Blood of the Fold

Chapter 25

Only the small, street-side window coated with ancient layers of dirt, and an open door in the back, lit the dim, dusty room, but it was enough to see a path through the cluttered mounds of sloppy rolls of winding sheets, rickety workbenches, and simple coffins. A few rusty saws and planes hung on one wall, and a disorderly stack of pine planks leaned against another.

While people of means frequented undertakers who provided guidance in the selection of ornate, expensive coffins for their loved ones, people with precious little money could afford no more than the services of simple gravediggers who supplied a plain box and a hole to put it in. While the departed loved ones of those who came to gravediggers were no less precious to them, they had to worry about feeding the living. Their memories of the deceased, however, were no less gilded.

Verna and Warren paused at the doorway out into a tiny pit of a work yard, its borders steep and high with lumber stacked upright against a fence to the back and stuccoed buildings at each side. In the center, with his back to them, a gangly, barefoot man in tattered clothes stood facing away from them as he filed the blades of his shovels.

“My condolences on the loss of your loved one,” he said in a gravelly but surprisingly sincere voice. He resumed drawing the file against the steel. “Child, or adult?”

“Neither,” Verna said.

The hollow-cheeked man glanced back over his shoulder. He wore no beard, but looked as if his efforts at shaving were rare enough that he was close to crossing the line. “In between, then? If you’ll tell me the size of the departed, I can work a box to fit.”

Verna clasped her hands. “We’ve no one to bury. We’re here to ask you some questions.”

He quieted his hands and turned around fully to look them up and down. “Well, I can see that you can afford more than me.”

“You aren’t interested in Ja’La?” Warren asked.

The man’s droopy eyes came a little more alert as he took another look at Warren’s violet robes. “Folks don’t fancy the likes of me around at festive occasions. Spoils their good time to look on my face, like it were the face of death itself walking among ’em. Aren’t shy about telling me I’m not welcome, either. But they come by when they’ve need of me. They come, then, and act like they never turned their eyes away before. I could let ’em go pay for a fancy box what the dead won’t see, but they can’t afford it, and their coin don’t do me no good if I grudge ’em their fears.”

“Which are you,” Verna asked, “Master Benstent, or Sproul?”

His flaccid eyelids bunched into creases as his eyes turned to up her. “I’m Milton Sproul.”

“And Master Benstent? Is he about, too?”

“Ham’s not here. What’s this about?”

Verna bowed her mouth in a nonchalant expression. “We’re from the palace, and wanted to ask about a tally we were sent. We just need to be sure it’s correct, and everything is in order.”

The bony man turned back to his shovel and stroked the file across the edge. “Tally’s correct. We’d not cheat the Sisters.”

“Of course we aren’t suggesting any such thing, it’s just that we can’t find any record of who it was you buried. We just need to verify the deceased, and then we can authorize payment.”

“Don’t know. Ham done the work and made out the tally. He’s an honest man. He wouldn’t cheat a thief to get back what was stole from him. He made out the tally and told me to send it over, that’s all I know.”

“I see.” Verna shrugged. “Then I guess we’ll need to see Master Benstent in order to clear this up. Where can we find him?”

Sproul took another stroke with his file. “Don’t know. Ham was getting on in years. Said he wanted to spend what little time was left to him being with his daughter and grandchildren. He left to be with them. They live downcountry somewheres.” He circled his file in the air. “Left his half of the place, such, as it is, to me. Left me his half of the work, too. Guess I’m have to take on a younger man to do the digging; I’m getting old myself.”

“But you must know where he went, and about this tally.”

“Said I don’t. He packed up all his things, not that that was much, and bought himself a donkey for the journey, so I reckon it must be a goodly distance.” He pointed his file over his shoulder toward the south. “Like I said, downcountry.

“The last thing he told me was to be sure I sent the tally to the palace, because he done the work and it was only fair that they pay for what was done. I asked him where to send the payment, as he done the work, but he said to use it to hire a new man. Said it was only fair what with him leaving me on such short notice.”

