Hearts in Zenith (Four Husbands and a Lover)

44. Hunting the Stranger

I abandoned slouching once I pushed through the doors of the dispensary in the Temple of Gala. Looking humble was counterproductive now that I didn't need to blend into the crowd of worshipers and hide murderous glint in my eyes.

The place hadn't changed a single bit since the day I had left. The table was full of papers. The shelves were stuffed with jars, vials and pots. And the expensive medicines were locked in cedar chests darkened by age and fumes. I bet Anastasia even kept the valerian draught on the same corner shelf as on the day I left the Temple.

And she was still presiding over her herb-stinking layer.

"Dearest Anastasia! Forgive me for not coming sooner. The joys and labors of motherhood..." I picked up a bronze paperweight shaped like a sleeping dragon and twisted it in my hands. The pile of paper formerly underneath it sloughed to the side, but didn't fall to the floor. A shame. "You understand, don't you?"

She glared from under the red-gold curls, tightened into finer spirals by age or by a hairdresser's efforts. It looked good.

"What ailment brings you to Gala's temple, Commander?"

"Not an ailment, Wise Sister, not an aliment. Gratitude!" I exclaimed. "I came to thank you for providing my husband with succor and counsel while I was away."

I weighed the figurine in my hand. It was hefty enough to cave in a skull.

"Someone had to!" she sputtered.

The words changed to a cry of panic, as I sidled toward her across the desk, the dagger's hilt at my hip parting the papers. Naturally, they put a peace-knot over it when I entered the temple or I wouldn't be playing with a paperweight.

Anastasia jerked a scroll from under my butt and moved it out of harm's way. "Kozima is a fragile, sensitive soul, not that I expect you to have an ounce of either to understand his value."

"Why, thank you for the compliment! But you... you took special efforts to understand him." I let go of the paperweight. It landed among her poetry with a satisfying crash. "You listened to him, provided spiritual advice, stroked his bent head."

She squealed. "I was doing my duty, no more..."

I went on like she hadn't spoken. "His hair, it just asks for stroking, doesn't it? So silky, like a newborn puppy. Then, being the kind, giving soul, you carried what he told you in confidence to someone who promised to get rid of the very source of his suffering. Didn't you?"

Her hand went to her bosom, pink lips trembling, unable to say ′no'.

I lifted the paperweight again and this time crashed it into the table next to her. "Did you?"

Mythra's fangs, I despised this woman! Miccola seemed to like Kozima too. Why couldn't it have been her to put moves on my husband? We'd trade blows, clear the piss out of our heads, then drink one another under the table, maybe even kissed for all I knew. We'd have ruminated sorrowfully about what men do to our wits.

This woman wasn't Miccola. She wouldn't slap me if I turned her table into kindling.

"Anastasia, I didn't die, but an innocent messenger did. They found her in the Gulf with her throat slit, and fish plucked out her rotting eyes. So... whom did you tell?"

An amazing thing happened: her lips stopped trembling. She straightened up. "Nobody. I did this myself and the only thing I'm sorry about is that it didn't work. That you've lived to force a barbarian whore down his throat."

"Liar!" I grabbed her robe's décolletage and pulled her sniffing nose to mine. It wasn't a pleasant arrangement, but I had no choice. "Kozima mused the other day how you'd never make a Head Priestess. I didn't figure out why he thought so until just now."