"No one mentioned the Commander," Rayne said, turning her face slightly toward the human standing at her side. What seemed like the whole population of the capitol city spread out in the courtyard and, past it, into the streets outside the keep itself - lined for miles, they were, or so she'd been told. But here on the balcony that overlooked the keep's main courtyard, she and her Trade Advisor - the only two High Council members now in the city - were relatively isolated. Only their four guards stood behind them, and they at a respectable distance. 'The Commander', she'd called him, because at that very moment, she couldn't quite speak of him by his family relationship and keep her voice as detached as it had been. As detached as it needed to be.

Word had come back two nights ago - victory - but the message was rendered quickly with very little embellishment. They knew now only that the kingdom of Ahlyss was razed, thoroughly destroyed, and no one survived save the civilians who fled. It was everything that the Chatelaine had ordered, everything that the Chatelaine required from the force that defended their homeland, but the woman behind the leader craved more. The woman behind the Chatelaine's cold visage craved a message, even a single word, about her brother. Typically, it was Graelin who sent those messages. The message this time had come from neither the Commander nor his Knight, the one who had been appointed as her own bodyguard when he was in attendance. She knew the face in the message - General Iathad of the Emerald Shield - but it was not he she wanted to see.

Her hand rested lightly on the stone rail overlooking the festivities below. Minstrels passed through the courtyard and down the streets, performing the same song in time with each other. It seemed miraculous that they, though separate, kept the same time and melody as the others. In the late summer breeze, Kenyon's green and red pendants fluttered on bars of wood that marched slowly or wavered in place depending on the carrier under them. The enthusiasm, the celebration, the joy was high and wild; the city pulsed with it. But to Rayne, to the woman and not the leader, it all felt false - minor notes trying to strike in revelry.

There were always casualties. Always injuries. But her people would see that soon enough. First, she wanted to see the victory, which is why scores of mages were sent, laden with the wares of their craft as well as fresh uniforms, to meet the Contingent before they entered the city. The party had left Kenyon's city walls one night past. The Contingent would be coming any moment now. But who would be leading them? Would she see her brother at the head, stubbornly covered in the dried blood and gore of Kenyon's enemies? Or would she see someone else?

Loria was not the type of friend to sweeten the truth. Rayne finally looked directly at the Trade Advisor. She hadn't need to tell Loria that there'd been no mention of Graelin; Loria had heard the last message as well. They both could guess what it meant that the General of the Emerald Shield had sent the message. Either both the Commander and Knight Everdark had been killed or they had been wounded so severely that they had been incapable of sending the message themselves. Perhaps a combination of the two. But either way, none of it boded well. Rayne lifted her chin, then, and squeezed the stone railing under her hands.

She was looking for strength to be the leader she needed to be. Grief could not appear in any of its forms. Nor could worry. Her people were celebrating the return of their Contingent - and the destruction of their enemies. To meet such a thing with sadness would be to dishonor the ones for whom she would weep and to shame the ones who survived. Rayne knew it well enough. But tonight, she feared, she would be heavily tasked to be the Chatelaine. She wanted only to be the sister. She wanted only to saddle her horse and charge out to meet the Contingent, to search for Graelin among their ranks.

And then, below them, a great roar rose from the farthest reaches of the city -- rose, rose, grew, and rose yet more. The Contingent had entered the gates.

Under the half-moon that marked a month's time since the murders in the Great Hall, vivid white silk shone with fervor. Embroidered red silk thread mitigated its brilliance across the Chatelaine's shoulders and down the long length of her back. The embroidery swirled twice at her hem and ended its delicate touch as gracefully as it had begun. That grace seemed to transpose itself on the leader of Kenyon as she walked down the cobbled pathway to her soldiers' marker. From the direction where the widows had gathered, muted sounds of grief cracked in broken bits through the still night.

It was tradition, but not ceremony, that brought Rayne Kenyon to the Bleeding Garden just outside Amasa's temple, tradition that called her to shed blood in tribute to the blood her people had freely given. Every month, the day of their deaths would be remembered in just this way. The silver-gilded dirk in her hand, unsheathed and gleaming, cut its way through a paler surface and drew a thin stream of red in its wake. The Chatelaine tilted her wrist over the youngest rose bush and painted the flowers a shade darker in dots and splatters. The petals themselves seemed to absorb her blood, as if it were a nutrient. One of the mysteries of this garden. She imagined that, with enough time and study, she could discover just what Saedus had done to produce such an effect -- but scholastic pursuit had never been the intent of his creation. And to treat it so cavalierly would be to dishonor his work and to dishonor her dead.

