Colorless

by Rita Stradling

  Heresy.

  The gods were not kind. It was always said, known, understood. East, West, North, and South, none of the gods were kind or benevolent. They rarely loved and almost never forgave.

  Unloved and condemned, I was now living proof of that.

  After pushing away from the tree, I stepped onto the road and stumbled my way to Hopesworth.

  ****

  I stood at the post office window, my face close enough to the glass that my cheek felt its chill. A constant stream of people moved in and out of the painted wooden door. The noise behind me had blended into a low rumble of carriages and pedestrians trudging along the winding Hopesworth roads.

  I’d often thought that in Hopesworth, the roads must have been built around the houses instead of the other way around.

  The one advantage to having the monks hunt me was I had not seen a single one in town. This was a first. Most days, at least one or two monks paced the streets, causing a hush in conversations and an immediate stampede to rush out of their path.

  The town itself seemed to be sighing out its freedom from their solemn presence. Shop owners stood outside their shops, fanning themselves from the afternoon sun. More people rode horses than carriages, giving the whole street a friendly feel. All around, women held up colorful parasols so thin that light shone through them like dozens of multicolored butterfly wings.

  Pedestrians fed around me as if I were a rock in a river. Without ever looking my way, they stepped out of my path while I stood vigil by the window.

  Two women stood in the shop. Both were clearly pestering the postmaster like they’d never before sent a letter. But from their leans onto the bar and batting eyelashes, I guessed they were less interested in the fineries of postage and more interested in the postmaster’s deep-set eyes.

  Just when I’d decided to walk in and leak the white from their letters just so they’d be forced to run home to retrieve new ones, the postmaster ended the flirting and insisted on taking their money.

  As the girls meandered out of the shop, far too slowly, I gazed down the little stretch I could see of the main street before it curved in each direction. My sweeping glance took in that there were too many people to guess their trajectory. Any one of them could be heading for the post office, but this was the best opportunity I’d had in an hour.

  As soon as the girls slipped out, I caught the door and slipped inside. The shop smelled like paper of all mints and ages, fresh off the press and old and musty. A wall clock ticked over the postmaster as he shuffled through letters. Somewhere in the rear of the store, the tittering of a telegram clicked its message.

  Rushing to the counter, I crouched down behind it. My box clanged onto the ground, the lid falling open. Pushing my scraps of food aside, I extracted the letter and coin bag before replacing the lid. Keeping it under the counter, I flipped the letter up to display the message I’d written, ‘Urgent to Fauve Matisse, Egres Holdings Manor.’

  Standing at the counter, I watched the postmaster as he continued to peruse through letters. His mustache twitched each time his eyes scanned across an address.

  “Telegram to go out,” someone yelled. “Is Devon back from the dailies?”

  As soon as the postmaster’s head turned, I placed the money bag and letter on his counter.

  “Should be,” the postmaster called. “Check in the back.”

  Running across the shop, I grabbed the handle of the door, opened it, and slammed it shut.

  The postmaster spun.

  “What was that?” the man in the back called.

  The postmaster’s mustache twitched once more as his brow furrowed. “The wind perhaps…” His gaze fell to the counter. He mouthed the word, ‘Urgent,’ but no sound came out. Taking a step forward, he lifted the letter and turned it over. The postmaster spun on his heel, yelling, “Go find Devon at once!”

  A grin broke across my face as I grabbed up my letter box from the floor. I turned and met the gaze of a middle-aged woman standing just outside the window. My steps faltered.

  Her hair was pulled into a neat red bun, high on her head. A servant’s dress clung to her buxom frame, drab and brown with a high collar. I thought she was looking to her own fair reflection when she lifted a hand to her brow and leaned toward the window. Wrinkles bunched around her sharp green eyes as she peered in at me.

  We stared, caught in each other’s gazes. A word moved over her lips, but I could not read what it was.

