by Shannon Page
The priest looked at her protectors, then shrugged. “Of course. They are welcome.” His gaze lingered on Pino. “It may help my wounded brother here to join in this discussion.”
He turned and started up the beach, followed by Sian, Reikos and Pino.
“A bone set badly must sometimes be re-broken before it can be healed,” the young priest said to Sian as she came abreast of him. “Many things cannot be healed without being broken first. This is among the first and hardest lessons the god taught me. I know you have no cause to pity me, my lady. And I do not ask you to. But my breaking took far longer than a single night, and far more than a single beating.” He turned without slowing, to look her in the face. “I would not change what happened to me now, however. Not for all the wealth in Alizar.”
“Why not?” she asked. “What happened to you?”
“You do not seem unwell to me now,” the young man said, ignoring her question. “You look quite well, in fact. Far better than you did the night you came to me. Nor, from what I hear, have you been left unrewarded for your suffering.”
“What!” Sian snorted. “Do you mean this gift I am afflicted with?”
“The power to heal — yourself as well as others — with a touch is an affliction?”
“When all the world wants you punished for it, yes! I live in hiding now. My whole life is gone. My marriage is failing, my business is threatened; the Mishrah-Khote will likely have me killed. I have nothing left and nowhere to go. I cannot walk down the street to buy myself a chicken in peace. I had to sleep beneath an abandoned boat last night, on stones, for fear of being found — by anybody!”
“Your life was long gone on the night we met,” the priest said, sounding half-disgusted. “Your marriage was a farce already, and your business had owned you for many years.”
Sian opened her mouth but found too many words clogged up there to get any out. How could he know any of this? What business of his was it to judge her? After what he had done?
Not that she could claim his assessment was wrong, however. That was the troubling part. Not even she had known herself so well the night they’d met. So, how could he possibly …
“Perhaps you would not have to live in hiding, Domina Kattë, if you were not so frightened of what you’ve been given.” He looked at her again, less angrily. “It is much harder to chase someone who is not running.”
“What do you mean? What exactly have I been given? I still have no idea what I am supposed to do with this. You called me a messenger that night — to the ruling family — of which I am barely part, as you must know if you know so much else about me. But you left me not a clue about what message I should take them. Or to whom.”
“If you had made any effort to deliver it, you would likely have found out by now.”
Without thinking, she balled her hand into a fist and slugged him in the shoulder, hard.
He stumbled to one side, gaping at her, as Reikos and Pino lunged to stand between them, unsure, it seemed, of who needed their protection.
“That is what infuriates me!” Sian shouted. “You talk and talk and talk so cleverly — and never say a thing that anyone can understand! You beat me into being your messenger but will not name the message. I ask you simple questions and you respond without giving me an answer. Your big speech back there was utter nonsense! You offered not a single specific goal to all these followers of yours, not even one clear instruction anyone could act on! Do you know you are a bag of worthless air? Or are you so caught up in your own performance that you haven’t noticed it is empty?”
He stared at her, blinking. “The god has not sent me to tell them what to do,” he said at last, clearly still reluctant to come near her. “They already know. The answers are inside them. They have been all along — and the instructions you request are bound to be different for each one of us. There is no one instruction I could give them if I wanted to.”
“Then what are you for?” she asked, exasperated.
“I am … just to wake them up,” he said with a shrug. “To disturb their sleep before the house burns down around their beds and takes them with it. That is all the god requires of me. The rest is his to do, not mine. I am not a god to give anyone instructions.”
“Then, what is this new world you want us all to make?” asked Reikos. “Do you even know?”
“Don’t you?” the boy-priest asked in turn. Sian felt herself tensing for another swing. Seeming to sense this, the priest added hurriedly, “What did you see — inside yourself — while I was speaking?”
Reikos looked blank for a moment. Then his mouth parted in surprise.
The young priest nodded. “That is the new world. Your part of it, at least. They all saw something as I spoke. Those who hear the god at all. They all come here knowing what the new world looks like. They’ve just forgotten it is there inside them. They’ve been trained, quite harshly — whether rich or poor, powerful or helpless — not to look for it. I am here … to make them think again. That is all. They march to remember. They will march until it becomes clear enough again inside them to be acted on. But it is they who will decide, when that time comes. I just serve the god who wants us free. All of us, not just my friends or followers.” He shook his head, wide-eyed, frightened even, Sian thought. “I am no dictator to tell others what they should do.”
“But you beat her!” Pino rasped. “I trusted you, and you tricked me into bringing you the finest, most admirable person I’ve ever known. Then you beat her into doing what you wanted! How can you say now that —”
“I did not want to!” the young man shouted. “It was the only time since I myself was broken that I resisted what the god was asking of me.” He looked desperately at Sian. “I had to drink all day. I took things. Powders I have never wished to use as others do, just to lose myself enough to do what was required of me that night. And even then …” His face began to crumple as he struggled not to cry. He grabbed the neckline of his robe and yanked it down to expose his naked chest. “Oh, lady, heal me!” he sobbed. “Take these scars I bear. It costs us everything to make the world new! Can you not understand that — even now? Can you not have pity on me too?” She stared, stunned, as he fell to his knees on the sand. “For I cannot forgive myself. I’m sorry. I am sorry; it was what he bade me do. To awaken what you had inside you. But I cannot forget the blows now.” He covered his face with his hands, weeping, and pressed his head almost into the sand. “The bone upon your skin. … I cannot … set it down.”
