by A Van Wyck
“I see,” the priest mused seriously, regarding the sword between them. A thimble sized cup was raised with both hands and blown on. The rancid butter musk wafted around the room. His mentor’s lax reaction was a catalyst to all his gnawing worries.
“We were betrayed!” he exploded. “Someone with the authority to command royal troops sent them to attack our caravan under the guise of bandits!” When the keeper still didn’t react, he snapped. “The royal family tried to assassinate us!”
The priest’s eyes remained on the tea. Loud sipping sounded.
“You already knew,” he breathed the accusation. Father Justin briefly met his eyes over cup’s rim. The affirmation was clear.
“Why didn’t you say something?!” He demanded, appalled.
“Because I couldn’t prove anything.” The priest glanced up and held his eyes. “If indeed that attack had been orchestrated by someone within the palace, then that person plainly didn’t want our mission to succeed. I wasn’t going to aid in that agenda by heaping unproven accusations at the feet of our royal hosts.”
He reeled. Father Justin had already given this much more thought than he had. “But we’ve got proof now!” He insisted, grabbing up the sword and brandishing it at the keeper as if he would run right now and demand an explanation from the king.
“I’m afraid,” the priest said, “that this,” and ink speckled hand indicated the sword, “proves nothing.”
“But–”
“Think,” his mentor interrupted, putting the cup down with a click. “The presence of the sword alone does not prove the person wielding it was a royal soldier. Swords get lost, they get stolen and they get sold. Retired soldiers no doubt keep theirs. So could deserters. Neither is it impossible to kill a royal guardsman and take one. It’s even possible the sword was planted on purpose, to birth these exact suspicions.”
He shook his head, denying the keeper’s words, unwilling to hear a reasonable explanation when he’d convinced himself of a royal conspiracy.
“And even if those men were royal soldiers,” the priest continued relentlessly, “how could you tell who’d sent them? The royal family, you assume, but why not a rogue officer? Why not an entire rogue unit? Or a scribe with a bit of cunning, forging orders?” Justin shook a disapproving head.
“The king invited us,” the priest insisted. “The king wants these negotiations to succeed. I’ve been in a room with him, so I know. And as long as the king wants this, it will happen. Unless,” and the priest waited for him to raise his eyes before continuing, “we take the bait. We could sabotage these talks ourselves by striking back wildly at an unseen enemy. And I won’t have that. Not when failure here could catapult us into another full-scale war. Next to that, our lives mean nothing.”
The keeper wrapped a gentling hand around his fist where it curled around the blade.
“I, too, grieve for the friends we’ve lost,” Justin promised. “But we cannot afford to accuse anyone. These talks would fall apart and our friends will have died for nothing.”
The priest’s eyes, imploring his understanding, could not be denied. He hung his head. He’d spent too many years discussing history and politics with the scholar to doubt the learned analysis. But he could not stop the sour frustration turning in his gut like bad meat.
The keeper tenderly loosened his fingers from their death grip, moving the sword aside to dab at shallow cuts with a cloth. He hadn’t realized he’d been gripping the blade so tightly.
“That does not mean,” the priest soothed, binding his bleeding fingers, “that I’ve been sitting idly by. But you can imagine how it would look if a Heli priest started asking in-depth questions concerning the movements and motivations of Kingdom troops and their superiors.” A rueful smile invited him to cast his own thoughts down that path.
“It would look bad.”
The keeper smiled at the understatement. “So I’ve had to content myself with some very discreet enquiries. I’ve not had much success,” the keeper admitted ruefully, knotting the bandage around his fingers.
A new possibility occurred to him. “Could the ones who orchestrated the attack in the mountains also be the masters of the assassin?”
“I’ve considered that at length,” Justin admitted, “and I simply don’t have enough information to say yay or nay either way. However, it seems unlikely someone with the Kingdom’s interests at heart would seek the death of a crown princess. In Renali law, she cannot succeed her father. Her husband could, though. Politically it makes more sense to marry her than kill her.”
That seemed a mixed blessing, of sorts, but he would take heart in it anyway.
“Just to be safe, though, I’m afraid you’re stuck with guard duty for the time being.”
He nodded mutely.
“And as to the rest?” he asked. “What do we do?”
“We do the only thing we can do,” the keeper shrugged. “We do our best. And we stay vigilant.” The priest’s brows bunched. “And watch out for assassins of course,” the man added. “Guard yourself, Marco,” Justin admonished. “And guard your friends.”
“So we do nothing?”
“For now.”
Inaction did not sit well with him right now. But he felt more at ease just knowing Justin was also chipping away at the mystery. With her keeper involved, Helia could only regard their endeavor with favor. He sighed. It was a weight off his shoulders.
They sat in silence for a time.
“Now, then,” Justin said with authority, “finish your tea. And then, for Helia’s sake, go get some sleep. You look exhausted.”
* * *
“Phew!”
The sun beat down on them heavily as they trudged along the dusty road. He glanced sidelong at Neever. The monk had pinched the front of his holy robes, flapping at the thick material in a useless attempt to coax some cooler currents. The sweat that ran down the man’s face didn’t seem to affect his ever-present good humor. This despite the wooden frame of the large pack that must surely be digging into the monk’s back. It contained both of their provisions but the man hadn’t been foolish enough to suggest he take a turn carrying it.
