Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) by Matthew Medina

long on her own.
Scavenging became Catelyn’s second attempt at survival,
and after the first span of begging, instead of going to the market
plaza, she would roam the streets and alleys, smelling for trash
heaps or other refuse left behind by others, and growing more
confident in her steps and moving around without the use of her
sight. But with the amount of crime and poverty in the Seat, it had
become the default life path of every failed citizen in the city,
leading to rampant and violent competition over the scraps of
others.
Two near confrontations with a pair of scavengers
threatening her if she showed her face near them or their territory
again had shown Catelyn that if she was going to survive, she
would need to find a way to do so invisibly. To take what she
needed without anyone being the wiser.
This, like everything about her life now, was easier said
than done.
    The day after mysteriously distributing her parcels of food
to the residents of the Seat who lived in the tenements and
apartments near her, Catelyn found herself once again lounging
upon the smooth clay tiles of a roof, trying not to let the heat
overwhelm her, and listening to the hollow echoes of the empty
priory below her bouncing up through the metal venting.
    The priory, or the Priory of the Divines if you were being
reverent or official, was not a temple of worship, like what Catelyn
had read about in the books from the Before, but a place where
people came to offer their supplications, and to whisper their sins,
to the Divines. As with all other things, the Empire tightly
controlled people’s access to their Creators. They were allowed to
beseech Them, but they were not allowed to worship Them.
    People were granted one day each span to make offerings
in recompense for their transgressions, and to confess their sins to
one of the priors who would then assign penance to be completed
in the Eyes of the Divines, or in other words, in front of the entire
congregation during the service of supplication. The sins were
private, the penance was quite public.
    The priory was not open for such services yet, but
confessions were due to begin within the next prayer.
Catelyn didn’t come to the priory for any such desires, she
had simply found that many people came to the priory
confessional expecting a private conversation between themselves
and the eunuchs who staffed the priory. Catelyn’s exploration of
the roofs of the building had revealed the vents which allowed the
wafting incense that the priors kept burning during services to
leave the building, and to her delight she discovered that they also
carried sound quite effectively.
Many a secret stash or ill-gotten fortune had been
confessed to the priors this way, and Catelyn had been able to use
this information to supplement her income and reduce her risks
quite nicely since finding it.
She was lying there, relaxed and expecting at least half a
prayer’s worth of silence before the eunuch’s opened the doors to
the public when the sound of the door banging open wafted up to
her ears from below, followed by two pairs of footsteps and
muffled yelling.
She turned her head, rolled over onto her hands and knees
and put an ear to the vent. As she did so, the voices rang out
clearly, as though she were standing two paces away from them.
“Damn you, Eyrris. What do you want for it?”
The first voice belonged to a man, although the voice was
lilted in a way that Catelyn automatically associated with the
eunuchs who staffed the priory. She didn’t know the priors by
name, but she was certain she’d heard this man’s voice before
giving penance and intoning the supplications to the Divines.
“Pater, there’s nothing that you have which I could want.”
Prior Pater had used his name, but at hearing the voice
with her own ears, she confirmed that the second voice was
unmistakably the booming deep tone of Dane Eyrris.
Since Catelyn had made the decision to take up the life she
now led, six