‘And who are we to listen to instead?’ asked Samiha softly. ‘I expect there’s a replacement, a wiser person we could turn to? Someone with the people’s best interests at heart? I imagine he’s been in town, that person, and spoken at length on the subject.’
‘Maybe he has. Maybe he’s right.’ Tanata snapped her mouth and the canvas shut, although her eyes still glinted behind the laces.
‘You know perfectly well Oren hasn’t just run away,’ persisted Samiha. ‘I need to talk to him. I need to get a message through. It’s urgent.’
The other woman was silent a moment. ‘They were arrested,’ she admitted, at last. ‘Someone informed on them. It wasn’t me!’ she added hastily. ‘I wouldn’t do that, no matter what I thought of those two. They had no permit so they got deported. As I heard it they went north.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘Two days ago. The soldiers took them at dawn.’
‘At dawn.’ Samiha bowed her head. ‘North. I see.’
‘Why did you come back, Kion?’ Tanata tightened the laces with jerking, angry motions. ‘What could you ever hope to achieve? You’re a liability to us. You should have stayed on the Freehold or returned with an army. Come with real help next time and you’ll find friends. Until then we can’t do anything for you.’
‘Oh, but you can.’ Samiha brought her face close to the diminishing gap. ‘You can get a message to Oren in case I don’t reach him. People leave Marak every day, you say. Someone will be travelling north.’
‘Fine,’ grumbled the woman. ‘Make it quick.’
‘Tell him—’ Samiha took a deep breath. ‘Tell him: all is as it should be. Tell him we need the family to come together. We can’t wait any longer. Will you do that for me?’
‘The family?’
‘Yes, the family. And please, Tanata: don’t believe everything you hear from Caro.’ Samiha rose to her feet. ‘He’s doing his own kind of mongering.’
‘Pathetic,’ growled Ash as they moved away from the tent. ‘You realise of course she’s still standing there, watching to make sure you’ve gone.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re remarkably patient with them. I’m not sure it does them any good in the long run.’
Samiha did not answer him directly, lost in her own ruminations. ‘She’s right. I shouldn’t have come. What was I thinking?’ she murmured.
‘Not of armies or of routing Argosians, perhaps.’
‘No.’ She glanced up at him with a forlorn smile. ‘That would have been the last thing on my mind. I’m pretty useless to them, aren’t I?’
Ash tilted his head to one side, noncommittal. She peered around the corner of one of the canvas dwellings into the darkened street beyond.
‘Well. I’m here, and useless, apparently. What next?’
‘You know exactly what next. Why ask me?’
‘You’re right,’ said Samiha with quiet satisfaction. ‘I know.’
Morning brought little change to Marak city. The sun shone fitfully over the quiet streets, battling a blanket of cloud. The hours went by and still many of the buildings remained shuttered and shrouded. Even the main market was half empty, a shadow of its former bustling self. The Governor’s palace stood looming over all, a stark, gutted reminder of why the city was being punished so harshly. No one had found the rebels responsible for the explosion that had reduced the palace to cinders, and conspicuously failed to do away with the Governor himself. No one was brought to justice, but everyone paid the price for the attack.
The section of the market that limped its way through the Nurian tent-town was sadly reduced. The sun achieved a precarious truce with the clouds at noon before a few hardy spice-merchants spread out their wares for inspection in the streets. The sellers of contraband and traffickers of som still skulked in corners, diminished in numbers but weathering their misfortune like rats. The stalls offering vegetables and dried goods had all but disappeared. Only one solitary, harried merchant doled out cups of carefully hoarded lentils to the customers jostling each other in front of his store. This particular man had raised the price of his wares threefold in a similar number of weeks; he had seen an opportunity to make a profit while being able to offload inferior stock, but now regretted his decision to stay in Marak. No pity moved the businessman’s heart as he surveyed the group of half-starved people before him, their faces pinched and desperate. He was afraid they might lose patience altogether and mob his stall.
