The Theracant’s Guild squats in Old Serei like a giant rose beehive, rows of windows and arches spiraling inward to a giant domed peak. It was once a theocrat’s palace, like the rest of the buildings in Old Serei—each new Chosen would commission a new palace, for the “glory of Uje,” forcing the faithful to build while living in the mud and clay hovels that became New Serei. It’s ironic, now, that the sworn enemies of the theocrats occupy the last and largest of these palaces, built of rose quartz mined hundreds of miles away and hauled here in caravans, centuries before the construction of the ironway.

  I am in the streets, porter’s cap low to hide my eyes, though there are few overseers or even people out in this part of the city. The guildhouse is an exception, buzzing with activity next to the serene mansions of Serei’s elite. Women in long skirts pass in and out, supplicants come from all over the peninsula to wait for healing, and waterfalls splash from verandas, where stately women rest feet in the cool water and gaze down at the city.

  I avoid their gazes. They likely know I’m coming anyway, have spotted me and let each other know, but I hold on to my last minutes of freedom. I’m confident in my fighting skills, in my ability to climb and escape, and my resistance to their blood-magic, but still there’s something intimidating about the place. Something powerful and alien about the way the witches walk—like the proud posture of the monks, but softer. Understated, as if they have no reason to flaunt their power—and therefore flaunt it all the more. I pull the staff from my back.

  The outer walls have been carved into a breezy latticework. I pass within, keeping my breaths deep and regular. A girl approaches me almost immediately, dressed in muslin like the other students in the yard, but with a few traces of embroidery on the chest that must mark rank.

  “Aletheia Vjolla?”

  I start. It’s been a long time since I heard that name. “I am,” I say, summoning the posture of a seer, the posture Gaxna has been teaching me to change while in disguise in the city. No reason to hide it here.

  “Theral Temerana,” she says in return, and turns toward the palace, expecting me to follow.

  I don’t. I’m not an idiot.

  Neither is she. She stops after a few paces and walks back to where I stand in the middle of the front courtyard, fountains splashing and supplicants milling about, many of them gravely ill. I don’t like disease, don’t like the ever-present threat of plague, but I’m still safer here than inside their palace.

  “The letter,” Temerana says flatly. “You want to see the letter.”

  “I do,” I say. “Before I go anywhere near that building.”

  She sighs and returns inside. They must have expected my resistance, for just a few minutes later a pack of dark-faced women come out, swords on their backs, dressed in leather armor over skirts and vests. The Theracant Guard—I’ve heard of them, but never seen one. They surround me in a tight circle, hands on weapons. I deepen my breathing, icing the tension. I am ten times the fighter these women are, but there are sixteen of them. And they don’t have the letter.

  Temerana comes with it a minute later, Temerana and another woman, older, black eyes sharp in her lined face.

  “Miyara Shalohei, of the Eighth Circle,” she says by way of introduction, short like the whole thing is a waste of her time. “You wanted proof.”

  I nod. The old woman pulls a bamboo case from her purse, opens it to reveal a roll of parchment sealed in black wax. I lean in, and the nearest guards draw swords. “That’s close enough,” one barks.

  It is—close enough to see the seal, anyway. It is my father’s, the curling water-to-steam symbol he chose on elevation, so familiar from the thick ring he wore on his middle finger. Aletheia is written on the outside in his bold hand.

  “Give it to me.”

  “With time,” Miyara says, again as though resenting the breath the words take. “It is not safe here.”

  “I’m not going further.”

  Miyara raises an eyebrow, glancing at the circle of guards. “I do not see that you have much choice.”

  I lean the bare side of my foot into the ground and push my consciousness out. Earth is a poor transmitter of thought unless it is soaked, but the fountains here keep their soil moist, as does the grass.

  “Sex, hunger, father, itch,” I snap in rapid succession, pointing to each of the guards as I read them, giving their current thoughts word. “Monk, spear, dog, temple, tooth.”

  With each word comes a gasp, a widening of eyes, as they realize I have read their minds.

  “Position, Chosen,” I finish, pointing first at Temerana, then Miyara. “Your minds are an open canvas to me, woman, and I am trained in the temple’s martial arts. I could take the letter now, if I wanted.”

  It’s a bluff, but the sword points waver. Temerana gasps. Miyara, for her part, looks undisturbed.

  “You might,” she nods. “But you would not escape. That much I promise you. And we have more to tell you than a letter can.”

