Her Majesty’s Daughters

This story contains a special content note roughly halfway through. Click on it to see content warnings and a summary of the affected section (so you can skip it without missing anything).

Maple first met Sister Chalcedony two weeks into her time at Silver River, and quickly came to regret it. She was a mere acolyte despite her near-decade of service, having not yet taken the vows that would bind her to one of the empire’s saints, and so the cloister did not quite know what to do with her. In a proper convent she might have been given to the ranks of Saint Lune of the Hearth, or else to where she was most needed, but Silver River had not been proper since it last drew Her Majesty’s attention down upon its flame-scorched roofs.

She was sitting in the dining hall, nibbling one a breakfast of crusty bread, smooth cheese, and too-soft figs, and thinking about nothing more than what tasks the day might set upon her shoulders. As friendly as most of the Sisters were she still preferred to eat in silence, and all the others seemed to have quickly learned that—except, of course, for Sister Chalcedony, who plopped herself down so close to Maple that the younger woman couldn’t help but feel the warmth and pressure of the older nun’s thigh pressing against hers.

Sister Chalcedony, she would learn, always delighted in breaking her possessions’ boundaries.

“I haven’t seen you here before! You’re new, aren’t you, Sister …?”, Sister Chalcedony asked, knowing from Maple’s plain grey wimple that she was not yet due that title.

“Maple, ma’am. And I’m not yet—”

“Oh, what a polite little thing! I’m Sister Chalcedony, Maple, but don’t worry about the title,” she said, winking. “I see to the herbs out on the terrace. And the private collection, of course.”

“The private collection, Chalc—ma’am?” She said, immediately thinking better of such an expression of overt familiarity.

“Oh, yes, you wouldn’t know it yet, would you? Mother blessed our simple halls with quite a trove of old records.”

“I see,” she said, and took another bite of her dwindling meal.

Most of the cloister’s other nuns could draw proper conclusions from her silence, and Maple was not terribly happy at having been found by one who refused to. Her chattering was easy to listen to, at least, even if she didn’t seem to be saying much of any substance. Just words, flowing out and through, all in that too-happy register. Like a girl who’s just been given a new toy, so excited, so eager.

Maple wouldn’t wonder at Sister Chalcedony’s lack of respect for Her Highness until much, much later.

Visitors are uncommon at the Silver River Cloister, the compound being both awkward to reach and of little material import. It was conceived as a cradle for the purest learning and worship, free from any social obligations outside its walls; but in its youth the faltering church found itself in need of a place to deposit its more unruly charges and Her Majesty carried it forward into her new order for much the same reason. Despite this, Sister Chalcedony does not stir from her seat when she hears the fuss and ceremony of its gates welcoming in a carriage and its guards.

Why would she? Give it a bit of time and she’ll learn everything she needs to, especially with Sister Ivy sitting across from her, craning her head to get a better view. The woman is another of her special little projects, and such a useful gossip besides! And even if she wasn’t there, breakfast today is rose pudding—a special treat in honor of Saint Elara’s triumph over the Demon Gannett, and all the sweeter knowing that all of its ingredients come from her own little garden.

All the ingredients that matter, anyway. The convent’s almond trees were in a bad state when she arrived and the last year’s weather was unkind to them, no matter how she worked to dredged up secrets from the special collection’s grimoires. A vexing gap in her abilities while the rest of her projects proceeded apace.

Her nose twitches. The visitor’s smell is all too familiar. The road, yes, dust and ash and pollen, and the warm, well-oiled leather scales that march in endless ranks down her overdress and drip from her elaborate braids; normal, common smells, that one might encounter on any visitor to their little cloister. But there is another scent, too; a spicy, hungry sweat perfumed with teak and a hint of pipe smoke. A unique blend.

It is the scent of betrayal, and before she entered the cloister Sister Chalcedony smelled it every day.

“It’s good to see you again, sister,” the Fulminous Princess says, standing behind her. Her voice is as warm as ever. She always had to be the better actress.

One last bite of her pudding, as much of a delay as protocol could be said to allow, and Sister Chalcedony must turn and greet the architect of her downfall.

