by Col Buchanan
'I would not know what to ask you.'
The ancient farlander tilted his head. 'You do not wish to go off on this crazy venture of theirs.'
Nico glanced back to see if Ash was listening, but his master had already stepped outside. He looked again at the Seer, his mouth open but no words coming forth.
'You fear you are not ready for this vendetta your master takes you on. You suspect that you are out of your depth.'
It was true. All day, Nico had been struggling to face the thought that in the morning he would be leaving this hidden refuge in the mountains, this place that had begun to feel a little like home. And for what? To cross the sea to the city of Q'os, the very heart of the Empire, in order to kill the son of the Holy Matriarch no less, and with Nico himself still barely able to wield a blade. Sweet Ers, it set his blood racing just to think of it.
'Will you listen to my guidance, then?' inquired the Seer.
Nico cleared his throat. 'In truth, I'm not yet sure if I believe in all these things… divination and such. Your guidance may be somewhat wasted on me.'
'Know this, my young friend: the seeds of things show what fruits will come of them.'
Nico nodded, out of politeness rather than anything else.
'When the time comes to leave him, you must follow your heart.'
'What?'
The old man smiled, began packing away the paraphernalia before him.
Nico backed quickly to the doorway and stepped outside.
All around them lay the night's stillness; even the flow of the stream seemed more subdued to his ears. Master Ash stood in silence next to it, watching the water gathering and unfolding amongst the rocks.
Together they walked home through the semi-darkness.
'A strange fellow,' Nico commented.
Ash rounded instantly on his apprentice. 'You owe that old man more respect,' he snapped. But then he seemed to regret his outburst, and tried to say something else – an apology perhaps. He could not find the words though. Instead, he turned and continued onwards.
As the moons of Loss and Longing shone down to light their way, the two figures descended slowly, each lost in his own thoughts. Below them, the warm and welcoming lights of the monastery windows stood out clearly amidst a forest of silvery leaves.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Diplomat On the first day of autumn, in what would soon be the fiftieth year of Mann, in a deafening rainstorm that slashed through the air to burst against every surface like a torrent of glass shots, a man hurried from the dark and hooded entranceway of the Temple of Whispers, and threw his own hood about his shaven skull, and set off at a brisk stride across the planking of the wooden bridge, his priestly white robes whipping behind him with their own wind, the stamp of his footsteps falling lost in the thrashing waters of the moat below.
The man did not pause as he passed the masked Acolytes standing on duty in the shelter of the guard house at the far end of the bridge. His gaze remained fixed to the ground as his pace bore him through the empty streets of the surrounding Temple District, his skin constantly itching so that he kept scratching at his arms and face. A few fellow priests scurried past, their similarly hooded heads bowed low in submission to the elements. Puddles boiled without reflections. A white cat huddled in a doorway, silent and watching.
Behind him, ever further behind him, the Temple of Whispers loomed amid curtains of rain like a living thing; its flanks bristling with spikes in such numbers that they looked like a covering of fur; a tower that was not one tower but a great twisting column of fluted pillars and turrets wrapped and warped by bands of stone. With every step, the young priest could feel it at his back, a massive sentinel watching him. It was a presence that flattened his mood even further – this sense of confusion he had awakened with on the morning of his twenty-fourth birthday.
The further he went, the busier the streets grew. Ahead rose a clamour of voices, and wild cries as though from some exotic menagerie. The rain had settled into a steady drizzle as the priest entered the great plaza called Freedom Square, where distant marble buildings lined three sides of the open space, and behind them, in turn, were visible lesser skysteeples – pale spikes partly obscured by the shroud of rain.
