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charitable nature. They agreed, as they sneaked peeks across the room, that
the Creator would reward her in the next life, and talked about all they
would be able to do to help those less fortunate souls.
Mother finally turned and regarded Nicci for a moment, and then said,
"I believe my daughter is old enough to learn to help others."
Nicci sat forward on the edge of her chair, thrilled at the idea of at
last putting her hand to what Mother and her friends said was noble work. It
was as if the Creator Himself had offered her a path to salvation. "I would
so like to do good, Mother."
Mother cast a questioning look at the man in the straight chair.
"Brother Narev?"
The deep creases of his face pleated to each side as the thin line of
his mouth stretched in a smile. There was no joy in it, or in his dark eyes
hooded beneath a brow of tangled white and black hairs. He wore a creased
cap and heavy robes as dark as dried blood. Wisps of his wiry hair above his
ears curled up around the edge of the cap that came halfway down on his
forehead.
He stroked his jaw with the side of a finger as he spoke in a voice
that almost rattled the teacups. "So, child, you wish to be a little
soldier?"
"Well . . . no, sir." Nicci didn't know what soldiering had to do with
doing good. Mother always said that father pandered to men in an evil
occupation-soldiers. She said soldiers only cared about killing. "I wish to
help those in need."
"That is what we all try to do, child." His spooky smile remained fixed
on his face as he spoke. "We here are all soldiers in the fellowship-the
Fellowship of Order-as we call our little group. All soldiers fighting for
justice."
Everyone seemed too timid to look directly at him. They glanced for a
moment, looked away, then glanced back again, as if his face was not
something to be taken in all at once, but sipped at, like a scalding-hot,
foul-tasting remedy.
Mother's brown eyes darted around like a cockroach looking for a crack.
"Why, of course, Brother Narev. That is the only moral sort of soldier-the
charitable sort." She urged Nicci up and scooted her forward. "Nicci,
Brother Narev, here, is a great man. Brother Narev is the high priest of the
Fellowship of Order-an ancient sect devoted to doing the Creator's will in
this world. Brother Narev is a sorcerer." She cast a smile up at him.
"Brother Narev, this is my daughter, Nicci."
Her mother's hands pushed her at the man, as if she were an offering
for the Creator. Unlike everyone else, Nicci couldn't take her gaze from his
hooded eyes. She had never seen their like.
There was nothing in them but dark cold emptiness.
He held out a hand. "Pleased to meet you, Nicci."
"Curtsy and kiss his hand, dear," Mother prompted.
Nicci went to one knee. She kissed the knuckles so as not to have to
put her lips on the spongy web of thick blue veins covering the back of his
hairy hand floating before her face. The whitish knobs were cold, but not
icy, as she had expected.
"We welcome you to our movement, Nicci," he said in that deep rattling
voice of his. "With your mother's caring hand raising you up, I know you
will do the Creator's work."
Nicci thought that the Creator Himself must be very much like this man.
From all the things her mother told her, Nicci feared the Creator's
wrath. She was old enough to know that she had to start doing the good work
her mother always talked about, if she was to have any chance at salvation.
Everyone said Mother was a caring, moral person. Nicci wanted to be a good
person, too.
But good work seemed so hard, so stern-not at all like her father's
work, where people smiled and laughed and talked with their hands.
"Thank you, Brother Narev," Nicci said. "I will do my best to do good
in the world."
"One day, with the help of fine young people like you, we will change
the world. I don't delude myself; with so much callousness among men, it
will take time to win true converts, but we here in this room, along with
others of like mind throughout the land, are the foundation of hope."
"Is the fellowship a secret, then?" Nicci asked in a whisper.
Everyone chuckled. Brother Narev didn't laugh, but his mouth smiled
again. "No, child. Quite the contrary. It is our most fervent wish and duty
to spread the truth of mankind's corruption. The Creator is perfect; we
mortals are but miserable wretches. We must recognize our wicked nature if
we hope to avoid His righteous wrath and reap our deliverance in the next
world.
