Free House of the Wolf (Book Three of the Phoenix Legacy) by M.K. Wren Page B

the War of the Twin Planets? The Concord is staggering, fighting with every available resource to save Mars. What will be left to join the battle to save Centauri? What except a shattered remnant of its vaunted fleets? And we will strike like a storm, without warning. We will rouse the silent, enchained masses, and they will swell our ranks by thousands, by millions! The people of Centauri will rise up and say to the proud Lords of the Concord—
no more
! We will live in your chains no more! We will set ourselves free, and the Republic will live again! The Peladeen did not die! Freedom did not die! Freedom is the Phoenix, the immortal bird rising from the ashes of death! The Republic of the Peladeen lives; it lives in victory!”
    He lifted his arms, calling up the thunder of straining voices, turning slowly to encompass them in the beatitude of his outstretched hands, his head thrown back, flame-hued hair seemingly tossed in the storm wind.
    And he shouted, “
Victory
!”
    They took up the word hungrily, letting it give shape to their formless clamor, and as each voice found the word, it became a rolling, rhythmic tide, the three syllables pounding out in crashing cadences, drowning everything except that one word, drowning even Predis Ussher’s unleashed laughter.
    “
Victory! . . . Victory! . . . Victory! . . . Victory
! . . .”

6.
    The white beads slipped through her fingers, one by one, her lips moved, tolling the silent minutes with prayers.
    Val Severin knelt in the first row of pews, and before her the chapel altar vanished into distanced shadows; tiers of gilt saints and seraphim winged into the hallowed darkness that swallowed up the light of the altar candles. There wasn’t even enough light to trace the interlaced arches to their culmination above her, and in the cavernous spaces meant to hold the echoes of the orchestral organ, there was no sound except the whispers of her penances.
    Her knees ached unmercifully against the stone floor, and yet she wondered sometimes if she didn’t unconsciously seek these hours of prayer penances. The solitude in this chapel was different from that of her small room; less constricting spatially, at least.
    And easier. Face it, she admonished herself bitterly, in that room the transceiver was waiting, and she never thought she’d dread her few nocturnal minutes with Jael, but she did now, because every call meant admitting another day of failure.
    I’m slipping, brother, slipping over the edge. Hold on to me. For the God’s sake, give me your hand. . . .
    Forty days and nights behind these walls, twenty-six since Sister Betha’s death, since Alex Ransom’s surrender to pain and grief. And twenty-two until Concord Day. She tolled the days with her prayers, pale, lightless beads, moving one by one through her fingers, and with every day she felt herself slipping nearer the edge of some incomprehensible abyss—
    “Sister Alexandra?”
    The voice took her breath. She hadn’t heard anyone approaching. In all this huge silence, not a sound had reached her mind.
    Sister Herma. That precise, clipped inflection was unmistakable. She stood in the aisle at the end of the pew. Val looked up at her, wondering as she always did what kind of face hid behind that veil.
    “Yes, Sister Herma?”
    “Did you know it’s past curfew?”
    I
am
slipping, Val thought distractedly. She hadn’t even heard the chapel chimes ringing the curfew hour.
    “No . . . I didn’t realize . . .”
    “I think you’ve done penance enough to satisfy the All-God, my dear. You’d best get to bed now.”
    Val rose, teeth set against the pain in her knees. At the aisle, she genuflected toward the altar, touching the first two fingers of her right hand to her forehead, then her heart, executing every movement carefully with Sister Herma looking on. Then she turned and nodded respectfully.
    “Good night, Sister Henna. Lord bless.”
    “Good night.” A hesitation just long enough for Val to take