Sin Eater

by Shel, Mike

  “Perhaps you should unburden yourself, Agnes. To another, without the same vulnerabilities as your father. I realize that we don’t know one another well, but I hope to be your friend.”

  Agnes winced at a brief stab of pain. Sira’s hand went from her chin to the wound, whispering an incantation of relief. She could admit to herself that a part of her resented the closeness this priest had with her father, understandable given their travails last year in the Barrowlands. She and Sira were of an age. Did she fear Sira would steal his fatherly affections from her? Foolish, she thought, closing her eyes and letting out a weary exhalation. The priest was right: she did need to rest. But the need to unburden herself was more urgent, as much as her body needed to heal. She paused a further moment before starting her story of the thing lurking in the basements of the Citadel. The young priest of Belu with the mousy brown hair sat on the side of her bed, regarding Agnes with solemn eyes, all attentiveness.

  Agnes was strong enough the next day to spend most of the late morning and afternoon on the lovely balcony attached to her room. Its walls and balustrade were festooned with rich green vines featuring fragrant white blooms, clinging to the stone, and there was a stunning view of the slate-covered rooftops of the lower tiers of Ironwound. Bell towers of the many cathedrals and temples rang out their songs, mixing with those of flocks of birds that flitted from rooftop to rooftop. A delightful summer day, with its light breeze and cloudless azure sky. It was the perfect setting for blissful repose.

  Shortly after the noon hour, she received two visitors. Chalca and Kennah, whom Agnes had taken to calling the Oil-and-Water Twins, seemed able to exchange nothing but symphonies of antagonism. Chalca’s digs were clever, with just the right amount of vulgarity to prick Kennah’s surprisingly fastidious piety. Kennah’s jabs all centered on Chalca’s elegance and femininity, which the actor did not find offensive in the least.

  “Sir Kennah”—Chalca enunciated the Syraeic’s newly awarded title and name in his polished, exacting thespian’s tenor—“I really am shocked at how uneasy you are made by my presence. It’s almost as though there is something within that you toil against. Is there a tickle in your heart? Do your loins stir unbidden when I am near?”

  Kennah scowled, the expression priceless. “You dream such foul things, molly boy!”

  Agnes felt some guilt that she found her Syraeic brother’s discomfort endlessly entertaining, especially because he was so ill-suited for this form of combat. During their poorly matched exchanges, Kennah’s hand was always on his hip near his sword, as though he wished their confrontation were a martial one. On occasion, Agnes would chime in as well. It was really unforgiveable, the poor sod.

  “Ye gods, boys! Perhaps you two should kiss at last, or more, to break the tension. Your disharmony surely impedes my recovery.” On the contrary, their comic clashes were just what the medicus prescribed. Chalca appeared to understand that. Kennah did not. He seemed to feel every ivory barb the actor flung at him.

  “You take the molly’s side, sister? That’s unkind.”

  Agnes gave the barrel-chested man a small smile and winked at him. “Oh, Kennah, I love you dearly and would be at your side at the blackened gates of the Yellow Hells, sword in hand. But gods, you make yourself a fat, hulking target in this arena.” Chalca laughed, Kennah frowned.

  “Do you think you would giggle all the way down if I chucked you over this balcony, Chalca?” growled Kennah.

  That was the signal: as soon as Kennah was reduced to threatening violence, the entertainment was at an end. Agnes bowed her head and looked up at the man, holding out her hand to him from the reclining couch the inn’s proprietor had brought up for her. Kennah pouted for a moment, like a little boy, then relented and came to her. She held his big hand in hers and gave it a kiss. He melted a little.

  Gods, men like Kennah can be such children, she thought. So easily hurt, so easily appeased. There were many like him in the League, though she rarely employed her charms in this way; it seemed unfair, especially since she was capable of winning them over with her martial prowess and courage instead. She didn’t relish manipulating others and felt not a little shame that she had played the big man with Chalca. One big, dumb mouse versus two cats was not a fair contest.

  “It’s a glorious day,” said Chalca, leaning on the balcony. He drew in a great breath of mountain air, standing before the vista of Ironwound’s tiered slopes beneath them. “That breeze feels something like heaven.”

