"I have no comment."
The woman's cold voice rang out, carrying an authority that brooked no question.
"The one who made the Sorrow of the Sun was you!"
Viya bit down harder on the end of the phrase, without a trace of giving ground.
The woman looked down at a Viya who was saluting correctly and speaking with very little courtesy, and a touch of anger colored the ends of her brows.
"Do you presume to question Us? There was a time when We would sooner have severed the inheritance than fail to make you Saintess. Do not fail to know good from ill."
"I have no intention of questioning you. Only, how much longer can a sun maintained this way hold out..."
Viya's hand fell limply to her side. The one above sat on a stone chair with her hands folded, and her tone gave away neither pleasure nor anger.
"These matters are Ours to decide. Viya, Our dear child, some things have no absolute right or wrong to them. You are not wrong, and neither are We. If there is blame, blame the caprice of the world.
"Though it has been a long while now, and you have still not brought your spouse to meet Us. We granted you the privilege. This pendant will count as Our having met her once."
The woman gave a low laugh, as though allowing Viya no opening to argue further.
Below the platform, Viya felt somewhat powerless. Even at this stage she was afraid her superior might take her wife away.
That Sorrow of the Sun counted as a rap on the knuckles.
Still, Viya knew her old superior was a virgin, and that this was supposedly only a way of frightening those below her, the business about needing a marriage to become Saintess included. That was a joke too.
"My lady, is there anything you have wanted to eat lately?"
"Fetch some osmanthus cake from the mortal world."
Osmanthus cake...
It sounded familiar to Viya. A certain Dragon King on the subcontinent was said to be fond of it as well.
"Yes."
"And bring back some scrolls that can record spells while you are about it. Certain old ones are waking."
"Who?"
"The witches."
A smile curved the woman's mouth. "Nothing but a swarm of flies, buzzing about at Our feet because that is all they dare."
Viya didn't answer that, only talked with her a while longer, and before the woman withdrew, she threw down one more line.
"We have no wish as yet to insert Ourself into another's romance. But if a certain person cannot keep watch over her own wife, We would be willing to offer some instruction.
"Your spouse has good foundations. We can feel her affinity for magic. Do not wake Us so casually again; next time the payment will not be settled with a few osmanthus cakes."
The woman's figure vanished. Viya had stood as though facing a great enemy, and only once she was well and truly gone did she let out her breath.
Today's probing had cleared up several things for her.
Marilou's getting hold of the Sorrow of the Sun was indeed the Temple Ancestor's doing.
There had been no direct contact; it was bestowed in the form of a gift. If Viya set herself against it, she would not only offend the Ancestor but plant a grievance in Marilou.
Which would make holding on to Marilou harder still.
It was rather like being short of money, having a debt appear in the household, and then moving to block a great magnate who wants to fund your wife.
She was the one in the bind. She was also the one who was helpless.
Calling it a rap on Marilou's knuckles was less accurate than calling it a rap on her own.
There was good news of a sort in it, though. The Ancestor's meaning was that she hoped Viya could keep Marilou.
And if Viya couldn't, the Ancestor would step in herself.
Except that by the time she saw Marilou again, the girl might already be in somebody else's bed.
If you will not do the thing decently, someone else will do it decently for you.
Viya didn't dare follow that thought any deeper. In her heart of hearts she had begun to resent Marilou a little: three years, and what are you running from?
But the reality was that in a few more months Marilou would leave, and it might be that the Ancestor carried her off, or that Viya found some way to keep her.
Either way she would have to accept the fact.
She rose and left the Temple, and the tension went out of her face.
She went first to where Marilou lived, and didn't go close, only watched from a distance, and something in her turned over.
Because the girl had started slacking again.
In the past Viya would absolutely have gone in and given Marilou a hiding, but now everyone was eyeing her wife hungrily.
Even if she wanted to act she had to weigh the consequences, and that sat very badly with her. Her wife. Did what her own wife did now depend on outsiders' faces?
Then whose wife was she, exactly?
Viya calmed herself several times over, her stomach rising and falling faintly, and in the end she sighed.
She turned and left Marilou's quarters.
Marilou, meanwhile, was still lying on the ground. It wasn't that she didn't want to train; it was that she'd found the Sorrow of the Sun had rather a strong kick to it.
A moment ago she had tried drawing out the pendant's power, and her method was crude and simple: practice dark magic.
She'd tried it, and sure enough it went about as she'd expected. When this pendant turned nasty it wanted to kill even the person wearing it!
It had very nearly blown her hair out into an afro.
Through it, though, she'd worked one thing out: the Sorrow of the Sun seemed to have no will of its own, and attacked purely on its reading of the mana's attribute.
Sun-aligned, and it granted an amplifying blessing. Anything else, and it simply snuffed the power out.
For reasons she couldn't name, Marilou felt more and more that this was a kind of restriction, as though someone unseen were steering what she learned.
Because she had distinctly felt the pendant pulling its power. Had it struck at full strength, she would be scattered in pieces by now.
That she could lie here intact meant the pendant had held its own magic in check.
She lifted a hand and closed it around the pendant, her feelings complicated.
Before the family banquet she had a chance to attend her first Witches' Assembly. At first, getting this pendant had seemed to improve her odds; now it looked as though some other hazard she knew nothing about was brewing.
"Never mind. It's obvious somebody has set a board with me on it, and if I pretend I can't see any of it, something is going to go wrong."
Marilou sat up off the ground, wondering whether, if she had coasted completely from the start and paid no attention to anything, she might have avoided drawing the eyes of these great figures.
Or had someone been scheming against her the whole time, and it was only now, after she'd thrashed about a bit, that she felt the line pulling at her?
Marilou couldn't work it out, and settled for getting her things ready in peace. The Assembly was almost here.
A few nights later.
Marilou lay flat on her bed feigning deep sleep, gripping the card that stood for the falling sun, touched the Sorrow of the Sun pendant at her throat, and spoke the incantation.
A stretch of agony like having her five senses stripped away came over her. The Marilou lying on the bed shuddered once and seemed to sink into a deeper sleep.
In a deeper darkness, Marilou's consciousness woke slowly. She looked up and saw a blazing sun bearing down on her, a ball of fire so vast it was nearly swallowing her.
Her mind snapped into total focus, her body shook as though it were about to die, adrenaline surged, and in that moment the pendant at her throat rose.
The blazing sun, only just kindled, slowly went out and began falling as a meteor toward the distant ground.
The scene cut off. Marilou lifted her head and found that all of it had been a dream, and when she opened her eyes she saw a long gray-white table, with several women in strangely shaped masks all turned to look at her.