The bad weather had barely diminished the vast crowd of devotees already gathered in the square in anticipation of the forthcoming festival of Augere el Mann, which was still almost a month away. The majority were pilgrims from across the Empire, drawn in ever greater numbers than usual by this Augere marking the fiftieth anniversary of Mannian rule: men and women alike, foreigners who had fervently embraced the religion of Mann even though many of their compatriots still grumbled bitterly and called for insurrection. All wore the common garb of the lay devotee, a vivid red robe hanging almost down to their bare feet. The front of their sodden garments bore the testimony of their past conversions: white open-palmed handprints flaking with age so that many were now a mottled pink.
After several years living in this city, the young priest Che was still barely inured to the sights and sounds of these mass devotions. As he splashed his way across the flagstones paving the square, he eyed his surroundings from within the reassuring folds of his hood.
The pilgrims called out in tongues whilst thrashing about wildly on the spot. Or they listened with bright eyes to the inflammatory sermons of priests perched on canopied podiums, firebrands who shouted and gesticulated with fervour at their nodding heads and calls of concordance. They skewered their bleeding faces with spikes, or paraded with scalps afire, or copulated on the ground, or simply wandered about like dazed sightseers, with mouths agape at everything going on around them.
Che skirted a great block of conformity that stretched from one side of the square almost to the other, ten thousand converts who stood facing the rain-shrouded Temple of Whispers, all dressed in unmarked red robes, their arms raised above them, mouths chanting constantly, faces aglow with the same fervour that had drawn them all the way to Holy Q'os for the ritual of conversion.
As one, they knelt on the flagstones, ten thousand robes rustling like a murmur of the wind. They bowed prostrate on the ground then stood up again, only to repeat the ritual. The young priest continued past lines of such dripping converts as they waited in turn to step forward and receive the press of a painted hand upon their chests from an ordained priest of Q'os. Che did not slow in his stride even here, the pilgrims clearing a path for him, as soon as they recognized his white robes. He walked between the legs of a dripping statue of Sasheen, the Holy Matriarch, sitting astride a rearing white zel, and another of Nihilis, founding Patriarch of the new order, his bronze face grim and ancient.
Towards the eastern end of the square, the press began to thin, pilgrims mixing with ordinary citizens going about their daily business. The usual vendors' carts had been set up, with their simple, sagging awnings, from beneath which their owners sold paper cups of hot chee, bowls of food, bundled rainslicks. Others stood in the rain hawking souvenirs: cheap tin figurines of Sasheen, Mokabi, Nihilis. They observed the practices around them without fondness in their eyes, and cast furtive looks at the plain-clothed Regulators who stood in pairs around the edges of the crowd, watching over all.
A pair of guards mounted on zelback halted to give way to him, their unstrung crossbows resting on their laps. Che did not bother to acknowledge them, but marched on out of the square through Dubusi street on the eastern side. He took a quick left and then a right through some smaller side streets, the noise of the crowds fading behind him with every step. His senses grew alert for any indication that he was being followed.
By the time he approached one of the smaller skysteeples, the constant rain had soaked his white robes grey. The cloth clung to his arms and legs, showing the hard wiry muscles beneath. His face still itched abominably, so that he paused before the bridge accessing the smaller tower, threw back his hood and stared up at the dark sky, then twisted his neck back and forth in the soothing rain. After a minute of such s
elf-indulgence, he spat out a mouthful of the acrid water and wiped his eyes clear.
A flight of bat-wings were circling up there in a slow descent. They were larger than the type he had become accustomed to seeing above the city, which were used for surveillance or as couriers dispatched from one temple to another. He assumed these must be the new Warbirds that the Empire had been developing over recent years, purportedly strong enough to carry ordinance in the field and he knew it was so when they suddenly turned and swept towards Freedom Square: a fly-over, intended to dazzle the pilgrims with the endless innovations of Mann.
Che set foot on the bridge, treading slowly. Reaching the entrance, he stopped by a stout metal door. A grille was embedded within it at head height, though it was too dark to see the eyes he knew were watching him from behind. A hatch slid open at waist level, to acknowledge his presence. Che scratched at his neck one more time, before sliding both hands into the black space now revealed.
