The Stepsister Who Followed Me Through the Shrine Gate novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Baggage's Shed

Mai is given the old herb shed to work in without pay, learns from the High Priestess why the gate carried her, and kisses Hinata between benches until the Chancellor sends word that Mai is to move to the servants' wing tonight.

Mai woke before dawn with Hinata's cheek on her shoulder and Hinata's leg thrown over hers.

Her first thought was that the room smelled of cedar.

Her second thought was that she had a pulse of a hundred and twenty, and had not even moved yet.

A bell rang outside, three slow notes.

Hinata groaned and burrowed deeper into her neck.

"Five more minutes, Onee-san."

"You have a prayer at dawn."

"I have you."

"You have a prayer at dawn, and I have to find out what I'm supposed to do here."

Hinata sighed, kissed the hollow under Mai's ear once, and slid out of the bed.

She stood in the grey light stretching, naked and flushed, with her chestnut hair down her back.

Mai forgot how to speak.

Two maids came in to dress the Saint in white and gold.

Mai stood off to the side in yesterday's blouse and pretended to examine the curtains.

Hinata caught her eye across the room and held it, and her dimples came out.

When the maids had gone, Odile was in the doorway.

"Lady Mai," said the High Priestess. "Walk with me."

The path led through the temple garden to a low stone building with a crooked roof and a green door.

Odile turned the key and pushed it open on a dusty smell of dry leaves.

It was an old herb shed with a long workbench and tall shelves of jars.

Bundles of dried plants hung from the rafters, and a stone mortar sat worn smooth on the bench.

"It belonged to the last Saint's apothecary," Odile said. "It has been empty a century."

Mai walked in and ran one finger along the bench.

She picked up a bundle of grey-green leaves and crushed one between her fingers, and the smell was sharp and bitter.

"This is wormwood," she said. "And this is a kind of mint. This one I don't know."

"It stops fever. We call it sunmoss."

"Who pays me?"

Odile's mouth twitched.

"No one. The court will not pay baggage. The Temple can offer you a shed, a key and your meals."

"I'm a pharmacist. I'll work for a shed."

She meant it, and she was surprised to find that she did.

Odile watched her take down a jar, sniff it and hold it up to the light.

"Lady Mai, you should know why the Gate carried you."

Mai put the jar down.

"I was holding her hand."

"That would not be enough. The Gate opens for a household."

Odile folded her hands.

"It reads the book on the other side, the one that names the family.

It carries everyone written there who is near the one it calls."

The air in the shed seemed to go still.

"The shrine's household book," Mai said slowly. "Her father wrote my name in it at the wedding."

"Then you are household, and the Gate knew it. A saint cannot cross without her house. The last one brought her brother."

"What happens if the book changes?"

Odile smiled, a small tired smile.

"The Gate is old and strange and it listens to promises. As long as the promise holds, so does the road home."

She left her the key.

Mai spent the morning wiping shelves and reading labels in a language she had never seen but, somehow, could read.

She found sunmoss and wormwood and a root that numbed the tongue.

She also found a stack of old notes about the grey rot in a neat slanting hand.

The notes said the rot began in the roots and moved up, and that no medicine had ever slowed it.

Mai propped her glasses on her nose and began to make a list.

At noon the green door banged open.

Hinata ran in, flushed from the prayer in her white and gold robe, with her chestnut hair half out of its ribbon.

She pushed the door shut with her heel and locked it.

"Hi," she said, out of breath.

"You're supposed to be at the offering."

"I have ten minutes." Hinata crossed the shed. "I ran."

She put both hands on Mai's face and kissed her.

It was nothing like the careful first kiss in the bath.

It was hungry and hot and sure of itself.

Mai's back hit the edge of the workbench so hard that jars rattled on the shelves.

Hinata's mouth moved down her jaw, and her hands pushed under Mai's blouse and spread across her ribs.

"I thought about you the whole prayer," Hinata said into her throat. "In front of nine hundred people. I couldn't stop thinking about your fingers."

"Hinata..."

"You said not tonight. It's daytime."

Mai laughed, helplessly, and the laugh broke into a gasp when Hinata's thumb found her nipple through the lace.

She dragged Hinata closer by the sash of the gold robe.

They kissed against the bench with their hands in each other's clothes, until the shed was warm and the bells outside had begun again.

Hinata pulled back, panting, with her lips swollen.

"Nine minutes were nice," she said.

"We have to be careful."

"I'm the Saint. I can be as careless as I like."

She straightened her robe and kissed Mai once more, hard and quick, and unlocked the door.

A page in the Chancellor's blue was standing outside it.

He bowed to Hinata and held out a folded paper to Mai without looking at her.

"Orders from the Chancellor's office," he said. "The baggage is to be moved to the servants' wing. Tonight."

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