A tiny old woman slept, curled in a massive, blue brocade armchair under a window, nested with at least three blankets. Sunlight peeked through the thin cracks between the blond wood shutters, illuminati
ng little of the woman’s form. When the shutters stood open, which wasn’t often these days, the armchair showed its age with faded upholstery, and when the woman wasn’t in it, one could see the lumps where the stuffing had migrated to accommodate years of sitting and sleeping. A long white curtain, the woman’s hair, draped over one of the chair’s arms, nearly to the floor. Near her face, it was stained yellow with smoke, and it always smelled strongly of incense, a wild, perfumed mix of a hundred different things.

The old woman’s breathing rattled. When she slept her lined face relaxed into openness, and the great beauty which had faded like the chair showed again. Like the chair, the woman had been born Before, born with the magic, and like the chair, she had survived when the magic died; they were two relics of a bygone time. She still, every so often, dreamed about the divine ecstasy of her Lady’s power flowing through her frame, when she’d
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felt unbreakable.

The door to the antechamber snapped open. The younger woman who ran in across the fine Hayedi carpet, sword banging against her thigh, had never known magic, but she knew the woman she served. “Disa!” she said sharply.

The old woman in the chair stirred and groaned.

“Wake up, Disa!”

“Is it Nones already?” Disa sat up in her chair and flailed at the blankets. “Gudrun—my vestments—”

“No time,” Gudrun said, and tucked her thick arms under Disa’s withered little body, and the blankets. She lifted the old woman from the chair and gathered her to a bust hard with muscle beneath large breasts.

Disa blinked, bemused, but wrapped her gnarled arms around Gudrun’s neck. “What’s going on? I don’t want to give service in my shift.”

“No prayers. Tell you later.” Gudrun
strode from the chair to the door out of Disa’s sitting room. Over the younger woman’s brawny shoulder, Disa glimpsed big, bloody footprints tracked over the patterned carpet, and blankets in a messy tumble where they had slipped from Gudrun’s arm.

This had never happened before, in all Disa’s long years, even when Hengist was Champion and she was a young woman gone silly over the muscular slab of him. She hitched the remaining blanket up around herself with one hand, keeping it clear of Gudrun’s feet. “Where’s Flannery?” she asked, of her five-year-old great niece, who was up from Ennis for the month.

“Don’t know.” Gudrun dashed out of the bedroom, giving Disa another view over her shoulder, this time of a black-clad corpse in a spreading crimson puddle, and the golden disk-and-rays of an Aurelian monk resting on his chest, pulled haphazardly out of his clothes.

“Where’s the other one?”

“Didn’t make it up here. Might be more. I’m moving you.”

“Horsefeathers!” If Disa had been on her feet, she would have stamped one. “Put me down this very moment, Gudrun. If you got both of them, that’s all there is to it. I’m not in the habit of letting anyone interrupt services, let alone these blasted doom-crows. I want my vestments.”

“No, Disa.” Gudrun hurried through the hall to the door that cut off the High’s apartments from the rest of the Cathedral, her usual station when Disa wanted quiet. She put her back to it and turned the knob, inching backward to press it slowly open, peering out of the crack. She didn’t give Disa even a moment to see the situation for herself, only bolted to the left, up the side of the west gallery. The sanctuary flashed past between the caryatid statues of the Lady’s saints: blond wood pews, the rich, sky-blue carpet of the aisle runner, purest white marble. When Disa saw the altar, she screamed.

“Gudrun! Stop!”

“I see them,” she said grimly. “Now they know—”

“Stop, I say!” Disa slammed a bony fist into one of Gudrun’s breasts. Gudrun gasped; her strides faltered, and Disa writhed fre
e. When her body struck the marble floor, she gasped, too, but immediately scrambled away and won her feet. “You, there!” she shouted at the Aurelian doom-crow at the altar, about to touch a brand to the coals that filled the thirty-foot, white-marble dish. “Don’t even think it, you fiend!”

