My heart sped up. I might not want to be involved with the Order of Thorns, but Prophetess herself… “We could always walk back down south together now the weather’s clearing.”
I like to think her smile was a little sad. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next, but for now, I stay here.”
“Can’t fault a man for trying. Maybe after dinner you’d like to sit and look at my clock with me.”
“Oh, so it’s your clock now?”
“Wouldn’t you say so?”
“Oh, I definitely would. I’m just a little surprised to hear you admit it. Now that it’s getting warmer, how about if we sit outside and look at the stars instead?”
“The clock has stars on it…”
She hit me with a roll.
That night we sat on a freezing stone bench between the rectory and the cathedral and watched the clouds chase across the stars.
“Cold,” I muttered. Which wasn’t a completely bad thing, because it meant we sat very close together for warmth.
“We’ve been colder.” And that was true. We’d nearly frozen to death on the way to Our Lady. We wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t bartered my sword for better clothing.
That sword was another worm of resentment gnawing at my heart. It had been a carbon steel blade forged and folded in the traditional style, a gift from my parents. Prophetess had thanked me warmly for what I’d done - and then it had never been mentioned again. I knew it was petty, but in my mind it was a symbol of what I’d given up, for no purpose I could now see. We hadn’t defeated Yoshana, and we were sitting around doing nothing. I was lodged like an irritating grain of sand inside the shell of the Universalist faith, treated politely enough but set apart because I didn’t share their beliefs. I didn’t think I was turning into a pearl, either.
As a Select, I had always been apart. Gray skin, white hair and solid black eyes marked our kind. Dee had once called it the mark of Cain, and it was close enough. But I had fit in better a thousand miles southwest of here, mining garbage on the Flow. I hadn’t thought that would be something I’d miss.
“What are you thinking?” Prophetess asked.
“Nothing important.” I searched for a better answer. “About family, I guess. Whether my parents were at the Paint… whether they survived if they were.”
She nodded. “It’s hard.”
“What about you?” I asked awkwardly. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from your brothers?”
I hadn’t even known she had siblings. Dee had told me. The older one had run off to join the army of Rockwall. Prophetess had worried that the younger one might follow him after she left home.
The fact that I’d known her longer than Dee and hadn’t bothered to find out about her family didn’t make me feel any better about myself. Maybe I really was best suited to a solitary life digging through garbage.
“No. Kafer never wrote after he left home. And Lito… I don’t know. I used to take him with me when I preached around the Flow. I hope he learned something from it… that he isn’t going to just run off to war and get himself killed.”
“You do know the Order of Thorns is probably a bunch of people who will wind up running off to war and getting themselves killed,” I said unkindly.
“Why do you assume it has to come to war with Yoshana, Minos?”
“What else is there? She made it pretty clear she means to rule the world. I don’t think you’re going to change her mind by appealing to her better nature. And you’re the one who said if she succeeds, the whole world will be damned.”
She gave me a reproachful look, but I kept going.
“The Order of Thorns is a military force, Tess. It’s just not a very good one. From what I can see, it looks like you’re meaning to get into a fight with Yoshana, but you’ve got no chance of winning it.”
“There are more ways to resist than trying to stab her in the heart, Minos.”
“I sure hope so, because someone did that, and it didn’t stop her. And I don’t think we’re going to get nearly as good a shot at her as they did.”
“Let’s talk about something else.”
So we did, but my heart wasn’t in it. If I’d known what was coming, I would have tried harder.
2. Arrivals and Departures
“Minos! You’d better get out here!”
Tolf was sweating and out of breath. I looked up at him and back down at my plate. “Can’t it wait? We haven’t had bacon in months.”
“No, it can’t, Minos. Now.”
I stuffed a last slice in my mouth and wiped the grease on my pants.
“All right, I’m coming.” There was no graceful way to get off the long bench with people to either side. I did the best I could not to jostle Loris or Dee. “What’s going on?”
“You’ve got a visitor.” I tried to puzzle that one out as I joined Tolf and we hurried up the stairs from the dining hall. Who did I know that knew I was here?
“He’s Select.”
I nearly tripped. Could it be my father? How would he know where to find me? “Who?”
“Just move it. You’ll see for yourself.”
It was only a short jog from the residence hall to Our Lady’s inner gate. Tolf must have sprinted before to be gasping so hard.
Just outside the gate, a squad of guards held spears leveled at a large, gray-skinned figure. For a moment I was about to protest. Then I realized who it was.
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah,” Tolf said. “He made it this far before one of the guys from Stephensburg recognized him.” We had slowed to a walk, and Tolf put his hand on my shoulder, stopping me completely. “He said he was here to see you. What’s that about, Minos?”
“How would I know? You think I invited him?”
The big Select looked remarkably at ease for someone with half a dozen spearpoints in his face. But then, I wouldn’t expect Yoshana’s lieutenant to be easily rattled.
“Ah, Minos,” Grigg called as we neared. “Your friends aren’t very welcoming.”
“Did you really think bringing the Darkness into Our Lady was going to go over well?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t really thinking about that - I was just thinking in terms of bringing myself.”
