Blood Of Gods

CHAPTER 29

It was risky to linger outside the Castle of the Lion, even during daylight hours. Sisters of the Cloth were constantly about, keeping close watch on the weary female populace as they shuffled through their daily routines. The Sisters seemed on edge now, presumably because over a hundred of their numbers had disappeared in previous months. They eyed everyone with suspicion. Civilians who appeared the slightest bit dubious were grabbed and dragged pleading into the castle for interrogation.

Over the seven days she had spent spying on the castle, Laurel Lawrence hadn’t seen a single one of them reemerge.

She was there again, sitting in a rickety chair by the side of the cobbled road, a seller’s cart filled with inexpensive baubles in front of her. The cart had been pieced together out of discarded lumber from crumbling houses; the trinkets had been collected from the belongings of those hiding out in the caverns beneath the Black Bend. Laurel was dressed in her Specter’s garb, a decrepit old woman with tangled hair and filthy skin. She made certain to look each passerby in the eye and call out in her false old crone voice. “Half a copper for a top! A quarter copper for a set of rings! One gold for the elixir of love!”

She had no such elixir, only a capped porcelain vial filled with cheap brandy, but she felt compelled to shout it anyway. With most of the street merchants offering at least one expensive, unbelievable item, it would have been suspicious if she didn’t. She also thought it a small rebellion to sell a love elixir in a city where there were so few men.

The weary citizens passed her by as always, bundled against the cold. Only one woman stopped, a child hanging off each arm. There were heavy purple bags beneath her eyes and her skin was pale. One of the children was sleeping, his rosebud lips pressed against the woman’s neck; the other, a small girl no more than three, sat in the crook of her mother’s right arm, draped in an outrageously large fur blanket. Neither looked in Laurel’s direction.

“Ooh,” the little girl said, pointing at something on the table. Her fingers were sickly and white.

“Yes, Soleh,” said the mother, her voice sleepy. “Which one are you looking at?”

The little girl pointed more exuberantly. “The dolly. It’s pretty.”

“It is, Soleh. Very pretty.”

Laurel was taken aback by the sound of the girl’s name. While it was a relatively common practice for those in and around Veldaren to name their children after the First Families-she had even met a handful of people named Thessaly, the most forgettable of Clovis Crestwell’s children-she had not heard anyone utter the name of the former minister in quite some time. She took a step backward, gazing intently at the mother, but the woman showed no interest in meeting her gaze.

“I want, Mommy,” little Soleh said.

The mother finally lifted her eyes, and Laurel could see a hint of recognition on her face.

“How much for the doll?” she asked.

“Um. . it’s. .,” began Laurel, but she quickly snapped her mouth shut. She’d forgotten her old crone voice. She cleared her throat and said, “two coppers” in a hoarse croak.

The woman squinted at her, cocked her head slightly, and then looked at her daughter. “I’m sorry, Soleh. We only have a half copper left.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid, Laurel chastised herself inwardly.

Little Soleh’s bottom lip jutted out, and her eyes grew watery. “But I want it.”

“We can’t, dear.” Her eyes began darting left and right, her words in a rush. “Please, darling, don’t make a scene.”

“I want the dolly!”

The child’s display had caught the attention of the Sisters lingering nearby. The mother glanced up at them, fear washing over her face. “We can’t, Soleh. I’m sorry.”

The mother started to walk away. The child continued crying.

Laurel snatched up the doll and circled around the cart, this time making sure to limp the way the Specter always did. “Wait,” she called out, and the mother turned. The Sisters were approaching them now, and the mother’s eyes flicked in their direction.

“Here,” said Laurel, placing the doll into little Soleh’s reaching, needy hands. “No payment necessary-seeing the smile on your daughter’s face is enough.” She rustled Soleh’s hair while the girl gathered the doll to her chest and hugged it.

“Th-thank you,” said the mother.

One of the Sisters had reached them, a short girl with arresting blue eyes. Laurel backed away. The Sister placed her hand on the mother’s shoulder and stared intently at her.

“I’m. . I’m sorry for the disturbance,” the mother said. “I was just out for some bread.”

The Sister nodded to her, then turned to face her approaching brethren. She held up her hand. The other Sisters inclined their heads and turned away, heading back to their posts. The mother breathed out a shaky sigh. The short Sister reached up and playfully flicked little Soleh under the chin before gesturing for the mother to be on her way.

“Thank you, thank you,” the mother repeated as she hustled down the road.

