This seemed to be no more than what many in Ys said behind the backs of the magistrates and priests, Pandaras thought, but he was still disturbed by these new ideas. He knew that Yama would have an answer to them, but even as he thought this he remembered that Yama had also questioned the motives of the Preservers in making Confluence and setting the ten thousand bloodlines upon it in the moment before they had stepped from the Universe. The praise-singers had it that the Preservers had extended their mercy to the races of servants they had raised up from animals; these they had set on this world to achieve what destiny they could for good or ill, in the sight of the Eye into which the Preservers had vanished. But why then was the world so bound in custom and tradition? We are the strength of the city, Pandaras thought, and yet we are regarded by higher bloodlines as no more than vermin. And what of the indigenous races such as the fisherfolk or the mirror people, or the unclean scavengers and ghouls who roamed the cloacae of Ys? These races had been raised up by the Preservers, yet did not contain their breath and so could never achieve the change—enlightenment, in this gray manikin’s argot—by which a bloodline dominated by unchanging habit becomes a nation of individuals. He remembered with a pang of shame the first day with his master, after they had escaped The Crossed Axes, when he had poured scorn upon the unchanged refugees who camped by the widening margin of the river. Was it the intention of the Preservers that some bloodlines should oppress others? Surely the Preservers had set themselves so high that all bloodlines were equal to them, no matter how lowly or how enlightened. The heretics had one thing right: all the world’s peoples should have the chance to rise as high as they could. If the Preservers had created a world so manifestly unfair, then surely they had done so through incompetence or spite. Surely they could not be as powerful as the priests and bureaucrats claimed.
Pandaras forgot in that moment that although his master was more powerful than many men, he did not deny that the Preservers were more powerful still, so powerful that men might never riddle their actions. Instead, the slogans of the heretics burnt like fever in his blood. Seize the day! Live forever! It did not matter if you were changed, for you would still remember what you had been, as a man fondly remembers his childhood. And what man would wish to remain a child forever?
One man in Pandaras’s discussion class was eager to deny the Preservers. Not out of belief or conviction, but out of fear, for he was anxious to save himself. From the first he agreed with everything the pedagogue said, without understanding anything, and mocked his fellow prisoners for stubbornly clinging to their outmoded and foolish beliefs.
He was a skinny fellow with leathery brown skin and a cayman’s untrustworthy grin. He wore only dirty breeches and a mail shirt, and stank like river water kept too long in a barrel. He had been badly seared when his carronade had jammed and exploded: his hand was gloved in a white plastic bag and a bandage was wrapped around his head; the right side of his chest and his face were livid with burn-scars; his right eye was as milk-white as a boiled egg. He was shunned by the other prisoners and was always trying to wheedle favors from the guards, who either ignored him or chased him away with swift, judicious blows. His name was Narashima, but everyone called him the Jackal. Even the pedagogue grew tired of the Jackal’s constant gabble of unthinking agreement, and one day turned on him.
“You do not worship the Preservers?” it said in its sweet, high voice.
“That’s so, your honor,” the Jackal said eagerly. “Men of my kind, we’ve never liked ’em. That’s why we are always hunted down by the authorities, because we refuse to bend our knee to the false idols of their temples. We were delighted when your people finally silenced the last avatars because we saw that it might be an end to the rule of the priests. And now I see it’s true, and my heart lifts on a flood of happiness.”
Pandaras thought that as usual the Jackal dissembled, giving up half the truth in service of a greater lie. It was clear from the arrowhead tattoos on the man’s fingers that he had been a member of one of the galares which operated in the docks of Ys, hijacking cargoes, smuggling cigarettes and other drugs, running protection and kidnapping rackets. The Jackal had probably joined the army to escape justice. Perhaps he had betrayed his own kind—it was clear that he believed in nothing but his own self, and one or two of the prisoners said, out of earshot of any pedagogue or soldier, that the Jackal was an ideal candidate for a heretic, for he would betray the Universe to save his worthless hide.
“What do you worship,” the pedagogue asked the Jackal sweetly, “if you do not worship the Preservers?” A ripple of interest stirred the circle of the discussion class, like a breeze lifting and dropping the leaves of a tree. The Jackal did not notice it.
“Why, your honor, captain… for a long time I did not worship anything. The other things I held dear were my family and my many friends, as any good honest man might tell you, but I saw nothing of worth beyond them. But now, by happy circumstance, I find myself in a position I could not have imagined then. My bloodline is one of the oldest on Confluence, one of the first to have changed. We have always lived in Ys, and those in power hate us because of our ancient and honorable pedigree. But now I feel that I have been changed again, that the change for which we are envied is nothing compared to what I feel now. Why, I’m even happy that I lost my eye and use of my hand, because it is a small enough price to have paid for the riches you shower upon us day by day.”
“Then you worship nothing?”
“Your honor, as I said, my people never worshipped the Preservers. But it does not mean we are not capable of worship.”
“Money, mostly,” someone whispered, loud enough for the rest of the class to hear it. Most laughed.
The Jackal glared around with his one good eye. It was yellow, with a vertically slitted pupil. “You see, your honor,” the Jackal said, “how jealous others are of me. Because I understand what you want of us while these others only pretend it. They are not worthy of your truths. You take me, your honor, and feed these others to the fish in the mud at the bottom of the river.”
“What is it you understand?” the pedagogue asked. “Every day you tell me that you are full of praise for what you hear, and I am glad. But I would like to know what you understand of the hard questions I put to all of you here. I would like to know how high you have been raised.”
The men in the circle nudged each other, seeing that some kind of trap was closing on the hapless Jackal, who glared at them again and hissed through his long jaw. “Higher than these scum, and they know it, your honor. Put that question to them. I’ll wager none of them will be able to answer it.”
“There is no competition here,” the pedagogue said. “We set no man against any other. That is one part of our strength. The other is our certainty. Tell me one thing of which you are certain.”
“Why, your honor, I know that the Preservers are nothing but shit compared to your people. I know that I worshipped nothing because nothing was worthy of my worship, but I know now that I have found something I will worship with all my heart and all my breath. Let me serve your people and I will grace them with such praise that all will know their fame. It is your people that I worship. I love you all more than life itself, and will serve you in any way I can, and hope to gain some small measure of your glory. It is you, you! You and no other!”