That seemed hard to believe. No matter how accustomed he was to the substance that the Universal Church called the physical embodiment of sin, I found it incredible he wouldn’t even think about how others might react to it. Unless, for all his supposed mastery, the infection controlled him more than he controlled it.
He looked around at the hedge of spears. “Be that as it may, not much of a greeting for someone who saved your life.”
That was unarguably true. He had stepped between me and Yoshana when she had lashed out at Prophetess in Stephensburg. I had no doubt that without his intervention, the Darkness boiling out of the enraged Overlord would have torn me to shreds.
“So let’s say I’m calling in the favor.” He gave me an easy smile.
“And what exactly is the price of my life?”
“Just to listen to me.” His grin widened. “Out of deference to your friends’ nerves, how about if we talk outside the walls?”
“How about if you don’t?” Tolf snapped. “Seems to me like you’re ignoring the fact that it was your boss tried to kill Prophetess in the first place. Reminds me of that joke where you push your buddy in front of a wagon then pull him back and say, ‘I saved you!’ Never thought that one was especially funny.”
Grigg’s expression remained perfectly pleasant. “You seem to have accumulated a rude collection of friends, Minos. I’m not here to order you around. If you want to talk, I’ll be waiting outside.”
The big Select turned, apparently oblivious to the spears at his back, and strolled calmly back toward the outer wall.
“Hope he stays out there until he freezes,” Tolf growled.
“I dunno. Would it hurt to hear what he has to say?”
The guard gaped at me. “You’re not thinking of
going out there?” It was more of a statement than a question. I found that it annoyed me.
“He’s not the only one who isn’t going to order me around.” I poked the circle of roses and thorns on Tolf’s chest. “I’m not part of the Order of Thorns, remember? I don’t take orders from you.”
“You think Prophetess would want you talking to Yoshana’s dog?”
“Comes to that, I don’t take orders from Tess, either.”
I started down the path after my enemy’s lieutenant. “Hey, Grigg. Wait up.”
There was nowhere to sit outside the high, stone wall. I suppose we could have found a tavern in the town that sprawled around Our Lady, but two Select together would draw a lot of attention. And I wouldn’t make any friends if the owner realized I was bringing in Yoshana’s henchman, literally seething with the Darkness.
Well, not that I saw him seething with it now. But I’d seen it before. It was there.
So we leaned against the wall instead. I wondered if Tolf and half the Order of Thorns were on the other side eavesdropping. Grigg had to be considering the same possibility, but seemed completely at ease. He was one of the calmest men I’d met.
Not exactly what I’d expected from someone helping to enslave the world.
For a man who’d braved the heart of his enemies’ stronghold to talk to me, he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to say anything. He just lounged against the wall, looking at me with a little smile on his face.
“Long walk from Stephensburg for a conversation,” I said. “Especially if you’re not going to have it.”
He grinned. “We already had the most important part of it when you came out here with me.”
I thought that over for a second and shook my head. “You’ve lost me already.”
“I needed to see if you’d have an open mind. If you’d be willing to talk at all. You are, so that’s half the battle right there.”
I stared into his eyes, black and unreadable as my own. There weren’t any answers there. I looked up into the early spring sky instead, blue and cloudless, innocent of threat or evil. No answers there either.
I heaved a deep breath. “Depends what you want to talk about. I appreciate what you did back in Stephensburg, but unless you’re here to defect, we’re working for opposite sides.”
“That’s one of the things we need to talk about. You and Prophetess seem to think the sides are her and Yoshana. I can tell you they’re not.” He paused, looking for a reaction, but I could wait, too. “In the end, there’s three ways the world ends up, Minos. Controlled by humanity, controlled by the demons, or controlled by the Darkness. Everything else is details.”
“Just so I’m clear, which of those three scenarios is it with Yoshana in charge?”
The big man looked exasperated for the first time. “Come on, Minos. The Darkness is a tool, if you know how to use it. If you don’t control it - it’s like the difference between a lantern and a forest fire. If the Darkness isn’t controlled, in time it’ll scour the world clean. And the demons - well, we’ve seen they’re not going to just sit in the Darklands.”
“Unless I’m misremembering, it was your boss who helped them break out.”
“She’s learned, Minos. She’s changed.”
I gave a nervous half-chuckle that ended in a shiver. “If that was the kinder, gentler Yoshana at Stephensburg, I would have hated to meet her before.”
“Yes, you would have.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment. “You wouldn’t have survived it.”
Conversations with Prophetess came back to me. The Overlord struck down and reborn, claiming she was resurrected as God’s tool. Yoshana had claimed to be a prophet herself at Stephensburg - and Prophetess had once said the Overlord might actually believe it.
“You’re saying Yoshana is really doing God’s work and not her own?”
“She’s a sharp-edged sword, Minos. The sharpest. But she’s the best weapon humanity has in this war. If we fight among ourselves, the demons and the Darkness are the winners.”
“What exactly are you asking, Grigg? The Church won’t follow Yoshana.”