  I do not doubt that they could stop me. That their play is always having more power than they use, like the witches quietly observing marketplaces, and the threat they’ve held over Gaxna’s head the last three years. But it’s curiosity that keeps me from grabbing the letter and running. Maybe they do have something I need to hear. At the very least, I want their take on the threat my father posed at the end of his reign, and whether that was real or played up somehow.

  That, and I’m dying to ask them about Arayim.

  “Then we go in,” I say simply, dropping my staff butt to the ground. “I find myself in need of some tea, anyway.”

  Miyara turns and the guards part, allowing us passage into the palace, though a few still trail behind. The inside is simple, white polished floors and walls, rooms with patients and witches and small antechambers where worried families wait. The place smells of soap and smoke and lavender oil and, under that, of vomit and raw meat. Moans and wails echo down the long hall, and blood runs from beneath a closed door we pass. Miyara steps neatly over it, like a cat, and we take a side set of stairs at the back.

  The upper floor is as rich as the lower is sterile—vibrant tapestries line the walls, water babbles over intricate statues, and diffusers send sheets of mist that catch the afternoon sunlight, mixing with cedar incense in a warm haze. Miyara strides on, never slowing, past groups of women gathered on cushions or soft carpets, sharing cups of tea or listening while older women talk at length. Lessons, then, though they look nothing like temple classes.

  We stop at an arched doorway, its opening beaded to let the air move through. “Wait here,” Miyara snaps. “Teme, fetch tea. White, I think, with anise and cardamom. I’ll gather the others.” Temerana scurries away and the old woman turns to me. “Mind yourself. You are a guest here, and few are allowed even this high. Five minutes.”

  They leave. Cushions are arrayed around a low teak table, a window on the far side letting in a whiff of ocean breeze. I choose a cushion that keeps my back to the wall, sit, and focus my breathing. There is nothing now but readiness. I will not let these women intimidate me.

  They file in three hundred breaths later, skirts and skins in all shades, but each bearing that same glowing, grandmotherly cast to their lined faces, as though each year they get older makes them healthier, instead of the opposite.

  Estrija comes last, her weathered face looking positively youthful next to the other women, but she stands apart with Temerana, along the wall. There is one cushion still open, and the witches stand in a circle behind their cushions, apparently waiting for someone. I stay sitting—to hell with these women and their customs.

  The standing women stay calm as glass, but I notice their eyes darting at each other, and at me. It takes a minute to remember they have no way of communicating, that they’re not holding the sort of silent watersight conversations that fill our days at the temple. In the next moment I wonder if there is a bloodsight equivalent, if they speak to each other through awareness of each other’s bodies, but it can’t be the same.

  The final witch comes two hundred-some breaths later, back straight and face unspeakably ancient, as though she’s had children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and watched them all grow old and die and learned from every moment of it.

  “Sit,” she snaps, even less patient in tone than Miyara.

  They sit, and the cutting glance one of them gives me leaves no doubt as to how rude my already sitting is. I ignore it. Temerana scuttles in a moment later, tea tray rattling, and lays it on the low teak table, before offering a cup to the youngest of the ancient women gathered there. The woman in turns offers a cup to the woman next to her, and they continue around the circle like this, skipping me, until an ancient woman with a cloud of white hair offers the most ancient one a cup of steaming tea, fingers steady as a clockmaker’s on the delicate porcelain.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  No one offers me tea, but there is one cup remaining on the table. I take it and pour myself a serving, to hisses and grunts and muttered skirt rearrangings all around. The water is lava-hot, and I set it on the stone before me to cool, as others have done.

  “Now then,” the eldest says, “let’s get this over with, shall we? Aletheia Vjolla, I am Regiana Shirje, head of the Ninth Circle and matron of this hen party of a guildhouse. Girls?”

  I almost laugh at calling the centenarian faces around me girls, but they nod gravely and introduce themselves, one after the other, with more formality than Regiana did. I like the old woman instinctively, despite myself.

  When they’re done, Regiana turns to me. “I’m not going to beat around the bush. You’re here to study with us.”

  “What?” I recover my cool a moment later, icing the surprise. This is not what I expected.

  “You’re here to study with us,” the ancient woman repeats, her silver-laced locks hanging unornamented nearly to the floor. “We know things you need to learn.”

  I lace my fingers. “I appreciate the offer, but I am not here to become a theracant. I am here because I have questions I want answered. First, who is Arayim, and why are you working with the traditionalists?

  Confused looks meet my question, but it could be a bluff. I grit my teeth, wishing we were in water, that I could just read these women.

  “Never heard of him.” Regiana says.

