by Neil McGarry
For a moment, Duchess thought about pressing Jana further. She stopped herself. She herself had a thousand secrets; it was only fair that Jana had at least one of her own.
* * *
The Godswalk was even stranger than the last time she’d seen it.
The great circular plaza looked much as it always had. The usual crowd of supplicants stood before the Sanctum of Wisdom, but rather than shouting for the facets’ favor, they remained silent. There was a steady trickle of worshipers into the Halls of Dawn and the Gardens of Mayu, as she would expect, but they were equally subdued.
Set amongst the faithful were the Saints, looking cleaner and more disciplined than the blackarms in the Shallows. There were more than one would normally expect, walking their rounds or standing near the temple entrances, but that was no doubt due to the recent riot.
As before, the folk who moved along the Walk on business ignored the beggars, but this time the beggars had ceased their begging. More gaunt and ragged than usual, they stood on the grassy center enclosed by the Walk, forlorn and forgotten. The whole scene reminded Duchess uncomfortably of the ceremony she’d attended in the Halls of Dawn, or the muted awe she’d sensed when she’d pushed through the crowd around Adam Whitehall’s waterlogged corpse. The quiet they observed was not just an absence of noise but a sort of hushed reverence. Even Jana, who had never before visited the Godswalk, seemed to notice.
“This is wrong,” Duchess said quietly, almost afraid to break the silence.
Jana looked in the direction of the beggars. “Yes. There is so much misery here and no one seems to notice.”
Duchess shook her head. “No, what I mean is that the beggars normally cry for alms, even if lately they haven’t been receiving them. What’s happening here?”
“And what are those?” Jana asked, drawing close and pointing. Following her finger, Duchess saw that each of the great stone statues was completely covered, head to toe, in giant iron chains. She’d never seen anything like it, and judging from the looks of passerby, she was not alone.
Was this yet another sign of the Evangelism? Drawing close to the iron-bound statue of Mayu, she wondered how far the conflict between the faiths would go—and how it would end. She shook her head. “I don’t know what it means, but I’d best get inside.” She pointed to the great stone arch that led to the Gardens of Mayu. “Care to join me?”
Jana shook her head. “I think your keepers would not be welcoming to one of my kind, and it will be more pleasant to sit.” She gestured towards the grassy center of the Godswalk. “I will remain outside.” She moved off with a wave, and Duchess turned towards the Gardens.
The inside of the arch was thickly festooned with ivy, despite the season and the lack of sun. She’d seen it once before and had even asked Jadis how it was possible. The Gardens of Mayu grow as they will, he’d replied cryptically. At the time she had dismissed the remark as a jest or empty piety, but that had been a long time ago.
When she stepped into the Gardens themselves it was as if she’d stepped backwards into spring. The air was cool, but milder than on the Godswalk. The grass that bordered the winding paths was green and lush, and there were leaves on every tree. Flowers which lay long dead in the window boxes and yards of Temple or Scholars still bloomed in the Gardens of Mayu. She took a moment to breathe in the air, which smelled as green as the grass, and only then noticed the black-cloaked keeper who stood half-hidden behind a bush, clearly watching the entrance. He approached, and under his cowl she saw a freckled young face. He said no word, but offered her a small cloth that smelled of herbs. For her offering of blood, she realized. She nodded in thanks and he stepped away. Off to report her arrival, she imagined, and she could guess to whom.
Many of the trees that grew here were already attended by worshipers, who knelt in silent prayer. Their knives were well hidden, but Duchess knew they were there. How else to pray to Mayu? She wandered until she found a tree of her own, old and gnarled. Carefully, she knelt on the bare earth, among its thick roots.
Her father had not been a pious man. The Kells had gone to the Halls of Dawn when they went to temple at all, but that was so long ago she barely remembered the visits. She’d been to the Gardens to pray since the Fall. Perhaps it was the realization that the old tales of sorcery were more than mere tales. Perhaps it was merely the comfort of the shared silence and the green. Whatever the reason, she always left the Gardens clearer-headed than she arrived.
