“Eldest,” Allta said, “your protection is in my care. I can only think of two reasons for the church’s behavior.”
Pellin nodded. In truth, he’d been able to hypothesize four possibilities, all variations on a theme. Perhaps his guard had seen more clearly than he. “What might those be?”
Allta’s voice dipped, though for the moment no one stood near them on the pier. “That the Vigil here on the southern continent means to quarantine themselves from the north. No one is allowed into the interior unless they’ve first been delved and found free of the Darkwater’s poison. They’re checking each traveler for a vault.”
He nodded. His own thoughts ran in that direction, though he’d included possible complications with the Merum order’s upheaval. “What is your other theory?”
Allta waited for a passerby who would have had no chance at overhearing their conversation unless they were gifted to wander away. It might have been Pellin’s imagination or the angle of the southern sun, but in that moment Allta appeared wan, almost colorless. When he made the sign of the intersecting arcs on his forehead, Pellin gaped.
“Speak, Allta.”
His guard came to a stop. Pellin stood with him, waiting.
“My time with the Vigil dates back only a decade, Eldest,” Allta said.
“I know that,” Pellin responded, his voice sharper than he wished.
Something of discipline or habit reasserted itself, and Allta’s stoic demeanor returned. “I don’t know how well Cesla knows the southern continent.”
As if someone had opened the veins on his legs, Pellin felt his blood draining away from his face and the world spun, but this was a familiar fear.
“Eldest, did you tell them Cesla was alive?”
Like an errant bolt from a crossbow that magically finds a single chink in the armor, Allta’s question pierced him, but this too was known to him. “Without the scrying stones, I had to send word by messenger out of Cynestol. I sent a flock of colm messenger birds as well. I don’t think Cesla has come here.”
“Eldest, the forest and the desert are common, both are guarded by the Vigil. Even if Cesla didn’t come himself—”
“He could have sent dwimor.” Pellin held up his hands. “Yes, I know. There is nothing for it but to get to the Vigil here and submit ourselves to inspection.” He stopped to address Mark. “From this point on, you and Elieve must stay as close to me and Allta as possible. Do not leave our sides for an instant. If the Vigil here should delve her before they delve the rest of us, she’ll be put to death before we’re afforded the opportunity to explain why she might be important.”
Mark nodded. “Yes, Eldest, but wouldn’t we notice them?”
Pellin shook his head. “The relationship between the southern Vigil and the church here is more formalized than ours, but they still operate in secret. If merchants are being vetted before they’re allowed onto the caravan routes, they won’t know why. An incidental brush is enough to delve them and check for a vault.”
“How do we find them?” Mark asked. “This city is about to explode.”
“Most of them are known to me, as I am known to them,” Pellin said. “My presence will be noted, especially now.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew the emblem that signified his standing within the Merum order, the only order formally recognized by the church on the southern continent. “This should suffice to get their attention. Then we need only wait until I am recognized.”
They threaded their way through the streets of Erimos, working toward the wall that enclosed it, isolating merchants and travelers alike from the rest of the continent. Everywhere he looked, he saw the effects of the quarantine. Pellin lifted a silent prayer that the crowd would be free of dwimor. In the congestion, one of the assassins could kill all of them with ease.
He shook his head at the foolishness that surrounded him. Everywhere his gaze fell, Pellin could see evidence of a city fit to burst. Tempers flared more than once in the heat, and daggers flashed, providing a temporary space for combatants that lasted only until one of them withdrew or died.
“Join hands,” Pellin yelled above the din. “Allta, lead us!”
His guard pulled the four of them through the crowd by main strength, his gift forcing others aside as the breadth of his shoulders cleared a momentary gap through which Pellin, Mark, and Elieve followed. A thousand yards later, Pellin caught sight of the gates that separated Erimos from the overland trade routes.
