CHAPTER ONE
“They’re coming, they’re coming!”
It was my younger brother Mahieu who brought the news, bursting into the manor’s great room, breathless and flush-cheeked, dried burrs and brittle twigs caught in the shearling cuffs and collar of his oversized winter coat. A swirl of yelping hounds accompanied him.
Everyone looked at me, and my heart kicked inside my chest like a hare thumping an alarm on the frozen ground. For as long as I could remember, I’d been awaiting the moment when my destiny came calling; I’d been expecting it since I turned ten years of age some days ago. Nonetheless, it struck a punch to the gut. From the kitchen came the crashing sound of a piece of crockery falling to the floor and shattering.
Our father set aside the ledger he was reviewing and took the moment in hand. “Jehane, assist your mother; Luc, alert the stables,” he instructed my older siblings. “Let us prepare to welcome our guests. Mahieu, how near are they?”
Mahieu dragged his sleeve over his nose before replying, leaving an ignominious trail of snot on the sheepskin. “A quarter hour.” Our middle sister Honore, jiggling last-born baby Beatrice in her arms, caught my eye and gave me a grimace of disgust. I wanted to laugh at Mahieu’s uncouth manners too, but the laughter that bubbled up from my belly caught in my throat and strangled there.
My entire life was about to change, and I was about to change with it. I swallowed hard, trying to force the lump in my throat down.
“Joscelin.” My father’s steady voice anchored me. He put his hands on my shoulders in a rare gesture of affection. It heartened me and I stood straighter, lifting my face to meet his gaze. “Today is a proud day.”
In Terre d’Ange, noble families that honor tradition pledge a middle son—if they are fortunate enough to have one that survives into childhood—to the Cassiline Brotherhood, the order of austere warrior-priests sworn to serve Cassiel.
I was the middle son of House Verreuil.
We had been on the lookout for an emissary from the Prefect since before my tenth birthday last week, and I’d been veering wildly between exhilaration and apprehension. A noble calling was a blessing, but it meant leaving my childhood home and my entire family to pursue a rigorous path of honor and discipline.
Now I took a deep breath, willing my voice to sound as firm and sure as my father’s. It was a proud day and I was determined not to let him see that it was a frightening day, too. “Yes, Father.”
He gave my shoulders a squeeze and let me go.
My mother emerged from the kitchen, dusting her floury hands on her apron. In many noble households it would be reckoned beneath the dignity of the lady of the manor to bake bread for her family, but in the province of Siovale, we were descended from Blessed Elua’s Companion Shemhazai, the divine scholar whose precept was All Knowledge Is Worth Having. According to my father, knowledge encompassed matters both homely and heady and no distinction in merit or worth might be drawn between the two, although I had never known him to try his hand at baking bread.
There was a faint furrow etched between my mother’s brows. We looked nothing alike—she was slight and dark-haired, while my siblings and I bore the blond and blue-eyed stamp of House Verreuil and our father’s lineage. All of her sons and daughters were tall for our respective ages; at ten years, I lacked but two inches of our mother’s height. But there were unspoken ways in which we understood each other, she and I, and I could not fail to see the shadow of concern in her expression.
I was grateful when my mother did not voice those worries, only gave me a quick, fierce hug before departing to don attire appropriate for receiving guests. It would have been harder to bear if she’d coddled me.
Some quarter of an hour later, the Cassiline Brothers arrived.
My father and brothers and I awaited them in the courtyard. It was a cold, crisp late-winter day. As Mahieu had reported, there were two of them; one older and one younger. Although it was a momentous occasion in our household, they arrived without fanfare. Both sat easy and attentive in the saddle, clad in the unadorned ash-grey garments of their order. The twin daggers that Cassiline priests bore at all times were hidden by the folds of their heavy winter cloaks, but the hilts of the longswords strapped across their backs protruded over their shoulders, throwing cruciform shadows that stretched westward across the snow-dusted flagstones in the morning sunlight.
Catching sight of us, they nudged their mounts into a collected trot, the sound of well-shod hoofbeats echoing across the courtyard. My father raised a hand in greeting. The Cassilines drew rein and bowed in the saddle with effortless grace, forearms crossed, winter light glinting on their steel vambraces.
My elder brother Luc shot me a glance that might have been envy or pity or both. I ignored him and squared my shoulders.
“Well met, brethren,” our father said. “I am the Chevalier Millard Verreuil. I pray you be welcome.”
The older Cassiline bowed again, a gesture as natural as breathing. “Our thanks for your hospitality, my lord Verreuil. We would be honored to break bread with you.” There was a faint huskiness to his voice. “I am Jacobe Ulric of the Cassiline Brotherhood.” He nodded at his companion, who offered another bow. “And this is my student Léon, a cadet of the Third Cohort. I trust you know why we are here?”
“We do,” my father affirmed.
Jacobe Ulric’s gaze scanned my brothers and me before settling upon me as I stood between them, neither the oldest nor the youngest. “You must be Joscelin.”
I stiffened my spine. “Yes, messire.”
He smiled ever so slightly. “Very good.”
After so long, it didn’t seem quite real that this day was finally here. It felt as though I were in a waking dream. There was a flurry of activity as old Henri the ostler hurried out to tend to the horses and we proceeded into the manor to be greeted by my mother and sisters. I was surprised to see that Jacobe Ulric dismounted with some difficulty and walked with a pronounced limp, using the aid of a walking stick that had been lashed to his pack roll.
His student Léon saw me take notice. “It is an old injury,” he murmured. “Do not make the mistake of thinking him any less the warrior for it.”
I inclined my head in respect. “I will not.”
Inside the manor, chaos swirled anew as our guests were divested of their cloaks and ushered to seats by the great fireplace, members of the household bustled in and out of the kitchen and larder, while an indeterminate number of tall, hairy Siovalese hounds milled around in circles, tongues lolling in excitement.
I was accustomed to my father being the calm center at the heart of our home, but this morning it was our visitors. Jacobe Ulric had accepted a seat by the fire and slung his baldric across the back of the chair. His walking stick was propped against it, and he stretched his bad leg toward the warmth of the fireplace, rubbing it absentmindedly. Léon stood beside him, at once attentive and at ease. Although the younger Cassiline had deigned to remove his cloak, he had retained his longsword. His vambraced arms were crossed before him, hands clad in chainmail gauntlets resting lightly on the hilts of the twin daggers at his hips. Like his tutor, he wore his hair bound in a warrior’s club at the nape of his neck. He was poised and relaxed, his gaze alert.
That, I thought, was what a Cassiline Brother ought to look like—still and contained, unassuming and deadly.
Copyright © 2023 by Jacqueline Carey
