Faith of the Fallen

Chapter 55

With Kamil at her side, Nicci ascended the dozen stone steps up into the city guard barracks. It was a huge fortress, its high walls stretching off down the entire block. Nicci hadn’t asked Kamil to go with her. She doubted that anything short of death would have stopped him. She couldn’t really decipher precisely how Richard managed to inspire such reactions in people.

As they had left, Nicci was in a state of frantic shock, but she had noticed that the entire building of people seemed tense and alert. Faces peered from windows as she and Kamil had rushed out the building and down the road. People had come out of other buildings to watch her go. They all wore grim expressions.

What was it that made people care so much about this one man?

What was it that made her care?

The inside of the filthy barracks was crowded with people.

Hollow-cheeked, unshaven, old men stood as if in a daze, staring off at nothing. Plump-cheeked women with scarves covering their heads wept as wailing children clung to their skirts. Other women stood around without expression, as if they were expecting to buy bread or millet. One small child, with only a shirt and nothing from the waist down, stood forlorn, his tiny fists at his mouth as he bawled.

The room felt like a death watch.

City guards, mostly large young men with indifferent expressions, pushed through the throng as they passed on into dark halls guarded by their fellows. A short, roughly constructed wooden wall held back all the people, confining the pandemonium to half the room. Beyond the short wall, more of the guards casually talked among themselves. Others brought reports to men at a simple table, joked, or picked up orders on their way through.

Nicci cut right through the crowd, forcing her way to the short wall where cowering women pressed close, hoping to be called, hoping for word, hoping for the miracle of intercession by the Creator Himself. Pressing up against the rough boards, they received splinters, instead.

Nicci seized the sleeve of a passing guard. He halted in midstride. His glare rose from her hand to her eyes. She reminded herself that she was without her power and released his sleeve.

“May I ask, please, who is in charge?”

He looked her up and down, a woman he appeared to judge was about to be without a husband and available. His face slid into an affected smile. He gestured.

“There. At the table. People’s Protector Muksin.”

The older man sat ensconced behind his sovereign stacks of papers.

Beneath a chin that sank down toward his chest, his spreading body looked as if it were melting in the summer heat. His loose white shirt bore big dark rings of sweat, adding its bit of stink to the stench of the sultry room.

Guards leaned down to speak into his ear while his dull gaze roamed, never settling. Others behind the table to either side of him were busily engaged in work at stacks of their own papers, or speaking among themselves, or dealing with the other stream of officials and guards that was ebbing and flowing through the room.

Protector Muksin, the shiny top of his head concealed about as well as an aged turtle napping beneath a few blades of grass, watched the room. His dark eyes never stopped moving, gliding past the guards, the officials, the milling crowd. When they glided over Nicci’s face, they registered no more interest than in any of the other people. All were citizens of the Order, equal pieces, each unimportant in and of itself.

“Could I see him?” Nicci asked. “It’s important.”

The guard’s smile turned to mockery. “I’m sure it is.” He waved a finger at the clump of people to the side. “End of the line. Wait your turn.”

Nicci and Kamil had no choice but to wait. Nicci knew enough about such petty officials to know better than to make a scene. They lived for the times when someone made a scene. She leaned her shoulder against the plastered wall dark with oily stains of countless other shoulders. Kamil took up station behind her.

The line wasn’t moving because the officials weren’t seeing anyone.

Nicci didn’t know if they only saw citizens at certain times. There was no choice but to keep their place in the line. The morning dragged on without the line in front of her changing. It grew more crowded in back.

“Kamil,” she said in a low voice after several hours, “you don’t need to wait with me. You can go home.”

His eyes were red and swollen. “I wish to wait.” He sounded surprisingly distrustful. “I care about Richard,” he added in a tone that sounded like an accusation.

“I care about him, too. Why do you think I’m here?”

“I only came to get you because I was so afraid for Richard, and I didn’t know what else to do. Everyone else was off to work, or to buy bread.” Kamil turned and leaned his back against the wall. “I don’t believe that you care for him, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

Nicci swiped a sweaty strand of hair off her forehead. “You don’t like me, do you?”

Still he didn’t look at her. “No.”

“Might I ask why?”

Kamil’s gaze snuck a glance around to see if anyone was listening. They were all concerned with their own problems.

