“As we marched into the city, the wagon with Ann’s cage never showed up,” Sister Georgia went on. “One of the drivers finally came around with a bloody head and reported that the last thing he saw before the world went dark was Sister Alessandra. Now the two of them are gone.”
Nicci felt her fingernails digging into her palms. She made herself relax her fists. “So, Ann offered you all freedom, and you chose instead to continue to be slaves.”
The three women lifted their noses. “We did what is best for everyone,” Sister Georgia said. “We are Sisters of the Light. Our duty is not to ourselves, but to relieve the suffering of others—not cause it.”
“Besides,” Sister Aubrey added, “we don’t see you leaving. Seems you’ve been free of His Excellency from time to time, and you don’t go.”
Nicci frowned. “How do you know that?”
“Well, I, I mean…” Sister Aubrey stammered.
Nicci seized the woman by the throat. “I asked you a question. Answer it.”
Sister Aubrey’s face reddened as Nicci added the force of her gift to the grip. The tendons in her wrist stood out with the strain. The woman’s eyes showed white all around as Nicci’s power began squeezing the life from her. Unlike Nicci, Jagang possessed their minds, and they were prohibited from using their power except at his direction.
Sister Georgia gently placed a hand on Nicci’s forearm. “His Excellency questioned us about it, that’s all, Sister. Let her go. Please?”
Nicci released the woman but turned her glare on Sister Georgia. “Questioned you? What do you mean? What did he say?”
“He simply wanted to know if we knew why he was from time to time blocked from your mind.”
“He hurt us,” Sister Rochelle said. “He hurt us with his questions, because we had no answer. We don’t understand it.”
For the first time, Nicci did.
Sister Aubrey comforted her throat. “What is it with you, Sister Nicci? Why is it His Excellency is so curious about you? Why is it you can resist him?”
Nicci turned and walked away. “Thank you for the help, Sisters.”
“If you can be free of him, why do you not leave?” Sister Georgia called out.
Nicci turned back from the doorway. “I enjoy seeing Jagang torment you Witches of the Light. I stay around so that I might watch.”
They were unmoved by her insolence—they were accustomed to it.
“Sister Nicci,” Rochelle said, smoothing back her frizz of hair. “What did you do that made His Excellency so angry?”
“What? Oh, that. Nothing of importance. I just had the men tie Commander Kardeef to a pole and roast him over a fire.”
The three of them gasped as they straightened as one. They reminded Nicci of three owls on a branch.
Sister Georgia fixed Nicci with a grim glare, a rare blaze of authority born of seniority.
“You deserve everything Jagang does to you, Sister—and what the Keeper will do to you, too.”
Nicci smiled and said, “Yes, I do,” before ducking through the tent opening.
Chapter 10
The city of Fairfield had returned to a semblance of order. It was the order of a military post. Little of what could be said to make a city was left. Many of the buildings remained, but there were few of the people who had once lived and worked in them. Some of the buildings had been reduced to charred beams and blackened rubble, others were hulks with windows and doors broken out, yet most were much the same as they had been before, except, of course, that all had been emptied in the wanton looting. The buildings stood like husks, only a reminder of past life.
Here and there, a few toothless old people sat, legs splayed, leaning against a wall, watching with empty eyes the masses of armed men moving up and down their streets. Orphaned children wandered in a daze, or peered out from dark passageways. Nicci found it remarkable how quickly civilization could be stripped from a place.
As she walked through the streets, Nicci thought she understood how many of the buildings would feel if they could feel: empty, devoid of life, lacking purpose while they waited for someone to serve; their only true value being in service to the living.
The streets, populated as they were by grim-faced soldiers, gaunt beggars, the skeletal old and sick, wailing children, all amongst the rubble and filth, looked much like some of the streets Nicci remembered from when she was little. Her mother often sent her out to streets like this to minister to the destitute.
“It’s the fault of men like your father,” her mother had said. “He’s just like my father was. He has no feelings, no concern for anyone but himself. He’s heartless.”
Nicci had stood, wearing a freshly washed, frilly blue dress, her hair brushed and pinned back, her hands hanging at her sides, listening as her mother lectured on good and evil, on the ways of sin and redemption. Nicci hadn’t understood a lot of it, but in later years it would be repeated until she would come to know every word, every concept, every desolate truth by heart.
Nicci’s father was wealthy. Worse, to Mother’s way of thinking, he wasn’t remorseful about it. Mother explained that self-interest and greed were like the two eyes of a monstrous evil, always looking for yet more power and gold to feed its insatiable hunger.
“You must learn, Nicci, that a person’s moral course in this life is to help others, not yourself,” Mother said. “Money can’t buy the Creator’s blessing.”
“But how can we show the Creator we’re good?” Nicci asked.
“Mankind is a wretched lot, unworthy, morbid, and foul. We must fight our depraved nature. Helping others is the only way to prove your soul’s value. It’s the only true good a person can do.”
