The Five Queendoms - Sestia E-Book

G.R. Macallister

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 707

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

An epic feminist Game of Thrones, full of duplicity, treachery, sex, and magic Return to The Five Queendoms series with the final book in this "ambitious and engaging" (Rebecca Roanhorse) epic fantasy trilogy, in which a centuries-long peace is shattered in a matriarchal society when a decade passes without a single girl being born. While a fragile peace has begun to settle across the Five Queendoms of the known world, trouble brews beneath the smooth façade. The first gate between the Underlands, where Eresh rules over the shades of the dead, has already been opened—and the scheming shade of a dead sorcerer has evil plans he hopes to unleash on the world. In the world Above, the Scorpicae struggle to find a path forward in defeat, the embattled regent of Paxim gets more than she bargained for, and a young woman who barely survived the Sun Rites finds herself the indispensable right hand of a priest-queen whose sanity appears to be slipping away. As living women across the Queendoms take desperate action to stay alive, and dead women plot to regain what they've lost, the time for the next Sun Rites nears. When five queens gather in the Holy City of Sestia for the most important ritual of their lives, who will be left standing?

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

The Five Queendoms Map

Major and Recurring Characters Listed by Queendom

Part I During The Drought

Chapter 1Priest

Chapter 2Mother

Chapter 3Silence

Chapter 4All Five

Chapter 5Sacrifice

Chapter 6Rites

Part II The Gate of Memories

Chapter 7The Underlands

Chapter 8Burning Bones

Chapter 9After The Ambush

Chapter 10A Visitor

Chapter 11The Regent and The Infant

Chapter 12Motherland

Chapter 13Magic

Chapter 14Diplomacy

Chapter 15The Second Gate

Part III The Gate of Warriors

Chapter 16Answered Prayer

Chapter 17Moon Rites

Chapter 18Negotiations

Chapter 19The Mentor, The Message

Chapter 20Seeking

Chapter 21The Tomb

Chapter 22A Banquet

Chapter 23Journey

Chapter 24The Heir

Part IV The Gate of Heroes

Chapter 25Heroes

Chapter 26Rising

Chapter 27The Taste of Wine

Chapter 28Gone

Chapter 29In The Night

Chapter 30Returned

Chapter 31Rovers

Chapter 32A Weapon

Chapter 33Delivered

Part V The Gate of Monsters

Chapter 34Monsters

Chapter 35All-Magic

Chapter 36Vote

Chapter 37Pact

Chapter 38Mother and Daughter

Chapter 39Reunions

Chapter 40Rites

Acknowledgments

SESTIA

Also by G. R. Macallisterand available from Titan Books

ScorpicaArca

LEAVE US A REVIEW

We hope you enjoy this book – if you did we would really appreciate it if you can write a short review. Your ratings really make a difference for the authors, helping the books you love reach more people.

You can rate this book, or leave a short review here:

Amazon.co.uk,

Goodreads,

or your preferred retailer.

Sestia

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789099379

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: May 2025

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© G.R. Macallister 2025

This edition published by arrangement with Saga Press,an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc, in 2025.

G.R. Macallister asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

EU RP (For authorities only)

eucomply OÜ, Pärnu mnt. 139b-14, 11317 Tallinn, Estonia

[email protected], [phone]

For my daughterAnd all our daughters

Major and Recurring CharactersListed by Queendom

ARCA

Aster, child of Stellari and Rahul

Beyda, royal scribe assigned to Arca, a Bastionite

Eminel, queen of Arca, Well of All-Magic, Master of Sand, and Destroyer of Fear

Ingini, a member of Eminel’s Queensguard

Rahul, former paramour of the Paximite politician Stellari

Sobek, a courtier and mind magician

Velja, god of Chaos

Yulia, a courtier

THE BASTION

Diti, daughter to Ravian

Hikmet of the Scholars, queen of the Bastion

Ravian of the Guards, a guard in training

PAXIM

Duente of Arsinoe, head of the Assembly

Evander, Stellari’s husband

Fasiq, a giant

Garel, an innkeeper

Heliane, queen of Paxim (deceased)

Heliane the Second, born Asana, young queen of Paxim

Juni of Kamal, magistrate of the Senate

Marageda of Nordur, a senator

Panagiota, matriarch of the most powerful family in Calladocia

Phinesh of Nigelus, a senator

Roksana, secret daughter of Queen Amankha and

Kingling Paulus

Stellari, regent of Paxim

Vish, also known as Vee or the Shade, Scorpican guardian of Roksana

Zofi, also known as Zo, daughter of Queen Heliane (deceased)

SCORPICA

Amankha, queen of Scorpica

Azur dha Tamura, an adopted Scorpican and mother to Madazur, known as First Mother

Dree, a warrior (deceased)

Galeigh, a warrior

Gretti dha Rhodarya, a warrior and councillor

Madazur dha Azur, first girl born after the Drought

Olan, a warrior (deceased)

Riva, a warrior

Tamura, a past queen of Scorpica (deceased)

Zalma dha Fionen, a smith

Wren, daughter to Zalma

SESTIA

Bateo, a servant in the Edifice

Concordia, High Xara of Sestia (born Olivi)

Darious, a boneburner

Emalio, a servant in the Edifice

Enifer, a daughter in Norah’s household

Fortitude, a past High Xara of Sestia

Jeremiah, uncle to Olivi

Joiaca, a Dara in the Edifice

Justicia, a Dara in the Edifice

Necessitas, a High Xara long ago

Olivi, daughter of Norah

Rix, a servant in the Edifice

Sestia, god of Plenty, also known as the Holy One

Teresh, a farmer and mother in Norah’s household

Timion, nephew to the boneburner Darious

Veritas, Xara of Sestia (born Norah)

Vetiver, a farmer and mother in Norah’s household

Victrix, a past Xara of Sestia

Xelander, a high-ranking servant in the Edifice, favorite of Concordia

Yegen, a servant in the Edifice

THE UNDERLANDS

the Child, a guide for recently deceased spirits

Ellimi, deceased Scorpican queen, mother to Khara, grandmother to Amankha

Eresh, god of the Underlands, sister to gods Sestia and Velja

Oscuro, deceased consort of Queen Theodora of Paxim

Paulus, deceased kingling of Paxim

Puglalia, deceased former High Xara of Sestia

Semma, deceased Scorpican queen

Septin, deceased Paximite soldier

Sessadon, deceased sorcerer

PART I

DURINGTHEDROUGHT

The All-Mother’s Years 501 to 516

CHAPTER 1

Priest

Autumn, the All-Mother’s Year 501The Holy City, SestiaConcordia

Every twenty years, the Xaras who ruled Sestia cast lots to find their successors, looking to the Holy One to show Her hand in the casting. Five girls were chosen: one to reign, three to serve in wisdom, and one, at the right moment, to die.