“You are Richard’s wife, yet you betrayed him. You took Gadi to your room. You are a whore.”

Nicci blinked in surprise at his words. Kamil glanced around again before he went on.

“We don’t know why a man like Richard would be with you. Every woman without a husband in the house, and the other houses nearby, told me she would be his wife and never lie with another man as long as she lived. They all say they don’t understand why you would do that to Richard. Everyone was sad for him, but he would not listen to us tell him.”

Nicci turned away. Suddenly, she couldn’t bear the shame of looking at a young man who had just called her a vile name, and had been right.

“You don’t understand the situation,” she whispered.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Kamil shrug. “You are right. I don’t understand. I don’t understand how anyone could do such a hurtful thing to a husband like Richard, who works hard and takes such good care of you. To do such a thing, you must be a bad person who does not care about your husband.”

She felt tears join the sweat on her face. “I care about Richard more than you could ever know.”

He didn’t answer. She turned to look at him. He was bouncing his shoulders gently against the wall. He was too ashamed of her, or angry at her, to look her in the eye.

“Kamil, do you remember when we first came to live in the room in your building?”

He nodded, still not looking at her.

“Do you remember how cruel you and Nabbi treated Richard, all the mean things you said to him? All the hurtful names you called him? How you threatened him with your knives?”

“I made a mistake,” he said, and sounded as if he meant it.

“Kamil, I made a mistake, too.” She didn’t bother trying to hide her tears—half the women in the room were weeping. “I can’t explain it to you, but Richard and I were having an argument. I was angry with him. I wanted to hurt him. I was wrong. It was a foolish thing for me to do. I made a terrible mistake.”

She sniffled and dabbed her nose on a small handkerchief. Kamil watched her from the corner of his eye.

“I admit it’s not the same kind of mistake that you and Nabbi made when you were acting tough when you first met Richard, but it was a mistake. I was acting tough, too.”

“You don’t desire Gadi?”

“Gadi turns my stomach. I only used him because I was angry with Richard.”

“And you are sorry?”

Nicci’s chin trembled. “Of course I’m sorry.”

“You are not going to get angry and do it again? With some other man?”

“No. I told Richard I made a mistake, I was sorry, and I would never do such a thing to him again. I meant what I said.”

Kamil thought it over as he watched a woman shake a child by the arm.

The child wouldn’t stop crying, because it wanted to be picked up. She said something under her breath and the child leaned against her leg and pouted, but didn’t cry anymore.

“If Richard can forgive you, then I should not be angry at you. He is your husband. It is for the two of you to settle, not for me.” He touched her arm. “You made a foolish mistake. It is over. Don’t cry for that anymore? There are more important things, now.”

Nicci smiled through her tears and nodded.

He smiled a little bit. “Nabbi and I told Gadi we were going to cut off—we told him we would cut him for what he had done to Richard. Gadi showed us his knife, so we would let him pass. Gadi loves his knife. He has cut men with it, before. Cut them bad. He told us to let him pass to go to join the army, that he was going to use his knife to slice the guts out of the enemy, to be a war hero, and to have many women better than Richard’s wife.”

“I’m sure I will not be the only woman to be sorry they ever met Gadi.”

In the late afternoon, People’s Protector Muksin began seeing people.

Nicci’s back ached, but it was nothing to compare to her fear for Richard. The people were taken one at a time by a pair of guards to stand before Protector Muksin.

The line moved fairly rapidly because the Protector tolerated no long conversations. At most, he would riffle through some of his papers before telling the supplicant something. What with all the wailing and weeping in the room, Nicci couldn’t hear any of it.

When it was her turn, one of the guards shoved Kamil back. “Only one citizen may speak with the Protector.”

Nicci tilted her head to signal Kamil to stand back and not make a scene. The guards each grabbed an arm and fairly carried her to the spot in front of the Protector. Nicci was indignant at being treated so roughly—like some common . . . citizen.

She had always enjoyed a kind of authority, sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken, and had never really given it much thought. She wanted to have Richard see what it was like to live as the common working people. Richard seemed to flourish.

The two guards stood close at her shoulders, in case she caused any trouble. They must have seen it enough. She felt her face flushing at her treatment.

