Heaven's Needle by Liane Merciel

her.”
    â€œI am aware. I would not presume to order you. This is only … a request. A favor, if you will.” Thierras sat again, steepling his hands on the desk. The years had put a slight stoop in his shoulders, and his sandy hair was thinner and grayer than it had been when Asharre came to Cailan, but these things only added to his self-possessed dignity. His voice alone—patient, infinitely reasonable—could have calmed a battlefield.
    It had no effect on her. “Why should I do you a favor? You’ve done me none.”
    Thierras sighed. “Asharre. I share your grief. I will not trivialize it by asking you to simply move past it. Oralia was a bright soul, and her memory is not easily laid aside. But the needs of the living do not stop for our sorrows, and your talents are too valuable to let rust. You know this as well as I do.”
    Asharre didn’t answer. She’d kept in training, but only because it had been hammered into her so deeply that stopping would have been harder than maintaining the routine. It helped, a little, to work herself into exhaustion; then she didn’t have to think, didn’t have to remember. It held the memory of loss at bay. But she trained because it was a habit, not because she had any use for those skills. She stayed at the Dome, likewise, because it was habit, and because nothing had come to dislodge her from the simple inertia of grief.
    There was no place for her in the world. Not really. Not that she cared to find. The Celestians made space for her,letting her walk among the ghosts she hated but couldn’t let go. Leaving them—and she wasn’t sure which “them” she meant—would mean accepting herself as a solitary entity, and trying to make her way in the world that way, when all her life she’d been defined by her duties to another.
    She wasn’t sure she wanted that. She wasn’t sure she wanted a new charge either. Why, when she’d failed her last so badly?
    The High Solaros was undeterred by her silence. “You are sigrir, ” he reminded her, as if she could have forgotten. His gaze lighted briefly on the blackened sigils that scarred her face from brow to chin in two vertical lines. “I know what that cost you.”
    â€œYou know nothing of sigrir .”
    â€œI don’t know much, it’s true. But you might credit me with a little more than ‘nothing.’ I’ve read Gaodhar. Attentively.”
    â€œHe was a summerlander.”
    â€œHe was a scholar, and he married into the Skarlar. Your clan.”
    Asharre scowled, crossing her arms. “Giant’s Spear Skarlar, not Frosthold, and that before my grandfather’s day.”
    â€œHave the sigrir changed so much?”
    When she did not answer, Thierras sighed again and pressed on. “The point, if you will allow me one, is that I know it takes enormous dedication to become sigrir, and still more to bring a child safely from the White Seas to Cailan, particularly when you were a child yourself. It is a sin to waste such skill. You’ve had the winter to grieve. You may have the rest of your life to grieve, if you like, but I will not let you sit here idly while you do it.”
    â€œMy ward is dead.” Her sister . The last of her family in this world.
    â€œThere are others who need protection.”
    She did not unfold her arms. But she asked: “Who?”
    â€œI received a letter last week. The solaros in Carden Vale wishes to retire. He is an old man, and in poor health; it is past time I let him lay down his burdens. The town will need a new solaros. I’ve decided to assign two young Blessed to the post. Falcien and Evenna are ready for their annovair. ”
    Asharre nodded. Oralia had been given a similar assignment after completing her training in Cailan. The Celestians believed that it was important for one blessed with the goddess’ power to serve a year or two as an ordinary