The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5) Page 295

“Except perhaps by her daughter.”

The felicity of his expression stilled and became rigid. He drew his finger south from the Ungrian border to the Heretic’s Sea and farther south yet into desert wilderness surrounding the holy city of Says, west to the ruins of Kartiako, then west and northwest to the disputed lands lying between southern Salia and the Jinna kingdom of Aquila, yet north and west again to the sheep’s head that marked Alba, and farther north yet to Eika country, inscribing a vast circle—a crown of sorts—across the continent of Novaria. By the time this was done he had recovered the mobility of his smile.

He beckoned. The servingman shuffled forward and handed him a brass disk engraved with marks and adorned with a bar on one side and a curling nest of circles, a smaller one superimposed on a larger, on the other.

“Except perhaps by her daughter,” he echoed. “Do you know what this is?”

“I do not,” she admitted.

He did not offer to let her hold it. “It is an astrolabe, which the Jinna use both as an observational instrument and a calculating device. It offers precision, and foreknowledge. I need only determine the altitude of a single star and with that information can tell which stars are about to rise and which have just set. You see there are several disks nestled here, each one a climate for a different latitude. If I am pulled off course, it will be quick work to forge a new path. I will get there.”

“Geometry holds many mysteries for me still, Father Hugh. Now that you must journey east, what thought have you given to my role here in Darre?”

After a measure of silence, during which the servingman shifted twice onto the creaking board before moving to avoid it, Hugh sat on the bench opposite Antonia and set his fine hands flat on the map, covering Wendar and Varre. “The Holy Mother Anne has departed Darre for the east with the emperor and the army.”

“To the old imperial lands of Dalmiaka, so I have heard.”

“What you have heard is true. For many years Anne supposed the central crown of the great crown lay at Verna, but now she realizes she is mistaken. This crown—” He pointed to a mark lying on the shore of the Middle Sea about halfway between Aosta and Arethousa. “—must come into our control. Therefore, a conquest. Empress Adelheid is pregnant again—”

“Again!”

“—so she remains in Darre. I have encouraged her to bring you into her schola. Go there now. Prepare the ground.”

“Prepare the ground?”

“We have spoken of this before. The cauda draconis has a particular role to play when a great spell is cast.”

The cauda draconis died, but since he did not say so out loud, neither did she. She waited. Let him show his strengths and weaknesses first; then she would know how much to conceal and reveal.

“Yet we need not stand passively.”

“God’s will must be accomplished,” she agreed.

“So it will be, Sister Antonia. But in order to accomplish God’s will the righteous ones must wield power.”

She nodded. “You are ambitious.”

He bowed his head. “I serve God, and the regnant. That is all.”

He was lying, of course. Yet what difference did it make? In all the years of the church, no man had been skopos. Hugh had risen as high as he could. He needed her. For the time being, she needed him.

“I will journey to Darre and join Empress Adelheid’s schola.”

“She will welcome you, Sister. You will be satisfied with the arrangements. You will be shown the respect due to you.” He picked up the astrolabe and rose. “We must be patient, and cautious. Now we walk on the knife’s edge. Now is the most dangerous time. It would have been best if I had remained with the emperor, but the Holy Mother has given me a different part to play. Be wary. Be strong.”

“You will not find me lacking, Father Hugh. I am aware that the hour of need draws close.”

“‘All that is lost will be reborn on this Earth because of a Great Unveiling like to that Great Sundering in which vanished the Lost Ones.’ As it was said: ‘There will come a furious storm.’”

“To overset the wicked.”

He shrugged. “The innocent may drown in the same tide that sweeps away the wicked.”

“Then they were not innocent, if God did not choose to protect them!”

Because she was seated, he had the height to loom over her, and because he was beautiful, she felt, briefly, diminished, as though visited by the messenger of God, who stood in judgment upon her in all its glory and found her wanting.