“Protector Muksin, my husband was—”

“Name.” His dark-eyed gaze was skipping over the people remaining in line, no doubt measuring how far off dinner was.

“Richard.”

He looked up sharply. “Full name.”

“His name is Richard Cypher. He was taken in last evening.”

Nicci didn’t want to say the word “arrested,” fearing to lend weight to a serious charge.

He shuffled through papers, not at all seeming to be interested in looking at her. Nicci found it slightly confounding when the man didn’t look at her in that calculating way men had of measuring her dimensions in their mind, imagining what they couldn’t see, as if she didn’t know what they were doing. The two guards, though, were looking down the front of her dress.

“Ah.” Protector Muksin waved a paper. “You are lucky.”

“He has been released, then?”

He looked up as if she were daft. “We have him. His name is on this paper. There are many places people are taken. The Protectors of the people can’t be expected to know where they all are.”

“Thank you,” Nicci said without knowing what she was thanking him for.

“Why is he being held? What are the charges?”

The man frowned. “How would we know the charges. He has not yet confessed.”

Nicci felt dizzy. A number of the other women fainted when they spoke to the Protector. The guard’s hands on her arms tightened. The Protector’s hand started to lift to signal them to remove her. Before he could, Nicci spoke in as calm a voice as she could muster.

“Please, Protector Muksin, my husband is no troublemaker. He never does anything but work. He never speaks ill of anyone. He is a good man. He always does as he is told.”

For one fraction of a second, as she watched sweat roll down the man’s cheeks, he seemed to be considering something.

“Has he a skill?”

“He is a good laborer for the Order. He loads wagons.”

She knew the answer was a mistake before she had completed it. The hand lifted, flicked, dismissing her like a gnat. With a mighty jerk, the guards lifted her from her feet and whisked her from the important man’s presence.

“But my husband is a good man! Please, Protector Muksin! Richard did not cause any of the trouble! He was home!”

Her words were sincere, and much the same as those spoken by the women before her. She was furious that she could not convince him that she was different—that Richard was different. The others, she knew now, had all tried to do the same.

Kamil ran behind as the guards carried her down a short, dark hall to a side door out of the stone fortress. Evening light stole in when they opened the door. They shoved her. Nicci stumbled down the steps. Kamil was shoved out right behind her. He fell facedown in the dirt. Nicci knelt to help him up.

From her knees, she looked up to the doorway. “What about my husband?” she pressed.

“You can come back another day,” one guard said. “When he confesses, the Protector can tell you the charges.”

Nicci knew he would never confess. He would die, first.

That was not a problem, as far as these men were concerned.

“Can I see him?” Nicci folded her hands prayerfully as she knelt beside Kamil. “Please, can I at least see him?”

One of the guards whispered to the other.

“Have you any money?” he asked her.

“No,” she said in a mournful cry.

They started to go back in.

“Wait!” Kamil cried out.

When they paused, he ran up the steps. He lifted his pant leg and pulled off a boot. Upending it, a coin fell into his palm. Without reservation, he handed the silver coin to the guard.

The man made a sour face when he looked at the coin. “This isn’t enough for a visit.”

Kamil seized the big man’s wrist as he started to turn. “I have another at home. Please, let me go get it. I can run. I can be back in an hour.”

The man shook his head. “Not tonight. Visits for those who can pay the fee are the day after tomorrow, at sunset. But only one visitor is allowed.”

Kamil waved his hand at Nicci. “His wife. She will visit him.”

The guard swept an appraising look over Nicci, smirking, as if to consider what more she might have to give to see her husband.

“Just be sure to bring the fee.”

The door slammed shut.

Kamil raced down the steps and seized her arm, his big eyes brimming with tears. “What are we going to do? That’s two more days they will have him. Two more days!”

He was starting to choke on his panic. He hadn’t said it, but she knew what he meant. That was two more days to torture a confession out of him.

Then they would bury Richard in the sky.

Nicci took a firm grip on the boy’s arm and walked him away. “Kamil, listen to me. Richard is strong. He will be all right. He’s been through a lot before. He’s strong. You know he’s strong?”

Kamil was nodding as he bit his lower lip and wept, reduced to a child by his fear for his friend.

