

A DIVINE CONSISTENCY



by M. C. A. Hogarth


Smashwords Edition 
Copyright 2010 M.C.A. Hogarth

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Oh, the smells: wild sweat, tangy and bright, tickling the top of her nose. Beneath it running fast a river of glimmer that she could taste under her tongue.
"This one," Kat said, staring at the beast as it strained against its ropes, still tasting its mettle.
"We'll also take this stallion," said the woman who stood beside her, the one who smelled of cinnamon and sparks of ambrosia.
"Are you sure, milady?" the ostler said, sotto voce. "He's a devil-spawn bastard!"
Kat said again, "this one."
The cinnamon woman smiled at him. "Thank you for the warning," she said. "Please, put him in the corral next to the one with our other selections."
The ostler called his companions to help him drag the stallion to the corral. Kat did not offer her aid. The coven's receiving courtyard had few shade trees, but Kat had been careful to remain beneath them so as not to betray the truth in her pupils. Her deceit around those who handled animals was long habit.
The cinnamon woman strolled back to Kat as the horsemen took their leave. She dusted off her hands on her gown, radiating a mellow ambrosial mist. "That went well. They're convinced we're the stupidest women that have ever wanted to sit the back of a horse."
"Fine by my thoughts," Kat said. "They're the poorest horse-handlers I've met." She padded to the corral with the stallion, footfalls silent, no longer bothering to conceal herself. Over the fence she went, and straight to the stallion's side.
She blew over his muzzle, sharing her ambrosial aura with him. Pulled off the tight cruelty of the halter. Slid astride and rested her cheek to the curve of his proud neck and promised him he would never be forced again.
"As always, you astound me," said Vicoeuria, the cinnamon woman, as she leaned against the fence.
"There's nothing to be astounded about," Kat said. "They just need to be treated well, that's all."
But that was not all, and they both knew it. The animals sensed the blood in her veins. Unlike humans, who saw only her blameless face and tailless body, they could smell the wild in her, could tell that she held in her body the stuff that magic used. No human could store ambrosia . . . only generate it. Kat could do both. She could arrange her hair to obscure the spots on her face. She could keep to the shade where her pupils wouldn't betray her by contracting to slits. Gloves could conceal her hands, with their tiny claws.
Nothing could hide ambrosia.
"Speaking of horses," Vicoeuria murmured, glancing past Kat's shoulder toward the gelding Kat could hear dashing toward them. The evergreen woman, Raissa, reined it up as it pounded into the courtyard, blowing and champing.
"What is it?" Vicoeuria asked.
"It's Aslinne," Raissa said. "She's gone back to Ciens."
"Back to Ciens! Why?" Vicoeuria asked, startled.
In reply, the other woman handed down a battered paper. Kat urged the stallion toward the edge of the corral and leaned over the fence to sniff the pungency of ink. The paper was so new it still gave off the aura of a living tree. Only as an afterthought did Kat think to look at the paper, look and find her occasional partner Aslinne, sketched in sharp detail but with demonic features. There were words, but Kat was still a slow reader of the Court tongue.
"She's going to return the things the new duke claims she stole," Raissa said dryly. "I suppose it didn't occur to her that what the duke really wants to do is burn her as an example of an unnatural creature so that no one fully remembers that his predecessor did something as unlikely as knighting a woman."
"Of course not," Vicoeuria said, touching her forehead with a sigh. The steady mist of ambrosia she'd been giving off shrank, taking with it her cinnamon scent.
"I had doubts when you asked her to join us." Pine-green agitation, acrid and bright. "You know how paladins are. We need people willing to defy societal conventions, not uphold them."
"I have my reasons," Vicoeuria said. "But obviously we're going to have to send someone to save her from her virtues, if she's ever to fulfill them."
Kat curled her legs up so she could sit cross-legged on the back of the horse. She admired how Vicoeuria had extended her mist until it had touched Raissa's, meshing with it to soothe it. "That means me, yes?"
Vicoeuria chuckled. "Yes, that means you."
"We don't need to send an assassin," Raissa said. "My brother's already there. Maybe he can help."
"Your brother, as I recall, is just as virtuous as Aslinne," Vicoeuria said. "He is just as likely to be hung as she is, if he speaks for her. And he should not, since it's more important that he find out why your uncle chose to have the duke killed. No, Kat will go. I did assign them to one another."
Kat nodded and patted the stallion. "I'll go get her. Before she gives away all her valuables."

