“Not like that. He already has a crossbow bolt sticking out of his leg, and no, the old man. I’ll speak to the boy later.”
Her face fell. “His Highness will forgive me if I say he is absolutely no fun.”
“I will not.”
She had the man brought over to them. Serefin guessed him to be the leader of the monastery. Did those have a title? Serefin wasn’t sure.
“Do you train all your people for war now?” Serefin asked pleasantly, resting his hand on his too-thin spell book. Before the man could answer, he held up his other hand, stopping him. “Forgive me, I should introduce myself, my name is Serefin Meleski, High Prince of Tranavia.”
“I am Father Alexei,” the man said. “And yes, even those not conscripted into the army receive some training. It’s necessary, wouldn’t you say?”
Maybe the tactic was necessary for Kalyazin, but the war had never breached Tranavia’s borders. Regardless, Serefin was surprised at the civility in the old man’s tone.
“A holy war that has raged for near a century calls for extreme measures,” Alexei continued.
“Yes, yes, we’re nasty heretics that need to be eradicated from the earth and you’re just doing what’s right,” Serefin said.
The priest merely shrugged. “Simple truth.”
Ostyia was tense at Serefin’s side. He shoved his hands into his pockets and smiled at the old man.
“But you have magic of your own, don’t you? Tell me, how many of your mages—what do you call them, clerics?—are hiding in Kalyazin? We know about the one here, don’t bother trying to protect her, she’ll be in our custody within the day.”
The old priest smiled. “They are called clerics, yes. I have no information that can aid you in this, young prince.”
Serefin frowned. He wished the man was patronizing him so he could at least work up the necessary righteous anger, but there was nothing of the sort in his voice.
He wasn’t going to press the point, not right now and not with the priest. The boy with the crossbow wound was the one who had shielded the cleric and helped her escape. He was the one to talk to.
Serefin directed a soldier to take the priest away.
“Do you want to question someone else?” Ostyia asked.
“No.” Serefin caught Kacper’s eye from where he was speaking with a mage nearby and waved him over. “Religious folk drink wine, correct?”
Ostyia shrugged.
“There are casks of wine in the cellar,” Kacper offered.
Serefin gave a quick nod. “Perfect. I want to be blind drunk before the night is out.”
4
NADEZHDA
LAPTEVA
Horz stole the stars and the heavens out from underneath Myesta’s control, and for that she has never forgiven him. For where can the moons rest if not the heavens?
—Codex of the Divine, 5:26
“It’s certainly not my fault you chose a child who sleeps so deeply. If she dies it will very much be your fault, not mine.”
Startled by bickering gods was not Nadya’s preferred method of being woken up. She rolled to her feet in the dark, moving automatically. It took her eyes a few seconds to catch up with the rest of her body.
Shut up!
It wasn’t wise to tell the gods to shut up, but it was too late now. A feeling of amused disdain flowed through her, but neither of the gods spoke again. She realized it was Horz, the god of the heavens and the stars, who had woken her. He had a tendency to be obnoxious but generally left Nadya alone, as a rule.
Usually only a single god communed with their chosen cleric. There once had been a cleric named Kseniya Mirokhina who was gifted with unnatural marksmanship by Devonya, the goddess of the hunt. And Veceslav had chosen a cleric of his own, long ago, but their name was lost to history, and he refused to talk about them. The recorded histories never spoke of clerics who could hear more than one god. That Nadya communed with the entire pantheon was a rarity the priests who trained her could not explain.
There was a chance older, more primordial gods existed, ones that had long since given up watch of the world and left it in the care of the others. But no one knew for sure. Of the twenty known gods, however, carvings and paintings depicted their human forms, though no one knew what they actually looked like. No cleric throughout history had ever looked upon the faces of the gods. No saint, nor priest.
Each had their own power and magic they could bestow upon Nadya, and while some were forthcoming, others were not. She had never spoken to the goddess of the moons, Myesta. She wasn’t even sure what manner of power the goddess would give, if she so chose.
And though she could commune with many gods, it was impossible to forget just who had chosen her for this fate: Marzenya, the goddess of death and magic, who expected complete dedication.
Indistinct voices murmured in the dark. She and Anna had found a secluded place within a copse of thick pine trees to set up their tent, but it no longer felt safe. Nadya slid a voryen from underneath her bedroll and nudged Anna awake.
She moved to the mouth of the tent, grasping at her beads, a prayer already forming on her lips, smoky symbols trailing from her mouth. She could see the blurry impressions of figures in the darkness, far off in the distance. It was hard to judge the number, two? Five? Ten? Her heart sped at the possibility that a company of Tranavians were already on her trail.
Anna drew up beside her. Nadya’s grip on her voryen tightened, but she kept still. If they hadn’t seen their tent yet, she could keep them from noticing it entirely.
But Anna’s hand clasped her forearm.
“Wait,” she whispered, her breath frosting out before her in the cold. She pointed to a dark spot just off to the side of the group.
Nadya pressed her thumb against Bozidarka’s bead and her eyesight sharpened until she could see as clearly as if it were day. It took effort to shove aside the immediate, paralyzing fear as her suspicions were confirmed and Tranavian uniforms became clear. It wasn’t a full company. In fact, they looked rather ragged. Perhaps they had split off and lost their way.
More interesting, though, was the boy with a crossbow silently aiming into the heart of the group.
“We can get away before they notice,” Anna said.
Nadya almost agreed, almost slipped her voryen back into its sheath, but just then, the boy fired and the trees erupted into chaos. Nadya wasn’t willing to use an innocent’s life as a distraction for her own cowardice. Not again.
Even as Anna protested, Nadya let a prayer form fully in her mind, hand clutching at Horz’s bead on her necklace and its constellation of stars. Symbols fell from her lips like glowing glimmers of smoke and every star in the sky winked out.
Well, that was more extreme than I intended, Nadya thought with a wince. I should’ve known better than to ask Horz for anything.
She could hear cursing as the world plunged into darkness. Anna sighed in exasperation beside her.
“Just stay back,” she hissed as she moved confidently through the dark.
“Nadya…” Anna’s groan was soft.
It took more focus to send a third prayer to Bozetjeh. It was hard to catch Bozetjeh on a good day; the god of speed was notoriously slow to answer prayers. But she managed to snag his attention and received a spell allowing her to move as fast as the vicious Kalyazin wind.