But like any ritual in any queendom, the system did not always proceed exactly as planned. Of the five girls chosen by lottery to serve the Holy One in the All-Mother’s Year 480, only two remained twenty-one years later: the High Xara Concordia and the Xara Veritas.

Now, one held the life of the other in her hands.

The High Xara Concordia remembered well the first time she’d met the future Veritas. She’d been a slip of a girl, all elbows and knees. Concordia herself had been a sturdy child, thinning as she aged, while Veritas filled out and rounded. The rule was that when girls were brought to the capital to enter service, they left their childhood names behind. But on that first day, as they mounted the steps of the Edifice, the stern-faced old Xara Victrix turned her back on the girls. When she did, the one who would become Veritas whispered her name hastily into the other girl’s ear, Norah, and too stunned to do anything else, the future Concordia traded her whispered name in return, Olivi.

For a long time after, the future Concordia broke no rules. She had been a devoted rule follower before she’d been taken from her family to join the class of future Xaras, a natural choice for the role. She threw herself into learning all that the Xaras had to teach her. But as one descended more deeply into centuries of sprawling Sestian edicts, statutes, and regulations, one couldn’t help but stumble over the occasional paradox—exactly the situation in which the High Xara Concordia found herself now.

While the penalty for deserting the God’s most sacred tenet was death, the law also stated clearly that killing any Xara was forbidden, no matter how grave her sins. When young Concordia irreverently pointed out to the Xara Victrix two rules in conflict and asked her which she would follow, the older woman first slapped her for speaking out of turn, then smiled.

“You will learn, child,” said Victrix, “that most laws are like green saplings. They can be bent a great deal without breaking.”

The Xara Victrix had been neither a good person nor a good servant to her god, thought Concordia, but she was also rarely wrong.

Today Concordia would decide how to bend. In a situation much like this, a few reigns ago, the High Xara Necessitas had ordered a disobedient Xara paraded to the tombs, handed a lamp and three apples, and sealed inside. The older stories were only rumor, but Concordia knew those, too. They said one sinning Xara was buried up to her neck in the dirt at a busy crossroads. A Xara who neglected the sacred flame was forced to lie down upon the hearth and sing hymns while the fire was rebuilt atop her body, then lit. They were the most powerful women in the nation, but precise laws constrained their behavior. Veritas had broken the most important law. Consequences must follow. The only choice was what shape those consequences would take.

“My queen,” came a familiar tenor voice from behind her.

The High Xara turned from the window. “Xelander.”

Her servant bowed his head, clasping his hands delicately in front of his narrow waist, which was cinched with a wide decorative belt denoting his station. He was the highest-ranking of all the servants in the Edifice, allowed in any room of the vast temple-palace except the holy lacrum. Xelander was capable of any duty, and he performed every one of them with grace.

“Where is she now?” Concordia asked.

“She was hungry,” he replied, his slight shrug speaking volumes. “I took her to the kitchens.”

“That is not a long-term solution.”

“I am your most humble servant,” he said. “I would no sooner tell you how to punish her than I would swan about in your vestments.”

She smiled at that. “You’d look better in them than I do.”

“Not so, my queen. No one else could wear the saffron to such advantage.”

It was a polite lie, but a lie all the same, thought Concordia. Xelander would look splendid in her ceremonial saffron robes, had he been allowed to wear the color. The men who served in the palace of the God of Plenty were beautiful, and they took great care with their beauty. They wore their dark hair well past their shoulders, cinched their waists tight, and lined their eyes with precise rings of kohl. Some wore short robes and some long, but all their garments followed the curves of their shoulders and thighs, clinging everywhere the priests’ robes were flowing and loose. Their forms were not intended to tempt the virtuous women of the priesthood to carnal delights; they were decorative, pleasant, like exquisitely carved urns or long-stemmed poppies. Only men who found their pleasures with other men were allowed to serve in the Edifice. Priests should have men to tend them but not touch them, or so went one of the thousands of platitudes the young Xaras-to-be had learned.

Still. High Xara Concordia had dozens of servants who dressed like Xelander, who might even be mistaken for him at a distance, but none other with his inborn elegance. He was also whip-smart, far and away her favorite. As soon as the rumor about Veritas had reached her ears, he was the one she’d dispatched to investigate. He’d brought her the truth, and the woman, within hours. Now she needed to handle both.

She said to him softly, “Is there no . . . natural solution to the problem?”

He caught her meaning. “You’re thinking of the pulegone tea?”

“Yes.”

“Much too late, I’m afraid.”

The High Xara Concordia didn’t curse, at least not out loud. She looked out the window again. The Edifice was a marvel, towering four stories above the city and gleaming like a new-laid egg. From the fourth story she could see leagues beyond the city’s gates into the vast countryside. Most days, the view soothed her. Today, as she searched the rolling green hills where the sacred rams and their mouflon mates were pastured, she saw no answers there. The answer would have to come from her. Or from the Holy One Herself, should She see fit to speak to Concordia for the first time.

“What would you do?” the High Xara Concordia asked Xelander.

Startled, he lifted his head. His expression was one of concern.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I truly want to know.”

“It’s not my place, my queen.”

“You have any place I choose to give you,” she reminded him. “If I ask for your thoughts, you do me disrespect to refuse.”

“I apologize,” he said, though his voice was not apologetic. She suspected his protest was mere form. He was smart enough to have opinions. She should be smart enough to benefit from them. She wasn’t aware of any past High Xaras who had been counseled by their servants, but then again, she differed from past High Xaras in ways no one alive knew.