"Self-sacrifice for the good of all is the only route to salvation. Our
fellowship is open to all those willing to give of themselves and live
ethical lives. Most people don't take us seriously. Someday they will."
Gleaming, mousy eyes around the room watched without blinking as his
deep, powerful voice rose, like the Creator's own fury.
"A day will come when the hot flames of change will sweep across the
land, burning away the old, the decaying, and the foul, to allow a new order
to grow from the blackened remains of evil. After we burn clean the world,
there will be no kings, yet the world will have order, championed by the
hand of the common man, for the common man. Only then, will there be no
hunger, no shivering in the cold, no suffering without help. The good of the
people will be put above the selfish desires of the individual."
Nicci wanted to do good-she truly did. But his voice sounded to her
like a rusty dungeon door grating shut on her.
All the eyes in the room watched her, to see if she was good, like her
mother, "That sounds wonderful, Brother Narev."
He nodded. "It will be, child. You will help bring this to be. Let your
feelings be your guide. You will be a soldier, marching toward a new world
order. It will be a long and arduous task. You must keep the faith. The rest
of us in this room will not likely live to see it flourish, but perhaps you
will live long enough to one day see such a wondrous order come to pass."
Nicci swallowed. "I will pray for it, Brother Narev."
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. Soma 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 is
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.
Trudging down the road between the edge of the city of Fairfield and
the estate where the three Sisters had told her Emperor Jagang had set up
his residence, Nicci scanned the surrounding jumble of the Imperial Order's
encampment, looking for a specific station of tents. She knew they would be
somewhere in the area; Jagang liked to have them close at hand. Regular
sleeping tents, wagons, and men lay like a dark soot over the fields and
hills as far as she could see. Sky and land alike seemed tinted by a dusky
taint. Sprinkled through the dark fields, campfires twinkled, like a sky
full of stars.
The day was becoming oppressively dim, not only with the approach of
evening, but also from the dull overcast of churning gray clouds. The wind
kicked up in little fits, setting tents and clothes flapping, fluttering the
campfires' flames, and whipping smoke this way and that. The gusts helped
coat the tongue with the fetid stench of human and animal waste, smothering
any pleasant but weak cooking aroma that struggled to take to the air. The
longer the army stayed in place, the worse it would get.
Up ahead, the elegant buildings of the estate rose above the dark grime
at its feet. Jagang was there. Because he had access to Sisters Georgia,
Rochelle, and Aubrey's minds, he would know Nicci was back. He would be
waiting for her.
The emperor would have to wait; she had something else to do, first.
Without Jagang able to enter her mind, she was free to pursue it.
Nicci saw what she was looking for, off in the distance. She could just
make them out, standing above the smaller tents. She left the road and
headed through the crowded snarl of troops. Even from the distance, she
could distinguish the distinctive sounds coming from the group of special
tents-hear it over the laughing and singing, the crackle of fires, the
sizzle of meat in skillets, the scraping rasp of whetstones on metal, the
ring of hammers on steel, and the rhythm of saws.
Boisterous men grabbed at her arms and legs or tried to snatch her
dress as she marched along, picking her way through the disorder. The rowdy
soldiers were but a minor consideration; she simply pulled away, ignoring
their mocking calls of love, as she made her way through the throng. When a
husky soldier seized her wrist in his powerful grip, yanking her around to a
jerking halt, she paused only long enough to loose her power and burst his
beating heart within his chest. Other men laughed when they saw him collapse
to the ground with a thud, not yet realizing he was dead, but none tried to
claim his intended prize. She heard the words "Death's . Mistress" pass in
whispers among the men.
She finally made her way through the gauntlet. Soldiers played dice,
ate beans, or snored in their bedrolls beside the tents where captives
screamed under the agony
of torture. Two men lugged a corpse, dragging some of its innards, out
of a big tent. They threw the flaccid form in a wagon with a tangle of
others.
