Mercedes Lackey - Shadow of the Lion

But . . . he was gone; had been for several years. So one of the Hypatian counselors would have to do. At least she knew she could trust them to keep what she said under the Seal of Counsel. That was more than could be said of the counselors of some of the other orders.

Especially the Servants of the Holy Trinity.

She got up and left the choir stalls, returning to the rear of the church to the line of three enclosed closets where someone in need of counsel could speak with one of the siblings anonymously. She dropped the curtain across the doorway and sat down on the thin cushion over the bench inside, waiting for someone to speak to her on the other side of the scrim-covered window. Compared to the brightness outside in the church it was dim in here. Dim and cool.

She didn't have to wait for very long. A male voice, one she didn't recognize, the intonation slightly foreign, coughed, then said: "Peace be with you, my child. How may I counsel you?"

A very good question, that. "I'm not sure how to start, Brother," she said, in frustration. "It's all gone so horribly wrong!"

"You might start with what has gone wrong," the voice replied helpfully. "Although from the sound of your voice, I fear that you are going to tell me that it is everything."

"It very nearly is." She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice, but it was still there. "But most of it is nothing I had any control over--and it's the situation now that I need advice with."

"If it has any bearing on the present, I should like to hear it anyway." The voice sounded patient, but Kat wondered about her own patience level. I'll sound self-pitying and whiny, I know I will. Despite that a sibling wasn't supposed to let such things color his counsel, she couldn't help feeling that it would make her look--well, unpleasantly petty.

But the counselor had asked, and you weren't supposed to hold back. Kat took a deep breath and started. She did her level best to keep the nasal complaint out of her own voice that she heard so often in her sister-in-law's.

She tried keeping things as brief as possible, but the voice interrupted gently from time to time, asking more questions about her father, her grandfather, and her own studies as a girl with a private tutor, dwelling on Dottore Marina for reasons she couldn't fathom.

Still, that segued very nicely into the current situation. "That was why--I remembered Dottore Marina seeming so good you see--that when we needed money, we began delivering things for the Strega, and not just the Jewish community. My . . . family has always brought in some cargo that the Doge's Capi di Contrada never saw. You know, Counselor: every trader in Venetia does a little. At first it was just because of the duties I think. Then, when the Sots--I mean, the Servants of the Trinity--began to have more influence on the Doge it was to avoid possible persecution. Then Dottore Marina just vanished. . . ." She paused.

"Then?" prompted her counselor, gently.

Kat took a deep breath. "Then the Strega I knew became very frightened and needed me to get things for them more than ever. We made more money from them. And we became more reliant on it."

"Did they ever ask you to obtain things of a"--the voice paused delicately--"dubious nature?"

"No, I don't think so. I don't know, of course, what some of the things were . . . still, even the best of things can be put to evil use, Counselor. But I always wear the Saint Hypatia medallion that my father gave me--it's supposed to warn me when there's evil magic around--or that's what the sibling who bespelled it for him told him--"

She paused; was that too superstitious for this counselor? What if the medal was bogus?

But-- "Quite right," the voice replied. "If there had been evil in what you handled, you would have felt the medallion grow warm, even hot, depending upon the strength of it. You should be certain to continue to wear it at all times."

Kat bit her lip; should she tell him about the warning it had given her when the Knots and the Sots brought that shrouded box into the embassy? It had been so hot even when she'd gone under water that she'd been surprised the water hadn't boiled, and equally surprised that there wasn't a burn on her chest.

"So, the Strega have not asked you to convey anything for an evil purpose?"

"No. Well, I don't think so. It's because of the persecution. The preaching outside their houses and shops. But--we don't dare take their commissions any more and I don't know what to do!" she cried. "If they aren't asking me to help them in dark magics, then why are the Servants saying that dark magic is all they do? And if the Servants are wrong, why is the Doge going along with what they tell him to do? The next package I carry might get me arrested. If that happens grandfather will go mad, and the House will be ruined. Why is everyone letting the Servants do what they want, anyway? They aren't Venetian, they aren't even Petrine! Why are they doing this to Venice? Why has everyone gone crazy? How am I going to keep my family from getting destroyed by all of this insanity?"

The last came out in a wail, and she clapped her hands over her mouth, only belatedly realizing that she had blurted out far more than she should have.

But the voice only asked, curiously, "Before Dottore Marina disappeared . . . Had he said anything to you that makes you think now that he was warning you he was intending to leave?"

The Counselor seemed entirely fixated on Dottore Marina--which caused Kat to reply in a flash of irritation: "No. If he did, it was years ago when I was only fourteen and I don't remember. And even if I did, what has that to do with my difficulties today? You remember--the ones you're counseling me with?"

There was a faint sound from the other side of the scrim; something like a muffled snort of amusement, and it didn't sound male, it sounded female.

Well, maybe this counselor was new to the task, and was being overseen by an Elder Sister. If that was the case--Kat felt some of her annoyance fade. He must have gotten distracted. Maybe he even knew Dottore Marina and was trying to find out what had happened to him.

"I beg your pardon, my child," said the voice apologetically.

"All anyone knows is that Dottore Marina just disappeared one night," she told him earnestly. "I know; I've asked all over in the years that have gone by since, and no one knows what happened to him. He wasn't even--" she gulped "--found--floating."

"Ah." Just that one syllable, but it held a world of disappointment.

"But what am I supposed to do?" she continued stubbornly. "My House depends on me; how am I going to help them when I can't even tell from moment to moment what next piece of insanity is going to threaten us?"

Silence. "If I told you to trust in God, I suspect you would be tempted to throttle me through the scrim," the voice said dryly, which surprised a tense and strangled giggle out of her. "Nevertheless, that is all you can do for now. But child, believe me when I tell you that God and his angels are not far from us, that they move to protect us at those moments when we have given the last of ourselves and have no more to give. I know. I have seen it."

There was something in his tone that sobered her; she couldn't doubt him, not for a second. He had seen such interventions.

Not that the Archangel Raphael is likely to drop out of the clouds bearing one of our lost ships in his hands . . .

"You and yours are in the exceedingly uncomfortable position of being sardines in a sea in which great sharks are maneuvering," the voice went on. "I cannot at this moment give you any counsel that will make you any safer."

Her heart sank into her shoes, but the counselor wasn't done, yet.

"I can advise you that regular counseling--here--will not only be of aid to your soul, but might also be of benefit to your secular self. While I may not have any advice other than what I have given you today, there is no saying whether something the order learns might not be of benefit to you on the morrow, or next week." He uttered a dry little laugh. "After all, our blessed Hypatia herself was no mean politician; it will certainly be in the tradition of the order."