Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2) (15 page)

Heden looked at the stars.

“Gwiddon told me what happened,” the bishop said.

Heden said nothing. Watched the constellations he knew wheeling slowly overhead through the open roof of the atrium. The ox and plow, the river and maid. Thought only of what a colossal fool he’d been.

“Or rather, told me as much as he knew, which he admitted was very little.”

Heden looked down at his hand, turned it over slowly. Watched the bright, subtle interplay of starlight across the lines on his palm, the hairs on the back of his hand. Saw the sharp shadow his hand cast on the dirt below.

The starlight was bright enough to read by. Even though everything in the atrium was cast in violent white and black, to Heden’s eye it seemed vibrant beyond color. He remembered a girl, a squire, and a hunt for urq under these same skies. Seeing Aderyn’s face half in light, half in shadow. Wishing himself a younger man.

“Is this atrium enchanted?” he asked.

“You’ve never been here before?” The bishop asked.

Heden shook his head.

“No,” the bishop smiled. “No these sculptures require…special light,” he spoke lovingly over his creations, like someone nurturing a delicate flower.

There were something like a dozen glass life-sized sculptures sitting on the dirt of the atrium. Vines growing around their bases.

‘Sculpture’ was, Heden knew, not accurate. They were smooth columns of glass. Bright silver lines and points in each column glowed and caught the starlight creating powerfully lifelike images within. Unmoving, but seemingly possessed of motion. Men and women caught in an instant of action; talking, breathing, smiling, laughing.

Under normal light, torchlight, sunlight, moonlight, all one saw was transparent glass. Perhaps some smoke inside the glass. But under starlight, the glass disappeared and figures of sliver light sprang forth.

Heden looked up at the stars again. Wondered where the sun was.

It was just past noon by his reckoning.

And he thought he could walk in here and kill this man. This old man. This villain who’d given the order that destroyed the Green. Killed everyone at Ollgham Keep. This old man who’d blotted out the sun at midday just over this spot so he could work on his starlight images. Maybe the sun never shone here. Was he that powerful? To simply maintain such an alteration without any further effort?

The figures looked so real. Heden knew there was careful technique in crafting the starlight images, though he did not understand it. The man was an artist as well.

“Rector Ullwen,” Heden said, looking at one sculpture. The only one he knew. Ullwen’s sharp jaw and tiny point of a beard instantly recognizable. He’d met the man several times as a Sunbringer.

The bishop glanced over to the sculpture of Ullwen, and went back to his current work. Bent in close to the glass of an unfinished image. “Yes,” he said, caressing the glass in some arcane manner. A pinpoint of light flared and moved deep within the crystal. “I’m glad you recognize him.” The bishop’s voice was quiet and distracted. Heden wasn’t important. Only the image in the glass. “I paint them from memory, you see. Quite a tricky medium to work in, memory.”

He straightened, stretched his back, and looked at Heden. “One is never sure, once the work is done, whether one remembers the man or the image in the glass.”

“Mmm,” Heden said, trying to avoid the bishop’s gaze, for fear the older man would see something of the difference in Heden.

He’d come into the city determined to kill this man. A man who’d infiltrated the top of the country’s largest church. Now, after the fall of Aendrim, the most powerful church in Vasloria. Was it all politics? He’d convinced himself of that on the way back, after leaving the forest. Convinced himself that this was just a normal man, schemed his way to the top, unable to command the power of a god.

“Do you…,” he ventured looking again at the stars, looking for the sun, “reveal the stars when you come here or is this…?”

“Oh no,” the bishop waved, dismissing the idea. “It’s always like this here.” He smiled, stepped forward, his tall, thin frame supporting his bishop’s robes like a wooden rack.

Gwiddon said it. The man did not serve Cavall. Where did his power come from? There were few options. Cyrvis and Nikros, the Black Brothers were the most likely. Where was Cavall? His greatest saint, Llewellyn whose church this was? Why did they allow this man to….

