Chapter Six
Six
Three Thoughts
Shadach shoved a cloth into another glass, trying to scrounge out dirt that was determined to stay in its place.
That woman. That supposed Messenger of the God.
If that’s even what she was. He’d asked around and by all accounts, she was the Messenger: the one the God chose to lead the Kingdom to the next Emperor.
Yes. Everyone was in agreement that the woman who had visited him last night was the God’s Messenger.
Everyone in the Knitting Widow was in agreement that the God’s sacred cat had led her to Shadach.
That she had chosen him. But it still felt like a trick.
A trap.
Shadach didn’t want to be Emperor. There was, in fact, nothing Shadach could think that he wanted less.
There was nothing worse than being a public figure.
A powerful figure. Every second of every day he’d have to live in fear of what others would do.
Of how they would try to use him. Or destroy him.
Of how they would try to discover his secrets.
Even the ones he barely admitted to himself.
Shadach shoved the glass in his hand underneath the bar along with the other glasses that mostly passed for clean.
“Shouldn’t you be at the temple?” Marcus sat at the bar, washing down a beer from the night before with a glass of water.
He was a middle-aged, Selatian slum dweller with greasy brown hair and one good eye.
Despite looking like a villain, he worked at a local orphanage and frequently volunteered at a food shelter.
Most of the time, Shadach liked the man. Not right now.
“Shouldn’t you be somewhere else?” Shadach stuffed the cloth into another permanently dirty glass. “We’re closed.”
“Why aren’t you at the temple, Shadach? That’s what the God’s chosen does after the Messenger finds him. Right? He and the Messenger go to the temple. Make the Choosing all official.”
“I’m not going to the temple.”
“Why the Shadows not?”
The glasses clanged together as Shadach attempted to fit another one into an already limited space. “Because it’s a farce.”
“I was there. I saw it.” Marcus pointed to his one good eye. Shadach couldn’t figure if he was trying to be funny or it just seemed that way.
“The God wouldn’t choose me,” Shadach said.
“He did choose you.” Marcus held out his glass for more water.
“He can’t have chosen me.” Shadach pulled out a water jug and refilled the glass. “I’m …” Shadach shoved the water jug onto a shelf behind him.
“You’re what?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re Halcin? The God wouldn’t choose you because you’re Halcin?”
Shadach rearranged two glasses with slow, measured movements. “It’s not what’s done.”
“Nothing’s what’s done until it is. Where’s your faith?”
Shadach straightened, slinging a bar rag over his shoulder. “Even if the God chose me, really chose me, do you think anyone else will believe me?”
“There were a million witnesses.” Marcus stretched out his arms, showcasing how many people were in the tavern last night.
“A million slum dwellers, you mean.”
“The Messenger will be at the temple. She’ll swear under oath it was you. Problem solved.”
“Unless she lies to get back at me.”
“She wouldn’t.”
“You didn’t see how angry she was.” If he was being honest, even though it had been anger in her blood, the pure passion of it had been painfully attractive. He’d never wanted someone so much as they’d walked away.
“The Messenger isn’t going to be that stupid,” Marcus said. “She’s probably at the temple now wondering where the Shadows you are, wanting to hurry up and do her testifying so she can get back to her normal life.”
That was the problem. The potential for him becoming Emperor aside, if he went to the temple, she would be there.
And Shadach didn’t want to see her. Did he?
He shoved another glass under the bar. Too many glasses, not enough space.
A glass fell and shattered, shards spinning across the filthy floor.
“Shit.”
“I’ll get it.” Marcus took a gulp of water before getting a broom from the storage closet. The man spent so much time here, he tended to forget he was a customer and not an employee.
Shadach glanced at the place he’d felt the Messenger.
Kissed her. Made her weak. Their worship had been good.
Really good. That moan she’d made, her breath catching in her throat.
The way she’d tilted her chin up every time he’d touched her, giving him full access to her gorgeous neck as her hips had ground into him. Begging him to take her.
Shadach felt his body getting hot at the dream of it. After everything, he still wanted to see her. But that was a problem. A dangerous problem.
She had been different. From the moment they’d met, she hadn’t lied.
Not about who she was, where she was from, not about having no issues with him being Halcin.
Not a single Shadow. It had felt like fate.
Destiny. As if the God had seen fit to make Shadach a perfect woman, beautiful and passionate with a voice like a goddess. But then, she had lied.
He had been a fool to think she wouldn’t. That she alone could be trusted.
Maybe all she’d wanted was a scandalous story to tell her friends about how she’d worshipped with a dirty Halcin criminal.
That wasn’t an uncommon situation for Shadach to find himself in.
But maybe she’d wanted something worse. Something darker.
Shadach had learned at eight years old the danger of others.
The danger of people knowing what a Halcin could truly do. He had to stay strong. To trust no one.
That was the only way to stay alive.
“Are you done moping?” Marcus dropped a dust pan to the floor.