The Sister swiveled around and looked at Laurel. Those soulful blue eyes flicked to her cart, and Laurel immediately turned around and limped back toward it. The Sister fell in beside her.

“Thanks,” Laurel whispered out of the side of her mouth.

Lyana, her face obscured by her wrappings, said nothing.

When they arrived at the cart, Lyana performed the ruse of examining all of the baubles resting on the cart’s flat surface. She cast a quick look behind her before asking about what had happened in her hushed, childlike voice. She held up a small tome that was for sale, its leather cover layered with stains and dust.

Laurel leaned forward as if looking at the tome along with her. “Just a scared woman.”

“Why did she panic?”

“Because I forgot to disguise my voice. If she were caught and brought before the judges, we both know what would happen.”

The girl nodded, and Laurel could not suppress her shudder. It was eerie to see Lyana back in her wrappings. Sometimes she found herself wondering if her young companion would fall back into the thrall of her former order.

“How did you forget to alter your voice?” Lyana asked. “You’re always so careful.”

Laurel thought about telling her, but decided to lie. “I’m just tired. I’ll concentrate harder next time. We still have a few hours before it’s time.”

“Good.”

Lyana’s eyes glazed over, and she pivoted on the balls of her feet, carelessly tossing the tome back onto the cart before walking away. Again, Laurel felt unease. She knew it was an act, but still. . when Lyana donned her wrappings, she became a different woman altogether.

The hours dragged by. Few customers approached her cart, their meager coin needed to pay the fish, meat, bread, vegetable, and medicinal sellers instead. That left Laurel with ample time to lose herself in thought. It hadn’t been an easy decision to start coming here, lingering just outside the castle’s portcullis in full view of the frozen corpses that still swayed on the wall. Laurel often felt like a sheep wandering into the lion’s den, causing her to wonder if this was worth the risk of exposure.

Of course it’s worth it. What else can we do?

The situation for those who railed against Veldaren’s new leadership had grown worse by the day. The fountain was now watched, and many who had helped those fleeing Karak’s law, including Ursula and Tristessa, the mother and daughter from the cobbler’s, had been executed before that very fountain, their heads lopped from their bodies while a broken populace looked on. No more communications reached the rebellion, no more stray Sisters, bandits, or other frightened souls entered their midst. The Sisters of the Cloth pressed closer and closer to the Black Bend, putting fear in the hearts of the masses. They began pulling the poor and downtrodden from their homes, hauling them away for judgment. The Judges also spread out their area of search during their nighttime hunts. They were simply getting much too close. Ten days ago the male lion had devoured one of the families living in a ramshackle building on the outskirts of the Bend itself. Those who resided aboveground in the Bend were frightened beyond belief, and though most topsiders didn’t know there was a settlement growing daily beneath their feet, Laurel knew it was only a matter of time before the caverns were discovered.

It had been Karl Dogon, King Eldrich’s bodyguard, who demanded action.

“The Judges may be the swords that stalk the night, and the Sisters the ax that rules the day,” Karl had said, “but the arm that wields them both is a single man. Joben Tustlewhite is the true ruler of this city. Were the mumbling priest out of the picture, it would be left to the acolytes to carry on in his wake, and they are but boys. The cowardly councilmen who remain in the priest’s employ would turn on them in a heartbeat and lock the Judges away for good. We need to kill him. How difficult can it be to take the life of a single man?”

As it turned out, very.

The mumbling priest spent his evenings in Karak’s Temple in the undeveloped far eastern corner of the city. Every morning just after sunrise, a carriage containing twelve Sisters would ride up to the temple to retrieve him. They accompanied him all the way to the castle. The priest would them remain in the castle all day, never once showing his face outside until an hour before sunset. Then he would reappear, again accompanied by twelve Sisters-it was impossible to tell whether they were the same twelve or not-and the wagon would carry him back to the temple, where the acolytes waited for him to arrive. The man was never alone.

For the last seven days, Laurel and her cohorts had charted the man’s movements, hoping that his routine would change. Yet, he always kept the same schedule, the time only shifting because the days were growing longer. At first they thought they could secretly place one of the former Sisters among them, perhaps Harmony or even Lyana, and slip a poison into the cup of cider and brandy they brought him each morning. Pulo insisted that was too risky, as a man of Tustlewhite’s importance would most likely choose his guardians carefully, perhaps even make them stand before the Judges to prove their loyalty. They couldn’t chance attempting the kill close to the castle, for with all the Sisters around, whoever did the deed would be subject to death or, even worse, capture. Also out was attacking the carriage once it reached the Road of Worship. Twenty men wouldn’t be enough to overpower the Sisters before Tustlewhite called the Judges, as Dogon claimed he could. Two hundred men could easily run through the Sisters, but the same problem remained: Should the priest summon the lions before he was killed, whatever size force they brought would be decimated.

