The Heretic (General)

3

She met him in Garangipore on the evening before he was scheduled to board the barge for Lindron. It was the apartment of a servant, near the Jacobson compound in Garangipore. The girl had cleared out at Mahaut’s request and given them the evening in the cramped but comfortable quarters. Most importantly, it was an apartment with a backdoor that opened onto an alley.

Even as he counted the alley entrances as instructed in her note, and entered through it, Abel had thought, This is not the last time I’ll be sneaking around through back alleys to see her, I’ll wager.

She was not in battledress, to say the least. In fact, there was little about her that might have betrayed that this was the woman whom all of Treville was beginning to refer to as “the Rocketeer.”

Mahaut had escaped her own charges of heresy when Golitsin had spontaneously confessed that he had conceived and manufactured the rockets, too. As they had proved less than effective as killers of men (although quite effective as terror to donts), the remaining stockpile, of which there were quite a few, had not been destroyed, but put into the charge of the Regulars, who were now free to adopt the weapon should they like.

And, knowing Joab’s penchant for using any advantage against the Blaskoye to the utmost, Abel imagined they would like the prospect.

He wasn’t so sure about the Women’s Auxiliary. Joab was still opposed to its continued existence, although he had acknowledged, and even praised, its effectiveness in the Battle of the Canal.

“Let me worry about that,” Mahaut had told him. “Your father is stubborn, but not unreasonable. He also knows I am beginning to win a substantial block of Jacobson goodwill to my side, and he needs that to pit against the Hornburgs of the world. I’m actually getting to have more power than I ever expected within the household.” She laughed. “It seems nobody much liked Edgar all along. They feel sorry for me. And I let them.”

Abel kissed her then. “I don’t feel sorry for you,” he said.

They fell together into the servant girl’s bed and made love in a tangle of linen blankets.

When it was over, they sat together, and by the light of an oil lamp, Abel traced a finger in a circle along Mahaut’s scar, her breasts, and her shoulders, her tan lines beginning to reassert themselves after they’d disappeared during her recuperation.

No battledress tonight, but here is its shadow, he thought.

“I have something for you,” she said. “It’s in the other room waiting. He wasn’t going to give it back, but I ‘acquired’ it from his valet with a bit of blackmail. An agreement to keep quiet about some gossip I knew about the man and a town whore. Very cheaply purchased, actually.”

“My pistol?” he asked.

Mahaut nodded.

“Take it with you to Lindron,” she said. “I hear there are certain sectors of that place you do not want to go unarmed.”

“Thanks,” he replied.

“Do you still have my dagger?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered. Then, after a pause. “Can I keep it?”

“Of course.”

“I killed him with it. Rostov.”

“You told me,” she said. She rose up and put her arms around him. The chill of her black onyx bracelet where it touched the back of his neck sent shivers down his spine. Her skin bore the faint odor of hyacinth, her perfume. The servant girl was lucky. It was bound to linger in her sheets for days.

She kissed him, then drew him down to her and whispered in his ear. “Tell me again.”





Epilogue: The Guardian

My Dear Son,

I am sorry that I have not written you in some time. However, my duties in holding the district safe from further incursion have taken me away from my desk more often than I would have liked. The Scouts are holding the Escarpment fairly well, but the Blaskoye are engaged in an enormous rebuilding effort that, I am afraid, is bearing fruit. Even after their ignominious defeat three years ago at our hands, they have not given up on their quest to dominate the Land, or to use this district as a gateway. The Scouts bring the word of a new leader who is arisen. There are strange reports, for it seems that this leader may not be a warrior himself, but a sort of politician among the tribes. To tell the truth, I fear this sort of leader far more than I did the one who pitted himself against us before.

But let me speak no more of these matters here. How is your service to the temple going? In your last letter you told me that, after a bit of trouble, that cabal of older Guardian toughs has eased up on you and you have found a place in the Academy. I compliment you for not killing them, or even seriously hurting them. It is a skill that you will have to employ more and more as you rise in rank and are given command of larger sectors. There will be many people you want to kill, yet cannot.

And always I expect you to continue to comport yourself as befits a Dashian. You were allowed a great deal of freedom in Treville, and I’m very glad that this degree of power and success did not inflame your sense of self-entitlement. The very fact that you could bear yourself humbly and remain an effective Scout and soldier after such victories was as impressive to me as were those victories themselves.

Just remember that in Lindron, you remain a very small fish in a very large pond, no matter what you did in Treville. Yet I do not believe that you are destined to remain in such a subordinate position for long. For now, bear it, with the promise that better things will come for those who are talented and who have the right connections. You have both. I hesitate to write these words, for fear they will betray the greatest hope of my heart, but I shall do so: I believe you have what it takes to become a leader among the temple guardians, to perhaps become the military advisor of the chief priest himself.

