by Ted Dekker
“Outside the Order? Without a chance to attend assembly at all? We’d be damning ourselves!”
Avra was silent. They both already knew where Avra’s eternal destination lay.
She abruptly looked away.
“Avra…”
She bolted up and hurried toward the door, stumbling over the hem of her cloak. It pulled askew, dragging wide the neckline of her tunic beneath, exposing skin that was unnaturally smooth and too light. A scar, one giant raised welt, lashed toward her neck.
He remembered the first time he saw that wound, seven years ago. Raw, the skin already bubbling up and coming off where the lantern oil of a wall sconce had spilled on her and caught fire. She had come to him in shock and shaking, nearly collapsing on her feet. But she had not screamed until he called his father to help them.
The Order did not tolerate physical defects.
Somehow, Rom had known his father would say nothing. He had arrived in silence and shown Rom how to help her dress the burns in wet bandages, helping to hide them from the eyes of her parents and from Anna.
“Is helping Avra wrong?” Rom had asked.
He had never forgotten what his father had said.
“The Order honors life out of fear of death. We are commanded to love life, but what we call love, Rom, is the shadow of something lost. It is loyalty born out of fear. Fear and love, sometimes the two conflict. Helping Avra is its own kind of love. But now, you must keep what I’m telling you to yourself.”
He had thought about his father’s words many times after that—including the day his mother took him to the wellness center.
He never returned.
Today, Avra ran the family laundry and lived alone, her parents having moved to Greater Europa. She had not stepped foot in a basilica until this moment, fearful of discovery, as though a priest might surmise her terrible secret by the look in her eyes alone.
Her fear extended beyond the basilica to society at large. Though she appeared whole to everyone who saw her, she bore the knowledge that she was unacceptable, alive in this life only as long as she could keep her secret…and even then, living only toward an inevitable end. Order rejected her. And Order was the Maker’s hand. There would be no Bliss for her.
It had robbed her of her own betrothal. Marriage, for her, would be impossible. Her own husband would be bound by the Honor Code to report her the moment he saw her defect. And so she had rejected her own betrothal without explanation to her parents.
He hurried to stop her. “Avra! If you run now they’ll find you for sure. Both of us!”
She halted, shaking. He went to her, pulled the edge of her cloak up over her scarred skin, gently covering it. She tugged the fabric close around her neck with pale fingers. By the time he drew her back toward the chair, she had gotten hold of herself.
He had to think. They were losing precious time.
Rom crossed to the box and opened it. There had to be more. What had the vellum said? Blood destroys or grants the power to live. It had certainly destroyed. He had witnessed that firsthand, hadn’t he? But what did it mean, to live?
A rustle sounded from behind him. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.” He lifted out the vial, unwrapped it carefully, and set the ancient glass container down on top of the table. He smoothed the vellum open next to it. “See?”
She came to stand beside him. “What does it say?”
Rom read the verse aloud, straining to see in the dim light.
“The Order of Keepers has sworn to guard
These contents for the Day of Rebirth
Beware, any who drink—
Blood destroys or grants the power to live”
She pressed against his shoulder. “Day of Rebirth. What Rebirth? The inauguration?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like it.”
“Beware, any who drink—drink what?”
“Blood destroys or grants the power to live. Just looking at this. I’m guessing it means the blood.”
“That can’t be. You don’t drink blood.”
“But that’s what it says. Beware, any who drink.”
“Yes. Beware. As in don’t. It must be poisonous.”
“They wouldn’t have killed the old man for owning poison. People buy it all the time to kill rodents.”
She poked her finger at the words. “Blood destroys. It’s poisonous or diseased.”
“Then what does it mean, or grants the power to live?”
“It’s just religious speak.”
He laid down the vellum. Avra picked it up, her lips moving as she reread the lines of the only legible paragraph.
Rom lifted the vial, held it to the candlelight. He had recoiled from it the first time. Now he watched the way it clung to the inside of the old glass. The liquid was so dark that it only hinted at the deepest shade of red in the candelabra’s meager light.
Drink blood? Unthinkable, yes.
But murder had been unthinkable to him just hours earlier. Life without his mother had been unthinkable. Running from authority. All unthinkable.
And all had become reality.
He tried to turn the metal seal. It didn’t budge. He twisted harder.
“What are you doing?”
The seal gave way with a metallic scrape.
“I just want to smell it.”
“Don’t!”
He twisted and pulled. The vial opened with a swift gasp, as though drawing breath for the first time in centuries.
He sniffed it. Metal and salt. Grave danger and life.
He knew what he was thinking before he logically reasoned it out.
So did Avra. “Rom! Don’t!”
He tipped it up to his lips. He took a small sip. Made a face. A stale, metallic taste filled his mouth.
“Well, it’s definitely blood.”
“You’re crazy! Put it back!”
He held the vial up to the candlelight, noted the first measure line of the vial. Enough for five.
“Do you have a better option?”
“Yes! Not drinking poison!”
He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s poison. But if I’m wrong, leave the vial with my body and go somewhere safe until they find me.”
He turned, lifted the bottle to his lips, and threw back one mouthful—enough to take the volume down to the first measure.