  “Your agent. The one you used to bribe the criers into lying about my father’s heresy. The one who passed money to merchants so they wouldn’t go bankrupt during the trade slump. Don’t deny it. I have proof from the criers and the merchants, and I caught Arayim last night. He’s bloodborn. Under your control. I know you know this.”

  Miyara glances around the room. “Nonsense. We clearly know nothing of the sort. And whatever plots you have concocted in your head, girl, they mean little to us. We had no special love for your father, but we would certainly never have helped the traditionalists into power. Think about it.”

  I have thought about it. And the annoying thing is that I agree with her. “It doesn’t make sense to me either,” I say, “but the man was bloodborn, and therefore clearly your agent. Unless there are witches outside the guild who can make bloodborn?”

  They hiss at the word witches, but I don’t care. Miyara sets her tea cup down with a clink. “There are none, girl, and though we have invited you here with good intentions, mind that you do not offend us.”

  “Perhaps you misread the man,” Regiana says. “He sounds like an agent of the temple. Could he have simply been putting up a waterblind?”

  “I know what a waterblind feels like,” I grit, even as a seed of doubt grows in me. Nothing about Arayim being a witch agent makes sense, but I know what I read. He was bloodborn.

  “Be that as it may,” Regiana says, sipping from a steaming cup, “we know nothing of this Arayim.”

  I reach my hand across the circle. “Fine. Prove it to me. Prove that you know nothing of him, and everything I just said. It won’t take long to read you.”

  The head witch watches me with cool eyes, then to the muffled gasps of the others reaches her papery-skinned arm across the circle and grips my hand.

  Her mind is wide and deep, like looking over a cliff-edge to find a valley circling with birds. “Arayim,” I say, focusing on the front of her thoughts. Confusion registers, and there are memories of a young man long ago with that name, but no knowledge of a bearded, bloodborn man, or any related thoughts of criers and merchants. Her thoughts begin to spin off into what I’m trying to accomplish, and fears of the temple, and worries about her sisters.

  I let go of her hand, decent enough to let her thoughts be private. There is nothing there.

  “You see, then?” Regiana asks, unruffled.

  I bite my lip. “Yes.” But it had to be one of them. “Let me read someone else—you.” I look to Miyara.

  Her face is a thundercloud. “You seek to command what you do not understand, child. Regiana bears all of our blood. If any of us know anything, she knows it too.”

  The others nod at this, and I feel like when someone strikes left instead of right, knocking me off balance. It doesn’t make sense, but—“Fine. Give me the letter then.”

  “We will speak our piece first,” Miyara says, knuckles white on her tea cup. I have made this woman angry. Good to know. I keep mine iced solid.

  “Under what authority do you keep it from me?” These are the kind of words the overseers use. Reminding them of my connection to the temple can’t hurt.

  “We’re not keeping it from you, child,” Regiana says, eagle eyes cutting into me. “We are telling you you’re not ready for what it says.”

  “So you’ve read it.”

  “We’ve read you,” Miyara says, “or I have at least. You are angry and impulsive. Those are not the emotions the city needs right now.”

  She hasn’t answered my question. I guess I will have to speak like a first-year trainer to these women. “Have you read the letter?”

  “We have not,” Miyara says, “if you must know. But you are too important to get killed wandering around the city. Gaxana was a clever student, but she cannot protect you from the overseers.”

  “I can take care of the overseers,” I say, with a glance at Estrija. I told her last night that I killed an overseer—the others likely know now, have put it together with the day’s news. Though Uje send that the news isn’t true.

  Regiana lifts her tea and sips. It’s a simple gesture, but somehow it carries weight, commanding the room’s attention. “This may not be a lesson they teach you in the temple,” she says when she is done. “But it is never about you. Not really. And the mind’s attempts to make it about you, about your ability to handle overseers or your reasons for coming here or your expectations, are always a distraction from what is true.”

  They actually teach us something very similar to that, but I don’t give her the satisfaction of knowing it. “And what is true?”

  “The truth is that our city is in danger,” Miyara says. “And you are the key to saving it.”

  I frown. I am the key to changing the temple, maybe, and restoring its service to the city, but all of Serei? “How?”

  “You have heard of Nerimes’ marriage,” Miyara says, not quite a question. “That he plans to wed the Ujela Dais to a Seilam Deul.”

  “And of his calls for a return to Uje fundamentals,” Regiana adds. “What he means is a return to the time when the temple ruled Serei entirely, the time of theocrats and peasants, before we rose and struck a balance of power.”

  “He would sweep theracants from the city,” a third woman says, plump and red-faced. “Replace us with Seilam Deul craftology. Trinkets! Those people worship trinkets! How can those save us from the flood?”

