The Censor's Hand: Book One of the Thrice~Crossed Swords Trilogy

by A. M. Steiner

  “Aye,” the man replied, proud to have been remembered.

  “Tell us how you came to be in this place.”

  “I was a lightsman on the canals for twenty years, sir. I attended the tunnel under Needwood Forest.”

  “Hard work – and dangerous, I imagine.”

  “I was attacked a few times, by smugglers and the like.”

  “How did the canal owners repay you for your bravery?”

  Herryk’s eyes glinted angrily. “They fitted the tunnels with glow-stones, said flames was unreliable, though none had ever gone out on my watch. Damn liars. They just didn’t want to pay my wages. I told them that straight. They paid me my last and sent me on my way.”

  Barehill’s pipe stem compassed the audience. “Imagine a future with no need for honest labour, where no skills are passed on from father to son. Where the elite decide what we learn and how we learn it. They say we should work with machines. The truth is they plot to replace us with them. What they offer is slavery in disguise.”

  Barehill pointed to the girl sat next to Jon.

  “What about you, young maid? Tell us your story.”

  She spoke slowly and her voice slurred.

  “My uncle told my pa that there was work for girls in the city, said the manufactory men would provide lodgings and pay twenty shillings for a year’s labour.”

  “Was that true?”

  “No sir. Uncle brought me to a manufactory, but they would not keep me. They said I was too slow with my hands. Uncle said I would have to earn my keep another way. He was the very worst of men. Every night he tried to ruin me.” She began to sob silently.

  Barehill dropped his head in shame. “Modern living brings out the worst in men.”

  Jon patted his hand awkwardly on the girl’s shoulder. It was a sad story, he thought, and he pitied her, but Barehill was wrong to think that modern living was to blame. The worst in men needed no excuse to make itself known.

  Barehill drew deeply on his pipe, concentrated on its bowl as if he communed with some hidden devil hiding in the flames of the pipe-weed.

  “And why does the Wise Council allow these things?” he said. “I swear to you it is the rottenest, wickedest and most tyrannical government that ever existed. They want to turn us into little things, creatures of fear controlled by the few, more like ants than people.”

  “What must be done?” the girl called out. Barehill stood.

  “The roguish ministers of the Wise Council play into our hands. Their fortunes stand upon our misery. Their detestable policies forge a bond of necessity between the people. We see it every day; feel the mood on the streets turn in our direction. The citizenry begin to feel the strain of their yoke. We are the Freeborn. We have been chosen by history. It falls to us to lift it from their shoulders.”

  “Yes,” some cried.

  He speaks better amongst his friends, thought Jon, and hidden in the dark.

  It was still a load of old bollocks.

  Barehill turned to him, as if a reader of minds.

  “Not all are convinced. The middling folk, the bakers, the farriers, do not know on which side they stand. Whether to follow greed or conscience. What say you? Jon, the miller, a man neither rich nor poor.” Jon bit his cheek. He didn’t like it that his name had been mentioned, but if this was a test, he had no choice but to pass it.

  “I’ve been honest all my life, law-abiding, yet my business has been ruined by magic. That cannot be right.” That was something they could all agree on, and the ragged listeners nodded in appreciation of his brevity. With a creeping sense of dread, Jon realised that they wanted more from him.

  “You should heed your master’s words,” Jon said and pointed at Barehill.

  “I am no master, only a spokesman,” Barehill pronounced. “We are the Freeborn, answerable only to ourselves.”

  Barehill signalled that his lecture had finished and his gaggle of wastrels dissipated into the camp, talking excitedly amongst themselves. He came to Jon while Kareem loitered in the background. The bowl of his pipe flared bright in the subterranean gloom.

  “What do you want from me, Miller?”

  “I begin to see the sense of your words,” Jon said slowly. Barehill eyed him cynically.

  “Been reading our pamphlets, have you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are a terrible liar, Jonathan Miller. I know why you’re here.”

