Chapter 69 Seventy two
“They tried to bind me,” Sienna said.
“They succeeded,” the Priestess said, not unkindly. “And you burned the ropes. They will remember in their bones if not their mouths.”
“Tell me how to stand,” Sienna said, sardonic through the weariness. “Tell me where to put my courage so it doesn’t offend the goddess.”
“Put it in your throat,” the Priestess said. “Most people swallow it. That is why their voices come out small.”
Sienna laughed once, brief and colorless. “You like me.”
“I like that you do not lie to yourself,” the Priestess said. “And you learn quickly.”
“Flattery,” Sienna said. “You want something from me.”
“I want you alive,” the Priestess said simply. “And I want this kingdom not to be fed to a story that decided itself centuries ago.”
Sienna tilted her head. “You have a history with her,” she said. “I hear it under your vowels.”
“She made me a promise,” the Priestess said, eyes not moving from the moon. “She did not keep it. She keeps very few.”
“Tell me,” Sienna said.
The Priestess looked at her at last, and for a moment the woman under the titles stood there, younger and angrier and so faithful she had almost died of it. “I asked her to leave me out of love stories,” she said. “She said she could not. They are the only engines that move the old machines.”
“Engines,” Sienna repeated, the metal taste of the word giving her mouth a different bitterness. “We will build a new one.”
“You cannot build and bleed at the same time,” the Priestess said. “Choose the order.”
Sienna stood again. The lilies shifted their perfume, as if curious. “Dawn,” she said. “Temple of Balance.”
“Before dawn,” the Priestess corrected softly. “When the world is indecisive.”
A shadow detached itself from the garden wall and became a man. Eamon didn’t step on gravel; he had learned how to walk where he would not be heard and did it now out of habit and respect. He kept a prudent distance and spoke without ceremony.
“Majesty,” he said. “Messengers from the east road. Scouts report a banner we don’t recognize and a formation we do.”
Sienna leaned her head back and looked at the moon as if asking which part of the punishment schedule this was. “Numbers.”
“Two thousand,” Eamon said, and then, as if dragging up a stone from a well, “and wolves.”
“Whose,” the Priestess asked.
“A general who signs his letters with a crown he doesn’t wear,” Eamon said. “Name of Kael. Vows the old order and the old blood. He marches light. He means speed.”
“He means theater,” Sienna said. “Old kings always do.”
“Do you want the men at the west gate,” Eamon asked. “Or the river?”
“Split,” Sienna said. “And call in citizens who can aim. Not the boys. The women who shoot birds for Sunday.”
Eamon nodded, already building the night from assignments. “And the cursed one,” he said, voice unchanged.
“He will know,” Sienna said, and the admission stung more than it should have.
The Priestess touched Sienna’s wrist, once, with the back of her fingers, quick as a blessing given to a woman in motion. “If he comes to the temple,” she said, “we will not keep him out with polite men.”
Sienna’s mouth went wry. “Nothing about him is polite.”
Eamon cleared his throat with the apologetic gravity of a man about to insult his queen with truth. “Majesty,” he said. “I would rather you do this when my back is not to an army.”
“Your back has been to worse in darker lanes,” Sienna said. “And you kept it.”
“Aye,” Eamon said. “But I prefer to complain.”
“Keep complaining,” Sienna said. “It keeps the gods honest.”
The High Priestess inclined her head. “We meet before dawn,” she said. “I will take the south stair to the temple. Bring only the breath you need.”
Sienna accepted the instruction as command because some orders are compassion disguised. “And if I fall,” she said, practical to the end.
“Then he will rise,” the Priestess said. “And the world will have the age it begged for.”
Sienna’s eyes closed a beat and opened as if she had been kissed by a cold wind. “Then we will not fall.”
“Or we will fall spectacularly,” the Priestess said, almost cheerful. “And men will write songs.”
Eamon looked between them and rolled his eyes at a sky that refused to help. “If either of you is finished conquering metaphor,” he said, “there’s a man outside with a crow banner who believes it looks like a crown.”
“General Kael,” Sienna said, and the mark on her wrist burned as if the name had teeth. “Let him march. We’ll teach him the difference between a picture and the thing.”
The garden exhaled. The lilies closed a fraction, as if modest on command. The fractured moon shivered and then held, brightening at the edges. Sienna turned from the bench and the Priestess and the scent of patient flowers and began to walk, brisk now, already dividing the kingdom into tasks she could give to other hands.
The Priestess watched her go with a tenderness she rarely let the world borrow. “The ritual requires your blood,” she called softly after Sienna, giving the last knife without a bandage. “Under a shattered moon.”
Sienna didn’t stop.
The moon shivered again and then, just for a heartbeat, dimmed, as if agreeing.
And in the cypress dark, a listening presence smiled and did not promise mercy.