The False Martyr (92 page)

“
You’re probably right,”
Dasen admitted, then remembered what Teth had told him that first
morning here. “But I'm not sure it's the battle. I mean that's part
of it, but she told me it was something she learned from the
Weavers that set her off. I have tried for days to think what it
could be. Do you have any idea? If I can figure out what’s
bothering her, maybe I can help, maybe I can . . . I can get . . .
. I feel like she’s slipping away from me, and I don’t know what to
do.”

Valati Lareno sighed, long
and deep, but did not turn. “Give her time,” he said. “She loves
you and will return to you when the time is right.” Dasen opened
his mouth to ask when that would be, but the valati pushed down on
the latch and was gone before he found the words.

An hour later, Dasen was
standing outside next to a wagon. He was wearing a work dress that
lacked all the adornment of his previous gowns but kept the long
sleeves and high neck. He had a light cloak on over the dress and a
wide-brimmed hat though the rain had stopped just as the valati had
predicted.

“
We should be on our way,
my lady,” the valati disturbed his thoughts. He gestured to the
wagon. It was filled with empty sacks. Another followed behind with
casks clearly meant for water. The same counselors and initiates
from the previous day accompanied the wagons, but past them was
another small crowd. A score of men and a few women, most of them
young, waited in a clump behind the wagons. As Dasen emerged, they
grew silent and watched his every move.

“
What is this?” he asked,
eyes shifting from the wagons to the crowd.

Valati Lareno seemed
surprised. “My lady, surely you meant to follow through on your
promise? I am sorry to say that the governor has made no food or
water available for the people of the camp. Do you still want to
beg it from the people of the city?”

Dasen swallowed hard. He
looked at the empty wagon then the rows of houses with their closed
doors. Men were moving along the streets, mostly workers heading
toward the docks. The people inside those houses and shops would be
awake now and preparing for their day. Many of them had waited
yesterday for him to hand them a cake of bread. How could he now
ask them for food? Then his eyes turned to the young men and women.
They murmured to one another like an audience waiting for minstrel
to tune his fiddle.

“
And them?”

“
Most of them came from
the temple. They saw you last night and want to see how the story
goes. Like many of the young, they want to be a part of history.
They will be equally satisfied if you succeed or fail. They just
want to say they were there when it happened.”

“
I see.” Dasen held his
head in his hands. “Well, I guess, we should start. As you said,
there is a lot to do.” He turned and walked back into the inn. The
crowd erupted into murmurs at his departure. They watched the door
uncertain, some of them waved off the young noblewoman and started
to make their departures.

When he returned, they
froze. He carried a large bag in each hand. “There are more
waiting,” he called to the acolytes standing by the wagons. “Please
load them into the cart.” He turned to Valati Lareno and spoke
loudly enough for his audience to hear. “This represents the food
that I would eat this day. Several of the other guests have agreed
to join me in a day of hunger so that their brothers and sisters at
the camp might eat. Master Tappers has generously doubled our
contribution.”

While the initiates loaded
the bags of grain, beans, and dried fish, Dasen strode across the
street and knocked on the first door. The house was the same as the
dozen others it stood next to in a solid wall that stretched the
length of the block. It was three stories with a shop on the lowest
level – this one selling pewter – and a residence above. The
windows of the shop were shuttered. The door was firmly locked. But
above, the shutters had been opened and windows thrown open to
welcome the cooler air that the rain had brought. Dasen looked up
in time to see a head peek out one of those windows. It withdrew as
soon as he caught it.

“
Good day,” he called to
the window. “My name is Deena Esther. I am accompanied by Valati
Lareno and several of the most devote members of the Church. We are
seeking contributions of food and water for the poor souls starving
at the camp outside of town.”

