As she approached the tiellan quarter, the silence shocked her. The town of Pranna itself bustled, humming louder than ever. The tiellan quarter was a stark contrast. No noise, no movement. Nothing.
Urstadt and Galce, silent on either side of her, did not help the sensation. Winter wanted them to speak, to say something, but now of all times they chose to remain silent.
Darrin and Eranda’s hut was closest, so Winter approached that one first. Ivy crept up one side of the structure, and the door gaped open, the inside dark. Winter poked her head in anyway, knocking on the doorframe, but no one responded.
“Hello?” Winter called out. “Darrin? Eranda?”
The hut was empty. Not just of people, but of furniture as well. Weeds sprouted from the once well-kept dirt floor. Winter remembered filling her pack on the table that was no longer there, after the death of her father. After Knot had left. She could see herself sitting next to Lian in front of the hearth, before they left Pranna together. Lian perhaps still half in love with her, despite her marriage. Now, both Lian and Knot were dead, too.
“No one is here.” Winter stated the obvious because she could not take the silence any longer.
“I am sorry, my garice,” Galce said quietly, “but it seems no one has been here for some time.”
Despite her confusion and the hollow feeling expanding in her chest, Winter was grateful that Galce said anything at all. The silence was eating away at her.
She nodded. She knew he was right, but she had not come all this way to give up after one house. “I need to check the other huts. Just in case.”
They moved on to Gord’s home, and Dent’s, and Lian’s, all abandoned.
Eventually, she found herself in front of her father’s hut. Seawood walls, tiled roof. Simple, but it had protected them from the snow and sun. As Winter reached forth to push the door open, she closed her eyes.
Chaos was there immediately, pure and white as drifted snow.
Winter opened her eyes, breathing heavily. What harm would it do to enter her old home? Perhaps that would help her actually feel something. She had come all this way to find her home again, to feel like the person she once was. To shed the trappings of violence she had been unable to escape for the past year. With frost still burning within her, she thought about reaching into the hut with her tendra.
Instead, she withdrew her hand.
“We do as Chaos directs,” Galce said softly.
Winter looked at Galce sharply. His head was bowed, and he did not meet her eyes. Before Winter could say something, Galce continued.
“I can sense Chaos here, my garice. I know nothing of why it comes to you, of what decisions you might face. But I can sense its presence.”
Urstadt stood on Winter’s other side, dutifully staying out of the conversation. Urstadt had made it clear she did not consider Galce’s chaotic religion—and the extent of Winter’s involvement in it—any of her business.
“That’s all very well,” Winter said, after some time, “but there is nothing for us here.” She turned away from her hut, and began walking back to Pranna.
* * *
This time, as they walked back through the town, someone recognized her.
“I know you.”
Winter turned at the sound of the voice, but her heart sank before she even saw who spoke. The accent was human, not tiellan, and not a voice she recognized.
A man faced her, eyes narrowed.
“You’re the tiellan girl that used to live here,” he said. He was tall, not quite thirty summers, the hair already receding along his skull.
Another man stepped up next to the one who’d spoken. This one was shorter, with a thick black beard. Nevertheless, both stood much taller than Winter. Humans, with rare exception, were always taller than tiellans. “You’re the one that married a human and then left town,” the other man said.
The men eyed Galce and Urstadt, standing on either side of Winter.
“She work for you?” one of the men asked.
“On the contrary,” Galce said with a smile. “We are her retainers.”
Urstadt moved to step between Winter and the two humans, but Winter put her hand on the woman’s shoulder.
“I can handle this, Urstadt.”
With a nod, Urstadt stepped back to Winter’s side. The two men looked at one another. A few others in the street had stopped to watch.
“Where did the other tiellans go?” Winter asked. But the question was superfluous. Two of her tendra—her acumenic tendra—were already snaking into the minds of these men.
