Farlander

'More likely you're lonely,' replied Nico's mother sharply, 'and in the fancy for a pretty boy.'

He shook his head simply. No.

'Then what line of work are you in? You dress like a monk, yet I see a sword in your hand.'

'Mistress Calvone,' he spread his hands wide, as though indicating something obvious, 'I am Rshun.'

Nico laughed then, despite himself. It came out tinged with hysteria and, when he heard it echo back from the curving roof of the vault, he stopped just as abruptly.

Both faces had turned towards him.

'You want me to train as Rshun?' Nico managed. 'Are you mad?'

'Listen to me,' the farlander said to him. 'If you give your consent, I will speak with the judge today. I will ask for the charges to be dropped, and I will pay him a sum of money for his trouble and that of the gaolers. You will be saved from your ordeal.'

'But what you ask…' protested his mother. 'I may never see my son again. He would risk his life in such work.'

'We are in Bar-Khos. If he stays here, sooner or later he may be called upon to risk his life on the walls. Yes, my work is dangerous, but I will prepare him for it well, and when I bring him into the field with me, he will be present only as an observer. Once his apprenticeship is finished, he may choose to commit himself to the profession, or to go anywhere else that he wishes. He will have money by then, and many useful skills. He may even return here to Bar-Khos, if it still stands.'

He watched as she pondered this, then continued, 'Right now, a skyship is waiting for me at the city skyport. In a few days its repairs will be finished, and we will travel to the home of my order. There he will be introduced into our ways, and I assure you, Mistress Calvone, that at all times I will place your son's life before that of my own. That is my solemn oath to you.'

'But why? Why my son?'

The old farlander seemed stopped in his tracks by that question. He ran a palm across the shaven stubble on his head, creating a sound like stone rubbing against the finest of sandpaper.

'He showed skill, and some courage, in what he did. Such qualities are what I seek.'

'But surely that is not all?'

The old man stared at her for what began to seem a long time. 'No,' he conceded, 'that is not all.' And he rocked back on the stool, looking once more to the floor, at the space between himself and Reese. 'I have been having dreams of late, though that will mean nothing to you. Still, they guide me in some way, and I feel they are right.'

Nico's mother squinted at him, still unconvinced.

'I'll go,' announced Nico suddenly from across the vault. Both heads swung towards him again and he smiled, feeling foolish. His mother frowned.

'I'll go,' he repeated, more firmly this time.

'You will not,' she announced.

Nico nodded, a little sadly. He knew what the Rshun were, everyone did. They killed people, murdered them in their sleep in exchange for the money they had been paid to carry out a vendetta. He could not see himself doing that, not for anything in all the world, but, still, he could leave as soon as his apprenticeship was finished, armed at least with new skills and experiences. Perhaps in its own way, this was it, his chance to make something of himself. Maybe the Great Fool had been right, and in the worst of days were laid the seeds for better times.

Then again, perhaps instead of escaping one punishing ordeal, he was trading it for a much worse one.

He didn't know. He could never know unless he went through with it.

'Yes, mother,' he said with a tone of finality, 'I will.'

CHAPTER FOUR

Flags of Conquest 'I'm hungry,' complained the young priest Kirkus.

The woman lying on the divan opposite gave a smile that almost split her withered features in two, showing a fine set of teeth that were not her own. 'Good,' purred the ancient priestess, while she spiralled a painted fingernail across her gleaming pot belly, tracing the course of old stretch marks and the gold ring pierced in her navel. 'The flesh is strong, Kirkus. But it may only become truly divine when it acts in accordance with the will. Deny your hunger. When next you eat, do so because your will has decided the issue as much as your stomach. That is how we maximize our appetites so that they demand power. That is how we achieve Mann.'

Kirkus grunted in irritation. 'You are starting to bore me. You offer nothing but sermons that I have heard a thousand times before.'

Her chuckle made him think of dry paper being ground purposely underfoot. It only irritated him more. Still chuckling, she shifted her bony frame on the divan, turning over to expose her bare, wrinkled back to the sun. The sound of her laughter spilled over the side of the imperial barge and fell, between the splashing, slow-moving strokes of the oars, into the brown waters of the Toin, before fading, ever so slowly, towards the distant bank of mud – where a crocodile stirred and plunged into the sluggish current in a brief sparkle of sunlight.

Abruptly, her teeth clacked shut.

'But I think you forget yourself, my young man, hmm? Not yet fully cocked, and you think yourself the next Holy Patriarch. Very good, but we are on the grand progress meanwhile, and I am to instruct you until you prove yourself worthy of the faith. These things you must know… but more than just know. You need to feel them, too, right down in your guts.'

'I already feel them right down in my guts,' he snapped. 'That's the problem, you old crone.'

Her look was one of measured appreciation. Kirkus knew he was her favourite pupil, and sometimes, when she scrutinized him in this way, it made him think of her as some obsessive sculptor, locked in an attic for years, slavering much too lovingly over her latest precious creation. Kirkus looked away from those hungry eyes, partly disgusted. He glared instead at the slave standing behind his divan, cooling him with a fan of ostrich feathers in this private space screened off from the rest of the deck; a thin Nathalese girl, with red hair hanging down around her small firm breasts, her ruined eyes hidden behind a scarf of peach silk, her hands gloved in white in case they accidentally touched the divine skins of Mann. Appetites, Kirkus thought lazily, taking in the slickness of her skin, noting how it stretched to the regular rhythm of her motion. He imagined for a moment what it would be like to take her, right here on the deck – this blind and deaf girl with only the sense of touch – the experience of pain or pleasure – left to her. Suddenly, he was physically responding to the thought of it.

'Patience,' the old priestess declared with mirth, her attention focused all too plainly on the evidence of his sudden enthusiasm. 'We dock at the next city at noon. You have heard of it, I trust. It is called Skara-Brae.'

Kirkus nodded. He had read of it in his studies of Valores's recently published Account of Empire, and wished to forestall yet another lecture from her.

'We can find some more playthings for your initiation. And, after that, we will go pay a visit to the city's high priest, and there drink and dine to our stomachs' content.'

'If only it was merely food that I craved,' he remarked gloomily, giving the slave another hard stare.

'You poor, weak child; it will all be worth it in the end. Have faith in an old woman who wishes only the best for you.'

She looked to the river for a moment, her features relaxing as she reflected on some distant memory, perhaps her own initiation as a priestess. Suddenly an expression of youthfulness passed over her features, as though by some glamour of recall. 'By the night of the Cull,' she said, still gazing at the flow, 'you will be so full to bursting that, when you unleash those desires, you will at last know what it is to be divine. I quite guarantee it, my fine boy.'