A sliver of torch-green light shot across Rayne's peripheral vision. Although she would not break the solemn mood in the garden tonight by being so careless as to turn her head away from the resting place of her soldiers, she watched from the corner of her eye, nonetheless.

It was Loria. She recognized, not the face or the shape, but the bearing. Prideful. Determined. Unquestioning in her purpose. And, by the way she hung back in the temple's light, also uncomfortable by the thing that Rayne was doing. Blood always made her Trade Adviser turn her head. Although she'd never quite crossed the line of disgust, it was no secret that the way of vampires was troubling to Loria. And it was also no secret that her very presence in the Temple of Amasa was a true and startling sign that something was urgent.

Rayne finished the rite with words of gratitude, words of peace. Her voice was a spell she wove for the ones who remained behind, and as the sounds of loss subsided gently behind her, she dipped low to the ground in a fluid, humble curtsy. When she rose again, the temple guards at the gates of the garden opened to the widows and the family of her soldiers. As for Rayne, she quietly - but as quickly as decorum allowed - slipped up the path to where Loria stood.

The doors to the temple closed behind them, and the two friends faced each other - Rayne with a question, and Loria with the answer.

"What brings you?"

If there was anything that kept Loria from worrying about whether supplies would run out it was actually keeping a running tab on what they had, what they were using, and what they would need in the coming week from their supplies. It was an easy and accurate way of keeping track of things. She was the only person who did it, although she sometimes asked for a few men to help her with heavier things that she couldn't count alone, or things on high shelves. Sometimes she had maids count things, twice, and recorded them after the second count.

( There was one thing she dreaded counting. )

There were no pews in the temple. They were seats of subservience, meant to make a man feel less than he was, and in the presence of the gods one should never feel thus. You could not forget their power to create or destroy. Yet you also could not forget that they would not have anyone to worship them if mankind were gone. A symbiotic relationship, one might say. One. He would never address such thoughts to the worshipful masses but they were in his mind at all times. The pews were gone. Instead hanging lamps that seemed connected to nothing designated the place where a man should arrange himself. Or a woman. That amendment to his thoughts was late but important given the fact that he was in the employ of not one but two females. They were iron, black as night, untouched by chain or cable, suspended. Arranged in perfect rows as pews once had been. Upon each iron lamp there were six candles, and each candle burned brightly tonight. No other light in the temple save the stained glass. In the sloping cathedral roof stained glass formed the ceiling, so far as the eye could tell, and above that stone and shingle. There were two towers and a long administrative wing attached to the temple but here - here was the work of art. Behind each pain of stained glass there were torches, hanging there as well, suspended.

( They made the stained glass glow. )

Although the torches burned against the wall - throwing off their odd green-tinged light - the high council room was cold. Even colder were its occupants. There were no smiles to be shared or jokes to pass between them; only a collective silence greeted her when Loria finally made it to the room. Loria was glad for that. She'd been summoned from her chamber minutes before entering the room. Dealing with merchants, wives of contingent members, and numbers that could drive a normal man insane was something Loria normally found thrill in. Today she did not. Shade was resting now. That was the only good that any of them would likely see today. He was alive, and he was resting. Loria wanted to speak with Rayne in private because of it, but instead she was here.

In the past weeks, she'd had too much to deal with to see her friend. There were merchants who wanted to argue about the price of spices and their goods. Loria did her best not to lose her temper around them, but with what felt like war brimming over the horizon, how could she focus on such a meager debate? When war came, if it did, there was too much to think about. The supplies an entire country needed that they could be denied once war was set on their borders… They already had thieves to deal with, let alone convoys of men who sought to suffocate the very people who lived and breathed in a country. It was a lot to think about, and squabbling over coins was not something Loria had the patience for these days. She knew too much. She knew how many lives were lost - twenty and counting, fifteen wounded, and some missing entirely. The price of pepper and salt would stay as it had no matter how much the merchants argued over it. Loria's prices were set in stone. If they wanted the goods - and the ability to sell them to those poor wives who could lose the men who made them their money - then they'd have to stop arguing with her.

( Now their eyes were on her. )