Page 26 of Heir

“Aiz, love.” Noa’s voice was a weak croak. Aiz trembled with relief that the cleric lived, followed by rage that she might have died.

“I’m sorry, Sister,” Aiz whispered, trying to temper her anger. “I’m so sorry—”

“No!” Noa glared and gripped Aiz’s wrist so fiercely that she flinched.

“Don’t you give up, girl,” Noa whispered. “Hold on to your anger.”

Aiz stroked the cleric’s short curls. “You’re never angry, Sister.”

Noa smiled. “I’m angry all the time. At the world and the Triarchs and us Snipes for accepting our lot. I’m angry for myself and for you. Better anger than despair. Anger will get us through this.”

She collapsed back and Aiz shook her head. There was nothrough this. There was only the Questioners finally understanding the clerics had nothing to do with the assassination attempt. The quicker Aiz could get them to take her, the quicker she could convince them of this fact.

But at sunrise, the Questioners took two other clerics. Two more each dawn after that. Again and again, Aiz watched as they dragged the clerics, tormented and beaten, back to the cellblock after their interrogations. Once, the Questioners took Olnas to the Hollows. She was only gone for a few hours, but when she returned, she didn’t speak for days.

“Take me,” Aiz begged the Questioners, then reasoned, then screamed. “I’m the one who tried to kill him!”

They ignored her as if she were a dead beetle, too insignificant to even be kicked out of the way.

“What can I do?” Aiz held Noa after the second time she was taken. The cleric felt so frail, as if a little pressure would wither her bones. “How do I fix this?”

“Tell the stories, my love.” Noa squeezed Aiz’s hands. “We all needto hear them. Tell them with wrath. Tell them with hate. But do not give up. Despair is death.”

When Aiz told one of the Sacred Tales that night, her voice shook with fury. She did not care if the jailers heard and punished her.

“Gather, gather and listen well,” she snarled. “For Mother Div’s voice must not be forgotten!”

Aiz had told the Nine Sacred Tales often, and by now the cadence of her voice quieted all who heard her. As her anger roared out of her like a great wave, faces peeked through bars up and down the cellblock. Snipes who were sick and wounded and hopeless, yet listening.

So it went, day after day. Week after week. When the clerics returned from interrogation, beaten and broken, Aiz took her place near the cell door and preached, the Sacred Tales imbued with a fiery righteousness that made even the weakest prisoners sit up.

The girl’s anger grew to an inferno, something beyond her control. The storytelling helped, but it wasn’t enough. After weeks in the Tohr, Aiz felt her ire press for release. She found herself snapping at Hani, Noa, even at dear old Olnas.

Curse Tiral for keeping the clerics here, when the Questioners must know they were innocent. Curse the Triarchs, who were descendants of Holy Div and did nothing as Div’s disciples were tortured. Curse the jailers who kept children like Hani and Jak and Finh locked up in the noxious dark for the crime of being born Snipes.

One day, after Aiz finished the Eighth Sacred Tale, Hani interrupted her.

“Aiz, why are there only eight tales when they’re called the Nine Sacred Tales? What’s the Ninth?”

“It has yet to be revealed,” Aiz said. “Mother Div whispered the Ninth Sacred Tale to the wind in a faraway land. When the wind circles the earth and returns to Kegar, we will finally hear the tale. Its telling will herald the Return to our homeland.”

“Until then,” Olnas said from the cot where she brushed Jak’s hair, “we start back from the beginning to see what we missed the first time.”

Aiz smiled. “Long ago and far away…”

She was midway through the tale when a figure stepped from the darkness. Kithka. Aiz didn’t know how long the woman had been lurking in the shadows, but it didn’t matter. Aiz refused to stop.

“And Mother Div ordered the early builders to lay the foundations of our capital, first and foremost the cloister in Dafra.”

As Aiz spoke, Kithka gripped her whip, gaze darting from cell to cell, clearly uncertain what to make of the sheer number of prisoners listening to Aiz.

“What the bleeding Spires is going on?” Gil barreled through the door at the far end of the block, behind Kithka. “What’s the racket?”

As if his voice had shaken her out of her indecision, Kithka wrenched open the door to Aiz’s cell. “Enough yammering from you.” The jailer grabbed Aiz by the scruff of her neck and shoved a rag in her mouth. “You’re going to the Hollows.”

8

Quil

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