Part 4 (1/2)

”That's what a king does, Talinger,” Jaimsley said with a serious look. ”He can't help it. It's in his blood. So if you're intent on having a monarch, be sure to take special note of Rule Twenty-Four. It tells you when you can wipe your a.r.s.e.”

Talinger's face reddened another shade. ”Better a just king telling you what to do than a bunch of greedy lords.”

”And I say we'd be better off without either king or a.s.sembly,” Jaimsley said, balancing a spoon on his finger. ”Perhaps, if we're lucky, one will do away with the other, and Altania will be rid of the scourge of both.”

”And who would rule us then?” Talinger said with a snort.

”Why, we would rule ourselves.” Jaimsley gestured around the table. ”The people would rule Altania.”

Perhaps it was only the effects of too much coffee, but these words filled Eldyn with a peculiar exhilaration. What if it did not matter that one was a lord or of the gentry or the lowest of the commons? What if a man's fate wasn't decided by who his father was, but was rather something he could choose for himself?

”I would start by tossing all the magnates in the pits beneath the Citadel,” Warrett declared, his usually tranquil manner replaced by a certain vehemence. ”Throw away the keys and let them rot in there with the other rats, that's what I say.”

”Now, that's the spirit,” Jaimsley said with a laugh. ”We don't need them to make decisions for us. The people can decide for themselves what's best for Altania.”

”But can they?” Eldyn said, realizing only after the fact that he had spoken the words. His excitement had faded. ”Can common people really be counted upon to make decisions about important matters? What if they choose unwisely?”

Jaimsley gave him a sharp look. ”But that's not possible, Garritt. If something is truly the will of the people of Altania, then it cannot possibly be wrong. It is only when the desires of the people are supplanted by the greed of the magnates that ill arises.”

While Jaimsley's words made sense, somehow Eldyn could not feel the same certainty. He remembered once, years ago, when his father took him to see a hanging at Barrowgate. Eldyn had been no more than five or six; why his father had wished him to see such a spectacle, he couldn't say. Perhaps it was out of simple cruelty.

He remembered how his father had hoisted him up on his shoulders so that Eldyn could see the black walls of Barrowgate. Who the men on the scaffold were he did not know, but the crowd shouted and jeered at them as if they were beasts. Except, after a while, it was the crowd that seemed to be comprised of beasts. Men threw stones and old women howled, while children danced about and vendors sold sweets and cups of grog from carts, as if it were a festival. There was a hunger in the air, and if one man had dared to get up and claim that one of the condemned was in fact innocent and should be spared, Eldyn was sure the crowd would have dragged him down and torn him apart with their hands.

As they waited for the execution, his father had bought him a treacle tart-which was strange, as his father never bought him sweets or presents. But he did that day, and he urged Eldyn to eat it, which he did, even though it made his stomach sick.

”Cheer,” his father told him. ”Cheer when they pull the lever.”

Then the trapdoor on the scaffold was dropped, and the prisoners fell. However, the hangman had tied the ropes too long, and when the men stopped falling, their necks broke, killing them. The crowd hissed and swore at being denied the spectacle of a slow death; then they turned away, going back to their lives as cobblers or was.h.i.+ng women or grocers.

Eldyn wondered-were these the same people who would decide the fate of Altania in the absence of King and a.s.sembly? His stomach felt sour, as it had that day long ago. But it was only too much of Mrs. Haddon's strong coffee. He glanced out the window and saw that dusk was gathering; the short day was nearly done. He stood and bid his companions farewell.

”You will be back at university next term, won't you, Garritt?” Talinger asked as Eldyn put on his coat. ”We need that pretty cherub's face of yours to attract the girls when we go out drinking.”

”Of course I'll be back,” he said, doing his best to sound confident. ”I'm preoccupied with business right now, that's all. It should be concluded soon. Until then, you'll just have to make do with Jaimsley's wit.”

”Then saints help us all,” Talinger said.

And the three were already back to discussing the doings of king and a.s.sembly by the time Eldyn turned from the table.

H E WALKED PAST the old church of St. Adaris on his way back to the Golden Loom.

Eldyn knew he shouldn't have come here; the church was out of the way, and he had told Sas.h.i.+e he would be back by afternoon. Now the brief day was done, and twilight settled like ash over the city. Besides, he had not set foot inside a church in years. There was nothing for him within those walls.

But he wanted to see the angel again.

Like so many of the old churches in Invarel, the chapel of St. Adaris had seen better days. It glowered at the end of a squalid lane on the far side of Durrow Street. It was a hulking edifice, its walls streaked with soot and bird droppings.

Eldyn gripped the bars of the fence that bounded the churchyard. The statue of a beautiful youth glowed amid the gravestones in the moonlight. He was naked save for a ribbon of cloth that swirled about him; his wrists were bound behind his back, and steel arrows pierced his flesh. Dark tears streamed from the weathered hollows of his eyes.

The statue was not really that of an angel. It was only years after he first saw it as a boy that Eldyn learned it was meant to depict St. Andelthy, who was martyred for his faith fourteen centuries ago: shot full of arrows by the barbarians who inhabited Altania when civilized men first set foot upon its sh.o.r.es, bringing the word of G.o.d with them. Maybe it was his silent prayer to St. Andelthy earlier that day that had made him think of the statue, or perhaps it was the thoughts of the past that had haunted him of late. Eldyn wasn't certain. All he knew was that he had wanted to look upon it again, and here he was.