That way led madness, Heden knew. He’d long ago given up understanding the politics of the gods and saints. Well before he’d met Lynwen.

The bishop approached Heden and removed a small holly sprig from his robes. Extended it to Heden.

Heden knew what it was, even before the bishop removed his hand. Nine milky white berries. Dywel, Cadwyr, Idris, Perren, Nudd, Brys, Isobel…Kavalen. Taethan. All dead. A three thousand year old tradition smashed. Taethan.

Taethan…

He took the holly from the bishop’s hand, looked at it under the starlight.

“I’ll…understand if you don’t want to talk about it,” the bishop said. The bright white of the stars contrasted and conspired with the inky blackness to make the bishop’s face seem more angular, more aqualine than it was.

Was he trying to be compassionate? Or did he simply not care. Worse, most frightening, was he actually compassionate? Which would make him the greater villain? Did it matter?

Heden was prepared, in any event.

“There’s not much to talk about, your Grace,” he deflected. He was good at that.

A practiced liar
, Sir Dywel, the weasel, had called him.

That was unfair, Heden thought.

“Many things went unspoken between Gwiddon and I,” The bishop said. “I know the man has long been your friend…,” Heden laughed inwardly at this. “And I feared asking him questions he would feel compelled to answer, thereby breaking confidence with you.”

Heden said nothing.

“If…if you had to…,” the bishop started. Heden knew what was trying to say.
Let him say it
, he thought.

“If you had to kill them,” the bishop finally ventured. “I understand. I trust you.”

Heden only nodded. Looked at a light sculpture of a woman. “Thank you, your Grace,” he said.

“He said something about an army of urq.”

Heden nodded. “Yes your Grace.” He glanced at the bishop. Tried to keep normal eye contact. Not act suspicious.

“Should we be alarmed? Do you have any idea where they went?”

This, Heden knew, had to be a question of some import. For he reasoned the army of urq was part of some plan. Thwarting the Green was part of that plan. Unleashing the dark power of the Wode on the lands of men. The sack of Ollgham Keep was, he suspected, just a test. 

“No your Grace. They sacked a small town, and retreated back into the forest best I can reckon.

The bishop nodded, as though this confirmed a suspicion. He changed subjects. Casually ran his hand down a light sculpture, admiring his work in the starlight.

“Am I right in recalling that you know the Duke of Baed?”

“Yes, your Grace,” Heden said, taken somewhat off guard by the bishop’s question.

“Personally?” the bishop asked.

“Yes, your Grace,” Heden said. This seemed safe territory and so Heden relaxed a little. “He, ah…he counts me a friend, I think. He taught me a lot about…,” Heden was going to say ‘warfare,’ but as it came to him, he realized he knew nothing about war. The Duke had taught him more important things. “A lot about living, your Grace.” And how much of that had Heden done, these past 3 years? These past 20? How little accomplished. 

“What kind of man is he, would you say?” The bishop’s voice took on a pragmatic, straightforward tone. As though asking a servant the weather.

“That’s something of a…broad question, your Grace.” Heden squirmed, wishing to get out of the atrium now. Being in the presence of this man was difficult for him.

The bishop nodded. “Is he a man of his word?”

Heden shot the bishop a look. Who could ask that of Baed?

Baed was, Heden knew, a touchy subject among the great and good of Corwell. Under his command, the armies of Vasloria held back the Army of Night. Stopped them flooding out of Aendrim after they’d taken it.

But he was a Duke of Graid, not Corwell, and now that same strategic and tactical brilliance was aimed at taking the land of Aendrim back. The king of Graid had, it seemed, promised all Aendrim to him privately. And now Baed intended to take it and install himself King. Tull, Farnham, Rhone, their regents had enough to worry about. But Richard, King of Corwell was cousin to Edward, King of Aendrim. Cousin and close friend. He considered Aendrim his by right.