“And so,” she said. “Tell me. If it were your choice.”

There was no pause before his answer. “I would make the choice hers.”

“How so?”

“Her body was not hers to use as she did,” he said, his dark gaze so steady it unsettled her a bit. She wasn’t used to being looked in the eye, even by Xelander. “The body of a Xara belongs to the Holy One. Her chastity, her virtue, those are the Holy One’s, and Xara Veritas did not have the right to give them away. You would be within your rights to remove what grows within her.”

“I thought you said it was too late for the tea?”

“The dose it would take might well kill her,” he said, with a shrug not so different from the one he’d made when he mentioned escorting her to the kitchens. “Removal can also be done with blades, or at least it’s been tried. I’ve heard reports of experiments in the Bastion.”

“So that could kill her too.”

“Yes.”

“You’d have her choose between herbs and blades?”

“I’d have her choose whether she wants it dead now or later. Killed inside her or killed in front of her. See what she chooses.”

Both possibilities turned Concordia’s stomach. Even if Veritas survived such butchery, even if her earthly body was returned to the Holy One’s sacred service, could such a loss be borne? Would Veritas go mad from pain and sorrow? Farm women were known to do so, and as far as they’d come since, both Concordia and Veritas—or Norah and Olivi, back then—had been farm-born once upon a time.

“But the choice isn’t mine,” Xelander said, finally looking away. “Nor hers, my queen. Only yours. And the Holy One’s, of course.”

“Of course,” echoed Concordia with a lightness she didn’t feel. As the holiest woman in the queendom, she alone could enter the sacred lacrum to speak with their god. Generations of High Xaras had done so and emerged, beaming, with an answer from the divine. But Concordia wondered every day if the High Xaras of the past had really spoken with their god when they went into the lacrum and locked the door. She herself had never found anything in that chamber but her own doubts, never heard anything but silence. Some days the lack didn’t bother her; some days it wrung her out.

She heard the approaching footsteps just before a voice from the doorway boomed out, “Apologies, my queen.”

Concordia didn’t know the newly arrived servant’s name, but she recognized him at once. He was a brute of a man, thick all over, ill-suited for the garb Xelander wore so fetchingly. Even the man’s braid was crooked, done in a hurry and without proper care. But servants had many purposes, and this one excelled at his. The woman beside him had no chance of escaping the thick fingers with which he gripped her upper arm.

While her figure was unmistakably that of a woman, Veritas was barely taller than a child. Her hair was loose in a black storm cloud, the saffron-dyed streak above her right temple the twin of Concordia’s own, marking them both as Xaras. Veritas wore no other sign of her station, no robe or sash, but she carried herself as the high-ranking holy woman she was, adjacent to royalty. Even in an ill-fitting rough-spun shift, too short in front and threatening to catch her heels in back, she radiated authority and intelligence.

The man with the crooked braid tilted his head in Xelander’s direction. “He said to stop her if she ran. She tried to run.”

Xelander said, “Thank you for your service, Bateo.”

The hulking servant nodded in return and didn’t budge.

“You may release her and go,” Xelander added.

“Is that safe?” Bateo asked. He shook Veritas by the bare arm, frowning. His meaty grip must have hurt, Concordia noted, but the other woman’s small, round face remained placid. Veritas’s eyes were on the High Xara.

Concordia said, “You may leave us.”

The big man turned to go with a dismissive grunt, braid swinging, and gave his erstwhile prisoner a half-hearted shove that sent her sprawling to the ground. She fell hard on her hands and knees, a soft rush of breath the only sound she made.

Concordia held herself back from running to her friend, consoling her. They had helped each other so many times in the early days. But things would never be as they had been, she reminded herself. Veritas had made the choice to sin, to give up that which belonged by right to the Holy One. A priest who broke her oath was no priest.

There was only one way to begin. “You lied,” said Concordia.

“About what?” Veritas responded from the floor, a spirit in her that Concordia would not have expected.

“Many things, I take it.” Concordia feigned patience. “I meant that you were granted permission to spend three months spreading the word of the Holy One along the western coast.”

“And so I did.”

“You traveled to honor Her.”

“I did.”

“Yet today you were found in the palace?”

“I returned.” The woman wouldn’t give an inch. She began to struggle to her feet, and though Xelander reached out a hand to help her up, she swatted it away and managed to get up on her own. She smoothed her borrowed shift—from whom had she borrowed it?—and stood firm.

Veritas’s eyes were on Xelander, suspicious, something cold in her glare. Her words were directed to Concordia. “You would have seen me this afternoon in any case, without setting your hound after me.”

“I heard a troubling rumor. One that, if true . . .” She couldn’t complete the thought. “Tell me it isn’t true, Xara Veritas.”

Veritas said softly, “For your sake, I wish I could.”

The truth hurt. “So you violated your vows.”

“I still serve the Holy One,” said Veritas. “We tell our people it’s a great honor to serve Her through pleasures. During the rites, we tell the same thing to the entire world. The greater the pleasure, the greater the honor. Why should it be different for us, who love Her most?”

“You know why.” Concordia’s patience was quickly unraveling. “When the Holy One lost her beloved consort to the Underlands, she renounced pleasures ever after. We honor her sacrifice by joining in it. Our chastity is Her chastity. We are committed only to Her.”

For her part, Veritas seemed unrattled. “That is the interpretation that previous Xaras have believed. But why would any just god deny us that which She created?”

“You claim She is not just?”

“I claim She does not ask us to deny ourselves Her greatest gift.”

Every word the petite Xara said was pure blasphemy. Concordia couldn’t see a way around it. Still, she wanted desperately to try. “Was it just the once? Were you carried away?”

Veritas shook her head.

“Don’t try to tell me it was love,” Concordia blurted.

“I doubt I can tell you anything at all. What does it matter why I did it or with whom? You know what I’ve done. You see the . . . evidence.”

And that was the crux of it. Not just that Veritas had used her body for pleasure in violation of her sacred vows. That could’ve been hidden, denied. But under the borrowed shift her midsection had begun to thicken and round out, the curve of a baby just beginning to blossom between her generous hips. In the months the Xara Veritas had spent on the coast—if in fact that was where she’d been—her shape had transformed. The curve was small now, but it would grow.

