The Book of Fire (21 page)

Erde halted beside Rose. “Oh, no! What now?”

“Dolph has refused to stay with us when Heinrich returns to the war.”

The furrows in Rose’s brow told Erde this was no ordinary skirmish. “But he gave his word.”

“Apparently he’s changed his mind.”

The men’s edgy dance brought Köthen’s back around full circle toward the women. Rose moved a step aside. Margit shifted to ease up behind him. She had a length of rope twisted between her fists.

“Back!” Köthen growled, with a warning sidearm swipe of his scythe. Margit leaped aside and retreated.

“Dolph,” said Rose. “Be reasonable . . .”

“Leave it, Rose! Reason has nothing to do with it!”

“How is this going to solve anything?”

“I will not, NOT be put out to pasture like some . . . broken mule!”

“You will if you behave like one!” Hal was winded. His chest heaved convulsively, making the difference in the two men’s ages terrifyingly apparent. But his manner was as fierce and implacable as Erde had ever seen it. “You’ll do as I say, if I have to chain you to a rock!”

No, Sir Hal
, she told him silently.
Don’t you see this man will go mad if you chain him, either physically or within his soul?
Now she was sure that her plan was the right one.

“Will you?” Köthen yelled. “Just try it, then! No one here but women, old man! You think you can take me?” Suddenly he closed the distance between them, stepping within range of the older man’s sword. He lifted the scythe to swing it like a club, then held it there for a long and frozen moment, exposing the entire front of his body to Hal’s attack. “Cut me down where I stand, my knight! Do it, or I’ll kill you, I swear I will!”

“Your chance for that has passed!” Hal spat. But his sword did not move.

“Is it?” Köthen cocked back the scythe and swung it wide. His aim was vengeful and true. It missed Hal’s belly by a hairsbreadth, then swept his sword from his hand and flung it clattering into the stalls. Erde breathed a split-second’s prayer. He would kill or be killed. He was, as Hal had said, beyond reason. She must do it now, or it would be too late.

She threw her heavy wool-and-leather coat to the floor, then sprang past Rose’s restraining arm and ducked the long blade as it whistled past on its second vicious arc.

“No! You mustn’t!”

She lunged and grabbed the scythe handle. The angry momentum of Köthen’s swing jerked her hard off-balance and dragged her across the floor. Horrified, Hal drew his dagger but backed away. Köthen did not. He hauled on the scythe handle, sending Erde tumbling toward him. He caught her deftly with his free arm, twisted her around, and pinned her to his chest with the scythe blade at her throat.

“Foolish child,” he muttered.

We shall see about that, thought Erde, amazed that she was not afraid.

“What are you . . . no!” Hal lowered his blade. “As a man of honor, Adolphus, let the girl go.”

“I have no honor, my knight. You’ve made that ever so clear to me.”

“I never meant . . .”

“No. Stay where you are if you wish this girl alive tomorrow.”

“You’d never . . .”

“I would! I will! Why shouldn’t I? You’ve left me nothing else. It’s your word I’ll need now. Safe passage out of here, Heinrich, on
your
honor, in exchange for her life.”

But Erde caught Hal’s worried look, shook her head once, and smiled. “It’s all right. We’re taking him with us.”

Hal’s eyes widened. “Now?”

She nodded as best she could, with a blade at her neck the length of a man’s arm. She reached for her companions in her mind, and found each waiting: one, two, three. Then she turned her head sideways against her captor’s chest! “My lord of Köthen, prepare yourself for a journey.”

Köthen said, “What?”

And the dragons took them both.

W
hen she doesn’t immediately show the mysterious scrap of paper to the God, Paia knows that something has changed. She has kept secrets from him before, mostly minor ones in the cause of preserving her pride or dignity. But he is the God, after all. Anything that might affect her security or the welfare of the Temple, she has always told him about . . . before.

Before what? Since the God arrived, Paia has been his favorite, his priestess, his beloved slave. When she was younger, it was like having a father all over again. As she matured, their relationship altered to admit a sexual innuendo, but through it all, she’s never doubted that the God loves her, in whatever way he’s capable of. Now she’s not so sure about all that. She tries to puzzle out what has happened. Was it the incident with the faked assassination? Is it his demand that she have a child? She doesn’t think it’s either of these. Though certainly both contribute, the real difference, whatever it is, centers around the note. Somebody she doesn’t know is watching her for a reason she doesn’t understand. Plus, she’s beginning to understand that Son Luco, her supposed subordinate, knows a lot more about what going on around the Citadel and beyond than the Temple’s High Priestess knows.

She stares at the remains of her breakfast: the crisp brown bread, the slim slices of precious melon, the tiny pot of honey from the hives in the Temple garden. There’s enough food on this small gilt table to feed several people. Yet Paia always eats alone, as the God has decreed she must. She tries to imagine other people in the room with her. Luco, perhaps, dicing up a bit of melon in his fastidious
way. Or the current duty captain, sitting back in her chair, sipping mint tea cooled in the Sacred Well. Paia laughs, but it’s a hollow sound in her big empty chamber. There’s only one chair in the room, the one she’s sitting on. If the God wishes to appear to sit when he comes in man-form, he commandeers hers.