Nicci snapped her fingers at an unshaven soldier coming from the
direction of another tent. "Let me see the list, Captain." She knew he was
the officer in charge by the blue canvas cover of the register book he
carried.
He scowled at her a moment, but when he glanced down at her black
dress, a look of recognition came over his face. He passed her the grubby,
rumpled book. It had a deep crease across the middle, as if someone had
accidentally sat on it. The pages that had fallen out had been pushed back
in, but they never fit right and their edges stuck out here and there to
become frayed and filthy.
"Not much to report, Mistress, but please let His Excellency know that
we've tried just about every skill known, and she isn't talking."
Nicci opened the book and began scanning the list of recent names and
what was known about them.
"Her? Who are you talking about, Captain?" she mumbled as she read.
"Why, the Mord-Sith, of course."
Nicci turned her eyes up toward the man. "The Mord-Sith. Of course.
Where is she?"
He pointed at a tent a ways off through the disarray. "I know His
Excellency said he didn't expect a witch of her dark talents to give us any
information about Lord Rahl, but I was hoping to surprise him with good
news." He hooked his thumbs behind his belt as he let out a sigh of
frustration. "No such luck."
Nicci eyed the tent for a moment. She heard no screams. She had never
before seen one of those women, the Mord-Sith, but she knew a little about
them. She knew that using magic against one was a deadly mistake.
She went back to reading the entries in the register. There was nothing
of much interest to her. Most of the people were from around here. They were
merely a sampling collected to check what they might know. They would not
have the information she wanted.
Nicci tapped a line near the end of the writing in the book. It said
"Messenger."
"Where is this one?"
The captain tilted his head, indicating a tent behind him. "I put one
of my best questioners with him. Last I checked, there was nothing from him
yet-but that was early this morning."
It had been all day since he had checked. All day could be an eternity
under torture. Like all the rest of the tents used for questioning
prisoners, the one with the messenger stood above the surrounding field
tents, which were only large enough for soldiers to lie in. Nicci pushed the
book at the officer's thick gut.
"Thank you. That will be all."
"You'll be giving His Excellency a report, then?" Nicci nodded absently
at his question. Her mind was already elsewhere. "You'll tell him that there
is little to be learned from this lot?"
No one was eager to stand before Jagang and admit they were unable to
accomplish a task, even if there was nothing to accomplish. Jagang did not
appreciate excuses. Nicci nodded as she strode away, heading for the tent
holding the messenger. "I'll be seeing him shortly. I'll give him the report
for you, Captain."
As soon as she threw back the flap and entered, she saw that she was
too late. The messy remains of the messenger lay on a narrow wooden table
affixed with
glistening tools of the trade. The messenger's arm hung down off the
sides, dripping warm blood.
Nicci saw that the questioner had a folded piece of paper. "What have
you there?"
"A map of what?"
"Where this fellow's been. I drew it all out from what he volunteered."
He laughed at his own humor. She didn't.
"Really," Nicci said. The man's grin was what had her attention. A man
like this only grinned when he had something he'd been seeking, something to
bring him favor in the eyes of his superiors. "And where has the man been?"
"To see his leader."
He waved the paper like a treasure map. Tired of the game, Nicci
snatched the booty from his hand. She unfolded the wrinkled yellow paper and
saw that it was indeed a map, with rivers, the coastline, and mountains all
meticulously drawn out. Even mountain passes were noted.
Nicci could tell that the map was authentic. When she had lived at the
Palace of the Prophets, the New World was a far-off and mysterious place,
rarely visited by anyone but a few Sisters. Any Sister who ventured there
always kept exacting records that were added to maps at the palace. Along
with many other esoteric items, all novices memorized those maps in the
course of their studies. Even though, at the time, she had never expected to
travel to the New World, she was thoroughly familiar with the lay of the
land there. Nicci scrutinized the paper in her hands, carefully surveying
the geography, overlaying everything on it that was new onto the memorized
map in her mind.
The soldier pointed a thick finger at a single bloody fingerprint on
the map. "That there is where Lord Rahl himself is hiding-on that dot, in
those mountains."
