Beyond the main room, the temple was only corridors and rooms that had been pressed into the goddess’s service. Cells for the priests to pray in, an altar where they carried out their rites. A pantry somewhere that servants stocked with bread and soup and wine. A privacy closet that they cleaned five times in the day. Old sconces with the black soot halos that marked where generations of torches had guttered and burned. Iron rings in the walls and ceilings whose use Geder could only guess at. The stones were older than the empire, and generations of footsteps had worn the floors smoother than glass. There was a beauty to the rooms, and a sense of age and dignity.
Geder scratched his arm and glanced back at the great doors. The ones that led to the stairway that they would escape down. The doors he and Yardem would bar and block just as soon as Basrahip arrived.
If he would only come.
“Might be a problem for another day,” the Tralgu man said.
“No. No, he has to be here,” Geder said.
Yardem flicked a jingling ear. “Any reason?”
Because he was the one who lied to me, Geder thought but didn’t say. He was the one who made me look like a fool. “He just does.”
The rooms of the temple were loud with the rush and crash of priestly voices. The air stank of incense and bodies. Geder hadn’t known really just how many priests there were. Between all the cities of the empire and the men still tending the original temple in the mountains east of the Keshet, hundreds had come. Most Firstblood, but at least one Jasuru and what looked to be a handful of Cinnae men, pale and reed-thin. He didn’t know when they had been brought into the fold. Tainted by the spiders.
The priests walked through the rooms of the temple, segregating themselves into groups that eyed one another warily. There were so many, it was hard to see where one group ended and the next began. The divisions were there, though, marked out in the motion of bodies and the suspicious glances.
The group standing nearest the great doors were all Antean, inducted into the temple in the last years. Jorey’s brother was among them, talking and laughing. They were too near the doors. What if they stepped out? What if they found the bars that were going to turn the temple first into a prison, and then into a kiln? How would he explain that?
“Don’t,” Yardem said.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t stare at the door. They’re watching us.”
Of course they were. Geder was their savior, after all. The man who had called them all into the reach of his living voice to reconcile all their differences and schisms. To end forever the wars between them. And he would, he would, but Basrahip needed to be there. He turned away, looking out over the city without seeing it. His chest felt tight, and between the heat of the room and the smell of it, little waves of nausea were starting to crawl up the back of his throat. This wasn’t what it was supposed to be like. This was his moment of vengeance, and all he wanted was for it to be over.
So many things in his life had been like that. Everything he’d expected, everything that was supposed to be good and wonderful, had actually been sour and sad. He’d ridden off to war expecting camaraderie and friendship, but except for Jorey, he’d been the butt of jokes and pranks. He’d been protector of Vanai, but only because he’d been set up to fail. He’d had a triumph thrown in his name, been given the regency, and none of it had brought the satisfaction he’d expected. None of it had carried any lasting joy.
Well, that wasn’t fair. There had been moments. His time with Cithrin and Aster in the ruins, of course. But others as well. Undermining Alan Klin had been a pleasure, and that had been before he’d met Basrahip and everything had been tainted. That one time, when Klin had sent him into the winter mud of the Free Cities hunting for the fleeing wealth of Vanai, he’d actually found it, made his own little fortune, and let the smugglers go rather than hand Klin the glory. The memory of the chest filled with gems and jewelry, half-sunken in ice and snow, of pouring double handfuls of the treasure down his shirt before anyone could see him, filled him with a soft, nostalgic glow. Of all he had done in all his life, there had been a good moment.
Something plucked at the back of his mind. The smugglers had been in a caravan guarded by some famed mercenary captain. He couldn’t remember the name. But…
“Were you ever in Vanai?” he asked.
Yardem answered with a noise deep in his throat. He put a hand on Geder’s shoulder.
“Now,” he said.
“Now? What now?”
“We have to do the thing now.”
“We can’t,” Geder said. “Basrahip—”
“The signal torch is burning,” Yardem said.
For a moment, it was as if the words were in some unknown language. He couldn’t make sense of them. Then, slowly, the air left him. He looked down toward the dueling yard. The iron brazier there glimmered like a star in the night sky. A thin cloud of smoke billowed up from it. Geder’s chest tightened more. He couldn’t breathe.
“No,” he said. “No, that’s just the sunlight. That’s just a reflection of the… of the…”
Yardem steadied him with a wide, strong hand. His voice was low and conversational. Nothing in his tone suggested that their lives were suddenly at risk. “We’ll be all right. But we have to go now.”
“We have to go now,” Geder echoed.
He gathered himself to walk, but his limbs suddenly felt as if they were made from wood. He’d become a puppet with an impatient child yanking at his strings. He forced his mouth into a smile that felt grotesque and false. The urge to run pricked him, and he had to pretend he didn’t feel it. Yardem padded calmly at his side, as if the distance from the great open windows to the door at the temple’s far end weren’t the difference between life and death. Geder tried to match the Tralgu’s stride.
The priests turned to watch him. Of course they did. That didn’t mean anything. He’d called them here. He hadn’t explained what he was doing. They were curious. Of course their attention was on him. It wasn’t because they knew.
The doors seemed to come closer, even through it was really him moving toward them. A wire-haired priest in a black robe with a belt of chain nodded to Geder. He nodded back, but didn’t speak. He couldn’t speak. They were thick doors. Hard to break through. Now he wasn’t sure of that. There were so many priests, after all. But the dragon was coming. All they needed to do was pass through the room, close the doors. There were iron bars waiting there in the shadows. He’d hold the doors closed while Yardem fit the metal across the brackets, and then they’d run. Geder could already imagine himself running down the stair so fast it felt like falling.
His heart stopped. What if they met Basrahip on their way down? How would he explain what was happening?
“We can’t,” he whispered, hoping the priests weren’t close enough to hear.
“Going to have to, my lord,” Yardem said.
The doors came closer, and Geder’s heart beat again, harder now for having lost its rhythm. It fought against his ribs like a panicked bird killing itself against the bars of its cage. He couldn’t quite believe the priests didn’t hear it. His own ears were roaring with his pulse. A dozen more steps to the doors, then the stairs…
“Remembered something important, Lord Regent?” Vicarian Kalliam asked, his voice light as a joke.