20
As Vi descended from the pass in the afternoon, the snows became sleet and finally rain. Forests yielded to farms, though she met no one on the road. Anyone with sense was inside. Vi rounded a corner and found herself staring at Sister Ariel, sitting on a mare with all the grace of a sack of potatoes. In contrast to how miserably drenched Vi was, the Bitch Wytch wasn’t even wet. An inch above her skin and clothing, the rain sheared away, ran in rivulets over an invisible shell, and dropped to the ground. She smiled beatifically. “Hello, Vi. It’s good to see you’re alive. I received a very odd message this morning telling me to expect you.”
“From Dehvi?” Vi asked.
“Who?”
“Dehvira-something Bruhmaezi-something,” Vi said.
“Dehvirahaman ko Bruhmaeziwakazari?” Sister Ariel asked, getting both the cadence and the tone perfect. Bitch!
“That was it.”
Sister Ariel smirked. “You are a very impressive young woman, Vi, but the Ghost of the Steppes—if not only a legend—is two hundred years dead. Someone was having fun with you.”
“The what?” Vi asked.
“Why are you here, Vi?” Sister Ariel asked. “No lies. Please.”
Instantly, Vi felt herself caught between rage and tears again, out of control. She’d never been like this before. Since murdering Jarl, she’d been a disaster. Ringing Kylar had only made it worse. Even the things that should have been good, like learning Hu was dead, and helping kill the man who claimed to be her father, Godking Garoth Ursuul, had instead only thrown her further off balance. “I’m here to become you, you bitch. To manipulate rather than be manipulated. To become the best.” She tugged at her earring. “And to get this f*cking thing off.”
Sister Ariel’s face stilled, her lips going white. “For your sake, I strongly suggest you come up with other reasons when the Gatekeeper interviews you. So how about you shut your mouth, and I’ll pretend you’re a normal young woman looking to join our sisterhood?”
It took a long time for Vi’s rage to subside enough for her to nod.
They rode together through the rain and soon the city emerged from the low-lying cloud. “It’s called Laketown,” Sister Ariel said, “for the obvious reasons.”
The city and the Chantry rested at the confluence of two rivers, which made a reservoir above VestacchiLake. All the buildings of the city and the Chantry rested on islands in the reservoir, the nearest of which was fifty paces from the shore. Arching bridges connected every island to its neighbors and several to the shore, but streets themselves were absent. Instead, low, flat punts navigated the waterways. Some of them were covered against the rain, others exposed. Regardless, the punts moved far faster than they should have.
Vi and Ariel entered the part of Laketown that had grown on the shores by the bridges, but all the merchants seemed to be huddled in their daub-and-wattle homes, with their chimneys or chimney holes smoking.
“By some ancient magic we still can’t duplicate, the islands are actually floating,” Sister Ariel said. “The entire dam can be opened and the islands flushed out into the lake in times of war. Of course, we haven’t had to do that for centuries. And a good thing, too. I understand towing all the islands back up here is a lot of work.”
“It’s beautiful,” Vi said, forgetting herself. “The water’s so clean.”
“This city was built at a time when magic was used to benefit farmers and fishermen. There were special streams in every city that would take the stains out of your clothing. There were plows that could be pulled by a single ox that would break six furrows in a single pass. There were free public baths with water as hot or cold as you wanted. Charms that kept meat from spoiling. People thought of magic as a tool, not only as a weapon. In Laketown, the slops and nightsoil are supposed to be thrown into these pipes that—see, no smell?—that take them directly to the dam. Of course, you can never get everyone to obey even a sensible law—like not throwing nightsoil in the water you drink—so the lake itself has spells that cleanse it.”
Sister Ariel led them to a white punt on the far end of the dock. A boy dodged out into the rain to take their horses and Vi took her bags and stepped onto the punt. She took some comfort in Sister Ariel’s obvious terror that the boat was going to capsize. As soon as they were settled on the low, wet seats, the punt began moving by itself.
Vi grabbed the side of the boat in a white-knuckled grip.
Sister Ariel smiled. “This magic, on the other hand,” she said, “we can do. It’s just too much trouble, these days.” They skimmed quickly into the wide water streets and the little boat turned on its own.
“There are currents that shift on the turning of the glass. If you know what you’re doing, you can get from one side of the city to the other going downstream all the way.”
After a few minutes, they emerged into an enormous opening with no islands except the biggest one of them all. “Behold the White Lady. The Alabaster Seraph. The Chantry. The Seraph of Nerev. And for you now, Vi, home.”
The Chantry had looked big before, but only now as they approached it did it become apparent how massive it was. The entire building was carved in the likeness of a winged, angelic woman. She was too solid to actually be alabaster, too perfectly white to be marble. The stone shone, even in the dim light of this dreary day. Vi imagined it would be blinding in the sunlight. As they came closer, Vi saw that what looked from a distance like erosion or pitting from age in the statue-building’s surface were actually windows and decks for the myriad of rooms inside, each nearly invisible because the surrounding stone was the same dazzling white.
The Seraph’s wings were half-unfurled, and she bore a sword in her left hand, point down, and a cool look on her face. As the punt circled around the back of the island, Vi saw that the Seraph’s right hand held a set of scales behind her back, with a feather on one side and a heart on the other.
Hundreds of docks crowded the back side of the island, and despite the rain, dozens of boats were loading and unloading all manner of supplies and people. Their white punt skimmed straight to the nearest set of docks, passing beneath an arch of living wisteria, impossibly still in bloom with a riot of purple flowers. The punt came to rest, and two sisters in black robes greeted them.
“Vi, go with them,” Sister Ariel said. She paused, then added, “No threat they make is idle. It has been years since anyone died during initiation, but it is a possible. May whatever god you believe go with you. And if you believe in none, good luck.”
The worst part wasn’t that the last god Vi wanted with her now was Nysos, to whom she had offered her body and soul and the blood of so many innocents. The worst part was that Sister Ariel’s good wishes sounded absolutely sincere.