“Your brothers did what they thought was their duty. I compelled nothing. I won’t deny that I wanted Ironfist to stay. He’s one of the smartest, most capable commanders I’ve ever met, and having him on my side is a huge advantage. What Prism would willingly give up such a strong right hand? And Tremblefist didn’t want to stay in Paria. Couldn’t. Of course he went where Ironfist went, but he, too, has been exemplary. His quiet competence inspires all the Blackguards.”
“He should have turned to me. After… after Aghbalu.”
“To his little sister? To understand a killing rage? Rather than to his big brother, who’d been a veteran of war?”
“I’m his sister! He shouldn’t have turned to you!”
“It wasn’t to me.” Well, the seed crystal would tell her that was true, at least. But she wasn’t even looking at it.
“It was you.”
“Fine, then. I gave him what you never could,” Gavin said. His sins might be manifold and worthy of death, but this wasn’t one of them. “I gave him trust, when he didn’t trust himself. A sister’s trust means nothing in such a case. No fault of yours. He needed something that he would have to earn. The trust of a man who had no reason to love him? That brought him back. He is not that which you knew as a little girl. He’ll never be that. What was done to him, and what he did, changed that forever. When I look at him, I don’t look for the man who’s gone. You would. That’s why he’s never gone back.”
“This,” she said, “this is what I hate about you, Gavin. After all I’ve been through, after all I’ve suffered, in five minutes you make it sound trivial. You turn it around so that somehow it’s my fault. Like I should thank you for taking my brothers from me. Like all this devastation has just been in my own head. I’m the Nuqaba. I’m a master of orange luxin. I’m the nearest thing to a queen these satrapies have known in centuries, and you make me feel a stupid little girl.”
She reached into the folds of her haik and produced a small matchlock pistol. Working the match cord free, she walked over to one of the small lanterns in the cellar. She rested the pistol on a shelf, lifted the lantern hood, and lit the match cord. “If you died in Eirene’s custody,” she said, “your father would hold her accountable. Her protestations that I’d killed you would seem weak lies, evasions.” She took up the pistol, cocked the hammer, and affixed the match cord. “Eirene would be furious with me, of course, but she wouldn’t risk putting herself in reach of Andross Guile’s vengeance. She’d join me.”
The Nuqaba leveled the pistol at Gavin’s face. Stepped forward so she was certain she wouldn’t hit the bars.
She winked at him, grinning, and he almost grinned back. Then he realized she’d winked closing her right eye. She was giving him the evil eye: judging him with Cursed Accuser, while the right eye of Orholam, Blessed Redeemer, was closed.
Gavin flicked his eyes ever so briefly up over her shoulder, toward the door, and twitched his lips in a fraction-of-a-second grin.
The Nuqaba glanced at the door. Gavin lunged. He slammed against the bars, extending one arm, jamming a shoulder as far through as he could. His hand slapped against her hand and pistol, for the barest instant, he had it in his grip, and then, without his third and fourth fingers, he couldn’t hold on to it. The pistol flew out of her hand and smacked into the wall, discharging.
The rapid whine of ricochets filled the cellar.
After the roar, for a long moment, they stood staring at each other. Gavin pulled his shoulder back through the bars, and felt himself, to see if he’d been hit. He hadn’t, but his two stumps of fingers were bleeding again. Damn. He’d had to attack with his left hand, but his instincts hadn’t adjusted to the loss of his fingers.
He looked to the Nuqaba to see if she’d been hit. Her eyes were wide. Her arm was bleeding. She took a handkerchief and dabbed her forearm. Just a scratch. She looked relieved.
In moments, a flood of guards burst into the room, drawn by the shot. Parians in blue vests, armed to the teeth, drafters all, the Nuqaba’s personal guard, the Tafok Amagez. Then a few Malargos house guards. Gavin raised his hands to show he was no threat.
