“There are . . . images of other people, faces I knew before his. I think they were kind. But they always seemed a dream. And he was so very real, his every word the Father’s truth. Except he was a liar. What does that mean, Uncle? What of the Father’s love now?” Tears were coming again and she was obliged to use the lace cuffs of her ridiculous dress to wipe them away.
Her uncle drained his glass and waved it at a servant who trotted off to fetch another bottle. “Allow me to impart a secret, my wonderful niece.” He leaned closer, voice dropping to a whisper. “I may cultivate the image of a godless sinner, but I have never doubted that the Father’s gaze rests upon me. I feel it, every day, a great and terrible weight . . . of disappointment.”
She found she couldn’t contain the laugh, mirth and tears mixing on her face.
“But there’s more,” he went on. “Who but the Father could bring me such a great gift? A saviour and a niece on the very night assassins come to kill me. Tell me you do not see His hand in this, and I’ll not believe you.”
He turned at the sound of the main gate opening. “Ah, it seems my counsellor’s gift has arrived.”
Reva rose in alarm at the sight of the approaching group, four guards, pushing a broad-shouldered youth ahead of them. She ran forward as they came to a halt, Arken sporting a blue-black bruise under his eye. “What have you done to him?”
“Apologies, my lord,” the guard sergeant said as Mustor sauntered over. “The boy saw us coming and jumped from the inn window. Wouldn’t listen to reason.”
Reva touched a hand to Arken’s bruise, wincing. “I told you not to wait.”
He gave a sheepish grimace. “Didn’t want to go to the Reaches on my own.”
The Fief Lord coughed in expectation. “It seems,” Reva said, “we’ll be staying with my uncle after all.”
? ? ?
They gave her a maid, a quiet woman with mercifully few questions, but a keenness to her gaze making Reva suspect her principal duty consisted of providing reports to Lady Veliss. She was given more dresses and a suite of rooms on the floor below those her uncle shared with his counsellor. She wondered if there was any significance to the fact that Arken was housed in a separate wing.
“He’s just my friend,” she had insisted in answer to the Fief Lord’s query over breakfast the next day.
“An Asraelin friend,” he pointed out.
“Just like Lady Veliss,” she returned.
“Which gives me a wealth of experience in fending off the jibes of those in this fief who still hunger for independence. If you are to be my acknowledged niece, a certain . . . discretion will be required.”
She chose to ignore the obvious irony of being lectured on discretion by so famous a whore chaser. “Acknowledged niece?”
“Yes. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“I . . . don’t know.” In fact she had little notion of what course to follow next. The priest was a lie, the sword a myth, and the Father’s love . . . “I thought I might journey to the Northern Reaches. I have friends there.”
“Al Sorna, you mean.” There was a sourness to his voice that told her she had finally found someone not in awe of her former tutor. “I don’t think I like the notion of my niece in proximity to that man. Trouble finds him with far too much regularity.”
“So I am your prisoner, now? Kept here to do your bidding.”
“You are free to go where you wish. But don’t you want to stay a while with your lonely old uncle?”
Reva was puzzling over an answer when the Lady Veliss arrived to join them. Breakfast was usually eaten in the large dining hall with the portraits on the walls. Veliss and the Fief Lord had a curious habit of sitting at opposite ends of the long table, obliging them to converse in shouts.
“Any more intelligence to impart, counsellor?” Mustor called to her as she sat down to a plate of bacon, eggs and mushrooms.
“Sadly our prisoner contrived to expire under questioning,” she shouted back, shaking out her napkin. “Too much drum-weed in the mix. All I managed to extract were a few ramblings about some great and powerful ally, able to match the Darkness that perpetuates the Heretic Dominion.” She shook her head. “These fanatics grow ever more deluded.” She cast a critical gaze over Reva. “You’ll need to change, love. Something more formal, and pleasing. It’s the Father’s Day, and we have a service to attend.”
“Service?”
“The date of Alltor’s first prophecy approaches,” her uncle said. “Three weeks hence. The Reader himself will conduct a service in the cathedral on each Father’s Day until then.”