Doing her best to keep her composure, Concordia told the only woman she’d known since childhood, “So you see the position you’ve placed me in.”

“You were not foremost on my mind,” said Veritas dryly.

Though of course it was true, it still hurt to hear. Nor did the Xara apologize, Concordia noted. The woman’s lack of deference would’ve been unthinkable in any Sestian citizen, but of course Veritas was next in line to be queen. Had been, anyway, before this.

“There are no unchaste Xaras,” Concordia told her. “You know the law.”

“I do. The law says I cannot be killed.”

“The law also says you cannot live.”

Veritas looked up, her brown eyes wet with impending tears, but not tears of weakness. She reached out for Concordia’s hand and held it between her own warm, dry palms. Concordia didn’t remember the last time someone had held her hand. She wasn’t sure she liked the sensation.

“Please, show mercy,” Veritas said simply. “Please, Olivi.”

And there it was. A name so old the High Xara Concordia had almost forgotten it herself, the name given her in the time before, when she was a sturdy, scampering girl in the farmlands. The harvests had been rich and the sun an outsize pearl in the blue sky above and her name had been Olivi, not an uncommon name, but purely and perfectly her own.

The queen couldn’t put this woman to death, no matter what she’d done, no matter her blasphemies. She didn’t have the strength. If the Holy One wouldn’t speak to her, the High Xara Concordia reasoned, the choice was hers alone. Her voice was ragged with emotion but she forced the words out, passing the only sentence she could.

“Go,” she said. “You are banished.”

“Oli, I—”

“Leave my sight.” Louder now. Commanding. “You are forever stripped of the rank of Xara. You will never again wear the saffron or taste sacred honey.”

The Xara Veritas looked down, swallowed, seemed to gather her strength. But before she could speak, Concordia rushed to speak first.

“You are common,” she said, nearly spitting the words. “The Holy One turns Her back to you. You’re no longer welcome within the borders of Sestia.”

“I only want to—”

“Wait,” said the High Xara, bringing her palm sharply upward. “You can’t take that with you.”

“Take what?”

She ignored the question. “Xelander,” she said instead, addressing the waiting servant. “A blade.”

When she heard the word, the Xara Veritas made no effort to flee, nor did she ask again for mercy. She simply stared at the High Xara during the long pause while Xelander moved silently to do as he was bid. Concordia could not meet her gaze.

When the blade was in her hand, Concordia said, “Kneel.”

Her rough-spun shift pulling tight as she moved, Veritas obeyed.

Xelander broke in. “My queen, do you think you should—”

“Hush,” the High Xara said under her breath, not even turning, and then took the other woman’s hair in her free hand.

Veritas showed no sign of fear. She waited, silent, on her knees.

With the tip of the blade, Concordia began to cut away the saffron-dyed streak of hair that marked Veritas as a Xara, starting at the hairline just above her wide-open right eye. In the beginning, as children, they had knelt next to each other as the High Xara Fortitude stripped the color from those sections of hair with a foul-smelling mixture of wood ash and vinegar, then painted on the precious saffron dye to mark them. They’d knelt as unremarkable girls from the country and risen as Xaras-to-be. Now, all these years later, only one of them was kneeling.

Concordia cut as gently as she could, but her hand was unsteady, and as the paler hair fell away from the darker, she nicked the tender scalp. She could feel the sharp tip of the knife drag where it caught on the skin.

Veritas flinched but didn’t cry out.

It took all Concordia’s strength to keep trimming until every trace of the saffron streak was gone, pretending to ignore the thick rivulet of blood that ran down Veritas’s face like the dark ghost of a single tear. Discarded hair fell in clumps to Veritas’s lap and slid soundlessly to the floor. Then it was done.

“Now. Take this woman away,” Concordia told Xelander. “Provide her safe passage out of the Edifice. Put her on a public cart headed for Paxim. Do it by force if you have to. After that, if she’s seen anywhere within the walls of the Holy City, make sure the archers have instructions to put an arrow in her heart.”

She turned back to the window so she wouldn’t see them go. At first there was only a long pause. She forced herself not to turn, not to bend.

Then there were shuffling footsteps, a heavy pair and a lighter, and after that, only silence.

In the distance, the white wool cloud-shapes of sacred rams moved over the broad green hillsides. Concordia watched them from on high until they blurred into pale smears, until she couldn’t tell if they were moving or her tired eyes were only playing tricks. She watched them until the sun set and they were only faint shapes in darkness.

Concordia’s doubts that she had chosen wisely started almost immediately, but of course, she kept them to herself. Who would she tell?

Two seasons later, she had almost managed to drown out the drumbeat in her mind that asked, Where did she go, what will she do, what will happen to the child, what does the god want, should I have killed her, should I have let her stay?

But then the Drought of Girls began.

The drumbeat got louder. The questions Concordia asked herself changed.

Is this my fault? Is this Her punishment?

What have I done?

CHAPTER 2

Mother

Leaving the Holy City, SestiaNorah

On the primitive public cart that rattled the former Xara Veritas’s teeth and set her legs to aching, she drew a sand-colored scarf more closely about her head. Her scalp had stopped bleeding not long after they passed through the city gates. Still, she could swear she felt the distinct edges of that bare patch of skin under the thick cloth, hot like fire.

Xelander had harried her through the palace and out of it, practically nipping at her heels like a sheep hound, doing as the High Xara bid. She remembered almost none of what he said, with a single exception. As they were leaving the palace, he’d plucked the scarf from a basket of work and tossed it her way with a pointed look at her head.

“Cover yourself,” he said, and no more.

Most of the cart’s other passengers looked the way the former Xara Veritas felt: worn out, anxious, fraught. But when the exhausted-looking woman next to her caught her eye and offered a kind smile, the disgraced priest returned it.

“The Holy One’s blessings be on you,” the woman said.

“And you,” she responded automatically.

“I’m Vetiver. What’s your name?”

No longer a Xara, the new exile reached back into her childhood for the name she hadn’t used since she’d counted her years on one hand.

“Norah,” she replied.