She slid a knife from her belt and gently cut the tip of the smallest finger of her left hand. Blood welled instantly—she kept her blades sharp—and she let it drip to the root-entwined earth. She closed her eyes for a moment, not praying, but simply hearing the drip of blood and movement of wind in the leaves. She used the cloth the keeper had given her to wrap her finger, all the while watching the earth absorb her offering. The blood soon vanished, unlike the scars upon her fingers, hands and arms. They would remain, bearing witness to her worship, proclaiming her a devotee of Mayu.
If there were spoken prayers to She Who Lit the Way, who knew all secrets and judged all hearts, Duchess did not know them. Still, she imagined the goddess would hear her anyway. She closed her eyes again and pressed her hands to the blood-soaked earth.
“Mother Mayu,” she whispered. “By your lamp may Lidda and Toby find their way to your eternal garden. May they not be lost along the way.” She could feel the beginnings of tears in her eyes and fought them back.
She’d never given the gods much thought; it had always seemed to her the only justice in Rodaas was fashioned by the hands of mortal men and women. That was before she had seen the dead walk, far below the city in the fabled Necropolis. Since then, she’d begun to wonder if she had been wrong to dismiss out of hand what the priests taught. Lysander had once claimed the Rodaasi believed only in what they saw, and she had seen ancient bones come together and crawl towards her on fleshless feet. She and Castor had only barely escaped with their lives. Was their survival due only to Castor’s skill with his sword, or had something else been at work? If the dead could rise, then perhaps there was divine protection from their cold wrath.
And the walking dead were not the only mystery she’d encountered. Last autumn, Jadis had told her that under his Lady’s gaze the keepers had the power to read the truth in the words of others. Yet he himself had claimed he could read nothing in her words, or in her heart. There is something in you that is beyond justice. A year ago she would have scoffed, but now she wondered.
She thought of the Halls of Dawn and the rituals of Ventaris, so different from Mayu’s. She’d tried to follow the complicated steps—left and right, right to left—in a pattern that everyone there seemed to know. Everyone but her. She had met Dorian Eusbius that day, the baron’s lovely son, and although he had known the steps he had said he did not remember when he had first learned the pattern. Shortly after, Preceptor Amabilis had called her an errant mote, one foretold in the bloody visions of Adam Whitehall. Whitehall was dead, murdered by the preceptor himself, but not before he had cut a bloody swath through the young men of the city, reading the future in their entrails. Whitehall had spoken of the Key of Mayu, which would bring forth a poison that would bring the First Keeper low, and of a tattered figure dancing in the city’s ruins. Amabilis had dismissed that last as the ravings of a madman, but Duchess was not so sure.
She had stood in the Sanctuary of Anassa, in a white room filled with running water, mirrored by a single facet. She had faced another at the Fall who had spoken in her long lost sister’s voice. The facets had been surprised to hear her true name. At the Fall, they spoke of something secret Justin had once carried, and had left to her. In the voice of her sister Marguerite they told her that they had expected to find her brother in the art gallery of Baron Eusbius, and not Duchess. The facets knew everything, but they hadn’t known to expect her.
Three faiths. Three priests who admitted that there was something in her they could not see and did not understand.
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“Mother Mayu,” she whispered again. “You light the path, you lead the dead. Please, lead me now. I do not know who...what...I am.” She looked up into the shade of the gnarled tree, its boughs moving slightly in a breeze she could not feel on her face, but no answer came. Her throat closed and she tried to catch her breath.
She realized she had asked this question once before, and had received an answer. There, at the precipice over the pit, far beneath the city, a hollow voice had answered her three times over.
Fool, it had whispered. Fool.
She heard the smallest of sounds behind her, and turned to see Keeper Jadis, pudgy and robed in black, standing at a respectful distance with his hands tucked into his sleeves. She coughed and wiped at her face, then got to her feet, wondering how much he’d heard. She moved to stand beside him and he regarded her with grave courtesy. “I trust I did not interrupt you at your prayer?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t call it prayer,” she said with forced lightness. “I feel as though I have more doubts now then when I first knelt down.”
