The Temple of Doubt

by Anne Boles Levy

  The soldier yanked jars and urns from the shelves, shoving them into my chest and ordering me to open them. My fingers trembled as I tried to undo seals and pry off lids. This was nearly a year’s worth of work for Mami and me. The soldier snatched them back and tossed them against a wall, shattering them one by one.

  “Nothing in there,” he said as the first burst open, its liquid contents splattering. He did the same with several others. “Nothing in that one. Or that one.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I stared in disbelief at the destruction. “None of that was illegal.”

  Almost none, I corrected silently. Maybe a little more than almost none.

  “Your word against ours.” He was still punishing me for opening my mouth. Anything I said would make it worse. So I stood there, flailing my hands or tugging, tugging at loose threads in my dress, as if I could unravel the whole morning and reweave it, while the soldiers made a sport of destroying our home. I ducked as they overturned the divan I shared with my sisters, and I dodged a hand-loomed rug that sailed across the room. They shoved me aside as they dumped the contents of bureaus and shelves on the floor and barked a sharp no at me when I tried to scoop up an armful of clothes.

  They fished out a couple items: an embroidered rendering Amaniel had made of Nihil’s last incarnation as a woman and Rishiel’s favorite doll, the one with white hair just like Nihil’s.

  Another soldier waved these artifacts in my face and said something harsh in his tongue. I guessed he was looking for explanations, so I told him, my voice faltering. Most of my fear hadn’t subsided. I’d only been spared for the moment, but my heartbeat was steadying even if my stomach kept up a fitful churning. There were two other surly soldiers who could easily change their minds about keeping me unharmed so far. The one facing me grunted, as if comprehending my stammered explanation as he waved the two items.

  He tucked them into a bag, which in turn went into a larger sack I hadn’t noticed before. It bulged with bags of loot they must’ve taken from other families. I had no idea when, unless they’d started on the opposite side of town. None of it made any sense. One of the soldiers heaved the sack over his shoulder, which I hoped was a sign they were all leaving. It wasn’t.

  The half-brow pointed up the ladder and said something that struck them as funny. They stared at me, guffawing, their gaze roaming from the top of my uncovered head to my toes, lingering on my chest. Armored or not, they were a pimply, gangly, adolescent bunch. Then again, that might make them more dangerous. They were far from the Feroxi’s frostbitten realm along the shores of the Warmless Sea. Here they could do whatever they wanted and then never have to live with the results. Port Sapphire could be left in ruins, and it wouldn’t matter one copper to them as they sailed back over the horizon.

  If I could wish them back to Ferokor, I would have. The two items they’d seized were nothing, less than trifles. Every herb Mami and I had gathered wouldn’t garner an arrest, but a doll could get me hurt?

  “Up,” said the half-brow, pointing.

  He wanted me to go to my parents’ sleeping loft with him. I began to shake again, my breathing coming in fits, bile rising in my throat. My stomach again. I had imagined myself a gift to Nihil, not understanding it wasn’t the worst fate I could meet.

  “I won’t go. I’m pious.” I wasn’t going to beg. Never mind that I was the worst excuse for a pious girl in recent history, and they were from the Temple itself. In some version of Scriptures, there must be a passage about carrying out official important duties without violence and leering. At least, there should be. I tried to cover my blouse with my arms in a futile show of modesty, which brought more laughter. A meaty hand clamped on my shoulder and spun me around.

  “I told you I won’t take what’s not freely given. Just show us what you’re hiding up there.”

  Relieved, I giggled; a hysterical, jittery, utterly inappropriate squawk that made my throat sore. They were resuming their search; that was all. I wanted to puke.

  “What’s so funny?” The half-brow’s frown told me he didn’t find anything amusing at all.

  I struggled to catch my breath. “You’re not going to hurt me, right?”

