The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (6 page)

Her smile broadened into a smirk.  “All right, so she was a mortal follower of Brigydde back when the Great War of Empires was brewing—back when everyone and their uncle was trying to destroy Lisalhan.”

At her prompting look, Cob nodded; he knew about Lisalhan.  It was the empire that used to exist where the Lisalhan Sea was now, before the stellar locusts and the Seals.

“
Well, not all the Lisalhanians sided with their leaders—the nightmare-priests and sorcerers of Daenivar the Terror.  Most of them were just civilians.  Farmers, merchants, craftsmen, like people anywhere.  But since they had been ruled by the God of Nightmares, the other empires considered them tainted, infectious.  Potential carriers of the dream-plague Daenivar had used to weaken his enemies.

“
So when the Lisalhanian peasants tried to escape the war, the other empires' armies harassed them, herded them into camps—sometimes killed them.  Breana had joined the Altaeran army to try to make a difference, and she stood up to her commander when she was ordered to execute some peasants.  So she was executed too.”

She paused for breath, dark eyes fixing on his.  He forced himself to nod again, trying not to match her words to his flying-dream memories: the crushed towns, the burning Pillar.  Lisalhan destroyed.

“After Breana's martyrdom,” Fiora continued, “Brigydde claimed her soul and raised her as an attendant, to intercede where she could not.  So now we Breanans protect the other orders, keep the peace, oppose the mighty and defend the weak—which is why the Empire can't tolerate us.  We are their dedicated enemy.

“
But they control the Heartlands.  There aren't enough of us to change that, and haven't been for a long time.  And so we're forced to hide behind the skirts of the Brigyddians, because the Imperials know the populace relies on them and so won't move to eradicate them.  The Brigyddians are the only reason the whole Trifold hasn't been wiped out.

“
So us Breanans are stuck.  Some live with our parents if they’re in the faith, but you can’t live alone up there as a young woman.  You’re not allowed.  The rest of us congregate here.”

“
Can’t live alone as a young man either,” said Cob, thinking of the Army recruiters.

“
I suppose not.  But the Imperial Army won't take women.  You can join the Army and work it from the inside, but I'd get taken as a ward of the Empire and married off as some fat old man's third wife.”

Cob blinked at her, then decided not to touch that last comment.  “Uh.  What d’you mean, ‘work it from the inside’?”

Fiora shrugged.  “This isn’t just a women’s faith.  You met Jasper, right?  We have plenty of men.  They can’t be Brigyddians because they can’t be mothers, but the other ranks are full of them.  Almost all of the Breanan men join the Imperial Army, and some of us girls too, if we can pass for boys.  We’re trying to win it to our side, since we can't oppose it directly.”

“
You’re not worried about the Inquisition?”

“
We’re aware of the dangers.”

Privately Cob doubted that, as he doubted the Trifolders could have any hold over the Gold Army.  From what little he knew, it was by far the most mage-dominated of the three Imperial Armies—which really meant mentalist-dominated—and it oversaw the arcane communication network that linked the Imperial provinces together and monitored them for threats.  He and Morshoc had run afoul of its beacons on the Imperial Road, and though he had successfully resisted Gold mind-probes and portal-magics afterward, it was only because of the Guardian.  Even then, he sensed that resisting could have destroyed him.

In the Crimson Army, the Inquisition visited rarely and was feared like the plague.  In the Gold, it would be ever-present.  He wondered if any of the Trifolders who had joined up still owned their own minds.

“
It doesn’t seem smart,” he said.

She wrinkled her nose at him.  “Well, what do you suppose we should do?  Sit back and wait for things to change on their own?  They won’t—not in the direction we want them to.  So we have to take action.  Not everyone here gets that, but I’d have thought the Guardian would.”

“The Guardian and I don’t talk much.”

“
And you don’t agree?”

“
I just wanna be free of this.”

“
As long as you’re in the Empire, you’re not free.  No one is.”

