TWO
The shout should have startled her, but the sound of someone approaching had given her two seconds in which to master her surprise. As it was, she had to conceal her growing irritation. Lad was an acceptable term for a young man; it conveyed youth but didn’t condemn. Boy, particularly when spoken with a sneer to someone of her apparent age, was just plain insulting.
Blinking away her ire, Rexei merely turned her head and stared at the “spiritual leader” of Heiastowne, Archbishop Elcarei. She gaped, really, letting her mouth hang slack in a sign of stupidity. Not for nothing had she earned her journeyman status in the Actors Guild. “Holy sir?”
“What are you doing up here?” the dark-haired priest repeated, stalking toward her where she knelt in front of the hearth.
“Helping?” she asked, adopting a worried, dull-witted look that skittered around the room as if looking for anything to fasten on but the scowling priest. He always reminded her of the slimy feel of cold saliva spat onto a polished surface—one of the priests took near-weekly pleasure in spitting on the winter-chilled floor in front of her and then demanding she wipe it up with her bare hands. But she didn’t dare show revulsion in front of the archbishop himself. “Coals . . . go t’ the rooms wi’ people innem, sir?”
“I swear to the Gods, you get stupider every time I talk to you,” Elcarei muttered under his breath. Snapping his fingers, he pointed at the doorway. “Out!”
She took just enough time to replace the tongs and pick up the bucket, then moved out of his study. Then stopped just past the threshold, her mind racing. Slimy or not, she needed to know what the local priests were going to do, and that meant asking them about the few things she could reasonably know about. Like the vanished symbols from stone carvings and embroidered garments. Turning to face him, Rexei asked, “Holy sir? What happened t’ the walls, sir? They’s gone blank, sir.”
The archbishop, about to seat himself behind his desk, stopped and scowled at her. Now that she was standing out in the hall, she could hear what sounded like the priest Koler arguing with someone at the Patriarch’s office that he knew what was going on, and the Patriarch had better speak with him immediately, before the whole populace revolted. But it was the archbishop’s reply that she waited for, because she wanted to know what the official line would be. Elcarei wouldn’t tell a dull-witted Servers Guild apprentice anything more than that.
Archbishop Elcarei eyed her. Leaving his desk, he clasped his hands behind his back as he slowly moved closer and closer to the lanky figure just beyond his door. “What happened? What happened? Our God is no longer here. He has removed all Patronage from Mekhana. We are Godless, you stupid peasant, and that means that without His Patronage and protection, our neighbors will gleefully invade, and we will be crushed beneath their hatred for all things Mekhanan! That is, unless we can come up with a new Patron quickly.”
Stopping right in front of her, the archbishop spat his last few words in her face. She blinked at that, lifted the back of a wrist to get a tiny bit of spittle off her cheek, then shrugged. Rexei knew who she wanted for a Patron Goddess, but a misogynistic archbishop was not the person to tell. Instead, she just asked, “Need help, sir?”
She looked and sounded earnest, asking that. Her innocent question made the taller man rear back and blink down at her. Once his stunned disbelief faded, though, he chuckled.
“My, my, you are an innocent, aren’t you?” He studied her for a moment, then sighed. “Come with me, idiot-boy. And set down the damn bucket.”
He returned to his desk, so Rexei moved cautiously into the room, wondering what she had just gotten herself into now. She needed to stay near enough to overhear Koler’s conversation with the Patriarch . . . but the archbishop had given her a command. Personal notice by a priest was never a good thing, but disobedience carried the very real threat of the priest doing something horrible to the offender. Ambivalence warred within her.
Nervous, she set the coal bucket by his desk and dropped her gloves on top of it, watching him warily as he fetched out a heavy iron ring laden with many keys. To her inner senses, those keys glowed . . . dark. That was the only word for it. They were darker than they should have been, full of foul magics, and she wanted nothing to do with them.
Thankfully, he didn’t hand them over. He did, however, lead her away from the corridors she was familiar with, toward the one door she was forbidden to enter. The door that led down to the dungeons where the non-priest mages were housed. Rexei balked, watching him use one of the keys to unlock the door. It didn’t reek of evil, of rot and horror quite so much anymore, but only a mage might have noticed that. A mind-blind drudge like the “boy” she was portraying would still be afraid for other reasons. “I . . . I’m not s’pposed t’ go there, Holy sir . . . not s’pposed t’ go . . .”
“Stop cowering and follow me,” Archbishop Elcarei ordered, grabbing Rexei by the shoulder. Contrary to his words, he pushed her through the door and down the steps ahead of him. Mages were prepped in chambers on the ground floor rather than down below, because until they were bound to Mekha’s will, it was too dangerous to give them a chance to not only free themselves but possibly free the others as well.
Descending two, three, four flights until they were well below the level of the city’s cobbled streets, Rexei found herself pushed aside when the stairwell opened into a long, curving corridor lined with many, many doors. Several oil lamps illuminated the corridor almost as well as daylight would have, making the cracked, whitewashed plaster walls look worse than if the lighting had been dim. To her other sense, her mage-sense, each door in those cracked walls was a blot. Not a slime but more like a patch of mold or mildew, something decaying that she didn’t want to touch.
