Page 90 of Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years 2)

“Since it may ease your minds on that score, I will tell you that I heard of no loss of human life in the collapse of the basilica,” said the Superior Maunt. “It was midnight, after all. The place was deserted, even the side sheds and storerooms that escaped being crushed by falling debris. I suspect, however, your foes imagine the basilica was your real target, and the death of the dragons—how do they term it these days?—collateral damage. As to your suggestion that you should turn yourselves in, let me take it up in council before you make your decisions.”

“What is council?” asked Trism.

“I don’t know. I’m going to find out,” she replied.

THEY GATHERED IN THE CHAPEL, the only room in the mauntery large enough to hold all inhabitants and guests. Evening devotions usually occurred on a basis of rotations, some maunts handling kitchen washup or geriatric babysitting while the rest sank into quiet prayer or early nap. Tonight the Superior Maunt requested the attendance of all, even those retired maunts like Mother Yackle who were on the edge of gaga.

Lady Glinda, though a benefactress, refused a seat on the dais up front, and she had removed her trademark diamond strutted collar for a quieter linen ruff. Liir and Trism, unfamiliar with these traditions, stayed standing. The older maunts were escorted in, in wheeled chairs when necessary; the novices took their places on their knees until the Superior Maunt indicated they should sit. “This is not prayer,” she said. “Something like it, but not prayer, precisely.”

She sat herself down, with difficulty. After a short silence, Sister Hymnody offered a provocatory in plaintone, though her sweet bell-like voice quavered. They were all on edge.

“Sisters, mothers, friends, and family. I shall be brief. Our tradition of charity, reinforced by our vows, brings us this evening into a conflict none of us has anticipated or experienced before. However generous the tithe of Lady Glinda, I doubt it will rebuild this house should the army of the Emperor sack it.

“We are a small house, a mission post on the road halfway between our motherchapel in the Emerald City and the rest of the world. Our isolation has been the cause of loneliness, at times, but also promoted peace and protection. Perhaps even provocation—but I pass over that. Tonight we are neither isolated nor peaceful. It is a truth we must accept.

“I am an old woman. I was raised as a novice in the venerable practice of obedience. Under the rubric of our order I followed instruction, including the one that required me, years ago, to take charge of this mauntery and govern it until death.

“I still believe in obedience. Even while soldiers camp outside our walls, and quite likely call for reinforcements, I must be obedient to the wishes of the powers that placed me here.

“As I speak these words, my dear friends, I hear in them an echo of the Emperor’s remarks. He professes subservience to the highest aims and intentions of the Unnamed God. God is the mouthpiece and the Emperor is his striking arm. The First Spear.

“I have not met the Emperor, and I will not. I should decline an invitation were one offered. The Emperor has hijacked the great force of faith and diverted it to further the prosperity and dominance of the City. Who can argue with a man who has the voice of the Unnamed God speaking exclusively in his ear? Not I. I have never heard such a voice. I have only heard the echo that still reverberates, once the Unnamed God stopped speaking and the world took up with itself.

“In our house, we profess to believe that the Unnamed God has made us in its likeness and its image, and this should have enlarged us to be like the Unnamed God. I fear in the Emerald City, they have remade the Unnamed God in their image, and that has belittled and betrayed the deity. Can the Unnamed God be belittled, you ask. No, of course not. But the deity can go unrecognized, and return to mystery.”

The sisters shifted. Many of the novices were ignorant of the Emperor’s apostasy, and the shoals of theocracy were beyond their ability to navigate. The Superior Maunt noticed.

She stood. “Bring me two other chairs, one at my right and one at my left,” she said. This was done.

“The Unnamed God retreats into mystery, and is not especially localized in my heart, my dears. Nor in the Emperor’s. The mystery is as equally in your heart as in mine, and in…the spirit of the trees and the…the music of water. That sort of thing. In the memory of our elders. In the hope for the newborn.

“I break with the tradition of our house tonight, as the decisions now to be made involve your lives as well as mine. I am old; happily I would go to my sweet reward this evening were it provided me by a literal spear of the Emperor. I cannot ask the same of you. Therefore it is my wish that henceforth the mauntery—even if our residency here lasts only till dawn—shall be governed not by a single voice, but by a troika of voices. Were the disagreeables not outside our walls, I should invite your opinions and call for a ballot. Time prevents me from allowing that. In extremis, our family of maunts shall accept the leadership of three. Sister Doctor, will you rise to the chair?”

Sister Doctor gaped. She grasped Sister Apothecaire’s hand briefly, and moved forward. Sister Apothecaire trembled and moved to the edge of her seat, perching for approach.

“I shall take the second seat,” said the Superior Maunt. “I may be old, but I’m not dead.”

The room was so still that the sounds of horses whinnying and stamping outside carried through the cold.

“The third chair I am reserving for the novice known as Candle,” declared the Superior Maunt. “I have a notion we shall see her again. For how long, I don’t know. But we need the wisdom of age, the strength of the fit, and the initiative of the young. From this moment

forward, my absolute command over this establishment is dissolved. I shall enter it so in the Log of the House before I retire. Now, let us see how we get on.”

Sister Apothecaire bit her lip and tried to feel more humble than humiliated.

Skirts rustled as the women shifted. Faint whispering, unprecedented in the chapel, sounded, like faraway wind. The Superior Maunt dropped her forehead into her fingers and breathed deeply, feeling that the world had changed utterly, and wondering how quickly she would regret this action.

In the stillness, Lady Glinda stood. Reticence not being her usual thing, she’d had about enough: and anyway, hadn’t the Superior Maunt called for a collaborative spirit? “If I may speak,” she began, in a tone that implied she knew she could not be denied, “even if the army breaks through the defenses of this mauntery, they cannot do you good women much harm. There will be no bloodshed or rape here. Not while I am in house. Make of it what you will, even though I am retired from what passed for public service, I am still seen as a friend of the government. I have the ear of every society power monger in the country. The army knows well enough they cannot abuse you while I am a witness—and they will not touch me. They daren’t.”

She added, “I am Lady Glinda,” in case some of the younger novices hadn’t cottoned on yet.

“It isn’t the girls that are wanted,” said Sister Doctor. “It is the boys.”

“Don’t underestimate what people in the throes of passion may do,” said the Superior Maunt. “Our rectitude means little to the world beyond our walls, and the commitment of our lives is as cheap as throwaway grain on unuseful margins of field. Still, Sister Doctor, you are right. The army seeks two young men, but they do not know for sure that they are here.”

Liir said, “I do not think the broom would carry two, but Trism could climb to the ramparts late at night, and fly to safety. That would leave only me, and whatever fate I have earned, I should face it by myself.”

The room grew decidedly chilly. “So the rumors of the broom are true?” said Sister Doctor. The Superior Maunt took in some breath wetly at the corners of her mouth.

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