He gave her a flat look.  He had heard those words from too many slaves to count—though Maevor had said it most often, rabble-rouser that he was.  What Maevor would raise up in the Empire’s place, he had never said, though Cob had always suspected him of being a Shadow Cultist and thus a proponent of unrestrained thievery.  While changing things from the inside sounded better than overthrowing the Empire in the name of the Shadow God, he did not see how a bunch of goddesses would be better than the Light.

“That’s hog-crap,” he said.  “No one here’s a slave.”

“
Just because everyone enslaved for a ‘crime’ get shipped to the Crimson Army doesn’t—“

“
So everyone here is free.”

“
We are not!”

“
You’re alive.  They let y’live down here even though you’re heretics, or up top if you’re bein’ productive.  If you follow the law, you don’t get enslaved.  If you act like a citizen, you get treated like one.  Am I right?”

“
Follow the law?  Our men can't even go into the city—you should know!  We all have to hide or the Empire takes us!  Marries us off, conscripts us—”

“
You jus’ said you people get married or volunteer y’selves.  What’s the problem?”

Her hands clenched around her mug, and for a moment he thought she would fling it at him.  There was a flinty gleam in her eyes that did not go away, even when she forced herself to relax.  “It’s not freedom if you don’t have a choice,” she said through her teeth.

“Y'could leave.”

“
This is my home!  —Wait.  Did you just call us heretics?”

Cob flinched.  Somehow he could not control his tongue when it came to that word.  At least the dining room had cleared out somewhat; there were a few women knitting on a couch while several trainees ate at another table, but no one was close or visibly paying attention.  Fumbling for an excuse, he glanced to Arik—who had finished licking the plates clean and now watched him with sad, disappointed eyes—then back to Fiora.  “Uh,” he said, “from the Empire’s perspective…”

Her eyes narrowed, then widened in horror.  “That’s why you want the Guardian out?  You’re a—“

“
Wait, wait, listen,” he said, holding his hands up defensively.  She glared at him but paused.  In a lower voice, he continued, “Yeah, I’m of the Light.  But I’m not your enemy, all right?  If I was, I wouldn’t be here, I’d be on the pilgrimage.  I jus’ wanna be free too.”

For a long moment she just stared at him.  Then she sighed and planted her chin in her palm again, skepticism written clearly on her face.  “Fine.  The wards let you in, so you have no ill intent.  But you’re crazy.  Carrying the Guardian and you can’t get it through your head that the Imperial Light is trouble?”

“The Imperial Light ended the Long Darkness—”

She laughed shortly.  “So the stories say, but that was what?  Two hundred years ago?  Who remembers that?  Who can say if it really happened, or if it’s just some legend the Emperor spread around to make himself look good?  You said you’re from Kerrindryr, right?  That means you’re not a proper Imperial.  You don’t live in the Heartlands, you don’t know—“

“Fine, I don’t know, all right?  I don’t wanna fight.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it and nodded curtly.  “Right.  Well.  Look, it’ll probably take a while for them to set up for the cleansing and get Sister Merrow back.  I can take you the guest area so you can nap…”

Next to Cob, Arik nodded vigorously, then unleashed a massive yawn.

Cob shrugged.  He felt irritable now, and far from tired.  Even if he had been exhausted he did not know if he could sleep in a heretic place.

“Or I could show you around,” said Fiora.  “If you’re bored.”

He took in the bland expression on her broad, rosy face and scowled.  “Y’don’t have to be my watchdog.”

“Are you sure?”

Arik heaved from the bench and hauled him up by one arm before he could speak.  “Go.  See the sights,” the skinchanger said, smiling widely, and nudged him around the table toward Fiora.  “I will find a place to sleep.”

“Two chambers north, then one east,” said Fiora, pointing.

The big skinchanger nodded to her, thumped Cob on the back, then ambled off in that direction.  Cob glared after him, face heating; from what Arik had been saying before, he could guess what ‘sights’ he meant.

Not gonna happen
, he thought as he turned to the girl.  She planted her hands on her hips and stared up at him as if calculating how best to take him down, then cracked a smile.

