Faith of the Fallen

Chapter 11

The next day, loaded with a big basket of bread, Nicci was let out of the carnage, along with a gaggle of other people from the fellowship, to fan out and distribute bread to the needy. Mother had attired her in a ruffled red dress for the special occasion. Her short white stockings had designs stitched in red thread. Filled with pride to at last be doing good, Nicci marched down the garbage strewn street, armed with her basket of bread, thinking about the day when the hope of a new order could be spread to all so that all could finally rise up out of destitution and despair.

Some people smiled and thanked her for the bread. Some took the bread without a word or a smile. Most, though, were surly about it, complaining that the bread was late and the loaves were too small, or the wrong kind.

Nicci was not discouraged. She told them what Mother had said, that it was the baker’s fault, because he baked bread for profit, first, and since he received a reduced rate for charity, baked that second. Nicci told them that she was sorry that wicked people treated them as second-rate, but that someday the Fellowship of Order would come to the land and see to it that everyone was treated the same.

As Nicci walked down the street, handing out the bread, a man snatched her arm and pulled her into the stench of a narrow dark alley. She offered him a loaf of bread. He swiped the basket out of her hands. He said he wanted silver or gold. Nicci told him she had no money. She gasped in panic as he yanked her close. His filthy probing fingers groped everywhere on her body, even violating her most private places, looking for a purse, but found none hidden on her. He pulled off her shoes and threw them away when he found they had no coins hidden in them.

His fist punched her twice in the stomach. Nicci crashed to the ground.

He spat a curse at her as he stole away into the shadowed heaps of refuse.

Holding herself up on trembling arms, Nicci vomited into the oily water running from under the mounds of offal. People passing the alley looked in and saw her retching there on the ground, but turned their eyes back to the street and hurried on their way. A few quickly darted into the alley, bent, and scooped up bread from the overturned basket before rushing off. Nicci panted, tears stinging her eyes, trying to get her wind back. Her knees were bleeding. Her dress was splattered with scum.

When she returned home, in tears, Mother smiled at seeing her. “Their plight often brings tears to my eyes, too.”

Nicci shook her head, her golden locks swinging side to side, and told Mother that a man had grabbed her and hit her, demanding money. Nicci reached for her mother as she wailed in misery that he was a wicked, wicked man.

Mother smacked her mouth. “Don’t you dare judge people. You are just a child. How can you presume to judge others?”

Stopped cold, Nicci was bewildered by the slap, more startling than painful. The rebuke stung more. “But, Mother, he was cruel to me—he touched me everywhere and then he hit me.”

Mother smacked her mouth again, harder the second time. “I’ll not have you disgrace me before Brother Narev and my friends with such insensitive talk. Do you hear? You don’t know what made him do it. Perhaps he has sick children at home, and he needs money to buy medicine. Here he sees some spoiled rich child, and he finally breaks, knowing his own child has been cheated in life by the likes of you and all your fine things.

“You don’t know what burdens life has handed the man. Don’t you dare to judge people for their actions just because you are too callous and insensitive to take the time to understand them.”

“But I think—”

Mother smacked her across the mouth a third time, hard enough to stagger her. “You think? Thinking is a vile acid that corrodes faith! It is your duty to believe, not think. The mind of man is inferior to that of the Creator. Your thoughts—the thoughts of anyone—are worthless, as all mankind is worthless. You must have faith that the Creator has invested His goodness in those wretched souls.

“Feelings, not thinking, must be your guide. Faith, not thinking, must be your only path.”

Nicci swallowed back her tears. “Then what should I do?”

“You should be ashamed that the world treats those poor souls so cruelly that they would so pitifully strike out in confusion. In the future, you should find a way to help people like that because you are able and they are not—that is your duty.”

That night, when her father came home and tiptoed into her room to see if she was tucked in snugly, Nicci clutched two of his big fingers together and held them tight to her cheek. Even though her mother said he was a wicked man, it felt better than anything else in the world when he knelt beside the bed and silently stroked her brow.

In her work on the streets, Nicci came to understand the needs of many of the people there. Their problems seemed insurmountable. No matter what she did, it never seemed to resolve anything. Brother Narev said it was only a sign that she wasn’t giving enough of herself. Each time she failed, at Brother Narev’s or Mother’s urging, Nicci redoubled her efforts.

One night at dinner, after being in the fellowship several years, she said, “Father, there is a man I’ve been trying to help. He has ten children and no job. Will you hire him, please?”

Father looked up from his soup. “Why?”

“I told you. He has ten children.”

“But what sort of work can he do? Why would I want him?”

