Selfish Is the Heart Read online

  Calvis laughed and a fresh waft of herb-scent drifted across to tickle Cassian’s nose. His brother’s weight, the heat of his body, pressed him. Cassian, bound tight by the blankets he’d pulled up so high, couldn’t move. With Cal at his back and the wall at his front, he could only twist a little.

  “As the elder brother, I can call you whatever I like.”

  “By no more than a moment or two.”

  “By the span of four or five good convulsions, according to our dear mother, from whose womb we were ejected. And I should think that dear woman would know the length of time between my first greeting to the world and thine, brother mine.” Cal snuggled close, his chin biting into Cassian’s shoulder. His arm slipped tight ’round his brother’s waist. “Be not angry with me. Next time I shall ask you to join us, I swear.”

  Cassian wriggled in the blankets and yet could not break his brother’s grip. Not without much struggle, anyway, and past experience had taught him such an effort would be useless. They were matched in strength and size, but Calvis would ever be the stronger in his desire to win.

  “Go to sleep, Cal. In your own bed.”

  “But why? When I’ve found myself in yours?”

  “Because it’s late and you snore when you’ve been drinking.” Cassian wriggled again, harder, to get past the blankets at least, if not his brother’s arm.

  “So do you. Snore when I’ve been drinking.” Laughter and hot breath caressed the space between them, until Calvis said seriously, “Let me stay. The hour, as you said, is late and I’m fair busted. Would you have me walk to my room in such a state? Waking the house? Subjecting our blessed mother to her beloved son in such a shameful state?”

  “Mayhap you shouldn’t have gotten yourself into such a state, if you’re so ashamed of it.” Argument was futile, Cassian knew, as was denying his brother what he wanted.

  Cal’s chin bit deeper as his nose pressed Cassian’s neck. “I am ever shamed over what I do.”

  This was the first time Cassian had heard such an admission, and he made no comment. Cal’s breath grew softer, deeper, slower. His arm relaxed, though it didn’t release him.

  “Next time,” Calvis said quietly, “I will ask you, brother. If you so wish. But I know you. You’d gain no pleasure from such jaunts.”

  That Calvis was likely correct in his assumption served naught but to twist Cassian’s determination to be included the next time. “You think me less a man than you?”

  Cal’s arm tightened. His mouth sought the flesh of Cassian’s throat, where he bit once, just lightly. “No, little brother. I know you to be much greater. Much, much, greater.”

  And with that, the bastard had fallen asleep, immovable and stinking, and had snored the night through while Cassian lay awake and trapped.

  Chapter 11

  There had been times when Cassian took great joy from discussion of the Word and the Law. The Book had been everpresent in him. It had led him to every path. It still did, he thought, catching sight of the leather-bound text on his desk. He didn’t need to open its pages to quote it word for word. He wished he could forget, sometimes, but never could.

  “I fail to understand,” he said now, “how you could have grown to such an age and have found such faith as to seek a position in the Order of Solace, yet be so unknowledgeable about the contents of a very basic passage.”

  Wandalette cleared her throat and blinked rapidly. The sheen of tears gave her away, and Cassian kept his sigh locked tight in his throat. He didn’t want to make her cry, but the bedamned chit would insist on allowing emotion to overcome her. He told himself it was a lesson she needed to learn and best taught by him rather than a patron, but it nevertheless left him with a churning in his belly that had naught to do with hunger.

  “Well?”

  “Sir, I . . . my parents weren’t of the Faith.”

  He studied her. All around, the other young women had paused in their scribblings to watch him test their novitiate sister. Annalise, the only one sitting in the back of the room, glanced up at the pause in his reply but looked away again, her pen moving smoothly over her parchment. She wasn’t studying, and he could only guess at what she was writing.

  Since the day he’d taken her letter, neither had made any pretense that he had anything to teach her, or she anything to learn.

  “Not of the Faith. They didn’t practice? Or they didn’t believe?” Cassian focused on Wandalette again.

  She swallowed hard and spoke in a voice thick with tears. “Not of . . . nor did they believe . . . I mean, sir, they didn’t practice it nor allow its practice in our house.”

  Cassian had heard of such folk, though few. Even those who didn’t have a heart-deep belief in the Faith most often at least celebrated the holidays. “And yet here you are.”

  “I wanted to make a difference, sir.”

  “Tell me, Wandalette, why you’d seek to make such a difference in the Order of Solace? Why not take up nursemaiding, instead? Why not raise a family yourself? Surely the birth and raising of children would make a difference.”

  Void take her, now she was weeping. He hadn’t meant to force her to tears, only an answer. He scrubbed at his face in resignation, palm over his eyes so he could gain a breath or two without having to look at her distress.

  “I had a vision.”

  From the back of the room, Cassian heard the sound of a chair scrape. He looked from behind his hand. Annalise was staring, too.

  “Of the Invisible Mother?”

  “No.” Wandalette shook her head. “Of her sons.”

  “In your vision she had more than one?”

  Cassian had heard many tales of visions. He believed those who’d seen them believed in their veracity as firmly as he understood not a one of them to be genuine. The Holy Family had gone away, never to return for any amount of solace provided the world they’d left behind. He’d never heard of a vision that was not of the Mother.

  “I know the text says there’s only one.” Wandalette gestured at the book in front of her. “I’ve read it front to back, sir. I promise you. But why does it not say she had two sons? Twins.”

  His gut twisted on the word. “No text states Kedalya had more than one son with Sinder.”

  Annalise spoke. “There are commentaries that say she had more children. After the first.”

  Wandalette looked back and shook her head. “The boys were twins. I’m sure of it. And Sinder’s sons.”

  There was a little-known commentary that stated much the same—that after Kedalya had left the forest and her god of a husband, taking their son with her, she discovered she was again with child. That the sons she bore after leaving were twins, identical in every way but for the fact that one was a murderer and the other a victim of his brother’s anger.

  But how could one such as she, not even raised in the Faith, know such a story?

  “Nonsense,” Cassian said in a voice that brooked no dispute. “Read the text in front of you for the answers. When you’ve mastered this level, you might move on. But know you it takes years if not a lifetime to fully understand everything and not a man yet who’s been able.”

  “Perhaps it’s not a man’s place to be able,” Annalise said from her seat at the back, “but there’s naught to say a woman is incapable.”

  “I don’t want to know everything!” Wandalette cried, alarmed. “Must I know everything to serve? Must I be a scholar of the Faith to be a Handmaiden?”

  “If your patron requires it, you shall be.” Cassian flicked a hand at her. “That, among everything else.”

  “Not every patron shall wish his Handmaiden to decipher dusty texts, surely.” This again from Annalise, whose tone might be sweet but whose gaze was most definitely meant to prick.

  “The best Handmaiden is not the one who knows everything, but understands what she does not know and how to best learn it,” Cassian said. “Besides, the patron who requires a scholar of the Faith will be assigned one who can so serve. No, Wandalette. You