  “Iconoclast!” she yelled so loudly I heard it through the pane. The green of her eyes brightened as her hand came down to point an accusatory finger. “Somebody! Help me find the monks; it’s a real, true iconoclast in our midst! It’s real! It’s there!”

  I stumbled away, the word sending my head reeling.

  Iconoclast.

  I shook my head. “No! I’m not!”

  A crowd was gathering outside around the woman, heading for the window.

  A man pressed his face into the glass. “Woman has lost her senses! There’s nothing in there!”

  Several other faces pressed into the glass. I read across a woman’s lips, “There’s nothing in there but an empty office.”

  “She’s there!” the woman bellowed. “Grey and wretched like a death mask! Her eyes aflame! Look there!” the woman yelled.

  Reaching up, I touched the hollow just beneath my eye.

  “Look, she moved! She’s casting a spell! I can see it! Call for the monks!”

  “I’m not,” I called, but the woman leapt away and hissed.

  Tittering and shaking their heads, the crowd abandoned the woman. She stayed, her green eyes brightening as she watched me.

  “What is this commotion?” the postmaster said as he emerged from the back. His hands fell at his sides, empty of my letter. He made a shooing motion with his hands at the window. “Move on.”

  The woman pointed again, her jaw clenching.

  “Move along,” yelled the postmaster.

  With what looked like fury, the woman rushed to the door of the office and threw it open.

  I rushed to the postmaster’s desk, pushed myself onto it, and climbed over. Miraculously, none of my skin touched it in the mad climb to the other side.

  The redheaded woman stormed to the counter. “She’s there! You see her! You have an iconoclast behind your counter!” she more growled than spoke, the words running together.

  “An iconoclast? Are you mad?”

  “She’s there! The fiend! Skulking behind your counter!”

  “Leave at once, ma’am, before I send for the monks. This is a congregational official courier office.”

  “Call the monks! There’s a heretic fiend preying upon your spirit!”

  I shook my head. “You’re mistaken. I’m not an iconoclast.”

  “Fiendish lies, I know what I see,” the woman growled at me.

  “Insane woman, you are talking to no one,” the postmaster called.

  Another two men arrived from deeper in the shop. They each looked at the other, and then the postmaster.

  “She’s raving mad,” the postmaster said.

  “Let me behind the counter and I’ll show her to you!” The woman lunged for me but hit the counter.

  I shook my head further. “I’ve done nothing,” I whispered, but the lady was now spitting mad, climbing her way over the counter.

  “Stop this!” The postmaster pounded a fist on the counter as the two men dove to intercept her. Dodging around them, I moved to the other side.

  She scratched at the men more like a wild animal than human.

  The postmaster, too, tried to hold her wrists down as she fought her way onto the counter.

  “I’m not!” I spun and ran deeper into the shop. A loud clicking emitted from a fast-moving black arm over paper to one side of the shop. Just beyond it, the smell of cigars wafted in. I ran through bins of letters and gadgets of all kinds, finding a man leaning beside an open door, smoke filtering from his open lips. I rushed past him and into
a narrow alley reeking of fresh human waste. My boots echoed over the stones as my arms flailed and legs sprinted up the alley.

  My box tumbled away, clanging onto the ground and spilling my remaining food onto the dirty stones.

  I left it for the rats, leaning deeper into my sprint.

  The gods had it wrong. They’d mistaken me for someone else. I was no iconoclast. I’d never committed an act of heresy in my life. I was no zealot, but even if the gods could read my perplexed thoughts, they would never have found heresy in there. It was mistaken identity. I must have been cursed on a false accusation from a jealous mind. Or perhaps one of my words or thoughts were taken out of context.

  This was a misunderstanding, all a grave misunderstanding.

  My gaze found the two twisting spires looming over the city, and I turned onto the next road toward them. I dodged through traffic. Horses whinnied and dodged me. A woman swung her parasol just in time to hit me in the face. It flew out of her hand, raining drops of blue as it fell.