The Aurelian monk, a Militant from the sword he wore, bared his teeth at her and lit the brand. Disa let out a shriek of rage and ran at him, forgetting about her aches and pains, forgetting her fragile lungs. He dropped the burning torch onto the carpet and drew his sword. Gudrun sprinted past Disa, knocking her to the floor with a stiff arm, and charged to meet the Aurelian in a sparking clash of steel. “Fire!” Disa screamed, or
tried to, as flames crawled across the carpet. Instead of the howl she’d aimed for, the word caught at the back of her throat and was lost in a fit of racking coughs. She pounded her fist on the floor, clutching her chest.

Gudrun pushed the monk forward, stepping out of the flames. Her boot was on fire. She kicked at him once, twice, until his black linen clothing caught. It
went up with an audible
whoosh
, and he started to scream, at least until Gudrun ran him through. Disa coughed on.

“Disa! Move!” Gudrun shouted in agony, beating at her flaming boot. Disa crawled forward as best she could. The thump from behind her made her start and forced out a last, bone-rattling, coppery cough. She rolled to her back, rasping shallow breaths into her aching chest.

“Aunt Disa?” Flannery asked from her left. The sneaky little thing had knocked a candelabrum onto another Aurelian, and he rose with difficulty, groaning. Disa tried to force a warning out of her mouth. “Are you—
eek!
”

The Aurelian lunged, snatching the front of Flannery’s blue dress and pulling her off her feet as he stood. He raised a stiletto, ready to drive it into her little body. She thrashed and struggled for all she was worth, shrieking. Disa fought her way to her knees, gasping, only to take a ringing backhand slap from the Aurelian.

Gudrun plowed into him from the side, still trailing smoke from her boot. She moved him a foot or two before he crashed to the floor under her. Little Flannery plopped down and scooted away. Disa lay reeling from the slap, trying to make her limbs obey her commands. The Aurelian cried out and dropped his stiletto when Gudrun broke his wrist. “Old women and little girls!” she said. “Try me, you filthy—” And she spat out an obscenity that would have scalded the ears of that foul-mouthed Vandis Vail. It was the least shocking thing Disa had heard this afternoon.

Gudrun planted her knee in the Aurelian’s chest, picked up the stiletto, and drove its full length into his neck. When s
he drew it out, his blood gushed over the carpet. Disa tried again to rise, but as soon as she did, a wave of dizziness crashed over her head, and she sank back down. Flannery knelt nearby, trying to beat out the growing fire with her hands.

“Come on!” Gudrun said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Flannery, let’s go!” She lifted Disa again, but this time Disa could hardly bring her arms up to grasp Gudrun’s neck.

“It’s the Lady’s carpet,” Flannery said, grimly slapping at the flames.

“Akeere loves you more,” Gudrun said, and shifted Disa to one arm so she could stride over and seize the back of the little girl’s dress.

“We can’t—”

“Hush, Flannery,” Disa croaked. Gudrun bore them both out of the sanctuary, down the nave and into the narthex, where she shouldered open a smaller door to the side
of the great double portal. As she ran down the marble steps, Disa reeled so badly she nearly lost consciousness. The edges of her vision grayed, but the cool slapping of wind on her bare legs kept her aware, if not alert. She shivered; even this close to Longday, Dreamport could run toward chill.

As soon as they reached the street, Gudrun set Flannery down. The little girl ran to the edge of Temple Row, shouting for help from the crowds rushing past, carrying buckets. “There’s a fire in Akeere’s house!” she cried. “Hurry!” T
hey paid her no heed.

“Too late, little one. Look at the sky.” Gudrun raised her square chin westward, toward the pall of smoke staining the blue afternoon. “Come back now,” she said, and Flannery obeyed.

“House of the Sun,” Disa managed. “Foul winds blowing, Gudrun.”

“The foulest,” she agreed, as the portal swung wide, exuding the stink of smoke.

“Fire’s out,” said Norbert, one of the young priests who lived in the east transept. He had ash in his hair and soot on his face. “All right, Your Holiness?”

“What took you so long?” Gudrun snapped, before Disa could answer.

“Sorry, Lady Gudrun, but there were assassins in the—”

“Never mind it,” Disa said. “Is anyone injured?”

