Three hours after the sword said her name, half the shrine already knew about it.
Garima found this out walking toward the dining hall. She was tired. The word Anchor kept flashing in front of her eyes. Like a blinking headline. She didn't even want to think about it anymore.
But something else was happening on her way. Priest who would normally have nodded at her now found something else to look at. A cleaning rag. A doorframe. Their own feet.
Two priests near the well stopped talking the second she came into view. But she had already heard the broken sentence. "—said it was an old title—" one of them was saying, before the other elbowed him quiet. They both looked inside the well till she walked past them.
Zihan was holding court near the courtyard steps, telling a small huddle of priests, with complete confidence, that "Anchor" was almost certainly a title given to saints who'd held back some forgotten catastrophe. He was wrong. He said it with such certainty no one could argue about. Nobody tried.
Garima looked at him for some time and sighed. She looked at the other side.
Riley sat at the stone table. He had a different theory. He was explaining it to three Priests and one priestess. "It's a relic word. Sacred. Something ancient. And Garima–Her Holiness is someone raised by the Goddess herself. Of course it would choose her."He looked thrilled by his own idea. Then he noticed her. "Garima–we were."
"I heard." She said,
He smiled at her hoping that was fine. It was not. But she just didn't have the energy to tell him so.
Neither of them was right. She knew that better than anyone. She also had no way to correct it without explaining what she actually did know, and that explanation went nowhere good.
Priest Hill was crossing the courtyard with an armful of folded linens. He had not once failed to greet her by name since she'd arrived. He didn't fail tonight either — just a small nod and a faster pace and skipped over her face too quickly.
Everyone was being very careful around her. And she was getting tired of being treated carefully.
---
So she went to the archives instead, while there was still light to read by.
She wanted the word. Anchor. Anything attached to a date, a name, a source that wasn't her own head. She started with the oldest scrolls first. Two hours of searching mentioned sentient weapons only in passing, usually as a footnote to some battle that had nothing to do with swords that talked. One scroll mentioned that a bonded weapon called "The Mark" had made a screeching sound. During a siege three hundred years ago. There was nothing about a talking sword. Nothing useful at all.
She found nothing that matched. Nothing that explained it.
Whatever the sword had decided to call her, it hadn't come from her outline. She'd given it power and a vague backstory and left the rest blank without any purpose. And the world had filled this one on its own. She sat there for a moment with that thought, in the dim light, with the dust and a bit of headache.
She didn't know whether to be relieved the world could do that, or scared of what else it might decide to do on its own.
She traced the artifact in her robes. It vibrated but there was no word from Cosmo.
She slumped on the seat. Her stomach started growling. She was hungry. She needed to eat something. Because hunger didn't wait for consequences..
---
She came face to face with Ava on the way to the dining hall, in the corridor outside the storage room. Carrying folded bandages. Garima hadn't expected to find her there.
"Ava," Garima said.
"Your Holiness." Ava didn't look up.
"How's his hand?"
"Healing." Ava arranged the rolls on her hand.
There wasn't anywhere to go from there. Garima could have apologised, but there was a difference between an apology landing and an apology being heard, and she wasn't sure Ava wanted either one. So she said nothing. Ava said nothing else. Her stomach growled again. Which was embarrassing and also perfectly timed.
After a few seconds, Garima walked on. She looked back. But Ava had already gone inside. She sighed, turned and walked straight into Dylan.
"You scared me." Garima glared at him with a hand on her beating heart.
"You were avoiding me," he said. "I had no choice."
"I am not."
"You are."
She stopped. No point lying to someone holding up a bandaged hand.
"I'm sorry," she said. It had been building since this afternoon. Still it couldn't lighten her guilt.
"You already said that."
"It wasn't enough."
"Maybe.Maybe not." Dylan paused. "I still don't blame you."
She wanted him angry. Anger she could argue with, push against, wear down eventually. This was just calm and reasonable and completely impossible to fight.
"You're making it sound like I didn't have a choice," Dylan said. "I did. Nobody made me pick that thing up."
"I brought it into the shrine and didn't tell anyone. I put everyone at risk."
"I was at your room rushing after Aloo. I rummaged through your things and picked up something that I wasn't supposed to." He shrugged then, winced because shrugging hurt. "That part's mine. Not yours."
She didn't have an answer for that. Possibly that was the point.
"I don't know." She said.
"Ava will come around." Dylan said, as they walked towards the dining hall. "Give her time. She just needs to be annoyed a little longer."
"How long?"
He considered this with genuine seriousness. " She was annoyed with me for ten days once. For losing her favourite book." He paused. "It was expensive I think."
"Oh."