#

Jibrel could not convince Duke Vachelle that he truly preferred porridge and water, or if extravagance was required, fruit and milk. He could not even convince the duke that he preferred to eat at the low table, if indeed he must eat with the court at all. But Vachelle had found him intriguing from the moment he arrived, and Jibrel had resigned himself to rich food and poor company. When Raissa had asked him to investigate Vachelle, Jibrel had promised her only that he would stay a few nights. His journey was two years young and he did not want to tempt himself from his aim with secular concerns. But when the duke found trekking over the fields toward the fortress and discovered that Jibrel had taken the obscure vow of questing, the priest had become very popular at the court... too popular to excuse himself swiftly. Jibrel supposed that God was more interested in his sister's activities than he'd thought and given up as gracefully as possible.
Every day, the duke tested that grace.
Thy will be done, Jibrel thought to himself again as Vachelle sent the stuffed quail back to the kitchen as "not rich enough," after barely a bite.
"Pardon my kitchen staff," Vachelle said, leaning back in his chair. "They have not yet been trained to my standards. Some brandy, Father, while we wait for them to cook a proper hen?"
Jibrel fought an entirely spiritual fatigue to say, with patience, "I may not, Lord Duke."
"Can you not cheat just a little?" Vachelle asked with a grin. "The brandy is really quite good."
"Even a little is too much," Jibrel said.
Vachelle shook his head. "I still wonder how it does not drive you mad, Father. The endless drudgery of walking, sleeping in the mud, eating the same foods..."
"God made mud as well as wine, Lord Duke," Jibrel said with the faintest of smiles. "I find Him everywhere."
Vachelle chortled. "You are a regular crystal, Father. All this for a little more ambrosia?"
Jibrel threaded his fingers together. "Not a little, sir. A very great deal. Abstinence from pleasures of the flesh enables the body to create more ambrosia... and the more accustomed one becomes to scarcity, the more one's body creates."
"Surely there are easier ways to gain ambrosia," Vachelle said.
"There are easier ways," Jibrel said. "None sanctioned by the Church. We espouse non-violent means only, through meditation, through fasting and chastity, through prayer, poverty and service."
"So speaks your particular sect, at least," the duke said. "No doubt that's the reason it's so very popular." He grinned... then looked past Jibrel's shoulder. "Yes?"
A page edged into view, one nearly smothered in his ostentatious livery. Neither stain nor tear marred it; Jibrel wondered how new it was, and what the old duke's men had worn. "My lord, the thief Aslinne has been apprehended! She languishes now in the dungeon, awaiting your justice."
"Oh ho!" Vachelle said. "And what noble knight caught her for me?"
The page blushed. "My lord... it is said she walked in herself."
"Surely not," Vachelle said. "Ah well. What say you, Father? Shall we go sully our feet? Or have her dragged here into the beauty she does not deserve?" The duke laughed; Jibrel supposed his carefully controlled expression betrayed itself. "Ah, I should not give you such decisions. They pain you, eh? Let us go down to see her." He picked up his brandy and said to the page, "Lead the way."
As he followed, Jibrel tried and could not think of anything a woman could have stolen from a duke to merit pursuit by knights and imprisonment in a dungeon. So, on the stairs he asked. "Duke Vachelle, what did the woman have of you?"
"Ah, it is a complicated thing, Father. You know about the iniquities of my predecessor."
Vachelle had showered him with tales of Reid's excesses. "Indeed," Jibrel said.
"Among his more spectacular sins, the man actually knighted a woman and sent this travesty to travel his lands, sullying the name of the Divine." Vachelle shook his head. "And after he died, the woman left with a valuable horse and several very expensive pieces of armor and equipment. Including swords! Fancy such a thing, if you will, Father. Today they carry swords... tomorrow they will want phalluses of their own. Then what need will there be for men?" The Duke grinned, striding after the page through the kitchens until they reached the cellar.
"I'm afraid I cannot imagine," Jibrel said.
"Of course," the duke said. "I forget you're celibate. You poor man. I shouldn't tease. Ah, here we are." Vachelle grasped the handle of a thick trap door and pulled it open. A short flight of stairs led down from it to a surprisingly clean dungeon, now lit by a pool of yellow light. Vachelle took a torch from one of the guards and descended, and Jibrel followed, the ragged edge of his robe whispering against his bare feet.
The duke investigated four cells in the dungeon before finding her. The woman stood rigidly erect, her sharply delineated shoulders suggesting a man's strength. Jibrel sought and found no evidence of breasts beneath the tightly girded leather. It was only until he allowed his eyes to travel to her face that he found any femininity at all... femininity and faded rose-petal eyes.
"Not just a woman, but a freak of nature as well," the duke said wryly to Jibrel. "See here, Father, how far my predecessor strayed from his path. You! Woman! What have you to say for yourself?"
"I am not a criminal."
Her voice was hoarse but borrowed beauty from its conviction. That same steadiness informed her gaze. Her chin was held firmer than a woman's, her lips pressed harder. She was, Jibrel realized, completely beautiful.
"You led my predecessor, God rest his soul, utterly astray and yet you say so? I would call you a succubus." The duke paused. "Albeit an ugly one. Whatever the case, God has given you into my hands to pass judgment on and I shall do so. Shortly." He smiled. "You might pray for mercy. Or perhaps even repent."
"I have done nothing worthy of punishment," the woman answered. "I returned the horse, the armor, the weapons. Allow me go my way and I shall trouble you no further."
"I doubt that," Vachelle said. "But if you are truly as honorable as you think, you will bow your head to my will. You are guilty not only of theft, but also of pride and unseemly ambition. Women are not knights."
She said nothing but she flushed, lending her cheeks the color nature had failed to provide.
"Come, Father," the duke said. "Let us leave her to ponder her sins." As he turned, one of the woman's hands leaped to the bars.
"You might leave a light," she said.
"Pardon?" the duke said, lifting a brow.
"A light," she said again.
"I think not," Vachelle said and ascended the ladder to the trap door.
"She was afraid of the dark," Jibrel said quietly to him on their way back up the stairs.
"Yes," Vachelle said. "I noticed." He smiled.