Nicci stared at the ceiling the entire night. The next day, she went to stand in line for bread. She realized, as she stood with the other women, that she must have the same hollow look as they. She was in a daze. She didn’t know what to do. Everything seemed to be disintegrating.

That night, she slept only a few hours. She was in a state of restless anxiety, counting the minutes until the sun would come up. When it did, she sat at the table, clutching the loaf of bread she would take to Richard, waiting the eternity it took for the day to drag by. The neighbor lady, Mrs. Sha’Rim, brought Nicci a bowl of cabbage soup. She stood over Nicci, smiling sympathetically, while she waited to make sure Nicci ate the soup. Nicci thanked Mrs. Sha’Rim, and said the soup was delicious. She had no idea what the soup tasted like.

In the early afternoon, Nicci decided to go wait at the stronghold until she was allowed in. She didn’t want to be late. Kamil was sitting on the steps, waiting for her. A small crowd of people milled about.

Kamil shot to his feet. “I have the silver mark.”

Nicci wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to pay it, that she would, but she didn’t have a silver mark. She had only a few silver pennies.

“Thank you, Kamil. I will find the money to pay you back.”

“I don’t want it back. It is for Richard. It is what I choose to do for Richard. It is worth it to me.”

Nicci nodded. She knew she would rot before anyone came up with a penny for her, yet she had devoted her entire life to helping others. Her mother told her once that it was wrong to expect thanks, that she owed help to those people because she was able to give it.

As Nicci walked down the steps, people came up and offered their best wishes. They asked her to tell Richard to be strong, and not to give in.

They asked her to tell them if there was anything they could do, or if she needed money.

They’d had Richard for days. Nicci didn’t even know if he was still alive. The silent walk to the prison stronghold was terror. She feared to find he had been put to death, or to see him, and know he would die a lingering, suffering agony from his questioning. Nicci knew very well how the Order questioned people.

At the side door, a half-dozen other women along with a few older men stood in the sweltering sun. All the women had sacks of food. None of the people spoke. They were all bent under the weight of the same dread.

Nicci stared at the door as the sun slowly sank. In the gathering dusk, Kamil hung his waterskin on Nicci’s shoulder.

“Richard will probably want something to drink with his bread and chicken.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The ironbound door squeaked open. Everyone looked up at the guard standing in the door, signaling for everyone to approach. He glanced down at a piece of paper. As the first woman raced up the stairs, he stopped her and asked her name. When she told him, he checked it against his list, then let her pass. The second woman he turned away. She cried out, saying she had paid for the visit. He told her that her husband had confessed to crimes of treason and was allowed no visitors.

She wailed as she fell to the ground. Everyone else watched in horror, fearing the same fate. Another woman gave her name and was sent in. Another went in, then the next was told that her husband had died.

Nicci, in a daze, started up the stairs. Kamil grabbed her arm. He put a coin in her hand.

“Thank you, Kamil.”

He nodded. “Tell Richard I said . . . Just tell him to come home.”

“Richard Cypher,” she answered the guard, her heart hammering.

He looked at the paper briefly, then waved her in. “That man will take you to him.”

Relief flooded through her. He was still alive.

Inside the dark hall, another soldier waited. He tilted his head in command. “Follow me.” He moved into the darkness, a lamp swinging from each hand. She stayed close behind as he descended two long flights of narrow stairs into the damp dark underground.

In a small room with a hissing torch, People’s Protector Muksin sat on a bench, sweating, as he talked to two men-minor officials, judging by their deferential treatment of the rotund Protector.

The Protector stood after briefly inspecting the paper the guard handed him. “You have the fee?”

“Yes, Protector Muksin.” Nicci handed over the coin.

He glanced at it before pocketing the silver. “Fines for civil violations are steep,” he said cryptically as his dark eyes halted to measure her reaction.

Nicci licked her lips, her hopes suddenly buoyant. She had passed the first test by paying the fee. The greedy bastard was now demanding money for Richard’s life.

Nicci spoke cautiously, fearing to make a mistake. “If I knew the fine, Protector, I believe I could raise the money.”

The Protector peered at her with an intensity that made sweat break out across her brow. “A man needs to prove his repentance. A fine that cuts to the bone is a sure way to show remorse for a civil infraction. Less, and we will know the penance insincere. Day after tomorrow, at this time, those who have confessed to such infractions and have someone who can pay the price of the fine, are brought before me for disposition.”