They fell into conversation. Luckily, the other woman was talkative. Without giving away where she’d come from or where she was going—not that she knew—Norah learned that Vetiver farmed near a small village called Tika, in a good-sized household of three mothers with nine children and only one uncle to help out. The farm was a successful one—to plant and harvest, they hired seasonal women and men with the proceeds of the previous year’s bounty—but the household itself was nearing crisis. The youngest child was sickly; the oldest ones did their part, but work piled up. Now one of the mothers, too, had fallen ill, and they all feared the worst. Vetiver had come to the capital to perform a generous offering and ask the Holy One, if it was Her will, to help them manage their burdens. Now they could only wait and see.

Norah asked Vetiver question after question as they traveled, all of which the farmer was happy to answer. Hours later, when the wagon began to slow for Tika, Vetiver turned to her with a look of keen interest.

“You didn’t say where you were going.”

“Looking for work,” said Norah, and left it there, hopeful.

With a new light in her eye, Vetiver said, “Perhaps She sent you to us.”

“Her will be done.”

The woman reached for Norah’s hand, warmed it between her own, her touch light. “Is there any chance you might come to our farm? Please? I hope you’ll stay, but even if not, just for a meal and the evening? It’ll be dark soon.”

The smile that came to Norah’s face was broad and genuine, even with her jaw aching from the relentlessly bumping cart. Perhaps the Holy One, in Her generous wisdom, was smiling on both of them. The High Xara might want Norah exiled from Sestia, but the country was not hers alone, nor could she see into its every corner. If Norah lived quietly, far from the capital, how would Concordia ever know?

Norah said to Vetiver, “Thank you.”

When the cart stopped at the next crossroads, they climbed down together. The village did indeed seem small. Only the two of them disembarked. Norah looked back down the road they’d come along, marked with ruts and grooves; the crossing road was clearly less traveled. The driver, who looked as weary as the passengers, half-heartedly lifted the reins and signaled to the oxen to move.

As the rattling wagon drove off, Vetiver brushed the dust of travel from her clothes with brisk, short strokes. Norah mimicked her movements. She had a lot to learn in this world. It would make all the difference to have someone to learn from.

Norah knew nothing at all of life, she realized, frowning at her own foolish innocence. She’d been raised in the palace from the age of five. Everything she’d needed had been placed at her fingertips. Her only lessons focused on what a Xara must know. Now that she was no longer a Xara, she recognized how very much the priests of the Edifice, high-ranking Xaras and lower-ranking Daras alike, had left out of her education.

“Shall we?” said Vetiver, gesturing, and Norah followed her down the unfamiliar road.

As she settled into her new household, Norah cut her hair to her shoulders and bound it out of the way. She wore the sand-colored scarf for the first several months, until the missing hair grew to cover the bare spot. She spoke little, blending in. She had an easy spirit and a willing strength, and there were no complaints when Vetiver proposed she join the household as a fourth mother, that her child be welcomed as a sibling as soon as it arrived. No one knew Norah’s history, as far as she could tell, and no one asked. She prayed in the morning and at night, calling upon the God of Plenty for Her love and blessings. Despite Concordia’s judgment, Norah firmly believed she hadn’t dishonored the god with her actions, merely found a new way to experience and honor Her love.

On the fourth day of the fourth month of the All-Mother’s Year 502, Norah’s daughter came into the world. It was an easy birth, labor beginning at midday and the child born by sundown, a clear sign of the god’s favor. A hard birth didn’t always mean disfavor from the god, but She chose who She would test, and She chose not to test Norah. Norah thanked Her in prayer.

Five days later, on her child’s name day, the former Xara set foot in a temple for the first time since her banishment. The local temple was a fraction of the size of the Edifice, only magnificent compared to the town’s humble wooden buildings. Still, Norah caught her breath when she walked inside.

Surrounded by white stone, cool air soothing her face and throat, she remembered what it had once been like. Growing up in the Edifice, living every day for her god’s glory, breathing and eating and sleeping for Her alone. Just for one moment, the disgraced priest felt the smallest pang of regret.

Then her daughter sighed in her sleep, a sweet, faint music. The moment passed.

Following the name-day ritual, giving a small sacrifice for the spark of a new life, the new mother burned the delicate bones of a bee-eater on the altar and gave thanks. She had planned to name the girl Chlora, for the bright white cliffs of the western coast, but perhaps because her life as a Xara had surged back into memory, a new idea sparked in her mind as the flame burned. On impulse, she gave the child the name of the woman she’d considered her oldest, and for so many years only, friend. The one person who’d been a constant in her life in those years when the two of them could rely on no one and nothing else. The woman who, that fateful day, had held both the Xara Veritas’s life and her unborn daughter’s in her hands and given both of those lives back to Norah, setting her free.

As she stood in front of the altar, faint wisps of smoke rising from the shallow white dish that had blackened with ash, Norah made her decision. She cradled her daughter in one arm. She smudged a thumbprint of sacred oil in the center of the baby’s small, wrinkled forehead. She told her, “You belong, as we all belong, to the Holy One. Your name, my child, is Olivi.”

The infant promptly spit up her milk, cackled once, and fell to sleep with the suddenness of summer lightning.

Norah’s giddy laughter filled the temple. Even the other worshippers’ glares and grumbles didn’t mar her delight. The ringing of laughter off the smooth white stone, in fact, delighted her even more. There’d been so little laughter in the Edifice. Here, Norah felt the presence of the god at the same time as she felt the community she belonged to, her expanded life, flowing like a river around her. She relished the echoes of her own merriment almost as much as she relished the soft breath of the warm bundle in her arms.

Surely, thought the former Xara, she was loved by the Holy One. A god who despised her would never bestow such blessings.

CHAPTER 3

Silence

Four years later, the first Sun Rites of the Drought of Girls,the All-Mother’s Year 506The Holy City, SestiaConcordia

Four years into the Drought of Girls, no one who saw the High Xara Concordia striding the palace’s long hallways would have known her feelings. Her head was high, her serene manner ideal for the approach to prayer. The wide neck of her ceremonial robe left an expanse of bare skin above the fine saffron-dyed wool, light as a whisper, and her shoulders had been anointed with rose oil and lily wine. Her lips, touched with honey from the palace’s apiary, would make her words sweet for the Holy One.