Nicci's breath paused. She stared at the paper, burning the line of
every stream and river, every mountain, every road, trail, and mountain
pass, every village, town, and city into her memory.
"What did this man confess before he died?" She looked up. "His
Excellency is waiting for my report. I was just on my way to see him." She
snapped her fingers impatiently. "Let's have it all."
The man scratched his beard. His fingernails were crusted with dried
blood, "You'll tell him, won't you? You'll tell His Excellency that Sergeant
Wetzel was the one who got the information out of the messenger?"
"Of course," Nicci assured him. "You will receive full credit. I have
no need of such recognition." She tapped the gold ring through her lower
lip. "The Emperor is always-every moment of every day-in my mind. He no
doubt this very moment sees through my eyes that you, not I, are the one who
succeeded in getting the information. Now, what did this man confess?"
Sergeant Wetzel scratched his beard again, apparently trying to decide
if be could trust her to credit him, or if he should be sure and take the
information to Jagang. There was little trust among those in the Imperial
Order, and good reason to distrust everyone. As he scratched his beard,
flakes of dried blood stuck in its curly hair.
Nicci stared into his red-rimmed eyes. He smelled of liquor. "If you
don't report everything to me, Sergeant Wetzel, and I mean right now, I will
have you up on the
table next, and I will have your report between your screams, and when
I'm done with you, they will throw you in the wagon with the rest of the
corpses."
He dipped his head twice in surrender. "Of course. I only wanted to be
sure His Excellency knew of my success." When Nicci nodded, he went on. "He
was just a messenger. We had a small unit of six men doing deep scouting
patrol. They went on a circle far to the north, around any enemy forces.
They had one of the gifted women with them to help them remain at a good
distance, so they wouldn't be detected. They were somewhere northwest of the
enemy force, when by chance they came across this man. They brought him back
for me to question. I discovered he was one of a number of regular
messengers sent back and forth to report to Lord Rahl."
Nicci waggled a finger at the paper. "But this, down here, looks like
the Creator would reward her in the next life, and talked about all they
would be able to do to help those less fortunate souls.
Mother finally turned and regarded Nicci for a moment, and then said,
"I believe my daughter is old enough to learn to help others."
Nicci sat forward on the edge of her chair, thrilled at the idea of at
last putting her hand to what Mother and her friends said was noble work. It
was as if the Creator Himself had offered her a path to salvation. "I would
so like to do good, Mother."
Mother cast a questioning look at the man in the straight chair.
"Brother Narev?"
The deep creases of his face pleated to each side as the thin line of
his mouth stretched in a smile. There was no joy in it, or in his dark eyes
hooded beneath a brow of tangled white and black hairs. He wore a creased
cap and heavy robes as dark as dried blood. Wisps of his wiry hair above his
ears curled up around the edge of the cap that came halfway down on his
forehead.
He stroked his jaw with the side of a finger as he spoke in a voice
that almost rattled the teacups. "So, child, you wish to be a little
soldier?"
"Well . . . no, sir." Nicci didn't know what soldiering had to do with
doing good. Mother always said that father pandered to men in an evil
occupation-soldiers. She said soldiers only cared about killing. "I wish to
help those in need."
"That is what we all try to do, child." His spooky smile remained fixed
on his face as he spoke. "We here are all soldiers in the fellowship-the
Fellowship of Order-as we call our little group. All soldiers fighting for
justice."
Everyone seemed too timid to look directly at him. They glanced for a
moment, looked away, then glanced back again, as if his face was not
something to be taken in all at once, but sipped at, like a scalding-hot,
foul-tasting remedy.
Mother's brown eyes darted around like a cockroach looking for a crack.
"Why, of course, Brother Narev. That is the only moral sort of soldier-the
charitable sort." She urged Nicci up and scooted her forward. "Nicci,
Brother Narev, here, is a great man. Brother Narev is the high priest of the
Fellowship of Order-an ancient sect devoted to doing the Creator's will in
this world. Brother Narev is a sorcerer." She cast a smile up at him.