  “It is nice,” added Kennah.

  Harmony achieved, at last. So easy, thought Agnes.

  “Sister Sira tells us that you can ride in a wagon tomorrow,” said Chalca. “Our friend Kennah here has secured a cozy conveyance for you.”

  “We’ll make it comfortable for you. I bought some thick blankets to make the ride…comfortable.”

  “Thank you, Kennah. But I do hope we won’t need it for long. I’d like to make most of the journey riding. I may grow soft if you pamper me too long.”

  “Bah!” scoffed Kennah. “You’re a tough one, Peregrine.”

  Agnes smiled. And that, she thought, is perhaps the finest compliment I can ever have from a man like him.

  All signs of the earlier acrimony had vanished. Kennah took a seat on a carved stone bench and leaned against the wall of Saint Tayma’s Aerie, eyes closed. Agnes turned to Chalca, the mountain breeze teasing at his hair, a gentle smile on his lips. There was a sudden rustle of leaves, the clinging vines shifting on the balustrade near Chalca. Agnes assumed it was the breeze that stirred them.

  With abrupt alarm, the actor’s eyes widened and he jerked backward, as though someone had waved a torch in his face. Agnes sat up a bit, wincing at the pain of her wound as she did so. “Pember’s prick!” exclaimed Chalca.

  A bony hand appeared on the balcony rail, clutching with desperate strength, then another, and the head of a man, gaunt, wild-eyed, long brown hair a tangle of knots, poked up. He hauled himself up, grunting with effort, flinging a leg over the side of the balcony. Before Kennah could stir himself from his respite, the uninvited stranger was over the railing and stood on the balcony with them.

  The man was tall, but stooped, his age impossible to determine. His flesh was tanned, nut brown, as though he lived baking beneath the noonday sun. He wore tattered rags, and Agnes could see his ribs poking through: an emaciated, wiry fellow—gods knew how he had the strength to climb to their perch.

  The man looked at Chalca, then Kennah, who finally leapt to his feet and reached for his sword. The man’s intense eyes caught Agnes’s and a thrill of anxiety rippled through her body; he seemed to light up, lifting his hands into the air, calling out in a hoarse, trembling voice. “Behold! Comes the Bearer of the Blade, who shall see the Age of Prophecy’s extinction!”

  Kennah stepped forward, imposing himself between the wild man and Agnes, blocking the intruder from her sight. “Back the fuck up!” he barked, sword at the ready.

  “You, her brave right hand!” the man continued. His words had the cadence of an ecstatic preacher, consumed by holy zeal. “Fear not, noble soul, I come bearing wisdom, and a gift!”

  Chalca leaned out over the balcony, looking down. “Where in blazes did you climb from?” asked the actor, still staring below. “It’s at least a fifty-foot drop to the next tier, you mad bastard!”

  “My gift!” cried the man. “My gift protected my ascent, gave me wings to reach the blessed heights! I come with a gift, for Agnes Manteo, saint to be!”

  “Move out of the way, Kennah,” Agnes commanded, heart caught in her throat. The big man turned to look at her, incredulity on his face.

  “He’s a fucking lunatic, Peregrine!” he said in an urgent whisper.

  Agnes sat up, ignoring the pain the movement released, and gave Kennah a shove with her palm. “Move, Kennah. Let me look this man in the face.”

  Reluctantly, her Syra
eic brother obeyed, but pointed his sword tip at the man. “No funny moves, you filthy bugger,” he grumbled.

  The man bowed to Kennah, a strangely formal thing, given his disheveled appearance, the dirt on his face and hands, his ragged attire. On a few occasions Agnes had seen his like in the streets of Boudun: wild hermits who lived in the inhospitable hinterlands at the far corners of the empire, religious devotees of one strange splinter sect or another, come to the capital to preach repentance or doom or both to city folk. Their wildness and fervor had always repelled her—their stinking rags, their righteous certainty, the way they pointed their long, jagged nails and proclaimed lamentations for humanity.