Hardly of her own volition, Sian bent down and wrapped him in her arms. She felt his body stiffen as she did, and the air filled with the potent scent of ginger. They remained that way for many minutes. Reikos and Pino remained still and silent. None of the priest’s guards came to ask them what was happening. It felt as if the world had simply vanished in the darkness.
Eventually, the young priest’s weeping subsided, and he gazed up at her with blank incomprehension. She knew that look. She had seen it on the faces of her daughters, when they were still just infants. This boy had been someone’s infant too, she realized, feeling heat rush to her eyes and her chest compress, as tears gathered on her own lashes.
“Oh, my lady,” sighed the priest.
She nodded, at a loss again. Nothing here was as she had expected. Nothing ever had been. She saw that very clearly now. All she’d learned here was that she had never known until now how much she didn’t know.
“Please,” she said, rising, then reaching down to pull him up as well. “Can you tell me nothing of what I am meant to do, or what it is that I am sent to tell … my family?”
He gave her a helpless look, seeming still half elsewhere. “I have rarely known what I was doing either, since the god came for me. I can tell you only this. Stop trying to hide your gift. Stop fearing it — or what others may think or do to you for being what you are. Just use what you’ve been given openly, and that will lead you to whomever you’ve been sent to. When you reach them, I think you’ll know what the message
is. Or they will, even if you don’t.” He smiled, and gazed at her. “I am sorry, Domina. But that is what it’s like to serve a god. I know you did not ask to serve him. Nor did I. And it will not all be pleasant.” A shadow of his earlier grief crossed his youthful face again, even as he offered a crooked smile. “But I do not think you will regret this burden in the end. I do not. … Even less so now.” His smile brightened as the fire came back into his eyes. “You are greater than I, my lady. I am only sent to break what’s broken. But you will help to heal it. Somehow. Of this, I am quite certain.”
Sian looked back at him, knowing she had received all she would find here. “I should let you return to those who wait, then.” She turned to leave, then looked back at him. “How can a dead god be served by anyone? What can a dead god want?”
The young priest’s smile became wry. “A god is not his body, Domina, any more than you or I are ours. To make the world new, even bodies may be left behind, if necessary.”
“Lady, if you’ll let me, I would like to stay,” Pino said, staring at the priest. Reikos gave the boy a sharp look, but said nothing. “I would serve you,” Pino told the priest, “if you’ll have me back.”
“Thank you, Pino,” he replied. “But you should go with Domina Kattë. Knowing that the god’s purpose will be fulfilled does not mean she will have no need of protection on her way. I have my guards, as you must have noticed. I would not last a day without them. She will need hers too.” He nodded at Reikos. “You and I may meet again, or maybe not. But either way, I hope you’ll not let go of whatever you saw earlier. Good luck. To all of you.”
He turned then, to walk down the darkened beach alone, leaving Sian and the others to stare after him.
Sian walked behind Reikos as they made their careful way back up the cliff-side path; Pino followed her. As they climbed, a fog rolled in, wrapping the island’s palm-and-wild banana-fringed bluffs in its muffling embrace. The weather was well suited to their introspective states of mind, Sian thought. The men appeared as lost in private ruminations as she was as they wandered back along the darkened streets of Three Cats, listening to the night-calls of tree frogs and crickets.
What had Reikos seen inside himself during the priest’s speech, Sian wondered. And why had she seen nothing — except suspicions of deceit? She still wasn’t sure what she had done to that young man when she had held him in her arms. Though she had felt no echoing ‘pain,’ the memory of all that ginger told her that her gift had been employed to some effect. But how, exactly? She had never asked him who he was, or where he had really come from, or even what his name was … She had meant to, but her whole life seemed to steer itself these days. Or it was being steered. Was that not what he had suggested at the end? Not a completely new thought, or a comforting one. She recalled again the frightening, haunted-eyed child she had seen on Pembo’s Beach … had that been just this morning?
“I … I hate to say this.” Sian broke their silence at last. “But I am rather hungry again.”
Pino laughed, then pretended he had just been clearing his throat.
“We’ll find another tavern,” said Reikos, still uncharacteristically withdrawn. “And another runner-cart. If we wish to reach Fair Passage before dawn.”
“What time is it, do you think?”
“Too late to be walking all the way to Cutter’s,” Reikos said. “Pino, while I find someplace to feed our lady, would you mind going to see if you can find a cart for hire somewhere at this hour? We will meet you back here in, say, half an hour?”
“Gladly,” Pino said, already jogging off.
“So, what did the priest’s new world look like?” Sian asked when he was gone. “To you.”
Reikos turned to her, surprised, she thought, and gave her a long look. “You were in it. I can tell you that much.”
She drew a startled breath, and looked away. So, he did still want her. She had suspected as much. Was that a problem? How big a problem? She was not sure — of anything right now. She shook her head without intending to, feeling exposed. This was not a conversation she was ready for. Not tonight, with everything else she had just been through.
