The second was the Sanctuary.
Kell had spent his entire youth between those two buildings. Raised in one, trained in the other, the second as solid and simple as the first was grand. In these stone halls, Tieren had taught Kell to control his power, to quiet his mind, and focus his magic when it was a torrent, spilling out with every burst of temper.
After—after the battle with Osaron, after the shadow king was bound, after Kell accepted that his bond to magic was broken—he had gone to see the Aven Essen.
“What am I now?” he’d asked, angry, and frightened, and in pain.
And Tieren had cupped his cheek and said, “You are alive. Isn’t that enough?”
Now Kell passed beneath an arch, and out into a walled courtyard, and felt the air go solid in his chest. The space had the stillness of a Grey London cemetery, the paths made of white marble, but in the place of tombstones were several dozen trees, spaced as evenly as pillars, each a different size, or age, or season.
Each one grown and tended by a priest, using only the balance of their power.
It seemed an easy enough feat, to grow a tree. But it was not—it required a mastery of all the elements. Aside from Antari, priests were the only magicians who could do that, but their talent lay not in the scope of that power, but in its restraint. A priest held no affinity for any one element, but an ability to wield them all in some small measure. They were the living embodiment of their mandate.
Priste ir essen. Essen ir priste.
Power in balance. Balance in power.
Such was the nature of magic, they said, that all scales must find their level. They could not move mountains or conjure rain. They could not burn ships to cinders or shatter walls with the force of their wind. Theirs was a gentle magic. The sea that eroded stone.
The tree was the embodiment of this restraint.
Too much power would kill it as surely as too little, and it must live within the bounds of the courtyard, without stealing more than its share of soil, or water, or sun.
When a priest died, so did their tree, not all at once, but slowly, left to wither without their care. And when it was dead, it was dragged out, and burned, and its ashes tilled into the dirt for the next priest, the next planting.
Tieren’s plot should have been empty now, but the tree remained, or what was left of it. A grey husk, leafless and dry, its roots lifting like gnarled fingers, slowly letting go of the ground beneath.
“I told them to wait,” said a voice. “I had a feeling you’d want to say goodbye.”
He turned, and saw Ezril standing in the archway. No, not standing, leaning, arms crossed and hip cocked to one side. Kell did not think he’d ever seen a priest lean before—when they were children, Rhy was convinced that he could balance a tea cup on Tieren’s head all day, and it would never spill.
Ezril padded down the steps, and he saw that beneath her white robes, she was barefoot. Her black hair hung loose, straight and sharp as glass from the widow’s peak to the ends, but it was her eyes he found most striking. Fringed in black lashes, her eyes were brown, and yet, somehow pale, like paint on a pane of glass shot through with light. Indeed, they even seemed to glow.
When Rhy had first met his new Aven Essen, he’d said, “What a waste.” She was radiant. Undeniably beautiful. But Kell’s first impression had been only that she wasn’t Tieren. He told himself that was the reason he did not like her.
Rhy said he was being unfair, and perhaps he was—after all, it was hardly Ezril’s fault that Tieren was gone. A man he’d known all his life, replaced by a woman young enough to be the priest’s granddaughter.
Perhaps Kell resented her for more than taking Tieren’s place. After all, she had been there for Rhy when he himself had not. Rhy said he would like Ezril, if he only spent time with her. His brother knew her better than he did. Perhaps he resented her for that as well.
“Aven Essen,” Kell said now, by way of greeting.
“Master Kell,” answered the priest. “Or is it Kay?” Those eyes glittered with mischief.
Kell stiffened. “Rhy has been telling tales, I see.”
She gave a careful shrug, a studied smile. “That coat of yours has many sides. So, I suspect, do you.”
“Indeed,” said Kell carefully. “And what else has my brother told you?”
She sobered. “I am the king’s priest, and his counsel. His burdens become mine, if and when he shares them. But I do not hand them off to others.”
It was not, he noted, an answer. She held his gaze, as if daring him to ask again. Kell did not like the way she looked at him, eyes flicking between his, from the black to the blue and back again, a constant reminder of their difference.
Some priests worshipped the Antari, saw them as an incarnation of Magic itself. But others saw them as a warning, a reminder of what happened when power existed in extremes. The opposite of balance.
Kell wondered which he was in Ezril’s eyes. He didn’t ask, instead turned his attention back to the tree—and the last traces of Tieren’s magic.
“Thank you for waiting,” he said. “I know it is just a tree. And yet…”
“Of course it is just a tree,” said Ezril. “This is just a building. The Isle is just water.”
He studied her. “Spoken like a true priest.”
“What gave me away?” she asked wryly, smoothing her white robe. “You think me an odd choice, for Aven Essen,” she went on. It wasn’t a question, so he wasn’t forced to answer. She looked past him, to Tieren’s tree. “Sometimes change is easier to stomach. Have you ever had a beautiful meal? You try to repeat it, you make the dish the same way over and over and it is never as good. Better to try something new.” She smiled, and shook her head. “Apologies, I must be hungry. You did not come to talk of meals, or trees.”
He had not. Indeed, he’d asked the priests at the door to send for Ezril when he first arrived.
“The Hand,” he said. “Do you have news?”
Ezril’s good humor faltered. “I told you, Master Kell, the Sanctuary is not the crown’s crows. The priests witness. We serve. We do not spy.”
“And yet,” said Kell, “you do not confine yourselves to the Sanctuary. You walk among the people. You know the city’s power, its pulse.”
“Priests answer to the balance of magic. Not to the thrones of kings.”
“You are the Aven Essen,” he persisted. “You serve the king, you are his counsel and his priest. If you know something—anything—if you have any love for Rhy—”
“Enough,” said Ezril, with the simple force of fingers snapping.
She looked past him, past the trees, and the walls of the courtyard. For several moments, she said nothing. Then, “They keep their voices low, but we have heard whispers.” Her tea-stained eyes flicked back to him. “Whispers of a device that can bend space. Cut through wards.”
Kell’s heart sank. The persalis. So it was here.
“What is their plan?” he demanded. “Do you know?”
Ezril only shook her head. “No, but it is a complicated piece of magic. It had to come from somewhere. Or someone.” Her voice dipped lower. “I have wondered if the queen—”
“No,” cut in Kell. “Nadiya Loreni did not make it.”
Ezril frowned. “You are sure?”
“It was stolen from a ship, and smuggled into the city.”
One brow lifted. “Then you know as much as I do.”
“I know nothing of any use,” hissed Kell. “Only that it must be found before the Hand use it against the royal family. Have you learned nothing of the Hand itself? Who is behind them?”
Ezril’s head swept side to side, and Kell felt his chest tighten in exasperation.
“Someone must know something,” he snapped, head spinning. He was no closer to finding the persalis, to stopping the plot, to uncovering the power behind the Hand. His fingers curled into fists, magic rising with his temper. A wind kicked up, whipping through the courtyard, and on its heels, the wave of pain rolled beneath his skin. He let go, quickly, but not quick enough.