“I’ll check.”
Returning to the window, Betzi and Rielle watched the Usurper’s forces withdraw, the soldiers disappearing over the ridges before marching into sight again beyond them. One of the peaked structures of the enemy encampment abruptly collapsed, then another.
“Are they packing up?” Rielle wondered.
“Who is that, walking up the road?” Betzi asked.
Rielle squinted, searching for the people Betzi had seen. “Where?”
“Three men, one with a gold-coloured coat, two in strange clothing. Foreigners, maybe.”
“Your eyes are much better than mine,” Rielle said. “Perhaps if they come near…” Her breath caught in her throat as she saw the trio.
“The one wearing gold might be the Usurper,” she heard Betzi say. “The others…”
Rielle opened her mouth, but could not find the air to speak.
“… they look a little like priests,” Betzi continued. “Didn’t you say they wear dark blue in the north? Rel?”
Rielle’s lungs began to protest. As her throat unclenched, air rushed in.
“What’s wrong, Rel?”
Rielle shook her head, but she could not take her eyes from the trio approaching the city. Hope and fear tumbled over one another in her heart. If this is… if they are…
“… escort these two women from the battlements to their home,” a voice said at the entrance of the stairway above.
“But, Captain—” Betzi began.
“Go home, Bet,” Kolz said. “Lock the door. I will send news to you, when we know what the situation is.”
A hand grasped Rielle’s arm and pulled her away from the window. A memory she kept well bound to the past broke free and she felt an echo of terror and a vision of a desperate man, his hand brandishing a knife. She closed her eyes, gathered the memory up and locked it away again. When she opened them again it was Betzi’s face she saw.
“Come on, Rel.” Betzi linked her arm in Rielle’s and guided her down the stairs. The tower now reminded Rielle of another. A mountain prison. A young priest leering. A scarred priest. An Angel, more beautiful than any mortal could hope to be…
Bright sunlight made her wince and brought her back to the present. Betzi stopped. The young archer stood a step away, a scowl on his face as he saw Rielle properly for the first time. Taking a deep breath, Rielle pushed away the memories, and the urge to run back to the tower window and confirm that she was mistaken.
Because she had to be, surely.
“Are you all right, Rel?” Betzi asked.
“Yes.”
Betzi turned to the archer. “Lead on,” she said brightly, and they set forth into the subdued streets of Doum.
CHAPTER 2
Standing in front of the loom, Rielle stared at the partially completed tapestry and let her memories overlay the design.
The bobbins still hanging from the surface were coated with dust. She hadn’t worked on it in over a year. It had been her practice piece, on which to try out and refine the techniques she had been taught. By now she ought to have finished it and freed up the loom, but the old wooden structure was too warped to be used for a valuable tapestry anyway, and the one student Grasch had taken on since Rielle had finished her training hadn’t even finished her first year of learning how to spin and dye yarn.
The weaving contained the awkwardness and mistakes of a novice, but that was not why she had abandoned it. The workshop had been in great demand until the siege, keeping all the weavers busy, but that was not why she hadn’t set aside a few hours to complete it. Betzi and some of the other girls had urged Rielle to sit at the loom countless times, but they could not persuade her to work on it.
The trouble was, filling in that last section meant taking a great risk. The karton–the drawing that hung behind a tapestry as a guide–and the painted design showed vague shapes in the unfinished area, because she did not dare add the detail that would reveal the subject. Many times she had wondered why she had chosen the subject at all, especially when she had promised never to speak of it to anyone. Yet her hands had drawn the karton almost as if someone else had controlled them.
Perhaps someone had. The possibility that an Angel had guided her was the only reason she hadn’t cut the unfinished piece down and burned it.
“A weaver’s first tapestry often says more about them than they expect,” Grasch had said, when the other weavers began to speculate on her reason for ceasing work.
“Or about someone else,” Betzi had added. “Whoever this man is. An ex-lover perhaps?”
“He is a priest,” Tertz had pointed out.
“So? Not all countries require priests to be celibate.”