The price of a sister

At the end of the hearing, Zesstra had returned the old scroll to Zaelyra without comment. She had slipped it under her coat while the guards led them to the exit.

Vhaelyn waited for the guards to close the door before speaking.

"You could have warned me."

"Of what?"

"Of what you intended to hide."

"I didn't know yet what I was hiding."

"This is what you say when you want others to bear half the risk without having half the information."

Zaelyra accepted the reproach. Her sister was right about one part, and that was the part she would have preferred to ignore.

"You let Nym out of the annex," she says.

"I left a lock badly closed."

"Why?"

Vhaelyn looked at the door, as if the answer could be there. "Because I wanted to know if the road existed. And because I wanted to know if Rhylor would let you down."

"He didn't do it."

"No. Her voice almost broke, but she resumed immediately. "This is one more reason not to let it be destroyed in your place."

They are shut. Above, the songs of the temple began. The voices went down the ducts and mixed with the rumble of the city.

"Mother will have the low neighborhoods searched," says Zaelyra. "If families use this road, they will be taken."

"Mother will do what she deems necessary."

"And you?"

Vhaelyn looked away. "I have to decide if I can still believe you."

A memory went back to Zaelyra: the night of her first rite, when she was twelve years old and trembled with fever. Vhaelyn was already old enough to know the price of an absence from the temple. However, she had spent the night sitting near her sister's bed, reciting prayers in her place, until the Matron agreed to postpone the test.

The next day, Vhaelyn had claimed that she had simply needed to repeat the words.

Zaelyra knew she was lying. She had never asked why.

"That night, I trusted you," says Zaelyra.

"You had a fever. I knew what to do."

"And today?"

Vhaelyn followed the line of light under the door. "Today, you ask me to cover things that you have not yet understood."

"I can't tell you what I don't know."

"I know. That's the problem."

"When I started at the temple," she finally said, "a novice refused to recite the oath. She was afraid. Not from the goddess; from her own voice."

Zaelyra vaguely remembered an empty seat at the table, then a name that had stopped being pronounced.

"Did you help her?"

"I told him to breathe before speaking. The next day, she recited the oath."

"You saved her."

"No. She chose. I only gave him one more minute."

Vhaelyn folded her hands in front of her. "I thought the minute would be enough. She served the House for years, then disappeared after a mission in the suburbs. I never knew if she was dead, if she had fled or if she had finally found another life."

"Do you think you should have done more?"

"I don't think I had the right to decide for him. It's different."

Zaelyra then understood that her sister was not only afraid of losing her position. She feared confusing one protection with another form of control. Vhaelyn knew how to open a door; she still didn't know who had to go through it.

"You can ask me to help you," said Zaelyra. But you can't ask me to stay because you're afraid of what will happen to me."

"I'm not asking you."

"Not yet."

Vhaelyn had a joyless smile. "You learn to answer like a Mother."

"Is that what worries you?"

"What worries me is that you learn from her to no longer distinguish people from the decisions they make."

Vhaelyn took out of his sleeve the tablet that an Arach-Tinilith acolyte had given him when he left the audience. She put it on a console. The text required that Nym be taken to the temple before the next ignition. The wax bore two seals: that of the House, which ordered the inspection, and that of Arach-Tinilith, which authorized his interrogation.

"If I disobey the temple seal, I lose my place. If I obey, he may never leave their rooms."

"So why not destroy it?"

"Because a destroyed order remains an order that someone can rewrite. A proof can be shown."

Zaelyra looked at the tablet. "If the acolyte learns that you have kept a copy, he will know that you have chosen a camp."

"He will know it especially because I delayed Nym's transfer. The copy does not create the choice; it keeps track of it."

"What if our mother finds her?"

"Then she will know that I wanted an order to remain verifiable. Not that I canceled it."

She unfolded the tablet and copied the two seals on a small piece of parchment. Then she handed it to Zaelyra.

