Saia was about to break her resolution to be quiet when the scholar sat down with the assembly instead of starting to talk. The abbot announced that the first topic was choosing a new candidate for Koidan's role.
“I know that some of you will accuse me of not taking this situation seriously enough,” Laius said, eyes following the circles of the assembly. Saia knew he was looking for her. “But Vizena’s punishment, if necessary, is a decision the priors alone have to take. Discussing it in front of the assembly is not something we would usually do. Since this problem was raised here, we will end it here, but first we'll give space to topics that request the participation of the whole community.
“Weak,” Saia whispered. They hoped to have less public, since people tended to leave around dinner, some of them not coming back.
She didn’t pay attention, observing the consciousness scholar instead, even if she was far enough she couldn’t see her expression. She felt lucky that Gaila was comfortable with silence, since she didn’t feel like discussing that particular debate with anyone who wasn’t Aili.
Two hours later, after a new candidate had been chosen and small groups had started to leave for dinner, the silence returned in the temple. The organizers brought some chairs and set them down in a circle for the priors. The abbot gestured for the scholar to approach.
“I examined the current situation of Suimer,” she started, standing from her spot in the crowd while the priors sat down. “I would tell you the result immediately, but I believe that the methods I had to apply to reach that conclusion are extremely relevant, and I fear that if I don't start from the beginning, you'll only consider the result and disregard the rest.”
“I promise you we won't,” the abbot said.
“Another thing I'm worried about, Laius,” she said, “Is that you will consider some of my methods irregular and try to deviate the conversation on what I should or shouldn't have done. I suggest you avoid that, or this will become a screaming match. All your fussing about tradition and protocol can go to the crater and jump, for all I'm concerned.”
She nodded in the direction of the well as she said that.
“Can I have a chair?” she asked then, looking at the organizers. The man with the hourglass carefully set the tool down and jogged across the room.
“I descended the mountain from Tilau’s side,” the scholar reprised, “Then entered Suimer dressed as a merchant, with a bag of clothes to sell. Vizena has welcomed me, inspected my wares and asked me some questions, just as expected. I didn't perceive any of the telltale signs that she'd guessed I was a monk.”
The helper returned with the chair. She took it and stepped onto the platform around the well, then planted it down outside of the semi-circle, forcing half of the priors to turn around completely in order to look at her.
“I only started asking questions after three days in a local inn. The observations up to that point hadn't shown anything anomalous. People were going about their business, for the most part. I’ve noticed that most of them tensed and adopted a more formal demeanor when Vizena addressed them, but I’ve seen it happen with other gods.”
Saia thought back at her life at Suimer: she remembered being tense all the time, and it got worse as she grew up and her life became bigger, with more things for Vizena to control. Knowing all of that was invisible to a scholar specialized in reading feelings was jarring, even if she knew that every inhabitant’s effort, all the time, was focused on hiding their true feelings, for fear that the goddess would find out what they actually thought.
“The second phase was interacting with people. I expected it to be particularly difficult, if Vizena was so focused on not letting any outsider know about what she was doing. On the contrary, people were extremely friendly with me. It was easy to talk to them and they answered my questions without hesitation. They also had a positive opinion of Vizena, and from what I could see it was genuine.”
Saia felt the need to get up and explain how the goddess managed to keep up appearances with foreigners, how good she was at it, but she remembered Maris’s threat and the promise she'd made to Rabam. She could only clamp her hands together and hope that Riena was good enough at her job to understand everything by herself.
“I decided to stay a bit longer and see if it was a ruse or their opinions were genuine. When I communicated to the goddess my intention to stay, she was fairly welcoming. I roamed around the village, observing the houses and inhabitants. It was then that I realized the people I had talked to were mostly unconnected to the rest of the population.”
“Elaborate, please,” Maris said.
“I saw them around, talking to each other. They tried to start a conversation with me too, every time they met me, but never with other people. The interactions with the rest of the inhabitants were brief and limited to buying products and asking for simple information.”
“So they were a separate group?” a helper prior asked.
“Exactly. The general population avoided them, and they only interacted with me and other foreigners. And each other.”
