The Lady Penitent

VI. The Tuama

"Thou hast been very quiet," Seva said, looking down at Holland. The penitent was still walking while Fionn rode her horse. She had the reins for their pack horse wrapped around her hand, leading it as Ciar perched on its back. The baroness commented earlier that Holland looked unwell, but the warrior insisted that it was nothing. Fionn was in a good mood and had tried gently ribbing her, only to get a cold shoulder. Whatever tolerance for him the woman usually had was gone as they entered Tamaris.

"I'm fine," Holland said, forcing herself to smile for Seva's benefit. All she could think about was that wonderful, captivating, terrifying voice. Somewhere in Tamaris, Deus was waiting for her. What was she going to do? Once upon a time, she would have gladly leaped to do his bidding. Things had changed. She had changed. Another frightening thought reared its head. What would happen if she didn't agree? He knew about Seva.

There was something oddly surreal about Tamaris. It was as Holland remembered it: splendor surrounded by squalor. The vast stretches outside the city walls were filled with hovels and little farms, all of them wattle and daub buildings that looked precarious at best. Inside the tall, grey stone walls, what had once been the ruins of the ancients was given new life. Gleaming spires rose above verdant gardens and broad avenues less than a mile away from muddy alleys and the smell of cows. It was a very different kind of city than her native one. Tamaris had disorganized sprawl to it even in the nicer part of the city. Streets wandered and the estates stretched out within mural-covered walls ringed by merchants' shops and market stalls.

The Royal Palace was a tall, fortified building of light-colored granite, complete with walls and crenellations. Its six high towers rose above the rest of the city, the adapted remnants of a once great ruin. Callaecia, as the palace was called, was a good deal older than any other building in the area. The interior of the mammoth building was spacious and elegant, much of the interior marble with bas relief carvings of trees and flowers broken up by the occasional dragon, the royal symbol of heraldry.

They left their horses, a bit reluctantly on Ciar and Holland's part, at the royal stables. "They'll see to them better than anywhere else ever could," Fionn said when Ciar gazed up at him judgingly.

"I think I'm going to seek out the temple," Holland said quietly as Seva landed lightly on her feet beside the penitent. "I'll come find you this evening, shall I?"

"Thou art leaving?" Seva said with concern evident in her blue eyes.

"Only for a little while," Holland promised.

"Hurry back," Fionn said, waving over a squire to tend to Holland's armor. "I said that I would reward you, and now that we are in Tamaris, I can show you my gratitude properly."

"Again, I cannot accept a reward. I did what was my duty, nothing more," the penitent said, frowning slightly when the young man started taking her armor off the pack horse.

"Then accept my hospitality, as a friend of my affianced," the prince said as he slipped an arm around Seva's shoulders. "We need to go speak to my father immediately, but you are more than welcome to dinner when you finish at the temple, Holland."

She bowed, though not too deeply. She couldn't bring herself to like him yet. "I will be there," she said even though she wasn't even a little bit hungry. She could only continue to chant her new mantra inside her own head: Seva is happy. Seva is happy. The baroness really did look happy, in a love-struck kind of way. That was enough. Well, it wasn't, but it should have been enough.

She made it halfway down the street before realizing that she had a follower. "Coming with me?" Holland said with a small smile, holding out her hand to the boy who had been trailing her.