  Behind Barehill, Kareem slid his sword from its scabbard. Jon looked about, deciding which way to run, if he got the chance. There were armed men everywhere.

  “It’s for the same reason that all men come to me,” Barehill continued, “because you begin to see that you have no other choice.”

  Kareem clicked his sword back into its sheath. He looked disappointed.

  “So what do you want from me?”

  “Money.”

  Barehill waved his pipe across the tents and shacks of the Holt. “Does this look like a bank to you?”

  “I passed the soup kitchen – you live off scraps, your men are starving.”

  “Precisely my point.”

  Jon had the words planned, his explanation for coming. He took a breath first, but still he rushed the words. “I have a mill, I make flour. I could supply your army. If you tell me where to deliver it, we could make an arrangement.”

  “A dangerous business. Why would you take such a risk?”

  “I told you already, I need the money.”

  Barehill searched his eyes. “There’s a price on my head. I have good reason to distrust men who need money – especially those who come so rapidly to my cause.” He raised a finger and Jon looked up to see an archer in another crow’s nest, notching an arrow to his bow. “You were not a rebel last week. Not even a prisoner of the Evangelicy would convert so quickly. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “If I cannot pay him by the end of the week, Peacock Matthew will take my mill.”

  “The truth! Hail Abjemo!” Barehill clasped his palms excitedly together in parody of an Evangelist.

  Jon warded himself from evil with the sign of the eye. Barehill laughed.

  “Just a turn of phrase. I am no believer in the ‘One God’, though I’m sure some would love to add heresy to the list of my offences. It’s fortunate for me that you really do need the money, because I really do need to feed my men.” He made a signal to Kareem, who began to stoke something in the fire beneath the brazier.

  “Before we do business two things must happen.”

  “Yes?”

  “First you must swear to keep my secrets.”

  “On my life.”

  “No, not your life; I have that already. On what matters most to you. On the Mother and the Father. On all of the gods. On the lives of your family. On your mill. On your honour. You must swear these things before the All-seeing.”

  Kareem rolled his eyes at all the god-talk, but it made Jon’s blood run cold. What Barehill demanded – that would be a terrible oath to break.

  “Ready?” Barehill asked.

  The day was turning into a nightmare. If the gods have brought me to this moment, Jon thought, it must be for a purpose.

  He made his promises.

  Kareem approached with a taper.

  “Now you must take our mark. Become one of us.”

  Jon realised it wasn’t a taper that Kareem carried. It was a brand.

  “Bare your chest.”

  The symbol that glowed in the metal was a shovel clasped in a fist. Jon beheld it with horror.

  The eyes of watching Freeborn glinted around him in the darkness. The archer drew his string tight. The censors will understand, Jon told himself, when I explain.

  He untied his shirt, held Kareem’s eye, grunted through his teeth as his skin was scorched. The air filled with the s
tench of burnt meat. Barehill handed him a bottle of clear spirit. Jon drank deep, splashed the wound and cried out.

  ***

  Barehill’s tent was small and dark, no grander than the rest. Maybe that was the point. He took a puff from his pipe and tilted his head in the direction of Kareem, who waited outside.

  “Some of my men warn me not to deal with you. They think you’re trouble, a stranger, maybe a spy. The brother of a censor.”

  “Daniel fled the seminary. He isn’t even an aspirant any more.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe that is what Magistrate Lang would like me to believe. Lang is a devious man.”

  “My brother isn’t devious. He lives life like the bolt from a crossbow.”

  “Well then, it’s a good job that the decision falls to me. Our numbers swell and a poor army marches on soup alone. A good general knows when he must take risks and I know a desperate man when I see one. I will buy as much flour as you can make. A tunnel runs to Turbulence, with an exit near to your mill. I will have my men dig a supply shaft so that we can take your deliveries unseen. Shall we talk terms?”

  Jon wondered why he hadn’t thought about bargaining with Barehill before. Maybe I never expected to get this far. But he slipped easily into the comfortable rhythm of commerce.