“And the goddess,” the abbot said.
Riena nodded.
“It was more difficult to witness, because they were more relaxed than the rest when communicating with her. But they did, there's no doubt about it. More regularly than the other inhabitants.”
Saia relaxed her shoulders. She had understood.
“So they're guards? Spies?”
“That's what I thought, at first. But they didn't behave as guards, they genuinely thought there was nothing wrong with the village and they didn't do anything unusual, except talking to foreigners.”
“So who are they?” Maris asked, arms crossed. “People she has instructed to make her look good?”
“Something like that, but you're forgetting the part where their feelings are genuine. No, I think she has simply treated them differently from the rest. Better, in some ways. And since they are loyal to her, they're more likely to listen without causing problems when she asks them to talk to some foreigner.”
Saia nodded. There were some details missing, but Riena had understood the big picture.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“This fact alone proved to me that Vizena was hiding something,” she continued. “And since she was trying so hard to prevent me from speaking to the rest of the inhabitants, I tried to do exactly that. I approached a couple of them, but both times they ended the conversation immediately, pretending to be busy. The third time I was successful.”
She paused, looking at the abbot. He sighed.
“This is the part I won't like, right?”
Riena nodded.
“I found two women talking to each other, neither of them part of the cover-up group. They were so focused on the conversation that they didn't see me approach, or I'm sure they would have left before I could get too close. I pretended to fall and grabbed the hand of one of them. I influenced her energies the minimum amount necessary to convince her to trust me.”
“You should have asked for permission,” Maris said.
“There wasn't time, and frankly, I would have done it even if you had refused.”
“You're not above the rules, Riena.”
“I am until you find someone that can do my job half as good as I can.”
The abbot raised his hands, palms open.
“We'll discuss it later. Go on, Riena, please.”
“Thanks to this trick, I managed to talk to her for a bit longer. I pretended to be sorry and asked her about the village in general. She became less and less spontaneous the more we talked. Her speech slowed down and she paused a lot, as if someone was suggesting to her what to say.”
“What kind of questions were you asking?” a prior of the helpers asked.
“Simple information about the village. What were the best stalls at the market, the best dishes... Nothing about the goddess, in any case. But it was clear it was her suggesting the answers.”
Saia wished to know the name of that woman, to grasp that faint connection to a person she probably knew, at least from afar. But she couldn't ask, and the conversation was already moving on.
“In the end, I let her go. I didn't need the answers anymore, because I already had the final proof that Vizena mentally abused the people of Suimer.”
She tilted her head to look at the abbot.
“You won't like this either.”
He made a resigned gesture with his hand, inviting her to go on.
“I had the chance to lightly touch her arm again during the conversation. This time, I focused on reading her viss more than influencing it.”
Maris leaned forward as if to say something, but a glance from the abbot stopped them.
“It's difficult to explain what I found to someone who doesn’t specialize in reading viss to a high enough level, but emotions can linger in the body for a long time after being triggered, even if the person doesn't feel them anymore. They get replaced over time by other imprints, until there are no traces left. Well, this woman... She had fresh fear on the surface, which made sense, considering she'd just talked to her goddess. So I went deeper, and I found layers and layers of old fears that influenced all the other emotions. There wasn't a single speck of viss that didn't also contain some fear, even if minimal.”
Saia closed her eyes. She had feared that Riena wouldn't have found anything to the point that she hadn't anticipated what a decisive proof could look like. She tried to focus on the conversation and not on the question that was knocking on the inside of her head: how much of that fear had been her fault?
“One person doesn't prove anything,” said the prior who had calculated how much energy was left inside Vizena’s sphere.
“No, I know. I went to the market after that conversation in order to have access to a bigger number of people without occasional touches being too suspect. Everyone I came in contact with had a similar amount of accumulated fear, regardless of age. Except for the people in the cover-up group, who had normal levels of residual fear, and obviously foreigners.”
Riena stopped talking, hands one over the other on her crossed legs. Saia tensed, paying close attention to the glances the abbot was exchanging with the priors.
“We have to punish her. Harshly,” Maris said.