“More than that, I do not know quite how to describe to you,” said Reikos, looking off into the misty night as well. “Perhaps we should be looking for that tavern, eh?”
Before she could answer, they heard the sound of running feet. A second later, Pino came dashing toward them out of the swirling fog.
“You’ve already found a cart?” Reikos called.
Pino shook his head urgently, bringing a finger to his lips to silence them. “There’s a squad of soldiers coming,” he panted. “Not the temple, but not just some patrol either, my lady. They’re searching for something.”
Instantly, Sian recalled the murmurs passed behind her when the priest had named her. Or had their cart runners earlier been less disinterested than they’d seemed?
Pino gave Sian a worried look. “I think we better go, and fast.”
Reikos grabbed her hand and started pulling her away.
“No, stop.” She took her hand back. “You both heard what the god’s priest told me.” It was perhaps the only clear thing he had said to her all night. “I am done running. I am done following fear. Let us find that tavern, just as we had planned.”
“Don’t be mad!” said Reikos. “This is not what he meant.”
“What did he mean, then?”
“He also asked us to protect you!” Pino pled. “He can’t have meant you should just give yourself to them.”
“I’m not giving myself to anyone,” she answered, wondering if men ever learned to listen. “I’m just doing what I had set out to do, and letting them do whatever they are meant to. If that is finding me, and this god allows it, I’ll go with them and see if our young prophet was correct.”
“Sian, please!” Reikos reached again to take her hand, but she withdrew it from him.
“Which way are they coming from, Pino?”
He pointed back behind him.
“Then we’ll start looking for our tavern this way,” Sian said, starting off in the opposite direction. “Are you coming, gentlemen?”
“Oh, she is a handful,” Reikos sighed.
“Don’t I know it,” Pino muttered. “I worked for her, remember?”
Sian arched a brow in amusement. The first disparaging words she’d ever heard him speak — about herself, at least. Could the boy be growing up at last?
They had walked hardly more than two blocks before the fog parted in front of them again to reveal a party of five armed men. Not Mishrah-Khote — these wore short leather skirts and body armor, cap helmets, and carried pikes.
Reikos turned to Pino. “I thought you said —”
“This isn’t them,” Pino said under his breath.
Two patrols? Sian thought. From the Factorate this time, if their unusually fancy armor was any indication. Could she have come to seem this dangerous to everyone already?
“Halt!” shouted their commanding officer, identified by his elegant uniform, lace collar, and feather crested leather helmet.
“My lady, would you be Domina Sian Kattë, of Little Loom Eyot?”
Ah well. She only sighed as Reikos pulled her close, almost shoving her behind him while Pino drew in toward her other side.
“What do you want?” Reikos growled.
Sian felt him reach for something underneath his coat, and grabbed his arm to stop him. Weapons were the last thing any of them needed now.
“I am,” she told the man. “May I know why the Factorate sees fit to honor me with such a well-armed escort? Have you some cause to be concerned about my safety?”
“I am Prefect-Sergeant Ennias,” said the grim-faced young officer. “We’ve been ordered to find you in regard to a complaint filed by your husband, Arouf Monde.”
“Arouf? That’s ridiculous. What could he possibly …” But then, what might he not do? Now. The Factorate did not serve complaints, however. She knew tha
t much. Could this officer be lying, or were they working with the Mishrah-Khote priests? What a strange union that would be.
“May I know the nature of this complaint?” Sian asked, her heart pounding.
The sergeant reached underneath his surcoat and withdrew a sealed envelope, which he held out to her.
“Don’t touch it, Sian,” said Reikos. “I’d wager my boat it is a trap of some kind.”
“The matter requires immediate attention, I’m afraid,” the sergeant said.
“One has five days to answer complaints,” she said, ever more alarmed. Nothing about this transaction was at all correct.
“I tell you, do not touch it,” Reikos warned again.
“We are three against five,” she told him levelly. Not to mention they are far better armed than we are, whatever you’ve got concealed in that coat. She stepped from behind him and reached for the envelope. Don’t hide. Don’t fear. That’s what the priest had said. Even bodies can be left behind, if necessary. He had said that too, of course … “Thank you, Sergeant.”
She opened the envelope and removed two folded sheets of cream-colored paper.
“I cannot read this in the dark.”
Ennias signaled to one of his pikemen, who brought out a small punk-torch and lit it. The glow was irregular and flickering, but sufficient.
She scanned the document, expecting the flowery language of the Mishrah-Khote, but no. “What in the…”
“What is it?” Reikos leaned in.
“It’s from Arouf.”
“Did he not say so?”
“No, I mean this letter is from him directly, in his own hand.” Sian held the papers out to Reikos, whose face darkened as he read.
“That wretched…infidelity and abandonment? Who have you abandoned?”
Sian flushed with anger, and some embarrassment, her mind racing. She knew things were badly broken with Arouf, but … They’d had an understanding, after all, of sorts. Of course they did.
Prefect-Sergeant Ennias cleared his throat. “You are to come with me, Domina Kattë.”