And so they watched, and they waited, hoping to find an opening they could use. But it seemed the only thing going their way was the warming of the weather. It hadn’t snowed for almost three weeks now, and though there was still ice on the ground, the snow within the city was almost gone.

Laurel watched as the sun finally drooped near the horizon. The other sellers began packing up their carts, so she did the same. The exhausted women then shoved their wares along the road, flanked by the Sisters. One of them joined Laurel as well, and she needed to check twice to make sure it was Lyana. She breathed a sigh of relief and steered her cart around the corner, allowing the other street merchants and their tails to pull ahead of her. As usual, none seemed to even notice she had fallen behind. Someone always had to be the last in line, after all, and she appeared to be an old woman. By the time she rounded the corner onto South Road, the others were far ahead.

Once out of view of the castle, she and Lyana glanced around to make sure no one was looking and then hastily shoved the cart into a slender alley, cutting between an abandoned apothecary and a smithy. They slid open the side door to the smithy and pushed the cart inside, careful to not make much noise. Then Laurel stripped out of her heavy, beaten shift and fur jacket. The cold made her teeth chatter as she reached below the cart and slipped her arms into a padded jerkin.

“That’s better,” she whispered.

“Ready?” asked Lyana. Laurel turned to her, saw the girl’s expression shift beneath her wrappings. It looked like she was grimacing.

“Ready,” she said.

They shut the door and climbed to the top of the smithy, which allowed them a clear view of the castle and its walls. The roof was the safest place to be at this time of day, as the Sisters were now making their way home and no longer watching the city from above. The Castle of the Lion was just south of the great fountain at the hub of the city, and the area around it had at one time been densely populated. The buildings lining South Road were set close together, their roofs often separated by mere inches. Because of that, when Laurel peered over the edge, it was like gazing at a landscape of pointed clay dunes and flat drab platforms.

“He’s coming,” Lyana whispered.

Laurel narrowed her eyes at the distant castle and saw the wagon exit the portcullis, five Sisters hanging off either side of it. The driver, another Sister, cracked the reins, and the two horses pulling the wagon began to trot. They turned west out of the castle, heading their way.

“Let’s go,” said Laurel.

The two of them hopped from rooftop to rooftop, taking care to keep themselves out of sight, as the Sisters were still present on the streets. At one point Laurel slipped on a slanted roof, sending a clay shingle sliding over the side, where it smashed on the ground below. “Shit,” she muttered, her fingers tightly gripping the roof while she panted. No Sister came to investigate the noise. After a look from Lyana, they kept on moving.

The wagon was a half mile behind them, slowly lumbering along the road. Whenever it came upon another conveyance, the Sisters would stare menacingly at the driver until they gave room to pass. The sun dipped lower. In less than an hour, it would sink below the horizon, and the roars would begin.

Laurel and Lyana didn’t follow the road directly to the fountain; instead, they veered off to the right, heading for the residential sections that sat in the elbow between South Road and the Road of Worship. The buildings were spaced farther apart here, forcing them to descend and walk on the road, but it was actually safer there than it had been on the rooftops. With nearly three-quarters of Veldaren’s residents now gone, either to Karak’s Army, beneath the Bend, or to the grave, the place was nearly deserted. It was also the area where some of the Sisters resided during the night, which meant they would be free to move as they pleased until just before sunset.

Soon the houses ended, and the foundations of unfinished buildings and stacks of rotting timber peppered the landscape. Laurel and Lyanna kept far out of sight, dashing through the field a good half mile away from the Road of Worship. Here the snow was still present, and they ran through the tall grasses, recently uncovered by the thaw, to hide their approach. On the distant road they could see the wagon lumbering along behind them, the Sisters peering out, hands cupped over their eyes to block out the low-hanging sun.

Finally, after running for nearly forty minutes, they arrived at Karak’s Temple. It was an unseemly rectangular structure, five stories high and black as midnight. The onyx lions outside its front entrance were captured in mid-leap, their mouths hanging open in an eternal roar. Lyana grabbed Laurel’s hand, pulling her across the field and toward the building. The wagon was close, almost close enough for the Sisters to see them. Once they reached the small thatch of evergreens that stood on their side of the road, Lyana helped Laurel climb one of the trees before bounding up effortlessly after her.