“We have already decided on a course of action," another prior of the sentinels said. Maris didn't answer, lowering their eyes instead.
“We'll send a warning,” the abbot said. “Wait two weeks, send Riena again, then re-evaluate. If the situation won't have improved by then, we'll remove two years of her life and continue until she obeys.”
Saia was standing before he had finished the sentence. Maris’s eyes darted on her, followed by the abbot's. She raised a hand, showing the red stone in her palm.
“Five minutes,” Laius warned, then nodded in her direction.
She thought about what to say while the helpers with the bag and the hourglass crossed the room toward her. She could insist that it wasn't enough, that the only way to save her village was to remove Vizena entirely. But they hadn't even listened to Maris when they had outright stated it, and they were a prior. If she wanted to convince them, she had to find a better argument.
She almost sighed out loud, despite all of the eyes pointed at her. She needed Aili, even if all she said was to wait. Her thoughts went to the day she left, and there she found the answer she needed.
“What you're asking is a sacrifice,” she began, trying not to glance at the hourglass too often. “You’re asking the people of my village to suffer longer because you don't want to waste the power of a goddess that should not be a deity anymore. You'll let them suffer because your rules don't cover this kind of situation, because despite all of your sentinels and controls you never thought to check that they were actually happy, or at least not miserable.”
She glanced at the monks sitting around her, looking for a friendly face. They were all listening to her intently. She remembered the parts of her speech that she hadn’t had time to use and mixed them with the feelings that were swelling up in her chest.
“The people down there don't know that you exist, that things will get better in the next months, provided Vizena won't find a way to deceive you again. You're asking this sacrifice knowing that they would never agree, because you wouldn't either. This village was built here specifically because you feared that a bad god could take control, and yet you don't see how important it is to remove an actually abusive goddess from her position. You don't want to waste the energy inside that sphere, but it was already wasted the second you allowed that ratbrain to become a goddess.”
She stopped to take a deep breath and glanced at the hourglass: her time was almost over.
“This whole situation was your mistake. I can maybe excuse the fact that you didn't know, even if you had everything you needed to do a better job and failed anyway. But letting her stay after you have proof of what she's done isn't a mistake anymore. It means that you want her to stay there and keep doing what she's done.”
The abbot lightly shook his head.
“It's not what you want?” Saia interpreted. “Then show it. Show that you actually believe in the mission you have chosen for yourselves.”
Her time was over. She wanted to say more, but Maris was already glaring at her and she didn't want to lose her spot among the sentinels. She was about to sit down, when the abbot spoke.
“What do you suggest we do? Five minutes.”
The helper with the hourglass promptly turned it.
“It's not my job to make this decision,” Saia said, glaring at Laius. “But whatever you do, remove her. You can handle her village like you're doing with Lausune, and choose a better substitute at the trials. Whoever comes second or something, just make sure they're not like her.”
There was still time, but she had already answered the question and didn't want to anger Maris by going off-topic, so she sat down next to Gaila.
“What do you think of this proposal?” the abbot said looking at the priors, his tone vaguely exasperated.
“We must remove her,” Maris said, without the force of their previous declaration, as if they didn't expect anyone to listen to them.
“With so much viss at stake, it should be our last resort,” said the prior who had made the calculations. “I suggest we go on with our decision.”
“Taking away two years isn't enough,” the other prior of the scholars said. “We should go back to three, at the very least.”
“Let's also keep in mind that Daira isn't here,” a prior of the helpers said. “We shouldn't change our decision so drastically with a prior missing.”
“We're also ignoring the fact that removing her without cracking her is close to impossible,” Rades said. “It would put us in danger if she gets awakened at some point. If we were to remove her, it would still require time and a lot of planning.”
He looked in Saia's direction, as if he was explaining that to her specifically. She wanted to scream that they could find a solution in two days if they put effort into it, if they considered saving Suimer a priority at all. But she kept silent.
“So it's decided,” the abbot said. “We'll take away three years immediately, and then after each reassessment, until the situation drastically improves.”
The votes were all in favor. Saia thought about the plan. She needed to breed more snakes, in case someone tried to stop her.