Free Essalieyan Chronicles 04 - The Weapon by Michelle West

“But—”
     
“Amalyn. You are barely out of their ranks; they know you, and will trust your reassurances.”
“And if I have none to give?” “Find them.”
Amalyn’s eyes closed. It was a type of surrender. She backed her way out of the nave, toward the door that led to the rooms that housed the novices who served the Mother. They were crowded now. Every person that the temple could save, they had—and proof of it could be found in the cramped quarters the Priests and the Novitiates shared.
“You wouldn’t be the only Daughter of the Mother that the Blood Baron has killed—”
     
“You will not use that title ,” she said, her voice as cold and severe as any autocratic noble’s. “If it is my time, it is my time.”
“We can’t afford to lose you—” Her words died as Amalyn struggled not to say what they all knew: There was no other god-born child in the temple.
“Yes,” the Mother’s Daughter replied quietly. “We can. But we cannot afford to lose the cathedral; we cannot afford to have the name of the Mother silenced across the lands.” She hesitated and then added, in a more gentle voice, “We serve those who have no other hope. And because we have obeyed the rule of our Baron, Lord Halloran Breton, we are the only church
that has not been destroyed or driven underground. Our responsibilities are to those who have no value to the Baron. And because we can heal, child, we have value.”
“Our oaths,” Amalyn whispered.
     
“Oh, yes. If the Baron kills any of those who serve the Mother at my command, I will close the healerie to his entire clan. But if that happens,” she added, with just a hint of fear, “you must be ready to flee; if we serve no purpose, we will become as the others.”
“But you could flee now —”
     
“Hush, child. The Baron sent word that he wished an audience; it is not his way to be so tactful when he desires a death. I am content to wait upon his command.” Amalyn left. Only when the door swung shut behind her did the oldest of the Priests bow.
“Iain,” the Mother’s Daughter said, granting permission to speak.
     
“Why has your agreement with the Baron never extended to your own life?” He said this with quiet respect—and managed to imply several decades’ worth of reproach in the almost
     

uninflected statement. He was good at that.
     
She shrugged. “It’s enough to protect those who serve.” And then she exhaled. “Not even the Baron can be offered affront without exacting a public price, and what better victim as balm to his pride than the Mother’s Daughter herself?
“Let the temple stand,” she added softly.
     
No one was certain whether or not it was a prayer.
     
* * *
     
Baron Halloran Breton was, in these times, a man to be respected. Of the Barons, he alone had managed to subdue his neighbors, binding them in ways that she did not care to imagine to his cause. And his cause?
He had not yet named himself King. But even casual analysis of the geography of his campaigns made clear that he desired a kingdom; he was first among equals, if he held any man to be his equal.
He was not a handsome man. This much was a known fact. But he might have been, had the cast of his expression been less forbidding. He was tall, and he wore his height as if it were a mantle. Age had not lessened him; it had broadened his shoulders and crafted lines across his face that made clear he was a man of little humor.
He traveled with four guards.
     
It was one third of even the most minimal number that she had seen him use before, and this gave the Mother’s Daughter pause. But not so much pause that she did not bow. The Priests and Priestesses who served her chose the more expedient gesture of obeisance; it was certainly the one with which he was most familiar. They adorned the floor, the robes across their supine backs a spill of thick cloth. A cloth not so fine as his, and not so stained by travel.
“Is this hall secure?” he asked as she