And now it seemed Kurrik might not have to be the one to resolve the matter after all.
Shandor Paan lived in a shed near the waterfront. He was a thin man, hunched at the shoulder and slow of speech. His loyalty to the goddess was based in fear more than faith, but it would do. If it had to. Their meeting place was a dark corner in what was called the salt quarter where they could speak without being seen, and Kurrik found the man waiting for him there.
“You took my message?” Kurrik said.
“I did. I did,” Shandor said. “How long are you gone for?”
“I do not know. The Basrahip called us, and so we go. I believe he has seen the same flaw that I have. If so, we may not need to go forward.”
“That’s good,” Shandor lied. Of course he did. His wish now was not the elevation of the goddess but of Shandor Paan. It pained Kurrik to see men so lost to lies that they forgot they were telling them, but there was no denying that Shandor was one such.
“If it is not that,” Kurrik said, “I will approach the Basrahip myself, so that when we move forward with the correction of our error, it will be with his blessing.”
And if it turns out that the Basrahip has also fallen into error, we will find another, purer way to remake the temple in her image, free of the corruption of the fallen world. He could already imagine taking the children of Porte Oliva into a temple of his own, conducted as they had the first temple, the true temple, before they’d been led out to the world and astray.
“So we’ll still kill the other one?” Shandor said, hope lighting his eyes. It took Kurrik a moment to understand what he was saying.
“If the need is still there, the need is still there. I will know more when I return.”
“Yeah. It’s only…” Shandor ducked his head like a bird.
“Only what?”
“What if the city rises up with you gone, eh? What if those letters that keep coming down from Carse make people think they can go back?”
“They will never go back,” Kurrik said. “The goddess is here whether you feel her presence or not, and once you have been touched by her grace, you will never fall to error.”
“But… the other one… he’s in error, yeah? So sometimes…”
Kurrik’s blood surged with impatience and anger. Having the city all around him was like living in a pile of rotting meat. The ignorance and the lies were worked into the skin of the place, and it would never, never be wholly clean. That was why men like Vicarian and Shandor should never be granted her gifts.
“It won’t fall,” Kurrik said. “Listen to my voice. Porte Oliva will be loyal to the goddess forever. The fighting here is over unless I am the one who brings it.”
The priesthood of the goddess left Asinport under a flowered archway with the local children singing the praises of the goddess in chorus. Girls in summer gowns with ivy braided into their hair strewed light-pink petals along the jade road before them. They were seven men in robes riding the best horses the city could offer. A train of servants followed, and a cart draped by the blood-red banner whose cousin hung above the temple.
Where the dragon’s road leading south widened, Sir Raillien Morn had set up a little stage. He stood on it now. He’d oiled his scales, and they glowed like metal in the morning sun. The men and women of court were all of lower families. Most were Firstblood, though there were a few of his own family present as well. The merchants present were more varied. Kurtadam with formal beads tied on their pelts. A pair of Cinnae men standing with the goddess and the empire in defiance of the banker girl who, they said, soiled the name of their race. There had been a Timzinae quarter in the city once, though of course none of it remained now. The lowborn who crowded the road were of any number of races, all equally unbathed and uneducated. They had come for the spectacle and the distraction, as if honor were a theater piece.
The priests paused before him. Sir Raillien lifted his hand to them in formal greeting.
“Since the coming of the goddess to Asinport,” he declared, “we have known nothing but peace and prosperity. While the world itself has shaken and struggled, our city has known only blessings and joy. This we credit, as is right, to our newest and best-beloved citizens. We wish you speed in your journey and safety on the road that you will return to us soon and with the further blessings of her truth. In her honor and in yours, I pledge a week of feast and celebration beginning upon whichever day you return to us.”
The eldest priest rode forward. When he answered, his voice carried as loud as if he’d held a speaker’s trumpet, and Sir Raillien felt himself washed by the words.
“You do yourself honor by this,” the priest said. “And you will not be forgotten by us or by her. We leave only briefly and look forward to our return to this, our right and proper home. Asinport is blessed by the Righteous Servant, and taken into her protection now and forever.”
The crowd cheered and waved small paper banners, red and pale and black. Sir Raillien took to horse, riding south with the priests. Both sides of the road were thronged. Every man, woman, and child in the city or the lands nearby had come out to watch.
A mile past the city’s southern gate, they came to the place where the prisoners had been executed. The bodies were nailed to poles set in the earth. Apart from a few scraps of white, the leaflets the dead men and women had been found with couldn’t be seen sticking out from between their rotting lips. But Sir Raillien knew they were there, as did the priests. And everyone else as well.
Morn stopped there among the righteously punished and the dead. The priests and their train rode on.
Strange not hearing them,” Coppin said, leaning on his spear like it was a walking stick.
“That’s truth,” Jerrim said, then chuckled. “Strange not hearing the truth is truth. Funny, that.”
Kavinpol stood in the fragrant sun of the summer evening, the guard looking down both sides of the wall. On one, the city streets slow in the heat. On the other, the traffic along the road and the river docks. Carts filled with early harvest crop, and lambs and pigs carried in carts or led on ropes, heading for the slaughterhouses and the butchers and the fires and the tables. Flatboats waited at the water gate where a team of men like Coppin and Jerrim took the tax, let in who could pay, negotiated with who couldn’t. Sometimes the rules bent, sometimes they didn’t. A farmer who’d brought Timzinae slaves, for instance, might be looked at more carefully than one who’d brought real Firstblood help. Having the roaches inside the gates at all made some people jumpy, and for a reason.
Twice in the last week, the forces in the south had come looking for resupply and cunning men. Daskellin’s once, Kalliam’s the other time. Seeing what the roach army was doing had sobered more men than Coppin and Jerrim. Lost legs and fingers and eyes. Men half-gone from fever. Lady Flor had set aside her personal ballroom and filled it with cots for the injured and the dying. They said you could smell the pus two streets away. Others had come down from Sevenpol and Anninfort. Boys and women now bearing whatever weapons they could scrounge, coming to defend the empire.
Coppin, leaning on his spear, clumped along the wall, and Jerrim followed after. Coppin had lost three toes off his left foot to an axe when he was ten. His arm was good enough to pitch spears down the wall if it came to it, or else he’d have been on the road with the others. Jerrim had fits, sometimes three a week, and the captain of the guard said he’d be more trouble than he was worth in the fighting. It didn’t matter. They had their part, and that was enough. They manned the walls, they kept the peace, they showed the roaches and traitors that Kavinpol had teeth enough to bite if it had to. And they waited for the war to get done with. The priests came along every day or two and gave a talk about it, and they always left feeling better after. It didn’t matter how things looked. It mattered how things were. Truth would carry them through.