He had named the price: everything. He had told her what Richard had to do. She wanted to tear out the man’s fat throat.

“Thank you for your kind understanding of my husband’s civil indiscretion. If I could see him, I will see that he hurts to the bone in remorse.”

He smiled a thin sweaty smile. “See that you do, young lady. Men left too long down here with their guilt end up confessing to the most terrible things.”

Nicci swallowed. “I understand, Protector Muksin.”

The torture would not stop until the man had the price.

The guard seized her arm abruptly and yanked her off down a pitch-black corridor, holding his two lanterns in his other hand. They went down another flight of stairs, down to the very bottom of the stronghold. The narrow passageway burrowed its crooked way through the stone of the foundation, past rooms purpose-built to hold criminals. Being not far from the river, water seeped into the place, leaving it forever slimy, wet, and reeking of rot. She saw things skitter away into the blackness.

The sound of their feet splashing through ankle-deep water echoed back from the distance. Decomposing carcasses of huge rats bobbed on the waves caused by their passing footsteps. The place reminded Nicci of her childhood nightmares of the underworld, a fate her mother had promised awaited all those who failed in their duty to their fellow man.

The short doors to the sides each had a small opening about the size of a hand—so that the guards could look in, she supposed. There was no light at all but what the guards brought, so there was nothing for those inside to look out at. In several of those doors, fingers gripped the edge of the opening. As the lamplight passed, Nicci saw wide eyes peering out from the black holes. From many of the openings came weeping of anguish, or agony.

The guard stopped. “Here it is.”

Her heart beating wildly, Nicci waited. Instead of opening the door, the guard turned to her and grabbed her breasts. She stood motionless, fearing to move. He fondled her, as if he were testing melons in the market.

She was too afraid to say anything, lest he not let her see Richard. He pressed closer to her and pushed his meaty hand down inside the top of her dress, fingering her nipples.

Nicci knew that men like this were necessary if the Order was to bring their teachings to all. You had to accept that the nature of mankind was perverted. There had to be sacrifices. Brutes were necessary to enforce morality on the masses. She stifled a yelp as he pinched her tender flesh.

The guard chuckled, pleased with his grope, and turned to the door.

After some difficulty with the rusty lock, he finally got the key to turn.

He grasped the door through the opening and gave a mighty tug. The door slowly grated open just enough to get by. The guard hung a lantern just inside on the wall.

“After I’ve seen to some other matters, I’ll be back and your visit will be over.” He chortled again. “Don’t waste any time getting your skirts up for him—if he’s in any condition for it.”

He shoved her in the room. “Here you go, Cypher. I got her nice and randy for you.” The door shut with a clang that echoed up and down the crooked passageway. Nicci heard the key turn and the guard’s sloshing footsteps as he departed.

The square room was so tiny she could have stretched her arms and touched the walls to each side at the same time. The ceiling brushed the top of her head. She was overwhelmed by the terrifying closeness of it. She wanted out.

She feared the body crumpled at her feet was dead.

“Richard?”

She heard a little groan. His arms were behind his back, locked in some kind of wooden binders. She feared he might drown.

Tears stung her eyes. She sank to her knees. The slimy water that had sloshed into her boots now soaked up through her dress.

“Richard?”

She pulled at his shoulder to turn him over. He cried out and shrank away from her hand.

When she saw him, she covered her mouth with both hands to stifle her scream. She felt the tears flooding down her face as she gasped to get her breath.

“Oh, Richard.”

Nicci stood and tore off a strip of her shirt from under her dress.

Kneeling once more, she used the cloth to gently wipe the blood from his face.

“Richard, can you hear me? It’s Nicci.”

He nodded. “Nicci.”

One eye was swollen shut. His hair was matted with mud and slime from the water he lay in. His clothes were torn open. In the harsh light from the small lamp, she could see puffy red wounds crisscrossing his flesh.

He saw her staring at his wounds. “I’m afraid you’ll never be able to patch this shirt.”

She offered a feeble smile at his grim humor. Her fingers trembled as she wiped his face. She didn’t know why she would react this way. She had seen worse than this.

Richard pulled his head back away from her ministrations.

“Am I hurting you?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry. I have some water.”

