Page 3 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Why should Inotbe a Librarian?

With my crowning achievements mentally composed and ready to be committed to parchment, it came time to address the body in the room. I could clean no further with Antonetta lying there, slumped against the wall with her veins open to the world.

The Eldest Sister was pinching the bridge of her nose as I straightened up from my crouch, ignoring the low groan in my back.

“Lady save me. Nadia is one of the most talented girls we’ve had pass through these walls in nearly a decade. The thought of giving her to that… thatanimalmakes me sick. It must be Risna.”

“No,” Aletha said more firmly, and I waved a hand. She scowled. “What is it, Cirri?”

I signed to her with filthy hands.Will the Sisters remove her body soon?

And that was why I was apparently unfit to become a Silver Sister. I had been born mute; I could read in multiple languages and speak with one—the language of fingers, known as the priests’ tongue—but none of those languages would ever leave my mouth.

My parents had left me here because I was worthless to them; the youngest of four children, unable to speak a word, a useless mouth to feed. No man of high noble blood would want to marry a mute, not when they had three other daughters who sang like nightingales and would snare rich husbands.

Even when I had written twelve pages detailing why I should become a Sister, Sifka had turned me aside.

She did not need a mute, she told me, reflecting poorly on the Sisterhood when they were already struggling against the tide of the vampires’ popularity. None of the women with obviousimpediments were brought into the fold—the Eldest preferred the prettiest, most physically capable women to serve as the face of the Silver Sisterhood, the better to bring up recruitment numbers.

I had been relegated to scullery maid instead, but in the Silver Cathedral, every woman—even the maids—received a basic education until they reached adulthood. With one avenue of communication lost to me, I had put my blood, sweat, and tears into learning as many languages as possible, so that I might be heard with pen and paper and hands.

And when I hit eighteen, the age of majority, I had elected to continue selling years of my life in servitude in exchange for a higher education. For every year of study in their Library, I owed them three years of work. For an unwanted daughter with no other prospects, it wasn’t the worst contract, but…

By now, I would be indentured until I was almost fifty. I’d hoped that it would one day lead to the Library, and this would be my year.

But my other hope had died a slow, painful death. I was the only invisible person in the Cathedral.

It was amazing, in a way, how easily you could vanish when you couldn’t speak. And as no one else had ever bothered to learn the priests’ tongue, I found that even with my signing, a language in itself… still no one could hear me.

In many cases I had to write on a small slate I kept tied to my apron to make myself understood, and often in a quick, crude way; the longer it took me to write, the less patience one had for reading it.

At this very moment, Aletha stared at me like my hands were butterflies performing some whimsical ballet, utterly uncomprehending of my question.

I silently sighed and performed crude gestures, miming the removal of Antonetta’s body from the room. I refused to touchmy writing utensils with bloody hands; a single stick of chalk cost me three days’ labor.

If you knew how eloquent I can be with my hands, you would not look at me that way.

“Ah. The night-diggers will be up in a moment,” she said, finally understanding thanks to the pantomime. “Just clean around her until then, and for the love of the Lady, wash yourself twice before you step foot near the kitchens again.”

She sneered at Antonetta’s corpse, no less forgiving than the Eldest Sister. The Sisters would never love, or forgive, a suicide—particularly not one that had left them in such dire straits.

“Eldest, we’re running out of time. We must prepare Nadia for the wedding, or the broken Accords will be on us. How long do you think Argent will tolerate our presence if we’re responsible for that?”

I knelt, trying to find a patch of floor I could start scrubbing without touching Antonetta’s clammy, grayish-white skin, but a hand like a vise fastened around my shoulder, drawing me back up.

I started, meeting Sifka’s pale blue gaze. Her deeply lined face had split into a smile, showing her silver teeth and the gray gums of someone who’d had them for years, as she searched my eyes.

Then she reached up and tore the wimple from my head, revealing my wine-red hair twisted into a tight braid beneath it.

A laugh of relief sent a gust of sour wind into my face. She dropped the wimple and gripped my chin, turning my head this way and that.

“Red hair, and eyes as green as the grass in spring. Oh, thank the Lady, you have saved me. Stand up straight, Cirrien.”

She alone called me by my full name, and every time, I heard the mockery beneath it: I was Cirrien lai Darran, once of a noble house, but mute and worthless. A noble name for a nobody.

What is it, Mother Superior?I signed, my stomach roiling with dread, and she batted my bloodied hands away with a grimace.

“Keep those filthy hands down. Just look at you. Not a single Forian dog in your entire family tree, is there? You can nod or shake your head, girl.”

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