#

There had been a savage and iron-bright time before Vicoeuria, when the desperate plight of her people had driven Kat to become a kret, a lightning-bolt striking down a person here, a person there. Her Suul brethren would have thought her passing-good at her task; the humans she'd attempted to cull called her an assassin, failing to understand the purpose of a kret. Some had tried to give her their shiny, cold coins to influence her choice of targets, but Kat had little interest in money, which smelled bad and contained no ambrosia. She had slain those who'd tasted of her cousins' distress until she'd found one so stained with malice she'd been unable to whelm him and had required rescue... which is how she'd met Vicoeuria. And that cinnamon spice smell and ambrosial mist had made her curious enough to listen through a lecture she might otherwise have found too human-convoluted to care about.
Sometimes Kat thought that becoming Vicoeuria's had made her too human. But most of the time, she was glad to be a kret whose culling might actually affect her people's survival.
One of the first things Kat had learned in becoming an "assassin" was that people saw what they wished to see. If she dressed like an addled kitchen girl, people would give her a pot of wet potatoes to peel and leave her by the sap-scented fire.
"There is a demon in the dungeon!" one of the maids exclaimed, stinking of acrid fear.
"Nonsense," the cook said. "There is a woman in there and she's as demonic as you are, girl. Which is to say, not at all. Mind the stew now, or I'll put you on the roast fowl again."
"Not the fowl," the girl said with a groan. "The duke cannot be pleased! First he wants it stuffed with wheat and nuts and wine. Then he wants it braised with mushrooms and dates and brandy."
"Going to eat us completely out of our homes at such a rate," the cook muttered.
"Who can complain when he sends the not-quite-rights back down to us?" said the barley-perfumed woman beside Kat with a cackle. "Those are fine eats he is discarding, yes. Let him find fault!"
"Easy for you to say," the girl said. "You're going to die in a few years. I wish Margrite hadn't entered the priesthood. He would have been far easier to deal with than Duke Perfection upstairs."
"Maybe," the cook said. "Maybe not. Those knights of Magrite's certainly weren't the saints we thought them, or why would they have started committing all those misdeeds with Magrite gone?"
"What do you think he'll do with the woman?" a fourth asked, sorting a basket of cabbages.
"Burn her, probably," the cook said. "Just like the rest of them. I don't care so long as they take care of it quickly. Having so many people trekking in and out of my cellar, moving things around to get to that trap-door... why, the wine will spoil and then what will the duke say?"
Kat excused herself to go to the privy, having heard enough. Once outside the kitchen, she wandered toward the smell of horses until she found a whitewashed building in fine condition. Investigation there turned up Aslinne's destrier, still tacked and barded but smelling of unease. Aslinne's swords, still humming with the memory of her mint-hot ambrosial touch, were racked on the saddle, peace-wrapped in white cord. Kat shook her head and backed out of the stable. Once she'd gained the safety of the shadows, Kat shed her disguise. Reaching the keep was ease itself, with the organ bequeathed to her by her Suul mother warning her of the ambrosial aura of the wandering humans.
Reaching the dungeon was another matter. She scouted every possible approach and all of them wound through heavily trafficked areas, thick with human sweat and tracked soil. Only one did not lead past the kitchens, and this route Kat chose as the most promising. She perched on rafters in vast, poorly-lit halls, eyes closed, utterly still. She sensed the thin mists of passing people and their myriad smells. Beer and sweat: men-at-arms, drinking. Sweet newness, crushed grass and large auras were children. Lavender and drippings: women, laundry-workers or kitchen-maids. At least one had the milk-scent and drowsy ambrosial aura of a pregnancy.
She listened to their stories with only half her attention. With the rest she drifted through the patchwork of smells and magic. Vicoeuria had often remarked on her patience; Kat had never been able to explain that she didn't understand the urgency of human time. Perhaps hours passed. Perhaps minutes. Kat was prepared to remain perched there until something changed—
—and then a wave of brilliant ambrosia engulfed her and sped past. Her eyes opened and she looked for Aslinne, who alone among the humans she'd met had such an aura... and instead saw a tall man striding past. He wore no shoes; his garb was that of an itinerant priest. He carried a candelabrum, and he walked in the direction of the dungeon.
Blinking still past the shock of his aura, Kat crept after him.

