Mateo didn’t eat, didn’t even open his eyes. He knelt on the hard altar steps inside the main Aidenist kirk, praying and pondering long past the point at which his legs had turned as numb and dead as his heart. He refused to leave, wrapped in the dark blanket of his tragic private world. The Fishhook-tipped preaching staffs, the blue-and-green banners, the preserved ice-dragon horn etched with verses—nothing here gave him answers or hope.
But he stayed anyway.
He didn’t react when other mourners came to share the kirk with him. After a while, even the presters left him alone. He huddled there for two days, not even marking the passage of time. He would have stayed there forever.
Mateo refused to think about the future. He wanted a reason to accept what he was asked to endure. No one could have shown greater loyalty to Tierra or to Queen Anjine, no soldier had ever served the land better, and yet Vicka—his bright spot, his wife, his hope for a normal life—was gone. Not the victim of an enemy attack or treachery, but killed in a simple, senseless house fire.
She died saving me, Ammur Sonnen had said, as if it were the most terrible confession he could make.
As the hours passed, and hunger, thirst, and weakness muddled his thoughts, he formulated the only conclusion that made sense. Vicka’s death must be more than an accident of fate, more than a vagary of adverse circumstances. No, it was his punishment. Mateo had done terrible things; he had meted out the queen’s justice, had overseen the slaughter of a thousand Urecari. That blood was on his hands. Even though Mateo had also done good for Tierra, Ondun had demanded Vicka’s life as recompense. He could not plead for things to change, could ask for no mercy—what mercy was there? Vicka was already dead.
After a while, he gave up praying and simply knelt on the stone steps. He kept his thoughts and his heart blessedly empty.
Then Queen Anjine came to him.
He smelled the scent—not quite a perfume—that he had always associated with her. He heard the rustle of skirts behind him, and her soft compassionate voice. “Mateo, I’ve been trying to find you for days. I am so sorry.”
He kept his eyes closed, sure that it was just a dream. In his disoriented state, he expected to hear Vicka’s voice, but it was Anjine, always Anjine. Right now he wasn’t sure he could even remember what his wife’s voice sounded like. Vicka seemed an unreal memory to him, a brief flash of happiness that was gone, drowned out by more vivid memories of war.
When he didn’t answer, Anjine knelt beside him on the altar steps where Prester-Marshall Rudio had given his sermons, where Mateo and Vicka had been united in marriage, linking fishhooks together as a symbol of their enduring bond…a bond that had ended in smoke and fire.
“I sent town guardsmen all over Calay to search for you. Ammur Sonnen is grieving, but he is also worried sick about you. So am I.”
Mateo kept his head bowed, his eyes shut. He was incapable of forming words, though he longed to let his sorrow pour out. It would be so simple, but he couldn’t allow himself that.
Anjine continued, close to him, her voice barely a whisper. “I finally came here because Guard-Marshall Vorannen got a message from one of the presters, and he thought the grieving man in the kirk might be you. I came right away.”
When he heard her, Mateo could think only of the sweet girl who had been his childhood friend forever. They were inseparable, Tycho and Tolli, Mateo and Anjine…without a care, blissfully ignorant of what the future might hold.
He felt the touch of her fingers like a gentle sparrow on his shoulder. Finally, he opened reddened eyes to see her, and caught his breath. Anjine looked like an angel that the presters might have described.
His voice was a faint rasp. “Vicka is dead.”
“I know—I’m so sorry. I wanted to be there for you, to tell you myself.” When she wrapped her arms around him, he tensed, struggling to bottle his sadness inside. She held him tighter. “You comforted me on the day that Tomas…” She swallowed her own words. “Let me do the same for you.”
Mateo felt weak. He shuddered and forced himself to stand, pulling out of her grip, but she stood too and grasped his hand. “You can’t go back to the Sonnen house—stay with me at the castle. I’ll have your rooms reopened. It’ll be like old times, happy times. You can finally feel at home, if not at peace.”
Mateo let her lead him out of the kirk. “I don’t have any other home.”