So hopefully in less than ten days. Or more" he said. " You didn't lose her expensive book.
He paused, smiling. "Just got me nearly killed."
Garima sighed this wasn't helpful at all.
---
Garima bit into the fruit they called Lezzu on her way to the courtyard.Apparently Duke Ruslan was waiting for her. She came half-rushed, still chewing.
"I'm sending word to the King," he said flatly. "Tonight."
"About the sword?"
"About the sword."
"Do you have to?"
"It spoke. A word with vague meaning, in front of three witnesses — one of them a Duke sworn to report exactly this kind of thing." He said it plainly: he was only saying it now as a courtesy "Yes. I have to. I wanted to let you know before I did."
She'd half expected to be angry about this, the way she'd been angry about everything else today. She wasn't. There was nothing personal in it. Ruslan wasn't doing this to her, or because of any opinion he held about her. He was doing it because it was his job.
"You're not upset," he said, noticing.
"Should I be?"
"Some people would be."
"You're not doing anything wrong."
He nodded once, then left. Whatever Ruslan thought of her — if he thought of her at all, beyond how she held a sword and how slowly she was improving. His life, as far as she could tell, had been arranged a long time ago around exactly this kind of duty. Nothing about that arrangement required liking anyone involved.
Garima finished the Lezzu. Then went to find Agatha.
Agatha was at her usual stop. The room that kept logs and records.Checking the chore schedule and making notes. She looked up when Garima came in.
"Everyone is talking nonsense," Garima said.
"I heard several versions." Agatha set the record down. "None of it made sense."
"It said Anchor. That's it. That's the whole thing."
"And you don't know what that means."
"No." Garima sat down. "I only know about a sword. A powerful sentient weapon. It chooses its own master. But I don't know why it said whatever it said. And that's the whole thing,"
It would have been so easy, right there, to keep talking. To say it might have decided that on its own, the way the world kept deciding things on its own, the way Domnur had grown noble houses she'd never— She caught the sentence before it finished forming, even in her own head, because the next word after that one was something Agatha shouldn't know.
"I am sorry." She said instead.
"What is done cannot be corrected."
"I know. That's why I am sorry. I should have been careful."
Agatha was quiet for a moment. "I will ask around about it too."
"And Domnur." Garima said. " What you are going to do about Domnur?"
"We are not involved in those disputes. Sir Lawrence sent the letter as a–"
"Agatha," Garima leaned forward slightly. "House Valen and House Merrow moving in the same direction at the same time — that's not a coincidence. And the Silver Coast Consortium has no reason to be in this at all unless someone put them there."
"I know," Agatha said. "I've been thinking the same thing since I read it."
"I can help. I want to help."
Agatha picked up her pen and set it back down. "Do you know something? From your visions?"
"I — yes. Some things."
"Then you should have told me sooner."
"I know. I'm sorry."
Agatha looked at her for a long time. Long enough that Garima made herself sit still.
"Tell me tomorrow," Agatha said finally. "Tonight — think carefully—what you want to say and how much of it you're actually ready to say. Come to me when you've done that."
It wasn't forgiveness. It wasn't even close. But she picked the schedule back up, and the conversation felt a little less heavy than before.
Garima nodded and got up.
She found Filly on her way back to her room. He was practically glowing. The man was a hazard.
"Your Holiness." He said it excitedly. "Is it true? Did it speak to you — truly speak, a divine word?"
"It said Anchor."
"Anchor." He repeated it. "A binding word. I knew it the moment Renya told me what happened. I said so. I told Priest Donna– I said this is not ordinary. This is not a common bonding. It's something else entirely. And Priest Robby–"
" Filly."
"Of course, of course, forgive me, Your Holiness, I only meant—"
He kept going. She let him. There was no stopping when he was like this. You could walk away and he'd still follow talking.
"Was it you?" She said when he paused for a breath. "Who told everyone?"
"Yes, Your Holiness." He smiled like whatever he did was excellent.
"Chutiya," she said, mostly to herself, mostly in a language he didn't speak, which was probably the only reason he kept smiling and nodding through it like she said something holy.
She watched him bow and walk away still beaming. She thought about correcting him properly. Telling him it wasn't scripture.
She was too tired. And looking at his retreating back—genuinely delighted, already composing tomorrow's version of events—she found she couldn't fully be angry.
He was Filly. This was what Filly did. She had known this about him since approximately the second week.
The corridor had gone quiet. Somewhere down the hall someone was banking the last fire
for the night.
She stood there for a moment. And then walked towards her room. She had a lot to think about.
And tomorrow she would have to start telling Agatha things she had spent months avoiding.