“I’ll stop by in the morning, before I leave,” he said. “I hope you change your mind, healer.”
It sounded like a threat.
Sable didn’t respond.
He strode for the door, but when he opened it, Sable called out, “Who are you?”
He paused in the threshold and turned his head just enough to make his strong profile visible. “Jos.” He tugged on his cowl and stepped out into the rain, and the door closed behind him.
Silence settled, expanded. Even the windchimes had ceased their song.
Sable let out a long exhale and sagged down upon the bench, thinking on how a name didn’t answer anything at all.
Jeric strode briskly down the path, his breath rising in a cloud before him. This wouldn’t be as simple as he’d hoped.
Instead of turning right, toward the square, he turned left and headed deeper into town. The streets were empty this morning, and the fog had settled as if it had battened down to stay. Jeric strode on regardless, his boots splashing through puddles as he took it all in—the cold air, the cramped buildings, the narrow streets—drawing a mental map of the town’s layout, marking every vantage point and every potential hiding place.
The townsfolk began to stir, and the few he passed made a wide berth around him, as people usually did. They didn’t know him, but Jeric believed man was designed with survival instincts, and his disposition naturally warned others away. Still, he found it oddly refreshing walking in a place where he was unknown. Where people didn’t want or manipulate him.
Where people didn’t do exactly as he asked.
He kicked a brazier out of the way, and its tinny echo pinged through the quiet street. A chicken squawked and waddled away.
The healer wasn’t at all what he’d expected. In a world where most cowered before him, he might’ve applauded her strong constitution had that constitution not interfered with his objectives.
“So…?” Braddok asked when Jeric finally returned to their room. He washed down a bite of honeyed cakes with mead.
Jeric tossed his damp cloak over a chair and swiped a small cake from Gerald’s plate before heading to the window.
“I was gonna eat that,” Gerald murmured.
Jeric ignored him, took a seat at the window, and propped one boot on the bench while stretching his other leg across the floor. He took a bite of the hot cake and watched the village beyond the window.
Gerald mumbled something unflattering about princes, and Braddok chuckled.
“Did you find any nightglass?” Jeric asked.
“Yeah,” Braddok said. “Turns out, it’s supplied by that Ventus and his Silent.”
This piqued Jeric’s interest. He turned the cake in his hand. “So they’re nightglass dealers… who also happen to rule The Wilds.”
“They’re technically priests, but they serve more as executioners, according to the smithy.” Braddok’s chair creaked as he leaned back. “And Ventus is their high priest, I guess you’d call him. They live in a temple northeast, but they’re here for the harvest.”
Jeric’s gaze trailed a child who scurried through the streets like a thief on the run. He probably was just that. “And how does the nightglass factor in?”
“The smithy said Ventus comes around a couple times a year and gives nightglass in exchange for tithes to the Maker.”
The Maker. God of the Sol Velor and, apparently, this high priest.
“How convenient,” Jeric mused.
“Isn’t it?” Braddok agreed.
“These Silent… are they a concern?”
“Dunno. The smithy seemed nervous saying much more than that, so I did some investigating.”
Jeric waited.
“They just beheaded a man in the village square for not paying his tithes.”
“That seems a little extreme,” Jeric said, taking another bite of his cake.
“I went to the square to see if I could get a look at them myself,” Braddok continued. “One of them stepped outside. Couldn’t see scat through the fog, but he just stood there on the steps, like some demon guarding his master.”
Jeric frowned.
“Creepy bastard,” Braddok added with a dramatic shudder. “I could swear he knew I was there and stepped outside just to warn me off.”
“I think you’ve been drinking too much mead,” Gerald said, stabbing a berry on his plate.
Jeric eyed Gerald. “And where were you during this reconnaissance?”
“Tending to the horses.”
“And your rutting belly,” Braddok drawled.
Gerald grinned and shoveled a bite into his mouth.
“You purchased more nightglass?” Jeric asked.
