Page 10 of House of Dusk

Cheers battering her ears. Her hands full of flowers. Someone slapping her on the shoulder. And inside, her soul screaming, her hands raw and rough from washing, and yet they never felt clean.

Before she knew it, Sephre was sloughing herself out of the water, shivering on the tiled floor, steam rising from her skin and her hair slithering around her shoulders.

Her breath came too quick. She snatched a towel from the pile nearby, wrapping it round herself.

“I never said I was a hero.” She spun on her heel and quit the room.

· · ·

When Sephre first arrived at Stara Bron, the slow, steady routine of prayer and chore had been a relief. She did what she was told. Chopped carrots. Lugged pails of water. Sang first rites every morning with the bright dawn stinging her eyes.

So when they sent her to the garden to dig out stones, she did that too. Dug deep, until her spade turned up a dark, rich loam. And then, for no reason at all, she sank to her knees in the soft earth, tears sliding down her cheeks and pattering the soil like rain.

She wept until her breaths softened to small gasps. And there was Sibling Abas kneeling beside her, holding a tiny horn cup to her lips, full of something sharp and pungent that unlocked the tightness in her chest. Teeth chattering, bones aching, she asked them what the draft was.

Come into the workshop. I’ll teach you how to make it.

And that was that. Abas never asked why Sephre wept.

Which was good, because Sephre didn’t know herself.

Her body was an alien thing sometimes. An untamed beast that could turn wild at the smallest thing.

The scent of burning cedar, a pool of rainwater if the light caught it at the wrong angle, even just the cold smoothness of a metal ladle against her palm.

Over time, she’d learned to quiet the beast. To creep past it, so it would not wake. She came to value the peace of the herbarium, the calm steady work of tending the plants, seeing that dark, deep soil birth new life.

Then came the morning just over a year ago, when Sephre found Abas slumped among the herbs, the scent of crushed mint and lemon balm stinging the air.

Not dead, thank the Fates. But the elder ashdancer never fully recovered, developing a tremble in their legs and arms that made their old work impossible.

They retired to the infirmary, and Sephre found herself responsible for the herbarium.

But that didn’t mean Sibling Abas had lost interest in their former domain.

“Have you trimmed back the nettleswift?” they asked. “Ah, that’s it. Thank you, child.”

Sephre bent her head to hide her chagrin, scooping up another bit of ointment and rubbing it into the leathery sole of Abas’s foot, feeling the tightness relax beneath her fingers.

She hadn’t been a child in over three decades, but she supposed someone nearly twice her age had the right to call her that.

“Yes. And I put up the dartgloss. And I’ve got plenty of spindleroot ready for winter chilblains. ”

Abas snorted. “And you don’t need some old goat telling you what to do anymore, I suppose?”

Sephre bit the inside of her lip. Abas looked more amused than insulted, but regret stung her. “That isn’t...I just don’t want you having to worry. Your garden is doing well.”

“I’m more worried about my apprentice.”

Abas had always seen her so clearly. “Your ankles feel a bit swollen,” she said. “I’ll bring some of the nettle tea next time.”

“You think if you ignore me, I’ll forget I asked?” asked Abas dryly. “My memory isn’t that far gone. And I’ll always have an ear for you.”

Her love for the old ashdancer stabbed sharply. That had always been Abas’s gift. Letting her be. Letting her speak, rather than telling her who she was and what she ought to be. A part of her wanted desperately to tell them about her day, but equally, she didn’t want to burden them with her fears.

She cleared her throat, rubbing the last of the salve into Abas’s instep. “It was just...a hard day.”

“Because of the corpse?” At Sephre’s startled look, Abas gave a grim smile. “I can listen to gossip as well as anyone. The kitchen novice who brought us dinner said that the woman died of snakebite, and that her body was half covered in scales.”

Sephre snorted. “By tomorrow it will be five corpses with glowing eyes and fangs, dripping pools of poison.” Ridiculous.

And yet a lump caught her throat as she recalled the reality.

The girl’s thin wrist, the bracelet of carefully woven beads.

Blue and green and white, forming the stylized eye of the Fates.

Meant to guide the wearer home, if ever they were lost.

“Yes,” she admitted. To Abas, she could say such things. “She was a child. Barely fifteen. Too young.” She dragged in a shaky breath. “Beroe is convinced it’s a sign that the Serpent is returning.”

No doubt she was the source of the outlandish rumors. Did Beroe think that if she roused all Stara Bron to alarm, Halimede would be forced to act?

“What do you think?” asked Abas.

Sephre didn’t want to think anything about it. She wanted it to be wiped away, gone. To have never happened. She sat back, tucking away the jar of ointment. “I think I’ve far too much work in the herbarium to have time for a second cataclysm.”

