Page 1 of House of Dusk

SEPHRE

T he new novice had been skulking at the edge of the garden for nearly a quarter hour.

If he was trying to hide from her, he was doing a poor job of it.

Sephre pretended not to notice, busying herself filling a basket with fresh, green leaves from the spindleroot bush.

Brother Dolon had been having headaches again, and she was nearly out of his tincture.

Then there were the yearly draughts of cold medicine still to brew.

And the mint wanted thinning before it devoured the entire garden.

She watched the novice through a feathery screen of greenery as she worked.

He seemed to be muttering something to himself.

Stiffening his shoulders, he took one step out along the crushed-shell path.

Only to catch himself, jumping back, as if he’d stepped on a scorpion.

After the fifth time, she lost patience.

“If you stay there too long, the bees are going to fill your ears with honeycomb,” she called out.

Not an idle threat. The novice did have quite large ears, jutting like the handles on a wine cup. He reminded Sephre of a sapling that had sprouted suddenly tall and skinny in a riot of new growth.

He gulped, darting forward, the short dark twists of his hair quivering.

The braids were unusual, but perhaps he was Scarthian.

Stara Bron might be located within the borders of Helisson, but it served all the lands of the Middle Sea.

Then again, she’d always heard Scarthians were bold and reckless, and this boy was. ..not that.

Zander had been half Scarthian. The thought caught her, an unexpected bolt, making her wince until she shoved it back into the past, where it belonged.

The novice apparently took this as a reaction to his own approach. “Sorry!” He made to retreat, not noticing the watering pail.

Sephre seized the boy’s arm, catching him just before he toppled onto her carefully tended patch of gauzebloom. “Careful! No, don’t run away, boy. I’m not angry at you. But I will be, if you squash my flowers.”

He made his way gingerly and somewhat sheepishly out of the verge, taking refuge on the far side of the worktable. “Sorry, sister,” he mumbled. Fates, what was the agia thinking, letting a quivering sprout like this into the temple?

Such arrogance, she chided herself, remembering her own floundering novitiate .

She had come to it much older, of course, well into her thirties, with a lifetime behind her.

A bloody, shameful lifetime that ill-suited her for this work.

And yet she had done all that Agia Halimede asked of her.

She had put in her time. Nine long years of service. Perhaps one day it would be enough.

Sephre directed her attention back to the novice, who seemed to be taking her silence as censure. “What’s your name, lad?” She wasn’t used to speaking gently. To speaking at all, really. It came out sharper than she intended, so she added a rusty smile.

“Timeus.” He started to dip his head.

“I’m not the agia,” she said, halting him. “You don’t need to bow to me, Brother Timeus. Just tell me why you’re here. Did Sister Obelia need more parsley for tonight’s supper?”

“N-no.” Timeus straightened, clearly making a valiant effort to gather his nerves. “Sibling Vasil sent me. They said you needed someone to help with the herbs and medicines. So that’s me. I’m the helper. That is...if you’re her. I mean, if you’re Sister Sephre.”

She smothered a sigh. This was the fifth “helper” Vasil had sent her in the past year.

The last boy barely made it three days before displaying a potentially lethal inability to distinguish between oregano and deadly nightshade.

Before that had been the promising girl who had fled her vows after reconciling with her spurned sweetheart.

Or had it been the lad with the paralyzing fear of bees?

She considered simply sending the boy away, but that would only bring Vasil down on her.

Or possibly the agia herself. And who knew, maybe Timeus would surprise her.

She tried to recall whether she’d even seen him before.

Last Sephre knew, there were five novices at Stara Bron, none of them a tall spindle with overlarge ears. This boy must have only just arrived.

She really should stop calling him “boy.” He must be at least seventeen. The same age she’d been when she enlisted.

Another dagger, catching her in the chest. Sephre breathed deep, filling her lungs with the spice of leaf and root, the sweetness of the honeysuckle that hung from the trellis behind her.

Listened to the hum of the bees. One of them buzzed closer, circling Timeus’s head.

He didn’t seem to mind. Well, that was something.

“Yes, I’m Sister Sephre,” she admitted. “And I do need help.” She held out the basket. “You can finish gathering the spindleroot. Be careful to pinch off just the newest. See how they’re paler green? Those are the ones you want. Leave the others. And don’t step on the roots.”

