Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

“Ai, Lady,” swore Liath. She jerked away from him.

“Yes, Ivar.” As soon as the cleric spoke, he knew it for truth. “My brother,” she continued, expression bland and eyes bright with—laughter? anger? He did not know her to be able to judge. “My brother novice,” she went on, gesturing toward his coarse brown robe, “this is most irregular. I will have to report you to Mother Scholastica.”

But at those words, Ivar exulted. “Very well,” he said, drawing himself up. “I will go willingly.” Brought to Mother Scholastica’s notice for the sin of consorting with a woman, surely—surely—the mother abbess would throw him out of Quedlinhame once and for all time.

It was a serious enough offense that Ivar had only to wait through Sext, the midday prayers, kneeling like a penitent on the flagstone floor in front of Mother Scholastica’s empty and thereby imposing chair, before the door opened behind him and the abbess entered her study. Rosvita walked with her. Ivar could not read his sister’s expression. He wished he knew her, so that he might guess what she had told the abbess, might guess whether Rosvita was sympathetic or hostile to his cause. But he did not know and dared not guess.

“I gave you no leave to look up, Brother Ivar,” said Mother Scholastica.

He flinched and dropped his gaze, watched feet shift, a dance whose measure and steps he could not follow. To his horror, Rosvita retreated from the room to leave him alone with the formidable abbess. He clenched his hands together, wrapping the fingers tightly around each other, and bit down on his lower lip for courage. His knees hurt. There was a carpet, but he had been strictly enjoined not to kneel upon anything that would soften his penance.

Mother Scholastica sat down in her chair. For a long while, though he dared not look up, he knew she studied him. A knob, an uneven hump in the stone, dug into his right knee. It was so painful he thought he would cry, but he was afraid to utter any complaint.

She rules with a rein of iron, so they all said. She was the king’s younger sister. Why had he ever ever thought, in that wild liberating moment in the library, that he could face her down?

She cleared her throat as a prelude to speaking. “In our experience,” she said, “when the king visits Quedlinhame with his court, there runs in his wake like the wash of a boat on the waters a shiver of restlessness through those of the novices and some few of the brothers and sisters who are not at that moment content in their vows. Always a few, seduced by the bright colors and the panoply and the excitement, mourn their loss of the world and seek to follow the king. It is our duty to rescue these fragile souls from their folly, for it is a fleeting temptation, dangerous but not, I think, unforeseeable.”

“But I never wanted—”

“I did not yet give you leave to speak, Brother Ivar.”

He hunched down, nails biting into knuckles. She did not have to raise her voice to make him feel humiliated and terrified.

“But I do mean to give you leave to speak. We are not barbarians, like the Eika or the Quman riders, to enslave you for no cause but our own earthly enrichment. It is your soul we care for, Ivar. Your soul we have been given charge of. That is a heavy burden and a heavy responsibility.” She paused. “Now you may speak, Brother.”

Given leave to speak, he also took the chance to shift his right knee off the digging knob of rock. Then he took a breath. Once begun, he could not hide his passion. “I don’t want to be here! Let me go with the king. Let me be a Dragon—”

“The Dragons are destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” The news shook him out of his singleminded fury.

“They were overwhelmed by a force of Eika, at Gent.”

Destroyed. Trying to make sense of this, he looked up at her. He had never actually seen Mother Scholastica from this close before; only the rare novice, like Sigfrid, came into contact with the abbess. She had a handsome face, her hair tucked away inside a plain linen scarf draped and folded over her head and twisting in neat lines down over her shoulders. She wore dark blue robes to distinguish her from the other nuns, a gold Circle of Unity studded with gems on a gold chain that hung halfway down her chest, and the golden torque that signified her royal kinship around her neck. Her gaze remained cool; she was not one bit flustered by this meeting or by the circumstances which had brought him here. He had a sudden, awful notion that she had judged many a boy or girl whose complaint was similar to his.

He would not let himself be overawed by her consequence! He was also the son of noble parents, if not of a king. “Then—then they’ll need more Dragons,” he blurted out. “Let me go, please. Let me serve the king.”

“It is not my decision to make.”

“How can you stop me if I refuse to take vows as a monk when my novitiate is ended?” he demanded.

She raised an eyebrow. “You have already pledged yourself to enter the church, an oath spoken outside these gates.”

“I had no choice!”

“You spoke the words. I did not speak them for you.”

“Is a vow sworn under compulsion valid?”

“Did I or any other hold a sword to your throat? You swore the vow.”

“But—”

“And,” she said, lifting a hand for silence—a hand that bore two handsome rings, one plain burnished gold braid, the other a fine opal in a gold setting, “your father has pledged a handsome dowry to accompany you. We do not betroth ourselves lightly, neither to a partner in marriage—” He winced as she paused. Her gaze was keen and unrelenting. “—nor to the church. If a vow can be as easily broken as a feather can be snapped in two—” She lifted a quill made from an owl feather from her table, displaying it to him. “—then how can we any of us trust the other?” She set down the feather. “Our oaths are what make us honorable people. What man or woman who has forsworn his noble lord or lady can ever be trusted again? You swore your promise to Our Lady and Lord. Do you mean to forswear that oath and live outside the church for the rest of your days?”

Said thus, it all sounded so much more serious. No man or woman who made a vow and then broke it was worthy of honor. His knees ached; his back hurt. His hood had slipped back, and the hem of his robe had doubled up under his left calf to press annoyingly into the flesh.

“No. I—” He faltered. Had he actually imagined scant hours ago that he could get the better in a debate with Mother Scholastica?