Braddok nodded. “Got more arrows for the princess”—he nodded at Gerald, who grunted—“and a nightglass blade for each of us. Cost you a shiny crown, but I didn’t think you’d mind.” He beamed, showing off his big teeth.
“It’s only coming out of your salary,” Jeric replied.
“You can’t afford me, anyway.”
Jeric smirked. “Nor can I be rid of you.”
Braddok chuckled, took a swig, then wiped his mouth. “Still haven’t answered my question, Wolf.”
Jeric draped an arm over his knee with a sigh. “She’s here.”
A beat.
Braddok cleared his throat.
Gerald groaned.
“Pay up, pay up,” Braddok gloated, flapping his open palm.
Jeric glanced over as Gerald dropped a few coins into Braddok’s outstretched hand.
“What’s this about?” Jeric asked.
“Gerald and I had ourselves a little bet,” Braddok said, palming the coins. “I didn’t think you’d be able to convince the girl to come. Being nice to Scablickers isn’t in your nature.”
“Such little faith.” Jeric feigned offense. “For the record, I was nice. You would’ve been impressed.”
Braddok raised a challenging brow. “Then where is she?” And then, as an eager aside, he asked, “She as pretty as you?”
“Gods, Brad…” Gerald moaned.
“Oh, get off your self-righteous—”
“I gave her until tomorrow morning to think it over,” Jeric said.
Braddok’s expression sobered, then pinched with confusion. Even Gerald looked up from his plate. Berry stained his lips.
“Why’d you do that?” Braddok asked.
Jeric tilted his head back against the wall and absently flexed his fingers. “Because she said no.”
A pause.
Braddok tipped his head back and laughed.
“Wait.” Gerald looked from Braddok to Jeric. “You were nice to her and she still said no? You gave her the story and everything?”
Jeric looked back at the window. “Everything.” He turned the one word into four.
Braddok’s laugh became one of resignation, and he sighed, elbows on his knees. “Gods.” He dragged a hand over his face. “We’re going to be dragging her Istraan arse through the rutting forest, aren’t we?”
Jeric watched a rivulet slide down the murky pane. “Yes, I’m afraid we are.”
10
The Temple of Aryn was a masterpiece of stonework, composed entirely of refined skal ore. For hundreds of years, its glossy black pillars and impossibly high dome sat like a god-sized jewel upon the earth, the city of Skyhold its lustrous band. It was the prize of Corinth, the heart of its people. A place of worship, a place of judgment. It was Rasmin’s home, and he despised it.
A low sun touched the horizon, gilding Skyhold’s storefronts as Rasmin strode through the cramped streets. People stepped out of his way, with reverence as much as fear. Positions like his were necessary, but not liked. Inquisitors were the swords of the gods, exacting justice in their name. No one regarded a sword without thinking of blood; no one regarded an inquisitor without thinking of death.
He passed an alley where three little boys played, throwing stones at squares, hopping through a rough course they’d drawn. Sol
Velorian children—dark eyes and skin and hair, clothes in tatters. Commander Anaton was tasked with their collection. His men swept the streets for both purebred and bastards, then the commander distributed them where Corinth had need. Lately, however, the commander’s attentions had been spread far too thin, and proof of that strain kept materializing upon Skyhold’s streets. Rasmin had almost passed by the alley but stopped short when the boys began chanting a rhyme, in their language.
“We are legion,
Legion is We,
One… two… three…
Soon we’ll be free.”
Rasmin knew all the Sol Velorian verses. He had never heard this.
The boy hopped to the end of the squares and turned around. His dark eyes found Rasmin. The boy froze, the other two glanced up, and all three scurried like mice, darting out of sight, leaving their stones behind.
Rasmin’s eyes narrowed, and he walked on to the temple, turning the rhyme over and over in his head. Perhaps it was nothing. The mere whim of a child’s wild imagination.
Perhaps it was not.