Visible signs of rot, Rexei thought, humming hard in the back of her mind. She suspected that, had the Dead God still been around, that rot would have been ten times stronger, but with His departure, everything associated with Him was fading. Prudence demanded extra caution, however, and so she hummed. Her mother had taught her meditation techniques, musically enhanced mind tricks to hide any and all magical traces . . . but she shied away from thoughts of her mother. That was the horror that had started her long flight and lonely, distressed life too many years ago.
Except . . . except she could hear familiar, frightening, rhythmic noises from one of the rooms on her right. Paling, Rexei sagged against the outer curving wall. Fear rose in her mind, dragging her down into memory. The sharp smell of various vegetables and cool, dusty stones in the root cellar. The faintest glimpse through the cracks in the kitchen floorboards overhead, of her mother’s form pinned over the worktable, of her limbs glowing with magical shackles, and those sounds . . . those sounds . . . as that priest had . . . had . . .
Archbishop Elcarei unlocked that room and flung open the door. “Novice Stearlen!” he snapped. “Pull out and pull your pants back up!”
“Wh-what?” the novice stammered. “Holiness—I swear, I was given permission to breed—”
“Pull your piston out of the wench and dry it off,” the archbishop ordered, stepping inside and vanishing from Rexei’s line of view. “Whether or not she’s pregnant is no longer any concern of ours . . . unfortunately.”
The last word was muttered under his breath, as if to ensure the dullard leaning against the wall couldn’t hear. She heard, but she didn’t react. Rexei remained outside the room, struggling to shut out the memory of another priest and her mother . . . her poor mum . . .
“If you haven’t noticed, boy,” Elcarei scorned, “all of the God’s markings and symbols have vanished in this room. And from all the others. Mekha has somehow been vanquished, and if we don’t set free all the mages and push them out onto the streets, the locals will come here to destroy us!”
“But . . . but we have magic—” the novice protested.
“Magic won’t stop a weapon aimed at your head when it’s a lump of metal flung from a hand-cannon, imbecile. And magic cannot stop the thousands of resentful residents who are about to wake up and realize Mekha is not here anymore.”
A thump of something striking something else—probably the archbishop’s boot hitting the novice’s backside—preceded the appearance of Novice Stearlen stumbling into view, hands still fumbling to get his velvet trousers buttoned. Elcarei appeared in his wake, forcing the novice to back up farther.
“The only defense we have is to release all the prisoners, shove them out the doors with a fast public apology, and then bolt the doors behind us. Boy!” the archbishop shouted. “Come here!”
Rexei jumped, snapping out of her unwanted memories. She scuttled inside when the archbishop snapped his fingers and pointed into the room. It wasn’t quite as bad a place as she had feared. An odd section of the ceiling, some sort of glowing crystal as big as the bottom of a chest, brought in clean daylight. The walls were a little less cracked and crumbling, suggesting this place had been plastered and whitewashed more recently than the main hall, and the floor was neatly swept, though since no one in the Servers Guild was allowed to come down here and clean, it had to have been done by the apprentice priests, the novices.
The furniture was very simple. A water-flushed refresher stood in the corner of the room, and a sink next to it, though there were no drying towels. A chair sat under the sunshine-bright patch of crystal with a small table in front of it, and a narrow bed stood in the corner beside the door. On it sprawled a woman with short-cropped hair and vacant, staring eyes; the skirt of her plain gray woolen shift pushed up to her hips. Rexei flinched away from the signs of what the novice had been doing.
The archbishop noticed. “Haven’t you ever seen a naked woman, boy?”
Rexei shook her head quickly, looking anywhere but at the pale but breathing living doll lying expressionlessly on the bed. In fact, she shook it fast enough, her felted hat came off, revealing her own dark, short-cropped hair, though hers at least had been cut evenly so that it looked flattering and not butchered haphazardly just to keep it manageable.
“Figures. Beyond innocent . . . You’re probably too stupid to know what your piston is, let alone how it works,” Elcarei muttered. “Listen carefully, both of you,” the archbishop stated as Rexei quickly scooped her cap off the floor, pulling it back over her short, dark locks. “Stearlen, you are to fetch your fellow novices and have them unlock all these rooms. Boy . . . Rexal, or whatever your name is . . . you will touch each of these godly sacrifices on the metal collar, and while touching it, order them to walk up the stairs and into the prayer hall, where they are to seat themselves on the benches.
“That goes for the novices, too,” Elcarei added as Rexei stared and Stearlen blinked. “I want every last mage upstairs and seated in that hall . . . and then you will get them all to stand up and line up at the temple doors, where I will remove their control collars. Once they’re free, they’ll be pushed into the streets, where they can fend for themselves. We will all work quickly, as none of us has any idea how long it will take for them to regain their wits . . . and then you, boy, will be dismissed along with the other members of the Servers Guild for the day.”