As a series of clunks announced the manipulation of the door's many locks, the young priest withdrew his hands, and a smaller door opened within the larger one. It was narrow and low, intended to force any visitor to stoop and turn sideways in order to step through. Being short, Che was able to enter without having to duck.
Every hindrance a blessing, he thought drily; and even here, in the heart of the Holy Empire of Mann, he did not find it odd to be recalling that old saying of the Rshun.
*
The Sentiate Temple was quiet at that early hour. Its circular ground floor was as dim as it always would be, windowless and lit only by a few gaslights sputtering along the curving wall. The two Acolytes on duty watched from behind their masks as Che shook his shaven head dry, as a dog would, and then his dripping robes too.
'It's raining,' he explained, as though in apology.
The guards wondered if he was an idiot, one of those privileged young priests that sometimes slipped through the examiners' nets by way of money and parentage.
The taller loomed over his head; like another tower watching him. 'We serve only the high caste here,' the guard said. 'State your business.'
Che frowned. 'Mostly this, I'm afraid.'
They had time enough only to widen their eyes before the two punch-knives drove up through their throats.
The two Acolytes convulsed where they stood. Che withdrew both blades simultaneously and at the same instant stepped aside to avoid the discharges of blood he knew exactly where and how would follow. He walked a tight circle around the spreading pool of gore as he glanced around for any witnesses, and returned in time to see the two guards only then crumple from the knees up, one man folding sideways to the stone floor, the other on to his backside, and then on to his back.
Che felt nothing.
He was quick to drag the corpses out of sight, behind a statue of an imperial celebrity; Archgeneral Mokabi – retired – he noticed when he paused long enough to inspect the alcove it stood in. The pools of blood would eventually give the game away, but in this gloom only if someone chanced to pass them directly.
It would do, for all the time his work here would take him.
He crouched in the shadows, using a knife to cut free one of the men's robes. He bundled the garment beneath his arm.
The north stairwell was merely a spiral of steps fixed around a central pillar. Che followed it upwards for seven floors, proceeding casually as though he rightly belonged there. No one he encountered cared to challenge him.
He halted at the seventh floor of the skysteeple, where the stairwell opened on to a lush and spacious room of pink marble with a water fountain playing at its centre surrounded by potted plants. The air within this space tingled with the heady fragrance of pleasure narcotics. Three bald and slightly plump eunuchs lolled on the edge of the fountain, wearing loose-fitting robes, yet armed with dirks. They occasionally tossed water at each other, throwing giggling glances at the two priests who sat on the opposite rim of the fountain, one wearing an expression of eagerness, the other of acute boredom. From beyond them, through an archway of sensual mosaics and flowing red silks, emerged the sound of laughter, both male and female, mingled with the music of flutes and light drums beating like a steady pulse.
Che, still hesitating in the stairwell, ducked his head back below floor level. He scratched unthinkingly at his arm while he quickly calculated his options.
He retreated to the floor below, seemingly empty except for the steady resonance of mass snoring.
A window shone pale light into the darkened space before him. It drew Che to it, and he opened it inwards and poked his head out into the rain.
Looking up, he found it was just as he had known it would be. A concrete facade, nearly vertical, dotted with decorative protrusions too widely spaced to aid climbing. It was windowless for another four floors up.
Che worked fast. First he donned gloves of the thinnest leather, then withdrew a clay jar from the equipment webbing slung beneath his priestly robes. The jar was sealed with a thick wax plug, and had a shoulder strap fixed to a wire wrapped several times about its neck. As he pulled out the wax stopper, a stench of animal fat and seaweed assailed his nostrils; he checked that the creamy white contents had not hardened inside. Satisfied, he pulled the strap over his head so that the jar hung against his hip, then shook open the bundled robe he had taken from the guard. He began to cut the material into strips using a knife drawn from his boot. Only once did he cast a glance backwards to check his surroundings; even then he did not pause in his task.
