“No one likes a bully, you know,” called a voice across the yard.
Tavarre stopped in mid-stride, his face darkening as he whirled. Seeing who had spoken, his rage disappeared, and a broad, toothy grin split his face. “Branchala bite me!” he swore. “MarSevrin?”
Cathan stood in the shadow of a colonnade, arms folded across his chest. Across the courtyard the squires gawked with open mouths, elbowing and whispering to one another.
They knew who he was. He let them stare. He’d long since gotten used to folk looking at him with that kind of fearful awe. His attention remained on Tavarre as the old knight lumbered forward.
“You should really try picking on someone your own size,” Cathan said when he drew near.
Tavarre growled out a laugh. “What, like you?” he asked, rapping a finger against Cathan’s breastplate. “Don’t forget, lad-everything you know about fighting, you learned from me. You can’t even guess what I held back.”
Cathan chuckled. He’d known Tavarre longer than anyone else in the Lordcity. Once, the old knight had been his liege-lord, baron of the highland village of Luciel. After hard times fell on the border provinces-famine and plague that cost Cathan his parents and brother and Tavarre his wife and son-they had become bandits for a time. Then the Lightbringer had come, and they had both followed. Cathan had been the first Knight of the Divine Hammer, and Tavarre the second. He’d been the order’s Grand Marshal ever since.
The old knight regarded Cathan with a stern eye. “You’re balder than I remember,” he said. “How long has it been?”
“Six months,” Cathan replied. “And you’re fatter.”
Tavarre guffawed, slapping his stomach, and gestured for Cathan to walk with him.
They started down the colonnade together, the training squires forgotten.
“Try living on what they serve at the Temple, and see how fat you get,” the old knight shot back. “I swear, I don’t know how His Holiness can stay skinny. What brings you back here?”
“His Holiness,” Cathan said. Reaching to his belt, he produced the missive from the mechanical hawk. Tavarre read it, then handed it back, nodding.
“I should have known he’d call you back,” he said. “You brought your men with you?”
“The ones who are still alive,” Cathan replied.
Tavarre gave him a sharp look. “Ah, no. Not Damid?”
Cathan sighed, nodding.
“Blood in the Abyss,” Tavarre muttered, and signed the triangle. “He was a good man. We’ll hoist a jug of Seldjuki wine to him later.”
Cathan clapped Tavarre on the shoulder. “There’s another one I want knighted too, as soon as possible.” He related how Tithian had killed the Deathmaster.
The gloomy expression that had settled on Tavarre’s face broke back into a grin.
“Swordflinger, eh? Well, the boy better not make a habit of it-usually, throwing your sword’s just a creative way to disarm yourself. I’ll dub him though. Any man who saves your life is good by me, lad.”
They kept on, across the grounds of the Hammerhall until they came to the keep’s looming gatehouse. There they stopped, and Tavarre threw back his head and roared with laughter as he saw what lay on the cobbles there.
“Great gods!” the First Marshal exclaimed when he could breathe again. “You killed the bird.”
Cathan couldn’t help but laugh too. The clockwork hawk rested on the ground in a metal heap, alongside Cathan’s shield and helm.
“Think he’ll mind?” he asked.
Tavarre snorted, glancing at the sky. The sun had passed its zenith and begun to wester. The sound of bells rang out from the city. “Come on,” he said. “The court reconvenes in half an hour. You can tell His Holiness about it yourself.”
CHAPTER 5
They could hear the chanting drifting through the city long before they reached the Temple grounds. The low drone, sounding not unlike the bellows-pipes the shepherds of Gather sometimes played, repeated the same two words over and over. The words were in the church tongue, but even the most unschooled Istaran knew them.
“Cilenfo,” the voices sang. “Pilofiro.”
The Healer. The Lightbringer.
Cathan raised his eyebrows at Tavarre, who shrugged. “More of them all the time,” the old knight said.
The Barigon was a broad plaza, large enough to hold half of Istar’s population: a vast, open space designed to make the Temple seem even bigger than it was. Cathan had seen it filled before, on the day the Kingpriest made him knight and perhaps a dozen times after. It wasn’t full today, but the crowd gathered before the Temple’s broad marble steps was by no accounting small. Two thousand, maybe more-all of them kneeling, hands extended to form the triangle as they chanted.
Cathan shook his head in silent awe. It wasn’t even a holy day. No other Kingpriest was Beldinas. People came from all over the empire to see him, many of them sick. All knew how the Lightbringer could cure the greatest ills with a word and a touch. Countless folk had felt that touch, heard his voice, over the past twenty years. Disease hadn’t yet fled the empire, but it was in steady retreat.
What better reason to revere him? Cathan thought. He had felt the same way the first time they’d met, when the man upon the throne had been just a boy in a monk’s habit.
He’d stood and watched the Lightbringer lay hands upon Wentha, his younger sister. She’d been nearly dead, past any hope-and Beldinas had come and lifted her suffering. Cathan had sworn himself to the Lightbringer that night. Others in Luciel had done the same, then the folk of the nearby city of Govinna, and even the Scatas Kurnos had sent to fight them.
These particular worshipers, however, were blocking his way. They were thick as Sadrahkan mud flies, and even Tavarre’s booming voice couldn’t get them to clear a path to the Temple’s golden doors.
“For the love of Jolith,” Tavarre swore, giving up at trying to shove through the crowd.
“Fine, then. We’ll go in another way.”
Cathan nodded. More than a few heads had turned toward him, staring, then looking away as soon as they noticed his eyes. A few plucked at the hem of his tabard or clutched at his hands. He bore it all, even the occasional one who tried to kiss his fingertips. The people of Istar had treated him thus for twenty years. He was, after all, something of a holy relic, the living result of Beldinas’s greatest miracle.
They left the crowd behind, a few dogging their steps as they traced around the buttressed walls that enclosed the Temple. There were other ways in, and soon they found a servants’ entrance, barred and guarded by a pair of broad-shouldered knights. The guards lowered their spears in salute as they recognized the two men coming toward them, then lifted bar and stood aside without a word.
In they went, into a garden where golden starbloom shrubs blazed around lime and almond trees, where a fountain of malachite sprayed water in arcs that looked like ropes of diamond. A lizard the length of Cathan’s arm, bred to look like a silver dragon-it even had horns, and the tiny stubs of wings rising from its shoulders-froze in the midst of a path of crushed rose quartz, stared at them for a heartbeat, then hissed and skittered away. The bushes rattled as it vanished.
Cathan jumped as the guards boomed the doors shut behind him, and for a moment his heart clenched. He was on holy ground now-the holiest in the world. His heart should have sung at the prospect of returning here, but it never did. No matter how much he looked forward to seeing Beldinas again, setting foot within the Temple always made a shiver run through him. He’d died here once.
A strong hand clasped his shoulder, and he looked over to see understanding in Tavarre’s eyes. The old knight had been there that day, had wept once with grief, then again with joy. Once lord and subject, the two were friends now. Cathan managed a weak smile.