“And what if she wants a little light?”
Kossal shifted his eyes from Ela, whistling tunelessly through a gap in his teeth as he studied me. “She wants to be a priestess, she ought to get acquainted with a little darkness. Besides, we’re wasting wax.”
“We’ve wasted worse than wax,” Ela replied. “I’ll snuff the candles when we leave.”
The old man watched me a heartbeat longer, looked back to the candles as though there were some answer there, then shook his head. “That you and I keep working together, Ela Timarna, is a mystery I cannot fathom.”
Ela’s laugh was a silver bell. I’d seen her put a fist through a thick block of sun-baked clay, watched her take a dying goat by the horns and snap its neck, but she carried her strength lightly. The muscle and sinew knitted beneath her brown skin looked built for leaping or lounging, not slaughter. Everything about her seemed light: her hair—a tumble of tight black ringlets—seemed to bounce with every movement; her hands were forever floating up as she gestured about one point or another; even her lips were always on the verge of turning up into a smile.
“We keep working together,” she replied, shooting me a wink as she answered the priest, “because you have a weakness for young women.”
Kossal grunted. “Funny thing about people: you give ’em enough years, and they stop being young.”
“And how many years,” Ela asked, spreading her arms as though offering an embrace or inviting the older priest to hazard a punch, “do you figure that takes?” She cocked her head to the side, smiling, her teeth bright in the candlelight. “Have I stopped being young yet?” She turned in a slow circle, graceful as a dancer, pausing fractionally when her back was to him, then completing the rotation.
Kossal kept his eyes on her. His gaze was frank, open, appraising, but utterly uncovetous, utterly scrubbed of lust’s sticky need. I found myself wanting someone to look at me that way: not just to look at me, but to see me. The priest’s eyes, however, were only for the older woman.
“Not yet,” he conceded finally.
Ela smiled. Both of them stood still, but a draft tugged at the candles, making their shadows shiver. “I’m glad. I can’t tell you how demoralizing it would be if you were younger at seventy than I am at thirty-five.”
Kossal shook his head. “I quit being young a long way back. Never did suit me.”
“I’ll be the judge of what suits you.”
The old priest grunted again, then turned to me. “I’ll give you a piece of advice, kid. Might come in handy if I don’t have to kill you at the end of your Trial.”
Ela draped an arm over my shoulder, gave me a conspiratorial squeeze, then leaned close to mock-whisper in my ear. “Pretend like you’re listening. His advice is terrible, but it makes him happy to give it.”
Kossal ignored the gibe. “When you give the god the one who makes your mind and body sing with love, make sure you get it right. Otherwise,” he went on, nodding to Ela without breaking eye contact with me, “she’ll be there to bother you the rest of your life.”
“As I said,” Ela murmured, still loud enough for Kossal to hear, “his advice is terrible. I was ten years unborn when he had his Trial.”
“Should have waited,” he said, half to himself, shaking his head, then moving toward the door.
In a movement so fast I didn’t understand it until after, Ela twisted away from me and pivoted toward the older priest, aiming a sparring blow low between his ribs. She was fast, as fast as any priestess I’d seen at Rassambur, but it wasn’t her speed I marveled at later, over and over, but the perfect ease with which Kossal blocked the blow, catching her wrist, holding those stiffened fingers inches from his side. Ela glanced down at her hand, shook her head ruefully, smiled, then leaned in to kiss him lightly on the brow.
“Would you really have strangled me in my crib?” she asked. The words were warm, private, as though she’d forgotten I was there.
“Would have been easier,” Kossal replied, letting her wrist go.
“Easier than what?”
The old priest just shook his head. “Snuff the candles when you’re done. A little light’s all well and good, but when the wax is gone, it’s gone.”
Kossal stepped into the night, and the cedar door swung shut quietly behind him. Ela watched it for a while, lips pursed, as though she were about to whistle the first few bars of an old tune. She looked totally relaxed, but I could see her heartbeat testing the vessel in her neck; not fast, exactly, but faster than before. Her breath was faster, too, her chest rising and falling beneath her robe, whether from the short struggle with Kossal or from something else, I didn’t know.
“He loves you?” I asked stupidly.
Ela turned to me, then smiled. “That old fool doesn’t know the first thing about love.”
“He must have, once.”
“Once?” The priestess cocked her head to the side, then nodded. “Ah. His Trial.”
“He passed. Which means he loved someone. He had to have.”
“Perhaps,” Ela replied, then shrugged. “Enough about him. He’s half in Ananshael’s hand already. This is what you’re worried about, isn’t it? Making that last gift to the god?”
I hesitated. The truth made me feel small.
The priestess turned me until I faced her. She kept one hand on my shoulder, then lifted my chin with the other, until I was looking into her dark eyes. The fog of her hair caught the candlelight until it seemed to glow, while her face was lost in shadow. She was only a few inches taller, but in that moment I might have been a child all over again, wandering a warren of emotions barely known to me.
“They’re always hard,” she said, “the song’s last lines. Even Ananshael’s priests forget, sometimes, that we belong to him. Love, meanwhile, is a sneaky, beguiling goddess. She makes you believe.”
“Love…” I said, then trailed off, unable to manage more than the single syllable.
Ela nodded. “Whoever it is, you think you can keep her. Or him.” She traced the line of my chin with her thumb. “You can’t.”