“No. Nobody’s asking it to. But you’re building an army here. Oh, don’t look so surprised - you must know we’ve got eyes everywhere. Of one kind or another.”
Not a pleasant thought.
“The Church isn’t a military operation, Minos. I’m sure you see that. We’re not asking for its troops or its blessing. But if we’re going to take the fight to the enemies of humanity, we can’t be worried about a knife in our back. No uprisings. No preaching anathema against us. That’s all we ask.”
“You know I’m not the one who makes that call.”
“I know. But you talk to the people who do. The person, really. At a time like this, people need to rally around someone. If Prophetess rallies them against us, well…” He shrugged.
“Should’ve killed us when you had the chance,” I said, half-joking.
His silence was the most disturbing thing I’d ever heard. The joke wasn’t funny anymore.
The gap stretched uncomfortably. At last I said, “Those are pretty words, Grigg.” The words he’d said, not the regrets left unspoken. “But I don’t know that I believe them myself, much less that I could sell them to Prophetess.”
“I’m not asking you to take it on faith, Minos. I know faith isn’t your thing.”
How much did his eyes see and his ears hear inside Our Lady? Obviously too much.
“We’ve got an offer for you. Yoshana’s going to the Darklands. There’s a threat we need to deal with now, or every argument you and I could ever have will be irrelevant. She wants you to see what we’re fighting against. She wants you to come with us.”
“Are you insane?” Tolf blurted. The candle flame in front of us danced wildly in that brief torrent of words.
Tolf, Prophetess, Dee and I sat around a little wooden table in the dormitory’s common room. Night had fallen.
Grigg had given me twenty-four hours to come up with my answer. I had turned the idea over and over in my head all day, putting off questions from my friends. I hadn’t made a decision. I wasn’t sure it was entirely mine to make. So I had called together the ones whose opinions mattered most.
“To start with, you’ll die,” Tolf continued, waving his hands. “Plus, you’re supporting the enemy. Did I mention you’ll die?”
“If Grigg had wanted to kill Minos, Minos would be dead,” Dee said gently. “No offense, my friend, but Grigg is bigger, stronger, much better trained… not to mention his command of the Darkness. Once they got outside the walls, Minos wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I muttered. Although everything he’d said was perfectly true.
“I told you it was crazy to go with him in the first place,” Tolf snapped at me.
“In case you didn’t notice, he didn’t actually kill me,” I retorted. We glared at each other.
Dee drummed his fingers on the table and looked thoughtful. “If there’s really an opportunity for peace here, we should explore it. If nothing else, Minos could learn things that might be useful to us.”
“And they could learn things from him that might be useful to them,” Tolf shot back.
“Such as?” Dee asked mildly. “Grigg has demonstrated that they either have spies in our midst, or are using the Darkness to observe us, or both.”
Tolf hastily crossed himself and looked suspiciously around the room.
“There’s no sense being shocked,” Dee continued. “The Darkness was a surveillance tool before it was a weapon. Although if they’re manipulating it from outside the walls, that would challenge what we know about its effective range…” He shook himself as if to clear his head. “In any case, there frankly isn’t much useful information they can get from Minos. No offense - there just isn’t much to know, is there? However, we could learn quite a lot about their intentions and capabilities. And, as I don’t see what Yoshana has to gain from this besides w
hat Grigg said, I suggest - despite her penchant for deception - we take her at her word. The possibility of peace should never be ignored.”
“Peace?” Tolf spat. “A peace where we agree not to move or even speak against them, while they gather their strength? A peace for them to conquer the rest of the world and deal with us at their leisure? What sort of peace is that, exactly?”
“The usual kind,” said Dee brightly. “The interlude between wars, in which rivals build their forces and look for each other’s weaknesses.”
He smiled apologetically to Prophetess. “Until the ultimate peace of Christ, of course.”
She nodded but didn’t say a word. She hadn’t spoken yet.
Listening to Tolf and Dee argue, with interludes for Tolf to berate me and Dee to point out how useless I was, didn’t really help me make up my mind. I stared at Prophetess.
“What do you think?” I asked.
She shrugged helplessly. “You should do what you think is right.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I found myself unaccountably angry. I suppose I had hoped to hear that despite it all, she still needed me. Obviously she didn’t. “I think I should go, then. I’m not accomplishing anything here.”
She looked sad and shrugged again.
“So I’ll go.” And that was how it was decided.
There was a commotion the next day, of course. I assumed that was thanks to Dee - the man had all the discretion of a cat in heat.
Mostly it was sidelong glances and whispers behind hands. No one was curious enough to actually talk to me, as if they thought I was contagious. It was pretty clear they thought I was betraying the cause, rather than doing my best to help. Or maybe they thought they smelled the stench of death on me, figuring the moment I left Our Lady, Yoshana would skin me alive and stick my severed head on a pike as an example.
That was possible.
I didn’t have the stomach to sit at the breakfast table with everyone else. I grabbed a warm roll and ate it standing by the door of the dining hall, trying to decide whether to go around and say goodbye to everyone.
Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle Page 21