Nicci’s father had been born a noble, but all his adult life he had worked as an armorer. Mother believed that he had been born with comfortable wealth, and instead of being satisfied with that, he sought to build his legacy into a shameless fortune. She said wealth could only be had by fleecing it from the poor in one fashion or another. Others of the nobility, like Mother and many of her friends, were content not to squeeze an undeserved share from the sweat of the poor.
Nicci felt great guilt for Father’s wicked ways, for his ill-gotten wealth. Mother said she was doing her best to try to save his straying soul. Nicci never worried for her mother’s soul, because people were always saying how caring, how kindhearted, how charitable Mother was, but Nicci would sometimes lie awake at night, unable to sleep with worry for Father, worry that the Creator might exact punishment before Father could be redeemed.
While Mother went to meetings with her important friends, the nanny, on the way to the market, often took Nicci to Father’s business to ask his wishes for dinner. Nicci relished watching and learning things at Father’s work. It was a fascinating place. When she was very young, she thought she might grow up to be an armorer, too. At home, she would sit on the floor and play at hammering on an item of clothing meant to be armor laid on an upturned shoe used as an anvil. That innocent time was her fondest memory of her childhood.
Nicci’s father had a great many people working for him. Wagons brought foursquare bars and other supplies from distant places. Heavy cast-metal sows came in on barges. Other wagons, with guards, took goods to far-off customers. There were men who forged metal, men who hammered it into shape, and yet other men who shaped glowing metal into weapons. Some of the blades were made from costly “poison steel,” said to inflict mortal wounds, even in a small cut. There were other men who sharpened blades, men who polished armor, and men who did beautiful engraving and artwork on shields, armor, and blades. There were even women who worked for Nicci’s father, helping to make chain mail. Nicci watched them, sitting on benches at long wooden tables, gossiping a bit among themselves, tittering at stories, as they worked with their pincers burring over tiny rivets in the flattened ends of all those thousands of little steel rings that together went into the making of a suit of chain-mail armor. Nicci thought it remarkable that man’s inventiveness c
ould turn something as hard as metal into a suit of clothes.
Men from all around, and from distant places, too, came to buy her father’s armor. Father said it was the finest armor made. His eyes, the color of the blue sky on a perfect summer day, sparkled wonderfully when he spoke of his armor. Some was so beautiful that kings traveled from great distances to have armor ordered and fitted. Some was so elaborate that it took skilled men hunched at benches many months to make.
Blacksmiths, bellowsmen, hammermen, millmen, platers, armorers, polishers, leatherworkers, riveters, patternmakers, silversmiths, guilders, engraving artists, even seamstresses for the making of the quilted and padded linen, and, of course, apprentices, came from great distances, hoping to work for her father. Many of those with skills lugged along samples of their best work to show him. Father turned away far more than he hired.
Nicci’s father was an impressive figure, upright, angular, and intense. At his work, his blue eyes always seemed to Nicci to see more than any other person saw, as if the metal spoke to him when his fingers glided over it. He seemed to move his limbs precisely as much as was needed, and no more. To Nicci, he was a vision of power, strength, and purpose.
Officers, officials, and nobility came round to talk to him, as did suppliers, and his workers. When Nicci went to her father’s work, she was always astonished to see him engaged in so much conversation. Mother said it was because he was arrogant, and made his poor workers pay court to him.
Nicci liked to watch the intricate dance of people working. The workers would pause to smile at her, answer her questions, and sometimes let her hit the metal with a hammer. From the looks of it, Father enjoyed talking to all those people, too. At home, Mother talked, and Father said little, as his face took on the look of hammered steel.
When he did talk at home, he spoke almost exclusively about his work. Nicci listened to every word, wanting to learn all about him and his business. Mother confided that at his core his vile nature ate away at his invisible soul. Nicci always hoped to someday redeem his soul and make it as healthy as he outwardly appeared.
He adored Nicci, but seemed to think raising her was a task too sacred for his coarse hands, so he left it to Mother. Even when he disagreed with something, he would bow to Mother’s wishes, saying she would know best about such a domestic duty.
His work kept him busy most of the time. Mother said it was a sign of his barren soul that he spent so much of his time at building his riches—taking from people, she often called it—rather than giving of himself to people, as the Creator meant all men to do. Many times, when Father came home for dinner, while servants scurried in and out with all the dishes they’d prepared, Mother would go on, in tortured tones, about how bad things were in the world. Nicci often heard people say that Mother was a noble woman because of how deeply she cared. After dinner Father would go back to work, often without a word. That would anger Mother, because she had more to tell him about his soul, but he was too busy to listen.
Nicci remembered occasions when Mother would stand at the window, looking out over the dark city, worrying, no doubt, about all the things that plagued her peace. On those quiet nights, Father sometimes glided up behind Mother, putting a hand tenderly to her back, as if she were something of great value. He seemed to be mellow and contented at those moments. He squeezed her bottom just a little as he whispered something in her ear.
She would look up hopefully and ask him to contribute to the efforts of her fellowship. He would ask how much. Peering up into his eyes as if searching for some shred of human decency, she would name a figure. He would sigh and agree. His hands would settle around her waist, and he would say that it was late, and that they should retire to bed.