While her telenic tendra could only affect non-living objects, her acumenic tendra had the opposite limitation. They could interact with other minds, and nothing else. A psimancer could only access one form of tendra, but Winter, for some reason, found herself an exception to that rule. There was a third form of psimancy as well—clairvoyance—that allowed a person insight into time itself, but Winter had no control over that particular branch.
“They left,” one of them finally said. “And you should, too.” Who does this tiellan think she is? the man thought.
“No room for tiellans in Pranna anymore,” the other man said, eyeing Winter up and down. His thoughts were not so much words, but a feeling. A feeling that reminded Winter of an alley in Cineste, in a moment from another life.
This time, however, Winter had the power.
Winter delved the two men with her tendra, and a slew of information flooded Winter’s consciousness. Who these men were—Harn Alasta, the tall one, and Breggan Dones, the short one; where they were from—Harn from Cineste, Breggan from Pranna (Winter knew he’d looked familiar); how they’d met—at the local gambling house (Winter wondered when Pranna had built a gambling house); who their families were; their political opinions; all the mistakes they’d made and people they’d loved and much more besides.
Winter sifted through it all for the information she sought. She found it in Breggan’s mind: the humans had driven the remaining tiellans from Pranna months before. Breggan had no knowledge of where they had gone, but he had heard that the tiellan population in Cineste had been growing recently.
“Cineste,” Winter said.
The two men stared at her. Winter’s acumenic delving had not taken more than a few seconds. The process was subtle; the two men would not have realized what was happening to them, and likely never would. There were other, more invasive methods of acumency, but Winter had yet to attempt them. These men had been simple to delve—that was not always the case.
Harn, eyes narrowing, took a step forward.
“Best you join them, elf,” he said softly.
Winter clenched her fist. A small crowd had gathered, watching the confrontation. No one intervened; no one stepped up in her support.
“Be careful, Winter,” Urstadt said.
If it had been any other day, Winter might have turned and walked away in that moment. If it had been any other town, Winter might have let it be. But her home was gone. Nothing remained in Pranna, not for her. A home ceased to be a home when the people who made it so left.
And worthless people like Harn were the ones who’d chased them out. Harn, whose failings were there to be read for any acumen who cared to do so: a man who beat his wife when he got drunk, and who got drunk all too often. Harn, who had always thought tiellans beneath him. Harn, who years earlier had a crescent-and-cross tattooed onto the inside of his wrist.
Harn the Kamite. Breggan was one, too, though he’d only received his tattoo a few months ago.
To destroy, I must first know love.
The words entered her mind unbidden, unwelcomed. She was through with that, now. She had killed Daval Amok, and now that his daughter had taken his place on the emperor’s throne, his ridiculous philosophy had died with him back in Roden.
And yet… she had delved into the minds of these two men, their lives, everything that made them who they were. What else was love, if not knowing and accepting the faults of others?
Winter frowned. She did not accept the faults of these men. She never would. Instead, she left it up to a power greater than herself. She closed her eyes, seeking Chaos, as Galce had taught her to do, envisioning a perfect sphere. The sphere was black. Chaos had spoken.
Winter opened her eyes, and sent a psionic burst into the minds of both men—a wave of power that pulsed along the two tendra that connected her with the men, killing them instantly. Harn and Breggan both collapsed to the ground.
Many in the small group of people who’d gathered around them gasped. A few of the bystanders rushed up to the bodies. People stared at Winter, eyes wide.
She turned, and while Urstadt and Galce reluctantly followed, no one else did.
“Was that necessary?” Urstadt said as they walked away from the town.
“She did as Chaos directed,” Galce responded. “Though Chaos is an abstruse master. It has taken me many years to become comfortable with its direction. If I may, my garice… I would caution against blindly following Chaos’s direction if you can help it. It is best to understand—”
“I’ve done what I’ve done, and that’s all that matters,” Winter said quietly. What Galce said made her uncomfortable; he was the one that had convinced her to trust in Chaos in the first place. Now he spoke of caution?