A hundred yards shy of the gates, the traffic and press of people had been cut off as if it had never been. A double cordon of guards separated the crowd from the area around the gate, and church functionaries stood at the apex of the arc, directing those caravan masters forward who’d been permitted to pass through. Armed guards searched each cart and wagon as if hunting for the emperor’s killer, even going so far as to draw swords and stab through goods and produce to the anger and angst of the factors standing by.
“Him.” Pellin pointed to one of the church functionaries dressed in the blue of deep water under sunlight. “That’s the man we need to see.”
Allta nodded, but Mark shook his head. “How can you tell, Eldest?”
He pointed to the hem of the man’s vestments. “The One Church, as they call it, follows a different liturgical calendar than the Merum. Their colors are different as well. See the three horizontal black bands on his hem? They signify him as an interpreter of the liturgy. One band means the wearer is a patera, equivalent to a priest in the Merum tradition. Two bands denote a cardinalio. The three bands on that man’s hem means he has the authority to interpret the liturgy according to the time in which they live. In the southern church, only those with four bands, those referred to as revelators, carry a higher rank.”
“Why do they wear the rank on the hem?” Mark asked him. “It’s pretty easy to miss.”
“Not if that’s where your gaze is directed,” Pellin said. “The southern church never split, lad. Their hold on the continent is absolute, and they brook no insolence to the faith. The emperor serves at the pleasure of the council of the twelve.”
They shouldered their way closer. When Pellin could make out the face of the man with the banded hem, he reached into his tunic for the badge that signified his rank as a bishop in the Merum church. Mark’s tug at his sleeve brought him up short, and Pellin had to strain to hear him.
“Will he know that you’re in the Vigil?”
“No. Even within the monolith of the southern continent, we are kept secret from all except the emperor and the council of revelators.” He nodded to Elieve. “Say nothing and keep anyone from touching her.”
Mark looked around, his expression disbelieving. “In this crowd?”
“Put her between you and Allta. There is a member of the southern Vigil here, and they must touch one of us first.”
Pellin left Allta’s protection and stepped toward the concentric arcs of soldiers, his right hand gripping the heavy silver badge of a Merum bishop. Unlike the Servant’s emblem of a foot resting in an open hand, this was simpler. It showed the two intersecting arcs with their common endpoint on the left and overlapping tails on the right. In the years that Pellin had carried the sigil, it had tarnished and been polished so many times that the metal no longer wore a uniform thickness, but that it was made from purest silver would be obvious to anyone with a passing knowledge of the metal.
A glint of reflected light from the emblem caught the interpreter’s eye as Pellin stepped forward, and he halted his conversation with a burly wagon master to point in Pellin’s direction, snapping a command. A squad of four soldiers peeled off the inner arc and came toward him in formation.
Turning to Allta, he waved the rest of the group forward to join him. The soldiers advanced until the space between them narrowed to a yard. Then one of them in the middle, a man with jet black hair and a single circle emblazoned on each side of his tunic, edged closer until his face was hardly more than a handsbreadth from Pellin’s.
; “You and your company are permitted forward.”
The guards closed around them, each pair of hands resting on the hilt of their sword and dagger. “They have a pretty funny version of permission here in the south,” Mark muttered.
“Funny!” Elieve said laughing, but when Mark didn’t respond, she returned to her quiet inspection of the strange world around her.
The interpreter watched them come, his dark skin and fine features similar to the people from Elania, but where blue eyes bred true for Toria Deel and her countrymen, the interpreter’s eyes were the vivid green of seawater close to the shore, striking, but not friendly at the moment. Taller than their Elanian cousins, the interpreter overtopped Pellin by a few inches, though Allta still dwarfed him and most of the guards surrounding them.
Pellin lowered his eyes to the man’s hem. “Interpreter, this is an unexpected honor.”
“I am Arcadial.” He paused as if expecting the name to be recognized. When it wasn’t, his tone sharpened. “Is it?” he asked.