“It’s fine,” the Nuqaba said. “I’m well. You may go. There’s no threat here. Just a little accident. Why is my…”
She looked down and lifted a bit of her haik from over her thigh. There was a small hole in the fabric. But Gavin’s eyes were drawn lower, where blood was pooling around her feet. A lot of blood. Like an artery had been cut.
She wobbled, her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed.
Chapter 60
~The High Luxiat~
The message in my hand is death. This, of course, has no bearing on its righteousness. But by my inner light, I know this is darkness.
“Orholam himself set the earth to spinning, little brother,” Brother Tawleb says. Tawleb is one of the six High Luxiats, and I’m nervous just speaking with him.
He doesn’t need to finish the phrase: to give the earth and all its creatures rest from his burning gaze. That there be a time for light, and a time for darkness.
“A line oft abused, big brother. As you yourself pointed out in Soliloquies on the First Ten Years.” I’m a coward. This is wrong. Death, for a child? Barely an initiate. Besides, I know how Brother Tawleb is going to answer, now that I think about it.
Brother Tawleb smiles. I’ve heard that when he was a young luxiat, he was renowned for his looks and his wealth. He’d had a luxurious Atashian beard bedecked with gold beads and anointed with myrrh. After her first husband had been killed in the Blood Wars, his mother had been forced to put him in the Magisterium when she remarried, so as not to muddy her new husband’s lines of succession. But Tawleb had still been her favorite, and she showered him with gifts.
He says, “ ‘Quentin Naheed, first of his cohort, a pupil of the top rank, a disciplined, thoughtful young man. Highly intelligent, probably brilliant, possibly a genius, though he guards his tongue so as not to shame his lesser brothers.’ It’s no mistake I’ve asked you to do this task for me, Quentin. You know how that quote from my treatise ends, don’t you?”
“ ‘Some men’s abuse of a truth is no excuse for all men to abandon the use of that truth,’ ” I answer. There is a time for darkness, for secrecy, and for deceit. But most scholars agree that such times lie at the margins: in righteous warfare, for example, where one cannot announce one’s intentions or they will be thwarted; or in the case of protecting the innocent from a sinful authority.
And of course, knowing such scriptural exceptions, every tyrant and liar argues that his case fits those exceptions.
But this is murder.
“All are brothers under the light, big brother,” I say. “Is this boy not to be offered a chance to repent for his misdeeds? Surely he is not lost to the night at so young an age?” He is only six years younger than I. If I were to have gone to face judgment at that age… I can’t bear to think of it. No innocent, I. But I am more of a sinner than many of my brothers.
“Your instincts are good, Quentin, and your heart is full of mercy. The brothers were right about you. Not just intelligence, but a heart after Orholam’s own,” Brother Tawleb says.
My heart pounds. The brothers have been talking about me? Complimenting me in such high terms? The reference is to one of the greatest saints in all scripture. My heart swells, followed by a horrible thought: am I taking a compliment and turning it to arrogance? Arrogance is a blindness we choose.
“It isn’t arrogance to recognize the truth, Quentin.” That Big Brother Tawleb is calling me by my name is itself a compliment I’m not worthy of.
“All are equal under the light,” I manage.
“A foundational truth indeed,” he says. “And one that must be handled carefully. When Orholam looks down on us as from the height of the sun itself, the difference between a dwarf and a giant is insignificant. The difference between your intellect and an idiot’s is puny when compared to the infinite intelligence which is Orholam’s. But tho
ugh we walk daily with Orholam and for him, we walk among men, and the difference between giants and dwarfs matters greatly to us indeed, though it doesn’t matter to Orholam—and oughtn’t matter to us—in terms of justice and mercy and righteousness. This is another truth easily abused. Just as all sins are one before Orholam, but we differentiate between a whitewashed lie and a murder because here one undeniably has worse effects. It is not sin to recognize what is true, little brother. Indeed, it is a sin to choose not to see it. So that you are gratified by a truth being recognized by others that you have long known yourself, but have not wanted to say aloud, is no sin.”
