Faith of the Fallen tsot-6

by Terry Goodkind

  Nicci splashed water on her face from the basin Richard had brought home one day. The flowers around the edges matched the salmon-colored walls, and the rug he had been able to purchase from savings. He was certainly industrious, managing to save from his meager wage.

  She pulled off her sweaty nightshirt and bathed herself as best she could with a wet washcloth. It felt refreshing. She hated to look sweaty and dirty in front of Richard.

  She saw that the bowl of stew she’d made for his dinner the night before was still sitting on the table. He hadn’t told her that he had to work at night, but sometimes he didn’t have time to come home for dinner first. When he worked at night, he usually came home shortly after dawn, so she expected to see him at any moment.

  He would likely be hungry. Maybe she would make him eggs. Richard liked eggs. She realized she was smiling. She had been angry when she first woke, and now, thinking about what Richard liked, she was smiling. She combed her fingers through her hair, already eagerly looking forward to seeing him walk in, to asking if he would like her to make him eggs. He would say yes, and she would have the pleasure of doing something she knew he wanted.

  She loathed doing things she knew he didn’t like.

  It had been several months since that awful night with Gadi. That had been a mistake. She knew that afterward. At first, she had enjoyed it, not because she wanted to have sex with that repulsive thug, but because she had been so humiliated by Richard refusing to make love to her that she wanted to get back at him. She had in the beginning of it reveled in what Gadi did to her, reveled in how he hurt her, because it was hurting Kahlan, too.

  Nicci enjoyed it only in the sense that it was punishment for what he had done to her. Nothing hurt Richard like hurting Kahlan.

  Gadi hated Richard. Having Nicci, he thought, got back at Richard and made Gadi a king again. As much as he wanted her, he wanted to get back at Richard more. Richard had taken Gadi’s kingdom and made it his own. Nicci was only too happy to let the little bully be king again. Every sincere cry, she knew, Richard heard, and would know that Kahlan felt the same pain.

  But as Gadi went at her with wild abandon, doing his best to degrade Richard by what he did to her, Richard’s words—“Nicci, please don’t do this. You’re only hurting yourself”—began to haunt her.

  As Gadi took her, she tried to make believe it was Richard, tried to have Richard if even by proxy. But she couldn’t make herself believe it, not even for the pleasure of such a fantasy. Richard, she knew, would never humiliate and hurt a woman in that way. She couldn’t even pretend for a second that it was Richard.

  More, though, Nicci began to comprehend that Richard’s words were not a plea to spare Kahlan pain, but to spare Nicci the pain. As much as he must hate her, Richard had expressed concern for her. As much as he must hate her, he didn’t want to see her hurt.

  Nothing else Richard could have said would have cut deeper into her heart. That kindness was the cruelest thing he could have done to her.

  The pain afterward was her punishment. Nicci was so ashamed of what she had done that she pretended to Richard that she hadn’t suffered in the incident. She wanted to spare him the distress of knowing what Kahlan was suffering along with her. The next morning, she told Richard that she had made a mistake. She didn’t expect his forgiveness; she wanted him to know she knew she had been wrong, and that she was sorry.

  Richard said nothing; he only watched her with those gray eyes of his as he listened before leaving for work.

  She bled for three days.

  Gadi had bragged to his friends about having her. To her further humiliation, he revealed all the details. To Gadi’s surprise, Kamil and Nabbi had been furious at him. They were intent on dripping hot wax in his eyes and doing some other things—what, Nicci wasn’t sure, but could imagine.

  The threat was so deadly serious that Gadi had gone off and joined the Imperial Order army that very same day. He had joined just in time to leave with a new troop on their way north to the war. Gadi had sneered to Kamil and Nabbi that day, telling them that he was going off to be a hero.

  Nicci heard footsteps coming down the hall. She smiled and pulled three eggs out of the cupboard. Instead of Richard opening the door, as she was expecting, someone knocked.

  Nicci stepped to the middle of the room. “Who is it?”

  “Nicci, it’s me, Kamil.”

  The urgency in his voice made the fine hairs on her arms stand on end.

  “I’m decent. Come in.”

  The young man burst in, panting. His face was white, as were his knuckles around the doorknob. Tears stained his cheeks.

  “They’ve arrested Richard. Last night. They have him.”

  Nicci was only dimly aware of the eggs hitting the floor.

  Chapter 55

  With Kamil at her side, Nicci ascended the dozen stone steps up into the city guard barracks. It was a huge fortress, its high walls stretching off down the entire block. Nicci hadn’t asked Kamil to go with her. She doubted that anything short of death would have stopped him. She couldn’t really decipher precisely how Richard managed to inspire such reactions in people.

  As they had left, Nicci was in a state of frantic shock, but she had noticed that the entire building of people seemed tense and alert. Faces peered from windows as she and Kamil had rushed out the building and down the road. People had come out of other buildings to watch her go. They all wore grim expressions.

  What was it that made people care so much about this one man?

  What was it that made her care?

  The inside of the filthy barracks was crowded with people.