The old ashdancer’s laugh held the crackle of banked embers. Abas reached for her hand, fingers fumbling, then clasping tight. She felt the tremor, but also the strength.

“Child, did I ever tell you about turnsole?”

“It’s a weed.”

“ Weed is a word for things ignorant people deem useless. But everything has some use.”

Sephre eyed them suspiciously. “Is this some sort of inspiring metaphor to encourage me to believe in myself?”

Abas squeezed her hand again, then released it. A wry smile bent their thin lips. “I should know better, I suppose. You don’t need me for that. What you do need is my recipe for azarine ink. Now stop goggling and get out your tablet.”

Dutifully, Sephre tucked the ointment away, retrieving a small wax tablet and stylus from her satchel.

Abas proceeded to dictate the instructions, then insisted that Sephre read it back to them three times to ensure she’d gotten all the details.

She slid the tablet away, then went to fetch a cup of warm lemon-water. Talking had brought back Abas’s cough.

When she returned, Abas was already drifting into sleep. She set the cup on the table beside their bed, moving softly. Watching the slow rise and fall of their chest, feeling a deep, bittersweet ache of gratitude and affection and wild fury that the old ashdancer could not live forever.

It was like watching a featherfrond, the bright golden petals fading, thinning, curling into themselves, seeming to wither to nothing.

And yet the nothingness was a lie. Inside were a hundred silken strands, each tipped with a tiny seed, ready to burst out in one final, transitory puff that would carry life onward, to some new and unknown soil.

Soon, Abas would be gone. They knew it, but they didn’t seem to fear it. Was it because they had done what Halimede said? Made themself pure? Or maybe they’d just been a better person to begin with.

You think no one else in the world has regrets?

Sephre chided herself. You’re not so special as that.

She checked the brazier to make sure the coals would last through the night.

At the infirmary door she paused, glancing back over the room, slumbering in the low golden light.

Two of the five other beds were filled, both elders like Abas.

A month ago there had been three, but ancient, owlish Sister Glauce had died a fortnight past.

Glauce, who had been the one to take Sephre aside when she was a miserable novice, and shared her trick for surviving Vasil’s tedious serenity exercises—a layer of padded cloth secreted in her habit that she could use to protect her knees from the stone floor of the meditation hall.

Serenity is a lot easier to find when you’re comfortable, she’d said, with a warm, wicked smile.

If the Serpent waits long enough, no one will be left to stop him.

Sephre grimaced. The last thing she needed was Beroe stuck in her head.

Her sandals scuffed lightly along the hallway, carrying her toward the garden.

She had to get back to the workshop, to see what Brother Timeus had made of the blacksap she’d left him to boil down, and perhaps get a start on compounding the azarine ink.

That was her job now. That was her role here at Stara Bron.

The scuff of her footsteps became a crunch as she emerged onto the gravel path. Sephre paused, breathing deep, drinking in the green, vivid scent of her domain, holding it deep to settle her.

Ssss.

Her hand went to her hip, muscles stubbornly reaching for the sword she had given up ten years ago. Apparently Timeus wasn’t the only one who still thought of Sephre as a soldier. But she was an ashdancer now, she reminded herself.

Sparks flickered from her fingers, spilling golden light over the darkness, revealing the boxwood hedges and soft billows of flosscap. She squinted, searching for any hint of movement. Her heart thrummed briskly, but the old calm flowed through her, holding her tense and ready.

Nothing. She was an old fool, hearing things in the dark. It was probably one of the temple cats. This was Stara Bron, after all. Surely no creature of the Serpent would dare breach its walls, knowing it was full of ashdancers capable of burning them to a toasty crisp.

A pang of unease chased the thought. Not everyone in Stara Bron was a full-fledged ashdancer.

The lay-servants would have returned to their homes in the village by now.

But not the novices. Not Timeus. Sephre cut abruptly through the bed of mint, arrowing toward the workshop. It was so quiet. What if—

She snipped the thought like a loose thread. Worry changed nothing. She squinted into the workshop. The large double doors were propped open, and by the glow of the cooking hearth she made out a lanky figure in gray slumped motionless across the table.

Panic surged up her throat.

Then the boy stirred. One hand brushed his cheek. He murmured something sleepily. A moment later she heard a faint snore. Lined up on the table before him were a dozen freshly sealed bottles.

Sephre sagged in relief. Only a cat, then. Or a breeze in the whispergrass. Or any number of things that were not dire minions of the underworld.

A movement stuttered in the shadows to her right. The stench hit her a heartbeat later, curdling her stomach, making her gag.

Two gleams of light winked in the darkness. Eyes that were dark as a bruise, yet somehow luminous, burning between the ragged strips of a tattered linen shroud. The same shroud she had seen hours earlier.

But this wasn’t Iola. Not anymore.