Verna considered her options. “I see.” She watched him take a dozen strokes on his shovel, and then turned to Warren. “Go outside and wait for me.”

“What!” he whispered heatedly. “Why do you—”

Verna held up a finger to silence him. “Do as I say. Take a little walk around the area to be sure . . . our friends aren’t looking for us.” She leaned a little closer with a meaningful look. “They might be wondering if we need any assistance.”

Warren straightened and glanced to the man filing his shovel. “Oh. Yes, all right, I’ll go look and see where our friends have gotten to.” He fumbled with the silver brocade on his sleeve. “You won’t be long, will you?”

“No. I’ll be out shortly. Go on now, and see if you see them anywhere.”

After Verna heard the front door shut, Sproul glanced over his shoulder. “Answer’s still the same. I told you what . . .”

Verna produced a gold coin in her fingers. “Now, Master Sproul, you and I are going to have a candid conversation. What’s more, you are going answer my questions truthfully.”

He frowned suspiciously. “Why’d you send him out?”

She no longer made an effort to show him a pleasant smile. “The boy has a weak stomach.”

He took an unconcerned stroke with his file. “I told you the truth. If you want a lie, then just tell me and I’ll build you one to fit.”

Verna shot him a menacing scowl, “Don’t you even think of lying to me. You may have told the truth, but not all the truth there is to tell. Now, you are going to tell me the rest of it, either in exchange for this token of my appreciation—” Verna used her Han to snatch the file from his hand and send it sailing up into the air until it vanished from sight. “—or in appreciation for my sparing you any unpleasantness.”

Whistling with speed, the file streaked out of the sky to slam into the ground, burying itself a scant inch from the gravedigger’s toes. Only the tang stuck above the dirt, and that glowed red. With angry mental effort, she drew the hot steel up in a long, thin line of molten metal. Its white-hot glow illuminated his shocked expression, and she, too, could feel the sizzling heat on her face. His eyes had gone wide.

She waggled a finger, and the ductile line of glowing steel wavered before his eyes, dancing in time with her finger’s movement. She swirled her finger and the hot steel coiled around the man, holding mere inches from his flesh.

“One twitch of my finger, Master Sproul, and I bind you up in your file.” She opened her hand, holding her palm up. A howl of flame ignited, hovering obediently in the air. “After I have you bound up, then I will start at your feet, and I’ll cook you an inch at a time, until you give me the whole truth.”

His crooked teeth chattered. “Please . . .”

She brought the coin up in her other hand, and showed him a humorless smile. “Or, as I say, you can choose to tell me the truth in exchange for this token of my appreciation.”

He swallowed, eyeing the hot metal around him, and the hissing flame in her hand. “It seems I do recall some more of it. I’d be most pleased if you’d let me set the story straight with the rest I’m now remembering.”

Verna extinguished the flame above her hand, and with an abrupt effort, flipped the Han’s heat to its opposite, to bitter cold. The glow left the metal like a candle’s flame being snuffed. The steel went from red hot to icy black, and shattered, the fragments dropping around the stiff gravedigger like hail.

Verna lifted his hand and pressed the gold into it, closing his fingers around the coin. “I’m so sorry. I seem to have broken your file. This will more than cover it, I’m sure.”

He nodded. It was likely more gold than the man could earn in a year. “I’ve got more files. It’s nothing.”

She laid a hand on his shoulder. “All right, Master Sproul, why don’t you tell me what else you remember about that tally.” She tightened her grip. “Every last bit of it, no matter how unimportant you consider it. Understand?”

He licked his lips. “Yes. I’ll tell you every bit. Just like I said, Ham did the work. I didn’t know nothing about it. Said he had some digging to do for the palace, but nothing more. Ham’s the closemouthed sort, and I never paid it no mind.