Their relationship had taken a strange turn since Marvellack Post. There was a certain measure of – respect might be too strong a word – in the monk’s eyes when looking at him. And, in turn, he was even more wary of Neever now than he’d been before. Despite this, the monk had been a little more personable and he’d found himself being… a little more polite. Where before they had been two strange cats locked in a room, now they were two cats in a familiar home, skirting each other’s territories.
Hiding a smile, he strolled unconcerned and unburdened at the monk’s side. He’d found a piece of cloth and wound it into an amori atop his head to ward off the sun. It was proving much more effective than the priest’s rough-spun hood. He stretched languidly.
“You call this hot?” he interjected between the priest’s labored breaths, savoring the reticent man’s discomfort. “In Oaragh it gets so hot you can fry a cat on the cobbles before noon if you’ve a mind to.”
“Really? Fascinating,” the man wheezed, with not a hint of sarcasm in sight.
He scowled. Nothing ever got under the blunt-faced monk’s skin. “No,” he sighed, “not really.”
“Oh.”
“Mmm,” he admitted. “It has to be well into the hottest part of midday. And roof tiles are better than cobbles,” he amended truthfully. “Cleaner too,” he added as an afterthought. Not that you could ever get cat anywhere close to properly done even then but, by the time you were prepared to eat cat, it didn’t really matter anymore.
“That is in the summer I take it?”
“It’s Oaragh. It’s always summer.”
Even so, this wasn’t the kind of heat he was used to. The desert sun scoured dry everything it touched. Here, when it got hot, it got wet. It felt like he was breathing water. It rushed in his nose and leaked from his skin. He felt he was drowning in air.
It was a horrible mental image and he suddenly found himself gasping uncomfortably right beside Neever.
First the ship, then the barges. Now this.
It seemed he would never be free of water ever again.
Stinking wetlands.
“So,” he wheezed, trying to distract himself, “where are we headed this time?”
“If Helia wills it,” the monk began in that easy manner – he had to suppress the urge to throttle the man, “we’ll reach Plammic sometime after sundown tonight.”
“And is there one of your temples in this Plammic?”
“Oh, yes,” the priest enthused but characteristically didn’t elaborate.
“A big one?” he guessed from the man’s emphatic nod.
“Oh, my yes,” the priest continued. “Quite unlike any of the others we’ve come by so far.”
He narrowed his eyes on the man. “How so?”
Neever frowned as if this had been a trick question. “That would be quite difficult to explain to a–” the man broke off, shooting him an apologetic glance from beneath sweat brimmed brows.
“A heathen?” he guessed. After a moment he priest laughed easily
“If you like,” the man nodded. “I was going to say,” the monk hedged, “someone uneducated in the basic scriptures.”
The monk smiled disarmingly to show no offense was meant.
The man needn’t have bothered. He had faith in one thing and one thing only. Himself. And he made no apologies for that. He was by no means an atheist. He’d seen spirits, demons and horrors aplenty, enough to convince him that, not only did the gods exists, but they also didn’t give a fig for the fate of their followers. Religion? Keep it. And if thinking so made him a heathen, he’d wear the title proudly. Screw all gods! He spat off to the side of the road, a habit he’d picked up since leaving Oaragh. In the great desert, you didn’t waste perfectly good spit.
“That’s me,” he confirmed, only halfway joking. “I lack all kinds of basic education.”
My skills are much more specialized.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” the monk soothed.
He glanced at the man but, as usual, could detect no hint of a barb in the words.
“So what of this temple?” he continued, hoping to waylay a conversation about his inherent worth and how he could come into his own under the tutelage of know-it-all priests if only he’d commit to serve someone other than himself – as if that made any sense. To be fair, Neever hadn’t tried to convert him even once.
That I know of…
The thought brought a frown.
“Well,” the monk began, “there are certain… differences of opinion, regarding some key points in the scripture.”
“Really?” he mocked. “I thought you were all one big, happy family?”
The man turned raised brows on him. “And have you ever spent much time among any big families?”
Does my clan of orphans, whores and pickpockets count?
When he didn’t object to the pertinently looming academic discussion, the monk smiled, obliging.
“Unofficially,” the man began, “there are two factions: the purists and the modernists. The purists hold to the old ways, followed now for countless generations, some say since before the Empire was an empire. They advocate the return of many of the old ways and customs that have… fallen out of favor in recent times.”
A remembered conversation came back to him. “Like buying unwanted children from struggling parents?”
The monk smiled ruefully. “Exactly. Although that particular practice should, perhaps, be reinstated. So many potential priests and priestesses now waste away as prostitutes and petty criminals.”
Why, Neever you old softy…
“Your prejudices are showing,” he jibed. “What’s wrong with being a petty criminal?”
The priest turned a pleased smile on him but failed to rise to the bait. They trudged another twenty or so paces through the dust in silence.
“So,” he tried, “you’re a purist, then?”
