CHAPTER TWO

1664

YEAR OF THE CRUX

Riin Cosas

Sevres Continent

The Planet Ma’kess

Cleric Chono arrives on Ma’kess by spacecraft, a forty-hour trip from the water world of Quietus. She comes alone and walks the length of the tarmac with only a bag slung over one shoulder. Black Ocean sailors mill about in knots of bitter talk and cool glances flung her way. In the east, the planet’s capital city of Riin Kala is a profile of spires built beneath a mountain range, purple cliffs a jagged backdrop. The city itself is a paragon of beauty and industry and art, and at the moment it seems like half its population has crowded to the docks, standing behind the metal fences. They clamor with protest, with curses and shouts. It’s two days since the Secretaries officially shut down jump gate travel for all but the most essential services. Chono’s own Hand, the Clerisy, has no authority to control the jump gates (such lines of authority are carefully delineated, amid the Hands), but one wouldn’t know that from how the people glare and mutter at her passing.

Chono can’t exactly blame them. As far as she can read the situation, there was no need to shut the gates down. Not yet, anyway. But these are tense times. The matriarch of the Nightfoot family, Alisiana Nightfoot, is dead, and she took with her all the stability of the sevite trade. Without sevite, the gates can’t operate, and the Jeveni factory workers are in the midst of labor strikes.

Chono knows for a fact that the Kindom has enough sevite in storage to outlast these strikes. But still, the Secretaries have chosen a radical course, sure to debilitate trade and travel. If the people of the Treble resent them for this decision, they resent the Jeveni even more. Out in the crowd, Chono sees a hand-drawn sign: MAKE THE J BASTARDS WORK! She fears there will be attacks, killings. Already the casting net thrums with anti-Jeveni sentiment, with accusations and threats. Always such an easy target, the Jeveni.

A chant starts up in the distance: “Free our ships! Free our ships! Free our ships!”

Chono looks up into a blue sky, squinting at the pinprick shapes of idling ships that hover like dust motes on the very edge of the Ma’kessn atmosphere. It’s so clear today that she easily sees the half-sickle form of the moon, Jeve. A black fingernail stamping the sky.

“Free our ships! Free our ships! Free our ships!”

A large contingent of guardsaan holds the crowds back from the main road out of the docks. There’s a transport waiting for Chono, a warcat shuttle, odd to see after so many months on Quietus. The shuttle’s driver, no doubt one of First Cleric Aver Paiye’s novitiates, intends to ferry her the five miles to the temple, but Chono elects to walk. The driver is flustered, nearly hostile as he babbles about the First Cleric’s schedule. But when Chono’s stare doesn’t waver, he bows under the weight of it and climbs back into the warcat. He asks petulantly if he can at least take her bag. She says no, and leaves him.

It’s an hour walk to the temple Riin Cosas, and Chono needs the quiet. The Black Ocean may be silent, but warships are not. Two days ago, she was making Hasha tea for a gaggle of parishioners come to morning prayer, peaceful in her appointment to the floating township of Pippashap. Far removed from the temple dramas that so often include Esek Nightfoot. Now she’s standing eight light-years away, on the borders of the largest metropolis on Ma’kess.

Quietus was a flatland of ocean, its god the gentle Capamame, the dear friend. Ma’kess is all mountains and forests and valleys, presided over by fecund and lovely Makala. Fierce and vain Makala. The change is stark, for Chono.

She adjusts her pack. Feels the crinkle of the letter in her breast pocket: Aver Paiye’s summons, on real laminate. Elegantly written. Full of praise. Cryptic.

She begins the walk with shoulders back and head high, determined not to look unsteady. Adapting to solid ground and lighter gravity is giving her a slight headache, but she leaves the docks behind at a steady clip, winding her way up the hillock that ridges the temple valley. At its crest, she pauses to absorb what anyone would assume to be her consolation prize for the tiring climb. It is, after all, a gorgeous sight. Against miles and miles of emerald grass and sapphire skies, Riin Cosas is a hexagonal jewel, its walls and domed roof glinting magnificently under an early afternoon sun, as reflective as glass, as impenetrable as steel.

By any measure of beauty in the Treble, Riin Cosas is the most exquisite temple in all of the three systems. The most ethereal. Chono has studied it since childhood: the seat of the First Cleric and the birthplace of Treble civilization. She wonders at the awe their colonizing ancestors must have felt, when they stepped from the decks of their generation ships into paradise. No wonder they built the temple here, intending a beacon of joy and hope that would survive through the centuries.

Yet to Chono, it has always been a source of deep ambivalence. Today, that feeling grows and ghosts inside her, as if her soul were two pieces engaged in a battle, all feints and hiding places.

By the time she reaches the temple, her trousers are hemmed with a foot of dust. Her hairline is damp, and she can feel the sweat under her arms and at the small of her back. When she arrives at the massive double doors at the top of the temple steps, she stands a moment staring at her own face in the reflective surface, obfuscated by inlaid carvings of Makala. All of Ma’kess is united in its worship of her, but beauty has always perturbed Chono. She prefers the five-eyed Sajeven, known for her barrenness and warmth, or the humble water god, Capamame. Quiet gods. Most of all she prefers the Godfire, for the Godfire is not a personality, has no ego or character, has only the steadiness of purpose: To keep the systems alive with its fire. To be a force of justice and mercy in the worlds.

Inside the door’s massive frame, there’s a creak of gears and pulleys. Chono’s reflection bifurcates as the doors open, and she steps through.

