Coming to the end of his rant, Jacob stood there, arms shaking, body trembling, as his god stared into his eyes in silence. If Jacob was afraid, he did not show it. At last, Ashhur looked away, his gaze turning skyward. Jacob noticed the gesture, and his face reddened.
“Do not look to her for answers, my Lord.”
“I must,” the deity whispered. His head lowered, and he looked so uncertain that Roland thought the world itself might begin to crumble. “I bid you good evening, Jacob Eveningstar. You have given me much to think over. I will tell you of my decision come morning.”
Without another word, Ashhur strode up to Jacob, held him at arm’s length for a moment, and then bent down and touched Uther Crestwell’s corpse. It caught flame just as Brienna’s had, burning away into the night, leaving behind little sign that the man ever existed. After that was finished, he turned and silently loped back to the Sanctuary, stepping over the wall in the process. When he disappeared through the great door, it closed behind him. An unnatural silence fell over the land. It was so complete that even the insects seemed to have ceased their nightly song.
“Master,” Roland said, his voice shaking, “what’s going to happen?”
“He’ll come around,” Jacob replied, not turning to look at him. “No matter what he says, he will not stand idly by watching the slaughter of innocents.”
“And…and if he doesn’t?” asked Roland.
Jacob glared at him.
“He will,” said the First Man. “The future of this land depends on it.”
Jacob offered one last glance to the spot where Brienna’s body had been, and he began to walk away. Roland called after him, but Jacob did not respond.
When he was gone, Roland stood alone, shivering despite the warmth of the evening. His mind was a jumble of contradictions, as everything he had witnessed over the last few months came to a head in his thoughts. When the torches began to burn out, one by one, he heard footsteps behind him. He turned, expecting to see Jacob but finding Azariah instead. The Warden seemed exhausted, and his eyes were deep wells of concern. He handed forth a jug, which Roland took and sipped from. His stomach began to cramp as the wine reached his belly, but he ignored it. When he finished, he handed the jug back, feeling very, very tired.
“What happened, Roland?” Azariah asked. “Where is Jacob? Is he well?”
Roland opened his mouth, closed it. He thought of the look on Jacob’s face as he stared down Ashhur, unafraid, unrelenting. He shook his head, looked to Celestia’s star, which seemed to have dimmed in the nighttime sky.
“I don’t know.”
CHAPTER 35
There were people everywhere, a bustle of activity that rivaled the chaos Patrick had witnessed the one and only time he’d visited the Temple of the Flesh with Rachida. Ah, Rachida. He hadn’t seen her since she’d departed with her husband for the southern islands. He would do anything to spend just one more moment with her, alone, naked, ravenous.…
“Patrick!” Deacon shouted. “Patrick, stop daydreaming! We need to get these people to safety.”
He sighed and tried to straighten his deformed spine so he could see over the gaggle of people-the very old, the women, and the children-standing in front of him. He caught a fleeting glance of Deacon, who was manning the other side of the temple threshold beneath the sweltering late afternoon sun, his cheeks flushed as he handed out pillows, blankets, and sacks of food to those who were heading inside.
“I’m not daydreaming,” he shouted back.
“Well, your line is growing. I don’t want people to skip your line for mine. Our supplies are divided equally. So hurry up!”
Patrick grunted, forced himself to look presentable, and handed a bundle of goods to a young woman wearing a drab gray dress. She looked haggard, with two small children clinging to her sides, and when Patrick smiled his hideous, uneven smile, he could tell she was trying her best not to appear revolted.
“Name?” he asked.
“Matilda Brownstone,” she replied.
He jotted her name on the massive roll of parchment that sat on the desk beside him and ushered her along.
“Thank you, kind sir,” she said, and then curtseyed and walked through the temple gates. Another woman with another group of children stepped up in line, and Patrick repeated the process again.
It was going to be a long day, made all the longer because the plan he was helping facilitate was so shockingly stupid.
When Deacon had suggested stowing those who could not defend themselves in the temple and reinforcing the gates to keep them safe, Patrick had freely expressed his opinion that it was a stupid strategy. Send them all farther south, he’d said, where there were several other small settlements. Or better yet, have them wait out whatever was to happen at the Gemcroft’s island estate-a scheme that Peytr himself had proposed. But Deacon would have none of it. He promised them all that the temple was the most secure structure for the women, children, and indigent, and that they would be hunted down and executed if they hid anywhere else. At least in there, he reasoned, the thick walls would give them a chance at escape through the sally port and into the Clubfoot Mountains should their defenders fall.
I refuse to be intimidated, Coldmine had said. If we send our loved ones away, we are admitting our fear that we might lose.
All of which completely ignored the fact that defeat was a probability, not a possibility. Every single man, woman, and child in the delta knew they clung to only the tiniest sliver of hope. Given how Deacon’s own wife had taken their children and fled to the shores of Pebble Island with Peytr and Rachida, Coldmine’s statement seemed rather hypocritical.
Patrick sighed. The longer he stayed in Haven, the more he realized how stubborn and pig-headed Deacon could be; he was a man who always thought he was right and wouldn’t listen to reason. Unfortunately, he was considered a hero in Haven, and his words were taken as gold. Even Moira, as strong and independent-minded a woman as he’d ever met, bent to Coldmine’s whims. Only Rachida and Corton Ender seemed to be able to think for themselves, but Rachida was gone and the old man had been raised a warrior. To him, talk was cheap. He did his talking with the pointy end of his sword, as he was fond of saying, and it was not his place to question those whose station in life was higher than his own.
To Patrick, that fact alone confirmed what Rachida had said about the uneven nature of life in the east. How could the people of Haven claim their freedom when they had been raised not to question their superiors? How could there be equality if the term superiors existed at all?
He shrugged those thoughts aside, focusing instead on the faces of all the women who passed through his station, making a mental note of their differing levels of attractiveness, and allowing his mind to wander when one or two of them accidentally brushed his hand with their own. Might any of them be the one to end the ever-loving torture of immortality from which he suffered? He laughed at himself. Here he was, a man from Paradise, ushering women and children into a temple designed for worshipping sexuality, all so they might wait for that night’s full moon, and the attack that had been threatened to follow thereafter. It didn’t seem real.
Finally, the last stragglers-an old woman and man who walked arm in arm, their hunched, uneven strides nearly matching-were escorted through the gates. Patrick looked over his list of names. Two hundred sixteen adults and two hundred eighty-seven children, and he still had nine sacks of foodstuffs sitting in the cart. He whistled, amazed at the amount of preparation that had been put into this endeavor. Given that each sack contained enough food to last a family of five for three days, Deacon had cultivated or purchased virtually three full years’ worth of food. It seemed an amazingly generous amount, especially considering that farming in swampland didn’t necessarily yield the most favorable crops. Although a great number of those who resided in the other townships around haven had came to them in search of safety, it was a good thing the many who resided in the far south of the delta had not decided to join in the fight. It would have been nice to have more men to fight by his side, but Ashhur only knew how Deacon would come up with the provisions to feed those who needed protection.