Page 2 of House of the Beast

Chapter

T here was no warning. One day, she simply collapsed.

A neighbor opened our door when she heard my wailing. “Oh, the poor woman!” she exclaimed when she saw my mother on the kitchen floor. I hadn’t been strong enough to move her, and she would not wake. “She must be very sick. Only a Sorrowless Disciple can save her now.”

Healers from the Church of the Weeping Lady often traveled Kugara’s provinces to provide their services to followers of the Four.

Unfortunately, the one stationed in Merey had just been called back to the capital in Sorrowsend.

Having given the last of her sorrows to the Lady, and her joy and her fear and everything else in between, she had begun mistaking her patients for willing subjects of medical experimentation, and eventually was deemed no longer fit for duty.

Summoning another healer to Merey would cost more money than I was capable of comprehending.

My best hope, the neighbors said, was to ask the local temple for their sponsorship.

I had nowhere else to go.

A Seer-Priest in heavy midnight robes greeted me at the temple entrance. The silver decorations hanging off his shoulders suggested he was of some importance. Though a blindfold covered his eyes, I still felt as though he were somehow regarding me beneath it, and he did not seem very impressed.

“You wish to contact the Church of the Weeping Lady?” he said.

He placed a thoughtful hand against the entry arch, which had been carved to resemble the Heavenseer’s many shadowy limbs twisted together in beautiful, incomprehensible patterns.

It reminded me of the sea creatures sometimes fished up by the sailors, their tentacles writhing in the salty air.

At the top of the arch, the mass of limbs parted to frame a giant eye.

“You are Alma Ven. Your mother is Ira Ven. Yes, I know your name. But I don’t recognize you from my sermons. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

My stomach sank like a stone in cold water. “What do you mean?”

“A Sorrowless Disciple works with miracles. Miracles which are granted by the gods,” he explained, looking rather pleased with himself. “Yet you do not believe. You do not attend communion, and your mother is unmarried. No, I don’t believe I can help you at all. Good day, child.”

At the time, I could do nothing but gape as one of the town’s holiest men shut the door in my face.

Later, I would often think back to that moment.

I would lie awake in bed, wishing that the rage that had once reared its head so terribly could have driven me to do something more—force my way through, wring the Seer-Priest’s neck between my hands, knock his stained teeth out of his head one by one until he agreed to help us.

But all I did that day was trudge home as hope slipped between my fingers.

It became known that I had been turned away by the temple.

The neighbors buzzed with gleeful vindication.

Eventually one of them approached me—an old woman who rarely spoke to anyone but who had always listened while the others gossiped.

I used to resent her for her complacency, but that resentment turned to gratitude when she quietly pointed me toward a local physician.

“Your mother is a kind woman,” she told me at the door. It was late, and I had to wonder if she chose this hour to drop by so she wouldn’t be seen. “I believe the gods will want to preserve that kindness, regardless of what the temple says.”

The next day, the physician paid us a visit. He examined my mother from head to toe, looking grimmer by the minute.

“I have seen this before,” he said. “I’m afraid the outlook is rather bleak.”

“Can you do anything?” I asked, my voice trembling as I sat beside my mother’s narrow bed and clutched her hand tightly in mine.

Only now did I notice how bony that hand had become.

At my touch, she half-opened her glazed eyes, her breath shallow as she looked at me.

“The Seer-Priests won’t summon a healer for us. ”

“This is not a wound that can be healed by the Weeping Lady’s miracles,” said the physician, wiping at his spectacles as he explained.

“There is a school of medicine in the capital. I would advise reaching out to them. They have been corresponding with doctors overseas who are developing something to manage this illness. But as with everything outside of Kugara, the court opposes this vehemently, and I worry for the school’s future.

I’m afraid, too, that I will have to stop here.

The temple already dislikes my practice. ”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said my mother weakly, managing to sound, despite the situation, like she meant it wholeheartedly.