"Keep it. If we later claim that the interrogation was never ordered, you will know who is lying."

The copy was accurate, even in the small break of the temple seal. Vhaelyn had reproduced the imperfection rather than correct it.

"Why the crack? Zaelyra asked.

"Because too clean proof looks like a fabrication."

"Did you learn that at the temple?"

"With an archivist who had lost her job for omitting an ink stain. She said that people distrust a flawless truth more than a well-presented lie."

Vhaelyn showed him how to write down the time, place and name of the witness on the edge of the parchment. She did not just transmit the seals; she taught him to keep their context.

"A trademark alone does not prove who affixed it," she says. "Note who showed it to you. Also write down what you couldn't check."

Zaelyra wrote the three elements. For the first time, his sister gave him something that was neither an order nor a warning.

It was not a promise of support. It was a way to give him a share of the risk.

A guard came in to announce that Rhylor was summoned to the temple. The order was regular, sealed, and therefore more dangerous than a threat.

Vhaelyn read the tablet. "This is not an arrest."

"Not yet," said Zaelyra.

His sister left with the guard. Zaelyra waited a few seconds, then took the opposite corridor. She knew the service passages of the House better than the priestesses who claimed to supervise them. A low door led to the cells in the annex.

Nym was sitting on his bed, his ankle bandaged. Next to him, someone had put down his tool bag.

"Your sister looks upset," he says.

"She always seems to know what I'm going to do."

"This is often the case with sisters."

"I can't get you out of here without setting off an alarm."

"Then don't take me out. Show me the map."

She took out of her coat the old parchment seized at the Bazaar and spread it on the bench. The route was incomplete. Nym quickly spotted the passage of the cistern and the interrupted line.

He didn't immediately look at the drawing. He first asked who had consulted him, how long he had stayed in the room and if the guards had hit the backhand.

"You want to know if the map has been changed."

"I want to know if it's still the same map. People change the lines. Sometimes they also change the paper."

Zaelyra checked the fibers near the fold. A paler area marked the place where someone had scratched the ink, then covered the parchment with a layer of wax.

"Can you find the old line?"

"Maybe. But if I do, it should be noted that we have revealed it. Otherwise, tomorrow someone will believe that the line was visible from the beginning."

Nym showed him a way to hold the parchment under the lamp without heating the wax. The line appeared, incomplete, then interrupted at the edge of a tear.

"It's not a road," says Zaelyra.

"It's a trace of a road."

She noted the two formulations side by side. He nodded, as if he recognized a student who had just asked the right question without yet knowing that she had done it.

"The relay is probably beyond this gorge. There is a low road, but it passes under an old toll station."

"Can you find her?"

"With my instruments, yes. With a fake map and three guards in the hallway, maybe."

Zaelyra took out the turquoise thread from her sleeve. Nym examined it.

"I would take it for an answer, not for a call."

"To what?"

"Perhaps to a sign placed elsewhere. Someone would have marked the road; this knot would say that we saw the message. But I didn't see the hand that did it."

"Who?"

"We should see the hand."

In the corridor, steps stopped in front of the door. Zaelyra put the thread back on her sleeve.

The lock turned. The faction guard opened, without taking his eyes off his eyes, the young drow who was waiting behind.

"He says he has an itinerary to sell, madam. I let him in to hear him."

The visitor passed under the guard's arm. He was wearing a merchant's coat. A silver coin was sewn to his collar, without an emblem.

"Lady Xil’Nrae? He asked.

"Who wants to know?"

"Someone who sells itineraries. I was told you were looking for one."

Nym stood up suddenly. "Who told you that?"

The messenger shrugged his shoulders. "In this city, the walls speak. Good routes cost more than walls."

Zaelyra dismissed him without taking the room he was holding out. When the door closed, Nym breathed:

"Bregan D’aerthe. Or someone who wants us to believe him."

The turquoise thread was therefore not the only answer they had been left.