It is hardly like looking in a mirror. Once they easily passed for reflections, but that time has long since gone, their bodies shifting as they each walked their own path. The cloister has made her soft and careful, with weathered hands and an eager tongue, while her sister was hardened by the exercise of their mother’s power. No callouses adorn her palms and no careless word would ever slip through her lips; and Sister Chalcedony knows the spark flickering in the depths of her eyes. It should have been hers.

“I wasn’t expecting you, your highness! And on a feast day too, oh! You’ve chosen such a good time to visit us; you’ll stay for supper, won’t you? But, as much as I’d like to entertain you,” she gestures at her almost finished meal, “I really must be about my tasks. Can’t let anything get out of hand, hmm?”

She wasn’t always so free with her words. Few can be, in the palace, and she’s gratified to see the princess’s eyebrows quirk in confusion. Change is dangerous, after all.

“… indeed. I had hoped to talk with you about old times, sister.”

“It’s Sister Chalcedony now, your highness, but I’m sure you already knew that. I am bound by holy vows to the service of Saint Langwidere,” she makes the customary obeisance, the line and the key, “and so it is improper to address me as I was.”

A simple correction; the protocols and laws that bind them both. But, she says, look at me: look at how I still dare to speak back to you after all these years, princess. Taste the poison in my tongue.

“Ah. You have my apologies, Sister Chalcedony,” an uncommon thing for her to give, “I thought—well. Can I walk with you, Sister?”

“Of course, your highness, though I doubt that anything I get up to here is as interesting as things back in the capitol! It’s all weeding and cleaning and prayer, nothing of interest,” and if that’s not true now then she’ll make sure it is by the time the princess is gone.

“… of course, we were cleaning up that disaster for months afterwards!” Sister Chalcedony finally concluded her story, leaving Maple nodding and blinking over her barely-begun embroidery. The highest terrace garden caught the sun so beautifully from its perch above the cloister’s walls, and the warm, perfumed air was full of the convent’s bees’ drowsy droning. Even without Sister Chalcedony’s endless stories and her sing-song voice it would have been the perfect place for an afternoon nap. “And, oh, might I ask why you entered the service, dear? It’s not often that one sees someone give their life to the saints when they’re still so young.”

“It was,” she usually wouldn’t say, but, “not entirely my choice, ma’am.”

“Ah? Is there a story there, dear?” That, she wouldn’t answer. The silence was sweet. Her eyes fluttered. “… well, I’m always happy to offer council to those who need it, Maple. That’s what we’re here for, really! Why, just two years ago I helped Sister Hazel with a rather vexing little quandary that was leading her into such distraction …”

And the stories resumed.

Sister Chalcedony really did have so many of them. Gossip about the other nuns, secondhand tales from other convents, scraps of possibly-forbidden apocrypha about the saints. Some familiar, most not. It was easier not to listen, to let her voice fade into just another droning presence, its edges dripping into the bees and the wind and the slow rumble of the river whose ancient bounty gave the cloister its name.

Stories about love, and family, and how it can all go wrong—and bile filled Maple’s mouth, a sudden spurt. She was on her knees, retching onto ruined fabric, yellow and green and orange, spotted with the last remains of her breakfast. Sister Chalcedony watching, her expression unreadable.

She fled.

If she’d stayed a bit longer she’d have seen Sister Chalcedony’s smile. It is unlikely that it would have changed anything, but there’s always a chance; and that night, after more than half a decade of absence, her nightmares resumed.

There is an unpleasant smell in the garden; something not wholly subsumed by the freshly turned gravel and the scattered wood chips. An unfamiliar flower, perhaps, though to the Fulminous Princess’s practiced nose it has more in common with the exercise of power. She’d never thought that the stories about saint-sworn nuns were true, but …

“Have a seat, your highness! Oh, don’t mind the dew, it’ll come right out. Right by the mint, if you please, it likes to meet new people.”

The plant is colonizing the wet bench. Sister Chalcedony’s chair, a few feet in front of her, is pristine and looks much more comfortable. Well, she can swallow a little insult.

“Your gardens seem very fruitful, Sister.”

