The Heretic (11 page)

“Maybe the Silent Brothers keep them away,” Abel said. “I’d be afraid of those gargoyles and wouldn’t set foot here if I hadn’t been ordered to come.”

Again they tied their donts outside, this time under the more promising shade of a large overhang that was constructed to cover the piles of raw material. There was a young boy throwing stones against a post nearby, and Abel promised him a handful of figs to watch the horses. They boy agreed readily enough.

There was a clear path that led through the works to what looked like a central office.

The smell of urea and feces, both human and animal, was almost overwhelming, especially when they passed the settling ponds where the saltpeter was gleaned from rippled sheets of a specialized papyrus.

“Now that’s a holy smell,” Abel said and nudged Golitsin in jest. He’d learned over the past days that the priest did have a sense of humor, albeit a dry one that was barely a beat away from irritation. “Does it make you just want to go and throw yourself in the cure tank waters?”

“I’ll throw you in first,” Golitsin replied. “It’s my duty as a priest to look after my flock, after all, particularly the stubborn and errant ones strayed farthest from Law and Stasis.”

You might be saying something truer than you know,
Abel thought, but he only smiled wryly at the priest and did not reply.

When they entered the main office, a man looked up from scratching out the totting of figures on a clay tablet. He was using a stylus cut from a river reed with a chipped flake of grainy feldspar fixed to its end—perhaps not optimal, but the hardest rock to be found in these regions. He was sitting in a chair behind a long plank table that faced the opening through which they’d entered. There was the distinct odor of flitterdung in the air.

This time Abel took the lead in questioning the gatekeeper. “We’re here to see Director Eisenach,” he said. “We’re told that he is the overseer of the powder plant, although we may be mistaken in his honorific. Does he not hold some sort of military rank?”

A voice from the back of the room cut in. “I’m a colonel of the local militia, if that means anything to you, soldier, but you can call me ‘director,’ that’s fine. I’m not in command of anything here because I happen to own the place. What can I do for you?”

The voice belonged to a man who was of indeterminate middle-age. One glance told Abel that he was no soldier himself, whatever his militia rank might say. Eisenach was not fat and definitely not skinny, but possessed an indeterminate pudginess that seem to be spread throughout his body, not concentrating in any one spot, but puffing out arms, legs, and belly to an equal degree. His complexion was sallow and unhealthy looking. The animated wrinkles around his eyes, and his obsidian-colored eyes themselves, chips of life in the doughface, belied this overall appearance of dullness, however.

He looks like a clever little man peering out from a big brute’s body with those eyes,
Abel thought.

Aye
,
lad,
said Raj.
He won’t be a fool, or at least not the same kind of fool as those guards.

Abel and Golitsin entered the room, and the man at the entrance table, a bird-faced, spindly sort, pushed back his chair, and stood beside it. The long table was topped with neat cakes of what looked, for all Abel could tell, like dung.

The man nodded slightly in greeting as they walked past him, but then turned, his back to his dung piles, and stared after them. Abel could feel the clerk’s predatory stare on his own back.

Eisenach, the director, did not stand. He smiled an indulgent smile and bid them speak.

“We’re from Treville District,” Abel said. “We’ve come to inquire about our district powder allotment. It’s four months’ overdue. We’ve been in constant engagements with Redlanders. We’re running out of firepower.”

“I assume you wouldn’t be here if you were completely out,” Eisenach said.

Abel frowned, but nodded in acknowledgment. “I guess that’s true, sir.”

“And your priestly friend here?” Eisenach nodded toward Golitsin. “Around here, priests and soldiers don’t usually mix so well.”

“This is the prelate’s chief of smiths,” Abel replied. “We get along fine.”

Golitsin gave a quick bow of the head and introduced himself. “Prelate Zilkovsky is as concerned as District Commander Dashian about the powder shortage,” Goltitsin finished. “He sent me to personally convey his unease.”

“Sorry to hear that,” said Eisenach. “But we’ve had problems ourselves, haven’t we, Latrobe?” It took Abel a moment to realize Eisenach was speaking to the birdlike man, who was still standing, leaning against the table behind them. “Tell them what you’re doing there.”

Abel and Golitsin turned toward the man. Latrobe nodded and gestured toward the piles of what looked like dung on the table. “Trying to find out which is the bad batch,” he said.