  “Don’t give me a reason to.” The half-brow reached for the hilt of his sword. I took the hint and scuttled up the ladder, nearly tripping on my long skirt. Once upstairs, it was much the same as downstairs: he ordered me to pull apart bedding and empty my parents’ wardrobe. At last, he stopped in the middle of the room by the heap we’d made. I wasn’t sure why he needed me there when he could’ve managed to be reckless and destructive all by himself.

  I edged closer to the ladder and found myself hoping that by some powerful luck he’d forgotten me. He hadn’t. He beckoned me over, and I took short, halting steps forward. I hadn’t given him any reason to harm me, had I? Would I know if I had, or was he the sort to invent a reason?

  “What’s your name?” he asked. Before I could answer, his voice became husky and low. “You shouldn’t insult a Feroxi. We’re not a forgiving race.”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it, I . . . I’ve just never seen a, ah.” I clamped my mouth shut again. No use making matters worse.

  “A half-brow, right?” He folded beefy arms high on his chest and glowered. “Did you not hear me when I said that was an insult?”

  “No, please. I’m so sorry. I’m an ignorant island girl. Can’t we leave it at that?”

  “Or what? You’ll crush another of my toes?”

  My mouth fell open. He was joking. Amid the wreckage, he was wisecracking. I stared back without blinking. He’d opened a door of sorts, and I intended to walk through it. “I’m truly sorry I crushed one of your toes. I was aiming for all of them.”

  “You’re forgetting where you are.”

  “In my own home?”

  “You are in the presence of a Guardian of Nihil’s Person with a full complement of arms.”

  “If not the full complement of toes.”

  A bewildered look spread across the half of his face that poked beneath his bronze helmet. He opened his mouth and shut it, lifted his chin, opened his mouth again . . . and nothing came out. I’d stumped him. Maybe he lacked a full complement between his ears, too.

  A black plume popped up from the floor below and a Feroxi face peered up, unsmiling. The two soldiers exchanged words I was glad I didn’t understand because I’d decided I despised them. Judging by their mocking tone, the feeling was mutual. My opinion of them obviously mattered little, and my shaky bravery seeped away. The half-brow flung me into the other soldier’s arms, and I found myself dumped to the floor. The landing hit hard, but it wasn’t a long way to fall, and I picked myself up without pausing and straightened my skirt. I smoothed my hair, sorry it wasn’t under wraps in a proper show of modesty around men. Not that they deserved it.

  “A tough girl, aren’t you,” the half-human one said, clambering down behind me. “I think you might even like us. And if you want something else to call me, it’s First Guardsman Valeo.”

  I pursed my lips and glared at him in what I intended to be my most menacing expression, but he only chuckled and motioned toward the door. My ordeal was ending, just when I was thinking up a few more opinions he needed to hear.

  He reached for me, and I jerked away, hitting my head on the open cupboard. The men laughed again. I seethed. I wanted to grab shards of urns and shove them in all their faces, but what could I do? I turned and followed the first two soldiers out, simmering, not even caring about the torrents that soaked me to the skin in an instant. I didn’t notice Babba running up to me until he’d clutched me to him.

  “What did they do to you?”

  “They tore up the house. Everything, they ruined everything.” I melted against Babba’s shoulder, but the sobs wouldn’t come. I simply stood there, letting the clammy wetness of his longshirt paste itself to my cheek, my arms limp by my side. Babba led me under the awning, where several families were huddling. Smashed earthenware l
ittered the patio; all Mami’s carefully tended herbs were destroyed, along with her stores of medicines. She shook her head at Babba.

  “This is Reyhim’s doing,” she said.

  “Because of what he’d said yesterday?” Babba asked. “About searching town first?”

  “No, the way it’s being done.”

  He nodded. “You’d have special reason for believing that, I suppose.”

  “It’s not a belief. Look around you. Tell me this isn’t . . .”

  “Stop.”

  “. . . like with my mother.”

  “I mean it.”

  Amaniel and I both stared at Mami, at each other, at Mami again. We weren’t allowed to mention our grandmother. I knew only scant details of her story, except that she was long gone and little remembered.