Jadis smiled, but he seemed somehow subdued. “Then your devotions were indeed successful.”
She remembered. “Your philosophy of doubt.”
“The experience changed you, yes? The true purpose of prayer is to change not the gods but ourselves. To remind us that we are small creatures upon a small world in Mayu’s eternal garden.” Another worshiper approached the tree and Jadis stepped away, gesturing for her to follow. “Still, perhaps there is enough doubt on the Godswalk without adding more.”
She looked at him curiously. “That...doesn’t sound like you, First Keeper.”
Jadis nodded sadly. “None of us are what we once were, my dear.” He led her along a shaded path. “The Evangelism has changed much. You saw the chains, I presume?”
“What are they? Does this have anything to do with the riot at the Halls of Dawn?”
“In a way. The Evangelism is worse than many know. There have been feints and counter-feints, attacks and retaliations. The riots were one example. I do not think this conflict will be resolved easily, nor without loss.”
“Not when there are those that use starving beggars to serve their own ends,” she remarked, just to see what he would say. Anything that discomfited the radiants helped the other two cults, and the facets didn’t seem the kind to instigate a riot.
Jadis raised an eyebrow. “My dear, what a suspicious mind you have! If you seek to blame all who profited from the radiants’ misfortune, why not start with Sheriff Galeon?”
She blinked. “What do you mean?” Galeon was the sheriff of Wharves, head of the Wharf Rats. She hadn’t seen him since the night she’d climbed back up the hill after sliding down it through the sewer. He’d very nearly arrested her, as she recalled.
“He and his Wharf Rats just happened to be on hand when the Saints were in disarray.” He made a coy smile. “Some might say it was all arranged to ensure his promotion.”
“Promotion?”
“To Temple District. He will assume control of the Saints, now that Takkis has moved up to Garden.” Jadis laid a finger on his cheek. “A most fortuitous—and profitable—coincidence.”
She could only agree, and the whole thing smelled of the Grey. Someone with enough influence could have seeded rumors among the beggars about free food, placed agents to ensure that violence broke out, and tipped off Galeon about both. Duchess glanced over at the keeper, recalling his visits to the Vermillion. Had Jadis received Minette’s help in this little endeavor?
Jadis sighed dramatically. “As is usual in times of conflict, the least of us suffer the most. The city is so disordered that some have wondered if there will be a Feast of Fools this year.”
If that were true, then things were going very badly, indeed. The Feast belonged to no faith, and marked the beginning of the new year, when spring was a distant memory. Every beggar joined in a great procession from the Deeps, all along the Way, through Beggar’s Gate and up to Temple, while the rest of the city watched from the sidelines. In an inversion of the usual Rodaasi order, the beggars wore paper crowns and necklaces, while the nobles donned finery disguised as rags. When the parade reached the Godswalk, the three faiths joined together as they never did the rest of the year, crowning one of the beggars Emperor and serving a feast in his honor.
Lysander believed the whole business just another way for the aristocrats to show off for one another, and she herself thought it a sop, a way to pretend that things in Rodaas were more equal than they truly were. Whatever the motivation, the Feast was an old custom, dating back to the time of Emperor Vassilus, if not before. What would happen, if it did not occur this year?
“And what of the chains?” she asked.
Jadis smiled, guiding her to a carved stone bench. “An ancient tradition, a sign of truce, and a call for restraint even in conflict. While they remain in place, the faiths agree to let cooler heads prevail—for now.”
“And when they come off?”
“Then I fear the Evangelism would become...less civil.”
Interesting that Jadis should ask for her at such a time. “I’m told you had something you wished to return to me.”
He nodded, and pulled from his sleeve a silk handkerchief embroidered with a D. “You’ll recall that I did you a small favor, in the matter of the Fall. I must now ask for one in return.” He handed her the handkerchief. “I have learned a little of the proper forms among your kind.”
