My throat clenched closed, but I forced myself to remain calm. If Alba felt I was truly threatened, I reasoned, she would have sent the girl to tell me to run.
I collected myself and joined the two in Alba’s private study, a loft bathed in late setting sunlight over the communal reading room of the library. Four chairs sat in a circle. I sat next to Alba, leaving a space between Kierk and me.
“In the Galatine, yes?” Kierk’s courtesy was rote and unsympathetic.
“Please,” I replied, composure buttered thin over raw nerves.
Kierk spoke to me, though he barely met my eyes. “It is no secret, miss, that you are a purveyor of sacrilege.” Alba’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “Such practices are, I have no doubt you are aware, forbidden here.”
He waited for me to reply. I didn’t deign to answer. Alba nodded, ever so slightly—let him spool out his speech without any admissions, suggestions, or evidence from us.
He sighed. Gold rings on his middle and smallest fingers glinted; one held a ruby the size of my thumbnail. “Forbidden, and yet you are given safe refuge here. Why, Sastra-set?” He turned abruptly to Alba.
“The rules of our order are clear, and the law does not interfere with sacred rules.”
“Ah. Yes. But I did not ask if she had invoked sanctuary here. I asked why.” He glanced at me. “Perhaps how is the more apt in Galatine—how is it that she came to seek sanctuary here?”
“I made Sophie’s acquaintance in West Serafe, at the summit,” Alba answered deliberately. “When the civil war broke out in Galitha, she was stranded without a safe place to return, and so I—”
“Her, without a place?” He tutted softly. “The betrothed of the Rebel Prince, the sister of the Midwinter Quill?” I had a feeling these nicknames were common in Kvyset; spoken in Galatine, they made those closest to me sound like characters in an old legend.
“It was not so simple to return,” I replied quietly. Kierk looked at me, surprised that I finally spoke. Surprised, or feigning interest well. “We feared capture if we returned.”
“Yet your betrothed and your brother did return,” he pressed.
“And were nearly captured,” I retorted. “We decided—it was better that I wait somewhere safe.”
“So you sought sanctuary here, where you no doubt were apprised that your… aberrant practice would not be welcome.”
“Are you accusing Sophie of something?” Alba said.
“As a matter of course,” he said, drawing something thin and square from his pocket, “yes.” He unfolded a length of wool and deposited a gray clay tablet on his knee.
Tantia’s tablet.
I maintained a neutral face, as best I could. Practice with the Galatine nobility and at the summit had trained me to hide my reactions. But how would we play this?
To my relieved surprise, Alba laughed. “Kierk, really. The woman’s reputation precedes her—does she make clay tablets?” She had her strategy well in hand already.
“I do not know what manner her perversion takes.”
“She’s a seamstress, you old bear. A seamstress. Cloth and needle and thread.”
“But this is a charm tablet. Or a curse tablet,” he added, the word darkening his voice.
“Yes, it appears to be,” I said. “May I see it?” I asked, hedging. The thin clay was inscribed with Kvys lettering, the words for Joy and Felicity marked in letters marred by shaking hands. I looked up at Alba, making my play. “I’m afraid I can’t read it.”
“Let me see that,” Alba said. “Of course you can’t—it’s written in Kvys. Kierk, she can barely speak Kvys.”
“So you say.”
“Try her,” Alba countered. “No—this must have been a cruel joke, someone sending you here on this pretense—”
“No joke,” he said, taking the tablet back. “This came from your house, Alba. Someone here has been tampering with the dark arts.” I held back a derisive snort—the tablet was a charm, imbued with light, and a badly done one at that. The precise opposite of dark anything, and it sure as the sun wasn’t art.
“I’ll make a full investigation. It is possible,” she said with a resigned sigh, “that Sophie’s presence here caused some… curiosity.” She pursed her lips. I wanted to ask the question, too, but I knew she was weighing the risk even as she voiced it. “How did you come by it?”
“One of your servants loyal to the faith,” he said.
“I would be remiss if I did not reward—”
“Do I look a fool?” Kierk snapped.
“I won’t answer that,” Alba said with a smile so sunny it cast a shadow. “Now you will stay for berry pudding, won’t you?”
He blustered out of the study. I opened my mouth to speak, but Alba shook her head. Someone—many someones—might be listening. Loyal servants to the faith.
While Kierk made free with the pudding in the common dining room, Alba led me to the kitchen gardens. Fragrant herbs in lush rows and tangles of squash and pumpkin vines filled the space between the kitchen and the wall bordering the convent.
“What I would give to know who tattled to the Assembly Council,” she said, following florid Kvys cursing. “It couldn’t be one of the novices, one of the underlings. It must be someone who has access—pah.”
“Does it matter who?”
“No, it matters why. Some blind devotee, that’s not so dangerous. Not in the long-term, that is. Too late for us to get out of it so easily. Kierk has his eye on us now, we’ll have to leave for Fen sooner rather than later. I’d hoped to cement these agreements first, and for you to make more progress with—yes.” She pinched her mouth closed. “You’re getting your way after all, leaving sooner than I had planned.”
“Will he try to prevent our leaving? Does he know, do you think? That we’re working with Fen?”
“I’m sure he knows, or could guess, that Sophie Balstrade is in fact still working to help her beloved Rebel Prince of Galitha.” She sighed. “It’s not subtle. But he can’t prevent our leaving, even if he wanted to.”
“Who would prefer a Royalist victory here? I thought Kvyset stood to gain from a new Galatine government.”
“Kvyset does. But the individual houses—the individual houses are another story from the country as a whole. If Kierk suspects that my house would be more favored, that irks him. If he suspects that my house may be seeding power in high places to maneuver into a more influential position among the orders, that concerns him. And if Kierk thinks we may soon have a weapon he can’t match? He’s shitting himself.”
“I thought you religious types would be more… pacific.”
Alba snorted. “All to the glory of the Creator, but the Creator has been silenced by men like Kierk far too long.”
And if your house rises, so do you, I thought.
Alba ran her hand through some waist-high rosemary. “Have to get this in soon, before the frost nips it.” She snapped the tip of one stalk off and rolled it between her fingers. “And we shan’t be here. We must leave before Kierk can make any move to detain us. We will leave tomorrow for Fen.”