Avra watched him, aghast.
He had to force himself to swallow. The stuff was foul. More than stale. Bitter. He wondered for an eerie moment if Avra was right about its being poison after all.
He recapped the vial and waited. Nothing. He turned back to her, held out his hands.
“You’re a reckless fool!” Avra said, the color drained from her face.
“Maybe.” He set the vial back in the box. “But now we know what—”
A force struck him like a steel beam to the gut. He dropped to one knee, grabbed at the table. Missed.
“Rom!”
Fire burned through his veins. He collapsed on the floor and curled up, clawing at his belly. By the time he began convulsing, he was only vaguely aware of Avra kneeling next to him. His legs kicked out at the stack of chairs. One of them crashed down onto the floor almost on top of them both.
She was right. It was poison.
Fear flooded his world and turned it black.
Chapter Six
The heels of Saric’s boots echoed sharply as hammer-falls along the upper corridor that led to the Residence of the Office. The passage was lined by the busts of past Sovereigns and draped by velvet and silk gold-threaded tapestries—gifts upon the occasion of Vorrin’s inauguration nearly forty years prior. Saric had never noticed until today just how dusty and threadbare they had become.
Their replacements had already begun to arrive in the Citadel’s large receiving yard. Crates of gifts, the favors of nations and the leaders that led them, reminders of the world beyond this one…the token presence of the nations and the one billion souls that populated
them.
The vaulted ceilings of the atrium, painted gold centuries before, shone down with false sun, their cracks and peeling testament to the ancient age of this capitol that endured history and looked toward the future at once.
Two of the elite guard openly watched Saric as he approached the outer chamber.
“School your gaze,” Saric snapped as he passed, despising the peevish sound of his own voice as he said it. It was the poison—the poison pulsing through his veins. It had tested his resolve to retain a sensible composure since he’d first been filled with it and its dark offspring: passion, ambition, lust, greed.
Anger.
He could hardly sleep for the wars they waged in his mind. He relished and loathed them at once.
But he had no intention of betraying himself.
He curled his fingers to still their trembling. The right cuff of his silk shirt had pulled away from his wrist and he could see clearly the veins beneath, so dark now that they seemed black. They were beautiful, he had decided. Still, he kept the neckline and high collar of his robe carefully fastened so that the edge of it brushed his jaw.
He walked past the desk of the secretary and strode to the double bronze doors beyond. Twelve feet tall, as thick as a wall, they were emblazoned with the symbols of the offices of the seven continental houses. On the right, the alchemists of Russe, the educators of Asiana, the architects of Qin, the environmentalists of Nova Albion. On the left, the bankers of Abyssinia, the priests of Greater Europa, and the artisans of Sumeria. The great compass, symbol of the Sovereign office, was framed in the upper-middle panel. Its graded points were the same as those etched upon Sirin’s halo.
Sirin…Megas…Order. But Saric knew that nothing was as it had once seemed. Even the great doors of this office no longer shut him out as they once had. Rather, they beckoned him in.
He laid his hand against the compass, fingers outstretched, and pushed his way inside.
Vorrin stood before the full window, his back to the room. Rowan, the senate leader, stood near him as always. The man was never more than three steps away.
Lapdog.
The heads of both men turned. Saric went to his knee, the long hem of his robe collapsing on the lush Abyssinian rug. His own apartments contained nothing so rich as this floor covering. He must rectify that.
Vorrin did not acknowledge him right away. After several moments, Saric glanced up.
Rowan was studying him too frankly for Saric’s tastes.
Finally, Vorrin spoke from across the room, his gaze fixed somewhere outside the window. “Son.”
Saric rose and went to join him. It was the first time he had attended to his father in weeks. As Vorrin turned to face him, he was surprised by the image.
Though the Sovereign wore the deep purple mantle of his office, Saric had never seen his father look quite so old. The flesh of his hands, of his neck, and even of his face seemed sunken against the bone. Veins and sinew showed through skin thinned with age. Liver spots dotted the backs of his hands and the sides of his high, shaven cheeks. His gray hair was combed back and gathered at his nape, but it had thinned so much that portions of his scalp showed through.
Though he stood four inches taller than his son at a stately six-foot-seven, he seemed to Saric dried as a husk.
Saric, by contrast, had never been more aware of the vitality in his own veins. He had never felt so strong, so absolutely virile. Next to his father’s ghostly gray skin, his own was the color of pale marble—beautiful by every standard.
Saric leaned in and touched his lips to the papery skin of Vorrin’s cheek. The act disgusted him. At this close vantage, the faint light through the immense windows only highlighted the translucent fragility of the wrinkles along Vorrin’s mouth, the spidery purple veins beneath his eyes.
The man appeared dead.
How had he never noticed his father’s frail state? How was it that Vorrin had always seemed as virile as a man thirty years younger, as charismatic as a god to him, until today?
Vorrin regarded him as dispassionately as ever before returning his gaze to the city beyond the window. “I have asked Rowan to issue the court’s decision on your request.”
“Thank you, Father.” Saric’s heart accelerated. He turned to face the senate leader. “Well?”