As she approached the sacred lacrum, a beautiful servant opened the door for her, bowing, clearing the way. She did not even incline her head to him as she swept past into the chamber. Behind her retreating back he closed the door, sealing her from sight.

Alone at last, she stood at the altar for a long moment, complete silence around her, attar of roses hanging heavy in the air.

Then she fell to her knees, weeping.

At the first Moon Rites after she’d chosen to banish Veritas, there had already been whispers of the Drought. Attendees from other queendoms gossiped, hinted. They’d noticed in their own capital cities that not a single girl had been born in two months, maybe three. They weren’t sure yet what it meant, if anything. They’d still had hope then.

Even after the Drought of Girls had finally been recognized and named, Concordia presided over the next three years of Moon Rites exactly as usual, making the lesser sacrifices with hallmark calm, even as news came that turned her guts to liquid and her heart to pulp.

Was it all her fault? wondered Concordia. Was the Holy One punishing her for exiling the Xara Veritas? Or was it the opposite—was she being punished for not being severe enough, for not killing the other woman where she stood for her unapologetic sin and blasphemy?

Now the All-Mother’s Year 506 had begun. Soon, all five queens would converge on the Holy City to complete the Sun Rites. Four years since a single girl had been born anywhere, and they’d be looking to her for answers. She needed to decide if this Sun Rites would be the same as the others—the same sacrifices, the same gifts to the god—when the entire world around them had changed.

All around Concordia, the cool silence of the lacrum was deafening. The smooth walls, the gleaming altar, the seemingly bottomless well, all of it mocked her. This was where High Xaras since the beginning of history had come to listen for the voice of their god, guiding them toward the right path. Was she the first one to find nothing here? To suffer so? She’d been so naive when she took the robe, assuming that once she had the saffron streak, once she was addressed as High Xara, everything would fall into place. But this stony room and its indifferent God defied her.

She’d even begun to hope for help from another quarter. If the Holy One wouldn’t speak to her, perhaps another god might. But none did. Not Sestia’s chaos-loving sister Velja who the Arcans worshipped, not their sister, Eresh, who ruled the Underlands, not the All-Mother who had birthed three divine daughters, then yielded the world to their generation and vanished. None of the dozens, even hundreds, of minor gods, spirits that oversaw everything from olive pits to winter rain. Not a word from anywhere beyond.

Was it sacrilege merely to think of the gods in this way, as potential tools to pry a door open or seal it shut? Probably. If she were as holy as she should have been, her mind would work differently. Maybe then the god would speak. For her part, Concordia had wept, begged, commanded, howled, pleaded. She had worn her voice out to the point where she couldn’t speak for days, but that only showed another harsh truth: once she banished Veritas, she had no one to speak to. When her voice returned, she found herself talking more and more often to Xelander, but she did not confide in him. A servant was not a friend.

She turned away from the altar toward God’s Well, its circle of white marble opening into a narrow downward shaft full of clear water that left a whitish crust on everything it touched, like the salt left behind after tears.

Concordia reached back to the altar long enough to scoop up the ceremonial bowl that rested there, then lowered it into the well to fill it with water. The well was God’s Well, and the water was God’s Tears. She hunched back down on the cool marble of the floor, curling her body over the bowl so her own tears dropped into it, each with a tiny, near-silent splash. If she wept onto her fine saffron robe, woven from threads as thin as spider’s silk, they would know. And no one could know. The silence of the lacrum was her bane and her terror, but it was also her sanctuary.

She contemplated the bowl in her hands, sacred and smooth. The water represented the tears the Holy One had cried twice: first, when she lost her beloved consort to the Underlands, and second, when she had journeyed beyond Death itself to rescue him and found him merrily disporting himself with ripe-figured shades in the fields of lust, his memory of her already fading. No wonder virtue was the greatest sacrifice she asked of her Xaras. There seemed to be no reason, no promise, in linking oneself to a man. Concordia still wondered what it would have been like, to indulge one’s body in pleasures. When they were girls, she and Veritas had giggled over the very idea of it, dizzy with their secret audacity. Once they’d become women, they no longer discussed it. Not until Veritas’s changing shape had forced the issue. Clearly Veritas thought the pursuit worthwhile, mused Concordia now. She’d sacrificed everything.

Concordia was virtuous and calm and utterly hollow. She could not believe the frivolous matters that had dominated her thoughts in the early, easy years of her reign. How she’d quibbled with the Edifice’s many Daras over minor matters of religious observation, the precise length of hair and robes, the exact words to be spoken when crops were brought in from the fields. None of that mattered now, if it ever had. Now the questions were bigger. Too big. The entire future of the world as they knew it depended on the answers.

Why had girls stopped being born? That was the most important question, but it led to so many others. After all these years of blessings, had the god turned on them? Were their sacrifices no longer enough? Or was it the other way around—did the god no longer want a sacrifice, at least in the form it had been delivered for centuries?

Her tears were still dripping into the sacred bowl of God’s Tears—irony, that—but more slowly now, a drip every now and again. As the next tear formed, she reached up to brush it away with the tips of two fingers. So much was out of her control. She had no idea how to secure the future of her nation, to win back the favor of their god. But this single tear, this she could wipe with her fingertips, rubbing the droplet across her skin until it was spread so thin it evaporated and disappeared, leaving no trace.

Enough tears for the day. She dabbed at her face with the altar cloth, then replaced both the cloth and the bowl on the altar, stepping back once she’d set the holy objects in place. Crying was indulgent. Yet it was hard to stop indulging once one had started; perhaps that was why Xaras were warned away from pleasures of all kinds.

But then her thoughts ran where they always ran: to the exiled former Xara Veritas. Where had she gone? Had she borne the child, named the child? She inspected her fingers and found a trace of wetness still on them, so she stepped forward again to wipe them on the altar cloth. Then, inspired, she used those fingers to count up months she’d never thought to count before. Veritas had left, when? Three months after that year’s Moon Rites? Four? Autumn, it had been, wheat turning pale gold in the fields. And how ripe had Veritas been when she’d left, the very beginning of the swell rounding outward between her hips? Was it possible that Veritas had given birth to a daughter, and that her daughter had been among the last of the girls born from the blood of Sestia before the Drought began?