  “I’ll need payment in advance, every month, to buy the grain. Quality strains that will keep in this damp.”

  “How much money?”

  “Eight pounds each week, for a ton. You’ll get four hundred good loaves from that. Feed a hundred men.”

  “Thirty pounds a month. No more.”

  “Agreed.” Barehill shook Jon’s hand vigorously, and Jon was pleased with the terms for all of the second it took him to remember that he did not intend to honour them. The moment I’m out of this hole, straight to Bromwich Seminary.

  Barehill whistled for Kareem.

  “Take Jon to the treasury and fetch thirty pounds. Help him carry it back to the mill, and assemble a gang to start on the new tunnel.”

  Kareem spat on the floor. “You’re the general.”

  Jon followed Kareem to the edge of the shantytown. Huddled Freeborn regarded him with curiosity and suspicion. He pulled up his collar, stooped his head and hoped not to be recognised. After the censors had dispersed these miscreants, some might seek revenge. He needed to be careful.

  They came to a crossing made of two ropes, one underfoot and one overhead, that extended into the pillared darkness. Kareem trod the tightrope with ease, passing the other rope from hand to hand in a fluent rhythm. Jon wobbled his way across. It took them to a haphazard breach in the cistern’s wall, a small room, rough-hewn from the clay and supported by wooden posts and cross-braces. Inside, buckets full of copper halfpennies and farthings sat amongst open-topped barrels full of swords. Freshly oiled guns were racked on the walls. That was something else to warn the censors of, when the time came.

  “Make sure you count it right,” Kareem said.

  On her knees, Laila was busy scooping coins from the buckets onto a set of scales with a trowel. She was dressed all manly in breeches and a corseted shirt. Kareem rested against a wall, his eyes planted firmly on her arse. Jon watched the money pile up. There was a lot of it.

  “Laila,” Jon said. Her auburn hair flicked across her face as she turned to him and his heart beat disobediently.

  “Barehill doesn’t need a guard for his treasure,” Kareem said. “It’s common coin, well handled. Fun to imagine what you could do with it though.” He winked at Jon as he picked his teeth with his thumbnail.

  “Whoreson,” Laila returned casually. Jon chuckled, watched as she filled the strongbox to the brim with the coins she had weighed. It was a handsome thing with a complicated lock, the iron plates painted with red flowers.

  “Thirty pounds in coppers.” Laila wiped the sweat from her brow. “More than most families see in a year.”

  Kareem handed Jon his walking stick, loaded a wheel-lock pistol, keyed back its hammer and stuffed the gun into the back of his trousers. Laila grabbed a dagger belt from the wall and strapped it around her thin waist. Weapons made Jon nervous, but what had he expected in the company of villains?

  The men lifted the strongbox together; Kareem strained at its front, holding its handle behind his back with both hands, while Jon held the rear with one. A rowing boat waited for them outside. They carefully lowered the treasure into its hull, and set off for the tunnels that led back to Turbulence.

  The mystery of the gods

  The pillar of white light, captured by the temple’s glass steeple and projected through the oculus embedded in the apex of its dome, blazed so bright it seemed solid. It was a wonder – the glory of the gods made manifest. Daniel raised his arms above his head, made the broad circle of He-who-lights-the-way, and reminded himself that he had not come to pray.

  The Verge’s temple was unlike any he had seen before, a single chamber without a transept, its inner sanctum hidden behind the central pillar of a double arch. The entire width of back wall was a crude carving of a fish – or whatever creatures had filled the sea before them. Daniel frowned in incomprehension. The place seemed ancient beyond measure. He called out and his voice reverberated emptily around the room. He went to the altar and knelt in front of the sun idol that rested on its rainbow cloth.