He nodded eagerly. Nicci poured water into his mouth from the waterskin. He drank greedily.

While he caught his breath, she said, “Kamil came up with the money for the fee to get me in to see you.”

Richard only smiled.

“Kamil wants you out of here.”

“I want me out of here.” He didn’t sound like himself. His voice was hoarse and almost gone.

“Richard, the Protector—”

“Who?”

“The official in charge of this, this prison. He told me that there is a way to get you out. He said you must plead guilty to a civil infraction, and pay a fine.”

Richard was nodding. “I figured as much. He asked if I had money. I told him I did.”

“You do? You’ve saved money?”

He nodded. “I have money.”

Nicci’s fingers desperately gathered his collar into her fist.

“Richard, I can’t pay the fine to get you out for two more days. Can you hold on? Please, can you hold on until then?”

He smiled in the dim lamplight. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Nicci remembered then, and pulled the bread out of the sack. “I brought food. Bread, and some roasted chicken.”

“Chicken. Bread won’t sustain me long. They don’t feed me.”

She tore at the chicken with her fingers. She held a piece up to his mouth for him. She couldn’t stand to see Richard helpless. It angered her.

It made her sick.

“Eat, Richard,” she urged when his head sank forward. He shook his head, as if to banish sleep. “Here, have some more.”

She watched him chew. “Can you sleep in this water?”

“They don’t let you sleep. They—”

She pushed a long chunk of chicken in his mouth. She knew too many of the details of the Order’s methods. She didn’t want to know which technique they had chosen for him.

“I’ll get you out, Richard. Don’t give up. I’ll get you out.”

He shrugged as if to say it didn’t matter.

“Why? Covetous of your prisoner? Jealous to see others abuse me in your place? Fear they might destroy me before you can?”

“Richard, that’s not—”

“I am just a man. Only the greater good matters. That I’m innocent is immaterial, because no one man’s life has value. If I must suffer and die this way to help drive others to the ways of your Creator and your Order, who are you to deny them that virtuous end? What do your wishes matter? How can you put your life, or mine, above the good of others?”

How many times had she lectured him with that same moral doctrine? How contemptuous, how venomous, how treacherous it sounded from his lips.

She hated herself at that moment. He somehow put the lie to everything the Order stood for, to everything she had devoted her life to. He somehow made doing good seem . . . evil. That was why he was so dangerous. That he even existed threatened everything for which they stood.

She was so close. So close to knowing what she needed to understand.

The very fact that there were tears running down her face told her that there really was something that made the whole ordeal worthwhile—made it essential. The indefinable spark she had seen in his eyes from the first instant was real.

If she could just reach that little bit more, then she could finally do what was best. It would be better for him. What kind of life could he ever have? How much suffering could he endure? She hated that she was condemned to serving the Creator in such a way.

“Look around, Nicci. You wanted to show me the better way of the Order. Look around. Isn’t it glorious?”

She hated to see one of his beautiful eyes swollen shut.

“Richard, I need the money you saved. If I’m to get you out of here, I’ll need it all. The official told me it had to be all of what you had.”

A hoarse whisper was all he had left. “It’s in our room.”

“Our room? Where? Tell me where.”

He shook his head. “You could never get it out. You have to know the trick to open it. Go to Ishaq.”

“Ishaq? At the transport company? Why?”

“It was his parlor, once. There’s a hidden compartment in the floor. Tell him why you need the money. He will open it for you.”

She held more chicken up to his mouth. “All right. I’ll go to Ishaq.”

She hesitated while she watched him chew. “I’m sorry that you have to give up what you’ve managed to save. I know how hard you work. It’s not right for them to take it.”

He shrugged again. “Just money. I’d rather live.”

Nicci smiled and wiped the tears from her cheeks. That was the best thing she could have hoped to hear.

The door opened. “Pull your skirt down, woman. Time’s up.”

As he dragged her out by her arm, she stuffed the last of the chicken in Richard’s mouth.

“Civil infraction!” she called to him. “Don’t forget!”

He had to confess to a civil infraction that could be paid with a fine.

Then they would release him. Any other crime was death.

“I won’t forget.”

She reached back toward him as she was pulled from the tiny cell. “I’ll be back for you, Richard! I swear!”