Rowan, in contrast with the Sovereign, never seemed to age. His smooth, dusky skin and small ears, the opacity of his eyes and lean stature, even the way he tied his hair back at his nape, all seemed to lend him the sleekness of a cat.
“We have reviewed your request to fill the senate leader’s seat upon the inauguration of your sister and find it unconstitutional. The Order decrees that your sister—ordained by the Order and by birth closest to one of three eligible birth cycles during the reign of our current Sovereign—shall elect her own senate leader from among continental prelates past and present, or the house overseers, past and elect, to serve on her behalf and at her leisure in all matters of Order public, private, political, and religious. As you are neither prelate nor overseer, nor have ever been, you are strictly…ineligible.”
Saric’s vision clouded, but he maintained his composure and looked away. Pravus had anticipated this. They both had. And yet, hearing it roused his ire.
“And the fact that you were prelate for a mere nine days before your own appointment qualifies you for this post above me, the son of the Sovereign?” he demanded.
Rowan didn’t rise to the insult. “I quote the book,” he said. “‘And so these successions are prescribed, that no man should proclaim himself, and no man should endanger his fellow or himself for the sake of attainment or gain. And so no man need aspire beyond his state, or fear the loss of his place in this world. The Maker has made it as it should be. All is well beneath the Maker.’”
“All is well beneath the Maker,” Vorrin said softly. Saric, too, intoned the words, his gaze coming to settle at the hollow of Rowan’s throat.
“Thank you, Rowan,” Vorrin said. He sounded weary, his voice slightly warbled with age and the decades of demands put upon it. The hourly audiences. The speeches made from the great balcony, the privy meetings in his council chamber. The hearings in the senate.
Too used, so worn. He should have been removed years ago.
Rowan bowed his head, his hands folded before him, backed up three steps, and left by the inconspicuous side door.
Saric said, “Father—”
“It is a fair evening, one of too few,” Vorrin said, as though he had not heard. He sounded tired. “Will you walk outside with me, my son?”
Impatience snapped inside Saric like the jaws of a great reptile. But he gave a tight nod and followed his father past the cushioned seats where prelates and heads of geopolitical houses had sat too many times to be counted these last forty years, past the giant desk with its claw feet and stone top, where so many acts of the senate were signed into existence as though by will of the Maker himself.
They walked out onto the balcony that wrapped around the corner of the chamber office. The long, columned portico that led to the senate ran directly below, so that every senator, on his way to the Senate Hall, might pass beneath the blessing of the Sovereign. Megas, it was said, had designed this building for that reason, so that he might look out at them, and they might go into their assembly with the face of their Sovereign foremost in their mind.
Vorrin looked up at the clouds, luminescent where they obscured the moon. “Perhaps when your sister’s inauguration is complete, we will stand on a night such as this and talk of small matters. And Feyn will be the one to carry our fears on her shoulders, to take them with her to her bed in the evening, to rise to pace in the middle of the night. And Rowan will either be relieved to walk the porticoes as a senator himself or shall serve as senate leader at her leisure, as he has at mine.”
Saric turned to grasp the balcony’s railing. Beneath his cloak, his wet shirt clung to the muscles of his back. “It’s all well for you, and for Feyn, and even for Rowan
. But what of me?”
Vorrin turned his clouded blue eyes on his son. “You? You will reside here, with her, and with me. She will have need of your loyalty then.”
“Loyalty. A dog is loyal.” He couldn’t suppress the tension in his voice. “Tell me: How should my loyalty serve her? What of my intellect, my charisma, my vision—what of them? Should they go to waste in loyalty to my sister?”
“Of course not. That is not waste, my son,” Vorrin said, oblivious to Saric’s churning emotions. “The continents look to this family as they have for forty years and, by the grace of the Maker, will for forty more. You are the face of the passing Sovereign’s son, and the new Sovereign’s brother. You and your wife, Portia, are examples of Order to all the world. Of the purity and peace of our system. Of every blessing. My son…”
He reached out and touched Saric’s cheek.
Saric pulled away from the repulsive, papery touch.
Vorrin looked down at the thin pads of his fingers and rubbed them together. “You are sweating. Are you ill?”
“I am not ill. In fact, I am very, very well. So tell me, old man, where is the justice in power passing from my father to my younger sister, and skipping me altogether?”
Vorrin blinked. “My son, I don’t understand.”
Saric took a deep breath and pushed down his rage. “Forgive me, I’m tired.” He stepped close again and took his father’s cold, gray hand in his own. “Only listen to me. There can still be justice in the Order, Father. I beg you, in these last days before your office passes to Feyn, grant this small request to me. I’ve never asked you for anything. I’ll never ask for anything again.” The bones of his father’s hand felt very thin.
“What are you saying? What is it you ask?” Vorrin tried to draw his hand away, but Saric held it tight, squeezing it.
“I cannot lead the senate. It was wrong of me to ask. I will seek Rowan’s forgiveness and praise his judiciary responsibility in this matter. I will go tell him so myself. But you can rightfully step down from power.”
“But—why would I do that?” The skin around his neck shook a little when he said it.