Sestia
Return to The Five Queendoms series with the final book in this “ambitious and engaging” (Rebecca Roanhorse) epic fantasy trilogy, in which a centuries-long peace is shattered in a matriarchal society when a decade passes without a single girl being born.
While a fragile peace has begun to settle across the Five Queendoms of the known world, trouble brews beneath the smooth façade. The first gate between the Underlands, where Eresh rules over the shades of the dead, has already been opened—and the scheming shade of a dead sorcerer has evil plans he hopes to unleash on the world. In the world Above, the Scorpicae struggle to find a path forward in defeat, the embattled regent of Paxim gets more than she bargained for, and a young woman who barely survived the Sun Rites finds herself the indispensable right hand of a priest-queen whose sanity appears to be slipping away.
As living women across the Queendoms take desperate action to stay alive, and dead women plot to regain what they’ve lost, the time for the next Sun Rites nears. When five queens gather in the Holy City of Sestia for the most important ritual of their lives, who will be left standing?
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While a fragile peace has begun to settle across the Five Queendoms of the known world, trouble brews beneath the smooth façade. The first gate between the Underlands, where Eresh rules over the shades of the dead, has already been opened—and the scheming shade of a dead sorcerer has evil plans he hopes to unleash on the world. In the world Above, the Scorpicae struggle to find a path forward in defeat, the embattled regent of Paxim gets more than she bargained for, and a young woman who barely survived the Sun Rites finds herself the indispensable right hand of a priest-queen whose sanity appears to be slipping away.
As living women across the Queendoms take desperate action to stay alive, and dead women plot to regain what they’ve lost, the time for the next Sun Rites nears. When five queens gather in the Holy City of Sestia for the most important ritual of their lives, who will be left standing?
Sestia
Return to The Five Queendoms series with the final book in this “ambitious and engaging” (Rebecca Roanhorse) epic fantasy trilogy, in which a centuries-long peace is shattered in a matriarchal society when a decade passes without a single girl being born.
While a fragile peace has begun to settle across the Five Queendoms of the known world, trouble brews beneath the smooth façade. The first gate between the Underlands, where Eresh rules over the shades of the dead, has already been opened—and the scheming shade of a dead sorcerer has evil plans he hopes to unleash on the world. In the world Above, the Scorpicae struggle to find a path forward in defeat, the embattled regent of Paxim gets more than she bargained for, and a young woman who barely survived the Sun Rites finds herself the indispensable right hand of a priest-queen whose sanity appears to be slipping away.
As living women across the Queendoms take desperate action to stay alive, and dead women plot to regain what they’ve lost, the time for the next Sun Rites nears. When five queens gather in the Holy City of Sestia for the most important ritual of their lives, who will be left standing?
While a fragile peace has begun to settle across the Five Queendoms of the known world, trouble brews beneath the smooth façade. The first gate between the Underlands, where Eresh rules over the shades of the dead, has already been opened—and the scheming shade of a dead sorcerer has evil plans he hopes to unleash on the world. In the world Above, the Scorpicae struggle to find a path forward in defeat, the embattled regent of Paxim gets more than she bargained for, and a young woman who barely survived the Sun Rites finds herself the indispensable right hand of a priest-queen whose sanity appears to be slipping away.
As living women across the Queendoms take desperate action to stay alive, and dead women plot to regain what they’ve lost, the time for the next Sun Rites nears. When five queens gather in the Holy City of Sestia for the most important ritual of their lives, who will be left standing?
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Overview
Return to The Five Queendoms series with the final book in this “ambitious and engaging” (Rebecca Roanhorse) epic fantasy trilogy, in which a centuries-long peace is shattered in a matriarchal society when a decade passes without a single girl being born.
While a fragile peace has begun to settle across the Five Queendoms of the known world, trouble brews beneath the smooth façade. The first gate between the Underlands, where Eresh rules over the shades of the dead, has already been opened—and the scheming shade of a dead sorcerer has evil plans he hopes to unleash on the world. In the world Above, the Scorpicae struggle to find a path forward in defeat, the embattled regent of Paxim gets more than she bargained for, and a young woman who barely survived the Sun Rites finds herself the indispensable right hand of a priest-queen whose sanity appears to be slipping away.
As living women across the Queendoms take desperate action to stay alive, and dead women plot to regain what they’ve lost, the time for the next Sun Rites nears. When five queens gather in the Holy City of Sestia for the most important ritual of their lives, who will be left standing?