She had no time for that. Not now.
“Let’s go to Cineste.”
2
Odenite camp, outside Kirlan, western Khale
“DISCIPLE CINZIA.”
Cinzia blinked, then turned to see Elessa standing next to her. She did not know how long her fellow disciple had been whispering her name, but this was clearly not the first attempt to get her attention. Elessa’s eyebrows knit downward in a scowl.
“Yes,” Cinzia murmured, only slightly ashamed that she had allowed herself to get so distracted during one of Jane’s Magnificals. She cleared her throat. “Yes?” she said again, meeting Elessa’s eyes.
Magnifical was a word she and Jane had translated from the Codex. It meant something along the lines of “devoutness,” as far as Cinzia could tell, and Jane had taken to using the word to describe the daily devotionals she led for the growing crowd of her followers, the Odenites.
“They will not let us pass,” Elessa said.
Knot, standing beside Cinzia, leaned over. “Who won’t let us pass?”
“It might be best if you see for yourself, Cinzia.”
Cinzia and Knot followed Elessa through the crowd.
They had arrived the night before, making camp in the middle of a massive arable field just north of the walled city of Kirlan. The field belonged to a local lord named Alam Derard; the man was a powerful figure in Kirlan, but had moved his immediate family north to Cinzia’s ancestral manor of Harmoth when he had heard of the Odenite movement. A fast convert to the new religion, he had offered his entire open field, and all of his crops and resources, to Odenites for their use. Cinzia was highly uncomfortably with the arrangement; the Odenites would likely bankrupt the Derard house, but Lord Derard himself did not seem to care. He was as devoted a follower of Jane as anyone Cinzia had met.
Now she, Knot, and Elessa stood amongst the crowd of over fifteen hundred Odenites, the sun burning down on all of them. Most of the Odenites were gathered around a large dais at the center of the field. Jane stood on the dais now, speaking to the crowd sprawled before her. A chosen group carried the platform with them as they traveled, assembling it each day in preparation for Jane’s Magnificals. Fortunately, Derard’s land provided more space than the Odenites needed—for now— but their numbers were growing. When the Goddess Canta had told Jane to move the Odenites south to Triah, their numbers had not yet broken one thousand. But people continued to flock to Jane and the Church of Canta, as if they knew exactly where to go to meet the Prophetess.
They traveled closer to Triah every day. Cinzia felt both a swelling dread and a sense of excitement at seeing the Circle City once more. Navone, her hometown, would always be close to her heart, but Triah was hers—the place she had first dedicated herself to the service of Canta, before she had returned to Navone and discovered her sister’s heresy. She hoped that feeling did not change when she returned as a disciple of the Church of Canta rather than as a priestess of the Denomination.
“Don’t be discouraged,” Elessa said, seeing Cinzia’s expression. “Our trek has been more or less uneventful until this point. We were bound to encounter trials sooner or later.”
Were we? Cinzia wondered. Of course, Elessa was right. It had taken them over two months to make it this far. But, other than reports from their lookouts that the Beldam’s splinter group was traveling shortly behind them, there had been very little to worry about. Canta had provided for them—or that was how Jane framed their survival, anyway. Cinzia supposed there was something to that; whenever the group seemed about to run out of resources, they came across more food, water, and whatever else they needed. Now that they had reached Kirlan, Lord Derard had emerged.
“I suppose you are right,” Cinzia finally said with a sigh.
The three of them made their way through the Odenites, who parted easily to make a path.
“Would it be best if we brought your… your daughter with us, Knot?” Elessa asked.
Knot grunted. “Can’t say. You’re the one won’t tell us where we’re going or what we’re about to see.”