  Hollow-cheeked, unshaven, old men stood as if in a daze, staring off at nothing. Plump-cheeked women with scarves covering their heads wept as wailing children clung to their skirts. Other women stood around without expression, as if they were expecting to buy bread or millet. One small child, with only a shirt and nothing from the waist down, stood forlorn, his tiny fists at his mouth as he bawled.

  The room felt like a death watch.

  City guards, mostly large young men with indifferent expressions, pushed through the throng as they passed on into dark halls guarded by their fellows. A short, roughly constructed wooden wall held back all the people, confining the pandemonium to half the room. Beyond the short wall, more of the guards casually talked among themselves. Others brought reports to men at a simple table, joked, or picked up orders on their way through.

  Nicci cut right through the crowd, forcing her way to the short wall where cowering women pressed close, hoping to be called, hoping for word, hoping for the miracle of intercession by the Creator Himself. Pressing up against the rough boards, they received splinters, instead.

  Nicci seized the sleeve of a passing guard. He halted in midstride. His glare rose from her hand to her eyes. She reminded herself that she was without her power and released his sleeve.

  “May I ask, please, who is in charge?”

  He looked her up and down, a woman he appeared to judge was about to be without a husband and available. His face slid into an affected smile. He gestured.

  “There. At the table. People’s Protector Muksin.”

  The older man sat ensconced behind his sovereign stacks of papers.

  Beneath a chin that sank down toward his chest, his spreading body looked as if it were melting in the summer heat. His loose white shirt bore big dark rings of sweat, adding its bit of stink to the stench of the sultry room.

  Guards leaned down to speak into his ear while his dull gaze roamed, never settling. Others behind the table to either side of him were busily engaged in work at stacks of their own papers, or speaking among themselves, or dealing with the other stream of officials and guards that was ebbing and flowing through the room.

  Protector Muksin, the shiny top of his head concealed about as well as an aged turtle napping beneath a few blades of grass, watched the room. His dark eyes never stopped moving, gliding past the guards, the officials, the mill
ing crowd. When they glided over Nicci’s face, they registered no more interest than in any of the other people. All were citizens of the Order, equal pieces, each unimportant in and of itself.

  “Could I see him?” Nicci asked. “It’s important.”

  The guard’s smile turned to mockery. “I’m sure it is.” He waved a finger at the clump of people to the side. “End of the line. Wait your turn.”

  Nicci and Kamil had no choice but to wait. Nicci knew enough about such petty officials to know better than to make a scene. They lived for the times when someone made a scene. She leaned her shoulder against the plastered wall dark with oily stains of countless other shoulders. Kamil took up station behind her.

  The line wasn’t moving because the officials weren’t seeing anyone.

  Nicci didn’t know if they only saw citizens at certain times. There was no choice but to keep their place in the line. The morning dragged on without the line in front of her changing. It grew more crowded in back.

  “Kamil,” she said in a low voice after several hours, “you don’t need to wait with me. You can go home.”

  His eyes were red and swollen. “I wish to wait.” He sounded surprisingly distrustful. “I care about Richard,” he added in a tone that sounded like an accusation.

  “I care about him, too. Why do you think I’m here?”

  “I only came to get you because I was so afraid for Richard, and I didn’t know what else to do. Everyone else was off to work, or to buy bread.” Kamil turned and leaned his back against the wall. “I don’t believe that you care for him, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Nicci swiped a sweaty strand of hair off her forehead. “You don’t like me, do you?”

  Still he didn’t look at her. “No.”

  “Might I ask why?”

  Kamil’s gaze snuck a glance around to see if anyone was listening. They were all concerned with their own problems.

  “You are Richard’s wife, yet you betrayed him. You took Gadi to your room. You are a whore.”

  Nicci blinked in surprise at his words. Kamil glanced around again before he went on.

  “We don’t know why a man like Richard would be with you. Every woman without a husband in the house, and the other houses nearby, told me she would be his wife and never lie with another man as long as she lived. They all say they don’t understand why you would do that to Richard. Everyone was sad for him, but he would not listen to us tell him.”

  Nicci turned away. Suddenly, she couldn’t bear the shame of looking at a young man who had just called her a vile name, and had been right.

  “You don’t understand the situation,” she whispered.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Kamil shrug. “You are right. I don’t understand. I don’t understand how anyone could do such a hurtful thing to a husband like Richard, who works hard and takes such good care of you. To do such a thing, you must be a bad person who does not care about your husband.”

  She felt tears join the sweat on her face. “I care about Richard more than you could ever know.”

  He didn’t answer. She turned to look at him. He was bouncing his shoulders gently against the wall. He was too ashamed of her, or angry at her, to look her in the eye.

  “Kamil, do you remember when we first came to live in the room in your building?”

  He nodded, still not looking at her.

  “Do you remember how cruel you and Nabbi treated Richard, all the mean things you said to him? All the hurtful names you called him? How you threatened him with your knives?”

  “I made a mistake,” he said, and sounded as if he meant it.

  “Kamil, I made a mistake, too.” She didn’t bother trying to hide her tears—half the women in the room were weeping. “I can’t explain it to you, but Richard and I were having an argument. I was angry with him. I wanted to hurt him. I was wrong. It was a foolish thing for me to do. I made a terrible mistake.”