  Miyara puts a hand on the woman’s arm. “Feel about them as we may, it is no lie that the Seilam Deul in the last two decades have gone from an isolated string of cities high in the mountains to a major coastal force, with their own ports in Daraa, Bamani, and inroads among the Pearls, where no outside ship has landed before. Serei is one of the few old polities that stands.”

  I’ve heard this before. That the Seilam Deul are taking over. But I hear it from the same people who clamor after their technology—blacksmiths working their improved forges, Daraa caravansers trading along their ironway, likely soon from sailors using barometers.

  I remember a favorite expression of Urte’s. “Does the steam from your cup die when it becomes a cloud? Change is inevitable. Suffering comes from denying that.”

  “Don’t lecture us with Uje truisms,” Regiana snaps. “Seilam Deul politics have real consequences, for real people. They would not be making this move if it wasn’t tied to their beliefs, to some knowledge they have of the next deluge. Which means they will be trying to convert us to their beliefs. Or making trinkets that do it for them. And there are no wars like religious wars.”

  My hands go cold. “You think the city would convert to worshipping things?” No one is really sure what the Deul believe, but most agree it centers around praying to their own inventions.

  “Some would,” Miyara says. “And then perhaps there would be a backlash. Something the temple could encourage, while we cleaned up the casualties. Enough to upset the balance of power.”

  “And that is what we do fear,” Regiana says. “That the temple is creating this whole mess in order to capitalize on it for their own good.”

  “Because you cannot see a way to turn it for your own good?”

  “No,” the woman cracks, like a beast handler’s whip. “Theracants do not seek power, child. It is in our oaths. We seek health, peace, and prosperity, all of which will be threatened if any single force gets an upper hand in Serei. The only reason the city has survived this long, prospered this long, is because we have kept the monks in check, and vice versa. With us gone, the temple will get ahead of itself, and we will have a return to the old days. You’ve likely already seen some of this since your father passed.”

  I think of my classmates, more concerned for political position than studying the craft. Overseers seeking bribes from the guilds. Seers too busy to meet with supplicants. Nerimes whipping up resentment against the theracants. Recent changes in the temple have not been good, but I still don’t trust these women and their claims to be doing it for peace and prosperity. I haven’t forgotten Gaxna’s story.

  “I may have.”

  “Imagine, then, if they didn’t have the threat of an entire city of bloodborn to hold them back. If the Theracant’s Guild were gone. Imagine what Nerimes would do.”

  “We don’t have to imagine,” Miyara says coldly. “He’s announced it in his preachings. A return to classical Ujeism. And a ‘firm hand’ to deal with the ‘growing theracant threat.’ And his theocrats eat it up like sweet-meats.”

  “Are you a growing threat? Is there no truth to the accusations?” Aside from Arayim, this is what I’ve come here to ask. To find out how or why the theracants were suddenly a threat in the lead up to my father’s death, when they never had been before. And why my father was blamed for it.

  A few of the women glance at Regiana, who takes a long sip of her tea before answering. “The truth is made by the threat. We have always wanted only to keep the balance, to keep the peace, that people might come to Serei from all over to get healed, and to seek insight from our therapies. But when we heard of the temple mobilizing against us, we had to respond in kind.”

  I shake my head. “What mobilizing? The temple did nothing of the sort. At least not during my father’s time.”

  Regiana sighs. “As I said, the threat made the truth. We know now that the mobilization was a lie fed to us to make us worried. To put us on the defensive, that Nerimes might then point to us as a threat and discredit your father for allowing it to happen. We were duped.” The word comes bitter from her mouth. “And now we need all the groundwork we laid then, if we are to stay strong in the face of the temple and the Seilam Deul.”

  “So you were never a threat?” My heart beats fast. They were lied to. Of course. I couldn’t believe it of my father, no matter what Gaxna thought. And this will be a crucial piece of evidence in exposing the plot against my father. “Who duped you? How?”

  “The theocrats, little one,” Miyara says. “Or just Nerimes, working with the Seilam Deul. We’re not sure. But they discovered my spy and fed him the lies they wanted us to hear.”

  Confirmation. I almost jump up and walk out right there. Proof from the theracants’ own mouths that it was a set-up. My father wasn’t weak against the theracant threat. There was no theracant threat. Only traditionalist lies. See what the overseers think when they read this memory.

  Only I don’t walk out, because there is a threat now. Taking down the council is going to mean dealing with the Seilam Deul, too, whatever they’re planning. And I have a feeling I’m going to need these women to do it.