“The bad batch?” said Abel.

“Of nitercake,” Latrobe replied. “One or more of these has been setting off the explosions.”

“Explosions?” Golitsin said. “What? Here?”

“Yes, here.” Eisenach’s voice came loudly from behind. He’d gotten up and walked up to them while they’d been staring at Latrobe’s dung piles. “It’s shut down production for weeks at a time. We think we’ve solved the problem, and along comes another one. Lost a couple of the damn Brothers, and that indentured overseer we hired—what’s his name?”

“Neimer,” answered Latrobe.

“Neimer lost both his arms from the elbow down,” Eisenach continued. “He won’t be diddling himself blind anytime soon, I don’t imagine.” Eisenach guffawed at his own joke and slapped Abel and Golitsin on the back for sympathy. Abel managed to conceal his surprise, but Golitsin jumped like a frightened springleg. He turned to see that Eisenach, who had merely seemed bloated sitting in his chair, now towered a good two handspans over him—and Abel was no longer a boy, but a man of more than average height.

He stared calmly at Eisenach. “We’re sorry to hear about your troubles, Director, but we need the powder that’s due us. It’s vital to the defense of Treville. Could you curtail some other shipment that’s not so urgent and supply us with ours?”

Eisenach shook his head sadly. “Would if I could, soldier,” he replied, “would if I could. But we’re stretched to the limit as it is, and there’s a shipment due to Lindron itself in ten days.

“It’s quite humid here by the cataracts,” Golitsin suddenly said. “Seems like the explosions would be minimal.”

“And you are an initiate into the making of sacred powder, are you, that you would know such a thing?”

“It seems an obvious thought, but I am not a Powder Initiate. Those priests are assigned only here in Cascade District, of course.”

“Well, I wish you were,” said Eisenach, “because then you could answer that question for me and save Latrobe here a lot of trouble and possibly a missing finger or two if he’s not careful. He’s going to have to test those nitercakes after all.”

“Sir, is there nothing you can do?” Abel asked.

“We do have a bit more to offer than just the heartfelt appeal of our dear prelate,” said Golitsin.

Eisenach’s obsidian eyes seemed to suddenly take on a sparkle. “And what would that be?” he asked. “Although I assure you the matter is entirely out of my hands.”

“My prelate mentioned a double wagon shipment of barley wine that he could get underway the moment the first half of our allotment reached Treville. In fact, I have a bottle sample he sent along.” Golitsin pulled the clay container out from under his cloak and handed it to Eisenach.

So that’s what he was getting out of the saddlebag, Abel thought.

Eisenach uncorked the top, took a sniff, and then threw back the bottle for a great, long swallow. He nodded his approval and took another. “Yes, yes, this is better than I expected, and I’ve heard all about Treville barley wine,” he said. “And two wagonloads?”

“Four,” replied Golitsin smoothly. “Two when we get half, two on final delivery.”

“Nothing up front?” Eisenach asked ruefully.

Golitsin nodded at the clay wine container. “You get to keep that,” he said.

Eisenach frowned at the bottle, then spoke to it, the bottle. “Well, my child, you will have to last me. For there is no hope I can fulfill the request of this young priest and soldier. What gunpowder we have is contracted for and bespoke.”

“We’ll have to try the district military commander, you know,” Abel said to him.

“I hope you will tell him I cooperated as completely as I am able.”

“And the prelate,” said Golitsin.

“Most regrettable,” Eisenach said. “I’m sure he will find a way to help you. I wish you success.”

His sardonic grin as they left the office let Abel know that the director of the powder plant did not expect Abel to receive such help in the slightest.

They found their donts where they’d left them, and Abel handed the young boy his promised three figs. The youngster disappeared down an alley, chased by four others who suddenly emerged from the shadows and stalked toward him.

“You should’ve told me about the wine,” Abel said to Golitsin.

“Zilkovsky said to hold it back as a last resort,” the priest answered. “I wasn’t even supposed to mention it.”

“Anything else you forgot to mention?”

The priest smiled. “You know we’ll never make the garrison, even if we do get across the River before the ferries shut down at sunset.”

“We can try.”

“I have another idea,” said Golitsin. “I was in Bruneberg three years ago, and I had to find a place to stay one evening. Did, too. Very nice place. It’s not too far from here, I don’t think. At least, I remember being able to smell the powder plant from there.”

