In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

“What do you suggest, then?” asked Stancy. “We haven’t enough to feed every soul who comes begging.”

“If you turn no one away, there will be enough,” said Alain.

They fell silent. Blanche sucked a dirty thumb, eyes wide and expression fierce. The light through the glass window washed the floor in five colors, according to the panes: there was red, and a pale green, as well as yellow, blue, and smoky violet. Because the bay of the church faced east, the sun shone through the glass window in the morning. Now, at midday, there was no direct light, but it was still bright enough with the doors flung wide to see the murals painted along each side of the nave. There, the blessed Daisan at the fire where he first encountered the vision of the Circle of Unity. And again, the blessed Daisan with his followers refusing to kneel and worship before the Dariyan empress Thaissania, she of the mask. The seven miracles, each depicted in loving detail. Last of all the eye might rest upon the blessed Daisan lying dead at the Hearth from which his spirit was lifted up through the seven spheres to the Chamber of Light. Beside him, St. Thecla the Witnesser wept, her tears feeding the sanctified cup.

Once he had seen brave scenes of battle hiding beneath the lamplit murals, but now he saw only suffering and it made him angry, and it made him sad.

Sister Corinthia cleared her throat. “Spiritually, you speak what we all know to be true, friend Alain. The church mothers teach that every heart is a rose, and that to turn away from those in need when you could aid them causes the rose to wither. In this same way, plants need water to live, and we need breath. But in truth …” She faltered and looked to Aunt Bel for help.

“One loaf cannot feed one hundred starving beggars,” said Aunt Bel. “Wishing does not make it so.”

“Which one will you refuse?” he asked Bel. “Let it be your choice. And if not yours, then whose? Who will volunteer to be the one who chooses which supplicant lives and which dies?”

No one answered him.

“Yet your Aunt Bel is right,” said Henri later as they readied the boats for sailing. “If we give all our stores away, we’ll starve, too. That seems not just foolish but stubborn.”

Below the house, workshops, and gardens lay a narrow trail that led to the boat shed, built two years ago. They rolled the new boat down to the tiny beach and pushed it out onto the water. Julien and Bruno set the sail and put out into the bay to test the waters while Henri and Alain remained behind to look over the old boat, always in need of repairs. Alain slid under the boat, which was propped up on logs. The work came easily to his hands. The smell of sheep’s wool greased with tar made memories swim in his mind of the days long before when Henri had taught him the skills of shore and boat.

Inspecting his work, Henri grunted. “Well, Son, you haven’t forgotten how to fasten a loose plank. Here. There’s another spot.”

They worked in companionable silence. Alain ran his hands over each fingerbreadth of the hull while Henri replaced the leather lining and hemp rope that secured the rudder to the boss. A gull screeked. Water slurped among the rocks.

From the boat shed, angled to take advantage of the view, they could see north over the sound. The eastern islands floated on gray waters. The distant promontory shielding Osna village gleamed darkly, and beyond it to the northwest lay ragged shoreline and white breakers where once the vast Dragonback Ridge had vaulted. A flash of sail skimmed the bay to the north.

“Rain,” said Henri, pausing, hands still, to stare across the waters.

The smell of salt and tar and wet wool caught in Alain’s mind, and he was swept as by the tide into memory.

Two slender ships skim up onto the strand. Scale-skinned creatures pour out of them. They cannot be called men, and their fierce, horrible dogs cannot be called dogs, but there are no other words to describe them. They burn as they go, destroying the monastery and the hapless brothers.

There is one who watches with him, her gaze sharp and merciless. “It is too late for them,” she says.

“No!” He jerked back, slamming his head against the boat.

“Alain?”

“She is the enemy,” he said raggedly. His head pounded. Stabs of pain afflicted him, waking that old headache that had caused his blindness and muteness.

“Who is the enemy?”

“The one who says, ‘This is as it must be, we can’t do anything else even if we want to.”’

“Do you speak so of your aunt?”

“No, no.” He rubbed his head. Spots and flurries of light blurred his vision. “Of the one I met on the road.”

“What one?”

“The Lady of Battles.”

“Who is the Lady of Battles? Are you well, Alain? Is your headache back? Maybe we’d better go back to the hall and let you rest.”

“What was my mother like?”

There came a silence from Henri and only the answer of the land around them: the hiss of surf, the wind in leaves, a branch snapping under the weight of Rage’s paw, a distant shout of laughter, a bird’s warble, quickly hushed. The ache in his head faded as he breathed, waiting.

After a bit, he felt Henri move, then heard the noise of the file as Henri worked to shave the curve of a wooden plug to the exact fit for its oar port, to replace one eaten away by dry rot. Alain leaned back against the boat, recalling the familiar comfort of familiar patterns. Henri had always had a habit of thinking as he worked, or perhaps it was better to say that working helped him think, that the motion of hands teased patterns of thought into symmetry.