10. VESSEL
VESSEL
JACEN
Jacen took a cart from the Citadel to the Inner City, not far from where his first chapel had been located.
He was to meet Ged Semira on the ground floor of an empty tower, where he’d been summoned for .
. . gods knew what. Jacen suspected he wouldn’t enjoy it.
He arrived rather late and not at all sober.
The tower was one of many such structures in Zivora, an uninhabited surplus of space set aside for storage.
The emptiness made Jacen feel like an ant crawling over the bones of something incomprehensibly greater than he.
The Merchants’ Guild owned this particular building; the men standing guard were private contractors, not Guardsmen.
He couldn’t decide whether he found that interesting or alarming.
The Knight Commander maintained a professional facade just long enough to get out of the guards’ earshot. At the top of a long spiral stair, Ged seized Jacen by the front of his robes and slammed him against the palestone wall.
“Damir hasn’t returned.” Ged leaned close enough that Jacen could see the silver flecks in his stubble and several places he’d cut himself with a razor. That didn’t bode well. Ged had a reputation for being as meticulous about his shave as he was his physique.
“It’s been almost two days,” he spat. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
Hard as it was to speak with a massive forearm shoved against his lungs, Jacen managed, “No.”
Ged loosened his grip enough to let Jacen breathe. “Don’t lie to me.” He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “You’re too drunk to do a passable job of it. And I’ve had a thorough discussion with Seth. I know everything.”
Shit. Jacen tried to squirm away, but Ged blocked him. Not for the first time, Jacen—who was not a short man—resented the sheer physicality the bastard had at his disposal.
“Maybe they got lost,” Jacen said stubbornly. “You’re the one who sent children into the canyon instead of going yourself.”
“I trust my son as much as any knight of Zivora,” said Ged. “If anything’s happened to him, I swear I’ll—”
Behind them, the heavy door to the observatory swung open. Seth stood there.
“Ged, for gods’ sake, get away from him.” Seth’s face was lined with barely restrained anger. “What are you trying to prove?”
With a look of deep disgust, Ged stepped back. “We have work to do. You’re in this now, whether you like it or not.”
He ushered Jacen into the observatory, an airy circular room with wide-open windows overlooking the darkened city.
A surprising assortment of people stood around a palestone table: Saraida Ancarath, two knights Jacen didn’t recognize, and Sister Sionann Ilusha, an inquisitor of his own order.
The thin, yellow-haired woman avoided eye contact.
The sixth individual was a thoroughly suspicious old man by the name of Ogden, who had once been a member of the High Lord’s court.
Now he ran a clinic in the Knots. Even in the heat, he wore layered robes, gloves, and boots instead of sandals.
He frowned at the sight of Jacen and told Ged, “When you said you’d enlisted a pair of telepaths, I didn’t think you meant the dregs of the Order. ”
Sister Ilusha flushed bright red. She must have been recruited because she was easy to blackmail—it was the one thing she had in common with Jacen. It was an open secret that the Merchants’ Guild owned her.
Jacen tersely asked Ogden, “Why are you here?”
“I’m a physician,” said Ogden, as if that explained anything.
Jacen looked at the ceiling and closed his eyes in exasperation. “Seth?”
Seth sat on a window ledge, unbothered by the three-hundred-foot drop behind him. “My dear wife-to-be told Ged everything.”
“I reported to my direct superior in the Guard,” Saraida said. “As is my duty.”
Seth snorted. “Spare me. You’re plotting a coup with him.”
“His interests are mine.” Saraida’s tone took on a touch of pity. “I’m not in love with you, Seth, and I’m not loyal to you. You knew that.”
Seth did not respond, but Jacen sensed his brief pang of shame as Saraida went on. “We’re all here because we agree something must be done about the Harvest.”
“Bad for your grandmother’s business, is it?” Seth said acerbically. “My grandmother is not involved in this, nor will she interfere. Ged and I have quietly seized her assets and placed her under comfortable house arrest.”
Saraida’s demeanor was cold, arms crossed, green eyes distant, but Jacen sensed no deception.
He recalled the scene Neri had caused at the offering ceremony, accusing Lady Ancarath of cheating the Harvest. Perhaps it had triggered a moral crisis in Saraida.
Whatever her reasons . . . she believed in this cause.
But Seth studied his betrothed with skepticism. “So, you’re suddenly loyal to Ged? Over your last living family?”
“My priority,” Saraida snapped, “is justice.”