  His attention turned from Kennah back to Agnes, his haggard face alive with a sort of ecstasy, as though he stood before a golden reliquary holding a martyr’s bones. Agnes noticed for the first time that a basket hung around his neck and shoulder from a leather strap, droplets of water escaping the weave, once, twice. He patted a grubby hand on the basket lid, then opened it, reaching in with both hands.

  “Watch it!” said Kennah sharply, extending the point of the sword an inch further.

  Hands still in the basket, the haggard man’s expression turned solemn. “I would do nothing to harm the saint, O bearded giant. It is my gift. I must present it to her.” He turned back to the basket, and from it drew an enormous river carp, great mouth gasping, gills flaring, desperate for air. He took a step forward and lay the fish on the slate-gray stone before Agnes’s couch, then fell on his knees before her. Kennah had the edge of his blade against the man’s throat in an instant. She looked down at the carp, gaping mouth opening and closing. Crawling from the mouth came a small green toad. It hopped at Agnes in a great leap and landed on her wound. She jerked in surprise and was rewarded with a thunderbolt of pain. The amphibian’s throat expanded, receded, over and over. Gods be good, was it staring at her?

  “Blessed art thou, Agnes of the Blade, for thou shalt usher in the New Age!” The haggard mystic bowed then, and Kennah had to yank his sword away to keep the man from inadvertently opening his neck on the sharp steel.

  Chalca stepped forward until he stood in front of the man who supplicated himself before Agnes. He reached down and took the man’s chin in hand, and with the finger of the other hand tried to rub off what looked like a smudge of dirt at the corner of his eye. The disheveled man looked in Chalca’s eyes and smiled a mad smile. Chalca stepped back, as though repulsed by the man’s manic grin.

  “One last sacrament, Agnes of the Blade,” he said, crawling back, still on his knees, “and the ritual is complete.” He rose up against the stone balustrade, straightening his back so that he stood tall, and held his arms out wide. “I do this in devotion to my patron, blessings upon the name.”

  “Timilis,” said Agnes, as though it was a curse.

  “No,” said Chalca. “That mark by his eye is a tattoo of a toad. He’s a devotee of Pember, god of prophecy.”

  “Aye, bless him or her, whoever they choose to be,” said the man, arms as wide as his beatific smile. “The sacrament now, at last. A blood sacrifice, to Pember, so that you may have clear vision on thy journey.”

  A thousand questions flooded Agnes’s mind, but she couldn’t speak a word. In an instant, without ceremony, the man pitched himself over the balcony. The toad followed him, leaping from Agnes’s belly over the ivy-covered stone. Before the mystic struck the slate-tiled roof of a building below, he was able to scream out his final prayer three times: “Saint to be! Saint to be! Saint to be!”

  27

  Pilgrims’ Progress

  The highway heading into the mountains northeast of Ironwound was the finest road Auric had ever seen: even, well-maintained, broad. Qeelb pointed out the marks of sorcerous engineering along the way: in many places the road plunged through rock cut by something greater than human labor. Traffic headed toward the earldom’s capital carried all manner of ore, precious metals, and gemstones, excavated from the mines scattered throughout the mountainous region. The drovers took no special precautions to guard their cargo, which struck Auric as odd until one of the teamsters explained that the penalty for theft on the mountain highway was drawing and quartering. This apparently served as an effective deterrent for brigands. Those wagons headed north with Auric and his companions were laden with foodstuffs and other goods needed in the mining towns that supported the industry of extracting treasure from the mountains. The Syraeic party passed through a dozen small towns with names meant to conjure dreams of abundance: Richpeak, Plenty, Golden Lode. Each settlement seemed like the last, bustling with taverns, boarding houses, brothels, and stores supplying mining equipment. Something about the atmosphere of those towns—he couldn’t say what it was—drained Auric’s spirit.

