Child of Flame

“What didn’t you tell me?” he asked. “There’s something you’re keeping from me.”

Her kisses ceased, and she sucked in a breath as if she had been slugged in the gut.

“I overheard you and Weiwara speaking today. I know other people have said.… things. Whispers. Comments. What is it that you fear to tell me?” His voice cracked a little. Now that he had found a home, he hoped for all those things any person wishes for: a mate, shelter and food, a community to live in, and children to follow after him. But perhaps it wasn’t to be. “I know maybe you tried to tell me before, but I didn’t want to hear it. If it’s about a child, Adica. You know that no matter what, I will never leave you.”

She let all her breath out in a rush. “It’s true,” she said in a low voice, face pressed against his hair as he shifted to try to hear her. “I’ll never have a child. It’s—it’s part of the fate laid on me as Hallowed One.”

No need to pretend it didn’t hurt to have it spoken plainly. He had begged God to soften Tallia’s heart so that they might make a child together. He had prayed for hours, hoping against hope to give Lavastine the grandchild the dying count longed for. But in the end, God were wiser than the human heart.

He knew now that Adica’s soul was as bright as treasure, and that he’d been deceived in Tallia all along, small and crabbed as her soul had been, frightened and selfish and hollow. He pitied Tallia now, seeing how trapped she had become in her own lies. Yet it seemed cruel for God to deny Adica what she deserved.

He could not argue with fate. Nor would he deepen Adica’s sorrow by trying to protest what he had no control over.

“It’s true we’ll be sad that we can’t make a child between us. But surely, beloved, we need not turn away from raising children. God know that there are orphans enough needing shelter. Wasn’t I one of them? Didn’t a kind man take me in?”

He wept then, a little. It had been so long since he had thought of Aunt Bel and his foster father, Henri. Had they ever shown him anything but the same kindness they’d given to their own kin? Whatever the truth of his birth, they had raised him with their own. They had opened their hearts. Maybe it was up to him to do the same for another child, now that he had found his true home.

“Did he?” She held him as if she meant to crush his ribs. She was so tense. “Did kind folk take you in?”

“So they did. I told you the story. We’ll find a child, Adica. Or two children. Or five. Whatever you want. That’s how we can serve God, by giving a home to a child who needs one. That’s good enough. But just in case—”

“Just in case?”

He rolled over on top of her, pinning her beneath him. “God help those who help themselves. Urtan says something like, but I can’t recall how he says it.”

“’Prayers can’t make a field grow unless seeds are thrown in with them.’ Oof ! You’re crushing me. What does that have to do with—” She gasped as his fingers tweaked a nipple.

“Just so,” he agreed. “Maybe a child won’t come from your womb, but there’s a certain ritual a man and woman must go through to get a child for themselves, and I don’t think we ought to neglect it.”

“Again?” She laughed.

Again.

Morning came. The day passed uneventfully. Adica had so many duties that he barely got to see her. At dawn she rose to welcome the sun; after this she meditated up at the stone loom, in practice for the great weaving that she and the other Hallowed Ones would weave in only seventeen days. At midday they ate, and all afternoon she tended to the villagers or to the visiting warriors camped up on the hill, ministering to the sick, chasing away the evil spirits that thronged around the village, checking the newly slaughtered swine for disease, reading entrails for signs of good and bad fortune, watching the flights of birds for clues about the course and severity of the upcoming winter.

So the next day passed as well, and the one after. There were acorns to be gathered, swine and geese to be fattened up before the winter slaughter forced them to choose which would be killed and which kept through the cold season. More adults, mostly young men, walked in to Queens’ Grave every day from the other villages, sent to guard the Hallowed One. Alain helped build shelters for them behind the safety of the embankments. He took his turn at watch, and in the afternoons tried with Urtan’s and Agda’s help to build a catapult while nearby Beor trained his growing war band how to fight with staves, halberds, and clubs. Bark or skins sewn together over a lattice of tightly interwoven sticks made crude shields.