“But I will be proud. I know my heart, and it is deceptive,” I say. I’m not comfortable speaking of these things. I will hoard these compliments like a miser and revel in them in the dark hours of the night. I will sneer at my brothers who flub their memorization, hold my sisters in contempt for saying a quote is from Strong’s Commentary when it was from Strang’s.
“That you have been given a great intellect is not something to be proud of; it is a burden to bear. It is muscle to be used in lifting greater weights than others can lift. That, little brother, that is why I’m trusting you with this. It is a heavy burden, I know. And this is why I don’t give it to some sycophant who would obey simply because of who I am. Your heart is true, your mind is good, and now we will see about your will. We are grooming you to lead, Quentin; I need not keep that fact in darkness. But you must show yourself worthy of it, in will and action.”
I’ve always known that I’m smarter than my brothers, but I’ve always called that knowledge sin. Always focused on the similarities, and the triviality of the differences, even when I would choose not to volunteer the answer to a difficult question simply so my brothers could have a chance to have their own moment in the light of a tutor’s approval.
My humility was false. It is a lie, isn’t it?
This much is true. I hear the ring of truth in those words, but many shadows hide behind light, and the best lies are those seasoned liberally with truth: salt covering the flavor of rotten meat.
These are not things a luxiat should do.
I realize suddenly that this conversation isn’t merely difficult; it’s dangerous. One does not blithely carry secret death sentences for others. If I say no to this assignment, or threaten to tell others in the Magisterium about it…
Dear Orholam, what would Brother Tawleb do?
More specifically, what would he do to me?
And there a light dawns. I’m not only the first of my peers; I’m also an orphan, and so studious that I have few friends. If I were to disappear, who would avenge me? The brothers and sisters of the High Magisterium have total control over the just-sworn luxiats like me. He could announce that he had sent me to the reaches of Tyrea on a secret mission, and no one would ever ask about me again.
I’m not a fearful creature. Those who live seeking the light will spend eternity in the light. There is little that can be taken from me that I don’t already despise.
“You have had a thought,” Brother Tawleb says. He is still a handsome man, though too lean of face, with a few pockmarks that a beard would have covered. A year into his full vows, he’d fasted for forty days, sprinkling ashes in his hair, and had shorn his beard, had given away all his belongings to the poor, and renounced the privileges of his birth and wealth. Paradoxically, that had only cemented in everyone’s mind his birth and wealth, and wedded to it an air of deep righteousness. His rise in the Magisterium after that had been swift.
Had that been on purpose?
No, no, please no. Such a scheme was worthy of one of the kings of old. A brilliant maneuver by one angling for power. Such should not be the way of the Magisterium. Surely, so close to the light, there should be no darkness.
And yet the heaviness in my heart, my inner light itself, tells me the truth of this. I have mentally elevated my brothers, have honored them as more than men, better than men. That fawning adoration is blindness, too. But my heart despairs to see the truth.
I say, “Many thoughts, and some contradictory. I can see what you meant by a heavy weight, big brother.” It is true, but not the truth he thinks it is.
He chuckles mirthlessly.
“I will trust you,” I say, lying to a brother for the first time in six years. “But I ask that you trust me, too.”
“You think my entrusting you with such orders doesn’t show trust?” he asks archly.
“Not the orders, the why. Why are the orders necessary? Orholam gave me the mind he did. When I stand before him for the judgment, I cannot tell him in good conscience that I didn’t ask why one of his innocent children deserved death. That a church father told me to won’t be sufficient. He hasn’t given me such blind faith.”
He exudes an air of deep sadness. “I’m not sure you’re ready for that knowledge yet.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for this action yet,” I say. I hurry to add, “Big brother.” But I may have been just a little too glib. Too smart.
He looks at me sharply, and something in that gaze reminds me that here is a man willing to sign a secret death sentence. I may not fear death, but I have no wish to die, and this man could not only order my death, he could—quite openly—send me to some living hell. There are always more luxiats needed to minister to leper colonies, to evangelize the Angari (and be martyred doing it), to take the news of Orholam’s love beyond the Cracked Lands. But he doesn’t look like he wants to throw away a perfectly good tool at the first difficulty in its use.