“Sturgis is dead,” said Norbert, flatly. “Lira’s got a bad stab wound, and Karys is on it. That’s it.”

“Go help the House of the Sun,” Disa ordered, feeling slightly better now that she had something to do rather than dangle fro
m Gudrun’s arms. “But first, get me a blanket. Send Thalia next door.”

“Right away, Your Holiness.” Norbert disappeared back inside and the portal swung slowly shut behind him.

“The fire’s out. We’ll go back in,” Gudrun said.

“This is where I need to be. Once Norbert comes back, put me down and go with him to the House of the Sun. Flannery! Where’s Flannery?”

“Right here, Aunt Disa,” said the little girl from Gudrun’s elbow. Disa pressed a hand to one temple. She wasn’t remembering things properly; the blow to the head must have addled her.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” said a young man. He was shorter than Gudrun, with almond-shaped eyes and a flattish nose—he must have been from Kuo. “I’m from the Knights.” He pointed a gloved thumb over his shoulder as he spoke, eastward, at the headquarters of the Knights of the Air. “They came here, too, didn’t they? Is everything all right?”

“We lost one,” Disa said shortly. “Did they get Sir Vandis?”

“No, ma’am, they did no
t.” The young man grinned. “This close to Longday, Vandis is already in Knightsvalley.”

“Good,” she said, and just then Norbert returned. “Put me down, Gudrun, and go with Norbert.”

“It’s not a good idea,” Gudrun said quellingly, but Disa grasped the blanket Norbert offered.

“Horsefeathers! You’ll go. Flannery will stay here with me, and this young fellow here, Sir Whatsisname. Won’t you?” She looked sharply at the Knight.

“Hui,” he said. “Hjaldi told me to make sure you’re all right, and that’s what I’ll do, ma’am.” He patted his sword and turned his cheerful face to Gudrun, who huffed disgustedly. “Gudrun, ma’am, do you know Pearl?”

Gudrun grunted an affirmative, though Disa didn’t know who that might be. “Fine swordswoman.”

“She was my Master,” said Sir Hui, his smile widening.

Gudrun nodded
, placed Disa carefully on the top step, and followed young Norbert down to the street. Disa struggled to wrap herself in the blanket, until Sir Hui took it and draped it around her. “There you go, Disa, ma’am.”

“You Knights never address me properly,” she snapped, but when he sat down next to her and looped a wiry arm around her shoulders, she didn’t protest. He supported and warmed her.

“Well, I suppose it’s how we’re taught, ma’am,” he said in a tone so serious it had to be meant cheekily. “Respect, always. Reverence is earned.”

“Hmph.”

“You know,” he went on, “we don’t even call Vandis ‘Sir Vandis’. He’s just Vandis.”

“You don’t think I’m holy?” she snapped, knowing exactly what sort of question she was asking.

“I’m sure you are, ma’am, but calling you ‘Your Holiness,’ I can’t do that. It’d be like saying you are the embodiment of holy, and I just don’t think anyone but our Lady can be that.”

“Hmph.”

They sat, quiet for a while, watching the people form into lines to bring water from pumps and fountains to the House of the Sun. “Just how old are you, anyway? You can’t be more than a Junior, young man.”

“I’m
twenty-seven,” Sir Hui replied. “I’m serving my Seniorship. Maybe I’ll pass the Mastery exams this year. I don’t know, do you think I should try it?”

“I think you lose nothing in a valiant attempt.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

They were quiet again, for a longer while, the man with the almond-shaped eyes warming the tiny old woman, listening to the shouts from down the Row. Little Flannery sat for a short time, and then got up and started playing some sort of hopping game on the marble steps.

“Have a care, Flannery,” Disa said when night began to fall. She felt desperately weary. Smoke marred the sky, a huge, ugly smear against the sunset, looking progressively paler as the light faded. Flannery uttered a frustrated grunt and came to sit next to them.

After a moment she asked, “Can you tell me a story, Sir Hui?”

“Maybe. What kind of a story?”

“Any story. I’m bored.”

BOOK: Saga of Menyoral: The Service

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