  She sniffled and dabbed her nose on a small handkerchief. Kamil watched her from the corner of his eye.

  “I admit it’s not the same kind of mistake that you and Nabbi made when you were acting tough when you first met Richard, but it was a mistake. I was acting tough, too.”

  “You don’t desire Gadi?”

  “Gadi turns my stomach. I only used him because I was angry with Richard.”

  “And you are sorry?”

  Nicci’s chin trembled. “Of course I’m sorry.”

  “You are not going to get angry and do it again? With some other man?”

  “No. I told Richard I made a mistake, I was sorry, and I would never do such a thing to him again. I meant what I said.”

  Kamil thought it over as he watched a woman shake a child by the arm.

  The child wouldn’t stop crying, because it wanted to be picked up. She said something under her breath and the child leaned against her leg and pouted, but didn’t cry anymore.

  “If Richard can forgive you, then I should not be angry at you. He is your husband. It is for the two of you to settle, not for me.” He touched her arm. “You made a foolish mistake. It is over. Don’t cry for that anymore? There are more important things, now.”

  Nicci smiled through her tears and nodded.

  He smiled a little bit. “Nabbi and I told Gadi we were going to cut off—we told him we would cut him for what he had done to Richard. Gadi showed us his knife, so we would let him pass. Gadi loves his knife. He has cut men with it, before. Cut them bad. He told us to let him pass to go to join the army, that he was going to use his knife to slice the guts out of the enemy, to be a war hero, and to have many women better than Richard’s wife.”

  “I’m sure I will not be the only woman to be sorry they ever met Gadi.”

  In the late afternoon, People’s Protector Muksin began seeing people.

  Nicci’s back ached, but it was nothing to compare to her fear for Richard. The people were taken one at a time by a pair of guards to stand before Protector Muksin.

  The line moved fairly rapidly because the Protector tolerated no long conversations. At most, he would riffle through some of his papers before telling the supplicant something. What with all the wailing and weeping in the room, Nicci couldn’t hear any of it.

  When it was her turn, one of the guards shoved Kamil back. “Only one citizen may speak with the Protector.”

  Nicci tilted her head to signal Kamil to stand back and not make a scene. The guards each grabbed an arm and fairly carried her to the spot in front of the Protector. Nicci was indignant at being treated so roughly—like some common . . . citizen.

  She had always enjoyed a kind of authority, sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken, and had never really given it much thought. She wanted to have Richard see what it was like to live as the common working people. Richard seemed to flourish.

  The two guards stood close at her shoulders, in case she caused any trouble. They must have seen it enough. She felt her face flushing at her treatment.

  “Protector Muksin, my husband was—”

  “Name.” His dark-eyed gaze was skipping over the people remaining in line, no doubt measuring how far off dinner was.

  “Richard.”

  He looked up sharply. “Full name.”

  “His name is Richard Cypher. He was taken in last evening.”

  Nicci didn’t want to say the word “arrested,” fearing to lend weight to a serious charge.

  He shuffled through papers, not at all seeming to be interested in looking at her. Nicci found it slightly confounding when the man didn’t look at her in that calculating way men had of measuring her dimensions in their mind, imagining what they couldn’t see, as if she didn’t know what they were doing. The two guards, though, were looking down the front of her dress.

  “Ah.” Protector Muksin waved a paper. “You are lucky.”

  “He has been released, then?”

  He looked up as if she were daft. “We have him. His name is on this paper. There are many places people are taken
. The Protectors of the people can’t be expected to know where they all are.”

  “Thank you,” Nicci said without knowing what she was thanking him for.

  “Why is he being held? What are the charges?”

  The man frowned. “How would we know the charges. He has not yet confessed.”

  Nicci felt dizzy. A number of the other women fainted when they spoke to the Protector. The guard’s hands on her arms tightened. The Protector’s hand started to lift to signal them to remove her. Before he could, Nicci spoke in as calm a voice as she could muster.

  “Please, Protector Muksin, my husband is no troublemaker. He never does anything but work. He never speaks ill of anyone. He is a good man. He always does as he is told.”

  For one fraction of a second, as she watched sweat roll down the man’s cheeks, he seemed to be considering something.

  “Has he a skill?”

  “He is a good laborer for the Order. He loads wagons.”

  She knew the answer was a mistake before she had completed it. The hand lifted, flicked, dismissing her like a gnat. With a mighty jerk, the guards lifted her from her feet and whisked her from the important man’s presence.

  “But my husband is a good man! Please, Protector Muksin! Richard did not cause any of the trouble! He was home!”

  Her words were sincere, and much the same as those spoken by the women before her. She was furious that she could not convince him that she was different—that Richard was different. The others, she knew now, had all tried to do the same.

  Kamil ran behind as the guards carried her down a short, dark hall to a side door out of the stone fortress. Evening light stole in when they opened the door. They shoved her. Nicci stumbled down the steps. Kamil was shoved out right behind her. He fell facedown in the dirt. Nicci knelt to help him up.

  From her knees, she looked up to the doorway. “What about my husband?” she pressed.

  “You can come back another day,” one guard said. “When he confesses, the Protector can tell you the charges.”