He says, “There is a holy relic that the High Magisterium has been entrusted with since the days of Karris Shadowblinder. During the False Prism’s War, Andross Guile seized it from us. He then claimed to have lost it, and accused us of stealing it from him, but we know this to be a lie. Andross Guile is an atheist, and a devious one at that. You must understand, I’m already telling you too much.” His voice is low and thready. I could swear there’s real fear in it.
“How do we know he was lying?” I ask. I want to ask what the relic is, but I can tell he won’t divulge any more than he must.
Big Brother Tawleb chews his lip. “Though they pretend to be at each other’s throats, Gavin Guile is still the Prism. He wouldn’t be if Andross really opposed him.”
“So this relic is necessary to keep power?”
Brother Tawleb blanches momentarily. Guessed it. Or he’s a better liar than I’d thought.
Orholam have mercy, what am I doing?
“That’s more than you need to know, and let me enjoin you never to speak of this with anyone, until you sit on the High Magisterium yourself. You understand?”
I do. Orholam’s tears, until I sit on the High Magisterium?! He says this not like it’s bait to tempt me, but as if it’s a foregone conclusion. I nod.
“The High Magisterium was… content to let this travesty pass.” He grimaces, and I can tell there’s a whole lot more to it than that. “Because the High Lord Prism has been a very reasonable friend and ally to us, despite his hidden alliance with his father. And because he has at most five years left. His father, our real enemy, has less time. We can deal patiently with provocation and take back what is ours after he dies, without any disruption among the faithful.”
The relic has been gone for at least sixteen years, and you haven’t tried to do anything to get it back? I don’t believe it. You all must have failed, spectacularly, and been warned that another attempt would mean some great vengeance. The Magisterium is patient, but it isn’t that patient.
Orholam, he’s lying to me. Easily. In multiple ways. How can a High Luxiat lie so blithely?
“But there’s a young man who just came to the Chromeria, Kip Guile. At first, they claimed he was a bastard, and High—we—thought…” He’s almost given away whoever it is who agrees with him in the High Magisterium. “We naively thought that might be the end of it. The Guiles have no heirs, nor does Gavin seem interested in producing any. We thought perhaps we could do no
thing, and the relic would revert to our care still. But now they’ve named him a legitimate son. A lie, no doubt, but it means he will inherit. Kip’s appearance takes the theft of our relic from being an insult that we knew would be remedied to being the prospect of our prerogative lost and the Magisterium marginalized, forever.”
So this artifact is something on which the Magisterium thinks all of its power rests.
I say, “But the boy himself, he may be amenable to reason. He might give it over. He’s an innocent.”
“This is war; innocents die for the sins of the powerful.”
Brother Tawleb thought he meant the sins of Andross Guile, but I’m not so sure he’s right. That innocents die in war is a fact. It is unavoidable that when siege engines obliterate a city wall, the children in the houses beyond it often die.
But targeting children is something else altogether.
He continues, “When the Magisterium is weakened, everything every luxiat does is weakened. We minister to the refugees of war, but without power, how can we get the funds we need from the Spectrum to pay to send luxiats to give succor to those refugees? We feed the poor. We treat lepers. We heal the sick. Most of the money comes from alms, but there are times when alms can’t arrive fast enough. Can you imagine if we were faced with a flood on the coastal plains of Paria, and we had to wait until all seven satrapies heard about it, donated, and shipped their gifts here, then we bought the necessary supplies and sent the luxiats there? It would be months. Months in which how many innocents would die? Without the power to do good, what good can we do?”
Pray. The glib answer is also the scriptural one, the one every luxiat has been taught for hundreds of years. It is not by our power that Orholam’s will is accomplished, but by his. What are our black robes but a constant reminder of our own emptiness, our own need for Orholam’s light? And our need for his power.
In pursuing Orholam’s business, Brother Tawleb has forgotten Orholam himself.