“Such vulgarity! Never have I heard such—”
Jael reached an arm out from under her cover and took Purwynn’s hand. “It’s not you. It’s his empty wineskin. He used to serve at my chapel. Took to drinking when his brother died during the Purge. Our deacon was helping to cure him, but he never could give it up.” She looked down on Gareth and his self-righteous fury. “What would your brother think if he saw you now?”
The former acolyte winced as if she’d slapped him. His cheeks turned red and his eyes dark, and with wrinkled lips he said, “Hans can’t see me now; he’s with the Devil. But I’ll find the truth in the capital. God help me, I’ll find it, and you can go on believing in your faerie tales.” He marched on.
Rain fall. A blast of thunder. Jael shivered under her blanket as horns bellowed from the front. Their departure was imminent. Sarah collected her quilts.
“I think I’ve had a dour time enough, don’t you dearling? It’s time I get back to the coach. You’re welcome to ride with me if you want.”
The offer was tempting, but then she thought of all the men wet and cold and covered in muck. She unwound herself from the patchwork blanket, put on her shift, shirt, trousers, and boots—then finally her surcoat. “No,” she said, her head a mess, though one thought was certain. “There are wolves in these woods, my lady. With them, I can be a maid or I can be a knight.”
Seventh Verse
Jezebel woke to cold sweat on fevered skin, her roughspun linens soaked through to the packed-dirt floor, hard as ice and moist. As she turned from her back to her side, she felt the bite of the dungeon air. She had always heard it was cold in the north, but hearing had not prepared her for the depths of the Pareo’s prison. She shivered and listened for Adam and Adnihilo, heard the weeping and restless chains. They were still with her. She sighed, wondering how many days it had been since they were carted inland and left to wither underground.
It had been evening the last time she saw the sun. Messaii soldiers had escorted them under limewashed stone walls vaster than the mountains of Horeb south of Eemah. And inside—her jaw still ached from gawking—the houses towered like northland trees, branches on mortared trunks looming out from their roots, a canopy of white panels hatched with wood, tiled roofs rimmed with gutters. Her eyes fluttered. In every direction were passersby dressed in bright doublets, gowns, and hose. It was enough to distract her from the weight of her fetters, at least until they passed through the inner wall.
“The Valley of the Temple Rock,” she had overheard some soldiers talking. A ring of pearl white bricks around a central garden, garrisons to the north and south, seven towers like the points of a crown jutting up from the inner ward; and there was the Temple itself, lime washed and adorned with columns and spires and golden, bas-relief doors—extravagances piled high over the centuries atop dark foundations dead to the world.
But those horrors were alive inside the Temple dungeon. Every time the jailor brought their pails of slop she saw the silhouettes in the lamp light: tables armed with prongs and barbs, racks and wheels and wooden wedge horses, iron chairs with leather straps, vices, posts, pillories, crucifixes. She counted their blessings that they had been spared such devices thus far, though she strongly suspected there wouldn’t be many more. Not for her.
Jezebel pressed the blister on her arm and felt it burn as puss ran off onto the ground. She could smell it as well, the stench of death. She tried recall how many sacrifices died that way, how long it took for the corruption to spread. A few days? Yet her fever had been stagnant for more than a month. But now it raged. She would have to act soon. The next time he comes. She would not watch them suffer—not Adam, not Adnihilo—not again, not like she had in the cabin of the ship. The shipmaster and his wormy, yellow grin. Adam screaming, begging for help.
Forgive me, she prayed to whatever Gods whom might be listening. She never thought she’d end up like this, like her mother bargaining with an invisible father. Yet there she was, desperate and widowed, for all her rebelliousness no different than the woman she despised. No. Jezebel realized she did not despise her; she’d never even understood how hurt her mother must have been when she chose to recreate the same anguish. Forgive me, she started, then she stopped, prayed instead, Save them. God, please, save them both.
They needed that miracle if they had any hope of escaping. And she did have a hope, and more—a ploy. For she knew that soon the jailor would arrive. He would totter in on stunted legs, lamp in one hand, red-brown slop in the other, smiling like the simpleton he was. He would waddle closer and drop pails at each of their feet, retrieve an apple from the bag on his belt then the knife from the sheathe that dangled between his legs. It was a crude thing, that knife, shaped from tarnished pewter and torturously noisy against his ring of keys. Their only reprieve from the din was when he would use it to cut chunks from his apple and eat it in front of them, smiling, especially at her.
Jezebel doubted