Rexei blinked and managed a dull-witted question. “We . . . go home early, Holy sir?”
“Yes, you ‘go home early,’ you delightful dullard,” Elcarei mocked. He pointed at the bed. “Touch her collar and get her on her feet. You know the path back to the prayer hall. Go. Both of you. And if you see any other servants, tell them to come down here or be spell-whipped for disobedience. I want these mages out of this temple in less than an hour.”
Novice Stearlen hustled away, his velvet robes once again neatly closed over his shirt and trousers. He felt to her mage-sense like snot from a bad nasal cold, the kind that looked green and yellow, pus-like, as it stained the sufferer’s clean-bleached kerchief. Cringing, Rexei turned back to the bed and approached the unmoving, slowly breathing woman, trying not to look at her still-splayed thighs. Rexei reached down and touched the rune-scribed collar around that pale neck. “Uh . . . on yer feet. Get on your feet.”
The woman sat up with barely a sound, closed her legs, then stood. Her shift dropped down around her legs, concealing what had happened to her . . . but the cloth was thin, even though it was wool, and all she had for shoes were the felted slippers keeping her toes warm in the not-quite-cold air found this far underground. Compassion made Rexei snatch up the top wool blanket from the bed and wrap it around the blank-staring mage’s shoulders.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Elcarei asked, frowning.
“It . . . it be cold upstairs, Holy sir,” Rexei managed, flushing. “Can’t give ’er burning coal t’ hold. Blanket’ll keep ’er warm.”
That earned her an impatient scowl, but the archbishop didn’t correct her decision. He just snapped his fingers and pointed toward the stairwell they had used. Rexei touched the collar and ordered the woman to start walking—and had to order her to turn left as they exited the room to save her from walking straight into the wall opposite. Thankfully, she didn’t have to order the woman to actually walk up the steps; the entranced mage managed them just fine. She even picked up the hem of her skirt so that she wouldn’t trip as she ascended the long flight.
By the time Rexei got back upstairs to the once forbidden doorway, two more novices were guiding mage-prisoners up the steps. She backed up to let them pass, ears straining to try to hear Koler’s conversation, but the priest’s office was silent. Two more trips netted a total of twelve novices and five servants, including herself, now working to get all the mages upstairs.
On the fifth trip, which took her to the next level down, she caught a glimpse of what could only be the “power room” of the temple. It was blank walled now, but crystals lined the tiered edges of the chamber and topped the circular rows of stone pillars crowding the main floor, all focused toward a massive, empty throne at the heart. Here, then, was where a fragment of Mekha had been rumored to sit, the same as at every other temple in Mekhana.
To feed Himself, Mekha had been rumored to split into several “chunks” that then sat in the depths of each complex, draining all the mages the local priesthood had managed to catch. No corner of the kingdom was considered free of His hunger, His presence. Even the smallest of temples was rumored to house both a dozen mages at any one time and a piece of the Engineering God’s utterly unwanted being.
But this room was empty, and when she came back on her seventh trip and caught a glimpse of the central chamber again, the stones of the throne at the very heart and the matching crystal-tipped pillars around the edges were crumbling. Several tumbled as she snuck a few seconds to look. Not the walls or the ceiling, which was a relief because she didn’t want to be trapped underground in a cave-in. No, just the paraphernalia of Mekha’s hunger was vanishing.
He really is gone . . .
She couldn’t stop to explore in more detail, though. There were signs the mages were beginning to wake up, even with the collars still clasped around their necks. After having escorted over half a dozen of them upstairs, Rexei could see sections where the runes were clearly missing on the metal collars. Whatever had drawn the mages’ powers out of them to feed to Mekha was no longer there, and though one and all were still obedient, some semblance of awareness was coming back into their dull, vacant eyes.
They showed some semblance of living, not just of merely being alive; it could be seen in the way their cheeks started turning pink, in the way their breath caught and changed at random moments, instead of just soughing in and out at an even rate. There was even some semblance of thought. As she escorted the ninth and last of her prisoners upstairs, the older man blinked and licked his lips, frowning faintly as he tried to . . . form words?
Did he want to ask a question? Ask for water? Ask for something warmer to wear? He was lucky to have a blanket as well as his felted slippers and woolen shift, but she could understand feeling thirsty and hungry. It was now well past the noon meal and approaching sundown, which meant supper was only a few hours away. Rexei sincerely doubted the priests would go so far as to feed their former prisoners, though. Not if barely half of them had blankets, and not if the archbishop wanted them out of the temple before sundown.
“Right, then. Bishop Koler, make a one-way warding outside the front door. Something that will allow me to address the masses gathering outside without them getting close, and that will allow these former sacrifices to leave,” Archbishop Elcarei ordered. “The rest of you, start getting these . . . poor souls . . . on their feet, one bench at a time—no, make that two benches, in two lines. Bishop Halestes, come take half of these collar keys . . .”