#

"I've come to hear the prisoner's confession," Jibrel said.
The two guards at the cellar door glanced at one another.
"Did the duke leave instructions that the prisoner is not to be allowed to confess?" Jibrel asked, brows lifted.
"No," one of them said, fidgeting.
The other sighed. "God bless it, Simon, the man's a priest." He led the way into the cellar and opened the trap door. "Go ahead, Father. But we'll close this behind you if you don't mind. All hell will burst free if the woman escapes. Knock when you're done."
"Of course," Jibrel said.
He stepped down the ladder, bringing the candelabrum with him. The door closed above him.
The woman met him at the bars. She had eyes only for the candles. Surely, no creature of darkness could need the light so.
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you. God, thank you, Father. Help me, please."
Jibrel began to say that he could not, but she had not finished.
"—I need to confess," she finished. "Father, if I should die tomorrow I do not want my hubris to accompany me into the presence of God. I should surely wither of shame if he saw me thus accoutered."
Jibrel frowned and set the candelabrum down at his feet. "You are a follower of the First Faith?"
Her hands wrapped around the bars. She looked pained. "Father, I am a knight of the Order of the Blessed Rose. I have kept my vows since the day Duke Reid knighted me, and I have been a member of the First Faith since I was found on the keep's steps." She paused—no, she hovered. The uncertainty in her eyes gave the brief silence the rocking rhythm of a pendulum. "Father... you believe me, don't you?" When he did not answer immediately, she said, "Test me, if you must know!"
Jibrel's fingers found the thin circle of copper hanging from the leather cord around his neck, the sole decoration allotted a priest on quest. The spear of rose quartz that dangled from its center tingled against his fingers.
"If you would, then," he said. "Are you wearing a crystal?"
"I swear not," she said, holding the bars.
Jibrel lifted a hand, grazed her white forehead and then let his fingertips rest between her brows as he closed his eyes and sought what he might find.
And he found... ambrosia. Simmering beneath the surface of her skin, as much as a human could ever create on her own. In that power he could read all her vows of abstinence from bodily excess. He had encountered rare men who could give off so much, and never women, whose bodies bled off their allotment each month at the moon's darkness.
Jibrel opened his eyes and found her staring at him, desperation in her gaze.
"You see," she said. "I have kept my vows. Do you believe me now, Father?"
"Yes," Jibrel said, fascinated by the revelation. Until this very day, the notion of a woman doing the work of a knight had never occurred to him. There were no First Faith priestesses for the female body could not meet the magical requirements. This woman's body should have been no different. Yet the ambrosia remained, in total defiance of what should have been her body's inability to maintain it. Her faith shone clearly through her skin, through the yearning and fear in her scarlet eyes. God had made her consistently, and that consistency was beauty. Women could not be knights, but somehow this one was.
"Yes," Jibrel said again. He took one of the candles off his candelabrum and gently wedged it onto the ground between two poorly mortared stones. "I believe you. And if you would like to confess, I will hear it. But I do not know your name, daughter."
"Aslinne," she said.
Aslinne. Something in that was familiar. "Aslinne," Jibrel repeated.
She nodded.
The name nagged. "Aslinne the knight," he murmured. "Do you have a companion?"
She hesitated. A blush stained her white cheeks and she looked down.
"I see," Jibrel said.
"No!" she exclaimed. "It is not how you think. Even in my thoughts, I keep that vow. It is only that... well, she and I do not share philosophies, Father. And she is half-Suul. Sometimes I think she is all Suul, she is so inhuman."
A half-Suul traveling with a woman warrior. Raissa's voice sounded in his head. "...need to find out why our uncle killed the duke. He knighted a woman, you know. Vicoeuria's half-breed picked her up off the road and brought her home, and the Lady's gone and paired them off. Strange couple."
"Dear God," Jibrel murmured. "You're one of Vicoeuria's coven."
The woman shied from the bars, stopping when the shadows threatened to lap her body.
"Please," he said, touching the bar below her hand. "There is no cause for fear. I am Raissa's brother, Jibrel."
"A priest?" she murmured. "Raissa's brother is a priest? I thought... from the way she spoke... well, I thought her brother was well off. He funds us so generously."
Jibrel smiled faintly. "A priest must give his worldly possessions to someone. My family believes my vocation a youth's fancy; they invest my money against the revocation of my vows. I give the results to Raissa."
Aslinne gathered in a thin breath. "You risk much to tell me this, Father."
"Does it convince you I am who I say?"
"That, or you are mad," Aslinne murmured.
Jibrel laughed, and then grew sober. "We must win you free of this dungeon, lady. I fear the duke has no good stored for you."
"I am not a criminal," Aslinne said. "He could not possibly accuse me of any crime. I have committed none."
Jibrel said softly, "I do not think he cares, lady. He will see you punished." Or killed, some part of his mind supplied, the part that had been watching and recording the duke's behavior for Raissa. Something was missing, something he almost understood but could not quite piece together.
"Surely he cares," Aslinne said firmly. "He cannot abuse his people's trust or they will depose him. His own soldiers will not serve him."
"How I wish it were so," Jibrel said. "I fear I do not have your faith in the systems of men." He smiled faintly. "Let me hear your confession before it grows too late and the guards wonder."
"Aye, Father."