“Right after, he broke it on me, real sudden like, that he was quitting, and going off to live with his daughter, just like I told you. He was always talking about going to live with his daughter, before he had to dig his own hole, but he didn’t have no money and she’s no better off, so I never paid him no mind. Then he bought that donkey, a good one, too, so I knew he weren’t mooning this time. He said he didn’t want the money from the work for the palace. Said to hire a new man to help me.

“Well, the next night, before he left, he brought over a bottle of liquor. Good stuff what cost more than the bottles we always bought. Ham never could keep a secret from me when he gets to drinking, everyone knows the truth of that. He don’t tell what he shouldn’t to others, understand, he’s a man to be trusted, but he’ll tell me everything, if he’s been drinking.”

Verna took her hand back. “I understand. Ham is a good man, and your friend. I don’t want you to worry about betraying a confidence, Milton. I’m a Sister. You aren’t doing wrong to confide in me, and you need not fear I will bring trouble to you for it.”

He nodded, clearly relieved, and managed a weak smile. “Well, like I said, we had that bottle, and we was talking old times. He was leaving, and I knew I’d be missing him. You know. We was together for a long time, not that we didn’t . . .”

“You were friends. I understand. What did he say?”

He loosened his collar. “Well, we was drinking, and feeling all misty-eyed about breaking up. That bottle was stronger than what we was used to. I asked him where his daughter lived, so I could send him the pay from the tally to help out with things. I got this place, after all, and I can get by. I got work. But Ham says no, he don’t need it. Don’t need it! Well, I was powerful curious after he said that. I asked him where he got money, and he said he saved it. Ham never saved nothing. If he had it, it was because he just got it, that’s all, and hadn’t spent it yet.

“Well, that’s when he told me to be sure to send the tally to the palace. He was real insistent, I guess because he felt bad about leaving me with no help. So, I asks him, ‘Ham, who’d you put in the ground for the palace?’ ”

Milton leaned toward her, lowering his voice to a gravely whisper. “ ‘Didn’t put no one in the ground,’ Ham says, ‘I took ’em out.’ ”

Verna snatched the man’s dirty collar. “What! He dug someone up? Is that what he meant? He dug someone up?”

Milton nodded. “That’s it. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Digging up the dead? Putting ’em in the ground don’t bother me, it’s what I do, but the idea of digging ’em up gives me the shivers. Seems a desecration. Course, at the time, we was drinking to old times and all, and we was in stitches over it.”

Verna’s mind was racing in every direction at once. “Who did he exhume? And on whose orders?”

“All’s he said was ‘for the palace.’ ”

“How long ago?”

“A good long time. I don’t remember . . . wait, it was after the winter solstice, not long after, maybe just a couple of days.”

She shook him by die collar. “Who was it? Who did he dig up!”

“I asked him. I asked him who it were they wanted back. He told me, he says, ‘They didn’t care who, I’m just to bring ’em, wrapped up all pretty in clean winding sheets.’ ”

Verna worked her fingers on his collar. “Are you sure? You were drinking—he might have just been making up drunken stories.”

He shook his head as if he feared she were going to bite it off. “No. I swear Ham don’t make up stories, or lie, when he drinks. When he drinks he would tell me anything true. No matter what sin he done, when he drinks he confesses it to me true. And I remember what he told me; it was the last night I saw my friend, remember what he said.

“He said to be sure to get the tally to the palace, but to wait a few weeks and they was busy, they’d told him.”

“What did he do with the body? Where did he take it? Who did he give it to?”

Milton tried to back away a bit, but her grip on his collar didn’t allow it. “I don’t know. He said he took ’em to the palace in a cart covered over real good and he said they give him a special pass so as the guards wouldn’t check his load. He had to dress in his best clothes so people wouldn’t recognize him for what he was, so as not to frighten the fine people at the palace, and especially so as not to upset the delicate sensibilities of the Sisters, who were communing with the Creator. He said he done as he was told, and he was proud that he done it right, ’cause no one got disturbed by his going there with the bodies. That’s all he said about it. I don’t know no more, I swear it on my hope to go to the Creator’s light after this life be done.”