Is it any wonder the temple interior is just as lush and beautiful as the surrounding valley? A garden square spills before her, overflowing with flowers and fruiting trees, the bounty of the southern Ma’kessn continents displayed in all its corals and crimsons and mauves. Statues of polished serpentine hold sentry in the lively garden, the Six Gods arrayed for worship. Flittering among them, birds call, insects whistle, and some small animal darts under a rosebush. The temple’s translucent roof decorates it all in fractals of light, because the Godfire is light. The Godfire is everywhere. It suffuses the temple grounds, inimitable.

Chono sees the temple novitiate scurrying toward her from one of the walkways bordering the garden. She stymies him again, carefully lowering to her knees before he can reach her. She holds out her open palms, bowing over them to recite the beatitudes. Though they are a holy order, clerics often play fast and loose with ceremony, and this is not the first time Chono has baffled a novitiate with her adherence to tradition. But she likes the beatitudes. She likes their poetry and familiarity. She likes the righteous worlds they imagine.

When she finally stands, dustier than ever, the novitiate swoops in. “Burning One. I hope your walk was… peaceful.”

Clearly, he hasn’t gotten over her refusing to take the warcat.

“It offered plenty of time for contemplation.”

The novitiate nods, barely listening, and ushers her toward the walkway. They go through a door into the atrium of the temple’s eastern corner. He says, “The First Cleric is currently in conference with the First Cloak, but he intends to see you directly afterward.”

This is surprising. The First Cloak of the Cloaksaan is Seti Moonback, and he’s not generally found in temples. Cloaksaan keep their own company and prefer to conduct meetings via comm or other casting technologies. If they show up somewhere, it’s usually to exercise some bloody errand. His business must have something to do with the protests over gate travel, though why he would come to the Clerisy instead of the Secretaries, Chono can’t say.

The novitiate leads her farther into the atrium, passing the short hallway to Aver Paiye’s office. Chono catches a glimpse of a large cloaksaan outside the door. A blink and he’s out of sight; Chono faces forward again. Only then does she realize the novitiate is leading her toward the clerics’ private gathering room. To burn like stars—the words of the Righteous Hand—is blazoned above the doors in holy lettering. What flashes through her then is not some image of majesty and power, but memories of destruction, and the reluctance she’s felt ever since receiving Paiye’s letter pulls heavy in her gut.

The novitiate says, “I’ll come for you when the meeting is over. You may wait with your kin if you like.”

Apparently, it is not truly “if she likes” because he has already reached the gathering room door and pulled it open with a flourish, as if he thinks he’s delivering her to a banquet. He glances to the bag over her shoulder.

“Can I take that for you, Sa?”

Chono knows she’ll look like a vagabond if she carries the pack into the gathering room; nevertheless she hesitates. Her grip on the strap tightens, before at last she hands it over to him.

“I want it somewhere secure.”

“Of course, Sa.”

Chono holds his stare for a long moment, and if a part of him thought her order was silly, now he shifts uncomfortably, realizing how foolish it would be to disregard her. Remembering, perhaps, who she is, and that unlike most clerics, Chono has a bloody history. Relatively satisfied, she looks away from him. She steels herself, and steps through the gathering room door. It closes behind her with a snick.

Inside, a glass column centers the room, burning with sevite fuel stones in homage to the Godfire. They are a glittering black blanket on the hearth, treated with oils that emit something woodsy and pepper-sharp—much more pleasant than the natural stench of the burning coals. It’s expensive, of course, constantly burning treated sevite, but the clerics will have their symbolisms.

It’s warm inside the room, another disorientation. Quietus is a chilly place, all mist and rain, with occasional warm floods of sunlight across the water. But here on Ma’kess, it is the height of summer, and the Year of the Crux is turning out to be a hot one.

A dozen clerics mill about, shiny-faced in their heavy gold-threaded coats, refreshing themselves with glasses of lemon water on ice. Some recline on couches as far from the fire as possible, chatting to each other. Others walk the circumference of the room in pairs and trios. No one acknowledges Chono. But they know who she is. Do they whisper? Do they say, There is the cleric who killed another cleric in cold blood?

Not to her face, perhaps.

Aver Paiye’s letter said nothing about it. He said, Come to Riin Cosas, where you are always welcome. But welcome by whom? Certainly not her kin, who must regard her as a danger now. Do they even care why she killed Cleric Khen Caskhen Paan, that scion of a powerful First Family? Probably not. Meting out death sentences is the purview of the Cloaksaan. For a cleric to kill… Well, it’s the sort of thing Esek would do. Perhaps the other clerics think Esek rubbed off on Chono. Infected her with her reckless, violent ways. So unbecoming.

It’s a point of some reassurance to Chono that whatever discomfort she feels, the other clerics in the room can’t see it. Chono has a very old impulse to go unnoticed. Not as cloaksaan go unnoticed, but as small animals do, safe in their burrows. This impulse always manifests on her face as stoicism—a rare characteristic for a cleric. Most of them are beautiful and alluring and charismatic. Chono is none of those things, but she is righteous and unflappable. And she has important benefactors.

It’s the sight of one of these that nearly breaks her composure. There, standing on the opposite side of the gathering room, is Esek.

