Temple had lived in Dagoska all his life. Grown up on these streets. Known them like a child knows his mother’s face. But now he hardly recognised them. Houses were blackened shells, bare beams showing like the ribs of desert carcasses, trees scorched stumps, heaps of rubble spilled across the cracked roadways. He kept the rock ahead of him, the lights of the Citadel perched at its top, caught a glimpse of one of the Great Temple’s slender spires above a fallen roof, and hurried on.
Fire raged all across the city, but no more fell from the sky. That only made Temple more fearful. When the fire stopped falling, the soldiers came. Always he was running from soldiers. Before the Gurkish it had been the Union, before the Union it had been the Dagoskans themselves. Give a man a sword and he always acts the same, whatever the colour of his skin.
There had been a market here, where rich folk had bought meat. Only a few blackened arches of it remained. He had begged here, as a boy, hands stretching out. Older, he had stolen from a merchant. Older still, had kissed a girl at night beside a fountain. Now the fountain was cracked, choked with ashes. The girl? Who could say?
It had been a beautiful place. A proud street in a proud city. All gone, and for what?
‘Is this your plan?’ he whispered at the sky.
But God rarely speaks to beggar-boys. Even those educated at the Great Temple.
‘Help me,’ came a hissing voice. ‘Help me.’
A woman lay in the rubble beside him. He had almost stepped on her as he ran past. A fragment from a Gurkish bomb had struck her, or perhaps from a burning building. Her neck was scorched and blistered, some of her hair burned away. Her shoulder was a ruin, arm twisted behind her. He could not tell what was torn cloth and what torn flesh. She smelled like cooking meat. A smell that made Temple’s empty stomach growl and then made him want to be sick a moment later. Her throat clicked with every breath and something bubbled in her chest. Her eyes were wide and dark in her black-spattered face.
‘Oh, God,’ whispered Temple. He did not know where to begin. There was nowhere to begin.
‘Help me,’ she whispered again, clutching at him, her eyes on his.
‘There’s nothing I can do,’ croaked Temple. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No, no, please-’
‘I’m sorry.’ He peeled her fingers away, tried not to look into her eyes. ‘God have mercy on you.’ Though it seemed plain that He had none. ‘I’m sorry!’ Temple stood. He turned away. He went on.
As her cries faded behind him, he tried to tell himself that this was not just the easy thing, but the right thing. There was nothing he could have done for her. She would not have lived. The Gurkish were too close. He could not outrun them carrying her. He had to warn the others, it was his duty. He could not save her. He could only save himself. Better one of them die than both, surely? God would understand that, wouldn’t he? God was made of understanding.
Times like these reveal a man for what he truly is. For a while Temple had convinced himself he was a righteous man, but it is easy to be virtuous before your virtue is put to the test. Like a camel turd baked in the sun, beneath the pious crust he was the same stinking, self-serving coward he had always been.
Conscience is that piece of Himself that God puts into everyone, Kahdia would have said. A splinter of the divine. There is always a choice.
He came to an uncertain halt, staring down at the bloody smears her fingers had made on his sleeve. Should he go back? He stood trembling, breathing hard, trapped between right and wrong, between sense and stupidity, between life and death.
Kahdia once told him he thought too much to be a good man.
He looked over his shoulder, back the way he had come. Flames, and buildings lit in the garish colours of flames, and against the flames he saw black shapes moving. The slender shadows of swords and spears, the tall helmets of Gurkish soldiers. And was it a trick of the shimmering haze, or could he see another figure there? A woman’s shape, tall and thin, swaggering forward in white armour, a glimpse of golden hair shining. Fear clutched at Temple’s throat and he fell, scrambled up, ran. The mindless impulse of the child grown up on the streets. Of the rabbit that sees the hawk’s shadow. He hardly knew what there was to live for, but he knew he did not want to die.
Wheezing, coughing, legs burning, he struggled up the cracked steps to the Great Temple. He felt a moment of relief as the familiar façade came into view, even though he knew it would not be long until Gurkish soldiers flooded into this square. Gurkish soldiers … or worse.
He hurried across to the looming gates, ashes whirling past, burning papers fluttering down on the hot wind, thumped at the door until his fist hurt, called out his name until his throat was raw. A small door within the door was pulled suddenly open and he scrambled through, the bar swung down behind him with a reassuring finality.
Safety. Even if only for a few moments. A man in the desert must take such water as he is offered, after all.
The first time Temple entered that glorious space and gazed upon the sparkling mosaics, and the filigree stonework, and the light pouring in through the star-shaped windows and making gleam the gilded letters of scripture written man-high upon the walls, he had felt the hand of God upon his shoulder.
He did not feel the presence of God now. Only a few lamps lit the vastness, the shadows of flames beyond the windows flickering across the ceiling. It stank of fear and death, echoed with the whimpers of the wounded, the endless low murmuring of hopeless prayers. Even the mosaic faces of the prophets which had once seemed moved by heavenly ecstacy seemed fixed in terror now.
The place was crowded with people – men and women, young and old, all filthy and desperate. Temple shouldered his way through the press, trying to swallow his fear, trying to think of nothing but finding Kahdia, finally saw him on the dais where the pulpit had once stood. One sleeve of his white robe he had torn off at the shoulder to make bandages. The other was blood-spotted to the elbow from working on the wounded. His eyes were sunken, cheeks hollow, but the more desperate the situation became, the calmer he appeared to grow.
What mighty strength must it take, Temple wondered, to carry the burden of all these people’s lives?
There were Union soldiers gathered about him and Temple hung back nervously on old instincts. A dozen of them, perhaps, swords sheathed out of respect for the holy ground but hands twitching always towards the hilts. General Vissbruck was among them, a long smear of ash down his sunburned face. He had been a plump man before the siege, but his uniform hung loose from him now. They all were thinner than they had been, in Dagoska.
‘Gurkish soldiers have flooded through the North Gate and into the Upper City.’ He spoke in the Union tongue, of course, but Temple understood it as well as any native of Midderland. ‘It will not be long until the wall is lost. We suspect treachery.’
‘You suspect Nicomo Cosca?’ asked Kahdia.
‘I have suspected him for some time, but – whatever else he is – Cosca is no fool. If he meant to sell the city he would have done it while there was still a good price to be had.’
‘What about his life?’ snapped the soldier with the sling.
Vissbruck snorted. ‘One thing on which he has never placed the slightest value. The man is an entire stranger to fear.’
Gods, what a blessing that must be. Temple’s fears had been his closest companions since before he could remember.
‘It makes no difference now, in any case,’ Vissbruck was saying. ‘Whether Cosca betrayed us or not, whether alive or dead, he is surely in hell now. Just like the rest of us. We are pulling back to the Citadel, Haddish. You should come with us.’