“Because he needs a job.”

Father set down his spoon. “Nicci, dear, I employ skilled workers. That he has ten children is not going to shape steel, now is it? What can the man do? What skills has he?”

“If he had a skill, Father, he could get work. Is it fair that his children should starve because people won’t give him a chance?”

Father looked at her as if inspecting a wagonload of some suspicious new metal, Mother’s narrow mouth turned up in a little smile, but she said nothing.

“A chance? At what? He has no skill.”

“With a business as big as yours, surely you can give him a job.”

He tapped a finger on the stem of his spoon as he considered her determined expression. He cleared his throat. “Well, perhaps I could use a man to load wagons.”

“He can’t load wagons. He has a bad back. He hasn’t been able to work for years because of his back troubling him so.”

Father’s brow drew down. “His back didn’t prevent him from begetting ten children.”

Nicci wanted to do good, and so she met his stare with a steady look of her own. “Must you be so intolerant, Father? You have jobs, and this man needs one. He has hungry children needing to be fed and clothed. Would you deny him a living just because he has never had a fair chance in life? Are you so rich that all your gold has blinded your eyes to the needs of humble people?”

“But I need—”

“Must you always frame everything in terms of what you need, instead of what others need? Must everything be for you?”

“It’s a business—”

“And what is the purpose of a business? Isn’t it to employ those who need work? Wouldn’t it be better if the man had a job instead of having to humiliate himself begging? Is that what you want? For him to beg rather than work? Aren’t you the one who always speaks so highly of hard work?”

Nicci was firing the questions like arrows, getting them off so fast he couldn’t get a word through her barrage. Mother smiled as Nicci rolled out words she knew by heart.

“Why must you reserve your greatest cruelty for the least fortunate among us? Why can’t you for once think of what you can do to help, instead of always thinking of money, money, money? Would it hurt you to hire a man who needs a job? Would it, Father? Would it bring your business to an end? Would that ruin you?”

The room echoed her noble questions. He stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. He looked as if real arrows had struck him. His jaw worked, but no words came out. He didn’t seem able to move; he could only gape at her.

Mother beamed.

“Well . . .” he finally said, “I guess . . .” He picked up his spoon and stared down into his soup. “Send him around, and I’ll give him a job.”

Nicci swelled with a new sense of pride—and power. She had never known it would be so easy to stagger her father. She had just bested his selfish nature with nothing more than goodness.

Father pushed back from the table. “I . . . I need to go back to the shop.” His eyes searched the table, but he would not look at Nicci or Mother. “I just remembered . . . I have some work I must see to.”

After he had gone, Mother said, “I’m glad to see that you have chosen the righteous path, Nicci, instead of following his evil ways. You will never regret letting your love of mankind guide your feelings. The Creator will smile upon you.”

Nicci knew she had done the right thing, the moral thing, yet the thought that came to haunt her victory was the night her father had come into her room and silently stroked her brow as she had held two of his fingers to her cheek.

The man went to work for Father. Father never mentioned anything about it. His work kept him busy and away from home. Nicci’s work took more and more of her time, as well. She missed seeing that look in his eyes. She guessed she was growing up.

The next spring, when Nicci was thirteen, she came home one day from her work at the fellowship to find a woman in the sitting room with Mother.

Something about the woman’s demeanor made the hair at the back of Nicci’s neck stand on end. Both women rose as Nicci set aside her list of names of people needing things.

“Nicci, darling, this is Sister Alessandra. She’s traveled here from the Palace of the Prophets, in Tanimura.”

The woman was older than Mother. She had a long braid of fine brown hair looped around in a circle and pinned to the back of her skull like a loaf of braided bread. Her nose was a little too big for her face, and she was plain, but not at all ugly. Her eyes focused on Nicci with an unsettling intensity, and they didn’t dart about, the way Mother’s always did.

“Was it quite a journey, Sister Alessandra?” Nicci asked after she had curtsied. “All the way from Tanimura, I mean?”

“Three days is all,” Sister Alessandra said. A smile grew on her face as she took in Nicci’s bony frame. “My, my. So little, yet, for such grownup work.” She held out a hand toward a chair. “Won’t you sit with us, dear?”

“Are you a Sister with the fellowship?” Nicci asked, not really understanding who the woman was.

“The what?”

“Nicci,” Mother said, “Sister Alessandra is a Sister of the Light.”

Astonished, Nicci dropped into a chair. Sisters of the Light had the gift, just like her and Mother. Nicci didn’t know very much about the Sisters, except that they served the Creator. That still didn’t settle her stomach. To have such a woman right there in her house was intimidating—like when she stood before Brother Narev. She felt an inexplicable sense of doom.