Once, when he asked her how much she wished him to contribute, she shrugged and said, “I don’t know. What does your conscience tell you, Howard? But, a man of true compassion would do better than you usually do, considering that you have more than your fair share of wealth, and the need is so great.”
He sighed. “How much do you and your friends need?”
“It is not me and my friends who need it, Howard, but the masses of humanity crying out for help. Our fellowship simply struggles to meet the need.”
“How much?” he repeated.
She said, “Five hundred gold crowns,” as if the number were a club she had been hiding behind her back, and, seeing the opening she had been waiting for, she suddenly brandished it to bully him.
With a gasp, Father staggered back a step. “Do you have any idea of the work required to make a sum of that size?”
“You do no work, Howard—your slaves do it for you.”
“Slaves! They are the finest craftsmen!”
“They should be. You steal the best workers from all over the land.”
“I pay the best wages in the land! They are eager to work for me!”
“They are the poor victims of your tricks. You exploit them. You charge more than anyone else. You have connections and make deals to cut out other armorers. You steal the food from the mouths of working people, just to line your own pockets.”
“I offer the finest work! People buy from me because they want the best. I charge a fair price for it.”
“No one charges as much as you and that’s the simple fact. You always want more. Gold is your only goal.”
“People come to me willingly because I have the highest standards. That is my goal! The other shops produce haphazard work that doesn’t proof out. My tempering is superior. My work is all proofed to a double-stamp standard. I won’t sell inferior work. People trust me; they know I create the best pieces.”
“Your workers do. You simply rake in the money.”
“The profits go to wages and to the business—I just sank a fortune into the new battering-mill!”
“Business, business, business! When I ask you to give a little something back to the community, to those in need, you act as if I wanted you to gouge out your eyes. Would you really rather see people die than to give a pittance to save them? Does money really mean more to you, Howard, than people’s lives? Are you that cruel and unfeeling a man?”
Father hung his head for a time, and at last quietly agreed to send his man around with the gold. His voice came gentle again. He said he didn’t want people to die, and he hoped the money would help. He told her it was time for bed.
“You’ve put me off, Howard, with your arguing. You couldn’t just give charitably of yourself; it always has to be dragged out of you—when it’s the right thing to do in the first place. You only agree now because of your lecherous needs. Honestly, do you think I have no principles?”
Father simply turned and headed for the door. He paused as he suddenly saw Nicci sitting on the floor, watching. The look on his face frightened her, not because it was angry, or fierce, but because there seemed to be so much in his eyes, and the weight of never being able to express it was crushing him. Raising Nicci was Mother’s work, and he had promised her he would not meddle.
He swept his blond hair back from his forehead, then turned and picked up his coat. In a level voice he said to Mother that he was going to go see to some things at work.
After he was gone, Mother, too, saw Nicci, forgotten on the floor, playing with beads on a board, pretending to make chain mail. Her arms folded, she stood over Nicci for a long moment.
“Your father goes to whores, you know. I’m sure that’s where he’s off to now: a whore. You may be too young to understand, but I want you to know, so that you don’t ever put any faith in him. He’s an evil man. I’ll not be his whore.
“Now, put away your things and come with Mother. I’m going to see my friends. It’s time you came along and began learning about the needs of others, instead of just your own wants.”
At her friend’s house, there were a few men and several women sitting and talking in serious tones. When they politely inquired after Father, Nicci’s mother reported that he was off, “working or whoring, I don’t know which, a
nd can control neither.” Some of the women laid a hand on her her arm and comforted her. It was a terrible burden she bore, they said.
Across the room sat a silent man, who looked to Nicci as grim as death itself.
Mother quickly forgot about Father as she became engrossed in the discussion her friends were having about the terrible conditions of people in the city. People were suffering from hunger, injuries, sickness, disease, lack of skill, no work, too many children to feed, elderly to care for, no clothes, no roof over their heads, and every other kind of strife imaginable. It was all so frightening.
Nicci was always anxious when Mother talked about how things couldn’t go on the way they were for much longer, and that something had to be done. Nicci wished someone would hurry up and do it.
Nicci listened as Mother’s fellowship friends talked about all the intolerant people who harbored hate. Nicci feared ending up as one of those terrible people. She didn’t want the Creator to punish her for having a cold heart.
Mother and her friends went on at great length about their deep feelings for all the problems around them. After each person said their piece, they would steal a glance over at the man sitting solemnly in a straight chair against the wall, watching with careful, dark eyes as they talked.
“The prices of things are just terrible,” a man with droopy eyelids said. He was all crumpled down in his chair, like a pile of dirty clothes. “It isn’t fair. People shouldn’t be allowed to just raise their prices whenever they want. The duke should do something. He has the king’s ear.”
“The duke…” Mother said. She sipped her tea. “Yes, I’ve always found the duke to be a man sympathetic to good causes. I think he could be persuaded to introduce sensible laws.” Mother glanced over the gold rim of her cup at the man in the straight chair.
One of the women said she would encourage her husband to back the duke. Another spoke up that they would write a letter of support for such an idea.
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