Chono is very careful not to stare. It’s a near thing. Something happens in her chest, a thunder of equal parts shock and childlike thrill, but she stamps both feelings down lest they somehow show up on her face. Why didn’t she expect Esek to be here? The First Cleric’s message summoning Chono to Riin Cosas—it’s all about Esek. And yet, the older cleric’s presence in the temple feels totally incongruous. Esek hates Riin Cosas. She avoids it religiously. Yet here she is, surrounded by her kin while very distinctly apart from them, and the sight of her after so many years is just as elating and just as terrible as it ever was. That their last meeting ended so badly makes the thought of a reunion now twist in Chono’s stomach like a parasite.

Of course, Esek hasn’t noticed Chono at all. Esek has always had a remarkable talent for ignoring others until their presence becomes of use or interest to her. Right now, she clearly has no use for anyone. She’s standing with legs apart and hands clasped, staring up at a massive statue. Her look is clever. Serene.

Chono dithers for long moments, sweat on her palms, but this is absurd. She’s not a novitiate anymore, scraping for Esek’s attention. She steels herself, then walks toward her one-time mentor. The farther she goes into the room, the more aware she is of her kin. Their glances and murmuring follow her all the way to Esek’s side.

“Burning One,” she says.

Esek doesn’t look away from the statue, but her mouth curves up in a shape like a cutlass. When Chono saw her for the first time, Esek was only twenty-two. She was the youngest cleric in a hundred years, the most beautiful, and had come to Chono’s school to watch her and her fellow fourth-years fight. Well, more accurately, to watch Six fight, back when Chono was called Four and Six was her friend, rather than a ghost at her periphery. The memory alone makes her uneasy, just as Esek made her uneasy, that day at Principes. Esek swept into their lives like a great, gorgeous bird of prey. Now, twenty years later, time has matured what was already exquisite: sharp jawline and nose, full mouth and large eyes the color of umber. Her thick black braids are tied and wound atop her head, displaying a slender neck.

“Dear Chono,” Esek Nightfoot finally answers. “How long since you were my novitiate?”

“Eleven years, Sa.”

“Yet you still talk to me like a novitiate. We’re kin now, don’t you remember?”

Chono pauses, considering. “You’ve always preferred your novitiates to your kin, Sa.”

Esek chuckles, glancing Chono’s way. Her golden-brown eyes are far more striking than any of the blue or green or purple eye mods other Ma’kessn favor. But this time, it’s not her eyes that command Chono’s attention. In turning toward her, Esek has exposed the opposite side of her head. Chono doesn’t react, doesn’t give any indication she sees it—but how could she not? So, it wasn’t just a macabre rumor. Esek’s left ear is half gone. It’s a rough, ill-healed injury, its origin unclear: A blade? A gunshot? Teeth? A simple mod could have repaired it, but instead she wears her hair back, displaying it like a trophy.

Far from disgusting Chono, it fills her with guilt. She was on Quietus when she heard about the pirate attack on the Nightfoots’ ancestral home, an estate called Verdant some two hundred miles south of Riin Cosas. Pirates, a particular subset of Braemish sailors, have always been an unavoidable nuisance in the vast reaches of the Black Ocean—they smuggle and kidnap and murder, all while finding ways to avoid Kindom justice. But they have a certain code of honor. And a gift for staying under the radar. This attack on Verdant—it was unlike anything the Treble had ever seen before. Unlike anything that any pirate had ever tried. Dozens of the Nightfoots’ private guardsaan died; four of the lesser Nightfoots, too. From reports, Esek Nightfoot fought like a godling, surviving against all odds, but the pirates still carried off heaps of wealth, of artifacts, of records, and burned half the estate to the ground. A year ago, the Kindom itself would not have dared attack the Nightfoots so, let alone pirates.

Of course, a year ago, the matriarch Alisiana Nightfoot was alive, her very presence a bulwark against attack.

There have been other signs that the Nightfoots are losing their primacy. This trouble at the factories, for example. The Jeveni have always been a hardworking and mild-mannered labor force, but now their union leaders are thundering for change, and with no new matriarch in place, the Nightfoots have yet to quell the storm.

Then, of course, there is the statue that Esek is staring at again. It depicts Reveño Moonback, the once First Cleric of the Righteous Hand. Reveño is a favored figure in the Moonback family, those Nightfoot rivals who control the northern continents of Ma’kess. But Riin Cosas is in the south, Nightfoot territory. The Moonbacks must have paid a fortune to have such a statue placed in this room. Its presence is a blatant shot at the Nightfoots. Anyone who didn’t know Esek would think she was admiring the craftsmanship. Chono thinks what she really admires is the Moonbacks’ audacity. And in time she’ll travel north and make them regret it.

“It’s been so long, Chono,” sighs Esek, wistful.

If she remembers their falling-out on Xa Cosas in ’58, her tone doesn’t suggest it. Strange. “Too long,” Chono agrees, half expecting some kind of trap.

“I heard about the old pervert cleric on Pippashap,” Esek says. Chono shows nothing, says nothing, thinks nothing nothing nothing. “I hope you cut his cock off.”

A flash of the old man’s face when she struck—stunned rage quickly turning to terror.

Chono flinches from the memory. “I didn’t know you would be here.”

Esek shrugs. “You know the First Cleric. He loves meetings. Loves to get his little birds together and hear us chirp. I took a warcat up this morning. Beautiful country, this time of year. One forgets when everything around them is ashes.”

“I am very sorry about—”

“Oh, stop.” Esek waves a hand at her and turns fully to look into her face. For several moments they are both perfectly still, Esek’s eyes traveling all over her, as if reminding herself what Chono looks like. And Chono knows she looks different, older. The year on Pippashap alone has weathered her, but she’s also put on muscle. She wonders what Esek sees. But Esek only gestures at her clothes, eyes lit with amusement. “Did you miss land so much that you decided to take a roll in the dirt?”