Whatever you accomplish, I’m sure it will reflect honor upon our family name. Stick to the ways that you know are effective and follow the good instincts that run in your blood and all will be well.

Perhaps you can take the barge up for harvest festival again this year. Your room is still here, and has not changed a whit. The Prelate has allowed the rice farmers along the Canal to return to their fields, and they have been turning up bones by the thousands. They pile them on the road levee, and they are visible as a line of white the whole long distance between Garangipore and Hestinga now. It is quite a sight, although I fear some of them may be our own dead, mixed among the Redlanders.

I will understand, however, if your duties do not permit you the luxury of such a long trip. Mine do not permit me to visit you, which I long to do, as you know. In any case, I will and do expect a letter!

Whatever you decide concerning harvest time travel, I remain,

Your affectionate father

* * *

Abel rolled up the scroll and put it in the small trunk that held all of his earthly belongings here in the Tabernacle garrison. He was off duty today, which meant that he was expected to spend time studying in the Tabernacle library. It was a task Abel looked forward to.

He made his way across the eastern side of the city along the riverfront, headed toward the great earthen mounds to the south that were known as Zentrum’s Seat. The Tabernacle buildings, both administrative and those reserved for ritual, covered these mounds, built basket by basket in some ancient time by carrying mud from the River below.

At the base of Zentrum’s Seat was the one place Abel had clear memories of from his childhood in this city: the Pools of the Tabernacle. The carnadons churned in the Tabernacle pools, ripping at the vast quantities of dak flesh on which they fed daily. It was a sight that never failed to fascinate Abel, even though its macabre nature brought back memories he would, perhaps, rather forget. He couldn’t help himself. He always tried to catch the morning feedings before going in to his duties.

Bows and muskets, blood and dust. The nursery song of his mother still echoed within him whenever he beheld them. I’m the one you’ll never catch. I’m the one who catches you. Beer and barley, lead and copper. You can’t catch me. I’m the Carnadon Man.

After the feeding, it was inside and to the library, where Abel located the scroll he had begun on the previous week and sat down at a quiet table to read and take notes on his own papyrus writing pad.

The scroll was entitled The History of the Second Blood Wind. It was a history of the invasion of the Land by Redlanders—these not calling themselves Blaskoye, but Fusilites—four hundred years before.

Came they to conquer, and conquer they did, wrote Hermes the Scribe, who was thought to be the author, although the truth was no one knew who the historian was. The scroll had been written in the difficult recovery period after the Scouring, when the entire priestly and military caste had been executed.

The wind blew wet with blood, as the scribe Hermes put it. For those who had never seen their first rain, this blood wind served that purpose.

It was not merely the aristocracy, said Center. It was every man, woman, and child who held power or position within the Land, and it went on not for days but for years. Ruling families were hunted down, found where they had fled into the marshes of the Delta, into the headwaters of the River in the Schnee Mountains.

Observe:

Chambers Pass, high in the Schnees, and the River’s origin. A cluster of huts made of turf in the alpine pasture. Three of the five structures are burning. In a fourth are gathered a group of men who are being made to watch as a Fusilite warrior, dressed in a garment sewn from the skins of enemies, had his way with a woman who is thrown facedown upon the table. Nearby a man struggles to push his tongue back into his head. It has been pulled out through a slice that runs from his lower chin down to his Adam’s apple. He is not successful, and collapses.

Outside another group of Fusilites are conferring. One is festooned in the scalps of his enemies, which hang from his shoulders, attached to epaulet boards there like so much braid. He is the leader.

“Have you rounded up the git?” he asks his lieutenants.

“I believe that’s all of them, wise one,” answers one of the underlings. Abel is startled to see that it is a woman.

The Fusilites were great believers in the equality of the sexes, Center explained.

The leader with the shoulder boards of scalps turned to her and said “burn them then. And that should be the last of this line of snakes. Who was it?”

“These are first cousins to the Prelate of Progar,” the woman answers.

“Good,” said the leader. “Perhaps I’ll give Progar to you, Klopsaddle.”

“Thank you, wise one,” the woman warrior replied.

Klopsaddle? That’s the name of Mother’s family! Abel thought.

You are a linear descendant of the woman on your mother’s side, replied Center.

Great, thought Abel ruefully. I’ve got Redlander blood.

Most do, at least some portion, said Center. And all of the First Families do, by definition. They are assimilated Redlanders.

Now Abel viewed the scene from high above, as if he were flying amongst the peaks of the mountains. Below him the last two huts of the settlement burned and threw great clouds of gray smoke in the sky. Abel was thankful he was far enough away not to have to hear the screaming.

