The Ritual (45 page)

“Hang on,” Tio said, taken aback. “Are you saying that the monastery was run by men who had their own private whorehouse of half-elf slaves? That they basically forced them to have sex against their will?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“That’s just wrong,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “I enjoy a good tumble in the bed as much as the next man, but to do it against a woman’s will is distasteful.” Then he noticed my smile and frowned. “What?”

“You might not make such a bad king after all,” I said, and giggled when he bent down and flung a wad of cut grass in my direction.

“I still don’t know what that has to do with this Chiarin woman,” he huffed as I brushed the grass off my dress. “Besides, how do you know that it’s true? You said yourself that most sources don’t mention that part.”

“No, but there are two reliable, verified accounts from women who were slaves in the monastery at the time. They recount how one night they were roused from their beds by four half-elves, who clothed them in the monks’ own robes and told them they were free to go. This was shortly after Aunt Tima became queen, and no one had yet told them that they were free citizens. Their rescuers offered them the choice to stay or leave, and although my sources were among those who left, others chose to remain. They overthrew the existing order and took over the running of the monastery. The half-elf intruders helped them to do this.”

“Four half-elves and a bunch of women?” Tio said sceptically. “Sounds rather far-fetched to me.”

I shrugged. “We know how the monastery is run now, and there are plenty of accounts that state it was run by men before. There is no official record of what happened exactly, the current occupants of the monastery are very reluctant to share their knowledge in this regard. All I know is that one of those four half-elves was a woman called Chiarin.”

“And that’s definite?”

“Yes. She had been at the monastery before, or so one of the accounts says. She had been meant to become one of the women slaves, but had only been there one night before she disappeared. My source never knew what had happened to her until she saw her again that night she was rescued.”

“Huh. So who were the other three then?”

“Ah well, from that particular account we don’t know,” I said, getting into my stride, “but there are other incidents.”

“Do tell,” Tio said, leaning his head on his arm again and watching me with an indulgent smile. I frowned at him, but he gave an encouraging wave of his hand. “Go on, I never knew you were this involved in your research.”

I wasn’t convinced, but continued anyway. “Have you ever heard of the mine of Upper Danzar?”

“I’ve heard of Danzar, of course. Southernmost of the high magistrate seats, famous for its quality sandstone, silk, silver and crystalwork.” He sounded like it was something he had learnt by rote, and I chuckled.

“Yes, silver. Upper Danzar is higher up in the mountains, it’s a silver mine. This is a similar story to the monastery, really. During Sovander’s reign the mines were worked by half-elf slaves, under atrocious conditions. They were supposed to have been freed when Aunt Tima took over, but the mine is remote and somehow it was overlooked, or the guards were turned away.”

“So let me guess, one day four half-elves showed up and freed all the slaves?”

I smiled. “Exactly. And all of those who recounted their story gave the same description as the women from the monastery had: two red-haired women, two black-haired men. The men were clearly identical twins, the women possibly too. The only names I have are their shortened ones, but one of them was addressed as ‘Rin’. I’m guessing that was Chiarin – the description certainly fits.”

“So if there were four of them every time, why not write your essay about all four?”

“Because Chiarin is the only one I know anything more about. The other three are complete unknowns but for their shortened names and what they look like, but for Chiarin I have that one account from the woman at the monastery, Tiziel. She described Chiarin as… Let me see…” I scanned through my essay, trying to find the exact passage. “Ah, here. ‘A determined, stubborn young woman, seemingly undisturbed by what was in store for her and admirably unafraid despite her circumstances’.”

“So a woman who didn’t lose her cool despite thinking she’d be raped repeatedly for the rest of her life,” Tio remarked. “I can see why you admire her now.”

“Thank you. Though to be fair, I admire her more for her actions. I’ve never seen the places I just mentioned, but from the descriptions they were pretty difficult to access. It must have taken guts to do what she did. What
they
did.”

“Why do you think they did it?”

I stared at him. “Tio, that’s a silly question. They must clearly be determined to improve the lot of half-elves in Arlennis. They’ve done Aunt Tima a favour in doing so as well, I’d say. They’ve fixed a couple of nasty situations, even if their methods are somewhat, um, brutal.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Explain?”

“There have been deaths in all these cases,” I said with a grimace. “Usually they’ve killed guards or overseers or whoever else was in their way.”

Tio gave an unconcerned shrug. “Sounds like they deserved it.”

“Mmm,” I conceded, “but hardly within the law.”

He scratched at a knot of wood in the table, then said pensively, “I suppose that sometimes it pays to circumvent the restrictions of the law. Mother probably knows that better than anyone else.”

A sudden, icy thought slithered down my spine. What if Aunt Tima
did
know this, and needed tools to circumvent the law when she needed to do so? What if I was being trained to be such a tool?

I pushed the thought away. No use in dwelling on that now. I tried to concentrate on my essay, reading through what I had already written, when Tio spoke again. “So they’ve done stuff like that a few times then?”

“I’ve found six accounts in total,” I replied absently. “Most of them fairly shortly after Aunt Tima became queen, but the most recent one was about fourteen years ago.”

“What was that one then?”

I sucked on the tip of my quill. “It was the half-elf orphanage in Innis. On the surface it was an orphanage like any other, you know, prepping children for adoption by half-elf parents, except these children were being abused by the staff.”

“Abused how?” Tio said sharply.

“Sexually.”

“Bastards,” he swore. “I hope they castrated them?”

“Tio, have you been listening? If they did, it was before they killed them. There were no survivors among the staff,” I said, meeting his gaze evenly.

He gave no reply, just a grim but satisfied smile, and I reflected that he really
would
make a good king, provided his current values remained intact and provided he could keep his manhood in check. But then, as Aunt Tima had once told me, the world revolved around sex, specifically around what men got up to with their manhoods. I knew that my natural mother had almost certainly been human, and had almost certainly been a whore. That much at least hadn’t changed since Sovander’s time. The only difference was that the orphanages now provided half-elf couples with the chance to make a family, rather than grooming children for a life of slavery.

Tio had finally bent over his own essay, and I concentrated on mine. Whatever I was meant to be, I had so far spent sixteen years on becoming it, and the least I could do was ensure that I would be good at it. I owed that to my queen.