Richard’s flesh went cold. His muscles tightened as hard as stone. He prepared to throw himself into battle. There appeared to be no choice but to fight, now. Neal was about to die.
“You see, I talked to People’s Protector Muksin.”
Richard was taken aback. “Who?”
Neal displayed a triumphant grin. “The man who sentenced you to work as a carver. He knew your name. He showed me the disposition of the case. You confessed to a civil infraction. He showed me the fine—twenty-two gold marks. Quite a sum.” Neal waggled the finger again. “That was a miscarriage of justice, Richard, and you know it. No man can get a fortune like that through a mere civil infraction. Such a gain can only be ill-gotten.”
Richard relaxed a bit. His fingers ached from how hard he had been gripping the hammer.
“No,” Neal said, “you had to have done something much more serious to have collected a fortune of twenty-two gold marks. You are obviously guilty of a very serious crime.”
Neal spread his hands like the Creator before one of his children. “I am going to show you mercy, Richard.”
“Does Brother Narev approve of your showing mercy?”
“Oh, yes. You see, the statue is to be your penance to the Order—your way to atone for your evil deed. You will create this statue when you are not doing your other carving for the palace. You will receive no pay for it. You are commanded not to steal any marble from that which the Order has purchased for the emperor’s Retreat, but to procure the marble with your own money. If you have to work for a decade to earn such a sum, all the better.”
“You mean, I am to carve, here, in the day, at my job, and I am to carve this statue for you on my own time, at night?”
“Your own time? What a corrupt concept.”
“When am I to sleep?”
“Sleep is not the concern of the Order—justice is.”
Richard took a calming breath. He pointed with his hammer at the thing on the ground.
“And this is what I am to carve?”
“That’s right. The stone will be purchased by you, and your labor will be contributed by you to the benefit of your fellow man. It will be your gift to the people of the Order in penance for your evil deeds. Men like you, with the ability, must happily contribute their all to help the Order.”
Brother Neal swept his arm out. “There is to be a dedication of the palace, this winter. The people need to see tangible evidence that the Order can bring such a great project as this magnificent palace to reality. They desperately need the lessons this palace will teach them.
“Brother Narev is eager to dedicate the palace. He wishes to hold a great ceremony, this winter, which will be attended by many dignitaries of the Order. The war is progressing; the people need to see that their palace is, too. They need to see results for their sacrifices.
“You, Richard Cypher, are to carve the great statue for the entrance to the emperor’s Retreat.”
“I am honored, Brother Neal.”
Neal smirked. “You should be.”
“What if I’m not . . . up to the task?”
Neal’s smirk widened into a grin. “Then you will go back into custody, and Protector Muksin’s questioners will have you until you confess. After you finally confess, you will be hung on a pole. The birds will feast on your flesh.”
Brother Neal pointed down at the grotesque model.
“Pick it up. This is what you shall devote your life to.”
Nicci looked up when she heard Richard’s voice. He was talking to Kamil and Nabbi. She heard him say that he was tired and couldn’t look at their carving, that he would look tomorrow. Nicci knew they would be disappointed.
That was unlike Richard.
She spooned buckwheat mush and peas from a dented pot into a bowl. She placed the bowl and a wooden spoon on the table. There was no bread.
She wished she could make something better for him, but after their voluntary contributions were taken out, they had no money. If not for the garden the women of the building had taken to planting in the back of the house, they would be in desperate straits. Nicci had learned how to grow things so she could have food for him.
His shoulders were stooped, his eyes distant. He was carrying something in one hand.
“I have your dinner. Come and eat.”
Richard set the thing on the table, beside the oil lamp. It was a small, intricately carved statue of figures cowering in terror. They were partially surrounded by a section of a ring. A tall lightning bolt, a common symbol of retribution by the Creator, came down in the center, piercing a number of obviously evil men and women, pinning them to the ground. It was a staggering representation of the evil nature of mankind, and the Creator’s anger at their wanton ways.
“What’s this?” she asked.
Richard slumped down into a chair. His face sank into his hands, his fingers stabbed back into his hair. After a time, he looked up.
“What you wanted,” he said quietly.
“What I wanted?”
“My punishment.”
“Punishment?”
Richard nodded. “Brother Narev found out about the fine of twenty-two gold marks. He said I must have done something criminal to get that much money, and he sentenced me to make a statue for the grand entrance to the emperor’s palace.”
Nicci glanced down at the small thing on the table. “What is it?”
“A sundial. This is the ring with the times etched on it. The lightning bolt casts a shadow of the Creator’s Light on the ring to tell the time of day.”
“I still don’t understand. Why is it a sentence? You are a carver. That is your job.”
Richard shook his head. “I am to buy the stone out of my own money, and I am to carve this at night, on my own time, as my gift to the Order.”
“And why do you see this as what I wanted?”
Richard ran a finger down the lightning bolt, his eyes studying the statue. “You brought me here, to the Old World, because you wanted me to learn the errors of my ways. I have. I should have confessed to a crime and let them end it.”