Chono remembers very well how this minor jab might have devastated her when she was Esek’s novitiate. The desire to please, the desire to be praised, were a constant ache in her belly. She feels that echo now. But other feelings take priority as she completes her truncated condolences. “I am very sorry about Alisiana.”

Esek’s eyes narrow. Chono adds, “I know your first loyalty is to the Kindom”—a wry look from Esek—“but I also know what your family means to you. I believe the Nightfoots will thrive in spite of this. Riiniana may be young, but she can learn.”

This time, Esek’s look turns flat and disbelieving. She stares for so long that Chono feels unsettled. What has she said? Esek never had anything particularly poisonous to say about Riiniana, Alisiana’s great-granddaughter and fourteen-year-old heir. But maybe things have—

“So, you don’t know?”

Chono hesitates, opens her mouth to respond—but Esek’s bark of laughter cuts her off. Nearby, unsubtly eavesdropping clerics startle at the gunshot sound. Esek puts a hand on Chono’s shoulder, stepping aggressively closer. Chono can see every detail of her mutilated ear.

“Chono,” Esek says. “You’ve been too long on that water world. The Secretaries read Alisiana’s will weeks ago. She didn’t pass the matriarchy to Riiniana, or any of her direct descendants.” Esek’s teeth glint. “She passed it to me.”

Chono waits for her to say something more, something that would negate the incomprehensible words. But Esek is alight with glee, and with something else—something maniacal. A shiver runs down Chono’s spine, but before she can think how to respond—

“Excuse me, Saan.”

It is the temple novitiate, addressing them both. “The First Cleric is ready for you, now.”

Esek starts off immediately, her commanding pace and posture attracting every stare in the room. After a beat, Chono follows, similarly erect, but with none of Esek’s swagger. Chono is half convinced this is a prank. The whole thing makes no sense. To join one of the Hands of the Kindom, to be a cleric or cloaksaan or secretary, is to abandon all familial rights. Hands can’t take leadership of their families because they are instruments of the Godfire, first. And all this to say nothing of the fact that on the complex structure of the Nightfoot family tree, Esek’s branch is nowhere near the line of succession.

Focus, Chono tells herself. Paiye said there were things you didn’t know.

They leave the gathering room with many eyes watching.

In the atrium Chono sees two figures all in black have emerged from the hallway leading to Aver Paiye’s office. One of them is the large cloaksaan Chono glimpsed on her way in. Larger even than she realized. He’s a great block of a man, his hands and feet like clubs, his limbs like tree trunks.

“Look at that specimen,” says Esek with interest.

The other figure is the First Cloak, Seti Moonback. He is very different from his companion—shorter by a foot but sleek as a cat, and eyes a modded electric blue. He smiles coldly at their approach, a smile made grotesque by the scar wending from nostril to chin, white against golden skin. He tilts his head and rests his hand on the hilt of his bloodletter.

“Cleric Nightfoot.”

“Cloak Moonback,” Esek returns, and her failure to use his full honorific can’t be accidental. “I didn’t think you liked our sunny climes.”

Again, the cold smile. “Cloaksaan are far less sensitive to the elements than clerics.”

“Tell that to this one.” Esek jerks a thumb at Chono. “She’s been languishing on Pippashap, of all places.”

Seti Moonback looks at Chono, a long, assessing look, full of banked hostility.

“Ah, yes. The cleric who tried to be a cloaksaan.”

Clearly he thinks very little of her for that. Cloaksaan are… possessive, when it comes to the work of assassination. Chono supposes that if she had tried to run the economy on Pippashap, her secretary kin would take that badly, as well. And yet no one has punished Chono for murdering Cleric Paan without trial. For months she thought the Cloaksaan would darken her door. Not yet, though.

Esek clucks. “Don’t be petty. It’s on you that a corrupt cleric lived as long as he did. She made a good job of it. Saved everyone the trouble of a trial.” This meets with a tense silence. If there was a secretary here, they’d probably throw a fit over this blatant disrespect for the legal system. Esek smiles, gesturing theatrically. “And who’s this big fellow you’ve got with you?”

The second cloaksaan is as stoic as Chono, but Chono doubts her own eyes ever project such an unsettlingly murderous gleam.

“This is my second, Cloak Vas Sivas Medisogo,” says the First Cloak, still looking at Chono. “I suppose he’s your counterpart, Cleric Chono. Though I didn’t realize you were Esek’s shadow again.”

“She can’t keep away,” agrees Esek. “As for your boy…” A slow perusal. Medisogo’s head resembles the end of a battering ram, with a nose equally as blunted. He looks at them with the contempt of a man being forced to watch his dinner roam free in a slaughterhouse. Esek looks from him to Moonback and drawls, “Bit of a stereotype, isn’t he?”

At that moment, Paiye’s novitiate reappears, burdened under two black cloaks. Seti Moonback takes his, sweeping it over his shoulders with a practiced flourish. The pauldron on his left shoulder gleams with polish, the Kindom’s symbol embossed on the leather: a three-pointed star against a fiery sun.

“Back to the Silver Keep?” asks Esek cheerily.

Moonback sniffs. Most cloaksaan get testy when someone references the headquarters of the Brutal Hand, whose location is a secret even from most cloaks. Chono has heard they won’t even say the name of the keep to each other, bound by a strange superstition.