‘He’s only selling you a cup each, but he’s got plenty more in his storeroom,’ sneered a voice, somewhere above the beleaguered merchant’s head. It spoke in Nurian. ‘He doesn’t care if you have nothing. He doesn’t care if your families go hungry. All he cares about are his profits.’
Caro squatted on the flat rooftop of one of the shacks lining the road, surveying the market below. He had let his yellow beard grow long since he left the Freehold and sported the white kafa, a self-consciously antique form of Nurian headdress. He smiled as the Argosian merchant glanced nervously first in one direction, then another, trying to pinpoint his opponent.
‘Why do you let these foreign animals use you? Take it back! Take back what is yours by right!’ called Caro.
The people waiting below muttered in agreement and pressed closer to the stall. The bean-seller glanced upwards, finally locating the cause of his trouble.
‘Hoi, you!’ he cried, in his own tongue. ‘Let a man do business in peace, or I’ll have you arrested!’
It was an empty threat and those by the stall knew it. The last colonial patrol had passed some time ago and there were no soldiers currently within earshot. The people crowded up to the table with its sacks of produce, their thin faces burning with hope. A hand reached out to grab a fistful of beans; another thrust a cup into a bag of lentils, despite the merchant’s protests. The sacks were lifted off the table and torn apart, scattering their contents. People scrabbled after the spilled produce as the market disintegrated into a furore. The display area at the front of the stall swayed, tipped and crashed down as the merchant covered his head with his arms. Beans bounced and spun away in all directions. Caro stood up on the roof.
At that moment, a single voice pierced the tumult. Its song soared like a bird over the city, to cut through the noise and confusion as briefly as the midday sun. I saw the face of God Like to a mighty Tree: Of fire were Her branches made, Fearful Her symmetry …
The words of the First Liturgy, sung in Nurian, brought the skirmish in the street to an end. People paused among the spilled beans, gazing at each other in shock, and the merchant peeped over the edge of the upturned table. The voice came from the precincts of the old temple, closed down since the fire that half destroyed it. No one had given the call to prayer for weeks. Caro frowned in sudden misgiving at the blackened remains of the dome, just visible over the jumbled rooftops. He made out a slim, upright figure on the balcony at its base, her hair shining like flame.
He opened his mouth to caution, to ridicule and sneer, but it was too late. The crowd so willing to listen to him a moment ago had slipped through his fingers. The people hurried toward the ruined temple, moved this time not by anger or desperation, but by the promise of seeing something greater than themselves.
‘Vultures,’ muttered Caro, as he turned away.
The people of Marak always claimed that the heretic’s words exerted a strange power over those who listened to her that day. The sermon she gave from the roof of the ruined temple was a masterpiece of eloquence and emotion. When questioned as to what exactly she had said, however, the witnesses were able to respond only with a few stumbling platitudes. The shanti had spoken of brotherhood and forgiveness, they reported. She had told them they were all one and should not fight among themselves. She had said, in essence, what she always said, at every temple sermon. They could not pinpoint what had been so different about this occasion.
When asked why they had then allowed the Governor’s men to shoulder through the crowd, mount a
ladder to the roof and arrest the angel of eloquence before their very eyes, they were unable to give a satisfactory answer. Some fell silent, or protested that they could not be held responsible for the Governor; others burst into tears. Accounts became muddled and illogical. Witnesses claimed to have left early or arrived late, missing the moment of arrest. Afterwards, they almost invariably asserted that the Kion had forgiven them in advance for what she knew would occur. She had told them they were not to blame. They clung to this idea, made a religion out of it. The alternative was too unbearable.
Lodged like a sliver of ice in their souls was the unspoken certainty that individuals like Samiha never survived for long. To speak as she did, to be as she was, was to invite censure and arrest. Those whose authority rested on fear and coercion would most certainly do away with such creatures, one way or another. The world could not abide them. The people who watched from the sidelines either silently tolerated or actively cheered on the Sacrifice. One had to die for others to live. It had always been so.