On either side of the magnificent doors stood Corinthian guards, each accoutered in black plates—armor forged of refined skal, a staple of Corinth, coveted throughout the Five Provinces for its lightness, durability, and strength. Rasmin was almost at the doors when a figure he knew well slipped out of them.
“Princess Astrid,” he said, somewhat startled but not surprised. She visited the temple regularly.
She glanced up. Her grin came delayed. “Head Inquisitor.”
Out of the three Angevin children, Princess Astrid was, without question, the gods’ most devout. Prince Hagan served Corinth with shrewdness, Prince Jeric with might, but the princess served it by prayer. The past few months had brought her to the temple more often than not.
Rasmin tipped his head respectfully. Princess Astrid adjusted her cowl and hurried on her way. For a moment, Rasmin watched her go, and then he strode past the guards and through the temple’s enormous double doors.
The temple was quiet this afternoon, its circular auditorium mostly empty, save a handful of scattered citizens, all kneeling with heads bent in prayer. Candles burned upon the depressed stage, located at the center of the auditorium, where a collection of flowers and coins lay in offering. More candles lined the temple’s upper rim, casting light upon the statues of Corinth’s gods.
The gods had been chiseled from the purist marble, carried down from the tops of the Gray Teeth Mountains, each figure standing roughly three times the height of man. The white marble gave a sharp contrast to the temple’s glossy black interior—a reminder that though the people might add colorful interpretation to the law, the gods worked in black and white.
Rasmin’s eyes lingered on the statue of Aryn, master of the gods, ruler of the skies and all that spread beneath them. The one for whom this temple had been named. Aryn’s form had been chiseled to human perfection, boasting a strength and proportion men admired and envied. In Aryn’s right hand was the sun, and in his left was a scepter which he’d stabbed into the earth, claiming it and everything in it as his.
Rasmin’s gaze drifted to the statue left of Aryn’s: Lorath, the god of justice. In contrast to Aryn’s broad and boastful figure, Lorath’s strength was hidden beneath heavy robes with only a chin and mouth visible. Watchful. Deadly. He held a sword, pointed straight down, his cowl bent over the hilt as if blessing the blade for its higher purpose. Rasmin found their resemblances to Corinth’s two princes uncanny.
He strode onward, winding beneath the arched hall that wrapped around the perimeter and headed for a door tucked in back. One of his inquisitors stood guard, pale hands clasped before him, head bowed. Upon sensing Rasmin, he glanced up.
The inquisitor’s face was a face that frightened many, with his snow-white skin and three vertical scars cording each cheek. One scar for each of the six god-given laws every inquisitor had sworn to uphold.
“Head Inquisitor.” The inquisitor bowed his head.
“She is ready?” Rasmin asked quietly.
The inquisitor nodded once.
Rasmin pushed through the door, striding down a winding stairwell and into the bowels of the temple. It was here that another people had built a temple dedicated to a god they called Asorai—the Maker. It was here the Sol Velorians had honored and worshiped the Maker until the Five Provinces had driven them out. It was here they had spent countless hours in prayer before Corinth had destroyed their temple, erecting its own upon the remains.
It was here he and his inquisitors did their work.
Rasmin found an irony in it all, to be using what remained of a god’s temple to torture and interrogate his followers.
Iron, must, and blood clung heavily to the air, and even after all these years, Rasmin hadn’t numbed to the smell. The torchlit tunnel ran beneath the temple of Aryn like an artery, lined with the skulls and bones of the dead. It branched off into smaller capillaries, each ending in what had once been rooms of prayer and teaching. Now, they were interrogation chambers.
Rasmin wound through the familiar network, passing more inquisitors as he headed for where they kept Prince Jeric’s prisoner. Two inquisitors stood guard before the door, stepping aside as Rasmin approached. One handed Rasmin a scroll. Rasmin took it, slipped the tie free, and unwound the paper. He scanned the writing, rolled it up tight, and slipped it inside his robe.
“I’ll take it from here,” he said.
