Even the pilgrims paused in their reverences, hands raised in supplication to the towers of the Cloister. The column entered the square from a side street, marched across the broad open expanse. All eyes followed its progress. A standard preceded them, a black cloth bearing the Imperial sceptre. Their surcoats were a dark grey edged in blood red. As the column tramped past the front of the temple a detachment separated and halted. It was led by a figure familiar to all those of the Banith waterfront, Sergeant Billouth, main extortionist and strong arm of the local commander, Captain Karien’el.
‘The priest here?’ Billouth demanded in accented Roolian.
She bowed. ‘I’ll see…’
‘Yes?’ It was the priest in the doorway, a robe open to his waist showing his thick chest and bulging stomach, both covered in a thick pelt of bristle-like hair and the blue curls of tattooing. Ella looked away; she’d glimpsed before that the marks extended well beyond his face, but never guessed they descended quite so far. ‘What is it?’
‘We’re looking for a man,’ Billouth said, and he crossed his arms over his studded leather hauberk, a pleased smile growing on his lips. ‘A criminal fugitive. A thief. Big fellow. Said to hang out in the neighbourhood.’ He leaned forward, lowering his voice. ‘Know anything that could help us?’
The priest’s expression didn’t change. ‘No.’
Ella lowered her gaze.
‘Really? You wouldn’t be withholding information, would you? Because when we catch this fellow and squeeze him… Well, that would be bad news for you.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Billouth ran the back of a hand over his unshaven jowls. ‘If you say so. But I think we’ll be talking again real soon,’ and he winked. Straightening, the sergeant raised his voice. ‘Thank you very much for all the information, Priest. A lot of locals will end up dancing on the Stormwall thanks to you.’
Ella gaped. But he’d said nothing!
Billouth waved the detachment onward, saluted the priest.
Bastard, the priest mouthed.
Ella stood watching the Malazans march away, their wicked grins at the trouble they’d stirred up, hating them. The priest took the tray from her. ‘Thank you, Ella.’
‘They want you gone.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why don’t they just… you know…’
‘Get rid of me?’
‘Yes.’
His wide frog mouth twisted up. ‘They’ve tried. A number of times. Right now it’s an uneasy truce.’ He shrugged. ‘But why should they bother when they can get the locals to do it for them?’ He ducked inside.
Ella gasped, seeing it now. She followed him inside. ‘Rumours! They’re spreading rumours about you!’
‘Yes. Them and someone else. The priests at the Cloister, I imagine.’ He sat cross-legged on a mat to eat.
‘But why should they do that?’
He shrugged again. ‘They’re on top and I’m an unknown to them. Any possible change is a threat to their position. So their reaction is to suppress.’
Ella rounded on the entrance as if she would march out to confront them all. ‘But why? You let the homeless kids sleep here. You give shelter and food to the debtors.’
‘And I extort money and sex for the privilege, yes?’
She lowered her gaze, feeling her own face heat. ‘I’d heard that one too.’
He nodded thoughtfully, chewing. ‘They might even believe it, seeing as in their hearts they know that’s what they’d do in my place. But that’s not what I’m here for.’
Surprising herself, she asked in a small voice, ‘What are you here for?’
Still nodding, he spoke, his gaze lowered to his food. ‘I’ve seen religion from the top and from the bottom, Ella. I’ve been intimate with faith all my life. And it occurs to me that the transfixion of ecstasy, the transporting feeling of being one with a god, is the same everywhere. It matters not what image or idol is bowed to or hangs on the wall, be it the cowled figure of Hood, or a severed bull’s head. It’s all the same because the sensation, the feeling, is the same as it comes from within all of us. From inside. Not without.’ He looked up, his gaze narrowed. ‘That’s the important point. It is a natural innate emotion, a human quality, that can be exploited. That’s why I’m here.’
At some point Ella had clasped a hand to her throat as if to assure herself that she could still breathe. Taking that deep breath, she bowed to the priest and left the empty room for the cool outside. In the small front court she forced her chest to relax, drawing deep the refreshing air to stop her head from spinning. That eerie child was right. This man was somehow much more dangerous than anyone could possibly suspect.
And the question for her was, dare she follow? She saw how till now her life had been nothing more than a mad scramble to fill her stomach, avoid danger, find shelter. Now something more had been shown her; so much that she’d never even suspected existed in the world. She felt as if she’d been granted a glimpse of something terrifyingly huge, yet also awe-inspiring, impossibly grand. Oddly enough she felt humility in the glimpsing of it rather than the puffed-up self-importance she’d met in those claiming to be filled with the spirit of the gods. Was this sensation what the priest meant? If so, she knew immediately she would follow without hesitation. It felt right. Which, she supposed, was its strength, and its danger.
Ivanr spotted the mounted column when it entered the north cleft of the valley his fields overlooked. He could run, he supposed, abandon his home and all he’d worked so hard to build these last few years. But something prevented him. A kind of obtuse stubbornness that asserted itself always at the most inconvenient of times. Besides, there was a chance that they weren’t after him anyway. So it was that the column of Jourilan cavalry encircled him while he leaned on his hoe amid his field of beans.
Its captain drew off his helmet and the felt cap he wore beneath, then pushed back his matted sweaty hair. He inclined his head in greeting. ‘Ivanr of Antr. We arrest you in the name of the Jourilan Emperor. Will you come peaceably, or must we subdue you?’
He peered around at the encircling cavalry. Twelve armed men. Quite the compliment. He shaded his gaze to study the captain. ‘And the charge?’
Within his cuirass of banded iron the captain offered a shrug of complete indifference. ‘You have been denounced for aiding and abetting the heretic cultists.’
Ivanr nodded, accepting what he knew to have been inevitable. Eventually, he knew, word would have reached the Emperor’s secret police, or the Lady’s priesthood, that he looked the other way while refugees and travellers drank from his well and slept in the lean-to shelters he’d erected in his fields. They’d probably tortured it out of one they’d caught. ‘And should I cooperate? What then?’
‘You will be tried.’
So. A show trial. A very public demonstration that no one was above the law, not even disgraced past grand champions. At the moment, though, he faced twelve armed men and the capital was a long way off. Anything could happen in the intervening time. He dropped his hoe. ‘I’ll make no trouble.’
‘A wise decision, Ivanr.’ The captain motioned to his men. Two dismounted. One took a rope from his saddle. They approached carefully. Ivanr held out his fists together. They bound him at the wrists.
The leather of his saddle creaking, the captain turned to study the surrounding valley slopes. He replaced his helmet. ‘They said you’d lost your fire, Ivanr. That you’d sworn some kind of vow never to take another life. But I couldn’t believe it — I’d seen you fight, after all.’ The trooper tied the rope to his cantle, remounted. The captain shook his head. ‘Hard to believe you’re the same man I saw that afternoon out on the sands, taking on all comers. You were untouchable then.’ He regarded Ivanr for some time from beneath the lip of his helmet, his heavy gaze almost regretful. ‘Better, I think, had you died then.’