I stop where the corridor branches off into the short hall that leads to the abbess’s private chapel, but no one is around to see, not with the bitter wind howling down the hallways like an angry wolf.
As I settle into position, I hear the murmur of voices. I recognize the abbess’s low, calm tones and Sister Thomine’s shorter, louder responses. It takes my ears a moment to adjust to the low cadences so that I can understand the actual words being said.
“. . . tells me you have shown great improvement.”
“I am honored that she thinks so, Reverend Mother.”
“You should feel honored that Mortain has seen fit to bless you with such skill,” the abbess says. The reproof in her voice is mild, but it is there.
Matelaine murmurs something I cannot hear, then the abbess speaks again, this time her voice soothing, as if comforting the wound her earlier words have just made. “Because of your great improvement and your renewed dedication to your studies, you are to be rewarded with your first assignment.”
My heart slams against my rib cage like a bolting horse, driving all the air from my lungs so I cannot draw breath. When my breath finally returns, it brings with it a hot gush of anger. My ears fill with a great rushing sound and something inside me snaps. Or breaks. Or shatters. With no thought to the consequences of my actions, I throw open the door to the abbess’s chambers and step into the room.
The voices stop abruptly, and three heads turn in my direction. Two mouths, Sister Thomine’s and Matelaine’s, are open in shock, but the abbess’s is pressed into a firm, flat line. Spots of angry red appear on her pale cheeks. “What is the meaning of this?”
My entire body thrums with barely checked fury. “You cannot send Matelaine.” I step farther into the room and slam the door behind me. “You cannot.”
“Have you been listening at my door?” the abbess demands.
“This is not right. Matelaine is too young to be sent out. Too untrained. She is not ready yet.”
The abbess rises from her chair, trying to use her height to intimidate me, but I am beyond caring. “You forget your place here, Annith. Remove yourself at once to your chambers and wait for me there.”
But I have not forgotten anything. Indeed, it feels like I have finally remembered myself. Deep inside me, the alarm keeps clanging. “You cannot be serious about sending Matelaine out! She is only fifteen. She has not passed any of the tests required to be a full initiate, nor has she learned all the skills needed—”
“So are you now the novice mistress, and no one told me?”
The icy sarcasm in her voice is sharp enough to strip the flesh from my bones, but it doesn’t matter. Instead, I say what we all know is true. “I have trained longer and passed all the tests.”
“We have already spoken of this. Serving Mortain is not a right, but a privilege. A privilege I grant to you, not one you can march in here and demand for yourself.”
“I thought it was a privilege granted by Mortain.”
Her head rears back slightly, but before she can respond, I continue. “I can best Matelaine in a fight, and shoot ten bull’s-eyes to her one. I can land a killing blow faster and more accurately than she can.” In spite of how it might appear to the abbess, it is no longer about what I want. I am well and truly afraid for Matelaine. “Would you send ten-year-old Lisabet next? Or Loisse? No one this young has ever been sent on assignment before, and you are surely risking her life.”
“What of Margot or Genevieve? They were but twelve years old.”
For a moment, I cannot fathom whom the abbess is talking about, and then I remember. “Are you merely placing Matelaine in the household of one of our enemies to act as spy, like you did them?” The panic in my chest lessens somewhat.
“What I do is none of your concern.”
“It is if I am to be seeress.”
I hear Sister Thomine’s sharp intake of breath, and Matelaine whips her head around to stare at me. For one hugely satisfying moment, the abbess is speechless, for she knows I am right. If I am seeress, then I will be involved in all these decisions—I will be the one to See who is to stay and who is to go. She cannot deny it.
“But not until you have completed your proper training.”
“Then Sister Vereda has Seen this?”
The silence in the room is thick and absolute. Sister Thomine turns to look at the abbess, and even Matelaine seems uncertain.
“Of course she hasn’t. Since her illness, her visions have only been of small, pointless things.”
“Then how can you send Matelaine out?”
The abbess’s mouth snaps shut, and as we stare at each other, I feel the past seven years of my life unraveling like an old rope. “You think Mortain’s business comes to a stop when one of us is ill?” she says at last.
“What if that is the very reason she has grown sick? Because Mortain wishes the convent business to cease for a while?”
“Mortain will protect Matelaine like He does all His daughters,” the abbess says through clenched teeth. She turns to Matelaine. “Go to your chambers and pack your things. I will be there shortly to give you your final instructions.”
As Thomine and Matelaine leave the room, the abbess thrusts her hands in her sleeves and strides over to the window. I flinch as she passes, her anger as palpable as a fist. But so is my own. “I have earned this,” I tell her in a low, hard voice. “By right of all of the Dragonette’s trials, I have earned my place as an instrument of Death.”
She turns to look at me, her eyes blazing blue fire. “And what of me, Annith? What have I earned?”
“What?”
“You speak of the Dragonette, of your time with her. Who was it that snuck you food to eat when she would have had you go hungry? Who was always there, ready to free you from your confinement early, even at the cost of punishment to myself? Who soothed you when you cried, hid your crimes from her, and did everything possible to make your life bearable?”