Moonback says, “The labor strikes on Loez are getting dramatic. You’d think the Jeveni never want us to turn the gates back on. Fucking parasites.”

Chono’s stomach churns.

“Punish them,” Esek suggests. “Deny them access to The Risen Wave. Cancel their Remembrance Day celebrations.”

Moonback sneers. “Thank you for the suggestion, but it’s all going ahead as usual.”

Chono frowns at that. Every twenty-five years, the Jeveni come together as a people to orbit their destroyed moon colony and perform ceremonies of remembrance for the Jeveni Genocide. They converge in one of the original generation ships, The Risen Wave, and worship their god and grieve their ancestors. It is an important holiday for them—but also a tremendous strain on the jump system. It will be even more so now, with the gates closed to everyone else.

“Wouldn’t it be better to ask them to delay?” she asks. “At least until the gates reopen?”

Moonback looks at her with cool displeasure. “It’s up to the Secretaries and they don’t want to exacerbate the union leaders. The last thing we need is for Jeveni malcontents to get violent.”

Chono balks at this. “I was under the impression the only threats of violence were against the Jeveni. And those threats will hardly end if you give them gate access while denying it to—”

“Ah, so you take the Jeveni for harmless pacifists, do you? That’s quaint. I for one don’t trust anyone who worships a barren goddess.” His words breathe with contempt, a contempt that’s common in the Treble. All the gods have children, even the death god, Som—but not Sajeven. Moonback snorts at Chono’s expression, adds, “But I suppose they were perfectly peaceable when Alisiana controlled the sevite industry.”

This is flung at Esek like an acid attack. But Esek smiles, unimpacted. One of Alisiana’s greatest accomplishments was to recruit the Jeveni as factory workers for the sevite industry. It was a natural fit. From the early centuries of the Treble’s colonization, the Jeveni were religious outcasts, derided for worshipping Sajeven, and distrusted for refusing to worship the Godfire. When the Ma’kessn moon, Jeve, turned out to be a spinning rock of fuel, the Kindom saw divine providence. Jeve was named after Sajeven, and the Jeveni were her worshippers. Relocate them to the moon, out of sight, and make them mine it for the jevite rock that so masterfully fueled the jump gates. And so it went, until the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the mining contracts had stripped Jeve of its one resource. Kindom overseers pulled out, but left the Jeveni behind, to fend for themselves in crumbling biodomes. Within a century Ri’in Nightfoot had found the formula for synthetic jevite (sevite, of course), and raised the Nightfoots from a declining First Family to one of the Treble’s most powerful.

The Jeveni were all but forgotten. That is, until Lucos Alanye found evidence of more jevite seams on the moon. But he was greedy, and monstrous. As soon as he realized he couldn’t hoard the seam, he turned all the firepower of his three mining ships on blowing the seam up—and the last of the Jeveni with it.

There were survivors, of course—nearly a hundred thousand refugees scattered to the systems. Alisiana gave succor to those who wanted it, gave them work and protection in her sevite factories, and while many Jeveni choose to live in separatist communities, most have acquiesced to their modern conditions.

That Alisiana chose to aid the Jeveni survivors was not, Chono knows, a sign of charity, but a ruthless cleverness that makes Chono’s insides crawl. She created for herself a deeply loyal workforce. A stable sevite trade. It remains to be seen whether that stability will survive her death after almost a year.

Chono tells Moonback, “I take the Jeveni for reasonable people who will understand if we ask them to delay, for their own protection.”

“I’m not interested in protecting the Jeveni right now. They can save themselves if they want to.”

Moonback says it with such disregard, such an utter lack of humor or self-consciousness, that Chono is stunned. She knows very well that there are people in the Treble who view the Jeveni as less than citizens, but to have it put so bluntly—

The First Cloak adds, “Perhaps Sa Nightfoot will take their protection on, hmm? Gods know you have the opportunity to do it, haven’t you?”

The words hang for a beat, inviting a reaction that never comes, and at last Seti Moonback snorts. He turns from them, striding off. Medisogo gives Chono a hateful look, disorienting for its intensity, and then he is sweeping away as well.

“Ass,” mutters Esek, though she looks more amused than offended.

“This way, Saan,” says the novitiate.

They follow him down the hall and through the open door to First Cleric Paiye’s small but beautifully lit office. The First Cleric is already on his feet, and he comes around his desk with a broad smile for Chono, arms outstretched.

“My beloved kin,” he says warmly, clasping her hand with both of his. She can feel the fat Godfire stone of his official ring, round cut and warm like a sun. “In all this trouble, I am so grateful for the joy of seeing you again.”

Chono is not much of a smiler but she grips his hand and allows her lips to quirk at the corners. Some years ago, Paiye made her his assistant on a two-year tour of the Treble systems. She has fond memories of it, of him. And ambivalent as she is toward so many of her kin, she has always trusted the noble intentions of the First Cleric, who chuckles at her meager smile. There is something fatherly in his regard.

“Ah, Esek.” He turns with only a slight dip in warmth. “It seems crass to ask if you have enjoyed your leave from duty.”

“Not at all, First Cleric,” returns Esek. “The work at Verdant is very refreshing. No one expects you to pray when you’re shoveling through rubble.”

Chono looks away, embarrassed. Paiye hmms, though it’s not without humor. He gestures them to the two chairs across from his desk, and then sits down himself. The light from the ceiling pours over them in buttery sheets, and there’s a rich smell emanating from the flowers standing in vases throughout the room. The First Cleric folds dark, weathered hands on the desktop, regarding them both before he lets out a heavy sigh.