Finally at a vantage point where they felt it safe to watch without risk of exposure, they sat still and waited.

The wagon pulled up in front of the temple as acolytes stepped outside. The mumbling priest got out of the wagon, what remained of his white hair flapping in the breeze. He pulled his cloak up over his head and approached the boys in red robes. The acolytes escorted him inside. The door closed. The Sisters piled back into the wagon, the driver turned it around, and they plodded away.

The same as every other day.

The sun dipped even lower, half of it now obscured by the mountains to the west. Laurel glanced up at the red lines streaking across the sky. A riotous roar shook the air, vibrating the branches of the tree they were in, knocking bits of ice to the ground. Still she held on, staring out at the blackening structure. She had to remind herself to breathe.

“Laurel, we must go.”

“Not yet,” she replied.

Darkness slowly descended over the land, the last rays of light making the windowless temple look like it was constructed out of living fire. Nothing was happening. Nothing at all. The lion roared again, and Laurel heard it echo all around her.

“Laurel, please. Roddalin will be here come morning. Our time is over.”

Laurel’s head snapped around, and she stared at the girl. “Not yet.”

“We must. The Judges will work their way toward the Bend. If we are not there before then. . ”

Laurel reached out and grabbed the girl by her wrappings with both hands. “Listen to me, Lyana. We must do this. There has to be something we haven’t seen. Something, anything. . ”

“Even if there is something, how would we know? The temple has no windows, Laurel!”

In her panic her voice rose, and Laurel placed a hand over her breast to calm her.

“I don’t know, Lyana. But I need to watch, I need to try. Please allow me that. None have stayed this late already, which means we are seeing things others haven’t.”

“Even if that is nothing?”

“Even so.”

Lyana huffed and sat back against the branch. She unwound the wrappings from her head, gradually revealing the pretty young girl beneath, the girl that looked so much like her grandmother, the dearly departed Soleh Mori. Laurel found herself staring. She’d grown fond of the young sprite. After all, they had so much in common. Neither had a family any longer. All they had was each other.

She was so focused on Lyana that at first she thought the sound that reached her ears was a trick of her imagination. But then she saw Lyana’s eyes widen, and she turned around, inching forward on the branch until she could see the whole of the temple clearly.

The top of the structure rose above their spot in the tree, and it was from there that the sound originated. It was the singing of a plethora of innocent voices. She saw outlines on the roof of the temple in the dying light, and many flashes of red.

It was the acolytes, marching in a circle as they sang Karak’s glory.

She squinted, confused, and then strangely, in the center of the temple above the massive door, a single shutter opened. There stood the mumbling priest, Joben Tustlewhite, breathing in the cold night air. Laurel could see everything inside the room-the bed, the cupboard, the candles, and a writing desk against the far wall. She looked on as the priest turned away from the window, went to the desk, and sat down.

Still, the acolytes sang on the roof.

Lyana was suddenly beside her, head poking out of the branches. “What’s going on?”

Laurel threw a hand over her mouth and shoved her to the side, almost losing her balance and falling out of the tree in the process. She held her breath as Joben stood up, came to the window, and peered out into the oncoming blackness. When he saw nothing, he returned to sit at his desk.

Putting a finger to her lips, Laurel pointed to the ground. Lyana got her message and silently descended the tree, making sure to help Laurel along the way. It was times like these that the last surviving member of House Lawrence ridiculed her own childhood love of girly things. Had she shadowed the boys for even half her youth, she would be much better prepared for the deeds before her.

Their feet touched ground, and they waited a few moments as the acolytes continued to sing. As one song ended, another started. When it became apparent that they wouldn’t be stopping soon, Laurel and Lyana crept back along the tree line and then began running, praying that the boys were too intent on their praise of that bastard Karak to look down and notice them.

None did. They passed by Karak’s Temple and continued to head east, then north into the forest bordering Veldaren, their footfalls crunching much too loudly in the thin layer of icy snow. The sky was completely dark now, the stars shimmering overhead. It was only when the temple was the size of a child’s block behind them that they chanced stopping. Lyana whirled in place, searching for signs of the Judges, and Laurel doubled over and coughed.

“What was that?” asked Lyana.

Laurel spit a wad of phlegm and wiped a stray strand off her chin, which in turn removed some of the caked-on mud that assisted her Specter disguise.

“That, Lyana, was our opportunity,” Laurel said with a tired smile. “Now let’s get going before the lions find us. We need to talk to Pulo and King Eldrich. We have a priest to kill.”