“You think you could find it again?” Abel asked.

“Yes,” Golitsin said. “It’s a place that’s hard to forget.”

And, true to his word, the priest mounted up and, as if by a sense of direction as sure as a flitterdak’s, led Abel through alley and down lane until, about a quarter-watch later, they arrived at a stable with the symbol of a boat on the River etched above the entrance lintel. Across the street—it was little more than a three-pace-wide passageway—was another door with a similar sign above it.

“What is this place?” Abel asked.

Golitsin nodded toward the stable. “This is where we leave the donts,” he said. “Then we go over there.” He motioned back over his shoulder to the other door.

“And what’s over there?”

“Where we leave everything else,” answered Golitsin.

2

It was not precisely a whorehouse, Abel discovered. There were indeed sleeping cots for rent, and these separate from the other beds for rent by the quarter hour. There was food of a sort to be had, and Golitsin ordered them both a dak steak, a loaf of barley bread, and a jug of wine.

The central hall was filled with rough-hewn tables and chairs, with pedestals strewn about upon which stood women. They were elaborately veiled about the head, but otherwise unclothed.

They swayed to the loud blare of rivercane pipes and some sort of percussion instrument that was made from an even larger, halved reed set on a resonating frame.

Interesting that some form of Hrand’s Planet kahlpipe music has either been preserved or reinvented,
Center intoned.

Do you even
know
what this place is?
Abel asked.
And do you approve?

Oh, we know where you are, lad,
answered Raj.
At least, I do. As to whether or not we approve: that’s really none of our business, now is it?

Damn right it’s not,
Abel answered with an enthusiastic nod of the head that surprised Golitsin, though he took it for assent to something else he was talking about.

A waitress approached, almost as naked as the veiled dancers, and Abel saw Golitsin pay with a clay piece rimmed with hardwood. It was a sum equal to nearly a month of his lieutenant’s pay. Abel waited to see the waitress bring back change, but there was none.

“I can’t pay you back. I…didn’t bring those kinds of funds,” Abel said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Golitsin shouted over the music. “The prelate said to tell you it was your Scout’s bonus.”

“Bonus? For what?”

“Killing Redland devils, I suppose,” Golitsin replied. “Now drink up, because I don’t think you’re going to like the taste of that steak otherwise.”

“Why not?”

“Not sure anybody told these Bruneberg cooks that you’re suppose to put meat in them.”

Abel drank. Then he sat back and for the first time really looked around.

The women were stunning. Or at least their nakedness was. He hadn’t seen a woman undressed since…well, since Captain Blackmore’s wife had flashed her breast at him while he’d stood detail outside one of Blackmore’s all-night officers’ bones games one night. He’d been fifteen. She’d stumbled outside and tried to pull him into the stables. After he resisted, she’d shown him her breasts. After he’d continued to resist, she’d reached under his tunic and grabbed his cock, as stiff as a musket barrel by now.

“He won’t come out,” she whispered. “He’s winning, you know. He’ll never come away when he’s winning.”

And Abel had almost done it, almost followed her into the stable. But another officer who was not Blackmore and who was not winning had stumbled out to relieve himself in the yard.

And, just like that, Captain Blackmore’s wife or concubine or whatever she was had transferred her entire attention to the officer.

Abel heard the pissing abruptly stop. Laughter. And then the creak of the stable door opening. And the sounds from within that he knew were not the sounds of rutting donts, no matter how much they sounded like them.

I won’t stand holding my musket tonight,
Able thought.
I won’t. But which? And how?

He turned to Golitsin. “They have special dispensation for this kind of thing in the priesthood? Special prayers or something?”

“Never heard of Zentrum smiting a brother who responds to his urges now and again,” Golitsin replied. “So long as you don’t break Stasis by, you know, trying something wrong.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know exactly. There’s stories about brothers that like to…do things…you know, with
metal instruments
.”

Abel shook his head. “I don’t know. Tell me.”

“I’ve only heard stories, I mean,” Golitsin quickly replied.

A bit too quickly,
Center said.
Stand by and I will perform a first pass interpolation to determine the priest’s deviancy from norms and specific instances of—

No, no, no!
Abel shouted in his mind.
I don’t want to hear any of that, let alone see it!