“Oh, yes! We had to bring in the right soil, when I first started, but now we get most of it from the compost,” the princess declines to hear her digression about table scraps and worms. It’s unimportant. In the palace this is a matter for servants; how far has she fallen, that she can yammer on about the reprocessing of rubbish for so long? It’s almost enough to make a princess cry. “And of course we have the most lovely bees,” she finishes.

“For honey?”

“No. Just for being bees.”

“Seems a shame. Do you remember the taste of the honey-drops mother used to—”

“No,” what a sharp word! “Your highness. I have set aside what I was before, as Saint Langwidere,” her hands move in a nonsense gesture, “teaches. I would thank you not to try to remind me of them.”

“I see,” she does not. They were so close, once, before she did what had to be done. And she is sure that her sister never knew it was her, “you have my apologies, Sister.”

“Thank you. Well,” Sister Chalcedony sighs, “you have not yet said why you’re visiting our little cloister. Surely Her Majesty hasn’t chosen to cast her eyes upon us?”

“Would it matter if she had?” A sharp question, and a dangerous one. The princess already knows the answer she will be given.

“Of course not! We are loyal here, your highness, and though the church declines one still finds ways to serve as one can.”

“Good. Good.”

“… so is there a reason, or are you simply here to watch me weed?”

“I wanted to see you after so long, Sister. But,” she leans forward, her leathers flexing around her, “mother did set me a task. When she gave you to the church she also bestowed a treasure upon this cloister.”

“She did,” Sister Chalcedony admits. A single blink is the only possible marker of surprise, though the princess knows that she thought that her true duty was a dire secret. She does not elaborate.

“The special collection,” the princess clarifies. “Seized books. Grimoires.”

“All nonsense, of course,” she dissembles. A better actress than she was, the princess thinks; what has she been up to here? “And dangerously so. It is so easy for a credulous mind to be overtaken by such things, your highness; that is why they are locked away.”

“Nevertheless, our mother,” Sister Chalcedony’s eye twitches. It’s still so easy to break her mask, “has sent me to retrieve the contents of one or two of these volumes. The ones pertaining to the bee-eaters. Just to better understand their incorrect beliefs, of course.”

The garden was not always this quiet, though it’s only now that the princess notices it. The pregnant air; the ozone speckling the cloudless day’s edges. Sister Chalcedony is very still. Her hand aches for her sword, left in trust at the cloister’s gate.

“… well,” Sister Chalcedony finally replies, “if Her Majesty wills it then of course I must obey.” She rises from her seat with a little huff, her knees creaking. Suddenly old in a garden filling with bees. “Follow me, then, won’t you?”

“I can see that this has been weighing heavily on you, dear, and I’m so glad that you’ve decided to come to me with it,” she said, her voice so uncharacteristically quiet that Maple found herself leaning forward to catch each word. The smallest gap in focus and she’d have lost her in the humming bees.

“It’s just, I’ve been having these nightmares the last few months, ma’am. And I thought, well …”

“Of course! We can’t have any secrets between us, not if you’re going to join me in the service of Saint Langwidere,” the line and the key, as unthinking as a buzzing bee, “as I’m sure you’re planning to.”

“Um, I wasn’t—”

“Hush, dear. Hush. Just listen to me, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” though she could barely hear. The bees almost sounded like they were singing, dancing around Sister Chalcedony’s words. An absurd thought. Bees do not obey nuns.

“Good girl. Now, I’m not going to ask you to tell me about the nightmares yet, okay?”

A little nod.

“We’ll get to that later. The waking mind isn’t good at dealing with things from sleep, right?”

Was that true? She didn’t know.

“Nod for me, dear, there’s a good girl. The waking mind just gets so confused, so muddled up with things. It’s always thinking something, always needing to make another choice, so we’re going to go around it a bit, okay? Nod for me, dear.”

Nod, nod. Her face felt weird.

“There you go. Such a good girl! And it’s good for you to let go of your choices from time to time, isn’t it? Nod, dear. It’s better for you. Nod. It makes things easier. Nod.”