Cinzia was glad to see that Elessa would at least speak to Knot. Knot had attacked Elessa during one of his episodes at the Harmoth estate. It had not actually been Knot, but it had been his body, and Elessa had not known the difference at the time. The more Cinzia learned of Knot, the more fascinated she was with him. Knot had woken up in a tiellan town more than two years ago with no memory of who he was or where he came from. He’d eventually discovered that he hadn’t actually lost his memory, but had rather been created, somehow, from a psimantic amalgamation of sifts—the condensed essences of other people. Months ago, those individual sifts had begun inadvertently taking control of Knot’s body. The episodes had almost destroyed Knot completely—and caused a great deal of trouble otherwise, as some of the sifts were particularly violent—but Knot had thankfully stabilized since the Nazaniin psimancer Wyle had helped heal him. Cinzia was glad to see Elessa had regained some confidence in speaking with Knot.
And Knot’s “daughter”—the vampire girl Astrid—was something of a legend among the Odenites. Most still did not know exactly what she was, but the Odenites who had joined them before they left Harmoth had to have some idea. They’d seen what she could do in the battle against the Kamites.
Elessa had accepted the girl’s true nature. All of the disciples knew of it; Jane insisted on full transparency amongst their little group. Cinzia thought Jane more than a little hypocritical. Jane, as a prophetess, had a link to Canta, but she only shared the Goddess’s communications when she deemed it necessary.
“I don’t mean to be evasive, Knot, it’s just that—”
“Goddess rising,” Cinzia whispered.
The field on which the Odenites mingled met with Kirlan’s northern outer wall. The city itself sat on a cliff that overlooked the ocean, its western walls against the edge of the precipice. A wide moat ran along the city’s eastern walls, on the other side of which was thick forest. A large gate directly ahead of Cinzia was the only entrance into the city she could see.
All of this was clearly visible from anywhere on Derard’s field, but what made her gasp were the Sons of Canta, armor glinting in the sun beneath red and white livery, standing in front of the gate.
Panic rose in Cinzia’s chest. “Where are the Prelates?” Jane had ordained the guard force Knot had formed—that now operated under the direction of her brother, Eward—as Prelates a few weeks ago. Cinzia was not sure why; although they had seen the word in the Nine Scriptures, there had been no indication as to what it meant. But Jane seemed sure of the decision.
“There are two contingents just behind us, about sixty soldi
ers,” Knot replied. “There’s another on either flank, and two more serving as rearguard.”
That made Cinzia feel slightly better. The Prelates had continued training as they traveled, under Knot and Eward’s leadership, and Astrid’s occasional help. Cinzia felt confident in their abilities.
The Sons of Canta, however, had trained for far longer, and Cinzia had the sneaking suspicion that the soldiers she saw before her were far from the only Sons stationed in Kirlan.
“We’d better talk to them,” Cinzia said. “Should we summon more Prelates?”
“Already done,” Knot said, signaling to the Prelates closest to them. Five soldiers trotted towards them.
“Only five?” Cinzia asked, wiping her palms on her dress. “Should we not bring more?”
“Don’t want to seem too aggressive,” Knot said. “Besides, they ain’t here to attack us. Not right now, anyway. They’re defending the city.”
“Defending the city… from us?” Elessa asked, more than a hint of surprise in her voice.
“That’d be my guess.”
“Very well,” Cinzia said. She was suddenly very conscious of her appearance. She had not been around a group of Sons without her own Cantic robes and Trinacrya since she arrived in Triah for the first time, more than eight years ago. Right now, she wore a simple wool dress, dyed a light shade of red. “We shall see what they want. Let me do the talking, please.”
Cinzia began walking towards the gate, Elessa and Knot to either side of her. The five Prelates stepped in time behind them. When they stopped within a few rods of the gate, one of the Sons called out to them.
“Halt! Who are you, and what is your business in Kirlan?”
Cinzia took a step forward and cleared her throat. “My name is Cinzia Oden. I am a…” She hesitated for only the slightest moment. “…a disciple of the Church of Canta. We request safe passage through Kirlan, so we can continue on our way.”
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