I nodded, my cheeks warming. She turned her back and swept her thick, coppery locks to one side, then pushed her gown off her left shoulder. And there, on the wing of her shoulder blade, was the flame. “It’s so small,” I blurted out, itching to trace my fingers over it.
She chuckled. “Tiny,” she said, winking at me. “Only half the size of yours. And yet still I made the firebreak that saved us from the inferno at the edge of the Loputon forest last summer. And I was strong enough to summon cold so complete that it choked that same mighty fire out of existence.”
I began to stammer my apologies, embarrassed at my clumsy words, but she shook her head and pulled her gown back onto her shoulder. She put her arm around me. “Darling, you have nothing to be sorry about.” She touched my burning cheek with her cool fingertip. “Only remember what I can do, though my mark is tiny, though it took the elders months to find me, though it was only by chance that they found me at all. And imagine what you will someday be able to do.”
I fall backward into the arms of one of the acolytes, my arms splayed, my wrists free. I did it. Thank the stars above.
The young woman looks down at me with tears on her lovely face. “Please use your magic, Valtia,” she begs, holding me tight as we sink to the floor.
I stare at the ceiling, too weak and agonized to move. “I didn’t?” I whisper. But my whole body is on fire! “Didn’t I just melt the chains?”
She shakes her head and gestures up at the shackles, hanging open, still dripping with my blood. Behind me, I hear a terrible noise. Armo, sobbing. The girl with the spots is cooing to him, telling him he only did his duty, reminding him that I asked him to. But it doesn’t console him. His grating cries only stop when Elder Aleksi’s voice strikes as surely as that whip. “Clean her up,” he barks. “And then bring her to the temple dock for the next trial. We’ll prepare the boat.”
“Elder,” says the spotty acolyte, her voice breathy. “She’s too weak. Maybe—maybe Elder Kauko could heal her wounds first?”
“She is the Valtia!” Aleksi roars. “If she’s not strong enough to heal herself, she’s not fit to rule. And if you question me again, I’ll order your immediate cloistering.” His stomping footsteps fade from hearing, followed by the slower, less violent footfalls of Kauko and Leevi.
The spotty acolyte’s hand shakes as she rubs it over her bald head. “I’m not due to be cloistered for another five years at least,” she says in a squeaky voice.
Next to me, Armo vomits all over the floor. “I can’t,” he moans. “I can’t witness this.”
The spotty acolyte frowns. “If he doesn’t pull himself together, priest Bernold might call for him to be cloistered and find another apprentice to take his place.”
“Then let him stay here,” says the acolyte with blue eyes and soothing hands. She has a mole on her cheek, small and round. “We can take her to the dock.”
I float in a fog of hurt as the three female acolytes press cloths to my back, then pull my sleeves over my arms and button my dress. “Those bandages won’t hold, Kaisa,” says the spotty one.
“I know, Meri,” says Kaisa, the girl with the mole. “But if we take too long, the elders will be furious.”
“I’ll stay with Armo,” says the girl with the wide, pretty face. She pats his back. He’s staring down at the bloody whip. “I’m due to be cloistered soon,” she adds with a sigh, “so it won’t matter if they make me start it a few days early.” She offers all of us a smile. “Besides, Salli was cloistered a few months ago, and I’m looking forward to seeing her again.”
Meri and Kaisa lift me from the floor and drape my arms over their shoulders. Slowly, they half carry me up the stone stairs and into the maze of the catacombs. My head hangs forward, and it’s all I can do to move my feet.
“They’ve already started the search for the new Saadella,” Meri says quietly.
“I hope they find her soon,” murmurs Kaisa. “People are scared. They need something to buoy their spirits.”
A tear falls from my eye. I’m supposed to buoy their spirits. I would do anything to give my people that confidence. But these two acolytes are speaking as if I’m a hunk of bear meat and nothing more. As kind as they are, I know they’re full of doubt, and it echoes in the hollow place inside of me, filling my chest with painful pressure as it joins with my own fear that I am failing everyone.
Meri pulls me to the left, guiding us down a dark corridor with a single lit torch at the end of it. “Did you hear about the fight at the thieves’ caverns? Armo was telling me earlier.”
“I heard the same rumor—that two miners were burned.”
“Wielders?” I whisper. Do the elders know there might be wielders in the outlands? I want to ask, but the one word I’ve already said has drained all my energy.