“Bodies? You said bodies. More than one?” She fixed him with a dangerous glare as she tightened her grip. “How many? How many bodies did he dig up and deliver to the palace?

“Two.”

“Two . . .” she repeated in a whisper, wide-eyed. He nodded.

Verna’s hand fell away from his collar.

Two.

Two bodies, wrapped in clean winding sheets.

Her fists tightened as she growled in a rage.

Milton swallowed, holding up a hand. “One other thing. I don’t know if it matters.”

“What?” She asked through gritted teeth.

“He said that they wanted ’em fresh, and one was small, and weren’t too bad but the other gave him a time, because he were a big one. I didn’t think to ask him more about it. I’m sorry.”

With great effort, she managed a smile. “Thank you, Milton, you’ve been a great help to the Creator.”

He scrunched his shirt closed at the neck. “Thank you, Sister. Sister, I’ve never had the nerve to go to the palace, being what I am, and all. I know folks don’t like to see me around. Well, I’ve never gone. Sister, could you give me the Creator’s blessing?”

“Of course, Milton. You have done his work.”

He closed his eyes with a murmured prayer.

Verna gently touched his forehead. “The Creator’s blessing on his child,” she whispered as she let the warmth of her Han flow into his mind. He gasped in rapture. Verna let her Han seep through his mind. “You will remember nothing of what Ham told you about the tally while you were drinking. You will recall only that he said he did the work, but you know nothing of its nature. After I’ve left, you will not recall my visit.”

His eyes rolled beneath his eyelids for a time before coming open at last. “Thank you, Sister.”

Warren was pacing on the street outside. She stormed past him without sloping to say anything. He ran to catch up.

Verna was a thunderhead, “I’ll strangle her,” she growled under her breath. “I’ll strangle her with my bare hands. I don’t care if the Keeper takes me, I’ll have her throat in my hands.”

“What are you talking about? What did you find out? Verna, slow down!”

“Don’t talk to me right now, Warren. Don’t say a word!”

She swept through the streets, her fists whipping in time to her furious strides, a storm rampaging across the land. The churning knot of fury in her stomach threatened to ignite in lightning. She didn’t see the streets or buildings, or hear the drums thundering in the background. She forgot Warren trotting behind her. She could see nothing but a vision of vengeance.

She was blind to where she was, lost in a world of rage. Without knowing how she had gotten there, she found herself crossing one of the back bridges onto Halsband Island. In the center crest above the river she stamped to a halt so abruptly that Warren almost collided with her.

She snatched the silver braiding at his collar. “You get yourself down into the vaults and link up that prophecy.”

“What are you talking about?”

She shook him by his robes. “The one that says that when the Prelate and the Prophet are given to the Light in the sacred rite, the flames will bring to boil a cauldron of guile and give ascension to a false Prelate who will reign over the death of the Palace of the Prophets. Find the branches. Link it up. Find out everything you can. Do you understand!”

Warren snatched his robes free and tugged them straight. “What’s this about? What did the gravedigger tell you?”

She held up a cautionary finger. “Not now, Warren.”

“We’re supposed to be friends, Verna. We’re in this together, remember? I want to know—”

Her voice was thunder on the horizon. “Do as I tell you. If you press me right now, Warren, you are going to go for a swim. Now go link up that prophecy, and as soon as you find anything, you come tell me.”

Verna knew about the prophecies in the vaults. She knew that it could easily take years to link branches. It could take centuries. What choice was there?

He brushed dust from his robes, giving his eyes an excuse to look elsewhere. “As you wish, Prelate.”

As he turned to go, she could see that his eyes were red and puffy. She wanted to catch his arm and stop him, but he was already too far away. She wanted to call out to him and tell him that she wasn’t angry at him, that it wasn’t his fault that she was the false Prelate, but her voice failed her.