There was no answer. No
sound of feet moving to open the door, no head poking from the
window. Dasen felt his anger rise at that. “Children!” He stepped
back and yelled up at the window. “Children are starving. They have
not eaten in days. They have no clean water. The Wasting Death is
claiming them. Their bodies are piled onto wagons and left to the
flies. As I stand here,
children . . . are
. . . dying
. Their mothers are weeping.
Their fathers are begging the Order for help. They have done
nothing to deserve this other than to come here. And it is up to us
to help them, to show them that the Order has not abandoned them,
to be the Order’s mercy.”

He paused, took a breath
and looked at the windows of each house along the block. They all
stood open. He stepped back further to address them all. “I know
that your families are hungry. I know that you have little to
spare, but the people at the camp, trades people, merchants, people
just like you, have nothing. I will come to each of the odd
numbered houses today. I ask only that you give up one meal. Give
me the food that you would eat for one meal, the water you would
drink. Tomorrow, I will come to the even houses and ask the same.
You need give up only one meal every two days, but the Order will
make it enough to save those people. I have already pledged that I
will not eat until the people of the camp have been fed, but I do
not ask that sacrifice from you. I will return to the camp each
day. I will give them my meals, and if I receive no others, I will
hold them, will wipe their brows as they die, and will pray that
they are welcomed by the Order for I will know that it has
abandoned us here.”

He returned to the first
door in a huff and prepared to knock. The door came open before he
had a chance. A woman stood before him. She was in her middle years
with a stern face and solid countenance that set Dasen back. “Bring
it here,” she called over her shoulder. A boy a few years younger
than Dasen appeared at the woman’s side with a bulging cloth held
at the corners and a large china pitcher. The woman moved to take
the items, and Dasen saw past her to a wiry older man who was
shaking his head.

“
We trust the Order here,”
the woman explained as she handed the bundle and pitcher to Dasen.
He struggled to take them without dropping a corner of the cloth
and was saved by a young man in a brown robe, who appeared at his
side. “My husband thinks me a fool, but I can’t stomach the idea of
the Order allowing children to starve. I have to believe that It
means us to help any way we can. That’s not much, but it’s what you
asked. We’ll skip our lunch today, and we’ll do so again on Third
Day. May the Order protect you, my lady.” The woman nodded,
accepted her pitcher and cloth back from the acolyte, then closed
the door, leaving Dasen gap jawed on the stoop.

He turned his gaze down
the street and saw that counselors and initiates were already
standing at every other door accepting bundles and pitchers. The
crowd of onlookers were murmuring between themselves and staring.
Dasen approached them. “Good day,” he said as they fell into
stunned silence, looking like children who had been caught spying
on a parent. “Valati Lareno says that most of you have come from
the temple. Is that correct?”

The majority of them
nodded. “Then you have been living off the charity of the Church
for weeks. You and your families have had a place to sleep and food
to eat while your neighbors have wasted away and died. It is your
turn to give back. Help us gather the food. Go with us to the camp.
Help us stop this terrible crime.”

They looked at Dasen
stunned. “My . . . my lady,” one of them finally stammered. “We . .
. we don’t know anything about . . . .”

“
What is there to know? Go
to every other house and ask them to give you the food from one
meal. If they have not received their allotment, ask for their
papers. Collect the food for them and ask for a small portion of
it. Either do this or go back to sitting by the temple waiting for
your own charity.”

The onlookers were
stunned, then slowly, starting with the man who had spoken, they
met Dasen’s eye, nodded, and walked off toward the next block. By
the time, Dasen and the wagons had caught up, they were already
standing at the doors knocking. When those doors went unanswered,
Dasen gave his speech. The response was the same.

What came after was a
blur. Block after block, Dasen gave the same speech. Young men and
women knocked on doors and came away with food and water. They took
it to the counselors and Valati Lareno, who loaded it into the
wagons. Somewhere along their path, two more wagons appeared, then
another. And somehow, those wagons were filled. When they came to
the last of the houses, they had three wagons full of food and two
with casks of water. Dasen stared at them, stunned. The men and
women he had compelled into service murmured among themselves,
asking each other how much they had collected, collectively
attempting to do the impossible math that would explain the
quantity of food that now filled those wagons.