#

No longer concerned by the stern constancy of the guards, Kat waited in the shadows outside the cellar for the priest to brush her again with his hot aura. Once he did, she followed him by scent all the way to his room. She could feel him through the wall, he radiated so much; she waited until he'd moved to the back of the room before slipping in through the door. He had entered the tiny wash-room with its bowl and chamber-pot, so she vaulted onto the rafters from the dresser.
Once he re-entered the room she allowed her eyes to assess him. His movements seemed familiar; when she tasked herself to it, she could just gather a taste-scent from his otherwise overwhelming aura, and it filtered into her mouth as evergreen. And as humans judged such things, his cheeks were similar to Raissa's. His hair was a brassier brown, almost russet, but he had those same gray-green eyes. The life that had given him so much ambrosia had also whittled the flesh from his frame, but granting that modification they were siblings in body's shape as well. Yet Raissa had never mentioned that her brother was also a father... a First Faith priest, even. Such irony, that a patron of their efforts could belong to a religion that excluded both women and Suul.
The man sat on the guest suite's spectacularly large bed and leaned down to massage his feet. Kat crept closer to admire the red gleam of the ring swinging from the rough cord around his neck. Its crystal centerpiece hummed with the wistful song of ambrosia that had been gently bottled... judging by its smell, from excesses generated by his own body. She was no mage to understand the human methods that trapped ambrosia for later use—the Suul had no need of them—but ambrosia she recognized no matter how it had been stored.
Her judgments took time, but he failed to notice her. At last, she spoke from the rafter near the headboard. "You're Jibrel, Raissa's brother."
He leaped away from the bed, his ambrosial aura flaring actinic-bright, stinging her nostrils. "God on the Heights!"
"No," Kat said, then continued, amused. "Not unless God is a half-Suul female."
His shocked face found hers, gazing up through the dark. The fist pressed to his chest loosened, and he let out a breathy laugh. The smell of evergreen intensified. "I must doubt that. I'm hoping you know I have no possessions for you to rob off me. Even if I am a rich woman's brother."
"I'm hoping you know that I'm Vicoeuria's Kat and I'm here for Aslinne," Kat replied. "Are you going to help me?"
"Kat," the man said, then laughed again. "It has been a strange day. Paladins with breasts. Rafters with voices."
"You're funny for a priest," Kat said. She slid forward on the beam until she was directly above him, fighting to keep her claws in her fingers. "Are you also laughing that Duke what's-his-name is going to kill Aslinne tomorrow?"
The smell faded. His aura collapsed in against his body. He turned his back on her and said, musing, "I thought as much. I don't know why, though. Killing her would make no sense. It would rouse the ire of the population. No one likes to see a woman die."
"Are you sure?" Kat asked, curious. She'd appeared in the man's room without permission, startled him, identified him as the brother of a trouble-maker and now he was talking his thoughts out for her hearing. Most humans were more wary around her yellow eyes and spotted edges.
"No good person does," Jibrel said.
"Aslinne doesn't look much like a woman when you dress her up in armor. People might call her an abomination. People love burning abominations."
"Do you think she knows something?" Jibrel asked suddenly, looking up at her. His mist had slowly expanded again, large enough to caress her with its edges. "Something Vachelle would prefer die with her?"
"I don't know," Kat admitted. "You would have to ask her, if you have time. I don't think you have time. We only have only a little while until dawn." She frowned. "Did you have to be in there so long?"
"She had requested confession," Jibrel said.
"All that time was spent talking?" Kat asked, incredulous.
"She had a lot to confess," Jibrel said. He paused. "I am not sure she'll leave."
Kat imagined sneaking to the cellar, killing the guards, prying open the trap door and unlocking the cell door... only to have Aslinne stand there, obstinately opposed to leaving, confident in the sanctity of God, justice and human wisdom. Kat scrubbed her forehead with her hand. "She'll have to be dragged. That will make things harder."
"You can't just carry her away?" Jibrel asked.
"Shadows will oblige a small half-Suul who will fold into their arms. Shadows will not stretch to cover a six-foot-tall white paladin in plate armor."
"I'm sorry," Jibrel said. "I'm not sure how these things work."
He wasn't laughing, but his aura quivered with fir-tree amusement. Kat dropped off the beam and onto the bed. "Can you convince her to leave? Command her?"
"Me?" Jibrel said.
"You are a priest," Kat said. "Aren't priest and knights lover-trainers?"
Jibrel stared at her, aura sparking. Kat growled and said, "Like with a cheyllat. One says what is to be done, and the cheyllat obeys out of love and duty."
"Oh," Jibrel said. He grimaced. "Knights of her order owe obedience to their patron dukes, not to any priest. With Vachelle succeeding Reid, her former patron, we'll need to give her evidence of the Vachelle's malfeasance before she'll consent to escape."
Kat stretched and slipped off the bed—not without reluctance, for the priest's aura was a soothing and restful radiation. "Well, that's for me to do. Stay here."
"I—"
Kat let herself out and hugged the flickering shadows all the way to the corridor's end. Few people remained awake and they were easy enough to avoid as she crept through the castle toward the ducal suite. The door was locked; she pricked it open with her clawtips and listened: nothing but the sounds of sleepers. She let herself inside.
Vachelle stunk of other people's fear and spent ambrosia. Beneath his arm, a slumbering laundry maid added the neutral scent of human mating to the miasma in the room. Remnants of hissing ambrosial violence lingered in the room's corners. Kat trembled against the wall, counting their slow breaths until she could move again without choking. She slunk through the suite, staring, cataloguing, never touching, trying to smell anything out of the ordinary through the stench.
When she paused at the threshold of the study, it spiked so far up her nose her eyes watered and she staggered against the lintel: a reek of blood and anger and snuffed lives. Gagging on it, she forced herself to creep inside, breathing through her mouth in shallow draughts.
Hidden beneath the table was a golden chest barely the length of her forearm, leafed in gold. Its interior had been cushioned with extravagant red velvet and fitted with twenty padded holes. The clamps on eighteen of them had been secured around thick glass vials, each capped with metal-tipped corks. These vials, filled to the brim with a milky fluid roiling with mist and streaks of blood, were the source of the reek.
There was writing on each vial. She did not understand any of it, but she memorized the patterns anyway before drawing back.
On the duke's desk two empty vials remained. The rich, high scent of gum wafted from the pot left open beside them, a brush carelessly tossed alongside two labels, already notated. Kat quivered, then turned and swiftly stole out.