Rexei worked with the others, guiding the collar-bound men and women to the temple doors. Most of them were young, a few middle-aged, none truly old. As she worked, she heard bits and snatches of the archbishop’s speech wafting in through the doors. “My dear fellow Mekhanans . . .” And, “. . . unexpected sadness, yet an unexpected joy . . .” The outright lie of, “. . . victims of our late God’s wrath, just the same as you!” And the one truth, “. . . decided to let these go into your care, with our deepest apologies . . .”
Well, a half-truth. She didn’t believe for one instant that the priests of Mekhana were actually sorry about anything they’d done to the men and women captured and forced to have their magic sucked out of them until they died. These velvet-clad men were sorry they no longer had their God’s protection, but that was all, and that was not the same thing.
Each time she directed a collared mage up to one of the two priests standing just beyond the front doors, she could see that while a crowd had gathered and that they were somewhat angry . . . they were also concerned about the men and women being pushed through the barrier holding them off. She could even see some of the mages beginning to recover as they stumbled into the arms of the crowd, usually the younger ones.
Hands lifted to the faces of their catchers, their partial rescuers, then fell limp, weak with disuse. Only the priests knew what they’d been fed, how little they’d exercised. Grimly, Rexei fought back the thought of her mother in similar straits and the sting of tears that wanted to accompany that thought.
It won’t do any good. It’s been over eleven years. She’ll have been used up by now. Dead, with who knows how many half sibs popped out and shoved off onto who knows whose hands as girl-orphans, but watched . . . always watched . . . to see if they developed magic. Or kept and coddled and spoiled as boys who might grow up to be privileged priests.
No. She’s gone. I can only . . . hope . . . that my brothers and father are still alive and free somewhere, and that she’s safely dead.
It was no good. Two tears spilled out, and two more. One of the novices spotted them and mocked Rexei. “Aww, is the little dullwit upset at how these little piggies have been treated? They were feeding your God, you greaseless twit!” the young man scorned, arm sweeping up to cuff her head. “Show some respect!”
Rexei ducked most of it, but the blow still made spots dance in front of her eyes. Her mage-prisoner kept walking, though, forcing her to scramble to catch up once her senses cleared. Thankfully, one of the priests scowled and intervened, ordering, “Leave him alone, Novice Jorlei, and keep to your own work. This isn’t the time for games.”
It wasn’t until she moved outside, stopping the mage with a touch and a word, that she realized her cap had been left behind, knocked off with the blow. Rexei realized it only because the temple steps were shrouded in shadow, making her hyperaware of how cold the air was on her short-cropped hair compared to the brazier-heated halls of the temple and how much she had sweated climbing and descending all those stairs. Not even the sun helped; it was shining brightly, but the crisp glow hit the far side of the modest square in front of the temple and not the spell-wrapped top of the steps.
She had to urge the mage through the barrier, but when she turned back to reenter, she found the priests retreating now that the last of the prisoners had been released. Archbishop Elcarei grasped the edges of the double doors, giving one last statement as he backed up into the hall behind him. “My fellow Mekhanans . . . until we have a new Patron Deity, this temple is closed.”
With that, he shut the doors firmly. They all heard the bolts being shot home . . . and a tingle of energy washed over the door and spread out across the walls, warding the place. Her cap, and the secrets of a possible demonic summoning, were now locked inside. For that matter, so was her winter coat, an oversized, carefully mended garment of sturdy felted wool pieced together from several shades of dark gray, with wooden buttons she had carved herself.
It was winter, specifically winter in Heiastowne, which was attached to the foothills of the southeastern mountains. If she stood in the sunlight, she wouldn’t freeze quickly, but as soon as night fell, she’d definitely be in trouble without a cap and a coat. Unfortunately, she found herself with a bigger problem immediately at hand.
“That’s it?” a burly, wool-coated man growled, his voice ringing across the stunned quiet of the crowd. “Thank you fer letting us suck yer men an’ women dry, here’s the lot of ’em, an’ we’re still too high an’ mighty t’ give you the time of day or a word of why?”
“If they can give us back our people, they can give us back our tax monies!” someone else cried out.
Rexei flinched as the crowd grumbled. Though most of them weren’t mages, even the least-powerful peasant could hurl pure life-energy at a hated target and have a chance for some of it to stick—usually as a curse, since it was unformed and untrained, but sometimes as a physical sort of blow. She knew it was about to turn ugly, knew they were about to charge the temple with nothing more than whatever they had in their hands . . . and she was still on the temple steps, squarely in their path. Quickly, she cried out on instinct in a hard, high voice, “Enough!”
It wasn’t quite a child’s scream, but it was similar enough to stop the pending mob in its tracks. Tugging her knitted sleeves down over her chilled hands, she slowly descended the steps, trying to glare hard at every face that wanted to twist with anger and charge the place.
