Free The Red Lily Crown by Elizabeth Loupas Page A

Steady. Level.
    She dipped up another ladleful of water and poured it gently around the edges of the circle of water already in the sieve. It held.
    The room seemed to shrink in size. It became round, like the sieve, with a straight line running through it. She added another ladleful of water, and another, keeping the sieve level, willing her hands to be steady.
    The shining flat circle of liquid touched the sieve’s silver rim.
    She put the ladle down and curved her right hand very gently around the frame of the sieve. Steadied it. Now. Walk. Slow. Easy. One step at a time, keeping the sieve level. Watch the surface of the water inside—water inside a sieve! She was amazed that it was actually happening—so it did not tilt or ripple in the slightest. Walk around the silver table—left, forward, right, forward. Three steps up. Careful, so careful.
    She did not dare look down, but she could feel the heat of the fire beneath the golden grate. It licked at her bare toes.
    â€œYou must walk over the grate,” the prince said. “It is the final test.”
    Slowly, very slowly, Chiara stretched out her arms, with the sieve in her hands. She looked at Magister Ruanno; he smiled and nodded slightly. Then she shifted her gaze to the prince’s face, looked straight into his dark eyes, and deliberately shook the sieve. The water cascaded down and she heard the hiss as it hit the hot metal grate, drenched the coals, drowned the fire. The fumes stung her eyes. Her hands, her whole body, shook with triumph. Without looking down she stepped on the grate—hot, yes, but not enough to burn if she stepped quickly—and crossed over it.
    â€œI walked across your golden grate,” she said. Her voice did not sound like her own at all. “And carried water in your silver sieve. I drank your black water and held it inside me and hold it still. Your red ribbon measured my neck perfectly, down to the last hairsbreadth. Never dare doubt that I’m a virgin, pure and untouched, worthy to be your
soror mystica
.”
    She walked down the three steps and cast the sieve to the floor at the prince’s feet. It made a clanging metallic sound on the stones, flipped over and rolled a few feet. She didn’t care if it was dented, or what happened to it. She didn’t care that she was naked, with her hair loose down her back. She didn’t kneel, but stood straight and proud.
    For a moment, there was absolute silence.
    Then the prince rose from his throne. “You have passed through the tests, Chiara Nerini,” he said. “Magister Ruanno, the habit.”
    The foreigner picked up a bundle of cloth, neatly folded. It was the creamy color of undyed wool. He shook it out to reveal a simple robe, nothing more than a wide, uncut and unsewn length of cloth with an opening in the center for her head to go through.
    â€œGather up your hair,” he said.
    She reached back and pulled the heavy length of her hair forward.
    He dropped the cloth over her shoulders. It fell straight to the floor, front and back; when she threw her hair back and stretched out her arms, she found it was wide enough to reach her fingertips on either side. Wool, yes, but it wasn’t coarse and scratchy like the clothing she was used to. It was smooth and fine and fell in wide, graceful folds.
    The prince nodded. He looked pleased.
    â€œNow,” he said, “you must vow to remain a virgin while you are in my service, upon pain of death. Magister Ruanno, the relic.”
    Relic? Pain of death? All Chiara wanted was a chance to slip behind the black curtain, and now there was a relic?
    Magister Ruanno stepped over to one of the bookcases on a side wall, then returned with a reliquary made of carved rock crystal in the form of a scallop shell, with a frame of gold and a clasp of gold and pearls and blue jewels—blue, the Holy Virgin’s color. Inside the shell, folded over and over upon itself, was a strip of