“
Come on,” she said.  “Let’s see if we can’t educate you about the Empire.”

“
Jus’ kill me now,” he mumbled.  She grinned and grabbed his arm, and with great reluctance, he let himself be led onward.

*****

By the time the tour ended, Cob was ready to leave.  To what destination, he did not know, but staying in the stifling confines of this faux crypt being lectured at by someone who was far too focused on Imperial round-ups and massacres of civilians, desecration of temples, rapes of priestesses and public burning of heretics was more than he could stand.

Not that he disbelieved Fiora’s tales.  She read most of them straight from the plaques on the walls, and he had marched with the Crimson Army; he had participated in the Fellen riots.  He knew what could happen when soldiers or slaves slipped their leashes.  By Fiora’s telling, the Gold Army did not bother with restraint.

But she rarely said ‘Golds’.  More often, she said ‘Imperials’.  And despite the weight of the Guardian on his shoulders, Cob still considered himself one of them.  It was bitter to hear such vitriol repeated over and over and not be allowed a response.

They were in an armory chamber—the third so far, all uncomfortably well-stocked—when a plump priestess cut into Fiora’s monologue about historical Trifold uprisings with a brisk, “The Mother Matriarch sends for you, Guardian.”  Cob looked to her with relief, and she gave him a slight smile.

Fiora glanced at Cob.  He took a deep breath and tried to master himself.  Politeness dictated that he thank her for her time, but what he really wanted was to take her outside and bury her in a snowdrift.  Maybe pile rocks on top.

He opened his mouth to speak.

“Go on, and good luck,” Fiora preempted.  “I only hope you find the freedom you desire.”

A muscle under his eye twitched.  He wanted to stay angry at her, at all of them, but they made it difficult.  Instead, he grunted and started down the hall after the priestess.  Fiora’s footsteps followed him.  There were no doors to slam in his wake—no doors here at all, only a few privacy-curtains—so he had to tolerate her pursuit.

All the life and bustle on the way back annoyed him.  The crypt plan was so straightforward that he hardly needed a guide, but he kept on the priestess’s heels as they cut through a crowded kitchen and dining hall and skirted past trainees in a sparring room.  Everyone stared after him as he passed, the same way they had stared when Fiora led him through the first time.  He wanted to yell at them to quit it, to just leave him alone.

But it had been his idea to come here.

Arik bounded up as he and his guide turned a corner toward the ritual room.  The skinchanger’s wide smile vanished as he caught the look on Cob’s face, but he fell into step just behind him, and with his presence Cob managed to let his temper go.  He felt more secure with the skinchanger at his back.

Ahead, the ritual room had gathered its own crowd.  Priestesses in brown and men and women in grey or red parted for him as he stalked in.  On the dais, the altar had been set with unlit candles, and three women stood behind it: the Mother Matriarch in her bell-trimmed dress, her thin hands wrapped around an etched bronze torch; Sister Talla in her armor and holding a ceremonial silver hammer; and a lean woman in red chainmail, her dark hair tied back in a severe tail, her expression stiff.  Cob assumed she was Sister Sentinel Merrow.  The sword she clasped was not steel but old, pitted iron.

“Be welcome, Guardian,” the Mother Matriarch said, her blind eyes finding him unerringly.  “Please, join us here.  Your friend may await you below.”

Cob glanced back to Arik, who gave him a close-mouthed smile.  The skinchanger was obviously nervous, his shoulders hunched and his stance edgy, but he folded down to the mat and Cob ruffled his hair reassuringly.  Someone in the crowd made a sound of amusement, but the skinchanger beamed, which was worth it.

Resolving to ignore everyone else, Cob headed up the dais to the three leaders.

“
Please remove your tunic and lay down on the altar,” said the Mother Matriarch.  “I apologize for any discomfort, but padding and clothing would interfere with our work.  We are not sorcerers, and thus must minimize the barriers between our power and your bonds.”