queen Indsorith had moved her court back to Diadem, ruling from the Crimson Throne Room for the first time in nearly twenty years, the old queen and the new pope governing their respective spheres from the same chamber. In a few short months Portolés had gone from killing Imperials at the Battle of Brockie to serving as personal bodyguard to one of their colonels… a position she had proven woefully inadequate for.

  No wonder a lowly anathema struggled with her faith even before what the summons had called the Encounter at Kypck—like all of her monstrous ilk, Portolés was born to sin, and only the intervention of the Burnished Chain brought goodness into her brutish heart. She couldn’t understand how anyone, even the Crimson Queen, could be excommunicat
ed from the church one year, only to be declared the spiritual equal of the Black Pope after the war went poorly for the Burnished Chain. Brother Wan sternly admonished her not to ask questions beyond her comprehension, but Sister Portolés couldn’t help herself; she wanted the world to make sense again, the way it had when she was young. Sadly, she was losing the war she fought with her own devilish nature, and now that she had effectively murdered Colonel Hjortt there could be no saving her: the two holiest women in the world would see her for what she was, and as Portolés went to fulfill the summons she knew she would never return to the Dens, the only home she had ever known.

  After being admitted through a dozen gates of narrowing width and increased guard, she was given a black candle as thick as her wrist, and with the aid of a blind officiant melted its base onto her shaven head until she was able to affix it in place. Only when it was firmly welded to her scalded skull was she permitted to proceed up the unlit avenues of Castle Diadem, her pace painfully slow lest the flame flicker out. Gargoyles leered at her from every arch and buttress, gobs of wax mingling with her tears to leave a trail for her to follow back out should she be permitted to leave after the audience. The way was known to her by the will of the Fallen Mother, channeled through the pure heart of the Black Pope, who waited with the Crimson Queen… or so the summons had alleged, but Portolés found herself guided solely by the smears of phosphorescent slime on the flagstones that directed her ever upward. Perhaps they knew her sin was so great she could no longer feel the touch of the divine, and had thus provided her another means of finding her way.

  An hour passed, maybe two, stair after stair, ramp upon ramp.

  Everything happens, but still Sister Portolés struggled. The echo of Brother Wan’s fingers now seemed shrill between her legs, and she would have cursed her weakness had her breath not been required to keep her chant at a respectable volume. It was not for the unclean to judge any but themselves—how many times had Abbotess Cradofil made her repeat that? And yet Sister Portolés had judged Sir Hjortt, and now she would be judged. The Fallen Mother loved her, and a war-worn sister should walk with her head high, even an anathema, yet the wax dripping down her nose and cheeks made her shame public. Any hope she had felt in her cell was gone here in the house the Almighty Matron had fashioned for her hierophants.

  Once Sister Portolés gained the throne room’s antechamber, the lighting improved even if her mood remained dark. Candelabras illuminated a posh old man dressed in the chartreuse regalia of Azgaroth. He waited on a bench, Abbotess Cradofil beside him, and both stood as Sister Portolés shuffled down the last shadow-draped corridor. Neither appeared happy to see her.

  “Sister Portolés,” said Abbotess Cradofil, her lips as slick and bulging as a pair of tadpoles. “I present you to Baron Domingo Hjortt of Cockspar, Retired Fifteenth Colonel of the Crimson Empire.”

  “Sir.” Sister Portolés bowed as best she could without risking her candle. A rivulet of wax arced across her eye, but she did not cry out. This old rooster looked just as puffed up as his broiled chick. “I pray for Sir Hjortt’s soul, and trust the remains and effects I returned to the Fifteenth safely found their way home to Cockspar.”

  “Let’s get on with this,” Baron Hjortt addressed Abbotess Cradofil. “I have no desire to speak to this creature.”

  “Perhaps, but Sister Portolés has something to tell you of your son,” said Abbotess Cradofil, those dead eyes of her cutting across Sister Portolés. “Don’t you?”

  “I lament the death of Sir Hjortt,” said Sister Portolés, but before she could stop herself the words came rushing out of their own accord. “I believe you would have had him die a hero, not a coward. Allmother forgive him.”

  Well, it was the truth, though the nobleman’s horrified expression confirmed that he had not come to the Imperial capital for such insight into Sir Efrain Hjortt’s final moments. Abbotess Cradofil’s slimy mouth pursed tight, and Sister Portolés silently apologized for the wildness in her bedeviled tongue. Perhaps it would have been better if they had just removed it altogether, as Abbotess Cradofil had always said.

  “I’ll watch you burn ere the moon next rises,” Baron Hjortt snarled, and Sister Portolés supposed he was right. She remembered the look that had appeared on his son’s face when she had not braved the burning terrace to save him, the hatred and fear and confusion… The familial resemblance was unmistakable. She wondered if she would die better. She couldn’t possibly die worse.

  “After all I’ve done for you, this is the tithe you offer,” Abbotess Cradofil murmured as she ushered Sister Portolés to the great white oak doors. No guards stood sentry here, the queen decreeing that any assassin was entitled to the same chance at her throne that she had once enjoyed. In twenty years of her rule, forty-seven contenders had breached this final portal, and forty-six skulls lined the archway, grinning down at the nobleman, the abbotess, and the anathema. The one missing skull supposedly belonged to a man unworthy of a death by the queen’s blade, a wastrel cast out to seek a more fitting tomb among the scavenging devils of the Star. “Fallen Mother heed me, Portolés, if you speak so freely before our pontiff, I will snap your neck myself.”

