“We will take the lift, Tyler, to spare your leg.”
Together, they crowded onto the thick platform of wood that stood beside the staircase, and Anders nodded to the two priests who waited there.
“Brothers’ quarters.”
Tyler grabbed the railing, slightly sick again, as the lift began to rise.
“This is a test, Tyler,” the Holy Father told him. “God is testing your faith, your loyalty.”
Tyler nodded, but he felt lost and bewildered. He had lived in the Arvath for his entire adult life, considered it home. But now it seemed a strange landscape, pitted with unknown dangers. When the lift reached the quarters, he wandered away from the Holy Father without a word, past Seth and down the hallway, past the staring eyes of his brothers, past Wyde, who waited beside Tyler’s doorway, his eyes downcast.
“I’m sorry,” Wyde murmured. “I didn’t want to, Tyler, but—”
Tyler closed the door in his face and went to sit on the bed. The bare walls seemed to glare at him, and he tried to ignore them, tried to pray. But he couldn’t escape the feeling that no one was listening, that God’s attention was elsewhere. Finally he gave up and pulled the small vial out of his robes, rolling it in both hands, running one thumb over the wax stopper. The liquid inside was perfectly clear; Tyler could look straight through and see a distorted image of the tiny room around him, the room where, not so long ago, he had expected to live contentedly for the rest of his life. He thought of the Queen’s library, the way time seemed to disappear as Tyler sat there, everything melting away until he felt that he was part of some better world. He could not do this thing, but he could not leave his books either. There seemed no way out.
Tyler got up and placed his hand on the wall, smoothing a palm across the white stone. There was no help for him in prayer, he saw now, nor could he afford to wait for miracles. God would not single Tyler out. If he wanted salvation, he would have to save himself.
THIS IS A fool’s errand,” Mace grumbled.
“You think all of my errands are foolish, Lazarus. I’m not impressed.”
They were traveling in near darkness, through one of Mace’s many tunnels that seemed to beehive the Keep. The only illumination came from a torch carried by Father Tyler, who limped alongside Pen. In the dim amber light, the priest’s face looked paler than ever. Kelsea had asked Mace what was going on in the Arvath, to make Father Tyler so miserable, but Mace, being Mace, had refused to say, remarking only that the new Holy Father was even worse than the old.
It was Father Tyler who had sent Kelsea on this little jaunt. The vision of William Tear had sent her into a kind of frenzy, and in the past week she had torn Carlin’s library apart, determined to find some information about Lily Mayhew, about Greg Mayhew, about Dorian Rice, about any of them. When Father Tyler had arrived this morning, Kelsea had been sitting there on the library floor, in a rut of sleeplessness and failure, surrounded by Carlin’s books, and she seized on the priest as a last resort. Were there any written histories about the years surrounding the Crossing, the life of William Tear? There had been no actual publishing after the Crossing, of course, but perhaps there was a handwritten history? Someone should have kept a journal, at least.
Father Tyler shook his head regretfully. Many of the original generation of utopians had indeed kept journals, but in the dark period after the Tear assassination, most of them had disappeared. Several fragments had been preserved in the Arvath, and Father Tyler had seen them, but they discussed everyday problems of survivaclass="underline" the scarcity of food, the labor of constructing the fledgling village that would one day become New London. Most of Father Tyler’s own knowledge of the Crossing was based on oral history, the same folklore that pervaded the rest of the Tearling. No real writings had survived.
“But there is something, Majesty,” Tyler remarked, after a moment’s thought. “Father Timpany used to tell stories about a portrait gallery somewhere in the lower floors of the Keep. The Regent would visit the gallery from time to time, and Timpany said there’s a portrait of William Tear down there.”
“Why on earth would my uncle visit a portrait gallery?”
“It’s a gallery of your ancestors, Majesty. Timpany said that when the Regent was drunk, he liked to go down and scream at your grandmother’s portrait.”
It turned out that Mace knew exactly where the gallery was: two floors down, on the laundry level. As they descended a twisting staircase, Kelsea could hear many people speaking through the walls. Although she had her own private laundry—Mace, who worried about contact poisons, had insisted on it—Kelsea had kept the Keep laundry open, sending the rest of the Queen’s Wing’s linen down there. Her uncle’s Keep had been stuffed with unnecessary services, but Kelsea couldn’t bring herself to put so many people out of work. She had fired the worst of the Keep servants, the masseuses and escorts, those she simply wouldn’t have on her payroll. But she tried to make use of everyone else. At the bottom of the staircase, she could see no farther than the tiny, dim circle of torchlight that surrounded them, but she had the sense of a vast, hollow space above her head.
“Who built all these tunnels?”
“They’re part of the original architecture, Lady. There are hidden ways all the way from the top of the Keep down to the dungeons. Several passages extend out into the city as well.”
Mention of dungeons made Kelsea think of Thorne, who now sat in his own specially constructed cell several floors up. Kelsea didn’t trust him in the Keep’s dungeons, not even with Elston standing guard over him at all times. She also had a vague idea that Thorne should remain separated from the albino, Brenna. So he remained in isolation, save for a gloating Elston just outside the bars of his cell. Kelsea didn’t know what to do about Thorne. Should she put him to trial? For the past six weeks Kelsea and Arliss had been quietly converting the Census Bureau into a tax collection agency, but they had also been pulling the honest men from the Bureau and moving them back into the judiciary. Creation of a justice system was slow going; the Tearling had few laws, and none of them were codified anywhere. Since the Mort had reached the border, Kelsea had found little time to devote to this endeavor, but at her request, Arliss had kept at it, and now New London had five public courts, where anyone could petition a judge for redress of grievances. The Crown could try Arlen Thorne in a public court, but what if he was acquitted? Judge or jury, either one could be bought. Conversely, even if Thorne’s guilt was not beyond question, many jurors would condemn him regardless of the evidence. After the Regent, Thorne was the most hated figure in the Tear. There was no real purpose to a trial, and yet Kelsea felt there should be one, all the same.
Mace wanted to simply put Thorne to death. The man was so universally hated that no one would protest a quick execution, particularly not if Kelsea made the execution public. She saw the wisdom of Mace’s advice; such a move would gain her throne the diehard support of anyone who had ever watched a loved one put into the cage. Even the Arvath didn’t protest against capital punishment these days, and Kelsea certainly had no problem with it. Yet something in her demanded a trial, even a show trial, something to legitimize the act. But there was legal precedent for summary executions: if Father Tyler’s folklore was to be believed, William Tear had practiced them, had even carried one out with his own hands.
And so have I, Kelsea thought, suddenly cold. In her mind she saw blood, thick and warm, spurting over her right hand and dripping down her forearm. The outside world assumed that Mhurn had simply been a casualty of the Battle of the Argive. Mace had allowed that belief to flourish, but Kelsea and the rest of her Guard knew better, and no matter how she tried to dismiss the matter from her mind, the image kept recurring to her: her knife hand, bathed in blood. It seemed so important for Thorne to have a trial.