Megan ignored her bitter tone. “We aren’t ready yet. You must leave when the timing is right.”
Sena’s face slumped into her hands. She stared between her fingers as leafy shadows from outside fell over the pair of blond girls stationed nearby. Initiates, about twelve years old, they stared blankly at each other while the breeze levitated their hair.
Megan circled around behind and started helping her with her bra, scrutinizing the lacy undergarment. “That’s a bit of black evil, isn’t it? Where did you get it?”
“Ghalla Gala, in Sandren. What are your plans? What are we doing in Stonehold?”
Megan hesitated. Sena saw the shadow of her arm rise up and quickly stretch across the floor. The young girls in the room left immediately. They pulled the door shut behind them. It made a dull bang followed by a vast hollow echo.
Megan continued. “We have several agendas. The Wllin Droul has resurfaced. Evidenced by your attack. Half-sisters in Isca say an old school is reforming in the undercity. We do not know why. Hopefully you can help us discover this once you are there.”
“Who do you have in Isca?”
“Miriam.”
Sena sniffed disdainfully. “You aren’t sending me to Stonehold just to play cloak and dagger with some smelly little clerics.”
“No. But that would be enough,” said Megan. “Your inexperience combined with this mystagogic society out of Iycestoke . . . well, they’re far more than smelly little clerics. They have preternarcomancers that sleep beyond sleep in warm coastal waters and perceive farther than—”
“If they’re so good at predicting the future,” Sena interrupted, “how did they get themselves butchered seventy years ago in their own temple? By a general they employed?”
Megan scowled. “We’re happy to have some historical proof that they do make mistakes. But the Wllin Droul go back. Thousands of years. Discounting them is an old mistake.”
“Thousands?” Sena scowled.
Megan began to pace in the spacious domed room, heels clicking loudly. “Yes, well. It wasn’t that long ago that the king of Sandren bore the Hlid Mark.”
Sena knew what that meant: the mark that shadowed the navel, three dark tendrils reaching upward.
“We wonder if they might be trying to infiltrate the Sisterhood.”
“Why would you think that?” Sena thought back to the rag-thing at her cottage and her flesh tingled with cold.
Megan stopped pacing. She faced Sena directly and her eyes burnt like tiny gray stars. She spoke barely above a whisper. “Some of our Sisters have died or disappeared. Wives of powerful men have been lost in the woods, run away with charming highwaymen or, according to the papers, fallen down stairs and snapped their necks.”
Her obvious skepticism added a new dimension to the discussion.
Sena raised her eyebrows. Considering the laws of the coven and the inordinate amount of physical dexterity it took to become a full-fledged Sister, such stories (while convincing to the general public) were ludicrous to a member of the Sisterhood.
They must be fearless, thought Sena. The more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed that someone could be laughing.
Through the antiseptic words of a journalist some entity might certainly be able to flaunt that it, or they, had attacked the Sisterhood in their most ensconced locations, beaten them at their own game. By publishing absurd accounts of accidents and capricious infidelity, things a highly trained Sister would easily and doggedly avoid, the enemy could broadcast in words clear only to the Sisterhood: we know where you are. We know how to find you.
Sena imagined the results. It would be like turning off lamps in a vast house. When the undercover wife of a regional lord vanished the very eyes of the Sisterhood would be plucked out of that household. The holdings of the Sisterhood would become darkened and obscure.
Maybe her attack in the highlands was related. Maybe she had escaped what others in the Sisterhood had not. Still, Sena remained skeptical.
“Why are they coming after us?”
Megan pursed her lips. Again she hesitated.
“There is an old book. Lost. Possibly in a shop or private collection by now. It was an item of conflict decades ago between the Sisterhood and the Cabal. It slipped through both our hands and wound up in Stonehold until its owner died. No one knows where it is now.”
“So the Cabal . . . the Wllin Droul . . . think we have it?” Sena lied well.
“I don’t think so.”
“Where do you think the book is?” asked Sena.
“Perhaps Stonehold. It might explain why the Wllin Droul have resurfaced there.”