The inquisitors stepped around Rasmin, and Rasmin watched their silhouettes retreat down the narrow corridor before he turned back to the door. It was a single slab of thick oak reinforced with five skal bolts and a bar. This Sol Velorian wasn’t Liagé; he didn’t need old Liagé doors to hold her. One by one, Rasmin turned the bolts, slid the bar free, then grabbed the torch from the wall beside him, pushed the door open, and stepped into the chamber.
The metallic scent of blood struck him at once, and the torch illuminated a Sol Velorian woman fastened to a stretching table in the center of the room, arms and legs spread. Her black hair had been brutally hacked off, one lid was swollen shut—most likely covering an empty socket. Blood coated that side of her face, and an assortment of cuts and slashes and welts decorated her naked body.
Rasmin closed the door and set his torch in the hook in the wall. The stone chamber was small—they all were—but then, these rooms hadn’t been intended for this.
Rasmin stopped beside the table and gazed down at the woman. He wondered, as he had so often wondered, how a people with so much fight and resilience could have been vanquished all those years ago. But pride was a dangerous flaw, for it refused to see the cracks in its foundation, and it was upon those cracks that kingdoms imploded.
“You are keeping secrets from me,” Rasmin said.
She did not answer. He hadn’t expected her to.
“I read your report,” Rasmin continued. “After everything you’ve been through, the only additional information my inquisitors extracted was a handful of very colorful curses.”
Still, she said nothing.
“So prepared to die for your cause,” Rasmin said, edging his way along the table, feet to head. “I admire that. It shows dedication. Loyalty. Invaluable traits in a person. Rare, I might add. Your son is very fortunate to have such a mother.”
Her breath hitched. It was the faintest sound, but he’d been listening for it.
Rasmin leaned closer to her. “Do you know how I became Head Inquisitor, Taviána?”
Fear marked her stillness now.
“Because not one man or woman has escaped my walls without first telling me their secrets.” Rasmin wrapped a hand around her wrist, and she flinched, expecting pain.
He did not give it. That wasn’t his way.
“Let us first pray to Aryn that he illuminates the truth,” he said as he always did. He flexed his fingers around her wrist and cleared his mind.
A flash.
Laughter echoed. A child. Sun blinded, sands gleamed.
Too far into the past.
Rasmin pulled back. The fates swirled, a tunnel of color blurred.
Another flash.
Dark shapes seeped over fields of wheat—the fields of Reichen. He had been there many times. The shapes wove through village fences, slipped through walls, and then…
Screaming.
A man walking the street collapsed, his face a twist of horror.
The scene changed into trees. Thick as spires. Sunlight mottled their thick canopy. Swaying, dizzying.
Whispering.
The landscape blurred, brown and green and black, and a lake came into focus. The scene halted on a silhouette, crouched, fingers digging into the earth. The cowl turned back. Teeth bared within. A hiss cut through his ears.
Rasmin’s lungs cramped, and his breath strangled. He let go of the prisoner and turned away.
He remembered the commander’s report of Reichen. The carnage of a kind Rasmin had not seen in a very long time, and yet no Sol Velorian slaves had been found amidst that carnage.
Here was one. She had seen it.
The wolf prince had unwittingly intercepted Reichen’s Sol Velorian fugitives, and this woman was their sole surviver. Jeric and his pack had slaughtered the rest. The lake, Rasmin had visited—recently, in fact. It was a location he’d determined from the map Prince Jeric had retrieved. There’d been no marking, but he’d known the altered words scratched upon the cities. Together, they’d described an uninhabited location deep within the Blackwood. He’d investigated it shortly after, but his search had turned up nothing. Clearly, he’d missed something.
“Im e’Liagé.”
The voice was so soft, so fragile, Rasmin almost hadn’t heard it.
You’re Liagé.
He glanced down to find the woman glaring up at him with her one eye.
She had felt his Sight.
“Im e’Liagé!” she growled, insistent.
Rasmin turned to face her completely.
The Gods of Men Page 9
