A Devoran prophecy somewhere probably mentioned it.
Kihrin hadn’t noticed the table had fallen silent until Janel spoke. “The worst part is it wasn’t always awful. Sometimes Xaltorath was … nice. I never knew which way it would go as a child. If she’d present herself as the demon or something passing for human.” She shrugged and picked at the food she’d been eating earlier. “When I realized she couldn’t control me, I left. I started destroying demons, but apparently, that had been her design all along.”
Kihrin made a sympathetic noise. Looking back, his childhood was happy. Full of crime, true, but also full of song. By comparison, he had no idea how Janel could even form coherent sentences.
Their eyes met again.
Kihrin said, “I’d give a lot to understand what Xaltorath’s angle in all this is. I always assumed it involved trying to summon more demons, but now I wonder. What’s their game?” He pointed his spoon at Janel.
“I don’t know,” she replied, “but I agree. Why didn’t she kill me when I was a child? Why did she attack you? I’ve never made sense of her motives.” Janel shrugged.
“May I tell this next part?” Brother Qown asked.
Kihrin shifted. He’d forgotten their chaperone.
“Please.”
Qown’s Turn. Mereina Castle, Barsine Banner, Jorat, Quur.
When Brother Qown joined Dorna in the kitchens the next morning, the Vishai priest’s eyes were sunken and bloodshot. He groaned as he slid into a chair.
“Didn’t sleep well?” Mare Dorna asked him.
“Why must everyone sleep on the floor?” Brother Qown whined. “Haven’t you people heard of beds?”
Dorna was taken aback. “We have beds. What were you napping on last night?”
“Pillows,” said Brother Qown. “And rushes and cushions. None of which are an actual bed. And the liveryman I slept next to snored. I’m surprised the noise didn’t wake you. He threw elbows too.”
“Ah, you have to nudge ’em a little when they do that.” She gave him a curious look. “You mean everyone where you come from sleeps in separate rooms? How high and mighty. Here, only noble types do that. Rest of the house sleeps together, the way the gods intended.”
“Or don’t sleep at all,” Brother Qown bemoaned.
“If you find yourself the right partner…” Mare Dorna winked at him.
“Oh stars, that’s not what I meant.” He’d been propositioned the night before too. When he’d refused her, the woman had taken no offense at all. She’d said if Brother Qown preferred to run with stallions, she knew just the man. Indeed, she would’ve matched Qown up with a male herald before the evening finished, if Qown hadn’t told her no. “But at least tell me you look for some privacy for that.”
“For what?” She was all wide-eyed innocence.
“I should have gone back to the Temple of Light when I had the chance,” he said.
“I’ve always found the best thing for a good night’s sleep is finding yourself the right bed warmer. Then the elbows don’t matter so much.”
“Does vow of celibacy mean nothing to you?”
She stared at him, bemused.
Brother Qown reminded himself to stop asking questions to which he knew the answers.
“So you don’t run at all, then?”
“No!” He claimed a bowl and set it down more forcefully than proper.
“Then just say so. Ain’t no shame in it.”
“I belong to a monastic order, Mare Dorna. We take a vow. Physical pleasure is a distraction from our contemplation of divine mysteries.”
The staff was largely absent as they busied themselves preparing the day’s tournament feast. This evidently involved a great many different ways of roasting fruits, vegetables, and game—far more methods than Qown found familiar—most of which was conducted outside. No one had really protested Dorna staking out a corner of the kitchen.
Someone in the castle’s kitchen had left a large pot of porridge to cook over the fire, but it didn’t smell like rice. He scooped what looked like oats into his bowl. Barley? Probably barley.
“Ain’t food a pleasure?” Dorna dribbled red chili sauce over her porridge and added pickled vegetables to her serving.
“Food’s purpose is to fortify and sustain. But what is that?” Brother Qown pointed.
“This?” She held up the lacy shape. “Lotus. You know, you ain’t supposed to eat your porridge plain.” She picked up several bowls on the table and started dumping portions into Brother Qown’s bowl. “Lotus, ginger, cabbage—”
“That’s not cabbage.”
“Course it is. Fermented dor beans, fenis root, pepperleaf, and pickled sour apple. Now throw pepper sauce on top—”
“Dorna, please—” Brother Qown tried to interrupt, but she paid no attention to him.
She handed him the bowl. “Now that’s a proper breakfast. I don’t know what you people cook out west, but it must be boring as dirt.”
“No, not at all. Our cuisine is excellent. I would be happy to prepare a dish—”
“You were going to eat your porridge naked. No thanks.” She returned to her own meal. “Anyway, your whole ‘vow of celery’ sounds stupid, if you ask me. If you don’t want to run, fine, but people forcing you to promise you won’t run? Acting like running’s a sin? Ain’t right.”
Brother Qown inhaled. Losing his temper wouldn’t help his cause. “I appreciate you noticing I didn’t ask you. Besides, it’s not about engaging in carnal relations. We live a simple life to fulfill our spiritual needs and escape the chains of our physical forms.”
Dorna stared. “Our count ‘escapes the chains of her physical form’ every night. I don’t think she’d agree it’s so wonderful.”
“That’s not what I mean—” He paused as Count Janel entered the kitchen. She looked grim.
“How did you sleep, Count?” Brother Qown asked.
“Like the dead.” She pointed to Dorna’s porridge. “Is there any more left?”
“Oh aye, colt.” Dorna fetched another dish and filled it from the cauldron.
Count Janel also added vegetables and pepper sauce to her portion.
Brother Qown thought the remaining cook still using the kitchen would faint when she saw the visiting count plunk herself down on a bench and eat. The cook didn’t dare tell the noblewoman to leave. She did, however, hover around the count like a wren fretting over a raven too near her nest.
When Count Janel noticed, she stood. “Walk with me,” she said to Dorna and Brother Qown. She took the porridge with her.
No one tried to stop the trio from leaving the kitchen or walking out onto the castle walls. Brother Qown suspected people would have objected—soldiers or the like—but Janel was a visiting count. She wasn’t Tamin’s direct liege, but the title still meant something. She could wander freely as long as she didn’t stray into private areas.
“Is anything wrong?” Brother Qown asked. The noblewoman wore a dour expression, extreme even by her own dour standards.