"Brother Narev, this is my daughter, Nicci."
Her mother's hands pushed her at the man, as if she were an offering
for the Creator. Unlike everyone else, Nicci couldn't take her gaze from his
hooded eyes. She had never seen their like.
There was nothing in them but dark cold emptiness.
He held out a hand. "Pleased to meet you, Nicci."
"Curtsy and kiss his hand, dear," Mother prompted.
Nicci went to one knee. She kissed the knuckles so as not to have to
put her lips on the spongy web of thick blue veins covering the back of his
hairy hand floating before her face. The whitish knobs were cold, but not
icy, as she had expected.
"We welcome you to our movement, Nicci," he said in that deep rattling
voice of his. "With your mother's caring hand raising you up, I know you
will do the Creator's work."
Nicci thought that the Creator Himself must be very much like this man.
From all the things her mother told her, Nicci feared the Creator's
wrath. She was old enough to know that she had to start doing the good work
her mother always talked about, if she was to have any chance at salvation.
Everyone said Mother was a caring, moral person. Nicci wanted to be a good
person, too.
But good work seemed so hard, so stern-not at all like her father's
work, where people smiled and laughed and talked with their hands.
"Thank you, Brother Narev," Nicci said. "I will do my best to do good
in the world."
"One day, with the help of fine young people like you, we will change
the world. I don't delude myself; with so much callousness among men, it
will take time to win true converts, but we here in this room, along with
others of like mind throughout the land, are the foundation of hope."
"Is the fellowship a secret, then?" Nicci asked in a whisper.
Everyone chuckled. Brother Narev didn't laugh, but his mouth smiled
again. "No, child. Quite the contrary. It is our most fervent wish and duty
to spread the truth of mankind's corruption. The Creator is perfect; we
mortals are but miserable wretches. We must recognize our wicked nature if
we hope to avoid His righteous wrath and reap our deliverance in the next
world.
"Self-sacrifice for the good of all is the only route to salvation. Our
fellowship is open to all those willing to give of themselves and live
ethical lives. Most people don't take us seriously. Someday they will."
Gleaming, mousy eyes around the room watched without blinking as his
deep, powerful voice rose, like the Creator's own fury.
"A day will come when the hot flames of change will sweep across the
land, burning away the old, the decaying, and the foul, to allow a new order
to grow from the blackened remains of evil. After we burn clean the world,
there will be no kings, yet the world will have order, championed by the
hand of the common man, for the common man. Only then, will there be no
hunger, no shivering in the cold, no suffering without help. The good of the
people will be put above the selfish desires of the individual."
Nicci wanted to do good-she truly did. But his voice sounded to her
like a rusty dungeon door grating shut on her.
All the eyes in the room watched her, to see if she was good, like her
mother, "That sounds wonderful, Brother Narev."
He nodded. "It will be, child. You will help bring this to be. Let your
feelings be your guide. You will be a soldier, marching toward a new world
order. It will be a long and arduous task. You must keep the faith. The rest
of us in this room will not likely live to see it flourish, but perhaps you
will live long enough to one day see such a wondrous order come to pass."
Nicci swallowed. "I will pray for it, Brother Narev."
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. Soma 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 is
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.
Trudging down the road between the edge of the city of Fairfield and
the estate where the three Sisters had told her Emperor Jagang had set up
his residence, Nicci scanned the surrounding jumble of the Imperial Order's
encampment, looking for a specific station of tents. She knew they would be
somewhere in the area; Jagang liked to have them close at hand. Regular
sleeping tents, wagons, and men lay like a dark soot over the fields and
hills as far as she could see. Sky and land alike seemed tinted by a dusky
taint. Sprinkled through the dark fields, campfires twinkled, like a sky
full of stars.