#

"I thought you'd been caught!" Jibrel opened the door for her and closed it quickly lest a passing servant find them. They usually came shortly after breakfast to refresh the rushes. "We're running out of time. Aslinne's to be judged this morning and it's almost dawn."
"Things got crowded. I had to wait." The half-breed found the darkest shadow in the room and crouched in it. Was she—she was shaking. "He has vials full of ambrosia."
Jibrel leaned against the door. "Many humans do. We don't store ambrosia the way the Suul do—"
"—DEAD people's ambrosia," Kat hissed, shaking. "People who died screaming."
Shocked, Jibrel stared at her. She moved from the corner and to his desk, where she rifled through his few belongings and then went through the drawers. She found an ink pot and a sheet of paper. "These marks. They were on the vials."
He looked over her shoulder as she scribbled, expecting a child's hand and finding instead an almost artistic rendition of a series of numbers and letters: as if she remembered them as visual patterns rather than as symbols.
"So," Kat said, marking them off with her fingertips. "Each one had this many. And the ones on his desk, the empty ones... they said this." She drew again. "Four hands of vials, two empty. Labels for stolen ambrosia."
The pattern snapped into focus. Ages and sexes, two of the most influential factors in how much ambrosia a human created. And the last labels... they were the only ones marked "F". For female.
"For Aslinne's," Jibrel whispered.
"That's what I thought too," Kat said.
"And these others? All men. All young men."
Kat shrugged. "Lots of knights have been burning. They said it in the kitchens. "Margrite's men," none of them the "saints everyone thought.""
Nowhere in Jitesse was it legal to kill for ambrosia, and the High Court at Sadoniette was still debating the legality of siphoning off the ambrosia released during a criminal's execution. Worse yet, Ciens was a First Faith province, and the First Faith had clearly ruled against the violent collection of ambrosia.
"Can you get in to see her?" Kat said. "If you distract the guards, I won't have to kill them."
"You won't kill them," Jibrel said, fighting the sensation that everything was receding beyond his control. "I can't condone that."
"You don't have to condone it," Kat said. "You just have to stay out of my way."
Jibrel shook his head. "Follow me." He strode past her to the small satchel he'd carried into Ciens, pulling from it a ceramic dish. The heel of the bread he'd been brought for breakfast went onto it. He did not check to ensure she followed. If she didn't, he wouldn't see her; if she did, he still wouldn't see her.
The guards at the dungeon door lifted their heads when they saw him coming, but they only nodded, too weary to greet him. Jibrel steeled himself and said to them, "I think someone is following me, good sirs."
Alarmed, the younger one straightened. "Father?"
"Down the hall," Jibrel said in a low voice. "I didn't turn to look. I was coming to shrive the prisoner before her trial and thought I heard footsteps." Close enough to the truth.
The guards glanced at one another, then the younger one crept up the corridor. The older one opened the door for Jibrel. As he stepped inside, a wind tugged at the underside of his sleeve, but he saw nothing. The door shut behind him with a dull thud.
The candle he'd left in the dungeon had burned out but he'd thought to bring no others. He'd presumed that day would bring some light to the cells, failing to note the lack of windows. It was darker than the abbey's catacombs. Jibrel bent over until he could find the floor and set his plate on it, then cupped his crystal in his hand and breathed a prayer. It glowed bright enough to travel the length of a huddled figure on the hay.
"Daughter," he said, hiding his horror. How long had she been in the dark? "Daughter, wake. This is important."
"Father Jibrel?" Her voice reminded him of verdigris, corroded but still beautiful.
"Aslinne," Jibrel said, "Come. I have bread for your shriving. Then we must discuss your expeditious retreat."
From the darkness in one corner came the mutter, "Do you always talk this much? What is it with humans and talking?"
"Kat?" Aslinne's braid hissed against the ground as her head lifted. "Is that you?"
"Who else?"
"I didn't even see you come in," Jibrel said, bemused.
"You weren't supposed to see me come in." Her dark shape had reappeared at the door to the cell and tiny scratching noises emanated from the lock. Jibrel said to Aslinne, "The duke is planning to kill you, daughter. There are two ambrosia vials with your names on them."
She sat up with a gasp.
"We won't let him," Jibrel said hastily. "But you see why we must effect your escape. We can't allow the duke to commit this sin."
"Surely... I can't imagine... "
"Just let us rescue you," Kat said testily. "The duke's already killed eighteen other men."
"Knights," Jibrel said. "Margrite's men."
 Aslinne came up to the bars now. "Are you certain?"
"So the cook says," Kat said. She squinted. "There were other conversations with names. I heard them while I was dreaming above the hall."
"You were asleep in the middle of the castle?" Jibrel asked, astounded.
"Not asleep," Kat said. The clicking at the lock grew more urgent; Jibrel couldn't tell if she was using picks or her claws. "Dreaming. In the rafters. The barley-scented ones. They had names."
"What names?" Aslinne asked, intent. She had discussed her multiple sins against Kat in great detail with Jibrel, but he saw none of her supposed distrust, her self-confessed contempt in her eyes.
"Boyce. Jemond. Florent. Mmm. Thi... Thi..."
"Thibault," Aslinne finished.
"Yes. And some others."
"Margrite was Duke Reid's choice as successor," Aslinne said. "But Margrite left for the priesthood and the Duke died before he could send us to fetch him... only a handful of us knew."
"A handful who are all packed in a chest now," Kat said.
"All but you," Jibrel finished.
The trap door opened with such force that Jibrel stepped back. Duke Vachelle strode down the ladder followed by several guards.
"You see?" he said to them. "No harm. No mysterious intruders. No strange demon shades, like the wenches have been whispering. Just the priest." He turned to Jibrel and grinned, teeth ghostly white. He occluded most of the light that spilled in from the corridor. "So, Father! Have you shriven the thief yet? I hope so, because her judgment won't wait any longer."
The guards converged on the cell. Kat had vanished, and whatever she'd done to the lock wasn't obvious since the guards didn't comment on it. They pulled Aslinne out of the cell and marched her out.
"Come along, Father Jibrel," the duke said, and there was no longer anything indulgent about his voice. "It's time you witnessed the justice of Ciens."
Jibrel allowed the man to lead him to the kitchen levels before he cleared his throat. "We must talk, lord."
"Ah, the conversation I've been expecting. Hold the prisoner here until I'm done." Vachelle grinned at Jibrel and indicated a shallow alcove off one of the halls. Jibrel stepped into it and the duke leaned against the arch, blocking egress. "Speak, then, but do not tax my patience, Father. The people are gathering."
"Let us cease this pretense to a trial. I know you plan to kill her, Duke Vachelle," Jibrel said. "And you must not."
"It is my duty as duke to mete out justice," Vachelle said. "She stole a noble's ransom in gear and horseflesh, Father, which is crime enough."
"She returned the items. Is that not why she came?"
Vachelle's lips curved into a smile. "Very well. She has committed no crime. But sins... those she has in plenty. Would you ask me to favor her worldly innocence over her obvious spiritual guilt?"
"But she is a—"
"A knight, you are trying to say?" Vachelle laughed. "Father! Please. The very idea is sacrilegious. Women cannot take holy vows. Women cannot join orders. God made them incapable of holding enough ambrosia."
Jibrel's hands slipped to the ring, gripping it. "She has enough, Duke Vachelle. More than enough. More than any person I've met."
"Which proves that she is an abomination. Part Suul, perhaps... or some kind of witch. True women bleed away their ambrosia, as God intended, so that they might bear healthy children." Vachelle canted his head. "Surely you do not disagree with your own Church, Father."
Jibrel cast his head down.
"Perhaps you should go," Vachelle said. "If indeed it would be a kindness for you not to bear witness to God's justice, as it seems, then you have much soul-searching to do."
Unmistakably a command. Jibrel said, "Of course, lord. I'll pack my things at once."
Vachelle let him out of the alcove. Jibrel dared to meet Aslinne's eyes only once, saw the panic in them. If she was truly an abomination, the thought of losing God's gift, the ambrosia that made His work possible, should not trouble her so. Vachelle was wrong. But what could he do? He was pledged to peace and contemplation. The righting of wrongs in Man's world was the duty of knights.
While buckling his satchel in his room, Jibrel realized he'd left his ceramic plate in the dungeon. He ignored the growing hum of the crowd gathering in the courtyard and went his way downward. He passed kitchen maids preparing the feast and the smell of spiced game hens nauseated him.
He opened the trap door and Kat jumped off the ladder and into his arms.
"Where is she!"
Jibrel stared down at her. He hadn't noticed how short she was, nor how sharp her claws until she'd punctured his robe's neckline with them when she'd gathered it in her hands.
"ASLINNE," Kat said, enunciating both syllables and dragging out the 's.' "Where is she?"
"Probably being burned right now," Jibrel said, melancholic.
"Some good you've been," Kat said and brushed past him. Jibrel glanced after her, startled, then gave chase all the way out of the keep and to the castle's walls. No one cared to stop them, particularly when Kat went up the stones, granules of mortar dust falling in her wake. Jibrel stared after her.
A few moments later, a rope bounced over the edge. Kat's face appeared. "Climb, since you insist on following me."
Jibrel shoved the satchel over a shoulder and climbed.
Outside he found Kat on the back of a mare without a saddle with only a loose rope around its neck. The full force of the woman's gaze fastened on him, and he froze beneath it.
"You want to save her," Kat stated.
"Yes," Jibrel said. "God does not make mistakes."
Kat pulled him up onto the horse and touched its neck. It leaped forward.
"What are we going to do?" Jibrel said, clutching the half-breed to keep from falling off. The mare's hooves pounded out a swift, hard tattoo on the dry earth.
A long, thin blade rose to Kat's hand from a sheath hidden on her back. In her hand it glistered gray, reflecting clouds from the overcast sky. "Do all priests ask such stupid questions?"