“We have bigger problems on our hands. If you haven’t noticed,” she bit out sharply, “these men and women are nearly naked, and it is winter. There are a hundred and fifty-three of them. They need shelter. They need clothing. They need food, and several of them need to visit the Apothecaries,” Rexei added sternly, moving into the crowd.
She tried not to shiver as a stray bit of wind started stealing away what warmth she did have inside her knit tunic and the two linen shirts that lay beneath. Her trousers were faring somewhat better; they were felted wool with a linen lining, and she wore stockings that came up just past her knees and long undertrews that came to just below her knees. But somewhat better wasn’t perfect, and the wind pushed through the layers with invasive, icy fingers.
At least the others were closing in around her, hiding her from some of the wind as well as the temple, but only somewhat. Unfortunately, her words had to be said, and the responsibilities asserted. “Every guild in this square will have to take in two to four of these men and women, just to ensure they are fed and clothed and cared for while they recover from what has been done to them. That is our first priority.”
The same first man spoke again, his face flushed with anger. “The priests are—”
“The priests aren’t going anywhere!” She hated all the eyes on her and hoped that the priests hadn’t realized that the dull-witted, soft-spoken Rexei of the Servers Guild was one and the same as the owner of that sharp voice . . . but her back was to the narrow, glazed windows of the temple. She lowered her voice, knowing that what she said next would spread on its own. “Listen to me carefully, and tell everyone what you can see with your own eyes. Mekha. Is. Gone. I was there when the Dread God’s images melted from the walls. I saw the embroidery vanish from their sleeves.
“Mekha is gone, and that means we have to rescue every single prisoner before those ex-priests in there change their minds and decide they want to keep draining these poor people. Men and women who can’t even remember how to speak right now—and mark my words, the priesthood will want to keep their power and their prestige. We must deny them that chance. Stow your anger, and go put your energy to good use.”
The burly, round-faced man lifted his chin at her. “Who are you to give us orders? You’re just a boy!”
Oh, again with the “boy” this and the “boy” that! I think I am finally growing tired of being young in everyone’s eyes . . .
Rexei dug a hand under the high neckline of her tunic, pulling out a chain necklace and a leather thong. The chain held a single engraved medallion, denoting the Servers Guild, but the thong held a long column of stamped discs. Four of them were larger than the rest, and she sorted out the one on the far right, pulling it up on its own so that he could see for himself the three interlaced gearwheels embossed on its surface.
“I’m a journeyman of the Gearmen’s Guild, and that means I’m a Sub-Consul with the right to speak on behalf of any Consulate. And it is not overstepping my rights as a Sub-Consul to tell you that these men and women need our help right now.” She lifted her chin and her voice, looking at the others. “Who has kept our people safe from the priests all this while? I ask you that, and I tell you that the guilds have kept our people safe. The guilds have looked out for each other all this time, ensuring that the priests could never take too much of our money or our goods or even our people. And it is the guilds of this land that must stand strong.
“Mekha is gone,” she repeated, clinging not to that thought but to the tokens of apprenticeships and journeyman ranks she had earned since fleeing her parents’ house at the age of ten. Clinging to the memories of all the help she had been given, because the Guild System worked. “And Heiastowne will not crumble into madness and lawlessness. Put your faith in your guild, each of you! Remember how it gave you a place to work and a trade to learn. Remember how when you had a problem, you could take it to the Consulates—made up of representatives from every guild in town—and know that you’d find justice from our hands, when the priests would give us none!”
Engines rumbled in the distance, first purring faintly, then growling louder and louder as something approached from the west. Rexei kept talking, because the crowd wasn’t quite calmed down yet. That was more important. None of these shift-clad women were her mother, would never be her mother, but each man and woman who had been drained was her mother, because they were fellow mages.
“Mekha is gone, and that means we must take over the leadership of this town—but not as a mindless beast. We are not a mob! We are guildmembers . . . and we have laws, and we have rules, and we have responsibilities that we will not set aside.” She panted a little, grateful that the heat of her speech was keeping her warm, though she knew it wouldn’t last. “Now . . . take these men and women home. Give them comfort.
“Get the Apothecaries to look at the women, for I promise you, each and every one has been raped repeatedly by the priesthood, and they will need care and compassion—and have them look at the men, too. There are bastards in that temple who’d piston a man’s bottom as surely as any woman’s front,” she said bluntly. “As they would’ve pistoned mine, if they didn’t have to answer to the Servers Guild for it—as you all know well they still could try! Any one of us could have been one of these mages, save for the grace of distant Fate . . . and many of us have lost kin and friends. It is our responsibility to take care of them and make them feel whole once more. If we do not, then it is we who will be metaphorically pistoning their bottoms a second time. They don’t deserve that!”
Her crude words made a few people blink and eye her askance, but Rexei didn’t care. The dangerous energy in the crowd had ebbed too low to be easily stirred as they strained and listened, as they passed along in whispers to the rest what they heard. At least, until an odd stirring rippled across the crowd from the west, from where the rumbling of engines was. With the sharp winter sunlight angling in from that direction, it was hard to see what was causing the commotion until the whispers reached her.