The day was becoming oppressively dim, not only with the approach of
evening, but also from the dull overcast of churning gray clouds. The wind
kicked up in little fits, setting tents and clothes flapping, fluttering the
campfires' flames, and whipping smoke this way and that. The gusts helped
coat the tongue with the fetid stench of human and animal waste, smothering
any pleasant but weak cooking aroma that struggled to take to the air. The
longer the army stayed in place, the worse it would get.
Up ahead, the elegant buildings of the estate rose above the dark grime
at its feet. Jagang was there. Because he had access to Sisters Georgia,
Rochelle, and Aubrey's minds, he would know Nicci was back. He would be
waiting for her.
The emperor would have to wait; she had something else to do, first.
Without Jagang able to enter her mind, she was free to pursue it.
Nicci saw what she was looking for, off in the distance. She could just
make them out, standing above the smaller tents. She left the road and
headed through the crowded snarl of troops. Even from the distance, she
could distinguish the distinctive sounds coming from the group of special
tents-hear it over the laughing and singing, the crackle of fires, the
sizzle of meat in skillets, the scraping rasp of whetstones on metal, the
ring of hammers on steel, and the rhythm of saws.
Boisterous men grabbed at her arms and legs or tried to snatch her
dress as she marched along, picking her way through the disorder. The rowdy
soldiers were but a minor consideration; she simply pulled away, ignoring
their mocking calls of love, as she made her way through the throng. When a
husky soldier seized her wrist in his powerful grip, yanking her around to a
jerking halt, she paused only long enough to loose her power and burst his
beating heart within his chest. Other men laughed when they saw him collapse
to the ground with a thud, not yet realizing he was dead, but none tried to
claim his intended prize. She heard the words "Death's . Mistress" pass in
whispers among the men.
She finally made her way through the gauntlet. Soldiers played dice,
ate beans, or snored in their bedrolls beside the tents where captives
screamed under the agony
of torture. Two men lugged a corpse, dragging some of its innards, out
of a big tent. They threw the flaccid form in a wagon with a tangle of
others.
Nicci snapped her fingers at an unshaven soldier coming from the
direction of another tent. "Let me see the list, Captain." She knew he was
the officer in charge by the blue canvas cover of the register book he
carried.
He scowled at her a moment, but when he glanced down at her black
dress, a look of recognition came over his face. He passed her the grubby,
rumpled book. It had a deep crease across the middle, as if someone had
accidentally sat on it. The pages that had fallen out had been pushed back
in, but they never fit right and their edges stuck out here and there to
become frayed and filthy.
"Not much to report, Mistress, but please let His Excellency know that
we've tried just about every skill known, and she isn't talking."
Nicci opened the book and began scanning the list of recent names and
what was known about them.
"Her? Who are you talking about, Captain?" she mumbled as she read.
"Why, the Mord-Sith, of course."
Nicci turned her eyes up toward the man. "The Mord-Sith. Of course.
Where is she?"
He pointed at a tent a ways off through the disarray. "I know His
Excellency said he didn't expect a witch of her dark talents to give us any
information about Lord Rahl, but I was hoping to surprise him with good
news." He hooked his thumbs behind his belt as he let out a sigh of
frustration. "No such luck."
Nicci eyed the tent for a moment. She heard no screams. She had never
before seen one of those women, the Mord-Sith, but she knew a little about
them. She knew that using magic against one was a deadly mistake.
She went back to reading the entries in the register. There was nothing
of much interest to her. Most of the people were from around here. They were
merely a sampling collected to check what they might know. They would not
have the information she wanted.
Nicci tapped a line near the end of the writing in the book. It said
"Messenger."
"Where is this one?"
The captain tilted his head, indicating a tent behind him. "I put one
of my best questioners with him. Last I checked, there was nothing from him
yet-but that was early this morning."
It had been all day since he had checked. All day could be an eternity
under torture. Like all the rest of the tents used for questioning
prisoners, the one with the messenger stood above the surrounding field
tents, which were only large enough for soldiers to lie in. Nicci pushed the
book at the officer's thick gut.
"Thank you. That will be all."