She took the cloth, feeling sour. Jadis did not wear a gray cloak, but he knew the rules of marks well enough. By all the customs of the Grey, Duchess was now required to honor his request. Failure to do so would destroy her waning prestige on the Highway, and possibly worse.
“Very well,” she said, tucking the mark away. “What is it you would have of me?” She suspected this wasn’t going to be easy.
Jadis traced a pudgy finger along the curved arm-rest of the bench. “I did not speak of the Evangelism idly. I am gathering every resource at my disposal, and there is a man in the city whose interests ultimately align with my own, and yet he has chosen to set himself in opposition.” He tilted his head. “A not unfamiliar situation.” Duchess realized he was referring to the departed Malachar, a fellow keeper whom Jadis had poisoned in his struggle for the office of First Keeper. Was he enlisting her blades in place of poison? Had the rumors of her murderous ways reached even Jadis?
He must have sensed her suspicion, for he raised his hands to reassure. “I am not asking for your weapons but your words. I simply want you to be my voice, to bring an offer of truce and a call to join me in this struggle, beneath Mayu’s banner. With the respite the chains provide I can marshal my allies, and I hope to count him among them. Do your best to persuade him.”
“And if my words aren’t good enough?”
“Then the matter may rest there, and he may live to a ripe old age, as far as I am concerned.”
It seemed straightforward enough, but Jadis was a cagey opponent who played tiles on two boards at once; she’d learned that the hard way at the Fall. “Who is this man?”
“His name is Morel.”
Duchess did her best to hide her surprise; she hadn’t heard that name since she’d blackmailed Preceptor Amabilis, last autumn. Morel was a renegade keeper who had set up a rival sect in the Narrows, one Amabilis had been secretly supporting in order to weaken Jadis. Adam Whitehall had been the radiant’s pawn, and the means by which Amabilis had smuggled weapons down the hill. One of those weapons had been the mysterious dagger she’d once stolen from Baron Eusbius, the one Jadis called the Key of Mayu. Whitehall was dead, but as far as she knew Morel was still in the Deeps.
She weighed Jadis with her eyes, wondering how much to reveal. Did Jadis know where that dagger had ended up, and how it had gotten there? She searched his face for an answer and found none. He had once proclaimed disinterest in the Key, but perhaps he was playing a deeper game than she knew. She resisted the urge to run her fi
ngers through her hair, deciding that whatever Jadis was up to, the less he knew of her mind, the better. “Where will I find this Morel?” she asked, as if she did not already know.
“In the Narrows, with his followers. I’m sure someone of your color should have no difficulty locating him there. Morel is a keeper who has gone astray, you see, but it is my fond hope that a firm word in a soft voice will bring him back into the fold.”
“What makes you think that voice is mine?”
Jadis grinned, a flicker of his old self again returning. “Because you are the inimitable Duchess of the Shallows, wonder of the lower districts and scourge of the upper.” He stood and led her back towards the stone arch and the Godswalk. “I understand that you will return my favor in your own time, but I believe the sooner this conflict between the sects is resolved, the better.” He regarded her fondly for a moment, then laid a hand gently upon her shoulder. “And perhaps my Lady will see fit to answer both our prayers.”
* * *
Duchess scanned the Godswalk for Jana and found her sitting on the grass and watching the passersby with interested eyes. She was surrounded by the countless tiny altars that littered the grass, emblems of the thousand named and nameless gods that were subordinate to the primary cults of Rodaas.
She got to her feet as Duchess approached. “All went well, I hope?”
Duchess nodded, stepping around a marble plinth. “Well enough.” She noted once again, and with some unease, how quiet the Walk was. “If you’re ready, we’ll head back and...”
Duchess noticed that Jana was looking at something behind her and she turned to see that the crowd gathered before the Sanctum had begun to stir. The silence was broken as those gathered to beg the Lady of Wisdom’s advice began to cry out. Looking more closely, Duchess saw why.
The temple’s door had begun to open.
Although she had no business with the facets this day, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “I think we’ve been here long enough. Let’s go.”