PART TWO
STEM
Everyone is a traveller.
Few embark upon the Journey.
— Nurian saying
12
The Admiral’s fleet was making excellent time back to Argos city. After the debacle on the Freehold, which everyone now referred to as the ‘containment’ of the Nurian rebels, the ships had put down for a fortnight in Marak while the Envoy conducted talks with the Governor and the fleet re-stocked on supplies. The harassed spice-merchants of the colony, whose businesses had been plagued the past year by both rebel agitation and local unrest, rubbed their hands together in glee as barrel upon barrel of their produce was loaded onto the Argosian ships. Admiral Greenly had ordered at least four times the Council’s annual contract in Treespice and paid for it up-front. He had also assured the middlemen of Marak that more such contracts were to come. It was hailed as a triumph for relations between the colony and the Mother Canopy.
The good news did not end there. During their halt in the city, word arrived from the Council indicating that the terms of the peace treaty were acceptable. The Envoy was requested to return to Argos. He was given passage on board the Admiral’s greatship, accompanied by his faithful servant, Wick.
News of the Council’s approval should have been a relief to the acolyte, whose personal seal appeared in triplicate on the treaty with the Freeholders. The Envoy had declared himself satisfied with the trip to the Eastern Canopy, and the Envoy’s satisfaction, Wick had long ago learned, made his own lot far easier to bear. He should have been happy, too, to be able to return home so quickly. By dint of good luck and good navigation the fleet caught the tail end of an autumn wind-current that carried them across the Gap in record time. By the second day of their voyage, they were already heading into the Central Canopy.
Despite such triumphs, however, the young priest’s face was troubled as he stood watch in the Admiral’s guest cabin on that second evening, at about the seventh hour. Father Lace was ostensibly engaged in a prayer vigil, thanking the Tree for their recent victories in the Eastern Canopy. His acolyte knew better. He was supposed to prevent anyone from entering his master’s quarters, and had remained diligently at his post just inside the door for the past two days, with few breaks. But it was what lay inside the cabin that disturbed Wick, rather than any threat from without. His eyes did not leave the bowed, curiously inert form of Lace slumped over the desk in the middle of the room. The Envoy’s jaw was slack and his gaze blank. Though scraps of note-leaf and parchment littered the table, he was not reading any of them. He had remained in the same position the entire time Wick manned the door, day and night since they left Marak city. He had not moved during the acolyte’s brief, uneasy period of slumber snatched in the hours before dawn.
The Envoy’s unnatural stupor was bad enough; the transformation when he finally jerked back to life was horrific. Wick jumped with terror as Lace staggered abruptly up from his chair, clawing at his throat. His expression was drawn and his eyes wild and unseeing. The noises emerging from his mouth were the strangled howls of a trapped animal.
It took Wick a moment to realise his master was actually choking. He rushed forward to help Lace, catching him clumsily as he collapsed to the floor. The Envoy’s body was racked with fits. With some difficulty Wick turned him on his side, loosening the white kerchief about his throat. Lace coughed and retched. The acolyte jerked back in horror as his master coughed up two balls of greasy matter, small globs of skin, broken fingernails and coarse black hairs. They rolled across the floor under the chair. Wick shuddered: he did not care to speculate about their origin. Gradually the fits lessened and Lace sagged against him, gasping. He showed no sign of recognition as he stared up at his acolyte, his pupils dilated to wells of darkness.
‘Master?’ cried the youth anxiously. ‘Master, can you hear me?’
‘Acolyte,’ slurred Lace, after an excruciating pause. ‘It’s you.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Wick cleared his own, constricted throat.
The Envoy raised a trembling hand to his face. ‘How long was I gone?’ he muttered.
‘Two days. A little bit more.’
Lace groaned. ‘How much more?’
‘Maybe six hours, sir.’
‘Good grief. Help me onto the bed, boy.’