Nicci was also impatient because she had duties waiting. There were donations to collect. She had older sponsors who accompanied her to some of the places. For other places, they said a young girl could get better results by herself, by shaming people who had more than they deserved. Those people, who had businesses, all knew who she was. They would always stammer and ask how her father was. As she had been instructed, Nicci told them how pleased her father would be to know they were thoughtful to the needy. In the end, most became civic-minded.

Then, there were remedies Nicci needed to take to women with sick children. There wasn’t enough clothing for the children, either. Nicci was trying to get some people to give cloth and other people to sew clothes.

Some people had no homes, others were crowded together in little rooms. She was trying to get some rich people to donate a building. Also, Nicci had been assigned the task of locating jugs for women to bring water from the well. She needed to pay a visit to the potter. Some of the older children had been caught stealing. Others had been fighting, and a few of them were beating younger children bloody. Nicci had been pleading on their behalf, trying to explain that they had no fair chance, and were only reacting to their cruel circumstance. She hoped to convince Father to take on at least a few so they might have work.

The problems just kept mounting, without any end in sight. It seemed like the more people the fellowship helped, the more people there were who needed help. Nicci had thought she was going to solve the problems of the world; she was beginning to feel hopelessly inadequate. It was her own failing, she knew. She needed to work harder.

“Do you read and write, dear?” the Sister asked.

“Not very much, Sister. Mostly just names. I’ve much too much to do for those less fortunate than myself. Their needs must come before any selfish desires of my own.”

Mother smiled and nodded to herself.

“Practically a good spirit in the flesh.” The Sister’s eyes teared.

“I’ve heard about your work.”

“You have?” Nicci felt a flash of pride, but then she thought of how things never seemed to get better, despite all her efforts, and her sense of failure returned. Besides, Mother said pride was evil. “I don’t see what’s so special about what I do. The people in the streets are the ones who are special, because of their suffering in horrid conditions. They are the true inspiration.”

Mother smiled contentedly. Sister Alessandra leaned forward, her tone serious. “Have you learned to use your gift, child?”

“Mother teaches me to do some small things, like how to heal little troubles, but I know it would be unfair to flaunt it over those less blessed than I, so I try my best not to use it.”

The Sister folded her hands in her lap. “I’ve been talking to your mother, while we waited for you. She’s done a fine job of getting you started on the right path. We feel, however, that you would have so much more to offer were you to serve a higher calling.”

Nicci sighed. “Well, all right. Maybe I can get up a little earlier. But I already have my duties to the needy, and I will have to fit this other in as I can. I hope you understand, Sister. I’m not trying to get undeserved sympathy, honestly I’m not, but I hope you don’t need this calling done too soon, as I’m already quite busy.”

Sister Alessandra smiled in a long-suffering sort of way. “You don’t understand, Nicci. We would like you to continue your work with us at the Palace of the Prophets. You would be a novice at first, of course, but one day, you will be a Sister of the Light, and as such, you will carry on with what you have started.”

Panic welled up in Nicci like rising floodwaters. There were so many people who hung to life only by a thread she tended. She had friends at the fellowship whom she had come to love. She had so much to do. She didn’t want to leave Mother, and even Father. He was evil, she knew, but he wasn’t evil to her. He was selfish and greedy, she knew, but he still tucked her into bed, sometimes, and patted her shoulder. She was sure she would see something in his blue eyes again, if she just gave it time. She didn’t want to leave him. For some reason, she desperately needed to again see that spark in his eyes. She was being selfish, she knew.

“I have needy people here, Sister Alessandra.” Nicci blinked at her tears. “My responsibility is to them. I’m sorry but I can’t abandon them.”

At that moment, Father came in the door. He stopped in an awkward posture, his legs frozen in midstride, with his hand on the lever, staring at the Sister.

“What’s this, then?”

Mother stood. “Howard, this is Alessandra. She is a Sister of the Light. She’s come to—”

“No! I’ll not have it, do you hear? She’s our daughter, and the Sisters can’t have her.”

Sister Alessandra stood, giving Mother a sidelong glance. “Please ask your husband to leave. This is not his business.”

“Not my business? She’s my daughter! You’ll not take her!”

He lunged forward to seize Nicci’s outstretched hand. The Sister lifted a finger and, to Nicci’s astonishment, he was thrown back in a sparkling flash of light.

