134th of Nemulum, 313 EA
Peyr Myarsa
“Lady abbess!” Leça called out across the warbling din in lashed-together hope. “Lady abbess! Please, we must speak!”
The faces in their immediate vicinity turned to show only withering irritation. The liturgy which they had wormed their way into had only just let out, filtering from the worship-hall onto the deck of a level on Peyr’s ziggurat that Leça had never before tread. Those around were draped in fine robes, and many carried with them axes of rarified iron. Leça, by grimy contrast, felt fully disarmed. In this moment they were still among the people of Peyr, as they always had been, but at this great height they felt themselves a grating force.
They could not afford to let that feeling keep them from their intent, though, and so they pushed through it as they pushed through the throng itself. Their quarry passed into view only momentarily, the high abbess ascending a staircase to her chambers as she waved behind to the onlooking devotees in vacant pleasantry.
“Highness!” Leça’s cries continued well after it was clear that they would not be heard. “Lady Abbess!
The hand to stop Leça’s advance was precise, delicate and clad in a ring of sharpened iron. It pressed into their sternum with a nauseating force. “What business have you with the high abbess?”
“I-” Leça felt themselves crumbling as their momentum fell out from under them. “There are things that I know, things that the abbess must know.”
The figure that Leça spoke to was highborn, undoubtably, her angular features blooming from the pressed garb of a conservator priestess. “There are few things the high abbess of reclamation is not abreast of.”
Leça found themselves stuttering, as though the air had suddenly gone rotten. “I’m sure that’s true, but even still. I must speak to her. I must.”
“You are not of a class to approach her eminence. You draw attention by your mere presence here.” The conservator lead Leça over to a secluded corner, ringed in potted trees. “But perhaps there is another way to get your message to her. I have the ear of the High Abbess, on occasion.”
Leça wavered a moment, untrusting, “If I were to share with you what I have seen, you would pass it along to her?”
“Yes.” The conservator’s words dripped out, “My faith demands that I would, if it truly is a matter deserving of the high abbesses attention.”
Leça drew in long breath, sighing out in staccato exhalation. “I am Leça Skhadova, I live in the third ward of the base. When this story has been told, from me to you and from you to the Abbess, please come and find me. My heart will not rest until I know that the wrong I am to share with you has been rectified.”
“Leça, my name is Niolett Glarka.” The conservator placed a cloying hand on Leça’s. “You have my word, I will come to find you at your home.”
Leça nodded, though the certainty they had hoped for moldered away, as they launched into the tale of their people’s abandonment and Marek’s loss for the priestess Niolett.
The Etra Anthology 