The Invasion of the Tearling

Tyler blinked. The voice was implacable. He believed it.

Peering around the corner, he saw that fear had made him overly cautious. Only two men stood in front of the Holy Father’s door, and they were acolytes, not the well-armed guards who accompanied the Holy Father whenever he left the safety of the Arvath. If Brother Matthew had still been the Holy Father’s right hand, this would be much more difficult, but Brother Matthew had been executed Sunday past, and these two on the door appeared young and soft, perhaps not yet taken into the Holy Father’s confidence. They looked up sleepily as he approached.

“Good evening, brothers. I must speak to His Holiness.”

The acolytes exchanged nervous looks. One of them, a boy barely out of his teens with a catastrophic overbite, replied, “His Holiness is not receiving visitors this evening.”

“The Holy Father told me that I was to come to him with this news immediately.”

They shot each other another uncertain glance. Indecisive, these two, and poorly trained. It was another marked difference between Anders and the old Holy Father, who never let his people represent him to the world until they were as competent as himself.

“Surely it can wait until morning?” the second youth asked. He was even younger than the first, still young enough for pimples to dot his face in small clusters.

“It cannot,” Tyler answered firmly. “This is news of the most vital importance.”

They turned away from him and held a huddled conference. Despite his anxiety, Tyler was amused to hear the two of them begin a game of rock, paper, and scissors to decide who would go in. After three tries, the young man with the overbite lost and slipped, white-faced, through the great double doors. The other acolyte did his best to appear professional while they waited, but he yawned continually, ruining the illusion. Tyler could only pity him, this boy growing up directly under Anders’s eye and tutelage. He could not imagine how the boy would conceive of his Church, his God.

“I should check your bag,” the boy ventured after a few moments.

Tyler held out his satchel and the acolyte peered inside, but all he saw was Tyler’s old Bible, a heavy hardcover given to him by Father Alan on his eighth birthday. The acolyte handed the satchel back, and Tyler replaced the strap over his head, settling the bag across his body. Sometime in the last few minutes, his fear had begun to ebb, leaving something electric in its wake. His heart seemed too big for his chest.

The other acolyte’s head appeared from the doorway, and Tyler could not mistake the look of relief on his face: Tyler was wanted. “Please come in.”

He opened the door wide, and Tyler followed him into what was clearly a common room of some sort, an enormous chamber with high ceilings and thick rugs. Oil paintings covered the walls, and velvet sofas were scattered throughout the room. The acolyte did not look at any of these things, keeping his gaze straight ahead. But Tyler, who glanced around the room in curiosity, let out a startled gasp. To his right, a woman lay sprawled on a low sofa, completely naked, her limbs thrown every which way to conceal nothing. It was the first time in his life that Tyler had seen a woman’s bare breasts, and he turned away quickly, embarrassed both for her and for himself. But the woman seemed entirely oblivious of their presence, her eyes wide and unfocused.

“Please wait here,” the acolyte told him, and Tyler halted abruptly as the boy continued onward toward a large, arched doorway at the far end of the room. Left alone, Tyler was unable to stop staring at the woman on the sofa, at her breasts and the dark triangle between her thighs. Although he felt no lust—his age had moved him past that particular indignity—the sight of these things was fascinating. The woman had long, dark hair that fell in ribbons over the edge of the sofa, and she returned his gaze without shame. As Tyler’s eyes adjusted to the dim candlelight, he spied a syringe within the crease of her elbow, the head of a needle still buried deep in her arm. Having seen this, he could not help seeing other things: a vial of white powder, still uncapped, on the low table between them; a spoon, bent and twisted through long misuse; deep bruising that went halfway up the woman’s other arm. She was not young, this woman, but her body was still lithe, and to Tyler’s eye, the needle in her arm seemed a ruinous thing, a perversion of potential.

“Who are you?” she asked Tyler, her voice wet and slurred. “Never seen you before.”

“Tyler.”

“You a priest?”

“Yes.”

She straightened a bit, propping herself on one elbow. Her gaze had sharpened slightly. “Never seen a naked woman before, eh?”

“No,” Tyler replied, dropping his gaze to stare at the ground. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I don’t mind if they look.”

“Who’s they?”