Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2)

by J. C. Staudt

  Bastille was floored. All this time she had believed Gallica and the others were plotting against her when in fact they had done everything for her benefit. She felt guilty now, after her attempts to thwart her students and subvert her superiors. She might have avoided it all, had she only known. “Why didn’t you tell me that was what you were doing?”

  “Can you imagine the backlash if it got out that we’d given the fourth high seat to a dead priest?”

  Yes I can, Bastille thought wryly. I can imagine that quite well… as I often have. She had been days away from proving it, in fact, according to Brother Lambret. “That would have been quite something,” she said.

  “Yes, it would have. And there was one other reason we held the position open for you. We wanted to be sure of who was to be the next inheritor. Since Sister Dominique has refused to accept the honor of elevation, and Liero has so graciously granted me the opportunity, there was always the risk that introducing a fourth voting member to the Most High may have disrupted our arrangement.”

  “Sister Gallica, you would’ve been next in line to inherit anyway.”

  “Perhaps. But there is nothing more conciliatory to someone in my condition than a guarantee. Now, what was this you were saying about Brother Travers? This is cause for concern, as it pertains to both your training and your elevation. We cannot leave your position unfilled, I’m afraid.”

  Regret twisted inside her. She’d made a terrible mistake. I should’ve been pushing my students to succeed instead of holding them back. In hindsight, maybe it was a good thing Brother Travers hadn’t learned more.

  Starting a new student at the beginning would mean remaining in her current position for more than half a year. Now that she knew high priesthood was within her grasp, six months sounded like a lifetime. “I’ll train them twice as fast as before,” she promised. “I’ll have them ready to take over for me in three months.”

  “Fully trained in both the surgical sciences and the sacrificial rites in three months?” Liero said doubtfully. “You told us two months ago that such expertise often requires years of both study and hands-on experience. You were concerned that half a year wasn’t enough.”

  Bastille searched for an answer. I am such a fool, she thought. All this time wasted. And for what? My own paranoia; my imagination’s folly. She was so frustrated with herself that, to her surprise, she actually felt like crying. She didn’t go through with it, though. Lakalie Hestenblach did not cry over trivialities, no more than she laughed at puerile jests or smiled without meaning. This was it. Time to pull out all the stops. “I have doubted my significance within the Order for one reason above all others: these talents of Sister Dominique’s. With powers like hers—the ability to heal any ailment in an instant—why bother with Nexuses and NewOrgans at all?”

  Liero and Gallica looked to Dominique as if to yield the question.

  “There are limits to what I can do,” said the high priestess. “My gift is the reason for my ailment. People like me can’t live in the above-world for long without feeling its effects. It is as if the whole of the Aionach is working against me. Each time I use my power, my body dies a little. Each time I give life, I come closer to death. Therefore I’ve reserved its use for times of dire need, and to quell the being who lives beneath our feet. Your talents, Sister Bastille, are as imperative to the Order’s survival as they have ever been.”

  “Then I will work as hard as I have to for as long as it takes to train my successors. I will treat my life’s work as a sacred covenant to the Order. You don’t understand how badly I want this.”

  “I believe we do,” said Gallica. “Does this mean you wish to rescind your previous statement about Brother Travers?”

  “I wanted you to know,” Bastille said. “That’s all. The decision of what’s to be done with Brother Travers rests with the Most High.”

  “Consider it your first task as a high priest,” said Brother Liero, “though you bear the burden only in theory and not in rank, as yet. Travers is an acolyte. He’s been with us for only a short time. You’ve worked more closely with him than anyone. Therefore, you know him better than anyone. If you wish him removed from your service, tell us and it will be done.”

  Bastille was skeptical, but at the same time the obligation energized her. It was invigorating to think she’d had such influence all this time without knowing it. “I haven’t yet discerned whether Brother Travers possesses a vindictive nature,” she said, “but I do worry for the safety of myself and others if he were allowed to remain in the Order—even in another vocation.”

  “That settles it, then. Be it known that Brother Travers has failed to exhibit the qualities befitting a member of the Order, and thus he is to be expelled at once. We’ll have a retinue of Fathers sent for him.”

  “What does that mean?” Bastille asked. “What will happen to him?”

  Liero narrowed his eyes at her. “Why, kind Sister… if you don’t know what that means by now, perhaps you haven’t been paying attention to your duties.”

  Of course I know what it means, she almost said. “Recent events have led me to believe the Order has gone lax with its rules.”

  “You speak in riddles, Sister.”

  “I do not wish to implicate anyone where it is not my place.”

  “That is somewhat of a departure for you,” said an amused Sister Gallica. “Your adherence to the Order’s laws—and your dedication to seeing that others adhere to them—is one of your most commendable qualities.”

  “I know of what she speaks,” Dominique said sourly.

  Bastille felt the witch-woman’s gaze, cold as a tomb. She knows I was watching.