“Me?” the man seemed genuinely surprised. “Not at all. On the whole, I find the changes of the past century to be quite an improvement. Certainly the more tolerant attitude towards–” the man flashed him an apologetic glance again, “heathens, if you’ll pardon my saying so, has brought an unknown age of peace to the Empire.”
“More tolerant?” he mused. “The purists are pro-war?”
“Um…” the man’s mouth skewed, eyes reflecting some internal struggle. “Not exactly,” Neever admitted. “They’re not so much pro-war as they are pro-expansion.” Taking his blank stare as an invitation to continue, Neever explained. “You see, if the Heli faith could be said to have a main precept, a founding commandment, it would be this: ‘carry My name to the corners of the earth and in unity find salvation’.” Neever shook a rueful head. “Combine that with armies enough to conquer a continent and an Empire ruled on and off again by the Temple…” the man trailed off, turning a jaded eye on him. “You can see the problem.”
“‘We bring peace and prosperity, submit or die’?” he quipped.
“I can see how one might think that,” Neever said sadly.
He turned the man’s words over in his head as they trudged along.
“So what is the more tolerant solution?”
“Missionaries,” Neever promptly supplied. “Brave priests who spread the scriptures peaceably beyond the borders of the Empire. We build missions and Temples wherever we can. We preach, we help, we heal and we try not to judge. The modernist focus is all on leading by example. The idea is to show others a life lived in Helia’s glory is worth the effort of conversion.”
He considered that.
So much for not trying to convert me outright.
“Sneaky,” he commented and Neever laughed. “So the modernist plan for complete domination amounts to a ‘my dog’s better than your dog’ argument?” He thought he might finally have succeeded in angering the monk but, after a moment, that infuriating smile spread across the blunt face again.
“Ha! Exactly!”
“And this temple we’re going to,” he continued, “it’s a purist temple?”
“Well,” the monk mused, “I may have given you an overly simplified idea of Temple politics. The prevalent political situation is much, much more complicated, with many more factions and splinter groups than I could name. Priests are sophists by nature and they tend to argue a lot. Most differ on minor points, like whether the Night of Exodus was on a Turnsday or a Merryday.” The man shrugged. “But, in essence, you are correct, it is predominantly a purist Temple.”
“And I’m a heathen,” he said needlessly, the amori atop his head suddenly heavy. “Great.”
“No need to worry,” Neever assured him. “You are my guest and whatever our interpretations of the texts, we remain siblings in the same faith.”
One big, happy family, he couldn’t help thinking.
“Besides,” Neever added, “it is also a very big Temple. A single country monk and his wayward charge should be able to slip in without raising too many eyebrows.”
“Wonderful.”
After that it became too hot for conversation. They took twice as many rest stops as on any other day. It was a real blessing when the sun started to dip behind the trees.
“Ah,” he sighed gratefully, pulling the headdress off so the cooling breeze could find his sweaty hair, “that’s better.”
The town slowly crawled into view from around the curve of the gentle hill they were climbing. And kept crawling and crawling until it took on the proportions of a small city. The outer wall was obviously for decoration and not defense, dwindling to no more than waist high twenty paces from the main gate. Beyond it rose buildings of pale stone. Tall, narrow windows in lead frames glinted in the dying light. He remarked aloud on how different it looked from Marvellack Post.
“Of course,” the priest explained. “Plammic never was a frontier fort. It began as a farming co
mmunity after this land was already settled. Over the course of many generations, as the nobles who’d won land here migrated from war to commerce, it became quite the country retreat. The nobles brought money, money brought more mercers and tradesmen and, well, just look.” A waved hand indicated the glistening city. “It has its own Imperial prefect in residence, mostly to keep the peace between the nobles and the mercers. Many influential court personages call Plammic home. It only makes sense the Temple here would be… more to scale.” The man turned a wry smile on him. “The rich and powerful prefer to worship amidst a bit more richness and–”
“Pomp?”
“Exactly,” the man grinned appreciatively.
The day’s light and heat leeched quickly from the air as they made their way up the crown of the hill. The sun was just a blush of orange on the horizon by the time they neared the gate.
“They don’t close it up at night?”
“What would be the point?”
He gave the gate, tapering to a low wall a blind cripple could jump, another glance. “I see.”
The gate guards slouched on either side of the huge, redundant portal, paying little or no attention to the trickle of traffic coming their way. He wondered how much of their unaccosted entry was thanks to their priestly robes and how much due to the guards’ chronic disinterest. Either way they had no trouble passing into Plammic and Neever led them down the darkening main street. Night fell as they left the main thoroughfare, venturing into a residential district. Second story windows spilled their candle- and lantern light across the darkened cobbles. Fragments of conversation, the sounds of cutlery and occasional laughter drifted down.
“No pie tonight?” he directed at the monk’s back.
“I’m afraid not, no,” the man apologized.
Hopefully that also meant he wouldn’t have to rob the governor’s mansion. Of the prefect’s. Or whatever.
“Promise?”
The monk laughed softly.
As they moved from the residential area into the slumbering trade sector, the streets quietened. The businesses and shops were dark, closed for the day, leaving the roads deserted. Despite the cooler air, he found himself still breathless. A backward glance showed them struggling up a gentle incline.