#

True darkness was a nightmare but Aslinne decided that muffled gray was just as bad. The guards had hidden the world with a blindfold—"A mercy," one of them whispered—and tied her to a stake.
The situation struck Aslinne as ridiculous. She cared nothing for the succession of Ciens. When Reid had died, all her interest in the province had gone with it. Her life or death was of little consequence, but under no circumstance could she permit anyone to take her ambrosia, for doing so would bar her from Heaven and steal that ambrosia from God.
She wasn't sure how she could stop it.
The duke was speaking, the duke was listing her many sins against God and the Faith. The duke was calling her an abomination. A roar rippled from the crowd. Had she missed the proclamation of her sentence? Steel ripped from scabbards near her, ringing. Hoof beats now. Then the smell of blood erupted and the weight of a man fell forward onto her.
"Get on," Kat's voice, frantic and thin. An arm slid around hers as her bindings fell away. When her blindfold came off, Aslinne was startled to find herself on an unfamiliar mare between Kat and the priest.
"Stop them!" Duke Vachelle roared.
Kat urged the horse into a tight pirouette. They leaped the scrambling guards and pounded for the keep's gate.
"This is not going to work," Aslinne whispered, clinging to Kat.
"I hear God doesn't make mistakes," Kat said.
Men swarmed the portcullis lever. The great gate with its toothed edges trembled. The great wheel with its burden of chains groaned.
Kat's whisper blew back to Aslinne. Something Suul, and then, "Faster, sister-lover, oh, faster!"
The gate rumbled and dropped, brushing only the mare's soft tail.
"Now what?" Jibrel asked from behind them.
"Now we keep going," Kat said.

#

At long last, the forest shivered beneath no more scent of steel and anger. Kat slid off the back of the trembling mare and lifted her head, tasting the wind. It too carried only the mist of their own ambrosia, washed back on themselves. She paced once to the edge of the tangled path, querying the shadows. They reported nothing more than the memory of the deer that had forged this trail before them.
"We're safe," she said.
"How can you be sure?" Aslinne asked, still on the horse. "It's only been half a day."
Kat held herself still, one hand touching the trunk of a tree. The stars felt benign through the cloud-cover that obscured them. "Nothing smells them. Nothing hears them. They expected us to ride on human roads and we did not. They are lost."
Jibrel dismounted, dragging his aura of exhaustion behind him. When Aslinne glanced at him, he said, "She saved our lives." He smiled wryly. "She saved mine, and God knows our faith is not kind to the Suul."
"Come off the horse," Kat said. "She's tired."
But Aslinne did not move, and her mint-bright ambrosial mist dispersed with the suddenness of a doused fire. She smelled of tears though she didn't weep. Kat crept closer.
"Aslinne?"
"I am succored by wild women and cursed by my own faith," Aslinne said. Her voice was full of human sorrow though she did not cry. "Stripped of my arms and my dignity. What is there for me in this world if I cannot be what I was called to be?"
"No one has said you need to give it up," Kat said.
On the other side of the mare, Jibrel's deeper voice added, "And some in your faith have not cursed you."
"They would have killed me," Aslinne said, her distress shredding her aura. "They would have stolen my passage to Heaven."
"What does it matter what they think?" Kat asked. "I think you're a knight. Vicoeuria does. You act like one. Isn't that enough?"
"I must answer to the authorities that granted me this power—"
"But it makes no sense," Kat said. "How can you obey them if they tell you something you know to be false? If these powers said, 'You're a man,' would you believe them even though you're not?"
"I wish I were a man. None of this would be happening."
"If you were a man, you would be dead now, Aslinne." Jibrel's sharpness snapped the woman's face to his. "It doesn't matter what Vachelle wanted the ambrosia for, or whether he was intent on killing you for it alone, or if he wanted to silence the last of the people who knew of Margrite's soft claim to the province. You were sent away in disgrace and so God spared you. And when you tried to return, again God saved you. It doesn't matter what our creed says. God has spoken."
Aslinne hung her head. "You're right, Father," she said, and slid off the horse. She sighed. "But what course do I follow now?"
"Go home to Vicoeuria," Kat said. Her own voice sounded strange in her ears. This complicated human concern... or Aslinne never listening to her and now listening to a stranger... she couldn't tell what had upset her calm. It disturbed her to see so poorly into her own mind.
"I have left stones unturned in Ciens," Jibrel mused. "I don't know why Vachelle hasn't pooled the ambrosia in a crystal. That would seem to suggest he's sending it to someone, since it doesn't keep in vials for very long. But who? I should find out—"
"You must not return!" Aslinne exclaimed. "It's not safe."
"She's right," Kat said. "Go home with her. You belong together." Then she slid into the brush, letting the blue shadows embrace her. She had only to walk a few steps among them to lose the two on the trail entirely; the forest would not betray her. They were kin. Kat crouched among the satin softness of the undergrowth, feeling the merged ambrosial auras retreat, willing them silently safe.
Then she turned her face toward the duke's castle. She had her own sense of justice to appease; best of all, she would be back before they were, for they would gravitate toward the roads their kind had made. She knew quicker ways.
She would have time enough to talk with Vicoeuria before they arrived.

