Song of the Sea Spirit: An epic fantasy novel (The Mindstream Chronicles) (31 page)

One thing was for certain; she had no interest in sharing her findings of the tones with Elder Sonnis. How did he know about her work with Elder Kassyl? That puzzled her, but perhaps the ailing elder had told him. After all, Sonnis had been next in line for becoming elder and inheriting Elder Kassyl’s hierarchy.

Jora shaved her head and then knelt beside her bed, digging under the mattress for her books. She found nothing.

The books were gone.

Jora shot to her feet and lifted the mattress first on one side, then the other, then dropped to her knees to check under the bed frame. Her books were gone, though her flute remained where she’d left it, wedged between the mattress and the wall.

That someone had stolen her books was nearly as shocking as the fact that there was a thief among the Truth Sayers, the upholders of law, the voices of justice in Serocia.

Her hands trembled with anger. Someone had come into her room, searched through her belongings, and took what Elder Kassyl had given her. Such a thing was unthinkable. She paced the length of her room, alternately trying to remember whether she’d hidden them elsewhere and railing against the thief who’d dared to take what was rightfully hers.

No one in the Order knew that Elder Kassyl had given her his book of tones, but knowledge of her journal was fairly widespread. Most had never seen it, though enough of the Truth Sayers knew of it to mention it when she’d begun joining them at the Spirit Stone.

Could she find the thief by using the Mindstream? Generally, it could only be used to view people one could identify, but how would she know which person’s thread to use if she didn’t know who had stolen it?

Elder Sonnis.

No, s
he thought, shaking her head. An elder wouldn’t stoop to theft. If he wanted Elder Kassyl’s book, he could have simply asked for it. Surely he could make a case that everything that had belonged to Elder Kassyl was now his by rights. Whether it was true or not, who was she to argue with an elder? Besides, without a witness, she could never prove it was Elder Sonnis or any other Truth Sayer, since every disciple, adept, and elder knew how to block her from observing him.

Jora spent a sleepless night worrying about her missing books, turning restlessly in bed. She dreamt of hands searching under her while she slept, pulling out secrets and pieces of her body.

The mirror wasn’t kind to her the next morning, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t like she’d have been a raving beauty without the dark circles beneath her eyes.

“Rough night?” Adriel asked when she joined her friends at the table for breakfast.

“Goodness!” Gilon said, looking at her face. “Did you get into a fight?”

“Bad dreams. Yesterday, while we were at the ceremony, someone came into my room and stole my journal.”

“No!” Adriel and Gilon said in unison, their eyes wide and mouths agape.

Jora nodded. “Didn’t take my flute or anything else. Just the books.”

“Was it in plain view?” Adriel asked.

“No. I kept it hidden, in case someone got curious enough to snoop without asking.”

“You said books,” Gilon said quietly. “Was there more than one?”

Jora cringed inwardly, realizing she’d slipped up. Nothing to do about it now but tell them everything. It was bound to come out sooner or later anyway. The more they knew, the safer she would be, but she didn’t want to be overheard making any accusations or implying wrongdoing. She leaned toward the center of the table so that Adriel could hear, too. They both leaned in. “There was another, a journal of sorts recorded over a span of thirty years.”

Gilon sat up straight. “Hold one second. You’re saying—”

“Yes,” she said, cutting him off. Elder Sonnis might not be able to observe her anymore, but he could still observe Gilon and Adriel. The less said outright, the better.

Adriel asked, “How did you get it?”

“It’s a long story that I can’t go into. I promised someone I wouldn’t tell, but both books are missing.”

“Who would do such a thing?” Adriel asked.

“Surely you don’t suspect... a certain elder,” Gilon said, a note of warning in his voice.

“I don’t know who else would want my books,” Jora replied, knowing Elder Gastone wanted the knowledge as much as Elder Sonnis did. She could have been talking about either of them, and anyone observing Gilon or Adriel wouldn’t necessarily know which.

“Report the theft. Elder Sonnis will investigate it,” Gilon said.

Jora shook her head. “I’d like to get my journal back, but there’s no way to know who took it. We were all at the temple.”

“Ask your disciple,” Adriel said. “Maybe she knows of a way you could, I don’t know, observe your door or something. See who comes in.”

“Observe my door,” Jora said with a dim smile. “That’s funny.”

“Why not?” Adriel asked with a shrug. “It used to be a tree. Did you try it?”

“No. I’m not going to observe a dead piece of tree. What if...” It occurred to Jora that perhaps a living tree could be observed. She’d observed dogs before, when one of the cooks had sworn she’d set out a tray of chops to roast and they went missing. There was a tree outside the dormitory whose tallest branches sometimes tapped her window in a stiff wind. “What if I observed a living tree? The one in front of the dormitory?”

“Yah,” Adriel said, her eyes wide with excitement. “Try it. I’ll bet you see who the thief is.”

“What then?” Jora asked. “I can’t go up against a Truth Sayer.”