  Beyond our ruined home, the soldiers moved on, banged down more doors, startled more families, and upbraided those who gawked from the boardwalks. The rain covered us all, the pious and the unworthy alike, gray and cold and without mercy or end.

  Make no graven images of me or of my enemies. Nor shall you abide those whose faith wavers; I am god, you shall follow only me.

  —from Oblations 10, The Book of Unease

  The downpour gave no sign of letting up. We huddled against one another under an awning at the outdoor hearth, listening in terrified silence to the city being upended and people’s lives overturned. The huddling didn’t offer much warmth in the rain and wouldn’t protect us from whatever was happening to us, but it was all we had.

  In the distance, women’s screams tore at the air, and sounds of things smashing, of entire homes crashing as wooden stilts gave out, then panicked shouts and more screams.

  Babba and the neighbor men led us all in prayers, which we got down on our knees for in the rain, since we were already soaked through. We prayed for forgiveness for the sin of assumption, for wandering from the certain path, for being caught cutting corners and transgressing in ways we could only guess, for everything and anything that might make it all stop.

  It went on so long, all of us murmuring or wailing or weeping or standing up and shouting, pleading into the air that shed only rain and no redemption. At long last, all the way into the late afternoon, a dull silence overtook the city. The storm slowed to a steady rhythm, the chaos and confusion becoming more distant and then fading away. A horn sounded several long blasts that ended in uplifting notes.

  Babba told us that was the all-clear signal, the one they used after a battle. I hadn’t known we were at war. We headed inside, and Babba propped the broken door closed behind us as Mami set us girls to work with a few nods at the mess. We dried ourselves off with blankets we dug out from the bottom of several heaps of belongings.

  Nothing at the outdoor hearth would be salvageable in the rain, but inside Mami and I sifted through the shards for anything usable. I did most of the work, as Rishi sobbed in Mami’s lap, her skinny little-girl arms locked solid around Mami’s neck. The dried beans and lentils were still good—we’d have some food, at least, if nothing to flavor it with. Picking them up one by one wasn’t my idea of sport, but it kept my fingers busy, which was better for them than flying nervously through the curls that had been uncovered and exposed. I felt embarrassed about that. The half-brow had been so close to my hair, I wondered if he could smell it.

  I wondered if it’s something he’d have noticed. I smelled like spice flowers, I suppose, which we put in our soaps, or like a hundred kinds of herbs I either picked or worked with day after day. If only he’d known what those smells represented, I might’ve been in bigger trouble. I smelled like the things he should’ve been searching for. I smelled like evidence. I was lucky he didn’t know that.

  I worked hunched beneath the cupboard with its broken latch, where the other soldier had pressed into me, almost crushing me. A hand flew protectively to my chest at the memory of that spiky armor. The half-brow had stepped in and pulled him away. I won’t take what’s not freely given.

  I’d stolen looks at him like I do with sailors on the piers. Every rotten word of his leaked out of my memory, so I could dwell instead on the broad sweep of those shoulders, and there was that majestic inverted triangle his torso made, with the way his leather corselet seemed perfectly wrapped to him like a second skin, muscular and tough.

  Oh no, this wouldn’t do at all. What was wrong with me? How could I have so many thoughts that bordered on unchaste, even as I cleaned up the mess the man had made? Not man—soldier. If I thought of him as a man, I’d keep thinking about that deep voice or his build, and soon enough, I’d be thinking he was attractive instead of monstrous. If I remembered he was a soldier, then I could keep in mind he’d come here to do a job and had gone about it rather efficiently.

  Thanks to him, I had two messes to clean: one on the floor, and one inside my head.

  Mami peered deep into my face, as if trying to decode something cryptic in my irises. “Amaniel’s been talking to you.”

  Sure enough, a hiccupy, red-eyed Amaniel was sobbing up stuttered words.

  “Didn’t you tell them I was pious?”

  “Tell who?”

  “The Great Guardians of Nihil’s Person!”

