the vast vault.
The Graced Cache was located deep underground, where the quarried stones of Chrism’s castillion became natural limed stone. Its ceiling hung unusually low. Even Dart had to keep her head bowed from the roof.
“The better to know your place,” Matron Shashyl had instructed. “To honor what is stored here with bended back.”
Still, despite the low ceiling, the Cache did not feel confining. Its space covered an area larger than the central courtyard of her old school. Most kept their voices whispered because of the chamber’s unnerving habit to echo and amplify. It was as if there were a ghost haunting the room, mocking their words.
The Cache reminded Dart of a wine cellar. While there was a certain dankness to the air, a pleasant sweetness lay beneath it, like the spirits distilled from aged wine casks-though no barrels had ever been rolled into this vault.
All around, rows of ebony weirwood shelves marched to the four walls of the subterranean chamber. Resting upon the shelves, small crystal repostilaries glittered in the torchlight, like a thousand stars in the night. The Cache was divided into eight areas, each representing one of the eight blessed humours of the god they served, a god neither Dart nor Laurelle had yet set eyes upon.
“What are you thinking about?” Laurelle asked, shifting closer to her. The ghost in the room echoed the word thinking, bouncing it back and forth.
Dart noted Laurelle’s eyes flitting about, attempting to follow her fleeing word. She kept her own voice a breathless whisper. “I was wondering when we’d be granted an audience with His Graced, Lord Chrism.”
Laurelle sighed, a flicker of a smile. “I hope soon. But I expect it won’t happen until those who we are to replace have faded completely.”
Dart nodded. They were indeed handmaidens — in-waiting. The two handservants, representing blood and tears, those whom they had been chosen to replace, were ailing but not yet gone, and continued in their duties, as was their honor.
In the meantime, Dart and Laurelle were placed under the daily tutelage of Matron Shashyl, the matron superior of the handservants. While not a Hand herself, she had served the castillion for over five decades and it was said only Chrism himself ever questioned her or went against her wishes. She personally instructed Dart and Laurelle in the finer points of their specific duties and oversaw the practices of the proper rituals. Some lessons had already been taught to them back at the school, but much had not.
“I wish Margarite could see all this,” Laurelle said.
Dart surprisingly felt the same way. Though Margarite had mostly been cruel to her at the old school, the girl would have been a welcome reminder of the only home she had ever known. Alone here, strangers to the castillion, Dart and Laurelle had grown much closer together. They even shared a bed in the dormitories; apparently it was rare to have two handservants-in-waiting arrive at the same time. Still, Laurelle clearly pined for the crush of friends that had always surrounded her.
“I even miss Matron Grannice,” Laurelle sighed. “She was so kind. She once read to me when I was fevered… do you remember that?”
Dart felt tears well in her eyes. She wiped them brusquely. The matron had been as close to a mother as she had ever had. Now she would never see her again. Dart’s defilement would not long go unnoticed here. She would surely be banished… if not worse. She felt a sudden urge to blurt out her fears to Laurelle, to unburden her heart. If there was anyone she could trust…
“Laurelle, can I tell you something?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. The next spilled out in a rush. “Something you’d swear to tell no one else.”
Laurelle shifted closer with a rustle of skirts. “What is it, Dart?”
She reached a hand to her friend. Laurelle grasped it, her eyes bright in the torchlight.
“I… the day that I was sent to the rookery…”
Laurelle squeezed her fingers. “After I teased you,” she said. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget myself and do silly things to make the other girls laugh. I shouldn’t have. It was mean and petty.”
Laurelle’s brow crinkled-not in shame, but with a weary knowledge of her own foolishness. For a moment, Dart saw the woman her friend would grow into: sharp-eyed, with a keen mind and a beauty that would weaken men. Dart suddenly felt too small to speak.
“What is it?” Laurelle encouraged softly.
Dart opened her mouth, ready to confess all.
Then a crash and tinkle of shattering glass startled them both. They swung around.
Dart spotted Pupp, balanced up on his hind legs, nosing one of the upper shelves. A broken repostilary lay at his paws. She watched him sniff at another vessel, setting it to rocking.
“No!” she cried out and leaped to her feet.
Her exclamation was taken up by the ghost and echoed throughout the room. Pupp glanced at her, eyes squinted in chagrin, tiny brass ears tucked back in shame. He lowered himself to the floor. She hurried to him and shooed him back from the shelf, keeping her motions hidden by her skirts.
Laurelle joined her. She stared down at the broken jar and the spilled humour. “How…?” She glanced around the room nervously. “Why did it fall?”
“We have to clean it up!” Dart declared, panicked. “If Matron Shashyl finds out…”
“But we didn’t do anything wrong,” Laurelle said, just a girl again, one who was convinced that the world was just and fair.
Dart knew better. “I don’t know what knocked the jar off the shelf. Maybe a groundshake.”
“I didn’t feel-”
“Maybe a small one, too mild for us to notice, but enough to rattle one of the repostilaries.”
Laurelle nodded, needing to believe something besides the mischievousness of an echoing ghost.
“But will anyone believe that?” Dart crossed back to their abandoned bucket of sudsy soap and brushes. “What if nobody felt the groundshake? We’ll be blamed.”
Laurelle’s eyes grew round.
“Perhaps even cast out for such an abuse.”
Her friend covered her mouth with a small hand. “No!” she whispered through her fingers. “My father would flay me…”
Dart recognized the true terror in the other’s eyes. From the time Laurelle was a babe, her family had groomed her for this position and would not tolerate any other role for her. Since their arrival here, Laurelle had received a single congratulatory letter from her parents, along with a small basket of snowy lilies. Dart had read the note. Though it was mostly kind, there was an undercurrent of disappointment. Laurelle had been chosen for one of the five lesser humours: tears. That night, Laurelle had shed many of her own tears, weeping at her failure, while pretending they were a joyous out-pouring.
Dart had not been fooled. Looking at the raw fear in her friend’s eyes now, Dart wondered if being an orphan was truly the worst outcome for a child.
“We’ll clean it up,” Dart promised. “None will be the wiser. There are thousands of repostilaries stored down here.”
Dart bent and carefully picked up the shards of glass. The tang of yellow bile, the god’s water, wafted. At least it hadn’t been his blood, the most valuable of all the humours. She dropped the sharp bits into the sudsy water, hiding Pupp’s crime. She would cast the broken pieces out when she dumped the bucket.
Laurelle steadied herself with a deep breath. Again proving her inner strength, she dropped to her knees and set about cleaning the spilled humour and rinsed the brush in the water.
In short order, the floor was clean, all evidence scrubbed away.
“We mustn’t tell anyone,” Dart warned.
“Our secret,” Laurelle answered. The last word was echoed by the ghost. It seemed all were in agreement.
With her heart finally calming, Dart glanced over to Pupp. He had his tail tucked low, nose close to the floor. She took a moment to frown at him. How had he knocked the jar off? Was it just another of those chance pushes into this world? Like when he had nipped at Laurelle? But he had done such things only when he was agitated, worked up, and protective of her.
She stared at her hands, remembering the one other time, when her blood had allowed her to touch him. She
