Kartania glanced up at the sky just in time to see a crimson comet streaking across the sky low and to the west. It’s the same color as Zarenna’s fire, she thought wistfully.
A warm hand on her shoulder urged her forward wordlessly, and Kartania continued across the Academy of Dhias’s courtyard. Around her were training equipment; acolytes out training despite the night’s chill; aged, well-trimmed trees; and familiar stone walls topped with familiar engraved crenellations. The sun-like symbol of Dhias watched from all angles.
Despite her situation, the still-for-now-paladin held her head high and kept her arms as straight as she could. Cold steel dug into her wrists, and she felt the manacles’ weight against the thin clothes she’d worn—formal, but not representing her rank. An equally heavy, itching warmth rested just above her chest, suppressing her magic, its source locked around her neck.
Symbolic rather than practical. The figure walking her had given her the choice of going without; Kartania had declined. News of her complicity in High Priest Grants’s death, and her open support of a demon she considered a blood relation had swept like wildfire through the halls of the academy.
In the span of a week, she’d gone from her personal quarters to a cell to a guest suite for visiting dignitaries back to a cell and then back to her quarters. The return of High Priest Styon to Ardath and his tacit approval of her judgment stung Kartania, even as it had given her back a shred of dignity.
He could have prevented this, I know he could have.
“Relax, Kartania.”
Kartania remembered to breathe. “Thank you, Walter.”
“You really don’t have to go like this. There are plenty of side halls we could use, and you’re allowed to go without restraint.”
“This is the most direct route,” Kartania said coldly. She studied the looks of the acolytes and paladins-in-training. Everyone knew of her upcoming hearing, and of the trial that would surely follow. Some looked at her with pity, others with scorn. From a few, she saw curiosity, and from many of the paladins she saw nothing at all.
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“Kar—”
“Enough, Walter,” Kartania snapped. “Free to go without restraint? I am to be disarmed, my magic suppressed, and to be walked there with a minder like I am a lost pup!” Walter took a while to respond, and Kartania kept her eyes forward, boots crunching on gravel.
When her former mentor did, eventually, respond, it was in a quiet, concerned voice. “You do not have to do this. I would be in charge of rehabilitation, were you to accept their deal. Within two years’ time, you could even regain your status as a paladin.”
Kartania’s eye twitched as she forced herself to choose her words carefully. All eyes were on her, after all. “Guilt will be determined in the trial, Walter. Or is it that you think me compromised as well?”
Her old mentor’s silence was telling. Without even looking, Kartania could imagine his mustache twitching as he held his own words in. Part of her ached that she’d disappointed her mentor. Walter had been one of the kindest people she had met during her stay here, all the way through her brutal training.
Smiling, encouraging, even as he pushed her again and again to the brink.
Truly, he’d lost his star student the moment Zarenna had held Kartania in the old fort ruins. Even if she’d told her family—Dhias, that was still something to consider—otherwise for a while after, Kartania had long known where her allegiance lay. Perhaps she’d known even earlier when she’d laid flowers on her sister’s grave, this time wondering if the bones that were down there were truly all that was left.
Walter’s once-comforting hand on her shoulder nearly burned, and Kartania snapped her eyes shut to block the tears. Her mentor sighed, but he didn’t speak, and the hole in Tania’s heart grew ragged at the edges.
“I’m… you’re right. I’ll hear your case at tonight’s hearing.” His words were low, thoughtful.
Kartania fought not to presume the worst meaning. After all, she’d left Zarenna’s side for the time being to pursue her own ends. High Priest Yevon couldn’t be trusted—none of them could. The acolytes watching her?
Some could; some couldn’t.
And telling the good ones apart would require the edge of a blade.
So once again, Kartania drew in a breath, and she held her head high. Marching in plainclothes, handcuffed and with a magic-suppressant necklace that could only be described as a collar around her neck, she resolved to not present the whipped dog they wanted to see.
As the doors to the council chamber loomed large, she kept a steady, marching pace. These next few hours, days, months, she’d hold her head high, she’d speak her mind and her truths, and she’d listen. Listen for allies, for enemies, and the most important of all—those who could yet be either.
The Church of Dhias could yet be made an ally of Kartania and Zarenna’s fight.
“I’m truly sorry if I’ve disappointed you, Walter. Perhaps soon you will know the truth of my actions.”