While a fragile peace has begun to settle across the Five Queendoms of the known world, trouble brews beneath the smooth façade. The first gate between the Underlands, where Eresh rules over the shades of the dead, has already been opened—and the scheming shade of a dead sorcerer has evil plans he hopes to unleash on the world. In the world Above, the Scorpicae struggle to find a path forward in defeat, the embattled regent of Paxim gets more than she bargained for, and a young woman who barely survived the Sun Rites finds herself the indispensable right hand of a priest-queen whose sanity appears to be slipping away.
As living women across the Queendoms take desperate action to stay alive, and dead women plot to regain what they’ve lost, the time for the next Sun Rites nears. When five queens gather in the Holy City of Sestia for the most important ritual of their lives, who will be left standing?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781982167950 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | S&S/Saga Press |
| Publication date: | 05/13/2025 |
| Series: | The Five Queendoms , #3 |
| Pages: | 496 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.60(d) |
About the Author
G.R. Macallister, author of the Five Queendoms series, beginning with Scorpica, and also writes bestselling historical fiction under the name Greer Macallister. Her novels have been optioned for film and television. A regular contributor to Writer Unboxed and the Chicago Review of Books, she lives with her family in Washington, DC.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1: Priest
Autumn, the All-Mother’s Year 501
The Holy City, Sestia
Concordia
Every twenty years, the Xaras who ruled Sestia cast lots to find their successors, looking to the Holy One to show Her hand in the casting. Five girls were chosen: one to reign, three to serve in wisdom, and one, at the right moment, to die.
But like any ritual in any queendom, the system did not always proceed exactly as planned. Of the five girls chosen by lottery to serve the Holy One in the All-Mother’s Year 480, only two remained twenty-one years later: the High Xara Concordia and the Xara Veritas.
Now, one held the life of the other in her hands.
The High Xara Concordia remembered well the first time she’d met the future Veritas. She’d been a slip of a girl, all elbows and knees. Concordia herself had been a sturdy child, thinning as she aged, while Veritas filled out and rounded. The rule was that when girls were brought to the capital to enter service, they left their childhood names behind. But on that first day, as they mounted the steps of the Edifice, the stern-faced old Xara Victrix turned her back on the girls. When she did, the one who would become Veritas whispered her name hastily into the other girl’s ear, Norah, and too stunned to do anything else, the future Concordia traded her whispered name in return, Olivi.
For a long time after, the future Concordia broke no rules. She had been a devoted rule follower before she’d been taken from her family to join the class of future Xaras, a natural choice for the role. She threw herself into learning all that the Xaras had to teach her. But as one descended more deeply into centuries of sprawling Sestian edicts, statutes, and regulations, one couldn’t help but stumble over the occasional paradox—exactly the situation in which the High Xara Concordia found herself now.
While the penalty for deserting the God’s most sacred tenet was death, the law also stated clearly that killing any Xara was forbidden, no matter how grave her sins. When young Concordia irreverently pointed out to the Xara Victrix two rules in conflict and asked her which she would follow, the older woman first slapped her for speaking out of turn, then smiled.
“You will learn, child,” said Victrix, “that most laws are like green saplings. They can be bent a great deal without breaking.”
The Xara Victrix had been neither a good person nor a good servant to her god, thought Concordia, but she was also rarely wrong.
Today Concordia would decide how to bend. In a situation much like this, a few reigns ago, the High Xara Necessitas had ordered a disobedient Xara paraded to the tombs, handed a lamp and three apples, and sealed inside. The older stories were only rumor, but Concordia knew those, too. They said one sinning Xara was buried up to her neck in the dirt at a busy crossroads. A Xara who neglected the sacred flame was forced to lie down upon the hearth and sing hymns while the fire was rebuilt atop her body, then lit. They were the most powerful women in the nation, but precise laws constrained their behavior. Veritas had broken the most important law. Consequences must follow. The only choice was what shape those consequences would take.
“My queen,” came a familiar tenor voice from behind her.
The High Xara turned from the window. “Xelander.”
Her servant bowed his head, clasping his hands delicately in front of his narrow waist, which was cinched with a wide decorative belt denoting his station. He was the highest-ranking of all the servants in the Edifice, allowed in any room of the vast temple-palace except the holy lacrum. Xelander was capable of any duty, and he performed every one of them with grace.
“Where is she now?” Concordia asked.
“She was hungry,” he replied, his slight shrug speaking volumes. “I took her to the kitchens.”
“That is not a long-term solution.”
“I am your most humble servant,” he said. “I would no sooner tell you how to punish her than I would swan about in your vestments.”
She smiled at that. “You’d look better in them than I do.”