Wick half-lifted Lace onto the bunk in the corner of the cabin where he sank back on the pillows. The acolyte eyed his master with concern. There was a weariness, a waxen cast to the Envoy’s features that he had not seen before.
‘Was the Exchange a success, sir?’ he asked. He did not sit down on the bed but dragged up a stool beside it.
‘It was,’ murmured Lace, rubbing his hand across his face. ‘Dreadful, tedious. But a success. Our allies in the east are now on the move. The troublesome Nurian Freehold will be wiped off the map. And we’re rid of that she-bat in Cherk Harbour, if only temporarily. It’s her fault this has all been so difficult.’
‘Are you referring to the Nurian Oracle, sir?’
‘Yes. My cursed counterpart plagues me.’ Lace let his hand fall back on the covers with a sigh. ‘She was a thorn in my side during this trip, I don’t mind telling you. One day we’ll have to deal properly with that problem. For now, she’ll be searching for another body to work with, which takes time. We’ll be left in peace to pursue our plans.’
‘Does that mean the new recruit has carried out his mission?’ Wick’s voice broke slightly at the end of this phrase; he hastily cleared his throat.
‘“He” has,’ said Lace, stressing the pronoun with a conniving wink, as if he guessed some compromising motive on Wick’s part for asking the question. ‘Our striking young convert will return to Argos with Father Ferny in about a month’s time. He’ll be a fine addition to the corps. Our allies in the east have turned out to be a worthwhile investment, all told. One more visit, perhaps, and we shall not need the Reaper’s services.’
‘What’s it like, sir? What’s it like to control a mind so completely, especially when there isn’t much of a mind left to control?’
Wick’s curiosity had gotten the better of his prudence. He leaned forward to drink in his master’s words, making the most of this spate of confidences. But Lace was beginning to recover his composure. His native cynicism had returned and his reply was caustic.
‘What’s it like to perform the Exchange, acolyte?’ he snapped. ‘Well, it’s like wading through a pile of manure. A madman’s mind has no barriers, nothing to keep the horror contained. Oh, don’t imagine you’re superior just because you’re sane. You only keep your horror under wraps. I don’t know how you humans bear it, actually. All that fear and anger sloshing about. All that flesh and filth and unrequited passion. You know what living things are? They’re a slew of irrational emotions attached to a slab of meat. And the Reaper is a sick man. The meat is rotting.’
Wick drew back, stung. He resented any comparison with the mindless puppets Lace used for the Exchange.
&
nbsp; ‘So, what do we do now, sir?’ he asked sullenly. One day, he told himself, he would prove that he was superior, like Lace. One day he would be the master, not the slave.
‘Now we concentrate on what’s going on at home.’
‘Home, sir?’ Wick felt a jolt of misgiving.
‘The time has come,’ said the Envoy, ‘to unveil the Lawgiver.’
His acolyte gaped at him. ‘Already?’ he stuttered. ‘I didn’t expect it so soon.’
‘Believe it or not, your expectations are beside the point,’ answered Lace irritably, waving Wick away. ‘I’m fine now, boy. Go and get something to eat, we have work to do later. Did you copy that letter out to the Marak Governor, as I told you?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Wick’s mouth had twisted in an involuntary spasm at the mention of ‘work'. He hunched his shoulders.
‘Good. Ferny will have precious cargo to deliver to us above and beyond any clever Nurian recruits. We can’t have his Lordship obstructing the process.’
Wick’s hand was on the doorknob, but he could not prevent himself from asking the obvious question. The Envoy’s answers were a bitter pill he felt drawn to take again and again. He had to know more.
‘What cargo is that, sir?’
‘Can’t you guess?’ Lace leered. ‘Use that scheming little mind of yours. There are always two mentioned together in your tedious Grafter prophecies. Who are they?’
‘The Prisoner and the Lawgiver,’ mumbled Wick.
‘There is only one Prisoner we care about at this juncture, right?’
‘Yes, Excellency.’ The youth’s grip on the doorknob tightened: he seemed to hold on to it for dear life.
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