Her mind was a butterfly beating against glass, its efforts futile. Doomed. Struggling even as she faltered and fell, swarmed by bees.

“There we are. Open your mouth for me, dear. Good girl! And let me see your tongue …”

She blushed as Sister Chalcedony inspected her mouth, though she couldn’t have said why. It never felt odd when a chirurgeon checked her teeth. Perhaps there was something unpleasant about her calloused fingers on her tongue. The warmth of her breath. Maple shivered, and she withdrew.

“You’re such a good girl, aren’t you? Nod. So obedient! Nod for me, dearie. Sister Chalcedony knows best. Better than you, certainly.”

Of course she nodded. She was all those things, and how could she think to question her seniors? Her, a mere acolyte? No. She’d asked for this. Asked for help. The best medicine was always a bit bitter.

“Now, you felt how much better it was to have your mouth open, didn’t you? Nod.”

Clear instructions. She’d been an acolyte for so long, hadn’t she? Growing used to obeying. To losing herself in whatever tasks her convent’s sisters had for her. It wasn’t even hard.

“Ehehe, you really are being so good for me, aren’t you?” She nodded. “Well, let’s put your mouth to better use. Tell me about your dream, dear.”

“Y-yes, ma’am …”, the words came with difficulty, echoing up from somewhere deep inside her. Was that really her, talking? Or someone with her voice?

“Still so formal! I think you should call me mother, shouldn’t you? Here and now. I’m sure Mother Superior won’t mind a bit, mhmm?”

“yyes, mother,” she hardly heard Sister Chalcedony’s purr of gratification. It was so easy to obey.

“Now. The dream, dearie. Just let it spill out of you, okay?” Nod, nod. “It’s so much easier to talk. To share. Don’t hold anything back.”

“i wwas, i was …”

Maple was in her family’s house, after the funeral. After everyone left, and her father started drinking and couldn’t stop. A vast bear of a man, stumbling around, breaking things. His belt undone, his pants stained with urine. She made a noise, and he noticed her, and …

That was not how it happened.

Maple was standing in the kitchen. A knife huge in her tiny hands, sharp and wicked. She turned it towards herself, and towards him, and could not decide before he kicked her like one does an unruly dog. Her body broke against the wall, the knife tearing into her.

That never happened.

Maple was lying in bed, terrified, and her father was crying. Begging her to forgive him, like the saints did. To forgive his sins, even as he loosened his belt and shrugged away his trousers and the stink of him filled her nose.

Sister Chalcedony’s habit was hiked up to her waist, exposing herself, and Maple was sitting, watching her hand move in hungry little circles between her thick thighs. The palm pressing down, the fingers twitching and stroking. Her undergarments barely able to contain her. Unable to move and unable to stop talking. The nightmares spilling out of her to taint the soil under her knees.

Whimpering. Praying to the saints. Begging her mother to save her as her father grunted her name, ’thena, ’thena, and blood dripped down and the bees droned louder, filling up the dream with red roses and flashing golden specks until it could hardly hold them, until its seams spilled open and it finally broke—

She was so small between Sister Chalcedony’s thighs, her mind lost in mother’s words and mother’s smell. A spicy, earth musk. Sweat dripped down her soft belly to linger around her swollen balls. The soft warmth of her, slowly hardening against Maple’s face. Against her parted lips.

This is what she’s for, mother told her, and she murmured her agreement. Mother knows best. Mother knows what’s good for her. What she needs, as she shifted against the soft ground, smearing dirt on her habit. Such a filthy thing. No wonder, no wonder …

Tears trickled down her cheeks. Mother made her gag and she was ashamed that she wasn’t better. That she wasn’t of more use. Vomit stung her throat but she was not there, not really. Shaking as she choked, shivering as mothers hands wrapped around her head, so large, so strong. Her skull could crack like an egg and there was a light behind her eyes, burning brighter with every passing moment, spasming, shuddering …

Mother liked it. Liked the way her throat felt, the nonsense vibrations as she tried to scream, the way her entire body got involved. Rewarded her for that just like father used to, a rush of warmth that filled her body up until there was no space for anything else and it came trickling out of her, stinging vomit and the sharp rush of piss and the tears that wouldn’t stop. She thought she was safe.