Dasen did the same math
but knew that the sums would never match. They had visited maybe a
hundred homes, had received meager bundles from each, yet those
bundles had somehow turned into three wagons of bulging
sacks.

“
It’s impossible,” one of
the young men proclaimed from the crowd. He moved from one wagon to
the next, inspecting the bags of bread, grain, beans, and dried
meats. “It’s . . . it’s . . . .” He looked toward Dasen in shock.
“It’s a miracle,” he breathed. The other members of his group
turned as one to Dasen and stared, shock slowly turning to
reverence. Their eyes moved slowly from him to the wagons, back to
him, to their own hands, and then to the wagons again.

“
I felt the power,” one of
them whispered, staring at his hands. “I felt it when I handed the
food to the counselors. I felt the bundles growing heavier.” The
others nodded, staring at their own hands as if they had never seen
them before. The word “miracle” echoed through them, bringing their
eyes collectively to Dasen. He felt a cold wave hit him. Then his
eyes wandered to Valati Lareno as a smile revealed his yellow buck
teeth and made his brown eyes sparkle. Another piece of his plan.
Dasen had no idea how he had done it, but he had manufactured a
miracle and laid it at the feet of Deena Esther.

“
The Order works through
her!” a woman proclaimed.

“
She has come to save us!”
a young man added.

“
We all saw it. The Order
has made us part of its miracle, but Lady Esther is the one who did
it. The Order has chosen her to show us the way. Its will is that
we serve her.”

They bowed. Their heads
lowered as one. Dasen felt his stomach churn. The Order had nothing
to do with this, he knew, but that was no longer the point.
“Please,” he said, trying to sound humble, benevolent, and holy all
at the same time. He looked to Valati Lareno. The little man’s
smile broadened, and he gestured for Dasen to continue. “We can all
see that the Order has been at work here. It has responded to the
travesty that has been perpetrated against It. We are, all of us,
Its tools. It has shown us the way, now we must see Its will
fulfilled. I hope that you will now accompany us to the camp to
complete this miracle.”

When the men and women
looked back up, they almost seemed to glow with the power of their
new-found devotion. Dasen did not address them further. He climbed
onto the bench at the front of the lead wagon and ordered the man
driving it to take them out of town. As they pulled out, he heard
his new apostles fall in behind. He could not decide whether to
laugh or cry. He was on his way to sainthood as a woman that didn’t
even exist.

Chapter 50

The 38 –
41
^st
Day of Summer

The saddle was a good
place to think. That did not mean that Cary usually used his
extensive time there for such a purpose. Usually, he spent that
time remembering the woman he had been with the night before or
dreaming of the one he would find when his ride was done. He wished
now that he’d spent more of it thinking about the reports he
carried. Maybe if he’d spent more time wondering why he was
carrying messages between generals and nobles and governors and
kings, he’d have some idea how to untangle the intrigue that had
kept him awake through the night. Something was happening.
Something wasn’t right. There was a plan afoot that Juhn, and
Chulters, and even Nyel did not see. He could feel it, but he could
not figure out what it was.
In the
saddle
, he told himself again,
I’ll figure it out in the saddle.

He had to find his saddle
first. An old Morg led him and the two rangers that were to
accompany him back to the cloak room where they’d entered the
lodge. Now, he just needed to remember where he’d left his things.
The rangers went to the pile of leather seats and harnesses and
picked up the first two from the pile. Cary took his time, not
wanting to reveal where he had hidden his most prized possession.
He found his jacket first then stuffed a fur cloak into his saddle
bag, watching the old Morg to make sure he did not notice the theft
– was it even theft since the Morgs did not believe in ownership?
Finally, while the rangers searched the racks for their woolen
cloaks, seemingly concerned that they had their own cloaks even as
they’d selected the first saddle off the pile, he snuck to the back
of the room and lifted furs until he found his own saddle peeking
out at him like a lost friend.