Without thinking, Nicci reached across the table and put her hand over his. “No, Richard, that’s not what I wanted.”
He pulled his hand away.
Nicci pushed his bowl closer to him. “Eat, Richard. You need your strength.”
Without complaint, he did as she told him. A prisoner, doing as ordered. She hated to see him like this.
The spark was gone from his eyes, just as it had left her father’s eyes.
When he looked at the statue sitting in the center of their table, his eyes were dead. It was as if the life, the energy, the hope, was gone from him. When he was finished with his meal, he went without a word to his bed and lay down, facing away from her.
Nicci sat at the table, listening to the sputter of the lamp’s flame, watching Richard’s even breathing as he went to sleep.
It seemed his spirit was crushed. She had believed for so long that she would learn something valuable when he was pushed to such extremes. It appeared she had been wrong, that he had finally given up. She could learn nothing from him, now.
There was little left for her to do. Little reason to continue the whole thing. For a moment, she felt the crushing weight of her disappointment; then even that was gone.
Empty and unfeeling, Nicci collected the bowl and spoon and carried them to the wash bucket. She worked quietly, to let him sleep, as she resigned herself to returning to Jagang.
It wasn’t Richard’s fault he could teach her nothing; there was nothing more to life to learn. This was all there was. Her mother had been right.
Nicci took out the butcher knife and set it quietly on the table.
Richard had suffered enough.
It would be for the best.
Chapter 59
Nicci sat at the table, the knife under her fingers, forever. She watched his back. His chest slowly expanded with his breath of life, and sank again. There was time enough to
slip the knife into his back, between his ribs, to pierce his heart.
There was time enough yet before dawn.
Death was so final. She wanted to watch him for a while. Nicci never tired of watching Richard.
After she did it, she wouldn’t be able to watch him anymore. He would be gone forever. With the damage the chimes had done to the worlds and their interconnection, she didn’t even know if a person’s soul could still go to the spirit world. She didn’t even know if the underworld still existed and if Richard’s spirit would go there, or if he would simply be . . . gone forever—if he and that which was his soul would simply cease to exist.
In her numb state, she had lost track of time.
When she glanced out the window that Richard had had installed with the money he had earned, she noticed that the sky had taken on a the color of a week-old bruise.
Linked as she was to Kahlan, Nicci couldn’t accomplish the deed with her magic. As much as she abhorred the idea of it, and knowing how gruesome it would be, she had to use the sharp blade.
Nicci curled her fingers around the wooden handle of the stout knife.
She wanted it to be quick. She couldn’t bear to think of him suffering. He had suffered enough in life, she didn’t want him to suffer in death, too.
He would struggle briefly, but then it would be over.
Richard abruptly rolled onto his back and then sat up. Nicci froze, still sitting in her chair. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Could she kill him when he was awake? Could she look into those eyes of his as she plunged the knife into his chest?
She would have to.
It was for the best.
Richard yawned and stretched. He sprang to his feet.
“Nicci. What are you doing? Haven’t you gone to bed?”
“I . . . I guess I fell asleep in the chair.”
“Oh, well, I—there it is. I need that.”
He snatched the knife out of her hand. “Mind if I borrow this? I need to use it. I’m afraid I’ll have to sharpen it for you later. I won’t have time before I have to leave. Can you make me something to eat? I’m in a hurry. I have to go see Victor before I start to work.”
Nicci was dumbfounded. He was suddenly revived. In the lamplight, and the faint dawn coming in the windows, he had that look in his eyes. He looked . . . resolute, determined.
“Yes, all right,” she said.
“Thanks,” he called over his shoulder while hurrying out the door.
“Where are you—?”
But he was gone. She decided he must be going out back to get some vegetables. But why would he need the big knife for that? She was confused, but she was revived, too. Richard seemed himself again.
Nicci pulled from the pantry some eggs she had been saving, along with an iron skillet, and hurried out back to the cooking hearth. The coals were still glowing from the cook fires of the evening before, providing a little light. She carefully fed in some small twigs and kindling, then stacked a bed of finger-thick branches on top. She simply set the iron skillet atop the wood as it caught, rather than set up the rack—eggs were quick.
As she waited for the skillet to get hot, she heard an odd scraping noise. In the flickering light of the fire, she didn’t see Richard in the garden. She couldn’t imagine where he had gone, or what he was up to. She broke the eggs into the hot skillet and tossed the shells in the compost bucket at the side of the hearth. With a wooden spoon she scrambled the eggs around as they cooked.
As Nicci stood, using her skirt to hold the hot handle of the skillet, she was surprised to see Richard coming out from behind the broad cooking hearth.
“Richard, what are you doing?”
“There are some loose bricks back here. I was just seeing to it before I went to work. I cleaned out the joints. I’ll bring some mortar home and fix it later.”
He pulled a handful of thick-bladed grass and used it as a potholder to take the skillet from her. With his other hand, he flipped the knife into the air, caught it by the point, and held the handle out to her. Nicci took the heavy knife, now scratched and dulled from scraping the bricks clean. He ate standing, using the wooden spoon.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Fine,” he said around a hot mouthful of eggs. “Why?”