Very well.

“But they say Zentrum
finds out
things such as that, if you do them, I mean. That Zentrum knows when a priest breaks Stasis, even then, even doing that.”

Quite possible,
Center said.
But even for a planetary defense computer with powers as immense as Zentrum, that would seem to be one calculation too many.

Golitsin tugged at Abel’s sleeve as the steaks arrived. “How about that servant girl?” he said. “They are for sale, too, you know.”

Golitsin began to flirt with the wench, who, after a moment, allowed him to pull her onto his lap. She cut up his food and fed it to him while the priest begged like a flitterdak chick for the next.

Abel noticed that the knife in her hand was trembling a bit much, as if she were having trouble controlling the urge to plunge it through Golitsin’s upturned chin. But after he finished off another cup of wine, the serving girl pulled the priest away toward one of the curtained doorways in the back of the room that led—well, Abel wasn’t sure where they led. It certainly wasn’t to the sleeping area, which was down a clearly marked separate hallway well-lit with torches.

And so he found himself alone with his wine and half-eaten steak. Golitsin had been right about the lack of meat, but incorrect about the amount of wine it would take before he didn’t care. Even with his head swimming with drink, he could still taste the sawdust filler when he chewed.

Sawdust and meat that wanted to return, he discovered. Return from the slurry of death in his stomach and emerge once more into the land of the living. Abel stood up, stumbled blindly in a direction he had decided might lead to a chamber pot, or at least to an empty alleyway.

And she was there, leading him. Gliding through the crowd, clearing a path in front of him, taking him through a curtained doorway, down a hall, and into a stall where a genuine toilet and washbasin sat. He heard the sound of rushing water somewhere nearby and looked around until he realized it was under him, under the floorboards. He was over the River.

He saw that when she opened the toilet hatch and he looked down fifteen feet into dark, rushing water.

“Don’t fall in, Sweetbread,” said the voice from behind the cerulean veil.

“I can swim,” Abel said. Not well, he knew, but he could. He’d learned, at Raj and Center’s insistence, in the lake at Hestinga.

“It isn’t that,” said the voice. “It’s that the carnadons would have you to pieces before you managed to drown in the cataracts.”

Her tone was playful, but with a trace of contempt, as well.

Not for me,
Abel thought.
More like for all men.

Aye,
Raj said.
You’ve got the right of that.

Abel turned away from the open hole. “Actually, I don’t think I need it now, I—”

That was when the swell hit him. He jerked back, and hung his head as fast as he could over the opening and let rip only just in time for the bulk of it, the spill of it—steak, wine, day’s rations, everything—to rain down in a putrid waterfall to the River below.

“Ah! Ah, by the bones and breasts of the Lady,” he cried out, “let this stop.”

He didn’t notice then, but later realized that this was when it must have happened, that she realized he was either a Scout, knew the borderlands, or was a Redlander himself. For who else would think to call upon Irisobrian at such a time?

He felt her hand upon his arm, softer this time. “Here now, drink some water,” she said. The other hand had dipped a clay cup into a nearby pitcher.

He took it, rinsed his mouth, spat into the River again and again until he’d banished enough of the taste of his own innards to resist the urge to turn once more to the blank hole and start the puking process all over again.

She handed him a bit of cloth. “Wipe your mouth.”

He did.

And then what looked like a weed.

“Chew this.”

He examined it, turned it in his fingers, didn’t recognize the small leaves or the pungent smell.

It is mint, Abel,
Center said.
Probably imported from the Schnee foothills. Quite safe.

He chewed. Good. The nausea faded.

“Can we—I would like to…
not
go back out there,” he said. “I mean, I don’t really have anything to pay you with.”

“You are inside, are you not? You have paid the night charge.”

“But I thought that just covered a pallet.”

A laugh from behind the cerulean veil, this time not contemptuous. Sweetly amused. “Come.”

She led him out and down the hall in the opposite direction from the main hall. At the very end, they passed through a beaded curtain and onto a veranda.

The view was stunning. They were at least a fieldmarch from the near River bank, suspended over water that was raging through the rocks of the cataracts below. Far on the opposite side of the River, nearly a quarter league away, firelights twinkled through the silhouettes of willow and fern trees.

High above, Duisberg’s three moons gathered.