With the shreds of cloak stuffed into another pocket, Che jumped on to the windowsill and turned so that his back faced out into the rain. His balance was precise, like that of a rope walker. Still, the empty air sucked at him.
He pulled out one strip of cloth, rolling it into a ball, then dabbed it into the jar before fixing the sodden ball to the outside wall next to the window frame, where it stuck against the concrete surface.
He proceeded to do the same with further strips, sticking a total of six rolled-up rags upon the surface within easy reach of his hands. By the time he had finished the last one, the first and lowest had dried into a hardened footrest.
Che removed his boots. He tied them together by the laces and slung them around his neck. Tentatively, he stretched a leg to the side and tried the first foothold with a bare sole. It held firm.
'World Mother preserve the foolish,' he muttered, and stepped out on to it with all his weight. Che did not dare look down. With a fierce grimace, he began to climb.
*
Despite his relative youth, Che was experienced at such work. He had discovered a natural aptitude for it, which was surprising, considering he had never been given any say in the matter.
It was this he reflected upon as he forced himself to climb the near-vertical wall of a tower in the freezing rain a few hundred feet above the ground, his fingers trembling with the effort, the sting of water in his eyes. A life without choices.
For instance; his childhood.
Che had been lucky at conception. He had been born into a family of great wealth – the Dolcci-Feda merchant clan, with warehouses covering half the northern docklands. At thirteen, he had been living happily enough in an affluent suburb to the east of the city. Like any other boy of that age, he had been easy with laughter, and daring, though at times overly wild. But life had changed dramatically when he had fallen into trouble of his own making – the worst kind of trouble, involving the daughter of a family that were commercial rivals to his own. In short, Che had got their fondest treasure with child.
One sultry afternoon, with dark thunderclouds pressing down upon the city, Che had been forced to watch a duel with blades, fought between his own father and hers, as was the custom of settling disputes of honour in Q'os. Though both men were wounded, they survived, and without a death it settled nothing. A few days later, a cannon shot exploded through the outer wall of Che's bedroom. Thankfully, he was not in the room at the time.
The shot had been l
aunched from an artillery piece set up furtively on the roof of a neighbouring household, whose occupants were away summering at their vineyards in Exanse. Initially, Che's father was enraged by the act. Later as the dust slowly settled throughout the great house, his mood turned quiet and nervous.
Even within the military, blackpowder was the rarest of commodities. Yet this had not dissuaded their enemies. Neither, for that matter, had they been deterred by the seal which Che had worn around his neck since the age of ten, thus protecting him by means of the threat of vendetta. It was now clear that their enemies would stop at nothing to settle this dispute.
Che was the only son of the family, and some day he would take over the reins of their business empire. It was quickly announced to him that he must leave for his own safety. His father could think of no other way to guarantee it.
The very next morning, Che was smuggled by a covered carriage to the local agent of the Rshun order. Once safely inside the building, with the doors locked, the windows shuttered, the lamps turned low, his father offered the woman a small fortune in gold, trying to persuade her to send Che away somewhere to train as a Rshun apprentice. She was reluctant at first, but Che's father pleaded and begged, claiming that the boy's life depended on her.
Che left there a week later, after hiding out in the agent's cellar. Someone had turned up to collect him, a middle-aged Rshun with the sharp cheekbones and hard, violet eyes that signified a native of the High Pash. The man growled his name, Shebec, and after that hardly spoke again. Without any chance of saying farewell to his family, Che was smuggled on to a ship which set sail the moment they were aboard. In just over a week, it had crossed to Cheem, and from there began a strange and frightening journey through the island's mountainous interior.
And so it was that pampered Che spent the rest of his boyhood learning how to kill without mercy, and with whatever means came to hand. As the weeks passed into months, and the months passed into years, it surprised him to find that he did not miss his family at all, nor the life of luxury he had left behind.