Suddenly, what Paia has accepted as the welcome privileges due her exalted rank take on a more sinister aspect, that of isolating her from the daily life of the Citadel. She has been pampered and revered and protected, but she has also been kept apart, innocent, even ignorant. Perhaps Luco is right to call her spoiled.

So here’s the question, she decides:
of what use is my ignorance to the God?
She knows he does nothing without a purpose.

She’s kept the note in her sweatpants pocket, now folded away with her T-shirt in a bottom drawer where her chambermaid is unlikely to disturb them.

What price survival?
She recognizes the reference to the Temple liturgy, but . . . whose survival does it refer to? Hers?

Paia feels some sort of response is called for, but she hasn’t a clue what it should be or how to go about making it. Should she just scrawl a reply and leave it on the easel where she found the first? Would the note writer be looking for that? What should she say?
“I don’t understand. Please explain further.”
This time, her laugh barely gets beyond a chuckle. She needs guidance, but there’s no one to turn to. Certainly not the God, though the God has always been her guide before. Certainly not his loyal servant Luco, though Luco is probably, after the God, the soul she knows best in the entire world.

She balls up her lace-edged napkin and flings it onto her plate, into the bright juice from the melon, into the melting stain of butter. The chambermaid will be heartbroken. Even so, Paia is tempted to upend the entire mess onto the starched white tablecloth. These are linens from the old days, her father’s days. Then, she was too young to care about what was going on outside the protected world of her nursery or playroom or schoolroom. She overheard bits of it anyway, from her father, from his advisers and staff, from friends who had been invited to take refuge with the
family. And from the House Comp, of course, which was always awake in those days, monitoring the increasingly disastrous progress of world events and reporting on it whenever requested, sometimes when not.

The House Comp.

Paia gets up from the table and goes to her alcove window. The sun is just up, a squat red oval hovering behind a pall of smoke and dust. The smoke is unusually thick to the south. Often Paia sees smoke plumes rising out of the distant hills and notes that something is burning again. This particular morning, it finally occurs to her to wonder what that something might be.

The House Comp.

The central brain of the deactivated House Monitor is still very much alive. Maybe it could tell her. Certainly in her father’s day, it could have. How odd that she has never tried to ask it such things before. But the God must not know. She needs to get up to House’s lair without being seen or followed.

Paia thinks her way through her Temple calendar for the day. She has a Sanctification of the Lambs at 0900, then a Ritual Bathing in the Sacred Well, then Lunch, then . . . maybe after Lunch, before the evening invocation, she can find a moment to slip away undetected to the Library. She hasn’t been there in a long while, she realizes. A very long while. The God has been keeping her unusually busy.

She rings for her chambermaid to clear the dishes and help her dress for the Temple. She feels energized and powerful, as if she’s made a momentous decision, and likes the surge of it in her veins. She paces about the room, humming, and allows the chambermaid to choose the most revealing of all her Temple garments, one she has always hated despite the ingenuity and richness of its design. It consists almost entirely of a shimmering body veil of the finest gold mesh. What little is worn underneath is sewn with thousands of gleaming seed pearls. The chambermaid smoothes a reverent hand across its silky transparent glimmer and unsnaps the thin, jeweled collar. A soft, unconscious sigh escapes her lips.

Paia strips and wraps the studded belt around her hips. The big gold clasp is decorated with the image of the Winged God Rampant. A fringe of strung pearls falls from
mid-belly to mid-thigh. The chambermaid fastens the collar at the nape of Paia’s neck. Under the long golden veil, her perfect breasts and buttocks are bare. The chambermaid fusses around her, straightening the clasps, arranging the folds, touching Paia in tiny intimate ways that could be an accident, could be a caress. Paia wonders if she reaches out, lets her fingertips brush and encircle the chambermaid’s nipples the way hers have just been, what will happen then?

Abruptly sweat drenched, she moves restlessly out of range of the chambermaid’s busy hands. She realizes that it’s happening again, a sudden rising of desire, this time with precious little provocation. Surely the chambermaid has always touched her this way, inevitable during the process of Enrobing. Perhaps the chambermaid thinks she would look better in this very revealing costume if she went to the Temple with her nipples well-formed. Paia is almost tempted to ask her, except of course that the chambermaid has been mute since birth. How convenient for the God, she muses, who otherwise strictly prohibits defectives from serving either the Temple or the Citadel. Not only does the chambermaid have no voice, she has no name, or has never offered one, by whatever means she could. And Paia has never asked. With this realization, desire dies, and her rime of sweat wraps Paia in an actual chill.

Momentarily, she considers rejecting the chambermaid’s choice of garment. But she can’t stand the idea of going through the whole dressing process over again. She signals curtly for the woman to cease her silent fussing. The Priestess is ready. She assumes her most aloof bearing, nods for the chambermaid to open the door, and sweeps majestically down the hall.