“I come to see Quenti,” I tell her in answer, once she’s reached the bottom of the rickety stairs. “I must speak with him privately.”
She hesitates, giving me the time to examine her more closely. She looks a few years older than I am, and wears the braids of a married riverstrider, black hair woven through with the iridescent blue-and-copper plumage of the crested flame-tail. Those feathers, and the bright bangles at wrist and ankle, identify her as a member of the same clan as Quenti. Olive skin at the neckline of her tunic darkens at her shoulders, telling of hours spent on the water under the sun, and muscle along the arm against the railing tells me she is more accustomed to river work than market politics.
The silence stretches, and I see that strong arm twitch. Realization hits me: she doesn’t know how to be around me. She is frozen between a desire to avoid offense and a fear of disappointing me.
I draw a breath, trying to ignore the abrupt sting of self-consciousness that needles at the back of my mind, whispering: Did you expect her to snap to attention? You’ve been too long in the shelter of guards and priests… .
“What is your name?” I ask her, letting go of the air of command that took me years to cultivate.
“Hiret, Lady.” She swallows. “I am Quenti’s niece. That is my sister, Didyet.” She tilts her head without looking—the girl who’d remained at the top of the stairs to watch is still there, but now that I look more closely, she is not as young as I’d first thought. Younger than me, but not by much.
“Really?” I don’t have to feign friendly delight. “I knew your mother when I lived among the riverfolk. I remember when ‘Auntie’ traveled with Quenti for a season. She made pirrackas.” My memory of the woman is hazy—most of them are, before the temple—but the smell of fried dough and the dangerous lavalike ooze of hot honey, I remember with crystal clarity.
Hiret’s eyes widen. Her right cheek bears a cluster of beauty marks just under the eye, and her quick smile makes them dance. “That would have been years ago—the last season she was here, I was still learning to walk the river. It would have been before …” She halts, the smile vanishing, her uncertainty returning.
“Before I was called to divinity,” I finish for her, more used to speaking of those dark years between my time and that of the previous vessel of the divine. “Your uncle was kind to me then, when I was no one—as he has always been since. I am sorry if I frightened you, Hiret—but I really must speak to him. I must ask him about the use of a boat, and the loan of a few of your people. I must go on a pilgrimage, and soon.”
Hiret glances past me, picking up on my urgency at the same time as she realizes I am not accompanied by the half-dozen guards that usually follow me. A flicker of recognition passes between us then, a hint of the girl in her recognizing the one in me, who I keep hidden beneath the crown and the robes. “My uncle is ill,” she whispers.
“Ill?” My chest tightens, for her lowered voice tells me it is not a passing cough. “What—”
“Mist.” Hiret looks away, up at the stairs and past her silent sister, as if she might stretch and bend her gaze along the cramped corridor and into the room her uncle occupies. The movement very nearly conceals the grief in her sharp, expressive features. “His ankles swell these days, and he was soothing them in the river mud when a storm rose quickly from the forest-sea.”
“Is he … ?” In my mind’s eye, I’m staring at the mist-touched man singing songs of fishes, and trying to imagine my old friend in his place.
“His mind is quick as ever. But … come.”
Hiret turns and leads the way up the rickety stairs, shooing irritably at Didyet as she reaches the top. I would know her even if Hiret had not made the introduction, for Didyet’s face is a softer, rounder copy of her sister’s, though she has no constellation of beauty marks on her cheek and her unbraided hair stands thick and defiant in a half halo about her head.
The girl returns my gaze with a stare of her own, showing me another way she is not like her sister—the set of her mouth is sullen and tight. Angry.
“What can she do about it?” Didyet mutters, as if in confidence to Hiret, though plenty loud enough for me to hear. She does not move from her spot, barring my way, since I can’t brush past her. “She can’t stop the mist-storms. She can’t heal the mist-touched. She isn’t even really the—”
“Didyet!” her older sister snaps, cutting her off with such vehemence and horror that the younger girl stops mid-word, a flicker of fear showing through her bravado.
Hiret stands in stricken silence, so appalled by the blasphemy her sister nearly spoke that she has to catch her breath before speaking. “You will not show yourself again while the Divine One is here, do you understand?” Her voice is low and quiet, but carrying such ominous promise and authority that I almost take a step toward the far bunks myself. “Go and tell the other children they must sit quiet in their rooms or there will be no time to visit the market this afternoon.”
Didyet stiffens, hearing the tiny emphasis on other children in a way only someone chafing against the delay between childhood and independence could. But her sister’s voice, it seems, is more intimidating than the robe and staff of a goddess—she only flickers a glance from Hiret, to me, and back again, then turns to flee toward a wobbly ladder staircase leading up. Only when she begins to climb do I notice that her ankles aren’t decorated with the bright beads and bangles of her clan. Instead, she wears only a single strip of cloth, tied neatly into a gray anklet.
My head is spinning—She is so young; how could she be a Graycloak already?
Hiret lets her breath out in a rush and turns to face me, an angry—or embarrassed—flush visible despite her sun-browned cheeks. “Divine One, I—”
“It’s all right,” I murmur, forgetting my lessons in diction, too focused on not letting myself think about that gray anklet. “Hiret, when did your mother pass beneath the river?”
“She …” Surprise overtakes her dismay. “It will be ten years, come the Feast of the Dying.”
“May she walk lightly,” I murmur, invoking the brief beginning of my blessing. Grief, I think distantly. Didyet lost her mother, and that is why she turns to the Graycloaks—why she looks for someone to blame.
“How did you … ?” Hiret’s eyes have gone from me to my staff, brow furrowed, as if she half believes my magic might allow me to read her mind—though such a thing is impossible.
“You have been looking after your sister for some time,” I tell her, a smile in my voice if not on my face. “Only mothers know that particular voice.”
And high priests, I think uneasily, imagining Daoman’s reaction to finding me missing and my guards unaware.
Hiret’s lips flicker in an answering smile, then fade. “Come. He is just here.”
She draws aside a curtain on one of the doorways and then steps away, bowing her head, leaving me room to slip inside with no risk of touching her. I nod—and then my breath stops when I see the man lying in the cot before me.
Sores travel up from the edge of the blanket to the crown of his head, the already-thinning hair there reduced to patches. His expression is drawn in pain even while he sleeps, and his breathing is shallow and irregular. A flash of him as I last saw him—round face wreathed by wrinkles and laughter lines—cuts across my eyes, and I have to swallow the bile rising in my throat before my vision clears.