  Grabbing my aching cheek, I jumped over the fallen, forgotten parasol and kept running. The Crimson Templum loomed closer, peering down at my approach. I did not pause at a monk who stood at the end of the lengthy line of parishioners streaming through the templum’s golden sculptural portal. I ran up between the incoming and outgoing crowds. At the double entrance, I squeezed my way inside and past the monk who stood statuesque between the golden doors.

  The inside of the templum was the red of the insides of a flayed deer. Every footstep, every hard-won heave of breath, echoed up into the sharpened chasm above.

  The crowd drove toward the arcamagyk, and arched around it to head for the door out of the portal.

  I halted, stumbling from my momentum. With the monk at my back, I was penned in at all sides. The crowd made an impenetrable wall around me as they trudged forward to fall before the great golden box crusted with rubies. Coins of all kinds littered the floor around the arcamagyk.

  “Make way for the lords!” the monk called behind me, his voice echoing long after his words had stopped.

  The stream of people rushed to move out of the way, clinging together. The moment I saw a break in the stream, I lunged for it and crawled under the rope that divided the crowd from the main section of the templum.

  My feet echoed like a thousand footfalls on the black marble beneath me. I ran toward the enormous red sphere that balanced in the center on the cathedral floor and up the great steps that led to the dais.

  “I’m not an iconoclast!”

  Above me, the portrait of the eight great magicians stretched from the base of the dais to forty feet above where the templum’s walls began to slope in.

  “I swear to you, I have done nothing! Release me! I am not a heretic!” I shrieked to their indifferent faces. Their crowned heads looked out at the templum, gaze fathomless as they admired their blood-red dominion, the gods’ colors embroidered through their midnight-black cloaks.

  Of the eight magicians, whose names I had studied, my panicked mind would only recall the leader’s name, Potestas, who stood before the rest. I directed my next plea to him, “Please, I beseech you, Your Highness, Potestas, the gods have cursed the wrong person! Please! I am no iconoclast!”

  Nothing happened. If Potestas or any of the other magicians heard me as I cried out my plea in their templum, they gave me no answer.

  Just like every time I stood by Fauve’s painting, I could hear a low buzzing sound. And, the same as in my sitting room, some instinct in me screamed that I should touch the painting. I did not know if this was the answer I was waiting for, an instinct instead of a spoken answer. After a moment’s hesitation, my gloved hands reached up to the painted toes and I pressed my fingers to the canvas.

  Too late, I saw that one of my glove’s fingers had split its seam. The pad at the tip of my pinky touched the painted fibers of the canvas and slipped through. I yanked my hands back, but as if it was caught in a trap, my pinky stayed.

  “No!” I fought to pull my hand loose. My finger complained at the pressure, yet remained stuck, disappearing into the painting.

  I glanced around and then up the painted length of the magicians’ bodies. Far above, all eight of the magicians peered down. Fury set on each of their expressions.

  “I did not mean to,” I begged. “I thought you wanted me to touch it!”

  The embroidery on their robes began to move, and slithered down their painted bodies, all straight toward me.

  “Destroy the painting,” the wind whispered into my ear. I wasn’t sure if I was hearing things or it was what my own mind was telling me to do.

  I wouldn’t destroy the painting. I didn’t even know how.

  The embroidery met together, threads weaving into one striped snake body.

  For one instant, I thought perhaps the magicians truly would cure me, and then the snake snapped out and bit off my fingertip.

  Thrice Daily Renouncement of the Iconoclasts

  I forsake the iconoclasts and their infectious plague of the mind.

  I renounce the heresy against the Congregation in all forms. It is heretic thoughts that lead to the curse, which transforms a human into an iconoclast.

  I will guard myself against the fiendish words of those who are discontent with what the gods have blessed them with, for only an unwavering spirit is safe from heresy’s contagion. Once heresy takes root in a spirit, the only cure is the cleansing of Weire’s eternal fire. For upon the heretic spirit, execution and its chance at redemption is a blessing.