Father’s back slammed against the wall. He slid down, clutching his chest as he gasped for breath. Tears bursting forth, Nicci ran for him, but Sister Alessandra snatched her by the arm and held her back.

“Howard,” Mother said through gritted teeth, “the child is my business to raise. I carry the Creator’s gift. You gave your word when our union was arranged that if we had a girl and she had the gift I would have the exclusive authority to raise her as I saw fit. I believe this to be the right thing to do, what the Creator wants. With the Sisters she will have time to learn to read. She will have time to learn to use her gift to help people as only the Sisters can. You will keep your word. I will see to this. I’m sure you have work to which you must immediately return.”

With the flat of his hand, he rubbed his chest. Finally, his arms dropped to his sides. Head down, he shuffled to the door. Before he pulled closed the door, his gaze met Nicci’s. Through the tears, she saw the spark in his eyes, as if he had things to tell her, but then it was gone, and he pulled the door shut behind himself.

Sister Alessandra said it would be best if they left at once, and if Nicci didn’t see him just now. She promised that if Nicci followed instructions, and after she was settled, and after she had learned to read, and after she had learned to use her gift, she would see him again.

Nicci learned to read and to use her gift and mastered everything else she was supposed to master. She fulfilled all the requirements. She did everything expected of her. Her life, as a novice to become a Sister of the Light, was numbingly selfless. Sister Alessandra forgot her promise. She was not pleased to be reminded of it, and found more work that Nicci needed to do.

Several years after she had been taken to the palace, Nicci again saw Brother Narev. She came across him quite by accident; he was working as a stablehand at the Palace of the Prophets. He smiled his slow smile with his eyes fixed on her. He told her that he had gotten the idea to go to the palace by her example. He said he wished to live long enough to see order come to the world.

She thought it an odd occupation for him. He said that he found working for the Sisters morally superior to contributing his labor to the evil of profit. He said it mattered not if she chose to tell anyone at the palace anything about him or his work for the fellowship, but he asked her not to tell the Sisters that he was gifted, since they would not allow him to continue to stay and work in the stables if they knew, and he would refuse to serve them should they discover his gift, because, he said, he wanted to serve the Creator in his own quiet way.

Nicci honored his secret, not so much out of any sense of loyalty, but mostly because she was kept far too busy with her studies and work to concern herself with Brother Narev and his fellowship. She rarely had occasion to see him, mucking out horse stalls, and as his importance in her childhood had faded into her past, she never really even gave him a second thought. The palace had work they wished her to put her attention to—much the same sort of work Brother Narev would have approved of. Only many years later did she come to discover his real reasons for having been at the Palace of the Prophets.

Sister Alessandra saw to it that Nicci was kept busy. She was allowed no time for such selfish indulgences as going home for a visit. Twenty-seven years after she had been taken away to become a Sister of the Light, still a novice, Nicci again saw her father. It was at his funeral.

Mother had sent word for Nicci to return home to see Father because he was in failing health. Nicci immediately rushed home, accompanied by Sister Alessandra. By the time Nicci arrived, Father was already dead.

Mother said that for several weeks he had been begging her to send for his daughter. She sighed and said she put it off, thinking he would get better. Besides, she said, she hadn’t wanted to disturb Nicci’s important work—not for such a trivial matter. She said it had been the only thing he asked for: to see Nicci. Mother thought that was silly, since he was a man who didn’t care about people. Why should he need to see anyone? He died alone, while Mother was out helping the victims of an uncaring world.

By that time, Nicci was forty. Mother, though, still thinking of Nicci as a young woman because under the spell at the palace she had aged only enough to look to be maybe fifteen or sixteen, told her to wear a pretty, brightly colored dress, because it wasn’t really a sad occasion, after all.

Nicci stood looking at the body for a long time. Her chance to see his blue eyes again was forever lost. For the first time in years, the pain made her feel something, down deep inside. It felt good to feel something again, even if it was pain.

As Nicci stood looking at her father’s sunken face, Sister Alessandra told Nicci that she was sorry she had to take her away, but that in her whole life, she had not encountered a woman with the gift as powerful as it was in Nicci, and that such a thing as the Creator had given her was not to be wasted.

Nicci said she understood. Since she had ability, it was only right that she use it to help those in need.

At the Palace of the Prophets, Nicci was said to be the most selfless, caring novice they had under their roof. Everyone pointed to her, and told the younger novices to look to Nicci’s example. Even the Prelate had commended her.

The praise was but a buzz in her ear. It was an injustice to be better than others. Try as she might, Nicci could not escape her father’s legacy of excellence. His taint coursed through her veins, oozed from every pore, and infected everything she did. The more selfless she was the more it only confirmed her superiority, and thus her wickedness.