“. . . militia . . .”
“Precinct men!”
“. . . the captain?”
“No, it’s th’ leftenant . . .”
“The guards are here?”
“I’ll not go without a fight . . .”
She had never met the leftenant of Heiastowne and had never wanted to meet him or anyone like him. Not even a mere private, let alone a sergeant or anyone ranked higher. For good reason, too; the military was ruthless, taking in lads of seventeen or older for five years of mandatory service. Not everyone was taken, but criminals were at the top of the conscription list, so staying out of the militia’s notice was a necessity. Escaping once one was inducted into the service was extremely difficult and extremely dangerous. Runaways were hunted down and whipped the first time, flogged heavily the second, and hung on the third failed escape try.
Between her slight frame, beardless cheeks, and careful acting, Rexei had always passed herself off as fifteen to sixteen at most. She had also taken care to heed the laws and cause no trouble, for the Precinct guards were also the town guards, and they drafted the troublemakers first and foremost. Women could serve in the Precincts as auxiliary members—clerks, cleaners, cooks, even as mechanics, helping keep the various machines running—but it was the men who had to serve in combat positions.
That was the last thing she could let happen. Guardsmen bathed together, and she was no boy in truth. The one good thing about the approach of the militia was that it would give her a chance to vanish into the crowd. The one bad thing was that she would have to wait until everyone’s attention was elsewhere to successfully vanish.
The engines cut off, leaving an odd sort of near-silence in the square.
“By order of the Precinct captain,” a strong male baritone called out, “the citizens of Heiastowne are to disperse and return to your homes, shops, and guildhalls. There will be no rioting in the streets. No disorder. The Precinct will investigate the claims that the . . . God of Engineering . . . is indeed gone, and we will maintain order. Anyone who riots, strikes out in violence, or attempts to loot anything at this point in time will be clapped in irons and dragged off for quarry work at the rate of one month per hour you cause trouble . . . rounded up.”
The crowd quickly started dispersing. Rexei turned to follow the nearest clump out of the square, but a heavy hand clamped down on her shoulder. The burly man dragged her around, his deep voice calling out, “Here’s yer first troublemaker, Leftenant!”
“Oy!” Gaping in shock, Rexei glared at the man. “I’m not a troublemaker!”
“Shaddup!”
He felt harsh and dry to her senses, like an overbaked cracker, not slimy. Worse, his big hand had a firm grip on the flesh underneath her knitted sweater. He added to it a grab at the waistband of her trousers when she tried to squirm free anyway, hiking them up so that she was forced to walk on her toes while he hustled her west through the rapidly departing crowd. At least the others were taking the spell-shocked, shift-clad mages with them as they moved off. Unfortunately, she couldn’t vanish with them, for the burly troublemaker—the real troublemaker, not her, in this matter—marched her on toe-tip right up to the quintet of motorhorses and the pairs of men astride them.
Each man wore an overcoat of metal-plated leather, a metal helm with leather coverings, stiff bracers, and leg guards. Like their armored clothes, the flanks of their motorhorse steeds bore the symbol of the local Precinct militia, a war hammer on a shield. The operators of the motorhorses sat toward the front where their hands could guide the somewhat horse-shaped machines by their steering bars, feet ready to brace the bike when at a standstill like this or to stomp on the galloper pedals to go fast and the stopper pedals to slow down. Their riders sat on raised saddles behind the operators, where they could grip the flank-brown housing with their thighs and operate crossbows and hand-cannons, lariats and lances, whatever tool they needed when chasing down a criminal . . . or a mage who was trying to flee.
Rexei flinched when the muscular man dragged her up to face the second of the two men seated on the lead motorhorse. He was the only one wearing bits of metal at the collar of his overcoat and with studs banding his bracers, and he carried himself with an air of unquestioning command. That, and his slightly long, pointed nose were the only things distinguishing him from the rest, but this was clearly the Precinct leftenant. Swallowing, she quickly dropped herself into the role of a brave, lawful youth who hadn’t done wrong—which she hadn’t—and was determined to be brave in the face of authority. Which she was.
“I ain’t done nothin’ wrong.” She asserted that much before wincing from the strength of the man’s fingers; they dug in hard on her shoulder, bruising to the point where she feared for her collarbone. “I’ve done nothin’ wrong! Leggo a’ me!”
“Oh yes, you have!” Burly Man asserted, dropping her to her knees with his grip as he tightened his fingers and pushed her down to hold her in place.
“Enough.” The order came from the leftenant. “Release him. You’ll not damage the youth any further, or you will be judged a troublemaker.”
The angry man released Rexei’s shoulder with a slight shove, making her gasp with the sudden flush of blood to the bruised region. She was grateful for the release but wished heartily she could run away. Unfortunately, running was a sure sign one had done something wrong, and it was not unknown—rare but not unknown—for Hunter Squads to use motorhorses. Usually, they used regular horses, as it was easier to guide a real horse through rough terrain than a mechanical one.