  Was she serious? Did she think I gave those vicious boy-men a house tour, boasting of my sister’s academic accomplishments?

  My mouth pressed into a firm line before I uttered the word “No” and nothing else.

  “But how could you!” Amaniel sobbed and hiccuped again. “You shifted the blame onto me because you’re jealous, and now I’m the one in trouble.”

  I glanced around at the swept up pile of debris. “I’m absolutely certain I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You’ve no idea? Mami, she has no idea. My needlework! They took it.” Amaniel’s face resembled a bloated anemone, hands flying like tentacles over her flushed face.

  Mami was the sort who talked with her eyes more than her lips, and her expressions were more sad than stern. She shook her head. “Amaniel, you’re forgetting your sister was put on the spot here.”

  “And look what an awful job she made of it, too.” Amaniel waved her tentacles around the room. “How many insults does it take to ruin our entire stores? A few dozen? Just one really disrespectful one? Why not just spit in the man’s face?”

  Both Mami and I sat in stunned silence. Babba came downstairs from the sleeping loft. Even Rishi turned around and stared.

  I let Amaniel’s words eat deep into me, like acid. Like molten rock. I melted. Flash. Gone. A pile of ashes where my soul had been. I didn’t even know if I could be angry.

  I had a sudden vertigo.

  Every family. Every single one. They all had this happen. And she—my sister—was blaming me. I was spiraling downward, and there was no bottom. I just kept falling into the deep, wide hole she’d dug for me. I’d been worried I was some sort of traitor for thinking about Valeo. She’d been thinking about him, too. And if there was anything at all at the bottom of this abyss she’d just pushed me into, it was likely to be spikes.

  “Amaniel.” Babba’s voice was low and controlled. “This isn’t acceptable. Not at all.”

  Mami joined in. “Take back every word. This moment.”

  “I may have spoken in haste.” Amaniel balled up her fists and planted them on her hips. “But what I said is true.”

  That brought Babba down from the last rung and across the room. The smack that landed across Amaniel’s face was something I’d see and hear the rest of my life. I had never, ever seen Babba strike any of us, not ever. Mami switched us once or twice when we were little, but it was nothing like this. Not ever.

  Babba towered over Amaniel, who’d begun weeping again, only this time with a nasal whine to it, eyes scrunched closed, snot streaming down her face. Welts in the shape of Babba’s hand were already flaring from her left cheek.

  “This family,” Babba said, “stays together. Together. And if Nihil himself were to bang down our door, we face him tog
ether. As one. And you will remember that. Yes?”

  Amaniel gave a curt nod and then fled for a far corner of the room, where she balled up on the floor and sobbed into the wall. Babba and Mami exchanged long, unhappy glances. An entire conversation happened in that moment, all unspoken. I pulled Rishi off Mami’s lap and hugged her to me so Mami could rise to her feet. Without either asking the other, both my parents headed outside, as they always did when they wanted to talk without us overhearing.

  I distracted Rishi by softly pointing out some of what I’d salvaged and making her identify the different types of beans. I set her to the task of separating them all and finding a mostly unbroken container for them. This stopped her snuffling while she squatted on the floor and gave all the beans pet names and scolded the naughty ones.

  Babba poked his head through the doorway and motioned for me to join him outside. There was a small overhang created where the eaves of our A-frame hut met, so I squeezed between my parents to stay dry. Babba pointed across the canal. A single sentry stood at attention on the boardwalk, a vertical stroke of a man between two houses directly opposite.

  “Is that the same one?” he asked.

  I nodded. It was. I didn’t need to see his chin or his skin color or the angry glare to recognize his broad outline, even through the downpour. We stared at the soldier staring back. For a moment, no one moved or said anything.

  “It’s probably just a normal patrol,” Mami said. “He’s just stationed there, I suppose.”

  Babba shook her head. “He’s watching our house.”

  Mami sucked in her breath. “If it were something Hadara and I had gathered in the swamp, they’d have collected that, too.”