“Not so, my queen. No one else could wear the saffron to such advantage.”
It was a polite lie, but a lie all the same, thought Concordia. Xelander would look splendid in her ceremonial saffron robes, had he been allowed to wear the color. The men who served in the palace of the God of Plenty were beautiful, and they took great care with their beauty. They wore their dark hair well past their shoulders, cinched their waists tight, and lined their eyes with precise rings of kohl. Some wore short robes and some long, but all their garments followed the curves of their shoulders and thighs, clinging everywhere the priests’ robes were flowing and loose. Their forms were not intended to tempt the virtuous women of the priesthood to carnal delights; they were decorative, pleasant, like exquisitely carved urns or long-stemmed poppies. Only men who found their pleasures with other men were allowed to serve in the Edifice. Priests should have men to tend them but not touch them, or so went one of the thousands of platitudes the young Xaras-to-be had learned.
Still. High Xara Concordia had dozens of servants who dressed like Xelander, who might even be mistaken for him at a distance, but none other with his inborn elegance. He was also whip-smart, far and away her favorite. As soon as the rumor about Veritas had reached her ears, he was the one she’d dispatched to investigate. He’d brought her the truth, and the woman, within hours. Now she needed to handle both.
She said to him softly, “Is there no... natural solution to the problem?”
He caught her meaning. “You’re thinking of the pulegone tea?”
“Yes.”
“Much too late, I’m afraid.”
The High Xara Concordia didn’t curse, at least not out loud. She looked out the window again. The Edifice was a marvel, towering four stories above the city and gleaming like a new-laid egg. From the fourth story she could see leagues beyond the city’s gates into the vast countryside. Most days, the view soothed her. Today, as she searched the rolling green hills where the sacred rams and their mouflon mates were pastured, she saw no answers there. The answer would have to come from her. Or from the Holy One Herself, should She see fit to speak to Concordia for the first time.
“What would you do?” the High Xara Concordia asked Xelander.
Startled, he lifted his head. His expression was one of concern.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I truly want to know.”
“It’s not my place, my queen.”
“You have any place I choose to give you,” she reminded him. “If I ask for your thoughts, you do me disrespect to refuse.”
“I apologize,” he said, though his voice was not apologetic. She suspected his protest was mere form. He was smart enough to have opinions. She should be smart enough to benefit from them. She wasn’t aware of any past High Xaras who had been counseled by their servants, but then again, she differed from past High Xaras in ways no one alive knew.
“And so,” she said. “Tell me. If it were your choice.”
There was no pause before his answer. “I would make the choice hers.”
“How so?”
“Her body was not hers to use as she did,” he said, his dark gaze so steady it unsettled her a bit. She wasn’t used to being looked in the eye, even by Xelander. “The body of a Xara belongs to the Holy One. Her chastity, her virtue, those are the Holy One’s, and Xara Veritas did not have the right to give them away. You would be within your rights to remove what grows within her.”
“I thought you said it was too late for the tea?”
“The dose it would take might well kill her,” he said, with a shrug not so different from the one he’d made when he mentioned escorting her to the kitchens. “Removal can also be done with blades, or at least it’s been tried. I’ve heard reports of experiments in the Bastion.”
“So that could kill her too.”
“Yes.”
“You’d have her choose between herbs and blades?”
“I’d have her choose whether she wants it dead now or later. Killed inside her or killed in front of her. See what she chooses.”
Both possibilities turned Concordia’s stomach. Even if Veritas survived such butchery, even if her earthly body was returned to the Holy One’s sacred service, could such a loss be borne? Would Veritas go mad from pain and sorrow? Farm women were known to do so, and as far as they’d come since, both Concordia and Veritas—or Norah and Olivi, back then—had been farm-born once upon a time.
“But the choice isn’t mine,” Xelander said, finally looking away. “Nor hers, my queen. Only yours. And the Holy One’s, of course.”
“Of course,” echoed Concordia with a lightness she didn’t feel. As the holiest woman in the queendom, she alone could enter the sacred lacrum to speak with their god. Generations of High Xaras had done so and emerged, beaming, with an answer from the divine. But Concordia wondered every day if the High Xaras of the past had really spoken with their god when they went into the lacrum and locked the door. She herself had never found anything in that chamber but her own doubts, never heard anything but silence. Some days the lack didn’t bother her; some days it wrung her out.
She heard the approaching footsteps just before a voice from the doorway boomed out, “Apologies, my queen.”
