It was a discomfiting thing, being able to see through people’s clothes. Most people, she decided, looked better with their clothes on. She now knew things about the High Luxiats that probably no one else knew.
From the fresh cuts and welts on his back atop old scars, High Luxiat Amazzal obviously practiced self-flagellation. It was a practice frowned on, though not explicitly forbidden unless it impeded the penitent’s performance of his or her duties. High Luxiat Mohana had the stretch marks of at least one pregnancy, which might or might not be scandalous. Certain orders of luxiats were allowed to marry, but generally not those who wished to progress high into the Magisterium. Perhaps Mohana had lost her child and joined the luxiats late? Or switched orders at some point?
Secrets, secrets everywhere, and Teia didn’t want to know most of them, and couldn’t use others that lay open to her eyes.
It seemed unfair. Godlike. How did she have this power? This power to see, and to kill? How did she have the right?
And a year ago, I was whining that my color was useless.
Suddenly everyone was bowing, and Teia flinched. She hadn’t even noticed that Carver Black was finishing his introduction. Throughout the plaza, everyone bowed or curtsied as deeply as possible.
Standing in front of those tens of thousands, Karris waited until everyone had risen. Then waited some more. Then more, until it was painful. Had she frozen up? Did someone need to do something?
Just when Teia was sure one of the Colors was going to move to rescue her, Karris began speaking in a strong, clear voice that carried well. “War is here. Would it were not so. Too many of us have thought of this war as something far away. The proclamations have meant nothing to us, for our own people are near. Our loved ones have been safe. So we have turned deaf ears to the widows keening at the lists. We have turned hard hearts to the weeping mothers of boys and girls who will never come back. What is some distant war to us?
“But war is here. Would it were not so. You have noticed the shortages in the markets. How long has it been since you’ve had a Tyrean orange? But an orange is a luxury, surely we can let that go. Then, cotton is expensive, too, from the loss of Atash, is it not? And wool, as the Ilytian traders have reconsidered the journey. But so what? What is this war to us? Perhaps more patches on our clothes, and our children having to make do with tunics and dresses they’ve outgrown. Builders, have you not seen the price of lumber double? Why? Because our brothers in the Blood Forest have laid down their saws to pick up swords, or turned their axes from hewing wood to hacking wights. So what? What is this distant war to us? The rest of us will put off those repairs our homes need until next year. You builders will have to charge the rich double, and pray they will pay so you can feed your families. You shipowners and fishermen, you’ll be paying double for wood for the repairs without which your ships will sink, so you’ll have to charge double for your goods, for your fish. But what is this distant war to us? We will pay in coin, lest we have to pay in blood. For those with money, that sounds like an acceptable trade.
“But we’ll notice that a certain kind of cargo comes to our island more frequently, not less. Slavers. Starving mothers will think, better my starving daughter live as a slave than die howling here. Better that I eat from the coin of her misery than die and leave all my children orphans to fend for themselves. Tell that mother she’s paying in coin, and not in blood. But what is this distant war to us?”
She paused, head bowed. And no one said anything. It was not like any rallying speech Teia had ever heard.
Karris said, “My friends, beloved under the light, war is here, and would it were not so, but we are not innocent in its genesis. After the False Prism’s War, our sisters and brothers in Tyrea begged us for the eye of mercy, and we delivered only justice instead. We took the holy command to ‘Love mercy and do justice, and walk humbly before the Lord of Light,’ and we ignored the parts we didn’t like. We took our own vengeance. When we take a command and obey only the parts that profit us, that’s not obedience.
“We have thought that because Orholam has blessed us, that his love and blessings belong to us, regardless of what we do. We have treated our lord as a slave to our desires. Where is the walking humbly in that? We, your leaders, are guilty.”
There was some uneasy shifting among the Colors and the High Luxiats. Karris, newly risen to her exalted position, hadn’t been among the ‘we’ she was so pointedly impugning now. They, on the other hand, all had been. And from the rapt attention on their faces, they didn’t know what she was planning to say next, either.
Except for Andross Guile, who was a cipher, as always.
“Therefore,” Karris said, “those of us here before you, the Colors and the High Luxiats, will be mourning and fasting for the next three days. I invite those of you who are able to do so to join us, to pray for us, and ask Orholam’s blessing and wisdom in our endeavors. For though we have erred, there is yet work to be done. We may repent, but the consequences of our sin remain. Would it were not so, but war is here.
“We cannot fight and take it for granted that Orholam is on our side. We must fight to make sure that we are on Orholam’s side. And that means cleaning our own house first.
“Don’t misunderstand. There’s no time to lose in proclaiming new festivals and holy days of repentance. If we hesitate, we shall lose all of Blood Forest and Ruthgar, too. As we cleanse ourselves, we shall also prepare our armies. Those who pray will pray, and those who fight will fight, but those who lead will do both.
“So let us turn to the work before us today. The first is a symptom of our emptiness. An emptiness that has reached even into the Magisterium itself. Where there is a vacuum of true worship, it will be filled by our own venality, our lusts, our cupidity, and our pride. It is a stain upon the Chromeria and the Magisterium itself.” She slowed down. “It must be… purged. And one way or another, it will be purged.”
That word, used twice, used so deliberately, sent a shiver through the ranks of luxiats. When they were commissioned, the luxors always began their purges among the luxiats first. Any luxiat with heterodox beliefs or personal failings would have much to fear if the Office of Discipline was commissioned and empowered again.
“And indeed,” Karris said, “to my great horror, our first guilty party today hails from the Magisterium itself.” The crowd booed and hissed, and Karris seemed taken aback for a moment. Teia felt the same. It wasn’t easy to distinguish boos and hisses directed at you from those directed at your subject.
But then she forged ahead. “Quentin Naheed distinguished himself early. Among the many brilliant scholars in the Chromeria, from his earliest days here, he stood out consistently as one of the brightest. Barely one year since taking his vows and donning the black robe, he is already acknowledged as an exemplary scholar, a gifted historian, hagiographer, and translator. His excellences are many, and his mind is peerless. However, Brother Quentin Naheed is also a murderer.”
She beckoned, and Quentin was brought forward by the tower soldiers. He had been stripped to his underclothes, and he resembled a small bird drenched and shaken from its time in a cat’s mouth, feathers limp, dignity taken.
Teia’s heart dropped. She realized too late that though she had sworn to meet Quentin’s eyes, to be his strength, with her wearing the hard, angular, opaque eye caps, her gaze would be no comfort at all. And the glue holding the caps on didn’t reattach well, so she couldn’t take them off and put them back on.
But an oath is an oath. She tore them away.
One of the High Luxiats, Brother Tawleb, was shifting peevishly. He murmured something to High Luxiat Selene next to him, but she said nothing.
“Brother Quentin Naheed,” Karris said. “Are you guilty of murder?”