  I will fear the gods, worship the magicians, and forsake the iconoclasts forevermore. Let it be so.

  6

  Marc’s Flight

  Dylan

  Marc yanked against the reins, turning to the main road to Hopesworth.

  I clicked my tongue and leaned into the horse, gently tugging on the reins in the direction of the horse path. “Can’t go that way, boy. Just one more time around the grounds, and then we’ll head in.”

  Usually the horse with the mildest temperament, Marc had been trouble for days. Most times when I exercised him, he’d try to muscle his way in the direction of the east wing, but for some reason, today it was the road.

  It wasn’t the only thing that was off about today, everything about that morning had felt wrong. I woke with a feeling of unease and Lord Klein’s words echoing through my mind.

  … there will be a price to be paid for what we’ve done… and it is those I love who will pay it.

  The feeling had worsened from there. Then, at high noon, the monks arrived with twice their previous number, which had already been growing to an alarming swarm.

  Marc attempted to muscle to the right once more, but my firm hold and lean convinced him once more to walk to the horse path.

  I had never worked so hard in my life nor had so little work to do as in the past days. With the lord, lady, and Lady Annabelle not visiting the stables or horses, little was required of me aside from keeping the horses fed, watered, clean, and exercised. And aside from Goliath, I could exercise most of the horses in the morning and be finished by noon, but I chose to wait until afternoon.

  I found myself stretching the day’s work out, not willing to leave until the patrols of monks did. Every day, that was later and later. For good or ill, something in me needed to see how this hunt for Lady Annabelle played out.

  That was likely why this morning, on my weekly break-day, that uneasy feeling woke me before Ester’s hour and sent me trudging out of bed. As most days, I found the small table already full with both my brothers and grandmother. They sat in the light of a flickering candle.

  “What in the death god’s red ass are you doing up?” Joseph had growled over the bread and sausage set before him.

  I’d plopped down on the chair beside my grandmother and grumbled, “None of your business.”

  Joseph set both his forearms on the table and leaned toward me. “I told you to quit. If you haven’t learned the reason behind Lord Klein’s
death by now, you’re not going to. Who knows? It could have been an illness—”

  I glared. “I told you, he warned me his death was coming—I just didn’t know it at the time.”

  “Regardless, none of us are happy about what happened, but we all need to move on. I need you other places—I need you more than ever now.”

  I looked Joseph in his eyes and said, “Not yet.”

  “Joseph,” John had said as he leaned in his chair so that only two of the chair’s legs were on the floor. Blue eyes landed on mine before John winked. “Give him a week or two; he’s probably chasing a skirt. Boy needs some happiness in his life.”

  Joseph pointed into my face. “You chasing a skirt or are you trying to find answers?”

  “Maybe I’m doing both.”

  “It doesn’t make me happy—but I’d rather it be a skirt than your stable master thinking he can work you like this with no extra pay. If that’s what’s going on, he’ll be hearing something from me,” Joseph grumbled.

  “It’s a skirt,” I had said, hoping to head off any ‘workers have rights’ speech that might swallow up my entire morning.

  “It better be a skirt, and it better not take long,” Joseph replied, pointing into my face. “Next week, this is over.”

  When Joseph had opened his mouth to say more, likely much more, our grandmother held up a hand. In her low, steady voice she said, “You’ll let your brother eat, Joseph.” That had ended all conversation at the table.

  As Marc trotted down the horse path, the monks weaved together across the lawn like strings on a loom. Their coordinated dance made slow progress, yet if the Lady Annabelle had been anywhere on the grounds, she’d have been cut off on all sides.

  Thankfully, she was still holed away in the forgotten east wing. In the past days, I’d spotted her in passing from the tall windows.

  Marc snorted and slowed as we approached the monks’ unbroken line, clearly not wanting to go any further. But when I leaned, Marc continued.