"You'll be giving His Excellency a report, then?" Nicci nodded absently
at his question. Her mind was already elsewhere. "You'll tell him that there
is little to be learned from this lot?"
No one was eager to stand before Jagang and admit they were unable to
accomplish a task, even if there was nothing to accomplish. Jagang did not
appreciate excuses. Nicci nodded as she strode away, heading for the tent
holding the messenger. "I'll be seeing him shortly. I'll give him the report
for you, Captain."
As soon as she threw back the flap and entered, she saw that she was
too late. The messy remains of the messenger lay on a narrow wooden table
affixed with
glistening tools of the trade. The messenger's arm hung down off the
sides, dripping warm blood.
Nicci saw that the questioner had a folded piece of paper. "What have
you there?"
"A map of what?"
"Where this fellow's been. I drew it all out from what he volunteered."
He laughed at his own humor. She didn't.
"Really," Nicci said. The man's grin was what had her attention. A man
like this only grinned when he had something he'd been seeking, something to
bring him favor in the eyes of his superiors. "And where has the man been?"
"To see his leader."
He waved the paper like a treasure map. Tired of the game, Nicci
snatched the booty from his hand. She unfolded the wrinkled yellow paper and
saw that it was indeed a map, with rivers, the coastline, and mountains all
meticulously drawn out. Even mountain passes were noted.
Nicci could tell that the map was authentic. When she had lived at the
Palace of the Prophets, the New World was a far-off and mysterious place,
rarely visited by anyone but a few Sisters. Any Sister who ventured there
always kept exacting records that were added to maps at the palace. Along
with many other esoteric items, all novices memorized those maps in the
course of their studies. Even though, at the time, she had never expected to
travel to the New World, she was thoroughly familiar with the lay of the
land there. Nicci scrutinized the paper in her hands, carefully surveying
the geography, overlaying everything on it that was new onto the memorized
map in her mind.
The soldier pointed a thick finger at a single bloody fingerprint on
the map. "That there is where Lord Rahl himself is hiding-on that dot, in
those mountains."
Nicci's breath paused. She stared at the paper, burning the line of
every stream and river, every mountain, every road, trail, and mountain
pass, every village, town, and city into her memory.
"What did this man confess before he died?" She looked up. "His
Excellency is waiting for my report. I was just on my way to see him." She
snapped her fingers impatiently. "Let's have it all."
The man scratched his beard. His fingernails were crusted with dried
blood, "You'll tell him, won't you? You'll tell His Excellency that Sergeant
Wetzel was the one who got the information out of the messenger?"
"Of course," Nicci assured him. "You will receive full credit. I have
no need of such recognition." She tapped the gold ring through her lower
lip. "The Emperor is always-every moment of every day-in my mind. He no
doubt this very moment sees through my eyes that you, not I, are the one who
succeeded in getting the information. Now, what did this man confess?"
Sergeant Wetzel scratched his beard again, apparently trying to decide
if be could trust her to credit him, or if he should be sure and take the
information to Jagang. There was little trust among those in the Imperial
Order, and good reason to distrust everyone. As he scratched his beard,
flakes of dried blood stuck in its curly hair.
Nicci stared into his red-rimmed eyes. He smelled of liquor. "If you
don't report everything to me, Sergeant Wetzel, and I mean right now, I will
have you up on the
table next, and I will have your report between your screams, and when
I'm done with you, they will throw you in the wagon with the rest of the
corpses."
He dipped his head twice in surrender. "Of course. I only wanted to be
sure His Excellency knew of my success." When Nicci nodded, he went on. "He
was just a messenger. We had a small unit of six men doing deep scouting
patrol. They went on a circle far to the north, around any enemy forces.
They had one of the gifted women with them to help them remain at a good
distance, so they wouldn't be detected. They were somewhere northwest of the
enemy force, when by chance they came across this man. They brought him back
for me to question. I discovered he was one of a number of regular
messengers sent back and forth to report to Lord Rahl."
Nicci waggled a finger at the paper. "But this, down here, looks like