Hazy, hazy.

Not again.

Not here.

Aboveground the cloister is all slate and tile, a marriage between artfully glazed ceramic and local rock. Tradition holds that this style marks the empire’s marriage to its many lands, the vassals that cling to Her Majesty’s dress, innocents graced with her protection. A teaching of Saint Perfus. If it was not always true, it is now.

The undercroft is stranger. Older. In it Silver River’s bones are left uncovered, fossilized wood and etched granite brought up from distant quarries by hulking barges. Mother Superior always talks about covering it with good tile or fragrant cedar, but Sister Chalcedony knows that she’ll ever get around to it. No one but her likes to go down here. It is easier to try to forget what waits under their feet.

The Fulminous Princess, following behind her, hesitates. The boundary between the summer outside and the cold within is sharp and disorienting. Impossibly so. She has known acolytes to sit on the steps for hours with fans, trying and failing to make the air mix into a natural gradient.

“It’s just down this way, your highness. Not far, though I dare say that some of the lamps might be out. It’s just me who keeps them lit, you know! Pouring the oil each day when I go down to make sure nothing’s out of place.”

“Are there often things out of place?”

“No, no. Well, sometimes an acolyte sneaks down on a dare, but I have the only key to the collection proper,” she pats her chest, feeling its shape dangling between her breasts, “so it’s never anything that matters.”

“I see. Are they punished?”

“Of course! Girls will be girls, but stars know we always have plenty of scutwork that needs doing. And my gardens always need weeding.”

“Mhmm,” the princess pauses almost until they’ve reached the inner door. Ashy, scarred wood fitted so tightly in its frame that not even a single sheet of vellum could pass through the gap, its ancient carvings and inlays ruined by necessary violence. It is only when Sister Chalcedony fetches the key from her cleavage and stoops down to unlock the door that she continues. “You seem happy here, sister. Content.”

Her hand tightens around the key. Her smile breaks. The princess does not see.

“Well, I have my flowers, your highness,” she says. “And my books.”

“I’m glad that you are. It hurt to watch it all happen. But it’s for the best,” a single drop of doubt stains her golden certainty, “you always were the less ambitious of us.”

“Perhaps, perhaps.”

The lock clunks and clicks and turns; the door slowly swings open. Sister Chalcedony has always known that it was her fault, of course. It’s insulting that she still pretends innocence.

Frost skulks along the private collection’s walls and lingers under its crowded tables. There are books everywhere, leather-bound tomes and sheathed scrolls and badly creased pamphlets. Drifts of fresh notes battle with ancient scraps. It’s glorious; the princess’s eyes are wide and hungry, flickering like a distant storm. Sister Chalcedony looks at it with a tired, considering air. She has spent too long here to be surprised by what it pretends to offer; she has found too many traps hidden in ancient knowledge.

Perhaps it is time for one of them to swallow her sister.

“… mother?”

The room is warm and bright. Well-worn fabric moves around her body; a nightgown, sheets, a light summer blanket. Achingly familiar. Something moves above her, a dark silhouette against the light, and her eyes struggle to focus.

“No,” it says, not unkindly. “Just Sister Hazel.”

“o-oh. i … what happened? i don’t …”

“You had a bad turn in the garden. Good thing Sister Chalcedony was there to find you, hmm? Could have been much worse.”

“i … where is …?”

“In your room. And don’t worry about thanking the good sister, I’m sure she’ll be around again after breakfast.”

“breakfast?”

“Mhmm. We gave you poppy for the fit, and when it passed you were quite asleep. You must be hungry, I’ll go fetch you something easy, shall I?”

“… no. not hungry.”

“Well, I’ll do it anyway. I’m sure you will be. Just stay put, okay?”

There’s something wrong with her. The room’s too small, and her body is too light; it’s a struggle to keep herself inside it. To keep herself from floating up out of the bed and jostling the whitewashed ceiling. All the weight seems to have gone out of her, scared away by the light still lingering behind her eyes.

She shouldn’t be here.