“Captain Ancarath can be trusted,” Ged said. “As for you”—he looked at Seth, then at Jacen—“I intend to liberate this city by any means necessary, and I will not allow the two of you to interfere with my plans again. If I have to send you to the deepriver prisons to get you out of my way, I will.”
“Your plans,” Seth said through gritted teeth, “hinge on allowing a monstrously powerful demon to possess an eleven-year-old boy.”
“Damir is doing his part in the canyon.” Ged went on as if Seth hadn’t spoken. “He’ll get Neri to the weapon while we do our work here.”
“What exactly is this plan of yours?” Seth ticked off questions on his fingers.
“How do you know you’ll be able to make Neri do anything once he’s in control of that abomination?
How do you know he’ll be able to control it?
How do you know it won’t kill him?” He looked at Jacen with an air of utter exhaustion.
“You’re the exorcist. Make him see reason.
How do we know this thing won’t kill us all? ”
“I don’t know,” Jacen said truthfully. Uselessly.
“It’s a risk, but it’s necessary.” Ged slashed an impatient hand through the air. “What’s more, Neri agreed to this. He knows my plan and my expectations for him.”
“You know that boy would do anything for your approval, no matter how stupid,” Seth snarled.
“He’s my son,” said Ged. “Not yours. This was never your decision to make, and you ought to be glad he has more courage than you.”
Seth dragged a hand down his face. “If you had spoken to me beforehand—spoken to anyone—”
“What’s done is done,” Saraida cut in, with poorly suppressed annoyance. “For now—we prepare. We mobilize our loyal Guardsmen. We fan the flames in the Knots, encourage their superstitions.”
Ogden spoke up. “We may not have to wait much longer. My contact says the voice in the desert has gone silent.”
Everyone in the room turned toward the old man.
The voice in the desert. The red thing. What waits below. Jacen had heard a score of names for what might have been one legend or a dozen different ones. A chill settled over him.
Seth’s gaze, however, had never left Ged. “Your plan—I want details.”
Ged watched him for a moment, then replied, “In the White Cathedral depths, there is a room. All Zivora’s infrastructure is controlled from there—cooling, irrigation, the dock elevators .
. . I suspect, even the polyhedra. It’s where all citizens are registered and consecrated.
My father has a ring that grants him access. ”
Jacen had been to that room. Every citizen of Zivora had, though few remembered it—usually in their first year, to be named and consecrated to the gods. All they had for evidence was a small scar, no wider than a thumbnail, on their forearm.
Jacen had a sudden urge to scratch at his own mark, almost invisible after nearly three decades. He failed to restrain himself.
“I’ve been paying attention,” Ged went on.
“Tracking his every move. He visits that room, usually with Akkani, whenever he’s called to speak to the gods.
I believe it’s through this room that they enter Zivora, and unless they materialize out of nothing”—he spoke as if he found the very notion preposterous—“there must be a back door. There are secret passages throughout the Citadel, some leading to the deepriver caves below. We need a map.”
He looked at Jacen. It wasn’t a question.
But Jacen shook his head. “If a map exists, it’ll be in the restricted archives.
I don’t have access.” “You’ll find a way.
” Ged’s tone brooked no dissent. “The next time we meet the gods in that chamber, we’ll be prepared.
We’ll follow them to wherever they come from, and fight. We’ll have to deal with the
Church and my father first—”
“Deal with?” Seth repeated, aghast.
“A figure of speech,” Ged snapped. “I need that ring to access the chamber.” He paused.
“The night Brother Kheris brought us the skull, the High Lord told me the truth. The burden I’m meant to inherit—you can’t imagine it.
But he is a coward and has long since closed himself off to the potential I saw in an instant. ”
Seth had the look of a man who’d never heard a more frustrating sentence. Saraida said to him, more gently, “We’ll force Avram to step down. The Guard will follow our lead. Then Ged enters the white room to be anointed with Neri, just as Avram did with your grandfather—”
“Neri isn’t Ged’s heir,” Seth pointed out. “Damir is. But he’ll be some-place safe, won’t he?”
Ged didn’t even blink. Jacen sensed another storm brewing, so he spoke up.
“You might be overestimating what this demon can do. Killing one”—he had to force himself to say it—“killing one god is not the same as challenging them all at once. Not to mention the Church’s entire arsenal of inquisitors. ”
“The Church is not as secure as they want us to believe,” said Saraida. “My fellow Captains have been ordered to arrest anyone suspected of venturing into the canyon and detain them for telepathic interrogation. Something has them scared.”