Reign of Shadows - Deborah Chester [66]
“Yes.”
Anas slopped pacing. “Resta has prepared the usual course to teach the girl receptiveness to seduction and the arts of—”
“No,” the Magria said sharply. She pressed together the scars that crisscrossed her palms, remembering their legacy. “I shall teach her myself.”
“You!” Anas said in complete astonishment before she tried to master herself. “But—”
The Magria lifted her brows coolly. “You have objections?”
“No, of course not, but—it’s just that you have taken no personal interest in the training of any of the imperial brides.”
“Only the first,” the Magria said softly. Her mind folded back to the memory of a tall, clear-eyed woman with a fiery temper and a will of iron. Fauvina came from a warrior family, a mob of squabbling warmongers who were finally defeated and tamed by Kostimon. Fauvina had been the object of truce, the bride, the settlement. She had gone to Kostimon’s bed like a tigress, unwilling and furious. But genuine love had been born of their initial passion and hostility. With love came liking, and with liking came an alliance of both hearts and minds. As empress Fauvina had used her intellect well, fashioning many of the laws under which the empire still operated. She had been tough but fair. She often fought, but she could also listen. She had heeded the Magria’s training, and under her sponsorship the Pen- estrican orders had spread and flourished. Women had known equality in the first century of the empire. They had owned property and could speak up for themselves.
“Kostimon loved her,” the Magria said softly. “She believed in him, in what he could do. She took his dreams and made them hers. She gave him all the hope in her soul, and it strengthened his arm when he forged the provinces into an empire and changed the world forevermore. For that, he loved her.”
“Fauvina refused his cup of immortality,” Anas said flatly, appearing unimpressed by the sentiment of this recollection. “She lies as dust in her tomb, and we have an emperor who still seeks to cheat death.”
Not until after her death had things changed. The purges under the Vindicants had been a horrible time. The Magria remembered sisters who had been burned alive, those who had been hunted and used by dreadots, moags, and worse for the entertainment of the new noble class. Some sisters had been tortured in ways far beyond physical torment by the inquisitors of the Vindicants.
This dark time of persecution and injustice had driven the Penestricans apart. A schism formed between those who wanted to cling to the true precepts of the goddess mother and those who wanted to forsake the gentle power of the earth for the vicious power of the goddess Mael. Finally they had broken apart, to be forever enemies, but the harm remained. Although through time the Penestricans had achieved some measure of trust again, they had never forgotten what Kostimon had allowed. And of late there had been a scattering of disturbances and incidents that warned that open persecution might return.
Now, however, after centuries of waiting, the Magria almost had the tool of her revenge in her hands. She thought again of her vision, aware that death awaited her. But, like Kostimon, she had lived a long time. It would be worth everything to see a woman of her training on the throne again. It would be worth everything to have some hand in the destiny of the new emperor who would follow Kostimon’s reign.
“I shall train the bride,” the Magria said firmly, lifting her head high. “No one else, not even you, will have the governing of her lessons until I am finished.”
Anas still looked troubled. “Do we dare stir up old animosities?”
“If we don’t act now, we shall never act! Don’t be a fool, Anas. I chose you as much for your courage as your intellect.”
Color stained Anas’s cheeks. She bowed her head. “Yes, Magria. As you say, so it shall be.”
“Our banner shall once again fly with respect everywhere,” the Magria said. “All the old wrongs shall be righted. And what Sien and his followers plan for us shall be thwarted.” She smiled, and in her heart she drew