“You did.” Every word she says is true. While Sybella might feel the current abbess to be harsh and unfair, to me she could never be a true monster. Not like the Dragonette, who still gives me nightmares, even though she has been dead for seven years. And while this abbess was as much my rescuer as any knight from the tales of chivalry, I never expected her to use the affection between us like a merchant with a sack of coins, trying to bind my will to hers.
She takes a deep breath and visibly calms herself. “By rights, I should have you expelled from the convent for such insubordination and disobedience. However, because of the extreme fondness I hold for you, I am going to assume this is a one-time occurrence—brought on by the duress caused by the weighty choice before you. But make no mistake, Annith, if this happens again, I will throw you out.”
And there it is. The threat I have lived with my entire life. If I am not good enough, kind enough, thoughtful enough, obedient enough, I will be cast from my home like a stunted fish from a fisherman’s net.
The abbess takes a deep breath and folds away her anger like an unneeded blanket. “Now, I must have your answer, Annith, for I am leaving the convent to travel to Guérande in two days, as events are growing ever more serious. I need to know if this is settled before I leave, and more importantly, I need to know if I can trust you.”
My heart leaps at the news that she is leaving, for if she is gone from here, then I will have more freedom to . . . what? Maneuver. Think. Strategize. Search for answers to the burning question of why she will not let me take my rightful place in Mortain’s service. All that I do not know swirls inside me, like some foul storm, so strong it nearly makes me ill. But I know my chance of finding answers will be better with the abbess gone. I take a deep breath and put my hands up to my face, as if to scrub the tumult away. When I withdraw my hands, I see the abbess watching me carefully. “Yes, Reverend Mother.” I permit a faint tremble of uncertainty to show and allow my shoulders to droop, as if in defeat. “If there is no other choice, I will stay at the convent to serve as seeress.”
It is not the first lie I have ever told her, but it is the first one that I do not feel any guilt or remorse for having told.
Chapter Nine
I FIND MATELAINE IN HER room packing a small leather satchel. She is no longer dressed in her habit but in a traveling gown of forest green with her red hair unbound from its customary braid. She looks up when I enter. When she sees that it is me, the bright look on her face evaporates and she returns to her packing. “What do you want?”
“I have come to bid you farewell. And to explain, and perhaps apologize.”
“You think you can explain away trying to humiliate me in front of the abbess?”
“Matelaine, I was not questioning your skill or devotion—I was questioning the abbess’s decision. You are being sent out before you have even completed your training and I am truly concerned for your safety.”
“Are you sure you are not simply jealous? We all know how much you’ve been longing for an assignment of your own.”
“That is true—I won’t deny it. But even if I were leaving on an assignment of my own this very minute, I would still be worried for you. Aren’t you the least bit concerned? With all the lessons you haven’t been exposed to and the tests you haven’t taken yet?”
She snorts as she places two clean linen shifts in the satchel. “If I was, do you think I’d confess it to you so you could carry the tale straight to the abbess and attempt to keep me from going?”
A sense of helplessness and futility washes over me. I look out the window, wondering how to explain to her the complexity of what I am feeling when I can scarce explain it to myself.
“Is being the next seeress not enough of a prize that you must grab my tasks as well?” Although she keeps her voice pitched low, anger hums through it.
I turn from the window, hoping she will see the truth of my words writ clear upon my face. “I do not wish to be seeress and would gladly trade with you! It does not feel special. It feels like a trap—a trap that I will be stuck in until the day I die. But more importantly, I have no skill, no aptitude for it, and I cannot understand why the abbess has chosen me for such a role.”
She shakes her head. “And now you act as if you know more than the abbess. Truly, Annith, you have let the nuns’ praise go to your head.”
She is the third friend of mine to be sent away, and I am terrified that I will not be so lucky as to have all three survive. I fear for Matelaine in a way that I did not for Ismae or even Sybella. She is so much younger and less experienced. “Matelaine, I do not wish to part—”
“After Ismae left, you and I were the closest in age, and I saw that you were lonely, and I was lonely, and I thought maybe we could be friends. Well, I understand now. We will never be friends. You need not worry that I will make that mistake again.”
Her words cut me to the quick. I reach out and grab her hand, squeeze it. “We have always been friends. But Ismae—well, she was one of the first true friends I had ever had. Of course I was closer to her, just as you are closer to Sarra and Lisabet over Loisse and Audri. It does not mean that Loisse and Audri don’t have a place in your heart.”
There is a long moment of silence, then Matelaine wrinkles her nose. “Well, I’m not particularly fond of Sarra,” she says, and I am filled with a giddy sense of relief. Then her face grows serious. “You always hold a piece of yourself back, Annith. For all your love and affection and kindness, there is always a part of yourself that you withhold from others.”
And of course, she is right. For one sharp moment, I teeter on the edge of sharing my past with her, my awkward, painful childhood, but I cannot. Not now, when she must be preparing herself for the challenges ahead. I squeeze her hand again. “When you return,” I tell her, “if I am not sealed away in that cursed room and unable to speak to anyone, I will tell you about that part of my life.”