  A godsworn entered the room, his footsteps loud and clumsy. He was an old man, clean shaved and olive skinned. A raven-black ponytail braided with gold rings lay across his shoulder and a gold disc dangled from the menat that circled his neck. He brandished an ivory wand with a taper wound over its end and swept around the room lighting thick wax candles that lined the walls in small iron baskets.

  “What is that carving?” Daniel asked.

  The godsworn stiffened at the sound of his voice.

  “A pagan relic,” he replied in a whine, “a depiction of the Dreamer, carved hundreds of years before the truth of the Rational Pantheon reached our isles.”

  “He-who-sleeps-in the-ocean?”

  The godsworn pursed his lips. “The primitives called him by a different name. This island has always been a magnet to the ignorant.”

  Daniel raised an eyebrow at the boldness of the claim.

  “You cannot mean the masters of cunning? Surely they are the opposite of ignorant.”

  “If the world is a dream of the gods and all of our experiences illusion, how is it within man’s gift to meddle with those dreams?” Daniel disapproved of the oblique response. Maybe the godsworn was an idealist, the kind of man naturally inclined to radicalism and mischief.

  More candles flickered into light as the godsworn continued his task. When he realised that Daniel was not about to leave, he spoke again.

  “Have you come to make an offering?”

  “Will you aid me?”

  “You wish to barter with the divine, do you? Is the scent of a promotion in your nostrils? Have you caught the pox from a serving girl?”

  Daniel laughed. If there was a god of rudeness, then this man served it.

  “I was hoping that you could lead me in prayer. I seek guidance from the Father.” He wanted the man’s attention, and no godsworn could refuse such a request.

  “Why?”

  Daniel disguised his surprise as deliberate hesitation, as if choosing his words carefully.

  “I’m not sure that I belong here.”

  “I could say the same myself.”

  “I’ve a difficult decision to make.”

  “Go on.”

  “My family insist on my presence – they see it as the route to a greater fortune – but I find the Convergence a cruel and godless place.” Daniel thought of the prank played on Miranda.

  The godsworn focused his attention on Daniel fully, for the first time, appraised him with a searching stare.

  “Forgive me, son-in-dream. It’s us
ually only the jealous and the greedy who trouble this place.”

  “Then my concerns are justified?”

  The godsworn joined him at the altar, placed his wand in its holder. “Do you have a prayer in mind? Maybe something from The Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld?”

  “The First Catechism,” Daniel said.

  “Of The Book of Gates? Every child in the Unity knows the words.” Daniel tried to look hurt, gave the man a plaintive look. “The Book of Going Forth is its proper name. Surely you don’t need me to lead you through the first prayer?”

  “My brother used to read it to me; I find it comforting,” Daniel said truthfully.

  “Very well then, a prayer against schismatic thinking. Let us submit to the Mystery of the Gods.”

  The godsworn knelt beside Daniel and took the disc from his neck. He struck it with his flaming wand and it chimed like a gong. Soft sparks showered the altar.

  “What are their names?”

  “None shall be given,” Daniel attested.

  “What is their scripture?”

  “It shall not be written.”

  “Who are their prophets?”

  “We shall suffer none to live.”

  “Let your deeds match your words.” The godsworn set down his wand and returned the disc to his neck. “It is done. What’s your name, son-in-dream?”

  “Edmund Sutton.”

  “Think upon on this, Edmund. When your soul is weighed in judgement, will a greater fortune avail you then?”

  “Do you think I should abandon my position then? Is the Convergence such a bad place?”

  “The cunning arts were forbidden for a thousand years. Do you imagine that was for no reason?” The godsworn spoke slyly, Daniel thought, like an animal circling a baited trap.

  “What reason could there be?”

  The godsworn sighed. “What is it all for? These luxuries and strange devices. How will they help men to unburden their souls?”

  Daniel nodded piously, considered his position. The godsworn was no friend of the Verge, but seemed too open in his opposition of it to be a true enemy – unless that was his trick. Daniel wasn’t sure what it all meant, but at least he felt like a censor. He was investigating. It was a start.