She knew that could mean only one thing: she was evil.

“Try not to remember him like this,” Sister Alessandra said after a long silence as they stood before the body. “Try to remember what he was like when he was alive.”

“I can’t,” Nicci said. “I never knew him when he was alive.”

Mother and her friends at the fellowship ran the business. She wrote Nicci joyful letters, telling her how she had put many of the needy to work at the armorers. She said the business could afford it, with all the wealth it had accumulated. Mother was proud that that wealth could now be put to a moral use. She said Father’s death had been a cloaked blessing, because it meant help at last for those who had always deserved it most. It was all part of the Creator’s plan, she said.

Mother had to raise her prices in order to pay the wages of all the people she’d given work. A lot of the older workers left. Mother said she was glad they were gone because they had uncooperative attitudes.

Orders fell behind. Suppliers began demanding to be paid before delivering goods. Mother discontinued having the armor proofed because the new workers complained that it was an unfair standard to be held to. They said they were trying their best, and that was what counted. Mother sympathized.

The battering-mill had to be sold. Some of the customers stopped ordering armor and weapons. Mother said they would be better off without such intolerant people. She sought new laws from the duke to require work to be spread out equally, but the laws were slow in coming. The few remaining customers hadn’t paid their account for quite a while, but promised to catch up. In the meantime, their goods were shipped, if late.

Within six months of Father dying, the business failed. The vast fortune he had built over a lifetime was gone.

Some of the skilled workers once hired by Father moved on, hoping to find work at armories in distant places. Most men who stayed could find only menial work; they were lucky to have that. Many of the new workers demanded Mother do something; she and the fellowship petitioned other businesses to take them on. Some business tried to help, but most were in no position to hire workers.

The armory had been the largest employer in the area, and drew many other people employed in other occupations. Other businesses, like traders, smaller suppliers, and cargo earners, who had depended on the armory, failed for lack of work. Businesses in the city, everything from bakers to butchers, lost customers and were reluctantly forced to let men go.

Mother asked the duke to speak with the king. The duke said the king was considering the problem.

Like her father’s armory, other buildings were abandoned as people left to find work in thriving cities elsewhere. Squatters, at the fellowship’s urging, took over many of the abandoned buildings. The empty places became the sites of robberies and even murders. Many a woman who went near those places regretted it. Mother couldn’t sell the weapons from her closed armory, so she gave them to the needy so they might protect themselves.

Despite her efforts, crime only increased.

In honor of all her good work, and her father’s service to the government, the king granted Mother a pension that allowed her to stay in the house, with a reduced staff. She continued her work with the fellowship, trying to right all the injustice that she believed was responsible for the failure of the business. She hoped one day to reopen the shop and employ people. For her righteous work, the king awarded her a silver medal. Mother wrote that the king proclaimed she was as close to a good spirit in the flesh as he had ever seen. Nicci regularly received word of awards Mother was given for her selfless work.

Eighteen years later, when Mother died, Nicci still looked like a young woman of perhaps seventeen. She wanted a fine black dress to wear to the funeral—the finest available. The palace said that it was unseemly for a novice to make such a selfish request, and it was out of the question. They said they would supply only simple humble clothes.

When Nicci arrived home, she went to the tailor to the king and told him that for her mother’s funeral she needed the finest black dress he had ever made. He told her the price. She informed him she had no money, but said she needed the dress anyway.

The tailor, a man with three chins, waxy down growing from his ears, abnormally long yellowish fingernails, and an unfailing lecherous smirk, said there were things he needed, too. He leaned close, lightly holding her smooth arm in his knobby fingers, and intimated that if she would take care of his needs, he would take care of hers.

Nicci wore the finest black dress ever made to her mother’s funeral.

Mother had been a woman who had devoted her entire life to the needs of others. Nicci could never again look forward to seeing her mother’s cockroach-brown eyes. Unlike at her father’s funeral, Nicci felt no pain reach down to touch that abysmal place inside her. Nicci knew she was a terrible person.

For the first time, she realized that for some reason she simply no longer cared.

From that day on, Nicci never wore any dress but black.

One hundred and twenty-three years later, standing at the railing overlooking the great hall, Nicci saw eyes that stunned her with their sense of an inner value held dear. But what had been an uncertain ember in her father’s eyes was ablaze in Richard’s. She still didn’t know what it was.

She knew only that it was the difference between life and death, and that she had to destroy him.

Now, at long last, she knew how.

If only, when she had been little, someone had shown her father such mercy.