She led him along the veranda, which seemed to encircle the perimeter of the structure. He paid no heed to where they were going, only looked out at the expanse of the River, the white flash of the rapids in moonlight. And listened to the surge of the water pouring through the teeth of the Land.

“Here,” she said, and pulled him through another curtain. The River was gone. He counted three doorways, and then she pushed aside another, a beaten flax curtain, and he followed into a chamber.

It was not what he expected. Not fancied with fabrics or colored papyrus. A makeshift bed. A table with a washbasin. A clay oil lamp.

“This is mine,” she said. “Where I sleep. Where I live.”

“Oh.”

“We can have time here,” she said. “At the other, they will roust you when the sand has run its course through the tumbler. And if you don’t come out, they will use sticks.”

“I don’t want them to use sticks.”

“No, this is better,” she said. “Also, seeing is not allowed there. Here, you can have this.”

She reached up and worked a clasp loose near the back of her neck. Then she carefully began to unwind the veil.

Which gave him a moment to step back and look at her completely for what, he realized, was the first time.

She was of medium height. Her skin had a darker hue, not sun darkened but naturally so. Her breasts were ample, not small or overlarge, her nipples brown and, so far as he could tell, perfect. She smelled of something he had never experienced before. Something wonderful.

Lavender,
said Center.

Lavender.
As she lifted her arms to undo the veil, he glimpsed the undersides of her forearms. Something odd. He looked closer. Three stripes. They were covered with something, something chalklike, to hide them. But here in this light, so near to her, they were quite clear scars. Scars like those he had seen before.

Blaskoye clan scars.

The veil fell away. Her eyes were blue. Lapis lazuli.

“Thon schonet er, damme Blaskoye,” he said to her.

You are very beautiful, Blaskoye woman.

He saw the recognition, the understanding, as she started back.

“You—you speak with an accent,” she said. “You are not a clansman.”

“I am a lieutenant of the Scouts.”

“Ah, of course. A sworn enemy.” He thought he heard the contempt that had vanished seep back into her reply, but this time it sounded as if it were directed at herself. “I should have known. I should have.”

“Yes. An enemy.”

“I had thought you might be…someone else.”

“Who?” he asked. “A Redlander? Is that what you thought? Is that what you are?”

“Not anymore,” she said. She dropped the veil beside her washbasin on the table. “Have you killed many Redlanders?”

“No,” he said. “A few.”

Only one woman. She looked like her. The same eyes, at least. He tried to push the thought from his mind, but could not.

“Have you fucked many Scouts?” he asked her.

This caught her off guard, and she laughed.

Her lips,
he thought.
They don’t tell you about the lips, full like that, behind the veil.
Before he could stop himself, before he even knew what he was doing, he reached up and touched her lips, ran a finger across the softness, pulled his hand slowly away.

“You will be the first,” she said.

And she was the first, his first. He didn’t tell her. Perhaps she knew. It wasn’t pretty. Her bed creaked, and several times she had him slow, stop the noise. If they were discovered, she whispered, he would be dragged away, she would be beaten. So finally they pulled what covers she had off the bed and he took her on the floor, which squeaked less.

And somewhere below them, he knew the River ran, the carnadons gathered. He pushed the face of the Blaskoye woman he’d killed from him mind, willed himself to replace it with
her
face,
her
form.

And almost could do it.

Almost, but not quite. For when he came, it was both the lamplit form of the woman
and
the feel of his hand on the trigger of the Blaskoye musket as he shot the other, shot the Redlander woman, that filled his mind like an explosion of desire, rage, and grief.

There was one solace. This one, this Blaskoye clanswoman or whatever she was, was not dead. She was still very much alive.

“You are young,” she whispered. “You can do it again. Quickly now, do it again.”

Could he?

Yes. Oh yes, he could.

So he did. And this time, it was only her and the River.

* * *

She led him back to the pallet and slipped away before he could speak to her again. He hadn’t even gotten her name. He lay still, unable to sleep, unwilling to converse with Center and Raj. For their part, they respected his obvious wish for quiet and remained silent.

Then Golitsin stumbled into the room—which slept five, although only four pallets were occupied—and collapsed beside Abel. He was making an odd sound, somewhere between a whistle and a moan, and at first Abel thought he was crying. But then he slapped the pallet and let out a guffaw, and Abel knew it was laughter.