Shadach wiped down the bar. “I wasn’t moping.”
“You were. Are you done?”
“I’m not going.”
“Shadach.” Marcus stopped sweeping, looking Shadach dead in the eye. His bad eye was drooping and glassy, but his good eye could cut stone with its shrewdness. “This isn’t only about you. You can’t just decide you’re not going to follow through.”
“I know, the God supposedly chose me, but—”
“That’s not what I mean.” Marcus set down the broom.
“You’re one of us. Selat, Halcin, purple dragon, whatever.
We’re all slum dwellers. That’s what defines us.
And one of us, you, was chosen. None of us ever gets chosen.
We never get a voice. We never get nothing but the crumbs from other people’s plates.
Today, that changes, and you don’t get to just piss that away on our behalf. ”
Shadach sighed, Marcus’ words heaping guilt onto his shoulders. Marcus wasn’t wrong. And Shadach hated that.
“If I go to the temple,” Shadach said, “they’ll tell me it was a practical joke.”
“It wasn’t a practical joke.” Marcus went back to sweeping up the broken glass. “Get your Emperor ass to the temple.”
~*~
“Then where is she?” Shadach stood in the temple of the God.
Last time he’d been here, it had been swarmed with bodies, suffocated by noise.
Now, it was eerily quiet, suspiciously empty save for the High Priestess standing before him.
She was a tall Selat woman, draped in lavish, thin purple robes with hair that was a complicated mess of braids interwoven with golden hair clips.
It was too extravagant for the salary she was supposedly paid.
“The Messenger never came to the temple.” The High Priestess looked Shadach over as if he were a rat spoiling her temple with disease.
“The Messenger came to me,” Shadach said. “I’m not lying.”
“So you’ve said.” The High Priestess tensed her neck, her chin lifting so she could be tall enough to look down on Shadach. It didn’t quite work.
“There are witnesses.”
“Criminals.” She waved her manicured hand, batting away his words.
“She was the true Messenger,” Shadach said. “It’s all over the city.”
“I don’t doubt Miss Donmaire is the Messenger, what I doubt is that she came to you.”
“Then why didn’t a priestess follow her? Why didn’t anyone follow her to witness the next Emperor being chosen?”
The corner of the High Priestess’s mouth twitched. “We never send someone to follow. The Messenger’s testimony is enough. But she isn’t here, and she certainly isn’t standing witness for you.”
“She might,” Shadach said. He didn’t know why he was arguing for this.
He didn’t even want to be Emperor. But something about the Messenger not being here, something about the hard set of the High Priestess’ lips, something about the temple being as quiet as the dead was niggling at Shadach’s mind.
Like a memory he could almost recall, if the right thoughts would just click into place.
“She won’t.” The High Priestess glanced at the door, as if waiting for a guard to walk through and save her.
“Why don’t you find her and ask her?” Shadach said.
“General Holt is looking for her as we speak.”
There was something peculiar in the way she’d said Aristen’s name. Barely noticeable. Blink, and Shadach would have missed it. The High Priestess hadn’t created a Shadow with her words, but just because she’d technically told the truth didn’t mean she wasn’t hiding something.
One thought, two thoughts, three thoughts fell into place in Shadach’s head. Three right thoughts to make a realisation form.
One: the High Priestess was a powerful woman, second only to the Emperor and a few others. Her penchant for bribes and gifts in exchange for influence was well-known. If not terribly sacrilegious.
Two: the Emperor had been chosen from the Book in the Emperor’s City for generations. The Emperor’s City was where the majority of political power lay.
Three: Aristen’s well-connected family had been grooming him for greatness since birth. Aristen had been overly insistent the God did not choose the next Emperor. Manipulation and money did. Aristen never could handle somebody else taking credit for his hard work.
“The Messenger wasn’t supposed to come to me, was she?” Shadach said. “She was supposed to go to Aristen.”
The High Priestess’ lips went pale, though the rest of her remained chillingly serene. “I don’t know what you mean.”
A Shadow, a blatant lie, screamed and wriggled as it lurched from her.
“Was she even supposed to be the Messenger?” he said.
“I don’t like what you’re insinuating, Halcin.” She said the name of his people like it was a taint on her tongue.
“I’m not insinuating anything. I’m saying you pre-selected the Emperor, and pre-selected the Messenger.
Like you have for generations, no doubt.
” Thinly veiled anger bled through Shadach’s words.
The outright blasphemy was hard to swallow.
“But the God messed with your plans, didn’t he?
This time he chose the Messenger. He chose the Emperor. ”
“Leave.” The High Priestess pushed past him. “You’re getting on my nerves.”
“What have you done with the Messenger?” Shadach grabbed her arm. Nearby priestesses emerged from the far corners of the temple, ready to call in the guards.
The High Priestess jerked her arm from his grasp. “We’ve done nothing. Nothing at all.”
Another Shadow was born.