Not that the Hunter Squads are needed to chase down mages anymore, she tried to reassure herself. Mekha is no more, His hungers are gone . . . but they might not believe that . . .
“So,” the leftenant stated, shifting his light brown eyes between the two of them. “What are the lad’s supposed crimes? Inciting a riot?”
Rexei couldn’t let that one stand. “I stopped a riot.”
“Not that,” the other man growled. He grabbed at her throat, almost choking her as he pulled free both necklaces. “This!”
She quickly pushed to her feet and grabbed at the thong and the chain, not wanting either to break. “Leggo! You’ll snap ’em!”
“This boy claims t’ be a journey-level Gearman,” her accuser growled. “But th’ lad’s clearly not even militia aged, an’ yet he’s got nigh-on twenty Guild coins! He’s a forger, that’s what. That’s yer troublemakin’,” he added, aiming his last words at Rexei, grabbing the youth’s shoulder for another shake.
“I said, let go of him.” The words were delivered mildly, but they didn’t need to be forceful. Two of the other second riders were already dismounting and moving forward in matching martial menace.
The man quickly released Rexei’s shoulder. He even backed up a little. The leftenant swung his leg over the rump of the motorhorse, dismounting. Since the leg-shaped shanks connecting the machine to the wheels were shorter than a regular horse, more like a pony’s legs, the militia officer managed to do so gracefully. Rexei forced herself to hold her ground. What she wanted, desperately, was to flee. Being noticed by the authorities was nothing but trouble, and trouble could get her killed or . . . Well, maybe not shackled to the temple, now that Mekha’s gone, but I can’t let them find out I’m a girl, either. And I don’t want to fight anyone!
It wasn’t easy to stand her ground when the leftenant walked right up to her and looked down into her eyes. Without a cap to help shield her gaze, all she could do was try not to flinch, and, keep humming in the back of her mind. Not that she suspected the leftenant of having magic, but it was by now a long-standing habit that kept her outwardly calm in the face of her inner terrors. She was afraid, but mentally humming the tunes her mum had taught her kept her brave.
The leftenant gently lifted the thong-strung medallions on Rexei’s flat-bound chest with one of his leather-gloved hands. She hadn’t worn all of them—a good dozen or so from her earliest years on the run weren’t registered with her current identity—but she had worn eighteen guild tokens. The others were hidden among her things in the bolt-hole she currently called home. She tried not to flinch when he thumbed through them, but at least he didn’t pull or yank or say anything derogatory.
She didn’t trust the way he narrowed his eyes, studying the four larger coins strung on the thong, the ones representing her journeyman status. The first one was for the Actors Guild, the second for Engravers. The third for Messengers. The fourth was her journeyman Gearman status, gained when she’d earned the one for the Messengers. Shifting the thong aside, he stared at the Servers Guild pendant strung on the silver chain beneath it.
When he spoke, she shivered from more than just being cold. “Rexei Longshanks . . . isn’t it?”
Oh Gods . . . he knows my name.
“Y’know who th’ boy is?” the burly troublemaker asked.
He dropped her medallions back onto her chest and moved past her. “Walk with me, Longshanks. You,” he added to the broad-shouldered man, “you’re dismissed. Go about your business, and cause no more trouble.”
Taking that for what it was worth, the stout man quickly hurried off. Just like Rexei, he didn’t want the attention of the Precinct leftenant upon him, either. She wished she could join him.
Rexei did not want to go anywhere with the leftenant. She stayed where she was, silently amazed at her courage, and asked, “Why should I?”
Surprised, he turned to face her from a few paces away, brows raising. She lifted her chin, fingers balled into fists to keep them warm. It wasn’t working.
“I’ve done nothin’ wrong . . . and if you know my name, then you know I’m a Gearman. Sub-C-Consul.” She folded her arms quickly, trying to stave off more shivering. “I’d n-no more c-c-cause a problem than c-cut off my own arm. You got no c-cause t’ arrest me.”
Returning to her, the leftenant leaned in close. “I’m not arresting you. I’m asking you questions. If you want to stay here and freeze, be my guest, Sub-Consul. If you want to be warm, I’d suggest walking and talking. Though I doubt your intelligence, standing here without coat or cap in the dead of winter.”
“’S in the bloody t-t-temple,” she muttered, shivering. “They sh-shoved us out th’ d-d-doors before I c-could g-g-get it.”
“Then start walking home. Or better yet, get on the motorhorse. We’ll give you a ride there.” He stared at her, then flicked his gloved hand impatiently. “The sooner you get home and get warmed up again, the sooner I’ll have my questions answered and go.”
He was being entirely too reasonable. Too polite for her to protest. Tucking her hands under her armpits, Rexei started walking. Behind her, she heard the leftenant give an order that sent most of the others off. She heard the creak of his leathers as he remounted behind his motorhorse operator, and the gruff rumble as the engine was restarted.