“Well. I won’t draw things out. I’ve asked you both here because we may have found a link to whoever plotted the attack on Verdant.”

Chono shifts subtly in her chair so she has a better view of Esek, and waits for her to respond. Paiye, too, watches Esek for a reaction, but remarkably, she gives nothing away.

Chono has read enough about the aftermath of the Verdant sacking to know the Nightfoots put a bounty on every pirate who participated in the attack. Hundreds have scrambled to claim the reward—accusing business rivals and neighbors and inconvenient relatives of colluding in the attack. But while everything from Nightfoot portraits to Nightfoot jewelry to Nightfoot underwear has resurfaced in various markets, none of it has been reliably tied to any of the accused. In the history of criminal undertakings, none has so absolutely managed to hide its operatives from the investigations of the Cloaksaan—or the retribution of the Nightfoots. Esek ought to be vibrating with the chance of some revenge, but her expression is calm.

Paiye clears his throat and spreads his hands. The light catches on his Godfire ring.

“As you know, among the possessions marked as stolen from Verdant were a great many archival records: antique documents, memory coins, that sort of thing. The Cloaksaan believe they may have tracked down one of those coins. A pirate ship called The Swimming Fox has been communicating with a caster who goes by the handle Sunstep. It’s unclear from communications which party is actually selling the coin, but the sale is scheduled to occur tomorrow, on Teros.”

Again, Esek is silent.

Chono asks, “Do you believe The Swimming Fox was at Verdant?”

Still looking thoughtfully at Esek, Paiye says, “No. In fact, they have a tight alibi. And Sunstep’s admittedly incomplete records don’t paint them as the type to raid a stronghold.”

Finally, Esek joins in. “How auspicious, to be the only coin we’ve found.” Her lips spread in a lupine grin. “Are you hoping to use it to track down the original attackers?”

“We could try. But the coin itself is what interests us.”

Esek’s brows lift. “Really. And what is on this little coin?”

“Something with the capacity to erode public trust in the Nightfoot family.”

For a moment no one speaks, and Chono is suddenly hyperaware of the powerful families in her orbit—the Paiyes themselves, and the Moonbacks up north, and the Khens out on Teros. These First Families of the Treble have long-standing rivalries with one another, and with the Nightfoots, and any of them would have a stake in seeing the public turn on the Nightfoots. But Aver Paiye is not an agent of his family, not since he took his vows. He is an agent of the Kindom. And the Kindom wants order, above all.

Esek says at last, “That’s very vague and mysterious.”

“We are limiting further details to the most essential people.”

Esek’s eyes narrow, the first hostile sign. “Am I not essential, where the Nightfoots are concerned?”

“You are a cleric of the Righteous Hand.” He meets her tone with a coolness few would dare direct at Esek. “You are a servant of the Kindom. It is in that capacity that I have invited you here. Not as the possible matriarch of your family.”

Esek smiles coldly. “Of course. That is not a position I have accepted.”

The “yet” hangs unspoken.

Aver Paiye clasps his hands again. “Very good. Then let me make your responsibilities plain. The sale will take place in the city of Lo-Meek on Bei continent. We would like you to go to Teros and intercept both the pirates and the caster. If possible, all parties should be placed under arrest with the local marshals. If it is a choice between killing them and their escape, you have permission to kill them.”

Chono’s skin prickles. Esek raises her eyebrows. “Really? And there was Seti Moonback not ten minutes ago, giving us shit because Chono killed a pedophile.”

“Pirates are not always redeemable,” says Paiye, unrattled by Esek’s mocking tone. “And the caster Sunstep is a known criminal, with ties to illegal cloaking technologies, not to mention some of the worst offenders in the Treble. They’ve managed to scramble their communications with The Swimming Fox so expertly that even our best couldn’t recover everything. We don’t know what they look like, where they’re from, who their allies are. The most personal thing we know about them is that they seem to do a lot of sniffing after the Nightfoots.”

Chono’s fingers bite a little deeper into the arm of the chair; her thoughts roil with possibilities. She knows Esek’s must be as well, a single name ticking in both their heads, like a countdown to disaster.

“Nuisance though they are, the Cloaksaan don’t seem to think Sunstep is particularly valuable. Nor are the pirates, for that matter. If they can’t be taken alive, they must be put down. Honestly, Esek, I didn’t expect any pushback from you on the matter.”

A beat of silence. An invitation to argue.

Esek merely says, “I see.”

Chono is surprised. She, for one, does not “see” at all. Lines of authority are firmly delineated between the three Hands of the Kindom. Clerics don’t practice the law; secretaries don’t administer death rites. And a task like this should rightly fall to the cloaks, who are the Kindom’s ruthless constabularies. It’s true Esek has all the skills of a cloaksaan (except, perhaps, the ability to go unnoticed), but Chono has never known the Righteous Hand to officially send one of its clerics on a mission of this type. It’s… bizarre.

Esek gestures at Chono. “And what’s her involvement?”

Aver Paiye smiles. “You and I both know from experience that Chono is a valuable companion.”

It’s a compliment, but the phrasing stabs her with memories she would like to forget.

Esek chuckles. “Ah. Of course. You want me to have a chaperone.” She tells Chono with mock seriousness, “You see, while you were on Quietus praying to Capamame for absolution, I was fighting a battle to the death for the Nightfoot estate. It all got very bloody and chaotic. Apparently, I attacked a guardsaan for trying to evacuate me. Nearly killed him. And now, they send me off to Teros to capture the very mongrels who are trading in my family’s stolen goods. Best to have someone keep an eye on me.”

