“He is not my bodyguard,” she snapped, more harshly than she’d intended, and stepped inside the Great Hall. Lanik followed after, closing the door behind him.
White marble walls rose high on all sides, threaded with silver, and carved in undulating waves. At the very top, fifty spans high, was set a skylight in pure crystal. A perfect circle of thinly cut quartz let in the day’s sun, muting its light into a soft radiance that lit the entire chamber. At night, it harnessed light from the moon and stars and lit the Great Hall in the glowing white hues of sea foam at midnight. Day or night, the circular shape of the crystal cast a full moon on the polished marble floor.
The beauty was marred by neglect. Dust motes danced in the air, and oily smudges climbed the walls where lamps were ensconced. Justarch and Armada officials and guards milled about, some stopping to watch her approach.
She turned to Lanik. “Again, I’ve lived within these walls since I was a child. I can find my own way to the Vestibule.”
“Of course, Paladin,” Lanik said, “but the High Reverent insists.”
Selena bit back her irritation and allowed Lanik to lead her down the broad passages of the Temple as if she hadn’t walked these paths a thousand times since her youth. Here, it was quiet; she and Lanik had left the officials behind, and their footsteps echoed around them hollowly. Stained glass windows lined the walls and cast rainbow hues against the marble. The syrupy colors were too bright, too cloying, like decorations for a festival no one attended.
They arrived at another heavy oak door, set with a silver disc the size of a dinner plate. In its blurred reflection, Selena thought her blue eyes looked tired and her skin pale—always pale, never flushed with heat or colored by warmth. Her pallor was the product of fear as well. On the other side of the door, she would learn the purpose of the summons. Another war? Or to deny her petition to drink from the God’s Tears. Or perhaps worse. She had sometimes wondered if the Reverents who made up the governing body of the Aluren would vote to exile her. The thought made her shiver nearly as strongly as her wound did. The Temple was all she knew. But for Ilior, it was all she had.
Two of the Admiral’s guards and two of the Justarch’s stood before the huge doors. They crowded the entrance to the Vestibule with their muskets and cutlasses, but discipline kept any one from appearing awkward or uncomfortable. Lanik cleared his throat delicately.
“I’ll announce you, Paladin,” he said.
“No, I go in alone.” Selena held up a hand when he started to protest. “I know what the High Reverent has ordered, but on this I insist. I will not be announced.”
“But…if I may ask,” Lanik said, “why would you not wish for an entrance befitting your station?”
Because when you announce my name, ‘Selena Koren’, will ring out in our empty halls and the ‘Tainted One’, will echo after, she thought. Aloud, she said, “My station is serving the god. You may go.” She smiled to help take the stiffness out of her command. Lanik acquiesced, and with a final bow slipped back down the hallway.
“Gentlemen.” She nodded to the guards. They moved aside and she stepped inside the Vestibule.
In the twenty years since she’d called the Temple her home, she’d only had cause to visit the Vestibule a handful of times. Her initiation into the faith had been one. The occasion of her Paladinship ten years ago was another. That had been a hurried affair, barely holding to tradition. The Zak’reth war had been a roaring inferno and Aluren Paladins were tossed into the fire as fast as their vows could be uttered.
The Vestibule was plainer than the Great Hall but better maintained. The walls were free of oil smudges and the marble was polished to a high sheen.
Celestine does her best, Selena thought, for one so heavily burdened at such a young age. The High Reverent sat in a plain chair on a long, raised dais at the end of the hall. She was flanked by her two Reverent Paladins—Gerus and Taliah. The Admiral of the Alliance Armada sat beside Gerus, and to his left was the Justarch of Isle Parish. They spoke in hushed tones and fell to silence as Selena approached.
Every time she sailed the outer islands to heal those in need, Selena returned to see the Moon Temple and its inhabitants with new eyes. Just as the foliage in the atrium seemed worse for wear in just a few short weeks, so too, did the High Reverent. Celestine’s beautiful face was stiff with her usual seriousness— a cold visage framed by rich brown hair—but showing signs of fatigue, like little cracks in the surface of white porcelain. Her robes were immaculate, and the silver pendant of a full moon rested in the exact center of her chest. The pendant looked as though it weighed a thousand pounds. She noted too that Celestine’s hands were folded on the table, but clenched too tightly.
Selena stood before the assemblage and bowed low.
Celestine began to speak but Reverent Taliah broke in first.
“Time grows short,” the Juskarii woman growled by way of greeting, as if they’d been sitting in the Vestibule waiting for days. “Our purpose is urgent and we’ve much to discuss.” Her red skin seemed to glow like hot embers in the light of the oil lamps burning in delicate sconces on the walls at paced intervals. Selena wondered, with a twinge of envy, if the Juskarii woman felt as warm as her coloring made her seem.
Reverent Gerus snorted. He was not quite seventy, but his ebon skin glowed with health. Or anger, judging by his next words. “Urgent,” he said, drawing Taliah’s indignant stare. “Urgent my eye. This is nothing more than a disgrace. A charade—”
“Silence,” Celestine cut in. “This is an Alliance meeting and will be afforded the proper decorum. Your objections of earlier are duly noted, Reverent Gerus, and now we must proceed.” She looked to Selena, a small, tight smile on her face. “Paladin Koren, greetings. I believe you’ve met Admiral Archer Crane?”
“I have,” Selena said. “Good afternoon, Admiral.”
“And to you, Paladin,” the Admiral replied with a wan smile.
He was older than her twenty-eight years—in his early forties—and handsome with dark hair and eyes. Selena recalled him as a happy, somewhat insouciant fellow, always with a smile and a jest on his lips. She had not known him well; they’d only spoken in passing, but he’d always been kind to her. Selena remembered his kindness well.
Archer Crane’s keen leadership skills and mastery of nautical tactics had earned him his rank though Selena thought the authority fit him like an undersized coat. “Bureaucracies belong on shore,” he was known to say, “but I belong at sea.” Even as she watched, he tugged on the collar of his red dress uniform and leaned back in his chair as if to affect a nonchalance he didn’t feel. He twisted a hammered gold doubloon worn on his little finger around and around.
His wedding ring.
He’s a good man, she thought. I hope Skye knows what she’s doing to hurt him so.