And the army Baed had commanded, had been Richard’s.

“His word is inviolate,” Heden said. There were few men in all Orden Heden trusted as much.

“Would you describe him as ambitious?”

This was a strange question, and one that made Heden think in spite of himself.

“I’d not have said so, your Grace,” he replied. “Not before the Oracle.” The tower of the Oracle at Adsalor was a powerful strategic asset. One the Army of Night controlled for three years. It lay at the border between Corwell, Graid, and Aendrim. Richard assumed it was his once the Army of the Star Elves retreated.

Baed took it. It marked the beginning of his steady march toward Aendrim’s ruined capital of Exeder.

“He never seemed to want anything but to do his duty,” Heden remembered. “But the man is a Duke.” Kings in Vasloria spent much more time managing their powerful, combative, scheming Dukes than they did worrying about rival kingdoms.

“Mmm,” the bishop said. He changed the subject.

“Gwiddon predicted you would retire the Arrogacy upon your return.”

“I considered it, your Grace,” Heden said.

“It is not for me to say, your station granted by Saint Lynwen and nothing to do with me, but I would be sad to lose so effective a tool.”

Heden didn’t know what he was anymore. He didn’t feel like an Arrogate anymore. Felt more like a priest, but he belonged to no church.

“I don’t know…,” he said, and suddenly felt incredibly weary. Was there any way to know? Any way to fight this man? There was so much Heden didn’t know, and he’d never been the best at figuring things out. He wanted to crawl back to his inn and shut the doors and waste away. But there was Vanora, if she were still there.

She would be, Heden knew. He knew it like he knew his own name. She was waiting for him. He wasn’t going to let her down.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he admitted. “It’ll be a while before I’m any use to anyone.” He wanted to leave this place and have the bishop forget about him. “I should go,” he said, and half turned to leave.

“If it’s any consolation,” the bishop said. “They couldn’t have been much use to anyone up there.”

What?
Heden thought. He stiffened, tried to hide his anger. Turned back to the bishop.

“Nine knights, three thousand years,” Bishop Conmonoc explained. “None of us had ever heard of them. I can’t imagine them any great loss. I know you don’t like knights, perhaps in this case your distaste was justified.”

Heden, mouth open slightly, stared at the bishop. The man had just lied to him.
None of us had ever heard of them
. Heden knew this was a lie. Knew he’d given the order. But there was no trace, no hint, not an iota of an inkling in the bishop’s bearing that he was lying.

Heden has a preternatural ability to tell when someone was lying to him, honed over years as priest and Arrogate. This man had just lied to him, and he couldn’t tell. It struck him dumb. What did it mean? What power did Conmonoc wield and from whence did it come? Heden suddenly knew some degree of fear. Of the unknown. Of the power behind the man before him.

The bishop’s expression changed. Something happened behind his eyes, his muscles shifted under his skin, a reptilian adjustment. Heden blinked.

The man had recognized Heden’s recognition. The bishop knew what Heden knew.

Heden took a deep breath. Steeled himself. Gave the bishop a look straight out of the mud and rain outside the Green Priory.

Did a sneer cross the bishop’s face?

“Perhaps they deserved to die,” he said, testing Heden.

Heden would not be baited. The anger was there, but more, the drive. He would bring this man down. Fight whatever cancer grew in the church he’d once belonged to. Did the bishop have any idea the power Heden could array against him, if he was patient? No. The 80-year old bishop underestimated him, always had. But then, Heden had done the same to him. There was no way to know the bishop’s true power.

“Someone thought so,” Heden said, eyes locked on the bishop. A flying insect grazed his neck. He brushed it away.

“I hope someday you discover,” the bishop said, raising an eyebrow, making some subtle joke only he understood, “why you, and you alone, had to go into the Wode.”

Heden pulled his hand back and saw the insect clinging precariously to a finger. Six legs gripped his index finger as though afraid he might casually kill it, or fling it away.