She found the round rock beneath the limb and sprang up the wall. Bothering with only two branches on the pear tree, she dropped to the ground inside the Prelate’s compound and, when she regained her feet, started running. Panting in hurt, she slapped her hand repeatedly against the door to the Prelate’s sanctuary, but it wouldn’t open. Remembering why, she dug in her pocket and found the ring. Inside, she pressed it against the sunburst on the door to close it, and then with all her anger and anguish, heaved the ring across the room, hearing it clatter against the walls and skitter across the floor.

Verna pried the journey book from the secret pouch sewn on the back of her belt and plopped down on the three-legged stool. Gasping for her breath, she fumbled the stylus from the spine of the little black book. She opened it, spreading it flat, on the small table, and stared at the blank page.

She tried to think through the rage and resentment. She had to consider the possibility that she could be wrong. No. She wasn’t wrong. Still, she was a Sister of the Light, for what that was worth, and knew better than to risk everything on presumption. She had to think of a way to verify who had the other book, and she also had to do it in a way that wouldn’t betray her identity if she was wrong. But she wasn’t wrong. She knew who had it.

Verna kissed her ring finger as she whispered a prayer beseeching the Creator’s guidance, and asking, too, for strength.

She wanted to vent her wrath, but before all else, she had to make sure. With trembling fingers, she picked up the stylus and began to write.

You must first tell me the reason you chose me the last time. I remember every word. One mistake, and this journey book feeds the fire.

Verna closed the book and tucked it back into its secret pouch in her belt. Shaking, she pulled the comforter from its resting place atop the box bench and dragged it to the fat chair. Feeling more lonely than she had ever felt in her entire life, she curled up in the chair.

Verna remembered her last meeting with Prelate Annalina, when Verna had returned with Richard after all those years, Annalina hadn’t wanted to see her, and it had taken weeks to finally be granted an audience. As long as she lived, no matter how many hundreds of years that might be, she would never forget that meeting, or the things the Prelate had told her.

Verna had been furious to discover the Prelate had withheld valuable information. The Prelate had used her and never told her the reasons. The Prelate had asked it. Verna knew why she had been selected to go after Richard. Verna said she had thought it was a vote of confidence. The Prelate said it was because she suspected that Sisters Grace and Elizabeth, who had been on the journey with her and had been the first two to be selected, were Sisters of the Dark, and she had privileged information from prophecy that said the first two Sisters would die. The Prelate said she had used her prerogative to pick Verna as the third Sister to go.

Verna asked, “You chose me, because you had faith that I was not one of them?”

“I chose you, Verna,” the Prelate said, “because you were far down on the list, and because, all in all, you are quite unremarkable. I doubted you were one of them. You are a person of little note. I’m sure Grace and Elizabeth made their way to the top of the list because whoever directs the Sisters of the Dark considered them expendable. I direct the Sisters of the Light. I chose you for the same reason.

“There are Sisters who are valuable to our cause; I could not risk one of them on such a task. The boy may prove a value to us, but he is not as important as other matters at the palace. It was simply an opportunity I thought to take.

“If there had been trouble, and none of you made it back, well, I’m sure you can understand that a general would not want to lose his best troops on a low-priority mission.”

The woman who had smiled at her when she was little, filling her with inspiration, had broken her heart.

Verna drew the comforter up as she blinked at the watery walls of the sanctuary. All she had ever wanted was to be a Sister of the Light. She had wanted to be one of those wondrous women who used her gift to do the Creator’s work here in this world. She had given her life and her heart to the Palace of the Prophets.

Verna remembered the day they came and told her that her mother had died. Old age, they said.

Her mother didn’t have the gift, and so was of no use to the palace. Her mother didn’t live close, and Verna only rarely saw her. When her mother did travel to the palace for a visit, she was frightened because Verna didn’t age to her eyes, the way a normal person aged. She could never understand it, no matter how many times Verna tried to explain the spell. Verna knew it was because her mother feared to really listen. She feared magic.