“I can,” Gilon said. “Up until a month ago, I was a warrior. I’m not afraid of any of these old cusses.” He picked up his empty bowl and stepped over the bench.

“Gil,” Jora drawled, her tone of voice a caution, “what are you going to do?”

“Nothing yet, but if you find out who stole your books, I’ll get them back for you.”

It was late in the afternoon by the time Jora finished her lessons with Disciple Bastin and served her time in the Observation Request Room. Though her stomach rumbled from hurrying through the midday meal and not eating her fill, she was anxious to try the experiment Adriel had suggested. She ran upstairs to her room, taking the stairs two at a time and huffing breathlessly when she reached the fourth floor. In her room, she pulled the stool to the window and sat, looking out at the tree.

Finding its thread was more challenging than finding a person’s thread or a dog’s. Trees didn’t have souls like animals did, or if they did, they were different than what she was used to. Try as she might to find its thread, she couldn’t, but she had another idea. She ran back downstairs and went outside, then placed both hands on its rough black bark. Once she opened the Mindstream, she found the tree more easily, but it was a pulsing, green haze rather than a thin white thread. Something tickled her skin, and she opened her eyes to find a plump black ant walking across the back of her hand. She shook it off, brushed a few other ants off the tree, and tried again.

The tree was older than she was, but not by much. She sensed its patience and understood that it didn’t measure the passage of time the same way she did. Finding the evening that the theft had occurred wasn’t as easy as simply going backward one night like it would have been with a person or an animal. At last, she observed through the thinnest, tallest branches and leaves a tall, hooded figure entering her room. In the dim light of the moon, without a lamp to light his way, the thief’s face remained obscured. Jora couldn’t tell what color the robe was, either.

Damn it.
She closed the Mindstream to find black ants crawling all over her hands and up her arms. In a somewhat panicky dance, she brushed them off and slapped at her robe sleeves and the bodice to dislodge the ones that had made it that far. All over her hands and forearms were little red bumps from where they’d sunk their mandibles into her tender flesh.

It had been an idea worthy of pursuit, though fruitless. At least now she knew she could observe trees and probably other plants as well.

“Jora,” Gilon said, waving her over almost the second she walked into the dining hall. “I’ve got to tell you what I found out.” He was sitting at one of the tables in the corner.

The dining room was filled with novices and disciples and a handful of adepts chatting over the evening meal, but the table in the center of the room where she, Gilon, and Adriel usually sat was still vacant. “What are you doing at this table? Why not our usual?”

“Quieter. More private.”

“Uh oh,” she said, eyeing him warily. “You aren’t getting yourself into trouble, are you?”

“No, not yet. Get your food and I’ll tell you about it.”

“Aren’t you eating?”

“I’ll get mine later. I wanted to hold the table until you got here.”

She got in line and filled two bowls with rice, chicken, egg, and vegetables, though the women serving the food eyed her suspiciously. She assured them one was for her friend.

“Thanks,” he said, taking the second bowl when she returned.

She sat across from him. “So, what’s your news?”

“I went to the First Godly Redeemer to use a god vessel to ask Retar about your missing books. I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask him, right? He’s a god. He would know who took your books.”

Jora barely tasted her food as she ate, listening intently. She nodded for him to go on.

“Well, he said he wasn’t the kind of god to tattle on anyone. Whoever heard of a god talking like that? Anyway, he said that if I sat there in the chamber for a couple of minutes, I might find out for myself. So I did. I sat in that cramped, wooden chamber, smelling that foul monkey—”

“You got a monkey?” she asked, giggling. “I’ll bet that was pleasant. I got a parrot.”

“Which chamber?”

“Number four. Anyway, you were sitting there...”

“...and through the ironwork in the door, I see someone walk in wearing yellow robes.”

“Go on.”

“He had a messenger’s bag over one shoulder, sort of clutching the bag to his belly as if he were afraid of letting it go.”

“And?”

“It was Elder Sonnis.” His tone of voice sounded like he was revealing a huge secret she hadn’t known.

She gave him an impatient look. “I guessed that much.”

“Oh. Well, he said something to the cantor at the desk, who then got up and left. Then Dominee Ibsa came out and greeted him. I couldn’t hear what they said after that. They spoke in near whispers, and I was too far away.”

Jora motioned with her hand for him to keep going.

“Then he opened the bag, pulled out two books, and handed them to the dominee.” Gilon slapped the table as if he knew who was behind the theft all along. “Those were your books.”

They could have been other books. Books he’d borrowed from the dominee, perhaps in preparation for becoming an elder. “Perhaps. What did they look like?”

He squinted at the ceiling. “One had a tan cover, and the other was dark. Blue maybe, or black. The light was too dim to see for certain.”

Her face warmed. “The dark one—was it thicker or thinner than the tan?”

“Definitely thinner. The tan one was quite thick.”

So it was Sonnis who’d stolen her books. Perhaps not the elder himself, but he’d had a hand in it, probably sending one of his disciples to do it.