Why his father had brought him past this place long ago, Eldyn couldn't remember. Certainly it hadn't been to hear the priests speak; as far as he knew, his father never willingly crossed the threshold of a church in his life. More likely he had come here to see one of his dodgy acquaintances, someone to whom he owed a gambling debt, or who owed him. He would often drag Eldyn along on such encounters, perhaps with the thought that men were less apt to be violent with a child about. However, more than once Eldyn had seen his father come out of some back room with his jaw dripping red and his grin less a tooth than it had possessed upon entering.

”Come, boy,” he'd say, grabbing Eldyn by the scruff of the neck and shoving him out the door. ”Don't you cry now, or I'll give you something to truly weep for later.” And with that he would spit blood onto the street, head for the nearest tavern, and drink until he ran out of money. After he was thrown out into the gutter, Eldyn would have to lead him staggering back to whatever dank house they were letting at the time.

It was on one such occasion that they pa.s.sed by the church of St. Adaris and Eldyn spied the statue. That time his father left him outside while he called on his business a.s.sociate-some men, Eldyn had learned by then, had no qualms at all about doing violence when a child was watching-and he stood for an hour, staring through the iron fence. A holly tree grew behind the statue, and a pair of branches spread out like dark green wings. Eldyn supposed that was what had made him think the statue was an angel.

As he gazed at it, he wondered who would shoot so beautiful a creature, why it hadn't spread its wings and flown away, and whether it wept because it hurt or-and Eldyn still didn't know why this thought had occurred to him-if it wept for the men who had shot the arrows.

The statue wasn't truly weeping, of course. It was rainwater dirtied by soot, running from the timeworn pits of the statue's eyes, that had made the black trails down its marble cheeks.

All the same, the statue still held some of that same magick it had for him as a child. Yet it was altered as well, just as Eldyn himself was altered. Despite the black tears, despite the arrows that pierced his side, the expression on the angel's face no longer seemed one of pain to him but rather one of ecstasy. The ribbon of cloth, so delicately wrought in stone, flowed about his body, clinging between the legs, obscuring but not completely hiding the fullness there.

A noise disturbed him from his trance, and a wedge of dirty yellow light cut across the churchyard. A door had opened in the side of the church. Even as Eldyn watched, one of the priests came out, wearing a black ca.s.sock and carrying a basket in his arms. Likely the basket contained the leavings from the night's meal in the refectory and was bound for the poor box in the alley behind the church.

As the priest drew closer, Eldyn saw that he was not old, as Eldyn had expected for some reason, but was instead a young man. His hair was blond and curling, and his face smooth and not so unlike the angel's. Eldyn must have taken a step back from the fence, for the priest halted and peered at the shadowed street.

”Who's there?” he called out.

Eldyn turned, ready to hurry back down the lane.

”You need not fear, friend. The church is open to all. If you wish for G.o.d's blessing, you have only to enter and ask for it.”

Though he did not know why-he had nothing to say to a priest-Eldyn turned back. He had never attended church as a boy. But a few times, on those occasions when Vandimeer had brought him into the Old City only to abandon him, he had slipped inside the doors of St. Galmuth's and watched from the niche of some nameless saint while the priests performed their rituals.

He could not understand the words they spoke, chanted as they were in high Tharosian, but it seemed to him the sounds that soared up among the arches were somehow beyond words: purer, truer-a language that spoke not to the mind but to the heart. Most of all he had loved the pageantry. He loved the scent of the incense, the vestments of gold and white and scarlet, the candles, and the silver font on the altar. He loved the way the priests moved: slowly, deliberately, as if even the slightest flick of a finger carried meaning.

When he was sixteen, he told his father he wished to enter the priesthood. That had earned him a laugh and the back of a hand across his mouth. ”No son of mine will ever be a priest,” his father said. ”I'd sooner break your neck than give you over to those simpering prats. Get that idea out of your head, boy. You'll follow me to the pits of the Abyss, you will-if I don't send you there first.”

He had never asked his father about it again, and in time Eldyn had forgotten about his wish to enter the priesthood. But now, as he stood there in the gathering dusk, the forgotten desires came back to him. Was that why he had come here? He longed to breathe in the incense again, to touch the cool water in the font, to let it wash away the taint upon him.

Eldyn stepped from the shadows. The young priest appeared startled, but only for a moment; then he smiled, and so beautiful did the expression render him that he seemed a statue himself. Eldyn opened his mouth to speak, but at that moment another figure appeared in the doorway.

”What are you doing, Brother Dercent?” This one was short and squat, and his voice was coa.r.s.e. ”Are you talking to someone out there? Who is it?”

Whatever magick had gripped Eldyn was dispelled. What had he been thinking? A peaceful life within the walls of a church was closed to him. Even if the priesthood would accept one as old as he, he had not the funds to pay the required endowment. Besides, who would take care of Sas.h.i.+e? Eldyn shrank back from the fence. The younger priest seemed about to speak, but the newcomer was faster.

”Has one of them come again from Durrow Street to mock us? You should have called for me at once.” The priest hurried down the steps and pushed past the younger man, the one called Dercent. He shook a fat fist in Eldyn's direction. ”I see you lurking there in the shadows. They cannot conceal you from the light of G.o.d. Begone, daemon. By all the saints, I command you. Go back to your houses of sin and trouble us no more!”

A shame welled up in Eldyn, as it had earlier that day outside the moneylender's office. Surely the elder priest had mistaken him for someone-something-he was not. All the same, the full force of those words fell upon him, and as if there was power in that invocation, as if he were indeed a wicked thing deserving to be cast out, Eldyn found himself retreating.

”That's right,” the elder priest called after him. ”You have no power here, fiend. Begone!”

Folding the shadows around himself, Eldyn turned away from the priests and the angel and slunk into the night.

CHAPTER FOUR.