The wondering was fruitless, the High Xara told herself. She couldn’t know. It was unwise to waste more time wondering. She had to focus on this year’s Sun Rites, this year’s sacrifice.

Whatever it was that Concordia decided in the privacy of this stony room, once she stepped outside and issued her decree, that decision was final. There was no going back.

So she let herself stay in the room a little longer. She even tried one last prayer, licking the sweet honey from her lips until nothing remained, breathing in so deeply that the oil of roses dizzied her. She asked the Holy One just once more to show Herself, to tell Her most devoted servant what it was She wanted—more sacrifice? No sacrifice? Something else entirely?

Concordia did her very best to listen, but as the silence stretched around and over her, her heart was in her throat again.

No one was coming to save her. No human. No god. She’d been foolish even to hope.

The decision was hers alone.

The altar cloth had dried by now, and the High Xara’s cheeks felt cool and smooth, no longer inflamed from her angry tears. She smoothed back the stray hairs that had clustered nearer her face when she had been bent over and staring downward, paying special attention to laying the saffron streak flat. She ran her hands over her elegant robes, arranged the fabric to drape away from her shoulders, raised her chin just so.

All this done, satisfied she was ready, she rapped her knuckles briskly on the door to indicate she wished to exit the lacrum. She could open the door herself, of course, but that would lack the proper gravity.

While she waited for the servant to respond, she took one more expansive breath, and by the time he swung the door open, she had plastered on a dizzying, eager smile.

“Call the Daras,” said the High Xara Concordia, breathless. “The Holy One has spoken. We will have the Sun Rites as before.”

*   *   *

The whole time she moved through the Sun Rites, Concordia felt as if she weren’t even there. She followed the parade of queens—the stone-faced warrior, the kindly diplomat, the straight-backed scholar, even the lithe, dark-robed magician, who had to be well over a century old but looked as dewy-skinned and smooth-cheeked as a young woman of twenty. The other queens’ faces had changed a great deal in the five years since they’d last met. In five years, new wrinkles had begun to appear, tiny cobwebbing patterns at the outer corners of Heliane’s eyes, grooves alongside Khara’s firm-set mouth. Creases emerged. Existing lines deepened. The Arcan queen alone remained exactly as she had been, like a carven figurine captured at the peak flush of youth. An elegant hawk of a woman, that beak-like nose, those all-seeing eyes.

As the procession brought them to the amphitheater and the dances began, Concordia let her attention wander, watching the old stories reenacted, trying to forget who she was, why she was here. She skimmed the dancers of myth, her eyes landing on one group, then distracted by the movements of another.

She watched a row of dancers, their faces streaked with ash, pass through a set of long scarves held high to represent a gate. Concordia suppressed a shiver as she watched them imitate the dead leaving the earth. In the early days of civilization, Eresh worried that so many humans dying so quickly would overwhelm the Underlands, her new domain. So she asked Velja to gift them with magic: a different gift for each human, something small. Their magic helped them sing the game closer for the hunt, made their arrows fly straighter, helped them build shelters, heal wounds, settle disputes. Magic helped the community survive another day, another year. But when the men misused their magic, selfishly keeping their spoils instead of sharing them, Velja took their gifts away. She left them only the magic of beauty to encourage women to share what their own gifts had wrought. Men with ram’s horns on their heads danced first their shock and disappointment, then accepted their gift of beauty and became radiant, dancing toward the women with alluring gestures, a graceful leap skyward, a delicate outstretched hand.

Concordia wanted the dancing to go on forever, to give her joy and beauty in which to lose herself, but the time came all too soon. She wished she had taken a relaxing herb; she knew more about such things than most High Xaras. A decorative plant called schimia bordered the Edifice’s kitchen garden on the north side, a succulent with thick pads of pale green, tips tinged purple. Schimia could easily be gathered for a tincture that eased the nerves. Next time, she thought. But if there was to be a next time, she had to get through this time first.

The High Xara Concordia rose to the dais and spoke the words she had to speak. She lowered the blade she had to lower, slit the throats she had to slit.

Afterward, she handed the ceremonial blade back to the wiry, hardened Queen Khara without wiping it of blood. The blood always splashed, even if she was careful. On every finger, the bright red of yesterday’s cherries mingled with the darker red of lifeblood freshly spilled.

Once the ceremonies were complete, she walked back to the palace and into her quarters. Without even removing her sandals or sash, she dropped to the stone floor to sit cross-legged. Hands in her lap, she watched as the lifeblood dried and darkened in color, crusting into a brickish red, nearly brown, as the day outside grew dim.

At length, after the room was dark, she heard a knock. She thought she should stand, but even while she was deciding, she heard a voice call, “High Xara, have you need of anything?”

She found her voice. “No.”

Then the voice again, somehow both louder and more tentative, “High Xara, if it please you, may I enter?”

She made a noise that she supposed could be interpreted either way, and when she looked up, a lithe, wasp-waisted figure was coming through the door. He held his lamp high; it was Xelander.

Concordia didn’t want anyone to see her like this, but if anyone had to, best that it should be him. Was it possible—should she tell him? How she felt useless, broken, a mere imitation of a Xara? Would he understand?

She looked up at him and saw that there was already understanding on his face, already a kind of sympathy. Perhaps she didn’t need to say anything at all.

Closing the door behind him, Xelander took a moment to scan the room, then seemed to come to a decision. He set the lamp gently on a stand near the door. In three easy strides he reached the table where a bowl of cool water waited, left there earlier by another servant for the High Xara to use for washing. He lifted the bowl in both hands.

“If it please you, High Xara,” he said, “permit me.”

She said nothing, did nothing. It was such a relief to leave things to someone else.

Xelander set the bowl on the floor in front of her, the cloth next to it, kneeling and bending in a way that looked much like supplication.

“Your ritual robe,” he said. “Shall we preserve it? I am certain you have already thought of this, but once the water loosens the stain, it could spread.”