Concordia didn’t know the newly arrived servant’s name, but she recognized him at once. He was a brute of a man, thick all over, ill-suited for the garb Xelander wore so fetchingly. Even the man’s braid was crooked, done in a hurry and without proper care. But servants had many purposes, and this one excelled at his. The woman beside him had no chance of escaping the thick fingers with which he gripped her upper arm.
While her figure was unmistakably that of a woman, Veritas was barely taller than a child. Her hair was loose in a black storm cloud, the saffron-dyed streak above her right temple the twin of Concordia’s own, marking them both as Xaras. Veritas wore no other sign of her station, no robe or sash, but she carried herself as the high-ranking holy woman she was, adjacent to royalty. Even in an ill-fitting rough-spun shift, too short in front and threatening to catch her heels in back, she radiated authority and intelligence.
The man with the crooked braid tilted his head in Xelander’s direction. “He said to stop her if she ran. She tried to run.”
Xelander said, “Thank you for your service, Bateo.”
The hulking servant nodded in return and didn’t budge.
“You may release her and go,” Xelander added.
“Is that safe?” Bateo asked. He shook Veritas by the bare arm, frowning. His meaty grip must have hurt, Concordia noted, but the other woman’s small, round face remained placid. Veritas’s eyes were on the High Xara.
Concordia said, “You may leave us.”
The big man turned to go with a dismissive grunt, braid swinging, and gave his erstwhile prisoner a half-hearted shove that sent her sprawling to the ground. She fell hard on her hands and knees, a soft rush of breath the only sound she made.
Concordia held herself back from running to her friend, consoling her. They had helped each other so many times in the early days. But things would never be as they had been, she reminded herself. Veritas had made the choice to sin, to give up that which belonged by right to the Holy One. A priest who broke her oath was no priest.
There was only one way to begin. “You lied,” said Concordia.
“About what?” Veritas responded from the floor, a spirit in her that Concordia would not have expected.
“Many things, I take it.” Concordia feigned patience. “I meant that you were granted permission to spend three months spreading the word of the Holy One along the western coast.”
“And so I did.”
“You traveled to honor Her.”
“I did.”
“Yet today you were found in the palace?”
“I returned.” The woman wouldn’t give an inch. She began to struggle to her feet, and though Xelander reached out a hand to help her up, she swatted it away and managed to get up on her own. She smoothed her borrowed shift—from whom had she borrowed it?—and stood firm.
Veritas’s eyes were on Xelander, suspicious, something cold in her glare. Her words were directed to Concordia. “You would have seen me this afternoon in any case, without setting your hound after me.”
“I heard a troubling rumor. One that, if true...” She couldn’t complete the thought. “Tell me it isn’t true, Xara Veritas.”
Veritas said softly, “For your sake, I wish I could.”
The truth hurt. “So you violated your vows.”
“I still serve the Holy One,” said Veritas. “We tell our people it’s a great honor to serve Her through pleasures. During the rites, we tell the same thing to the entire world. The greater the pleasure, the greater the honor. Why should it be different for us, who love Her most?”
“You know why.” Concordia’s patience was quickly unraveling. “When the Holy One lost her beloved consort to the Underlands, she renounced pleasures ever after. We honor her sacrifice by joining in it. Our chastity is Her chastity. We are committed only to Her.”
For her part, Veritas seemed unrattled. “That is the interpretation that previous Xaras have believed. But why would any just god deny us that which She created?”
“You claim She is not just?”
“I claim She does not ask us to deny ourselves Her greatest gift.”
Every word the petite Xara said was pure blasphemy. Concordia couldn’t see a way around it. Still, she wanted desperately to try. “Was it just the once? Were you carried away?”
Veritas shook her head.
“Don’t try to tell me it was love,” Concordia blurted.
“I doubt I can tell you anything at all. What does it matter why I did it or with whom? You know what I’ve done. You see the... evidence.”
And that was the crux of it. Not just that Veritas had used her body for pleasure in violation of her sacred vows. That could’ve been hidden, denied. But under the borrowed shift her midsection had begun to thicken and round out, the curve of a baby just beginning to blossom between her generous hips. In the months the Xara Veritas had spent on the coast—if in fact that was where she’d been—her shape had transformed. The curve was small now, but it would grow.
Doing her best to keep her composure, Concordia told the only woman she’d known since childhood, “So you see the position you’ve placed me in.”
“You were not foremost on my mind,” said Veritas dryly.
Though of course it was true, it still hurt to hear. Nor did the Xara apologize, Concordia noted. The woman’s lack of deference would’ve been unthinkable in any Sestian citizen, but of course Veritas was next in line to be queen. Had been, anyway, before this.