  “The recent visitation of heathens within our walls resulted in a failure on my part. I let three of them go, alive and unharmed, at catastrophic risk to the Order. I admit my mistake and accept full responsibility for it. I never thought my before-life would interfere with my duties here, but in the moment, I was weak… and I acted in kind. None of you may ever understand the hatred one man bears toward me because of my role in his family’s dissolution. I am not proud of what I did to appease him. I let my shame influence my decision. There are many things I’ve done of which I am not proud, truth be told. My before-life is longer than most, with no fewer opportunities for lapses in judgment. Just as the end of the False World is known by many names, so have I been known by many names through the ages.”

  The ages? Bastille thought with wonderment. How long has the witch-woman lived? “I did not intend to question your motives, kind Sister. My only concern was to ensure Brother Travers will be treated with… finality.”

  “Brother Travers has done nothing wrong as yet, so his ultimate fate will be determined following our inquiry. We will see that there is justice in his treatment. One thing you can be sure of is that he has no future with the Order, so long as your accusations about him are true.”

  That was not what Bastille wanted to hear. If Travers were left alive, he might go to desperate lengths for survival or vengeance. She had no means for overruling the decision of the Most High, so she simply bowed her consent.

  “It is our hope that you will practice both diligence and restraint as you leave here to fulfill the task we’ve set out for you,” said Gallica. “And I pray you’ll take your lessons more seriously from now on. Your elevation is no less a secret than it was when you walked in here today. Neither is Brother Froderic’s death. Remember that.”

  “I will,” Bastille promised. “Please let me know when Travers has been detained.”

  “As you wish,” said Liero. “One more thing before you go. We’ve received some rather worrying reports from the Cypriests. They seem to have detected a curious heathen in our vicinity. A man, they say, has been approaching close to the walls. He moves slowly, yet they can’t seem to bring him down. They’ve expended a great deal of ammunition on him with little to show for it. They did, however, turn up something else during their rounds last night. Since you’re the one in c
harge of harvesting heathen corpses, I was wondering whether you’d seen anything like this before.”

  Liero rose and beckoned her to follow him to the window, where he opened the blinds and pointed to a small mound in the west yard. An animal of some sort, with streaks of gray and brown fur running down its back.

  “What is it?”

  “A jackal, they say. A rather large one, too. Whenever the Fathers have spotted this particular heathen, he’s always surrounded by several of the beasts. Naturally the Cypriests ignore them. This one was hit by mistake. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

  “Never,” Bastille said, her curiosity piqued.

  Liero gave a thoughtful frown. “I’m sure you’ll be seeing it in your preparation rooms soon enough. Do let us know if anything strikes you odd.”

  “I certainly will. Was there anything else, kind Brother?”

  “That was all. You may go.”

  Bastille fled the meeting hall in haste, overcome with equal parts dread and elation. She marched straight to her bedchamber and locked the door. It wasn’t even lunchtime, yet she had no intention of leaving her room for the rest of the day, starving or not, until Brother Travers had been taken by the Fathers.

  A knock on her door a few hours later woke her from the nap she’d fallen into without realizing it. “Yes?” she said softly, picturing Travers on the other side with a scalpel in one hand and a dinner fork in the other.

  “It’s Brother Lambret. I have some news. I was wondering if you might open up.”

  Bastille dropped to the flagstones and peered through the opening beneath the door. She could see two pairs of feet, not one. Just as I suspected—Travers is standing behind Brother Lambret with a knife to his spine, making him talk. She grabbed the heavy pewter candlestick off her nightstand and hefted it like a club. She checked the door again to make sure it was still locked. “I can hear you well enough like this,” she said. After a moment, she added, “I’m not dressed.”

  “Very well,” Lambret said. “It’s about Brother Travers. When I brought Father Xan to his bedchamber, he wasn’t there. In fact, we’ve been searching for him for the last few hours, including inside your preparation rooms. We can’t seem to find him. I don’t suppose you’d happen to know where he might’ve gone off to.”

  Bastille crouched on all fours to look under the door again. The second pair of feet were wearing heavy leather boots. A Cypriest. She rose and opened the door, hiding the candlestick behind her back, and was relieved to find Father Xan—not Brother Travers—standing beside Lambret. “Are you telling me he’s missing?”

  “I’m afraid so. Any idea where we might find him?”

  Bastille was perturbed that Brother Lambret had summoned only one Cypriest rather than the ‘retinue’ Liero had promised. This was a cannibalistic deviant with a carnal attraction to the dead. The Cypriests were known for their aim and their reflexes—not necessarily their strength or physicality. “I know he likes godechente and dead bodies. That’s about it. Have you asked the other Cypriests whether he’s been seen in the yard today?”

  Lambret pursed his lips. “No, come to think of it. That’s a good idea. I’ll do that.”

  That’s a good dway. See that you do… and let’s not be amateurs about this. “Thank you, kind Brother.”

  “Be well, Sister Bastille.”

  “Do let me know when he turns up.”

  Lambret nodded.

  She locked the door and put her back against it. Her eyes came to rest on the small, high window near the ceiling of her bedchamber, which looked out onto the north yard. She imagined trying to climb through it, head, neck, and shoulders. If she really needed to, she could probably wiggle her way out. That meant if someone really wanted to, they could get in.

