The Diminished

As I turned to close the door, I was startled to see Sula, Lugine and Bethea sitting at the kitchen’s long slab of a table, their faces grim. They shouldn’t have been back in the residential part of the temple yet—adulations were barely over. Moreover, it was more than a little strange for all three of them to be in the same room together like this. What would bring them all here at this hour?

My hands trembled as I dumped the sacks of oysters into the tin trough at the end of the table and shrugged out of my sweaters. I sent up a silent prayer to my twin. Watch my back, will you?

“Before you say anything, I know I should’ve gone to adulations this morning, but I hadn’t yet had any luck this month, and I wanted to find at least one pearl for you before my birthday.” I gave the women my best smile, which none of them returned.

They were each powerful within their orders. Anchorite Sula supervised all that went on in the trade library and made certain that each of the temple’s charges were assigned a craft or else made our way into the Shriven. Anchorite Lugine oversaw my work as a diver in the summer and in the canneries in the winter. Long-suffering Anchorite Bethea, the eldest of the three, was responsible for the spiritual education of us brats the temple took in. They were the closest thing I had to real parents. Though, to be fair, they were collectively about as warm as an ice floe. I’d spent my whole childhood with their eyes on me, watching me with the same wariness they’d use with a rabid dog.

Once, when I was barely seven, a gang of grubby urchins cornered me in a back alley. One of them managed to break my nose before I fought my way free. I ran through the streets, blood and tears streaming down my face, and sought comfort from Lugine in the kitchen. She’d taken one look at me, thrown me a dishrag and set me to scrubbing pots. From then on, when the other brats came after me, I scrambled up onto the roof of the nearest building or into a dank corner to hide.

That was how Sawny and I’d found our spot on the temple roof.

Sula sighed. “We’ve long since given up on forcing you to attend daily adulations, Obedience.”

My jaw clenched. I hated being called by my given name, and she knew it. The name “Obedience” had always seemed like a cruel joke. “I’d prefer you call me Vi, Anchorite.” I fetched a plain ceramic bowl and a spoon from one of the shelves that lined the walls of the cavernous kitchen. “My birthday’s not ’til tomorrow, and before you ask, I already sent my ma a birthing day note. Did you come to tell me you’d miss me when I leave?”

I lifted a ladle from its hook and started toward a pot of rich broth studded with root vegetables and chunks of lamb. Before I got close, a low, disapproving sound from Lugine stopped me. I turned to the half-congealed pot of pea and oat mush on its hook at the edge of the hearth instead and filled my bowl, and settled myself on the rough bench across the table from the anchorites to eat. Diving was hard work, and trouble or not, I was ravenous. I shouldn’t have provoked her with the stew, though. Not when she already looked so angry.

“Tell me, Vi. What are the rules of the pearl trade?” Lugine asked.

I swallowed my spoonful of lumpy mush and recited the rules I’d been taught since I began to train. “All the fruits of the dive must go toward the betterment of the temple and its occupants. The meat to feed the servants of the goddesses and gods, the pearls to glorify the goddesses and gods by making their home and their servants beautiful.”

“And why are laymen allowed to partake in the bounty of the sea?” Bethea asked.

“So that they, too, may share in the glory of Hamil’s gifts.”

Sula nodded. “And how do the laymen honor the god’s gifts to them?”

“I don’t plan to stay here and keep diving, Anchorite,” I said. “I’ll look for work in the North, near my ma’s people.”

“Answer the question.”

I sighed. “Laymen must offer their bounty to Rayleane, Hamil’s partner, to thank him for his gift. They can keep what the goddess doesn’t want and be paid for their service besides.”

The anchorites stared at me in silence. I set my spoon on the table, the pouch of pearls burning between my breasts. A wave of cold ran over me, and I tried not to shiver.

Finally, Bethea asked, “What is the penalty if a layman is found to be giving the goddess less than her due?”

“What is this about?” I asked, though the answer weighed heavily on a thong around my neck. They’d found my stash. That was the only explanation for this interrogation.

They waited, unblinking. Lugine’s brow furrowed. Bethea bit the inside of her cheek. Sula’s face was implacable, as always.

“They suffer the same penalty as any thief, time in jail and half of their earnings until their debt is doubly paid.”

“And what is the penalty for a thief who is diminished?” Sula asked.

Lugine stared at her lap, and Bethea cleared her throat. So. This is how it would end. Just shy of sixteen years, and not a day without someone’s terrified glance. I’d long ago accepted that no one would ever hold me, kiss me, love me, but I had hoped that I would at least have one day when no one looked at me with fear in their eyes.

“Death,” I whispered.

“Do you know why we are here?” Sula asked quietly.

I nodded, studying the table, tears hot in my eyes. I wasn’t ready to let go. I’d held on for so long.

“We sent Shriven Curlin to pack your things in preparation for your birthday. She brought us this.” Sula slid the wooden box full of cultured pearls across the table toward me. My pearls. My savings. Of course Curlin had known where to look for my secrets. She’d shared the room with me for years. “You know, if you were to join the Shriven, you would be exempt from any penalty.”