“There are no unchaste Xaras,” Concordia told her. “You know the law.”
“I do. The law says I cannot be killed.”
“The law also says you cannot live.”
Veritas looked up, her brown eyes wet with impending tears, but not tears of weakness. She reached out for Concordia’s hand and held it between her own warm, dry palms. Concordia didn’t remember the last time someone had held her hand. She wasn’t sure she liked the sensation.
“Please, show mercy,” Veritas said simply. “Please, Olivi.”
And there it was. A name so old the High Xara Concordia had almost forgotten it herself, the name given her in the time before, when she was a sturdy, scampering girl in the farmlands. The harvests had been rich and the sun an outsize pearl in the blue sky above and her name had been Olivi, not an uncommon name, but purely and perfectly her own.
The queen couldn’t put this woman to death, no matter what she’d done, no matter her blasphemies. She didn’t have the strength. If the Holy One wouldn’t speak to her, the High Xara Concordia reasoned, the choice was hers alone. Her voice was ragged with emotion but she forced the words out, passing the only sentence she could.
“Go,” she said. “You are banished.”
“Oli, I—”
“Leave my sight.” Louder now. Commanding. “You are forever stripped of the rank of Xara. You will never again wear the saffron or taste sacred honey.”
The Xara Veritas looked down, swallowed, seemed to gather her strength. But before she could speak, Concordia rushed to speak first.
“You are common,” she said, nearly spitting the words. “The Holy One turns Her back to you. You’re no longer welcome within the borders of Sestia.”
“I only want to—”
“Wait,” said the High Xara, bringing her palm sharply upward. “You can’t take that with you.”
“Take what?”
She ignored the question. “Xelander,” she said instead, addressing the waiting servant. “A blade.”
When she heard the word, the Xara Veritas made no effort to flee, nor did she ask again for mercy. She simply stared at the High Xara during the long pause while Xelander moved silently to do as he was bid. Concordia could not meet her gaze.
When the blade was in her hand, Concordia said, “Kneel.”
Her rough-spun shift pulling tight as she moved, Veritas obeyed.
Xelander broke in. “My queen, do you think you should—”
“Hush,” the High Xara said under her breath, not even turning, and then took the other woman’s hair in her free hand.
Veritas showed no sign of fear. She waited, silent, on her knees.
With the tip of the blade, Concordia began to cut away the saffron-dyed streak of hair that marked Veritas as a Xara, starting at the hairline just above her wide-open right eye. In the beginning, as children, they had knelt next to each other as the High Xara Fortitude stripped the color from those sections of hair with a foul-smelling mixture of wood ash and vinegar, then painted on the precious saffron dye to mark them. They’d knelt as unremarkable girls from the country and risen as Xaras-to-be. Now, all these years later, only one of them was kneeling.
Concordia cut as gently as she could, but her hand was unsteady, and as the paler hair fell away from the darker, she nicked the tender scalp. She could feel the sharp tip of the knife drag where it caught on the skin.
Veritas flinched but didn’t cry out.
It took all Concordia’s strength to keep trimming until every trace of the saffron streak was gone, pretending to ignore the thick rivulet of blood that ran down Veritas’s face like the dark ghost of a single tear. Discarded hair fell in clumps to Veritas’s lap and slid soundlessly to the floor. Then it was done.
“Now. Take this woman away,” Concordia told Xelander. “Provide her safe passage out of the Edifice. Put her on a public cart headed for Paxim. Do it by force if you have to. After that, if she’s seen anywhere within the walls of the Holy City, make sure the archers have instructions to put an arrow in her heart.”
She turned back to the window so she wouldn’t see them go. At first there was only a long pause. She forced herself not to turn, not to bend.
Then there were shuffling footsteps, a heavy pair and a lighter, and after that, only silence.
In the distance, the white wool cloud-shapes of sacred rams moved over the broad green hillsides. Concordia watched them from on high until they blurred into pale smears, until she couldn’t tell if they were moving or her tired eyes were only playing tricks. She watched them until the sun set and they were only faint shapes in darkness.
Concordia’s doubts that she had chosen wisely started almost immediately, but of course, she kept them to herself. Who would she tell?
Two seasons later, she had almost managed to drown out the drumbeat in her mind that asked, Where did she go, what will she do, what will happen to the child, what does the god want, should I have killed her, should I have let her stay?
But then the Drought of Girls began.
The drumbeat got louder. The questions Concordia asked herself changed.
Is this my fault? Is this Her punishment?
What have I done?
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