There was no way she was going to be sandwiched between two militiamen, where she could be all too easily subdued and hauled off for unwilling service. Or incarcerated for doing nothing wrong but catching the leftenant’s eye at the wrong moment in time. That and her bolt-hole was only a few blocks away.
As a member of the Messengers Guild—the longest guild she had spent time in so far, almost two full years—she had learned how to walk at a tireless, long-legged pace. It helped that the melodies constantly playing in the back of her mind, hiding all traces of her magical abilities, were usually set at a tempo well suited for walking.
For messages delivered between towns or to a recipient more than a couple miles away, she had learned how to ride a motorhorse, but those were loaned out by the Guild and had to be returned at the end of each ride. Unless it was an emergency, any messages delivered within a town were delivered on foot. The pace she set was brisk enough that some of her chattering eased, though her muscles were still tight from the aching cold.
Within a matter of minutes, she reached the wood and stone tenement building which was her home while in Heiastowne. This one was occupied by tenants from various guilds. Though some apprenticeships came with lodgings, usually in the home of whatever master had been assigned to teach said apprentices, not all of them did. The Servers Guild was one of those that didn’t.
It had been decided long ago that no member of that guild would stay overnight in any temple or priest’s home, just to be safe. The guild had also raised its members’ wages so that they could afford to rent rooms . . . and had withheld all services from all priests when some of those priests had tried to incarcerate their servants on their properties to keep them past their service hours. Peer pressure had forced the release of the maidservants, footmen, housekeepers, and butlers. But while the wages had been raised to pay for lodgings elsewhere, that raise hadn’t been much, and her tenement reflected it.
The leftenant dismounted when she started up the external stairs. The operator didn’t come with them, though he did shut off his engine. A glance behind showed the leather-armored man settling into the saddle to wait the leftenant’s return. It also showed the leftenant moving up behind her, clearly determined to follow her all the way home. Wincing, she moved up the steps. At the fourth floor, she strode along the open balcony. Their boots clomped on the wood, both hers and his.
The only thing that showed almost a dozen Servers lived here was how well the snow had been scraped off the balconies and steps of the whole building compared to the one directly across from it. All of them got together in the mornings and the evenings after a snowfall to keep the balcony and steps clear, since living on the fourth floor meant a very dangerous fall should they slip on an icy surface. It also meant a slight break for them in the cost of living here in winter, if they swept and shoveled.
Fourth floor rooms in winter were usually a bit warmer than ground or first floor ones, and thus were more expensive. Size was another factor. When she unlocked her tenement, there was only one room to it; that was another cost kept down. The right-hand wall was a mass of brick, since every room above and below hers had its own hearth, and they all shared a wall for the chimney spaces. Midday in winter, it could be quite cold if the others were out and about when their hearth fires were either banked or gone out. At midnight, it could be cold, too, but it was now close to supper, and that meant people were coming home and lighting fires, preparing food.
Her breath didn’t frost inside her tenement, but it wasn’t exactly warm, either. Grabbing her spare coat off one of the pegs by the door, she shrugged quickly into the felted wool and picked up the sparker and oil lamp from the shelf above it. Light came in from the narrow window by her door and the slightly broader window at the back of the somewhat narrow, rectangular room, but she carried the lamp to the table and lit it with a squeeze of the spring-loaded arm that scraped a bit of flint over a coil of steel.
Her teeth still threatened to chatter, though the coat helped somewhat. Unfortunately, it was a summer-weight coat, not winter weight. More heat would be needed. Ignoring the leftenant, she crouched by the hearth in the middle of the wall and used the fire tongs that came with the room to scrape back the ashes, hoping for a couple live coals. Grateful there were a few, she reached for the coal bucket, not the kindling box, and laid sooty black lumps on the glowing orange ones. It would take a while for the room to heat up, but at least she had started the process.
Only after she had washed her hands in the bowl of water by the front door did the leftenant speak. He didn’t seat himself on the sole chair in the room nor on the edge of her bed—not that she had invited him to make himself comfortable, but he didn’t seem upset at the lack of courtesy. Instead, he got straight to the point.
“I know you were assigned to be a Server in the temple, Longshanks,” the older man stated without preamble, making her heart skip a beat. She turned to stare at him, absently wiping her hands on the cloth hung on the rod along the side of the washstand, and watched him dip his head to her. “And I know who assigned you to watch the priests as well as serve them.”
He . . . he works with the mages? She stared at him, wide-eyed and unsure whether to be relieved or afraid.
Taking off his leather helmet, he set it on the table with a sigh, then scrubbed a gloved hand over his short-cropped hair, as if relieving a full-scalp itch. Smoothing the ginger-brown locks back from his face, he wrinkled his nose. “I need to know what happened in there, Longshanks. I need to know if . . . He . . . is actually gone. The only thing keeping this town from going mad is the bitter cold and the shock of disbelief, and I will not have Heiastowne overrun and burned down by rioting. So tell me, what did you see in the temple?”