#

Jibrel kept Aslinne company on the journey back to the coven. He had forgotten what it was to travel with company... and Aslinne made for peculiar company, woman and knight that she was. He found her a glad puzzle and they spent the hours discussing philosophy and theology. Sometimes arguing. Always testing. Thus they sped the days until they walked onto the grounds at the receiving courtyard and found Raissa and Vicoeuria awaiting them, accompanied by several other women Jibrel did not recognize. Vicoeuria had dressed in court finery so severe and so expensive she could have passed for Jitesse's heir. Beside her Raissa stood in similar garb, holding the reins of a splendidly appointed stallion.
"Aslinne, formerly of Reid, approach. Father, do you come as well."
One of the women relieved him of the horse's rope and handed him the ceremonial mantle of a priest of the First Faith. Surprised, Jibrel donned it and joined Aslinne before the women.
"Father, will you bless this sword, that I might use it in the service of God and humanity?"
Jibrel's eyes touched on the sword in Vicoeuria's hands, found with surprise the mark of the province of Ciens. He lifted his gaze; between Vicoeuria and Raissa and the breadth of their dresses he spotted a lithe shape hidden in the shadow of the stallion, black leather, black linen, black hair, yellow eyes. Kat assayed a smile for him, one he could have blown away with a single breath.
Jibrel summoned the ambrosia from his crystal, let it travel through his body and set fire to his fingertips. He sketched a blessing on the sword so that it trailed a blue fog when Vicoeuria lifted it.
"It is my understanding," that woman continued, "that any priest may induct an individual into the Order of the Blessed Rose if he is satisfied that the knight has undergone the vigils and taken the vows upon himself."
"That is correct," Jibrel said.
"And would you induct this individual, Father? Are you satisfied that she keeps her vows to God and humanity?"
"I would, and I am," Jibrel said.
"And you lack only a landed patron to sponsor her?"
"It is so," Jibrel said, beginning to enjoy himself. He could sense Aslinne's incredulity.
"Would I serve?"
"The stipend is one hundred triskeles a year, lady," Jibrel said, "Plus you must supply your knight with arms, armor, beasts, board and housing."
Vicoeuria held out her free hand and Raissa dropped a velvet bag into it.
"Five platinum coins," she said to Jibrel, handing it to him. She turned to Aslinne. "I have bought your service. Kneel."
Aslinne dropped instantly.
"Aslinne, formerly of Ciens, I take you now into my service under the laws of Jitesse and the Church of the First Faith, to be my knight as provided for by the Order of the Blessed Rose. From this day forward, you serve me after God and will look to me for your livelihood as you pursue the goals that God has set for you. You have only one opportunity to decline this oath... after you have agreed, you will be bound to this service until I release you or the Church does... or God does, through death. Do you agree?"
"God hear me," Aslinne said, her voice cracking, "I agree."
"Then with this sword blessed by God's ambrosia, I claim you as my knight. Rise now, Aslinne of Amê, and see what patron gifts your lady offers you."
Aslinne staggered to her feet, still stunned. Jibrel grinned at her expression.
"Very unnatural," Kat said at his elbow. "A priest allowing a lady to claim a knight."
"Any more unorthodox than a knight who is already a woman?" Jibrel said. "It makes perfect sense to me. A duchess needs a female knight." He glanced at her, saw her eyes following Aslinne as the restored paladin embraced Raissa. "I imagine she'll want to know how Vicoeuria got her swords back from Ciens."
"She's smart," Kat said. "She'll figure it out."
"It will make her even less easy with you," Jibrel said, knowing full well he probably should not.
"I know," Kat said. She looked up at Jibrel abruptly, her pupils thin slits in startling yellow eyes. "But she'll be glad that she has them. She'll be glad of the horse that I picked out for her. She'll be happy."
"And that will make you happy," Jibrel said.
"She is difficult when she's miserable." She shrugged. "No creature deserves misery."
She was gone before Jibrel could question her further and perhaps that was for the best. Raissa was beckoning to him; no doubt she'd want to know what he'd discovered about Duke Vachelle. He should pay his respects to Vicoeuria as well, whom he saw infrequently. And there was obviously a celebration planned.
A landed duchess and a rose of a knight. Jibrel grinned and went to see what he had helped to wreak.

***

About the author:

M.C.A. Hogarth has been many things--a web database architect, product manager, technical writer and massage therapist--but is currently a parent, artist, writer and anthropologist to aliens.

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