Selfish Is the Heart Read online

  She was not alone. A figure stood in the shadows of the far corner. She didn’t need to see his face to know him. She still hadn’t learned his name.

  He stayed as still and silent as she had in the chapel, not a sway or mutter to betray him. Perhaps he wasn’t praying, she thought, but as her eyes adjusted to the dim light the stiff set of his shoulders told her she might be wrong in that assumption. He was certainly concentrating fiercely enough not to have noticed her, she was fair certain of that, for not a hair twitched her way. And his eyes were closed, she could see that now by the deeper pools of darkness in his face. If he’d been looking at her, surely his eyes would have caught the light.

  The common rise and fall of voices inside the chapel changed as she watched the man from the forest do nothing. The service was over. Annalise backed out of the alcove, her sleeve scraping the bricks as she did. She caught a flash of motion from his corner just as she joined the crowd spilling from the main chapel doors.

  In less than a breath she was caught up in the throng, again one among many. When the man appeared in the doorway, his dark eyes searching the crowd, Annalise knew there was no way he could know she’d been the one spying on him. Yet when his gaze caught hers from across the hall, just as she was jostled and tugged along toward the dining hall by an exuberantly chatting Tansy, Annalise could tell he knew she’d been the one.

  He had looked into the crowd and plucked her face from all the others as easily as he might have tugged an apple from a tree.

  Chapter 7

  Silence was Sinder’s Blessing and for the moment, Cassian had it in abundance. He needed it. After the incident at morning services he’d found himself sorely incapable of suffering giggles and frothy questions designed to prick at him. He’d assigned his class a lesson too difficult for them, apurpose to keep them from plaguing him, and watching the ten or so sleek heads bent over their texts, Cassian had no regrets he’d set such a hard task.

  Classes in the Motherhouse didn’t run on a yearly cycle the way traditional schools did, just as he wasn’t a teacher in the traditional sense. None of the instructors here were—they were all members of the Order, or in Cassian’s case, a member of the priesthood, whose skills and temperaments had provided them capacity to instruct others. As novitiates entered and were tested, they were placed in groups according to their skill levels. As they became more proficient, they moved to different groups where they could be further challenged, or if they were not yet assigned a patron, they became instructors themselves.

  Cassian had been teaching the Faith for near ten years. In a school he’d likely have been given a brass pocket watch by now in recognition of his service, but here in the Order where service itself was considered the reward, he’d merely gained a reputation.

  Not undeserved, he knew, as a particularly timid novitiate looked up from her text with a yawn and closed her mouth on a squeak when she saw him watching. Yet Cassian would have challenged even one of the women he’d tutored to show proof of his temper. He knew what they whispered about him. What was said of his fury, and what had happened to novitiates in the past who’d overstepped him. But not a one of them had ever witnessed him so much as raising his voice, much less destroying furniture in a rage, or striking a wall so fiercely he put a hole through the plaster. He knew what they said about him, but he never denied it.

  He liked being able to quiet a room with no more than a lifted brow or downturned corner of lip. Obedience and submission pleased him greatly. There was a reason he’d found a place here amongst the Sisters-in-Service . . . and there was a reason they allowed him to stay.

  “Please, sir, if I might ask . . . ?” The timid girl, Wandalette, cleared her throat.

  Cassian, leaning back in his chair with his feet propped upon the desk, flicked a fingertip at her by way of answer.

  “I would like to know why the stories diverged? Why is there more than one version of the Book? Do the priests not know which is the true word of Sinder?” Again, she cleared her throat. “I mean, sir, why is the story the same until the end?”

  “Yes, sir, I’d like to know that as well,” piped up another of the newer novitiates. Perdita, he thought her name was. “My grand-mother always told me the tale of how Kedalya was set upon in the forest by wolves in the form of men. They took Her virtue, and left Her for dead.”

  “And when Sinder found Her so sullied,” Wandalette said, “He blamed Her for the attack and took their son away.”

  “But this text here,” Perdita pointed out, “says that Kedalya betrayed Sinder of Her own accord, and the commentary states that it was the Invisible Mother’s fault the Holy Family split up. Which is the truth, sir?”

  Perhaps the lesson had not been too difficult for them to understand, after all. Cassian let his boots thump to the floor and leaned over the desk. “The version I gave you is the correct text.”

  Wandalette and Perdita exchanged glances. Perdita shrugged and bent back to her book. Her fingers smudged with ink, she carefully copied a passage into her small parchment booklet, the one that would attend her during her entire time of service to the Order. Wandalette did not copy the passage, but sat back at her desk and thoughtfully flipped through the pages of the text.

  Cassian waited for another challenge from her, but she seemed sated by his answer, and he allowed the silence and heat of the room to lull him into a near doze. He’d slept unwell the night before, dreams of old plaguing him for reasons he wished not to explore. Now with the soft scratch of pens on paper and the occasional low sigh, he let his eyes drift shut.

  “Your mercy,” said a voice he hadn’t known long enough to be so familiar. “I was told to report here for . . . instruction.”

  Again his boots thumped to the floor, this time hard enough to rattle the inkpot upon his desk.

  Annalise tilted her head, a smile in her eyes but not yet upon her lips. “Your mercy, sir. Perhaps my greeting was . . . unseemly?”

  Ten pairs of eyes flickered back and forth between their instructor and this stranger. Annalise was easily six years older than the oldest of them—a woman grown, and well aware of it, too. She was out of place in this group, who’d been placed together mostly because of their youth and inexperience.

  Unless, of course, it had been determined she knew too little of the Book to be placed with any other group.

  “We meet only until the next chime,” Cassian said. “There’s scarce enough time for you to attend today’s lesson.”

  “I don’t mind.” She smoothed her skirts as she took an empty seat at the back of the room. She folded her hands atop it and fixed him with a steady gaze. “It’s been a good long time since I was in class. I think I should seek to gain as much from the experience as possible. Don’t you?”

  Ten mouths gaped. Cassian shifted in his chair and linked his fingers together as he stared at her. She’d been in the alcove this morn, he was fair certain of that. Watching him. But to what purpose? More importantly, to what impression?

  “You’ll need a text to read. And something to write in and write with.”

  “Such as this?” She reached into her pocket and pulled forth a leather-bound book the size of her palm, along with a pen carrier of folded felt. “They gave me this already.”

  Their eyes locked. Her smile had faded even from her eyes, and she met his gaze with naught but seriousness. Her look did its best to unmake him, and Cassian did not like this. Not at all.

  None of the novitiates were required to share texts, as they might have done in a school. The Order used its funds wisely for provisions. Cassian had a stack of books ready for dispersal in the storage closet.

  “Wait,” he said and returned in a few moments with a text for her. “Today we’re studying the final four chapters.”

  Before he even had the chance to sit back at his desk, Annalise had flipped through the pages and looked up at him, her brow furrowed. “This book is unacceptable.”

  Nobody said a word, but the sound of their shock