  Suddenly her bedchamber did not feel so safe. Her preparation rooms, on the other hand, had no exterior windows and a heavy ironwood door to complement the thick stone walls. Perhaps she would be safer there.

  Bastille left her room in a panic, heading toward the basement.

  CHAPTER 50

  The Deepness Stirs

  All it took to get Savannah Glaive’s commscreen working again was a touch and a brief ignition. The lodwit, as she called it, must’ve been one of the first of its kind. Raith had imagined calling home once he’d gotten the thing up and running, but without the transmission codes he had no way of contacting Decylum. What he could do was enter the coordinates he’d found scribbled in the margins of one of Decylum’s construction documents. The commscreen would show him, in grainy detail, which direction he needed to travel to get there.

  Although Savannah gave Raith her permission to take the commscreen home with him, the Sons of Decylum didn’t leave Bradsleigh right away. Savannah had invited them all to stay at the Glaive Estate after their underground discovery, despite what Raith suspected was her every inclination to the contrary. Once they were there, Savannah’s attitude seemed to change.

  Hosting a dozen houseguests would’ve been an inconvenience to anyone, but Savannah appeared to relish the idea of having people around again. She’d been alone since her father died—and long before that, to hear her tell it. Raith believed she was enjoying the change of pace. As heir to the largest dwelling in town and victim to a lengthy string of suitors who wanted nothing more than to take it for themselves by way of her bed, she found Raith and his companions a welcome change. The Sons were nothing if not courteous; thus she now had a dozen men protecting her instead of trying to take what was hers.

  That wasn’t entirely true. Raith and the Sons did want something of Savannah’s. They wanted pieces of the underground facility beneath her family’s old shipping yard for Decylum’s expansion. When Raith told the Sons about the facility, he pointed out that they were better off concealing their interest in it for now. Without vehicles on which to transport said pieces or heavy draft animals to pull them, they couldn’t harvest the materials anyway.

  One day while Raith and Savannah were in the stables feeding the horses, Raith began to tell her about the master-king’s ploy; how he was convinced he could gain the powers of a blackhand by visiting Decylum himself. With Savannah’s commscreen, they could exchange Decylum’s location for Rostand Beige’s freedom. Yet the problem remained that they didn’t want the nomads to know where Decylum was.

  Savannah gave him a thoughtful smirk and said, “This might be a stupid question, but… why don’t Decylum’s people just… come out?”

  “And live in the above-world?” Raith asked. “Why would we want to do that?”

  “Because now you know it’s a somewhat hospitable place.”

  Raith laughed. “Hospitable? Yours is the first true hospitality we’ve received so far. And even that was a long time in coming.”

  “If the place is too small for you, what else can you do? It doesn’t sound like you’re going to convince the master-king not to go. Either you bring him to Decylum, or you let him keep your friend captive. If there is no Decylum… if everyone leaves… what does it matter if he finds the place?”

  “You make a convincing point,” Raith said with a smile. “But very few of Decylum’s residents will be inclined to leave without good reason. Between growing our own food and maintaining our reproductive potency, we’re better off in our subterranean home than anyone I’ve met up here. Besides you, maybe. And Pilot Wax.”

  “You met Pilot Wax?”

  “Yes.” Raith decided to leave out the part about nearly killing him.

  “I’ve always wondered what a dway like that must have to do to keep an entire city under his thumb,” Savannah said.

  “Two things, I imagine,” said Raith. “Make promises, and follow through on them.”

  “It’s a marvel he’s been able to do that for so long. He’s been in power as long as I’ve been alive. Longer, I think.”

  “Pilot Wax may not be in power much longer,” Raith said. “Your half-brother wants to depose him and take the seat for himself.”

 
Savannah looked intrigued. “Does he, now? Sounds like an ambitious dway. Tell me, does my half-brother know about me?”

  “I didn’t even know about you until we got here,” Raith said. “I doubt Merrick has any idea. He’s holding onto a lot of anger, most of it directed toward your mother. She left him when he was very young with a father who abused him. Merrick hardly remembers her.”

  “Isn’t it strange that two people could share a mother and never know each other? Especially these days, when one woman having multiple children is so rare.”

  “You and Merrick are very different. You’ve known the love of your parents. I don’t think he’s ever felt loved in all his life, and it weighs on him. It’s jaded him. And I think that longing for acceptance is something that drives him in everything he does.”

  “My Uncle Toler is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a brother. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a real one, though.”

  “I hope you meet Merrick someday,” Raith said. “Maybe not just yet. Maybe after he’s grown up a little.”

  “Didn’t you say he’s older than me?”

  Raith smiled. “He doesn’t always act like it.”

  “Tell me more about my mother. I never get tired of hearing about her.”

  “Did I tell you about the time she led an entire classroom full of her peers in a protest against the instructor? Myri was opposed to the pro-Ministry sentiment in the curriculum. She also didn’t much like this particular instructor, Mr. Cavril, and she knew a full-on revolt would push his buttons. She was always very intuitive about people in that way. She knew just how to incite them, whether for good or otherwise.”