Timeus took the basket reverently. Sephre returned to the worktable, watching from the corner of her eye.

He wasn’t as bumbling as she’d first taken him to be.

Clearly mindful of her direction, he moved slowly around the bush, pausing before each step to check for the thin, tangled roots that gave the plant its name.

She felt him watching her, in turn. Slanting surreptitious glances when he thought she was busy with her mortar and pestle. She knew she ought to say something, but her conversation skills were as rusty as her smile. Maybe that was why Vasil kept sending her apprentices.

“Have you worked with plants before?” she asked. She had to make some effort, or Vasil would give her one of their disappointed looks next time she saw them, and probably try to talk to her about her feelings.

Timeus shook his head. “My parents are weavers. My eldest brother, too. And Rhea—she’s my twin—enlisted. She’s going to serve in the third wing,” he added, wistfully.

Sephre held her breath for a moment. Released it. Ridiculous. She could talk about such things. The war was over, and so was her part in it. She was an ashdancer now. Warmth flared in her palms, a reassuring heat, warning back the shadows of her past. “Was soldiering not for you?”

He bent his head, making a close study of the spindleroot. “They cast me out of training after the first week. They said I didn’t have the talent for it. I suppose I don’t have the talent for most things.”

She wanted to box the ears of whoever had taught him this.

“Talent is overrated. Skill is what matters. And that only comes with time and practice.” And a willingness to make mistakes and learn from them.

Something she herself should keep in mind.

She nodded to the basket. “You’re doing fine work with that. ”

His smile was fearsome. “Thank you, Captain! I mean—” He clapped a hand over his mouth. Unfortunately, it was the hand that had been holding the basket, which went tumbling to the ground, spilling a drift of leaves across the dark earth.

His brown eyes were wide. Aghast, but also appallingly curious.

She forced herself to take a breath before speaking. To make the words mild as milk, like a proper ashdancer, scrupulously paring away the ire, the pain, every baleful emotion. “ Sister ,” she said. “Sister Sephre.” Then she looked, very meaningfully, at the fallen basket.

Timeus crouched at once, retrieving it. “But you did fight in the Maiden’s War, didn’t you?”

This time it took three breaths to still herself. The heat in her palms flared.

“One of the other novices said you were in the seventh wing,” Timeus went on, not waiting for her reply. Or perhaps she nodded. She wasn’t sure. Her body seemed to belong to someone else. “Part of the final assault.”

Smoke burns her nose, not quite masking the stench of decay.

The bodies lie crumpled, bloodless, in soft heaps like dirty washing.

Her ears aren’t used to the silence. No more clash of swords, no shouts and screams. Only the hum of the flies.

And once, horribly, the wail of a baby. It stops before she can find it.

Done. Gone. Over.

Flames flared at her fingers, clear and bright and relentless, burning the memory back. She knew they must be snapping in her eyes as well, by the way he cowered before her. “I said I’m an ashdancer now. But apparently minding your tongue is just one more thing you’re bad at.”

Timeus opened his mouth, then closed it, looking utterly aghast. Ducking his head, he began collecting the fallen leaves while making distressing snuffling noises that he was clearly trying to muffle in the sleeve of his new habit.

Furies’ tits, she cursed silently. Are you happy, now?

You made him cry. A few questions from an overly curious youth shouldn’t shatter her like this.

That life was over. She was Sister Sephre, who tended to herbs and brewed tinctures and would spend the rest of her life here at Stara Bron, where she could do no harm.

Aside from utterly destroying a perfectly fine batch of spindleroot with her self-indulgently dramatic gesture.

She was staring mournfully at the contents of the mortar, burnt beyond any good use, when a woman came skimming into the workshop, the sleeves of her gray tunic embroidered with yellow flames, like Sephre’s own.

“Sister Beroe,” Sephre greeted her, relieved. “Have you come for Brother Timeus?” It would be just as well if the boy went elsewhere. One more failed apprentice. Failed apprentice? Or failed ma ster?

“No, sister, for you.” Beroe frowned at the still-smoking mortar. “The agia has need of you.”

Sephre hastily dumped the burnt spindleroot into her compost pail. “Is it her chest again?”