Pellin shook his head, raising it to meet that gaze. “I don’t understand your question.” The interpreter’s skin held the unbroken smoothness of youth, but his hair was shot with gray.
“Is it all of those things, Bishop? Unexpected? An honor?”
Pellin’s answering nod didn’t mollify him.
“What business does a bishop of the Merum have on the southern continent?”
He bowed, using the opportunity to check the soldiers. They all possessed the bearing of military men, and none of them had moved their hands from their weapons, but that told him little. The interpreter’s attitude told him more. He wore the demeanor of a man unused to taking orders who’d just been given one he didn’t like.
One of the soldiers surrounding them coughed, and the interpreter’s eye twitched. “You and your party will accompany us through the gate, Bishop.”
Pellin nodded, his gaze returning to the interpreter’s hem in a show of respect, but Arcadial had already turned away, raising puffs of dust where his heels smote the ground. Another four soldiers joined the original quartet and they progressed through the open gates.
No tradesmen or foreigners trafficked the southern half of the city. As a result, the streets of this part of Erimos seemed empty compared to the concentration they’d just left. A market of sorts, remnants from a time before the quarantine, still stood ready to do business with the few permanent residents of the city, but the men and women who manned the stalls wore the expressions of those who’d surrendered hope.
“They’ll have to relocate to the other side of the gates if they want customers,” Mark said. “They should have seen this coming.”
Pellin kept his eyes on their escort, still ready to intervene if one of them tried to touch Elieve, but Mark’s observation piqued his interest. “Seen what, exactly?”
“That the bottleneck created by the church would create a whole host of desperate sellers on the far side of the gate. With a bit of coin and a little time, any citizen of Erimos could set themselves up as a merchant.”
“The meirikio is perceptive,” Arcadial said without turning. “Indeed, a number of the citizens of the city have contrived to do just that.”
“Meirikio is the southern word for lad,” Pellin said to Mark.
“Or apprentice,” one of the soldiers, the one who coughed, amended.
Mark nodded. “Whether they can succeed as a merchant when that advantage disappears would be interesting to see.”
“Truly.” The soldier nodded.
Pellin came to a turn where the street narrowed between market stalls and their column narrowed, forcing them to walk three abreast until they reached the end of the turn. Here. If one of the soldiers accompanying them was in reality a member of the Vigil, he or she would attempt a delve as they jostled past one another. It’s what he would do.
Darting a glance behind, Pellin saw one of the soldiers stumble as if the man after him had accidentally kicked his feet. Flailing, the soldier’s hand darted toward the nearest figure.
Directly toward Elieve.
Chapter 23
Pellin thrust his arm backward so that the man’s hand was forced to touch him instead. In his mind he locked away every recollection of Elieve and her vault. Then he waited for the presence of the soldier to appear, though the stumbling man was unfamiliar to him. The instant their skin touched, the man’s image appeared in his sanctuary, the projection a few years younger than the man himself.
“If you will allow it”—Pellin bowed within his mind—“I would like to explain our presence in Erimos in the traditional way.”
The soldier’s hand left his, and they continued walking. Nothing more was said until they reached the southernmost tip of the city, where another wall and pair of gates stood vigil. The soldier coughed twice, and like a horse on a leading rein, Arcadial swerved toward a building composed of two long wings, intersecting in the middle with a red-tiled roof. High arches that reached almost to the ceiling ran through each room. Pellin stood at the entrance and found he could see completely through the building’s length.
“The summers here are intense,” he explained to Mark. “The archways capture and magnify the breezes, keeping the interior cool.”
“This way,” Arcadial ordered in clipped tones, leading them toward the center of the building, where the two wings intersected. At his command the four doors of the room were closed and barred. Without the cooling breezes, the air turned stifling. A pair of soldiers posted up on the far side of each door until only Arcadial and the soldier who had attempted to delve Elieve remained with Pellin and his company.
Pellin bowed to the soldier. “The north sends greetings to our honored brethren in the south.”