You may be sure that essentially the same scene would have played out over and over for many decades had the Blaskoye succeeded in Treville three years ago, Center said.

Checked, but not stopped, said Raj. Note the information in your father’s letter of this morning. Rostov is dead, but there is perhaps an even more dangerous leadership now in place. Three years, too! This rebuilding is remarkable, considering where they had to start from. This new leader must be considered a very serious threat.

Abel sat back from the library scroll and took a deep breath. It was not pleasant to learn that a great-grandmother, however distant, was a sworn enemy.

“Ah,” said a rich baritone of a voice nearby. “It is so good to see a young man from the Guardian Academy take such interest in his assigned texts.” It was Prestane, a religious instructor. Abel had not had a class with him yet, but he was rumored to be a stickler for rote memorization. “I am afraid many of your fellow students don’t even bother to create the appearance of having read this material.”

“I enjoy learning about the past,” Abel said, “so I can apply it to the present.” He let the scroll go, and it partially rolled itself back up under his hand. “Speaking of which, I am wondering something, Professor.”

“Yes?”

“The carnage that the Second Blood Wind produced is unbelievable. One reads of babies being roasted, women spitted. Even cannibalism,” Abel said. “And yet Zentrum permitted it. He permitted all of it. Why?”

Prestane stepped back, considered Abel. “Well, now, I don’t know if I should put myself in a position of answering such a weighted question,” he said. “After all, one can’t be too careful.”

“All I’m asking,” said Abel, “is for a little information. Nothing more.”

Prestane cleared his throat, took yet another step back. “Well, then, yes…the point is that the people of the Land had grown very wicked in those times. Horribly wicked and sinful.” The worry left Prestane’s face, and the teacher began warming to his explanation.

Or at least to the sound of his own voice, Abel thought.

“So you must not think of the Fusilites as individuals,” Prestane continued. “Think of them as instruments that Zentrum chose to punish those who had fallen from his ways.”

“I see, “Abel said. “They were the Hand of God.”

“Precisely,” Prestane replied. “Now you’re getting it.”

“Is he?” asked a quiet voice from a corner of the alcove in which Abel worked. The light was wan in this area, and oil lamps were forbidden in the library. What light there was streamed in through a nearby window. Abel had not seen the other. He had apparently been quietly standing there for some time. The new person wore a priestly robe. He looked to be a fairly old man, too, though still of ruddy complexion and obviously in good enough health.

Prestane gasped when he saw the man. He made a quick bow, and trotted away. The man sat down in the chair across the table from Abel.

“This is a simplistic explanation our dear colleague Prestane has given you,” said the old priest. “It’s a bit more complicated than a parable of punishment.”

“How do you mean, sir?” Abel asked.

“The Hand of God,” said the old man. “You must reconsider this way of thinking. It is allegorical, a thing of images that may or may not be true. Pictures we form in our minds of things we cannot see are invariably limited. You understand that Zentrum has no hand, not really.”

“Of course not, sir,” Abel replied.

“Then you must understand that Zentrum does not think in terms of men or the lives of men, but rather thinks of eternity. The Land is all that matters to Zentrum. And note: the Land itself was indistinguishable before and after the conquest. Within two generations it was, at least.”

Abel shook his head sadly. “But the butchery, the torture, the rape…”

“Men die,” said the older man. “All folk harmed by the Blood Wind would be dead by now, anyway. The Land survives unchanged.”

“I think I understand,” Abel said.

The old priest smiled. He touched Abel on the head affectionately, tousled his hair. “You have a good mind, my son,” he said. “Your compassion is praiseworthy, as well. But one must never lose sight of the bigger picture, eh?”

“No, Professor.”

“Professor?” said the other with a chuckle. “It’s been a while since anyone called me that.”

And with that, the old man turned and made his way down the library alcove and out of sight.

From others studying in their carrels came a whisper: “Goldfrank.”

The old man had been Abbot Goldfrank, the High Priest of Zentrum.

Abel slowly closed his study scroll completely.

It is always the same justification, he thought.

Yes, laughed Raj, like a machine caught in a perpetual loop.

The logic is not defective, Center put in. Given the assumption that men are means rather than ends, it is flawless.

Valid and flawless for a computer, Raj replied.For a man, his words are those of a monster.

It will, however, take more than outrage and skill at arms to overcome such a monster, Center replied. It requires a mind to direct those qualities. Continue your study, Abel.

Abel sighed. He considered for a moment, but there really wasn’t anything else for it, was there? He slowly rolled open the scroll once more upon the library study table. He began to read and add to his notes.