The convent is so empty. No one’s around. All at worship, perhaps? Or driven back by the brilliance dripping down her face. She’s floating, drifting through the halls, caught by little eddies of air. Uncertain. She should be doing something, shouldn’t she? Going somewhere? But …

She’s in the kitchen when she hears them coming down from the garden. Sister Chalcedony talking to a stranger, someone from outside the convent’s walls. She crouches behind a table, listening; one wandering hand finds a freshly honed knife. They’re so polite to each other, but she can smell the hate underneath. The poison connecting them.

Being pulled along in their wake is not a choice. It is not a voluntary action. Maple doesn’t think that she’s capable of that right now; she’s just a leaf caught in the current.

Creeping after them is simply what happens next.

The knife’s tip wavers against Sister Chalcedony’s throat. A bead of blood drips down her neck, yellow as old honey.

“Oh, is this your new toy?” The princess asks, her voice dripping with warm menace.

“You should still be in bed, Maple! You aren’t in any condition—did Sister Hazel not tell you? Oh, I’ll have to give her such a talking-to later …”

“y-you … you can’t,” the knife’s tip smears her blood around, “do this to me. i-i won’t let …”

“She reminds me a bit of us, sister,” the princess muses, completely ignoring Maple’s words, “when we were her age. Sowing our wild oats. Do you have a type?”

“Just a coincidence, sister,” Chalcedony growls, also ignoring Maple. “I have to amuse myself somehow, all the way out here.”

“Of course, of course, as long as you don’t get caught again. Whatever happened to that girl,” idle curiosity, as unconcerned as if she were asking about the weather, “by the way? Married off into the provinces or somesuch?”

“Why should I care?”

“Hmm. What was her name, anyway? One of the old goddesses, Ath- something …”

“It doesn’t matter, Heliotrope,” the last word an angry buzz, barely comprehensible.

The Fulminous Princess blanches; isn’t there anything her sister still holds sacred?! Her reply is practically a shout. “Not in front of a commoner!”

“That superstition. Really! I thought you were cleverer than that. Do you know how embarrassing it is to know that someone like you stole my tiara?”

“Wha—I didn’t. I was always on your side, s—”

“Please stop pretending that I’m stupid. It was you! And I had the courtesy not to drag you down with me, and look what it’s gotten me! Nothing!”

“u-um. i was. i’m really g-gonna.”

Both of the sisters look at Maple as if she were completely beneath their notice; an insect, a mildly embarrassing pet. A little nothing. “Well, then do it,” the princesses laughs, “why wait?”

“i-i, i …”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sister Chalcedony grumbles, and steps forward. Towards Maple. She doesn’t react fast enough, and when she tries to pull her arms back they just twists the knife in Sister Chalcedony’s throat. Widening the cut. Her skin parts as easily as a ripe peach and inside she’s slick and dripping, full of little white grubs and yellow insects fanning their wings, and rich, dripping gold, dusty and fragrant, pouring out to stain her habit and splash on the little room’s stone floor. Sticky, so sticky—

Maple faints.

“So, is she …?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Hmm. Well, I suppose it’s no concern of mine.”

“It certainly isn’t. So what are you here for?”

“… I did tell you. I take it that there’s more to them then just superstition?”

“Of course there is.”

“Do you think mother intended you to read them?”

“Probably. The old hag can’t resist playing games. Half of the books in the collection are either nonsense or traps, but the bee-eaters were real. Are real.”

“And are the rumors about them true? About what they could have—”

“I can’t test it, obviously. Unless you’re volunteering.”

“If you suggest that again I will burn you to ash.”

“Ha! It wouldn’t say anything about mother, anyway.”

“No. So, are you …?”

“Are you?”

“Yes,” the princess easily admits.

“Well. Thank you for giving me what I need to destroy you, sister.”

“I didn’t want—I didn’t think everyone would take it so seriously. It was just supposed to push you down the order, not …”

“I don’t particularly care. You will follow my instructions, or I’ll make sure that your fate is worse than confinement in a piddling little convent.”

“… yes, sister.”

“And get on your knees. It’s been two decades and I’m tired of waiting!”