Instead of returning his bow, the soldier’s gaze cut to Arcadial, whose mouth had tightened so that the skin around his lips blanched.
“Is it not enough,” Arcadial demanded, “that the twelve have asserted their authority over me by proxy? Must you also make it so obvious that even untutored norlanders can see it?”
The guard sighed. “Interpreter Arcadial, as I’ve said before, the twelve mean you no disrespect, but circumstances—”
“Circumstances they refuse to share!” Arcadial spat the words as if they had the power to wound. “What good is the One Church if we harbor the same divisions internally that the uncouth orders of the north parade externally?”
Pellin blinked and the soldier stiffened. “Interpreter Arcadial,” the soldier said, enunciating each syllable formally, “you go too far. The bishop and his party are guests here in the south, and your words and tone are offensive. I think it would be better if I spoke to them alone.”
Arcadial turned apoplectic. A crooked vein throbbed on the side of his forehead. “You are dismissing me? Do you think the twelve will tolerate this behavior out of one of their messengers, Dukasti?”
The soldier pointed to the door, his face devoid of any emotion. “I suggest you excuse yourself to some locale where you may scry any of the twelve of your choice and state your grievance. But Arcadial,” Dukasti added as the interpreter stomped away, “I suggest you do it in private, just in case the conversation doesn’t go as you intend. I know how zealous you are concerning your position and the dignity of the church.”
He waited until the door closed behind the interpreter before turning to Pellin, but his demeanor didn’t change. “I offer apologies for Interpreter Arcadial. He is young to be an interpreter and thinks to compensate by donning gravity as other men would a tunic. I offer you greetings, Eldest Pellin, from your kinsman of the gift here in the south.”
Pellin nodded, but a knot in his chest remained even after the welcome. “I have no memory of you, watchful one, though I thank you for your recognition. How old are you in the gift?”
Dukasti smiled. “In some quarters, the abruptness of your question would be considered coarse.” He shrugged. “I have held the gift for fifteen years.”
Rings showed under h
is eyes and his voice held the brittle timber of forced equanimity.
“Does Igesia still lead the southern Vigil, Dukasti?” At the man’s nod, he inched forward. “I need to see him.”
Dukasti’s dark brows lowered until his eyes glittered at Pellin from the depths. “When I touched you, Eldest, I noted many things that disturbed me.” He nodded toward Elieve. “We’ll leave the question of why your memories of her were locked behind the doors of your sanctuary for later. I noticed that you were not wholly surprised by circumstances here in Erimos.” His face darkened further. “Do you not wish to know the specifics that require one of the southern Vigil to delve every merchant before allowing them to go inland?”
“Since you touched me, Dukasti, then you know I have suspicions.” He inclined his head in apology. “And that the northern Vigil holds the blame for your circumstances. I would ask your forgiveness.”
A hint of a smile that held no humor might have touched Dukasti’s face. “You know our theology differs from yours in the north. We do not hold with the idea of blaming the group for an individual’s wrong.”
Unexpected tears burned his eyes. “Cesla . . .” He stopped, then restarted. “I knew something had changed within my brother. He grew restive at the end with his duty to guard and judge. He wanted victory.” A pair of tears, one for each lost brother tracked their way down his cheeks. He would have wiped them away and pretended they had never been, but the culture of the southern continent frowned upon such gestures.
Dukasti straightened. “You should have deposed him.”
Bitter laughter burst from him. “And have us be led by who? Elwin? He worshipped the ground Cesla walked on. Me? I was the youngest of us and least suited to leadership. I am Eldest now by virtue of attrition.”
“Forgive me for saying so, Eldest,” Dukasti emphasized the title, “but you’ve yet to make a case for why I should grant you passage to see Igesia.”
“The north is falling, Dukasti,” Pellin said. “I need whatever information I can get from Igesia to help me stop it.”
The Wounded Shadow Page 18