Chono doesn’t know how to respond, so she looks at the First Cleric. His generally easy demeanor has started to frost at the edges. He stares at Esek with disapproval, bushy brows gnarled above his dark eyes.

“Everyone needs friends sometimes, Cleric Nightfoot. I approved your leave request so you could be with your family as it works to rebuild Verdant. But just because you’ve been away doesn’t mean I haven’t had my eye on you. Alisiana only died a year ago. I know it hit you hard. I want to make sure this secondary blow hasn’t pushed you too far. Chono is uniquely qualified to protect your best interests, even when you act against them. Never forget my duty as First Cleric is to see that you are safe and well.”

Chono thinks if this is indeed his duty, sending Esek to Teros is a peculiar way to perform it.

Esek smirks at the First Cleric with such insulting condescension that Chono wonders how Paiye can bear it as peacefully as he does.

Apparently, he doesn’t mean to bear it any longer.

“So,” he says, with finality. He stands up, Chono rising with him. Esek takes her time following. “You will have a warkite for the duration, The Makala Aet. It has a capable crew and will accommodate your novitiates, since I know you’ll insist on bringing them. They are completing their preflight checks and will depart late this afternoon.”

Esek says, “I have business in Riin Kala, first.”

Paiye’s expression goes flat. He is reaching the end of his patience. Esek smiles placidly and shrugs. “It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”

After a tense moment, the First Cleric nods once. “Fine. You will depart after your errand is complete. The trip to Lo-Meek will not take more than ten hours, and you’ll find a garrison of marshals available for your use. The meeting is at 8:00 a.m., local Teron time. We’d like as little mess as possible, so I trust Chono to be your conscience in these matters. Bring the coin directly back to Riin Cosas once you have it. Understood?”

Esek bows over her palms, low enough to evacuate the holy gesture of all sincerity.

“Of course, Sa. Gods keep you well.”

Chono gives her own, genuine bow, and turns with Esek to go, but Aver Paiye says, “Stay a moment, Chono.”

Esek pauses only to shake her head as if at two silly children, and then she flounces off, shutting the door after her with exaggerated consideration. Chono, still standing, looks to the First Cleric with an uncertainty she’s not used to feeling in his presence. They had such warmth between them, when they toured the Treble together. He had taken her under his wing, trained her, equipped her with patience and care for the true work of being a cleric—things Esek never taught her. And yet now, he is doing such strange things…

He sighs and goes to a tea tray on a nearby table to pour himself a cup. He offers her one, but she shakes her head no, watching him. He carries the cup and saucer with him back to her, sips contemplatively. Then gives her a rueful look.

“You must have questions.”

She hesitates. “I assume you’ll tell me whatever I need to know.”

His smile is affectionate. He takes another drink of tea, and then places saucer and cup on his desk. “I also trust you to ask what you need to know.”

Chono shifts her stance and folds her hands in front of her. She has never had the luxury of complete honesty, with anyone. But whatever honesty she has given Aver Paiye over the years, he’s accepted without reproach.

“The business with the factory unrest, and with the jump gate rationing. Is it connected to this mission on Teros?”

Paiye regards her shrewdly. “What connection do you imagine?”

“I’m not a secretary, but I have access to the same ledgers as any cleric, and it’s clear that the Clever Hand has reserved enough sevite fuel to make these recent rations unnecessary. Yet here we are, with protests ratcheting up, and the factory unions growing even more recalcitrant, and now I find that Esek has been named the matriarch of her family. I don’t think you’re rationing because of what’s happening now. I think you’re rationing because of what you think may happen.”

He nods approvingly. He twists the ring on his finger, as if it were a key in a lock.

“Alisiana was always supportive of the factory unions,” he says musingly. “She treated them well, protected their autonomy. She did this so they would be loyal to her, and it worked. You know as well as I that the factory workers view themselves as ancillaries to the Nightfoots. The unions don’t care that the Kindom itself controls the gates. They care that their work remains the purview of the Nightfoots, whom they trust to grant them at least some freedoms. Since Alisiana’s death, union leaders have openly demanded that Esek take her place.”

Chono considers this, surprised. Alisiana was always personally involved in monitoring sevite production, an empire she inherited and made thrive. Esek has never been anywhere near the family business (at least, not in any official capacity). Why would the Jeveni want her for their matriarch?

She asks as much. Paiye says, “It’s something we’ve anticipated for some time. Alisiana was a force of nature. So is Esek. If the matriarchy passes to a child, like Riiniana, the unions fear an erosion of Nightfoot authority, and that Kindom oversight will take its place.”

“Are they right?” Chono asks.

Paiye chuckles. “I sympathize with the Jeveni not wanting their way of life to change. After all they have endured, it’s natural. But the Kindom chose its words for a reason: Peace, under the Kindom. Unity, in the Treble. Without our mediation of the sevite trade, the individual families would turn on one another. There would be monopoly and war. Alisiana understood that, but she still fought for every crumb she could take. She was a strategist. She took care of the unions and workers so they would protect her independence from us. She offered employment to tens of thousands of Jeveni survivors so they would see her as their ally, not the Kindom that rescued them. But her methods never went so far as to force a Kindom response. She kept a delicate balance. If Esek becomes the matriarch of the Nightfoots, do you think she will be able to keep that balance?”