Fury flooded me. Nothing, not even the threat of death, could make me become one of those mindless, soulless murderers. The people of Alskad might think that the Shriven were righteous, holy even, protecting them from the atrocities of the diminished, but I knew better. I’d grown up in the temple. I knew the kinds of poison that ran through their veins.

“Over my rotting corpse,” I snarled.

Lugine drew in a sharp breath, but Sula put a calming hand on her arm.

“We assumed you’d say something of the kind.” Bethea laid a stack of papers on the table.

“What’s that?” I asked warily.

“A choice,” Sula said. “We care for you, as much as you may not believe it. We’ve not brought this matter before the Suzerain. Instead, we’ve decided to let you choose your own path. You may either join the ranks of our holy Shriven, or you will be sent to Ilor, to spread the word of our high holies to the wild colonies by helping to construct temples there. You’ll serve one month for each pearl you stole from the temple through your deceit. Twenty-five years.”

My breath caught in my chest. It wasn’t a choice. Not really. Either way, I would be forced to spend the rest of my life in service to a pantheon of gods and goddesses I didn’t believe in, couldn’t bear to worship.

I would be no better than a prisoner in Ilor, but I knew deep in my bones that I could never join the Shriven. I could never be like Curlin.

And there was a bright spot of hope in a future in Ilor: the only person who’d never been afraid of me. While I knew I would never see freedom if I accepted the temple’s twenty-five-year sentence—the grief would take me long before those years were up—but at least in Ilor, I would be close to Sawny. I would see him again. Missing Sawny was an ache that went all the way to my bones.

I met the eyes of the three anchorites and took a deep breath, rising to my feet. “Ilor. I choose Ilor.”

I stalked out of the room, visions of space, of time to myself, of freedom crumbling in my mind, leaving my bowl of half-congealed mush uneaten on the long-scarred table—and my hard-earned fortune in the hands of the anchorites.

CHAPTER SIX (#u32bd4549-2432-517d-945f-61a820fc6dc7)

BO

My bedroom was warm from the large fire crackling in the hearth, but I was ice all the way to my bones. I’d been cold since I woke up, probably due to nerves at the thought of what the day would bring. I smoothed my jacket’s embroidered cuffs and stared out the window. I turned sixteen at midnight, and the Queen would declare me a grown man, singleborn of the Trousillion line and successor to her throne. The thought of that heavy crown and the responsibility that came with it nauseated me.

I wanted to be King. I wanted to be a great king, but I’d never felt the easy entitlement the other singleborn flaunted. And after the incident in the park, I’d never felt so unsure of myself, so afraid. I’d spent my whole life preparing for this day, yet still feared that I would trip over some part of the ceremony and embarrass myself—or, worse, my mother.

The soft din of the party drifted through the palace. The fashionable quintet my cousins had hired seemed to play only fast, reeling tunes. My feet ached at the idea of another night spent dancing, but I’d do, as always, what was expected of me, though the stack of books Rylain had sent for my birthday called to me from my bedside table. There was a history of trade dating back to the cataclysm that I ached to dig into.

Outside, in the dark night sky, the two halves of the fractured moon were full, and so close they looked like they might crash into each other. My tutor, Birger, said this interaction of the moon’s halves was a rare and good omen: the reunited twins. He claimed that when the halves of the moon were close, the goddesses and gods forgot the evil our ancestors had done when they split the moon in half. I’d always thought they looked more like twins conspiring in a corner than a pair long lost and reunited, and personally ascribed to the theory that the halves were always the same distance apart—it was our perspective that shifted.

No great wonder Birger was so fascinated by the moons. He and his twin, Thamina, were always whispering in each other’s ears and exchanging those infuriatingly weighted looks twins gave one another. Nothing made me feel more alone than standing in a room full of twins, steeped in the knowledge that I ought to be grateful for the fact that I was singleborn. I knew it was a blessing, but the constant reminders that I’d been born with a greater conscience, a keener sense of justice, a powerful birthright—they had never helped me see those things in myself.

A knock at the door brought me out of my reverie, and Mother swept into the room, not waiting for my response. Rather than her usual well-cut breeches, silk tunic and jacket, She wore a floor-length, lavender-gray gown that sparkled with silver embroidery and accented her olive skin. Her brown hair had been curled, and it brushed the immaculate white fox-fur stole wound round her neck. Huge hunks of raw diamond set in creamy gold cuffs decorated each of her wrists, but her bare arms and sleeveless dress made more of a statement than those jewels. She was the living personification of Dzallie, invincible and immune to the chill of the early summer night.

She narrowed her dark eyes and looked me up and down and adjusted my jacket. “That color suits you, Ambrose. It brings out the gray in your eyes.”

“I thought it was a little garish, but Claes insisted I choose something bright.” I felt like a pigeon dressed in peacock feathers. The purple silk jacket was festooned with scads of embroidery; colorful birds and flowers exploded from my shoulders, trailing down the sleeves and to the wide hem that brushed the floor. At least my trousers were plain—if very fine—gray wool, with embroidery only along the cuffs.

I was waiting for someone to notice how out of place I really was.