She nodded and did not move. She felt his hands on her shoulders, pushing the robe aside, letting its billowing softness slip off with a whisper. Carefully, he lifted and disengaged the sleeve while holding it clear, guiding the fabric with a sure hand. He repeated the motion on the other side, and bent at the waist to gently lift the garment away from her, leaving her in a plain saffron shift, her hair down around her shoulders in a mass of unbound waves.

She closed her eyes.

“If you’ll allow me,” he said, and she gave the barest nod. Such a relief, she thought again. Giving no commands, taking no action, feeling nothing inside. She didn’t even have to look at her hands anymore. He would take care of it. The red would be gone.

The splash of water, the sound of the cloth being rinsed and lifted, then the cool wet towel was laid over her clasped hands. A heartbeat, a moment. Then she could feel him begin to scrub gently in the smallest of circles, starting with the first joint of the index finger of the right hand, circling, circling.

With her eyes closed, it was easier to say the words that echoed and murmured inside her head. She was going mad from keeping her fear inside. Here she could reveal it, share it, hope to let it go. “They doubt me.”

Xelander worked her finger between two of his, circling with the wet cloth, working down to the base and then all the way up to the nailbed and then the very fingertip, meticulously, in a regular rhythm. Hypnotic. Reassuring.

“Who does?” he asked in a mild voice.

She let herself relax and speak. “Everyone. The Daras. The people. They think I should stop the Drought.”

Silence while the cloth was rinsed in the bowl again. Then the next finger, the middle finger, was grasped gently. “I’m certain you would if you knew how. Wouldn’t you?”

“Of course,” she murmured.

“If you haven’t found the answer yet,” Xelander said, working hypnotically in that slow, careful rhythm, “it is because She isn’t ready for the answer to be found.”

Should she tell him that the god didn’t speak to her? There was serious risk in that, the most serious. Her priesthood. Her life. Both could be forfeit if her secret made its way into the wrong hands. Could she trust him? Not yet, she told herself.

Instead she said, “I ask Her every day.”

“And when She’s ready, She’ll guide you. In the meantime, you govern as best you can. After all, the Holy One trusted you with this office, did She not? It is yours, no one else’s, until you choose to let it go.” His voice had gained force; his grip on her hand stilled and tightened. Then he seemed to catch himself. “I apologize. I fear I speak too freely, my queen.”

He dipped the cloth, worked on the next finger, squeezing, circling.

“Not at all,” she said, “I want you to be free with me.” In this moment, it didn’t matter who Xelander was to the world, only who he was to her: a mind, a voice, a safe haven.

“To be free with you,” he responded, his voice husky, low. “There is nothing more I could ever desire.”

Her eyes opened then; he was so close, his eyes deep brown in the lamp’s light, a hint of gold gleaming in their depths.

She addressed him with surprise. “What do you mean to say?”

“It’s easier to show than to say,” he answered, and his damp fingers—those slender, nimble fingers—reached up and traced the line of her cheek.

How long had it been, thought High Xara Concordia, since someone had touched her in any way that wasn’t pure function? Not to bleach and dye her hair, to wash her feet, to cinch a belt at her waist, but to truly reach for her? Had it ever felt so powerful, this simple thing called touch? She was too stunned to speak.

This was wrong. This was forbidden. And yet.

In her silence, he continued moving. The thumb that had traced the line of her cheek now moved to her jaw, and gently, lightly, brushed her lower lip. Instantly there was an ache in her, a longing, where his touch had been and where she wanted it to go.

There was no mistaking Xelander’s intent now. He was breaking every rule at once, holy and earthly laws alike, to touch her like this. To reach for her in the way women and men seeking pleasure reached for each other.

“But,” she said, her mind reeling with uncertainty, canting away from her body, which remained stubbornly in place, aching with a want she didn’t fully understand. “You can’t—you don’t—I am not a man.”

“I am aware.” His voice was a gentle, teasing purr.

She had never heard him speak this way. She had never heard anyone speak this way. It lit a flame in her. “But all men who serve in the house of the Holy One—”

“I gave the pledge they asked of us,” he breathed. “To find pleasure in men. What they ask us to swear is . . . too narrowly defined, let us say.”

Everything felt out of control, thrilling and terrifying in equal measure. She was on the verge of letting the feeling sweep her away. Then, all at once, she remembered who she was. She was in control of everything. Life and death, sacrifice and abundance, plenty and want. And that included this man. Only she would decide how much he could truly know, how much he could truly have. She was the High Xara Concordia, Blessed of the Holy One, Queen of the Nation of Sestia. She chose.

She said, “Explain yourself.”

“Gladly,” he said. He didn’t seem upset by the demand; he was still touching her. He would stop in a heartbeat if she said so. She did not say.

“Men are beautiful,” he said. His fingers traced her jaw again. Then he ran them down the line of her neck to brush the outline of one breast, round under the drape of the light saffron-colored shift, the thin fabric no real barrier. “And so are women.”

“But you can’t want both,” she said stubbornly. “Men and women are . . . different. Like night and day.”

Lifting his hand up to cup her cheek, he asked in a whisper, “Is there not beauty in both the day and the night?”

And she gave no answer because he knew her answer already, had always known, and he leaned in to cover her mouth with his, and with that first soft, tender kiss, High Xara Concordia was lost.

CHAPTER 4

All Five

Five years later, the All-Mother’s Year 511In the Holy City of SestiaConcordia

Once she had tasted pleasures, the High Xara understood why Veritas had held so loosely to her status as a Xara. When one heard these things described, these actions sounded like nothing at all: a part of a body touching a part of a body, flesh on flesh, moving. If Concordia had not felt such pleasure for herself, she never would have believed it. There was a world of difference between hearing and knowing.

For years now, the High Xara Concordia and her servant Xelander had kept their shared, illicit passion secret. In public, Xelander was like an elegant statue: handsome, slender, nearly expressionless. Only in private did he transform into a hungry, lascivious tease, matching Concordia stroke for stroke and kiss for kiss until they both lay exhausted and spent. She loved everything about him in those moments: his sweat-dampened hair spread about both their shoulders, his garments lying in a hastily discarded heap, the musky scent of his body half atop hers, the woolly hair of his chest in contrast with her own smooth skin. Almost as soon as she’d had him, she found herself hungry for him again.