After he left, she patted my hand and smiled at me. “Will you bring me a pen and some paper, my duck? We can write a letter to the school together, and you can help me send it.”

I collected the items for her, and she dictated as I wrote. My penmanship was poor but she still nodded in approval after I fin ished each word. The thought of not having these moments with her anymore made my insides feel hollow.

“Alma,” she said as we were finishing the letter. “There’s a box in the bottom drawer of my dresser. I have some money hidden away, and keepsakes that should be of some value. Old Mrs. Dee across the hall is kind and has agreed to take care of you in exchange for them if anything happens to me.”

I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to talk about it. But when I conveyed this to her, she only held my hand very gently.

“There are some things we can’t fight,” she said.

“I will do my best to heal, because I will miss you so much if I am gone. But if that happens, I want you to promise me you’ll be strong.

You are such a good girl, Alma, and I know you will do so many wonderful things when you grow up. Will you be strong for me?”

Saying yes felt like giving up. She must have known this, because she gave me a weary smile and let it go for the day. Soon after, she fell asleep. She must have been so tired that she completely forgot about what she had been hiding from me.

When I scrounged through that box in the dresser for the money to send the letter with, I came upon the thing that would ruin my life.

Sitting under a sparse assortment of mementos and ornaments was a stiff, heavy envelope with a seal of black wax.

The seal had been broken through the middle, and I could not make out the image that had been stamped on it.

I should have looked harder, but at the time, I was only curious as to where such a fancy thing had come from.

I shouldn’t have read it. I had been told to respect others’ privacy by the very person whose privacy I was now disregarding. I knew it was wrong, but I opened that envelope anyway and unfolded the letter lying within.

It read:

This letter is to advise your discretion in this affair.

I’m sure you understand my position—and the allegations the family might visit upon you were you to make any bold claims. Do not write me back.

If you seek recompense, you may instead write to the address below, but only within reasonable parameters .

Z.A .

My head spun. My stricken young mind focused only on two words: affair and recompense .

The rumors must have been true. My father was a married man and, from the looks of it, an important one. He would have the money to cure my mother.

She must have hidden this from me for a reason, but I couldn’t think of one that would justify squandering an opportunity to save her.

I sent our letter to the school of medicine that day, and another one of my own, praying to whatever deity was listening that one of them would reply.

I probably shouldn’t have done that either.

***

HE ARRIVED IN A SLEEK BLACK CARRIAGE. I HAD BEEN ON MY way home from the market with a meager crop of barley to be boiled into porridge when I saw the neighborhood children ogling it parked by the grubby stairs leading to our home.

It was rare to see anything so luxurious in our area of town, as the wealthy families lived farther north.

What would someone like that be doing here?

A second later, it occurred to me who that someone might be, and I nearly dropped the groceries in my haste to barrel up the stairs.

When I slammed open the door to our apartment, a man was standing inside with his back to me. He was wearing a sharp black coat and a hat, his figure casting a shadow across the room to where my mother sat at the small kitchen table.

“Alma!” My mother stood on wobbly feet and rushed to my side. I hadn’t seen her walking like this in days. She held me tightly and turned me away from the man as if to shield me. Her face was haggard, and she must have been in terrible pain, but still she stared him grimly down.

“So this is her.” The man I already knew to be my father turned to face me. “Alma, was it?”

His black clothes were spotless, absent of the frills and embroidery that the upper class found so fashionable, yet tailored to perfection.

He was tall, with a clean-shaven face and skin a few shades lighter than my own.

His hair was the same pitch-black color as mine.

Strapped to his waist was an exquisitely crafted sword, and the hand that he had resting casually on top of it was made of metal.

I froze.

I’d heard the stories about the Hands of the Dread Beast. Just as the vessels of House Metia offered their sight to the Heavenseer, the vessels of House Avera gave their arms to the Beast, and in return became arbiters of death guided by His touch.

They were fearsome swordsmen who had won us every war for the past five hundred years, agents of Kugara’s own deity of destruction.