The agia had been vigorous well into her seventies, even leading the procession of tombs the previous autumn. But lately she’d been bothered by pains in her chest, and a shortness of breath that troubled Sephre.

“No. They’ve found another body.”

Another. Sephre counted back the days. That would be the third this month. Forty-seven in total. That they knew of.

“Like the others?”

She could feel Timeus watching. No doubt his overlarge ears were quivering. She remembered all too well how novices gossiped. Perhaps they’d already heard the rumors. A pattern of mysterious deaths scattered across all Helisson was ripe fodder for eager minds.

“Yes.” Beroe’s eyes were bright. Fates, she was practically quivering. “Snakebite.”

Timeus gave a muted squeak. Sephre ground her teeth. “Timeus,” she said. “Please go fetch a ewer of water from the well.”

She waited until the boy departed, then cut her gaze back to Beroe. “If that boy has nightmares, it’ll be your fault.”

Beroe blew out an impatient breath. “That boy took the same vows as you and I. He knows it’s our duty to guard the holy flame. To cleanse the dead. And to destroy any creature of the underworld that dares trespass in the mortal realm.” She brandished the words like a banner.

Sephre swept the smooth wood of her worktable, catching up bits of leaf and stray twigs.

She added them to the compost pile, then dusted her hands together.

She had known people like Beroe. Known them?

You were them , she chided herself. So eager to fight for a cause that you didn’t question it. Until it was too late.

“What does Agia Halimede want me for?”

“She wishes for you to examine the body.”

“The corpse is here?” Her voice crackled.

“Yes. The girl was from Tylos.”

This was the first time it had struck so close.

Stara Bron was the largest of the ashdancer temples, the oldest, its flame the most renowned, having been seared into the mountainside by the Phoenix herself.

But there were others in bustling cities, in humble fishing villages, even in the windswept Scarthian plains and the shattered isles of the old empire.

No doubt still others burned across the sea, though the Idrani kept their secrets too well for anyone to know for certain.

Centuries ago, there had been ashdancers guarding nearly all of them.

But the cataclysm had changed much. There were barely fifty ashdancers at the temple, and only half that stationed outside Stara Bron now.

It was from them that the earlier reports had come.

Brother Itonus had sent the most recent firespeaking, from the shrine in the royal city, telling of a merchant found dead in his library.

But Helissa was a five-day journey to the south.

Tylos was barely five miles from Stara Bron. Sephre remembered stopping there, nine years ago, dipping up cold water from the village well, wiping the dust from her face and hands, trying vainly to make herself presentable, clean and pure, the perfect postulant.

“Why me?” She gripped the edge of the worktable, her knuckles pale. “Any ashdancer can question the girl’s spirit.”

“There’s no sign of a spirit,” said Beroe.

Sephre’s skin prickled. It didn’t necessarily mean anything dire. Spirits were harder to reach the deeper they drifted into the Labyrinth of Souls. Even the agia’s powers had their limits.

“Which means we have only the girl’s body to give us answers.

Agia Halimede believes that you might have some insights, given how much time you spend puttering around your tinctures and tonics.

” Beroe’s lips pinched as she spoke. The woman had always been far more interested in spiritual dangers than in something as mundane as a fever or sniffle, and no doubt considered Sephre’s work in the herbarium to be less meaningful than the prayers and invocations that filled her own days.

Not that it had stopped her from coming straight to Sephre last spring when she broke her arm.

Which was unfortunate, because try as she might, Sephre could not help but feel protective toward anyone she physicked.

Even Beroe. Which meant she really had to do this, didn’t she?

The day was apparently cursed. Or possibly this was an ordeal set by the Fates, a punishment for making Timeus weep.

Enough whining . She’d seen dead bodies before.

She could handle this. And it would give her the chance to speak with Halimede.

This foolishness with training an apprentice had gone on long enough.

It was abundantly clear that she was a terrible role model.

Timeus was a lily, too pure for her poisoned soil.

And if there was a chance that Beroe’s suspicions were true, well, then Sephre could not shirk her duty. Not when the danger had come so close to Stara Bron, to this small corner of the world that had tangled itself into her weary heart.

“Right,” she said. “Then you’d best take me to her.”