“Esek is a strategist, too.”

Paiye nods, a conciliatory gesture. “I know she is. Which is precisely why I prefer her to remain a Hand of the Kindom. I do not seek the day when she is at odds with our interests.”

Chono reflects, the pieces coming together. “If Esek becomes matriarch, it will pacify the unions and restore order to the trade. But the Kindom does not trust her with that sort of power. So we are rationing access to the jump gates in order to further stockpile the sevite—as an insurance policy against her intransigence.” Paiye looks at her quietly, an invitation for her to continue. “If, on the other hand, she remains a cleric, there will be more uproar in the factories. We will have to break up the unions—install new leadership and loyal workers, which would displease the Jeveni. Rationing sevite now is a security against the time it will take to rebuild.”

The move is typical of Kindom leadership, and especially of the Secretaries—farseeing and practical. And it explains, in a roundabout way, why Paiye is sending Esek after this memory coin. It’s a test. Will she obey the Kindom? Or act according to her own desires? Will she be a Hand… or a matriarch?

Of course, in the meantime, it’s the people of the Treble who will suffer the consequences. And the Jeveni who will bear the brunt of the blame.

Chono asks, “Don’t you think it would help our mission, Sa, to know the contents of this coin?”

He gives her a sympathetic smile, but there is steel behind it, and Chono knows that she has touched too close to the quick. He shakes his head. “On the contrary, I think it would prove a distraction. You must trust me on this, Chono. The contents of the coin are not your concern. Only bringing it back to me.”

Chono knows better than to argue, yet through her curls a premonition of that coin’s import. She more than any non-Nightfoot in the worlds (and more than many Nightfoots themselves) knows the kinds of secrets that family carries. And if she’s right about the contents of the coin, then it can only mean one thing: Six is involved.

Suddenly Paiye is looking at her with a deep warmth and gentleness, as if to soften his refusal. “You are the most righteous Hand among us, Chono. And you are also devoted to Esek. You will protect her, counsel her. Remind her of the loyalty she owes our kin. At the end of it all, you will keep your vows to the Godfire. You will be my ears.”

At those words (expected, dreaded), Chono hazards to remind him, “Esek won’t appreciate being spied on, Burning One.”

“I don’t ask you to spy on her. I ask you to report to me on the progress with this mission, since I know Esek will not. Whatever else is at play, I want that memory coin. If someone like Sunstep has it, or gets it, I fear the repercussions.”

Chono clears her throat, banishing thoughts of whoever Sunstep might or might not be. There is only one answer she can give to the First Cleric.

“Of course, Sa. I am your servant.”

“Good.” He smiles again. “Good. Do you know anything about this business she has in Riin Kala?”

It’s a loaded question.

“I don’t, Sa.”

“Go with her.”

Chono hesitates, about to point out that Esek may not allow it, but then he is moving toward the door. “And if there is anything you need, contact me directly.”

“Thank you, Sa.”

“Gods keep you well, Cleric Chono.”

“Gods keep you well, First Cleric.”

But just before she is about to go through the door, she stops, and looks at him again. He frowns curiously, an invitation, and though something in Chono tells her to keep quiet, she can’t help herself.

“Seti Moonback says that Remembrance Day will go ahead as planned.” Paiye looks at her without answering. A confirmation. “Isn’t that dangerous, for the Jeveni? People already blame them for the gate closures. Now they’ll think they’re getting special treatment.”

“It is not special treatment. Remembrance Day is built into the Anti-Patriation Act; it is crucial to Jeveni autonomy. We cannot break our own laws.”

The irony of this, of course, is that the Anti-Patriation Act never had anything to do with protecting Jeveni autonomy, but rather curtailing it.

Chono says, “Surely a delay while we resolve—”

“The Jeveni are intransigent. They would not accept a delay, even to save their own lives. They refuse to see us as anything but their persecutors.”

His tone creeps close to the one that Seti Moonback used. It unnerves Chono, wondering at this attitude from a man who has always regarded the Treblens as his own children. She says quietly, “They have reason, you know… to distrust us.”

Centuries’ worth of reason, in fact. They were treated as little better than slaves on Jeve. After the Kindom abandoned them there, they at least had the benefit of worshipping their goddess in peace, creating their own government, and avoiding the attention of the larger Treble. The genocide stripped them of those freedoms. Now they are tightly controlled, their separatist communities forbidden by the Anti-Patriation Act to exceed a hundred people, their one-time government disbanded, their very existence occupying a liminal space: rejected as Treblens, but beholden to the laws of the Treble.

Paiye says, “Your concern for their well-being is admirable, Chono. Rest assured, I will take your thoughts to heart.”

It is a definitive close to their conversation. Chono hesitates, and Paiye looks at her in a way that says, Enough.

She nods curtly, and leaves. The door snicks shut behind her. In the empty hallway, she’s momentarily disoriented. She needs to find Esek. She needs to speak to the novitiate who took her bag. She needs to decide what to do with that bag, and with the thing inside it, her dearest possession of all. Should she bring it with her? No, not with Esek here. Esek, who makes chaos out of peace.

Breathing out, Chono marshals a career of meditative practice, trying to quiet her mind. Trying to remember what the air tastes like on Pippashap, how the breeze swoops in through the shanty curtains, and how the floor always moves gently, rocked by a world-covering ocean…

Instead, her nostrils are full of the Riin Cosas gardens, and the shifting ground underfoot is of an entirely different type.