Nicci gestured toward the house. “Well, last night . . . you seemed so . . . defeated.”
He frowned at her. “So, I’ve no right to feel sorry for myself now and again?”
“Well, yes, I suppose. But now . . . ?”
“Now I’ve thought it over.”
“And . . . ?”
“It’s to be my gift to the people, is it? I shall give the people a gift they need.”
“What are you talking about?”
Richard waved the wooden spoon. “Brothers Narev and Neal said this will be my gift to the people, and so it shall be.” He shoveled more eggs into his mouth.
“So you are going to carve the statue they want?”
He was already running up the stairs before she had finished the question.
“I have to get the model of the statue and be off to work.”
Nicci raced after him up the stairs. He was still eating the eggs as he went. He stood in their room, peering down at the small statue on the table as he finished the eggs. She couldn’t make sense of it—he was smiling.
He set the skillet on the table and scooped up the model. “I’ll probably be home late. I have to get started on my penance for the Order, if I can. I may have to work all night.”
In astonishment, she watched him hurry off to work.
She could hardly believe that he had once again somehow evaded death.
Nicci couldn’t recall ever being so grateful about anything. She couldn’t understand it.
Richard reached the blacksmith’s shop shortly after Victor had opened up for the day’s work. His men had not yet arrived. Victor wasn’t surprised to see him; Richard sometimes came early and the two of them would sit and watch the sun come up over the site.
“Richard! I’m glad to see you.”
“And I you, Victor. I need to talk to you.”
He let out a gruff grunt. “The statue?”
“That’s right,” Richard said, a little taken aback. “The statue. You know?”
With Richard following behind, Victor made his way through the dark shop, weaving among the clutter of benches, work, and tools. “Oh, yes, I heard.” Along the way, he stooped to pick up a hammer here, a bar of iron there, and set them on a table, or shoved them in a bin, as if one could tidy a mountain by arranging a few pebbles and picking up a fallen limb.
“What did you hear?”
“Brother Narev paid me a visit last evening. He said there is to be a dedication of the Retreat, to show our respect to the Creator for all he provides for us.” He glanced back over his shoulder as he strode past his huge block of Cavatura marble. “He told me you are to carve a statue for the entrance plaza—a big statue. He said it is to be done for the dedication.
“From what I hear from people, from Ishaq and others, the Order credits the uprising to the drain of building such a monumental project as the Retreat in addition to waging the war. They have armies of men working for the construction—not just here, but from quarries far and wide, to mines for the gold and silver, to forests where they cut the wood. Even slaves must be fed. The purge of officials, leaders, and skilled workers after the uprising was expensive. With a dedication, I think Brother Narev wants to show people the progress, to inspire them, to involve outlying lands in the celebration, believing this will head off further troubles.”
In the blackness of the room, only the skylight in the high ceiling above let light cascade down over the stone. The marble took the light deep into its fine crystalline structure, and gave it back as a loving gift.
Victor opened the double doors that looked out over the Retreat.
“Brother Narev told me that your statue is also to be a sundial, with the Creator’s Light sh
ining down on mankind’s torment. He told me I am to oversee the making of the gnomon and dial plane for its shadow to fall upon. He said something about a lightning bolt . . .”
Victor turned around, his eyes following as Richard set the model of the statue on a narrow tool shelf that ran the length of the room.
“Dear spirits . . .” Victor whispered. “That is grotesque.”
“They want me to carve this. They want it to be a statue with the power to dominate the grand entrance.”
Victor nodded. “Brother Narev said as much. He told me how big would be the metal for the dial plane. He wants bronze.”
“Can you cast the bronze?”
“No.” With the backs of his fingers, Victor tapped Richard’s arm. “Here is the good part: few people can cast such a piece. Brother Narev ordered Priska released to do the casting.”
Richard blinked in astonishment. “Priska is alive?”
Victor nodded. “High people must have not wanted him buried in the sky in case they needed his skills. They had him locked away in a dungeon. The Order knows they need people with ability; they released him to get this done. If he wants to remain alive, and out of the dungeon, he is to cast the bronze, at his own expense, as a gift to the people. They say it is his penance. I am to give him the specifications and see to its assembly and placement on the statue.”
“Victor, I want to buy your stone.”
The blacksmith’s brow slid into an unfriendly frown.
“No.”
“Narev and Neal found out about my civil fine. They think I got off too lightly. They ordered that I carve their statue—much like Priska is to provide the castingas my penance. I must buy the stone myself, and I must carve it after my work at the site is finished for the day. They want it for this winter’s dedication of the Retreat.”
Victor’s eyes turned toward the model on the shelf, as if it was some monster come to visit ruin on him. “Richard, you know what this stone means to me. I won’t—”
“Victor, listen to me.”
“No.” He held his palm up toward Richard. “Don’t ask this of me. I don’t want this stone to become ugly, like all the Order touches. I won’t allow it.”
Faith of the Fallen tsot-6 Page 74
