The Born Queen Read Free Page A

with their writing lecterns and smell of lead, then around a corner, past the lesser scriftorium. He realized with a chill that they were making their way to the private suites of the Fratrex Prismo, but not by the most direct route.
    “There’s no one here,” Brother Helm whispered. He had noticed it, too. “The corridors are all empty.”
    “Quite,” Sir Eldon agreed.
    Their escort didn’t glance back, but he surely had heard. Not that it mattered.
    He’d been in this part of the Caillo only once, very long ago, when Niro Pihatur had been the Fratrex Prismo.
    He thought he knew where they were going.
    They came into a lozenge-shaped room, ostensibly a chapel to Lady Lasa; her winged and wreathed statue stood at the far end, smiling a knowing smile. At the moment, however, the place was filled not with worshippers but with Mamres monks. They were armed, and not with ceremonial weapons. At their head stood a figure in dark indigo robes and a black three-cornered hat that somewhat resembled a crown.
    “Brother Mylton,” Hespero said, favoring the man with a short bow.
    “I am a tribiceros now,” the cleric corrected.
    “Yes, I see the hat,” Hespero said. “But you are still a brother, like all of us.”
    Mylton smiled indulgently. His bulging eyes and narrow face had always made Hespero think of some sort of rodent. The hat didn’t really change the impression.
    “You will submit to blindfolding, all of you,” Mylton said.
    “Of course,” Hespero replied.
    As the monks knotted darkness to his face, Hespero felt the floor beneath him thin even further, and his body shivered as if aching to tear itself into pieces.
    Someone took him firmly by the arm.
    “Step down,” a voice he did not know whispered.
    He did, once, twice, thrice. In the end, he counted eighty-four steps, just as he had the last time. Then there was turning this way and that in air that tasted stale, until at last they stopped and the blindfolds were removed.
    Perhaps they don’t plan to kill us,
a small part of Hespero thought as his eyes adjusted to his new surroundings.
Why bother keeping the way secret if we’re never coming out?
    But another part of him knew that was stupid. It was ritual. Any intelligent, attentive person—and certainly any initiate of Decmanus, for instance—would be able to find his way back here, blindfolded or not. Only initiates and sacrifices made this journey to the place beneath, to the real Caillo Vaillaimo.
    He began picking out details in the guttering light of the torches that plenished two score wall sockets. The chamber was carved into the living stone the temple was built upon, its natural sandy hue made orange by the firelight. Rows of semicircular benches climbed before him, but all were empty save for three seats raised up at the back and the throne behind them. Two of the three were occupied by the other two tribiceri, and as Hespero watched, Mylton completed their number.
    The Fratrex Prismo sat the throne, of course.
    “Where are we?” Brother Helm asked.
    “The Obfuscate Senaz of the Hierovasi,” Hespero replied.
    The Fratrex Prismo suddenly raised his voice:

    Commenumus
    Pispis post oraumus
    Ehtrad ezois verus Taces est.

    “Izic deivumus,”
the others chorused, and Hespero realized with faint surprise that he had responded along with everyone else.
    Well, he had been in the Church a long while. Much of what he did was reflex.
    Niro Fabulo had been in the clergy longer than Hespero. The Fratrex Prismo was almost eighty. The hair streaming from beneath the black-and-gold crown was white, and his eyes, once blue, had been bleached to tinted ice. He had an arched Vitellian nose and a persistent tick in his sagging left cheek.
    “Well,” Fabulo said, almost sighing. “You surprise me, Hespero.”
    “How so, your grace?”
    “You’ve delivered yourself here after all of your crimes. I thought I would have to have you brought in by the ear.”
    “You don’t know me very well,