  Evenings in the mountains were too chilly to sleep out under the stars, even at the height of summer, so they stayed at inns along the way. In one town they slept at a brothel called Bella’s Garters; it had spare rooms for them when the local inn had none. When Auric presented the madam—presumably Bella herself—with queen’s script rather than coin to settle their bill the following morning, she pitched a magnificent fit that set his teeth on edge. Kennah had apparently availed himself of the establishment’s courtesans, and only after the big man emptied his own purse into the madam’s hands would she allow them to leave.

  Agnes was growing stronger, able to sit up on her own and walk short distances without too much discomfort by the end of the first day of their trek. Auric prevented her from leaving the wagon on the second and third days, but by the fourth there was nothing he could do to prevent her from riding her own mount. Sira assured him that her healing was near complete and that the exercise would do her good. Begrudgingly, Auric surrendered to the priest’s reassurances and Agnes’s will.

  The final mining town along the highway’s path was called Farwind Vein. It supported a few extraction houses mining tin, as well as a disorderly flock of solitary gold prospectors panning the nearby mountain streams. There was an inn, however, different from the rest they had passed along the way. Its name—Wisdom’s Repose—called it out as much as its somber and simple décor. The inn was a starting point for those making pilgrimage to the Oracle at Gnexes. The common room was as quiet as a chapel, its patrons refraining from conversation, silently eating stew out of wooden bowls.

  The innkeeper was a thin, gray-haired woman full of nervous energy, flitting from one task to the next like an especially agitated hummingbird. Nonetheless, she had a kindly demeanor and was happy to answer Auric’s questions, as long as she could continue with her seemingly endless responsibilities.

  “The road to Gnexes is much narrower and less well maintained than the mountain highway, sirrah,” she said as she wiped down her stone-topped bar counter with a wet cloth. “Most pilgrims make the journey on foot, but there’s no proscription against riding, and the road is wide enough for your wagon, though you’ll need to practice patience when you come upon travelers headed from the oracle.”

  “Patience?”

  “Well, deciding who moves aside for whom. A trip to Gnexes affects some people deeply. They come down from the mountain consumed by a religious fervor or prophetic message they feel compelled to share. They might expect you to stop and hear what they have to share. With a wagon you’ll have difficulty simply squeezing past and riding on. Are you sure you’ll need it?”

  “No,” Auric answered, “but I’d like to have it with us in case we might on our return.” The woman looked puzzled, but didn’t inquire further. The truth was, if any of them were wounded or worse, he wanted the wagon with them. It was a luxury the Barrowlands didn’t permit; he would take advantage of it now. “How long a journey should we expect?”

  “Two days, with a serious pace and barring unforeseen complications.”

  “And where do pilgrims sleep on the cold nights?”

  “There are roadside shelters, low stone wa
lls with canvas roofs, like a legionary’s tent. Some have stoves in them for heat, some don’t. Expect to pay a few coppers to the shady attendants.”

  “Who are these ‘shady attendants?’”

  “Failed priests of Pember, those who lost the Second Sight, one way or another. Sad and bitter folk. Give them your offering and speak with them as little as you can. They’ll offer to read your palm, or invoke a blessing for you, at a price. Both are worth less than a fart in the wind.”

  Auric found himself grinning at the woman’s mild vulgarity. She seemed so proper. Or perhaps it was just the solemnity of her inn. Either way, Auric made sure to pay her with coin from his purse rather than using queen’s script, which he assumed would be as unwelcome here as it had been every step of their journey. He was rewarded by the woman’s own smile as she pocketed his coins, an expression that exposed the young girl within. It also revealed her resemblance to Lady Hannah. Auric thought on his lover, trying to imagine her running an inn, and smiled wistfully.

  “Blessings on your pilgrimage, sirrah,” said the innkeeper in parting. “I pray it bears the fruit for which you hope.”

  And Szaa’da’shaela purred at his side.

  The road to Gnexes was the product of no sorcerer’s labor: it wound around, following the terrain, narrowing and widening without warning, and featured dips and potholes aplenty. At points the path was precarious. The wagon did complicate their journey, slowing them down when those coming from the oracle needed to pass. There were few places on the road with room for either party of travelers to move aside. There was no choice but to squeeze past one another, or backtrack until they came upon a section wide enough to allow people to continue their journey.