Chapter 27 #3
The Messenger’s Guild was housed in a large building, but the interior was so cramped and subdivided that it felt like a warren made of very small tunnels.
The Dervish had an impression of dark wood, piles of envelopes, and purposeful, bustling movement.
Edmund went through two doors and turned twice, while the Dervish was still instinctively ducking his head under the doorways.
“Can I help— Oh, Learned Edmund!” The woman behind the desk smiled with a combination of genuine warmth and profound exasperation, which the Dervish recognized immediately.
Is that what it looks like when I do it?
“I didn’t know that you were in town. What obscure corner of the city are you going to ask me to find today? ”
“Nothing too obscure, I hope, Kit,” Edmund said, looking slightly sheepish. “My friend is looking for a shrine.”
Kit turned a pleasant, if harried, gaze on the Dervish. “I assume you’re looking for one in particular? Otherwise there’s a very nice little alcove dedicated to Daelius on the third floor. Just don’t light candles, the place is a firetrap.”
“Ah, no.” The Dervish had no idea who Daelius was, presumably a god or saint or something of the sort. “I’m looking for a shrine to the ancestors. Sort of … uh … general ancestors.” He was already starting to regret his spur-of-the-moment impulse. “Not any one in particular.”
“And that takes general admission without appointment,” Edmund put in.
Kit’s face cleared. “Oh, that’s easy enough. I’d recommend the House of Our Beloved Dead, in Tingle Court.” She rattled off a string of instructions, then had the Dervish repeat them back to her. “Anything else?”
Edmund looked longingly at the door on the far side of the office. “I don’t suppose you’d let me take a quick look in the archives…”
“A quick look for you is three days. Now get going.” She made shooing gestures.
“Interesting place,” the Dervish said, as they emerged, blinking, into the sunlight.
“Oh yes. The messengers are the ones who know every inch of this city. The Mapmaker’s Guild claims they do, but they only update the maps once a year, and the messengers have to be able to deliver every day. They’re the best people to ask for finding your way around.”
“Does the city change that much?”
“The inner city, not so much. But it’s growing outward all the time.
And of course the Elkinslough floods every year and in a bad year, it’ll wash out parts of the slums, and they never get built back the same way twice.
” Edmund coughed. “At least, that’s what Zale says.
Property law gets dicey when the property has been washed downstream … Ah, this must be it.”
The House of Our Beloved Dead was a narrow building wedged between a grocer and a tenement building.
The interior was golden stone, but soot from endless candles had darkened the high ceilings so that it felt even taller than it was.
Ranks of votives burned along the walls, and a central brazier held a small, crackling flame.
A woman just inside the door sold candles and small, elegantly folded paper animals. The Dervish dropped a coin into her bowl with a ringing sound, and she handed him a candle and gestured to the animals. “Choose one for your dead.” Her voice was deep and roughened by smoke.
It was an easy choice. The Dervish selected a horse with a cut-paper mane and brought it to the brazier. Two other people knelt on worn cushions around it, an old man and a young woman.
The Dervish waited until the young woman had finished feeding her paper rabbit to the fire, then set the horse in the brazier. A bright line of red raced across the folds, followed by curling black.
Ancestors … Father’s Brother, if you’re able to hear me … please. I know that I abandoned my family, but have I not suffered enough? Surely five hundred years is enough. Let me be free of the sword and this dreadful immortality, I beg you.
The paper horse crumpled in the flames. The Dervish watched until it had burned away to ash.
There was no voice from the heavens, no promise of redemption, but then, there never was.
But he felt soothed nonetheless, as if he had completed some small, essential task that had been left undone for too long, like mending a bridle or oiling a sword.
His ancestors had been practical people. Probably that’s how they felt about themselves, too.
He got to his feet, feeling a trifle easier in his heart, and went to collect Edmund, who was lurking around the entrance with the awkward but courteous expression of someone attending a religious observance different from their own.
“Do you have any ancestors you want to offer to?” the Dervish asked.
Edmund’s smile was slightly wistful. “I was given to the temple when I was five. I don’t have any idea who my ancestors were.”
The woman with the paper animals spoke up before the Dervish could think of anything to say. “It doesn’t matter if you know them,” she said. “They know you.” She eyed the scholar thoughtfully, then picked up a small paper bird and offered it to him.
“It’s so beautiful,” Edmund said, turning it over. “I hate to burn it.”
“Keep it,” the woman said. “Someday, when you have something to thank your dead for, you can offer it to them then.”