A crossbow is a complicated machine, but Lucelia is glad for it because she’s got the weak arms of someone who has spent her whole life having no need to lift anything by her own strength, arms with no hope of pulling back a proper bow. The crossbow she’s got now, handcrafted by Graham and so small as to be almost dainty, just needs fingers nimble enough to pull the pounded iron trigger and point the damn thing in the right direction. Lucelia stands out in the early morning at the range shared by the several archers of Runeheim, and takes careful aim only for the bolt to shoot past the target and thud on the wall behind it. Clunk.
Years of study helpfully supply: that kind of masonry was popular about twenty years ago, a trend that cascaded out from well-constructed merchant houses seeking increased stability without compromising visual appeal after a series of earthquakes led to the collapse of several country estates. The bolt’s gotten stuck wedged between two large stones, and Lucelia attempts to pry it out to minimal effect. The technique relies on encasing iron rods between several thin layers of brickwork throughout the structure to provide additional vertical support. That tidbit had come from The History of Masonwork and Stone Construction Techniques Within Gotha, a book with contents considerably more interesting than Lucelia had initially expected when one of her tutors recommended it to her. Enchanting, interesting knowledge which is nonetheless completely useless now, in the real world.
She gets the bolt out, painstakingly reloads the crossbow, takes careful aim.
Clunk.
Again, and again, and again, the bolts bounce off the stone wall in front of Lucelia. The goal is to repeat the process ‘till loading and firing a crossbow becomes second nature. Many mornings, Lucelia wakes early and practices until convocation begins, and despite how hard she’s working at it, progress is slow-moving. Her mind wanders, despite her best efforts. The quiet of the mornings is far too loud.
As she reloads again, Lucelia recalls the collective grins of Clan Steelfire, smiling as they chided her: it’s not a sin to get drunk if a priest blesses the wine. Bishop Godfrey pronouncing the next day: It is a sin if you get drunk to stop another from doing so. The Testimonium reads, “Any man may choose to die for another,” and Lucelia thinks about spilled wine sinking into a table, red as blood.
Clunk.
She thinks of the quiet, serious looks of Aodhan and Fianait that night in the tavern, Fianait saying, “You just come from a place where all the bodies have already long been burnt.” It’s a sin to suffer a heretic to live, but a sin to kill another person, which means there must be a line in the world that when crossed means a person isn’t a person anymore.
Clunk.
The trees gave a list of demands to the community. Lucelia just can’t let that go, no matter how much everyone else seems to treat it as normal. If they can express desires, can understand concepts of loss and gain and making right out of wrong, can a tree be a sinner? Should she demand Bishop Godfrey minister to the woods themselves, and sit and listen for repentance in the whistling of wind through branches? Something yellow. A story almost forgotten.
Clunk.
A person is a person, has a divine soul, is a manifestation of God walking upon the earth until they aren’t. Could a tree cross the line backwards into personhood, if it tried? Does heresy spread like a disease the same way rot spreads from trunk to trunk, damning a whole grove? What makes a person a person at all?
Clunk.
Clunk.
Clunk.
…
Father, when she was first starting to learn needlework and couldn’t ever keep her stitches even, would tell Lucelia: repetition is the mother of learning. He’d take a break from balancing the family books and place his hands over hers and guide her stitches, over and over again. There was a particular spot in his study Lucelia would sit, where the sunlight would slant in and illuminate her work; she and her father would sit in quiet companionship, air filled with the pull of thread through fabric and the shuffling of papers, and Lucelia would loop her way through the same stitches, over and over again.
Clunk.