  “I praise your mercy, Superior, but I shall not accept it,” Sister Portolés heard herself reply, and marveled that sinning had apparently become something she did on reflex. Had the deviltry she had fought her whole life to smother come loose once she let Sir Hjortt die? Was the wickedness of the Deceiver stirring this mutiny in her breast? As much as she wanted to believe such excuses, in her soul Portolés knew that her love for sin was nothing new, that hard as she had fought against her base nature, transgression gave her more succor than obedience ever had.

  The Crimson Throne Room was built into the rim of the petrified volcano, a roofless half-moon of polished obsidian ending in a two-thousand-foot drop down to the gables and cupolas of the city beneath the castle. It was told in songs that the stars blazed hotter here than anywhere else in the world, even when the moon was full, as it was this night, and other than Sister Portolés’s candle no earthly light disturbed the chamber. She suspected that even had she a pair of pure eyes the room would seem bright as the flush of dawn.

  The Queen of Samoth, Keeper of the Crimson Empire, sprawled across a huge throne of carven red fire glass that erupted from the obsidian floor, the flowing lines and steep curls of the seat making Her Majesty appear to float atop a plume of blood. The Black Pope, Shepherdess of the Lost, sat stiffly beside her queen in a shorter, plainer throne, this one crafted of onyx and inlaid with thick silver chains. Both women were opulently enrobed, but the queen was barefoot. The doors swung shut and Sister Portolés’s candle guttered out. Three pairs of knees slipped to the hard floor, three heads bowed.

  “Your Majesty and Your Grace,” began Abbotess Cradofil, “I present unto you this worthy pilgrim, Sir Domingo Hjortt, Baron of Cockspar, Retired Fifteenth Colonel of the Crimson Empire, and the sister whom you seek, an anathema we have rehabilitated and given the name Portolés, for Saint—”

  “Rehabilitated, you say?” came a surprisingly high voice, and Sister Portolés peeked up, one-eyed from the wax she dared not wipe away, to see if her queen or her pontiff spoke. It was Pope Y’Homa III, Voice of the Allmother, now sitting straight up, the tip of her conical hat nearly, but not quite, as high as the jagged carnelian crown of the seated queen. “This devil-spawned witch had but one purpose in the life we built her, and you dare allege she is reformed, after what befell her charge? Small wonder my cardinals counsel me to raze the Dens and be done with this ill-guided quest of yours.”

  “Your Grace, a single transgressor—”

  “I did not call you here to debate theology.” The Black Pope’s pale sneer pushed through Sister Portolés’s robes, into a secret tenderness she had never believed existed in her breast. That she was a sinner she readily admitted, and she prayed for punishment, but to hear that her actions might reflect upon all her wretched brethren was a poison to her ner
ves, a brand to blister her very soul. “You have claimed, to myself and my uncle before me, that an anathema may serve but a single purpose: to put itself between danger and the righteous. To serve as shield, however sullied. To protect the clean. Yet here we have a monster that dares return to its post not with the living pureborn it swore to serve, but his blackened bones! And as if such a travesty were not crime enough, it wears the robes I have given it, mocking this very office. And you would lecture me on the difference between one and legion?”

  “Your Grace, I never meant to imply—” Abbotess Cradofil began.

  “I know well the difference between a single devil and an army of them, Cradofil—the latter currently enjoy every comfort of Diadem while all across the Star faithful pureborn go hungry and cold, and the former has aroused such disgust in our queen that it has been brought here, to befoul the most sacrosanct space in all of the Empire as we ponder its punishment.”

  The words scourged Sister Portolés far deeper than the physical lashes she had brought upon herself, and she silently wept. Doubt was her devil, forever goading her, and she had fed the beast as eagerly as a disobedient child slipping scraps to a forbidden puppy. She had doubted Sir Hjortt, and that doubt had made her feel befouled when she had delivered the order to exterminate that village, and fouler still when she had personally executed the five members of the cavalry who refused the will of their colonel. And after the slaughter, it was her doubt that had kept her on the edge of the flames at the mayoress’s house, it feeling just and good to watch Hjortt burning alive, after what he had ordered Portolés and the Fifteenth Cavalry to do…

  Ever since Kypck she had been deceiving herself, pretending that killing the villagers was the true crime and Hjortt the true criminal, Portolés an avenging angel of the Fallen Mother, but now she recognized just how deluded she had been. Her innate corruption always perverted the truth, sin tasting sweetest upon her tongue and goodness smacking of ash and lye, which was why she had let him die, and why she had told no one of what really happened that day. Instead, during every confession after the event she had cast his death not as the result of her inaction but as the inscrutable will of the Fallen Mother. She had almost convinced herself that it wasn’t a lie, not really, but of course it was, and of course the only sin that had been committed that day was her refusal to help the pureborn colonel who needed her aid. She remembered how he had thrashed in the chair he was bound to as the deck of the mayoress’s house burned around him, hurling insults and promises and prayers at Sister Portolés while she watched him roast. From the corner of her eye she saw Baron Hjortt shake with silent laughter or barely contained emotion at the pope’s condemnation of Portolés, and she would have whispered an apology to the grieving father had she not feared a cry would escape instead.