Though the Sisters made no attempt to conceal the existence of the spell about the palace that slowed their aging, people without the gift had difficulty fathoming it. It was magic that had no meaning to their lives. The people were proud to live near the palace, near its splendor and might, and although they viewed the palace with reverence, that reverence was edged with fearful caution. They didn’t dare to focus their minds on things of such power, much the same way as they enjoyed the warmth of the sun, but didn’t dare to stare at it.

When her mother died, Verna had been at the palace for forty-seven years, yet appeared to have aged only to adolescence.

Verna remembered the day they came and told her that Leitis, her daughter, had died. Old age, they said.

Verna’s daughter, Jedidiah’s daughter, didn’t have the gift, and so was of no use to the palace. It would be better, they said, if she were raised by a family who would love her and give her a normal life; a life at the palace was no life for one without the gift. Verna had the Creator’s work to do, and so acquiesced.

Joining the gift of the male and the female created a better, though still remote, chance of the offspring being born with the gift. Thus, Sisters and wizards could look forward to approval, if not official encouragement, should they conceive a child.

As per the arrangement the palace always made in such circumstances, Leitis didn’t know that the people who raised her weren’t her real parents. Verna guessed it was for the best. What kind of mother could a Sister of the Light be? The palace had provided for the family, to insure Verna wouldn’t worry for her daughter’s well-being.

Several times Verna had visited, as a Sister merely bringing the Creator’s blessing to a family of honest, hardworking people, and Leitis had seemed happy. The last time Verna had visited, Leitis had been gray and stooped, and was able to walk only with the aid of a cane. Leitis didn’t remember Verna as the same Sister who had visited when she was playing catch-the-fox with her young friends, sixty years before.

Leitis had smiled at Verna, at the blessing, and said, “Thank you, Sister. So talented, for one so young.”

“How are you, Leitis? Have you a good life?”

Verna’s daughter smiled distantly. “Oh, Sister, I’ve had a long and happy life. My husband died five years ago, but other than that, the Creator has blessed me.” She had chuckled. “I only wish I still had my curly brown hair. It was once as lovely as yours, yes it was—I swear it.”

Dear Creator, how long had it been since Leitis had passed on? It had to be fifty years. Leitis had had children, but Verna had scrupulously avoided learning so much as their names.

The lump in her throat as she wept was nearly choking her.

She had given so much to be a Sister. She had just wanted to help people. She had never asked for anything.

And she had been played a fool.

She hadn’t wanted to be Prelate, but she was just beginning to think she could use the post to better the lives of people, to do the work for which she had sacrificed everything. Instead, she was again being played for a fool.

Verna clutched the comforter to herself as she cried in racking sobs until the light was long gone from the little windows in the peaks and her throat was raw.

In the heart of the night, she finally decided to go to her bed. She didn’t want to stay in the Prelate’s sanctuary; it only seemed to be mocking her. She was not the Prelate. She had finally exhausted all her tears, and felt only numb humiliation. She couldn’t get the door to open, and had to crawl around on the floor until she found the Prelate’s ring. After she had closed the door, she put the ring back on her finger, a reminder, a beacon, of the dupe she was.

She shuffled woodenly into the Prelate’s office, on her way to the Prelate’s bed. The candle had guttered and gone out, so she lit another on the desk still stacked with waiting reports. Phoebe worked hard at seeing to it that it stayed that way. What was Phoebe going to think when she found out that she wasn’t really the Prelate’s administrator? That she had been appointed by a quite unremarkable Sister of little note?

Tomorrow, she would have to apologize to Warren. This wasn’t his fault. She shouldn’t take it out on him.

Just before she went through the door to the outer office, she stopped in her tracks.

Her diaphanous shield was shredded. She looked back at the desk. No new reports had been added to the piles.

Someone had been snooping around.