“Services are a perversion of the Ten Books,” Reva said, in remembrance rather than conviction. “No rituals are stipulated in the books. The truly loved need no empty ceremony from the venal church.”
“Did the priest teach you that?” he asked.
She nodded. “And much more.”
“Then perhaps there may be some wisdom to the Sons’ delusions. In any case, perversion or not, I would greatly appreciate your attendance. I think the Reader will find you most interesting.”
? ? ?
She tried on four dresses before finding one Veliss approved of, a black tight-bodiced contrivance with lace sleeves and a high collar. “It itches,” Reva grumbled as they formed a procession before the main gate. A squad of guards lined up on either side and they started forward at a sedate walk, making their way through the gate and into the square beyond.
“Power comes at a price, love,” Veliss replied through bared teeth, maintaining the smile she offered to the townsfolk lining the square.
“What power?”
“All power. The power to rule, to kill or, in your case this fine morning, the power to incite the lust of the old goat you’re about to meet.”
“Lust? I have no desire to incite lust in anyone.”
Veliss turned to her with a quizzical expression, her smile suddenly genuine. “Then I’m afraid you’re in for a lifetime of disappointment.”
Inside, the cathedral seemed a vast wonder of ascending arches and tall windows, the stained glass casting multi-coloured rays across the pillars. The air was thick with incense as they made their way to the balcony on the western wall, the raised seats offering a fine view of the interior. In the centre of the space below stood a podium surrounded by ten lecterns.
It took an age for the whole congregation to assemble, finely attired nobles and merchants in the foremost rows, poorer folk behind, the poorest lining the walls. Reva had never seen such a multitude in one place, and found herself squirming under the weight of so many curious eyes. “Is the whole city here?” she whispered to her uncle.
“Hardly. Perhaps a tenth. There are other chapels in the city. Only the most devout come here, or the richest.”
The sound of a bell pealed forth, stilling the murmur of conversation. After a moment the white-robed figure of the Reader appeared, preceded once again by his five book-bearing bishops. They went to each of the lecterns, placing the books with careful reverence before stepping back, hands clasped together and eyes downcast as the Reader ascended the podium. He surveyed the congregation with a faint smile then raised his gaze to the balcony, smiling at the Fief Lord, at Lady Veliss, and paling somewhat at the sight of Reva, the smile slipping from his lips, making them sag on his aged face like two wet slugs.
That, Reva decided, is not the expression of a lustful man.
The Reader seemed to recover his composure quickly, turning and opening one of the books, his voice strong and clear as he read, “‘There are two types of hate. The hatred of the man who knows you and the hatred of the man who fears you. Show love to both and they will hate you no longer.’”
The Tenth Book, Reva recognised. The Book of Wisdom.
“Hatred,” the Reader repeated, raising his gaze to the congregation. “The World Father’s love, you would think, would be enough to banish all hatred from the hearts of men. But, of course, it is not. For not all men open their hearts to such love. Not all men allow themselves to listen to the words in these ten books, and many who do make only a pretence of hearing their truth. Not all men have the courage to cast off their old ways, to banish sin from their hearts and make a new life under the Father’s gaze. In return for what He offers the Father asks so very little, he offers you love. His love. A love that will preserve your soul for eternity . . .”
Reva’s boredom grew as he droned on, her collar itching worse than before as she tried not to fidget. What am I doing here? she wondered. Showing respectful obedience to an uncle I don’t even know. Alongside his whore no less.
She was seized by a desire to leave, just get up and walk out. Uncle had said she was free to go where she wished, and she wished to be somewhere far away from this old man’s twaddle. But his expression when he saw me, she remembered. Not lust, fear. She had scared him, badly, and she found she wanted to know why.
Although it seemed a century, the Reader spoke for perhaps an hour, pausing now and then to read another passage from one of the books, then launching into another rambling diatribe on the Father’s love and the nature of sin. As a child one of her few pleasures had been those periods of respite when the priest would educate her in the Ten Books, reading every passage with such passionate conviction she couldn’t help but be swept along in the torrent of words. The respite was always brief though, for he would test her after every reading, hickory cane poised to punish any fumbled recitation.