“Ain’t you got nothing better to do?”
“Anskar’s practicing his metalwork skills,” Orix said, “so that when he fails the trials he’ll be able to find work in a Niyandrian forge.”
“I won’t fail,” Anskar said. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t work for a Niyandrian. They don’t know the first thing about metal crafting. I’d sooner work for the nomads of the Jargalan Desert.” He’d been studying their techniques in his spare time. The Jargalans knew how to forge.
“They’d make a slave of you,” Naul said. “And I ain’t talking about hard labor neither.”
“What’s that supposed to—?”
The chair on Anskar’s right scraped. He looked to see who it was—and groaned.
“Oh, Anskar. Are you really so naïve?” Sareya said. “Slaves that don’t work?” She mimicked Anskar’s tone, and the others chuckled. “Whatever could that mean?”
Anskar met her gaze before looking away. She’d dyed red streaks in her hair, which highlighted her cat’s eyes.
Sareya lowered herself into her chair and gazed around the hall as if looking for someone more interesting to talk to. She was dressed like the rest of the novices, except the ties of her loose-fitting white shirt weren’t laced up all the way. Anskar was drawn briefly to the swell of her breasts, then quickly dipped his head and looked away. He made a mental image of a sword, the symbol of the Warrior aspect of the Five, which was said to cut passion dead. It didn’t work, and he felt heat rise to his cheeks.
Sareya pressed in close and whispered, “Am I making you nervous, half-blood?” Her breath smelled of fresh mint from the leaves she was always chewing.
Anskar’s fists clenched. “For the last time, I am not a half-blood.”
“Of course you’d deny it,” Sareya said. “I would too, if it meant accepting my Niyandrian mother was raped by a knight of the Order of Eternal Violence.”
“Vigilance!” Anskar said. “And she wasn’t raped.”
“And you know that how?”
Anskar had no answer for that. He just knew.
“But she was still Niyandrian,” Sareya said. “Or your father was. Don’t be angry about it. It’s what makes us close.”
“We are not close.”
As if to prove him wrong, Sareya leaned toward him and ran a hand through her silky black hair. Anskar caught a whiff of something at once floral and musky.
“Is that perfume?” he said, waving his hand in front of his nose and faking a cough. If it was, she was going to be in trouble. According to the statutes of the Order, the wearing of scent was lascivious.
“Brother Tion made it for me. He’s not such a stick in the mud as some of the other healers. Tell me you like it.”
Anskar felt the heat return to his cheeks and looked away. He closed his eyes the better to picture the Warrior’s sword. Still it didn’t work.
“Are you thinking of me?” Sareya asked.
“I’m praying.”
Naul snorted.
“For success in the trials?” Sareya asked.
Anskar grunted in affirmation. It somehow lessened the lie if he didn’t verbalize it. He should be petitioning for the god’s aid in the trials, rather than trying to avoid thinking about what lay beneath Sareya’s shirt. No one succeeded in anything unless the Five willed it.
“Say one for me,” Sareya said.
“Say it yourself.”
She chuckled, then slipped her hand under the table and touched between his legs.
Anskar slapped her wrist away so hard she shrieked.
Silence descended upon the hall, and Sareya lowered her eyes to the table, embarrassed. More than embarrassed, Anskar saw from the curl of her lips. She was smarting. He shouldn’t have struck her, but she’d gone too far this time.
He swallowed and looked at the Seneschal to see how he would react. Vihtor met his gaze for an instant, then looked down into his half-empty wine glass.
“You all right?” Orix asked Sareya.
“No,” she said, fixing her unnerving eyes on Anskar. “I am not all right. I was just teasing, and this idiot struck me.” She made a show of rubbing her wrist. “Is that how it started between your father and mother, half-blood?”
Anskar didn’t rise to the bait. He was all too aware of the disapproving eyes around the dining hall watching him. The flush on his cheeks was no longer the bloom of arousal, but embarrassment for disturbing the Seneschal and his knights at their meal; shame for lashing out at a peer. For whatever else she was, Sareya was a fellow novice of the Order of Eternal Vigilance, a sister in arms.
Naul mouthed, “You shouldn’t have done that.” It sounded like a threat.
Anskar acknowledged Naul’s comment with a nod, then rose to his feet. Bowing stiffly from the waist, he said, “I’m sorry, Sareya. I shouldn’t have lost control like that.” He offered his hand for her acceptance.
With a haughty tilt of her chin, Sareya sat up straight in her chair and looked down the length of the table, ignoring him.
Cutlery once more began to clink and clatter on plates and bowls, and little by little the hubbub in the hall resumed. Anskar took his seat again. His palms were damp, and he wiped them on his pants.
At Anskar’s left, Blosius—the son of a noble family from Sansor in Kaile—whispered, “She’ll get over it.”
It was typical of Blosius, who never took anything seriously. Anskar supposed it came from being the heir to vast wealth.
“Besides,” Blosius added, looking toward the door into the kitchens, “there are more important things to consider. Food’s coming!”
“Thank the Five,” Anskar muttered under his breath.
Sareya seemed to have forgotten their spat. She was laughing and joking with the girl to her right—Niv Allund, another Niyandrian who had been brought to the Burg at around the same time as Sareya.
Anskar’s mouth watered as the servants brought out trolleys stacked with covered dishes and set them in front of the novices. Despite their hunger, no one dared to remove the pewter lids covering the plates.
The Seneschal rapped his fork against his wine glass, and the room stilled once more as Brother Tion, tonsured and robed in the Healer’s white, and four priests of the other aspects processed solemnly into the hall.
Each stood beside one of the five braziers at the center, and each took turns to bestow their blessings and offer prayers for the novices’ success at tomorrow’s trials: Tion first; then Sister Haldyca, who stood for the Mother; then a decrepit old man whom Anskar hadn’t seen before—presumably the Elder’s representative.
The old man’s eyes were milky with cataracts, and the staff in his hand seemed there to keep him upright rather than for ceremony. Over threadbare pants and a woolen jerkin, he wore a moth-eaten coat with only one of its brass buttons remaining. It was difficult to hear his blessing as his voice was so rasping and thin. He rambled on until Vihtor Ulnar cleared his throat. Brother Tion ushered the old priest to one side and fetched him a chair.
All the while, the food was getting cold. Anskar glanced at the covered plate in front of him, and Orix grimaced as if he were in pain.
Beof Harril was next, the priest of the Warrior, a bearded ogre of a man who held a monstrous bejeweled mace in his shovel-like hand. Beof was the only one of the Five priests to wear armor—a breastplate of mirror-bright steel upon which was embossed a sword. Like all Beof’s speeches, his prayer was brief and brutal, full of intimations of blood.