Rather it had glowed dimly all along.
“Yeah,” the man from the city had said with something between boredom and condescension. “We don’t really know where those draw juice from. There’s a file on ’em down at public. You can check it out for yourself if you want.”
The story behind the garish colors was that two decades ago, some eccentric investor had installed the dials asymmetrically across the building’s front before letting the loan lapse. He had replaced the rose window with a cluster of glowing clocks that didn’t seem to have much to do with telling time. The metholinate boilers in the basement did siphon some of their power into turbines that charged chemiostatic anomalies at the front of the building. Every time the boiler fired, the eleven large hermetic dials flickered with a slight surge of luminosity. But boilers or not … the dials never dimmed completely.
Taelin hated them. Come spring, if she could spare the money, she would have them torn out.
On the second of Tes, she bought detergent and wire brushes and put the squatters to work. Those who wanted could stay, with the provision that they earned their keep and followed her rules. Grinning dutifully, several bedraggled souls helped her scrape candle wax from the floor and scrub where campfires had blackened the frescoed ceiling.
In the afternoon, Taelin caught Palmer smoking beggary seeds on the postern steps.
When she scolded him, he handed them over with nothing more than a tilt of the head and a shrug of the shoulders. She was surprised by his acquiescence but pleased as she slipped them into her pocket and guided him back inside.
The two of them spent the next couple days bringing some of the original polish back to the front doors. None of the imagery related to Nenuln, but Taelin didn’t care. The carvings and paint offered bright alternatives to worm gang graffiti and soot. All she needed was a warm, relatively clean place to shelter her flock.
The flock consisted of nine people, three of which had been squatters. Taelin fed them twice a day so that, with the boilers restored and the windows replaced, the comfort of their former haunt far surpassed what it had previously been.
On the sixth, Taelin woke up to the smell of Palmer’s body, right next to hers. He smelled of beggary smoke and was difficult to rouse. Her room didn’t have a lock, a detail she knew she would have to remedy later that day.
When she finally got Palmer awake, he smiled sheepishly. She frowned and told him kindly but clearly that this was her space and that he couldn’t just plop down and sleep wherever he wanted. He looked confused with the sunlight blasting his bright blue eyes, pale skin and orange hair in a mad snarl on top of his head. A scrawny Naneman, wasted by the streets, but with a decentness and a sincerity still present in his eyes. He didn’t argue, just nodded quietly and gathered up his clothes.
She made him breakfast. Tebeshian coffee for herself.
After that she put him to work caulking cracks in the basement and set herself at a small table to formulate her budget and forecast expenses. The savings made by buying instead of building had stacked up in the church’s larder: great sacks of wheat and shelves of canned goods. The northern brands offered no reassurance, all of them strange. Without a sense of quality, she chose the canisters of powdered milk that seemed the most welcoming: cartoon faces of bovine happiness shining in purple ink.
By the end of the day, she judged her stores sufficient to maintain the shelter for several months. She could begin pulling some of the burden off Cripple Gate, planning to feed one hundred twenty meals a day. The larger soup kitchen, two miles to the west, served nearly five hundred. But Cripple Gate was supported by Hullmallow Cathedral and the Church of the Mourning Beggar. They had more resources—a fact that didn’t keep them from noticing her efforts.
Taelin read the paper on the morning of the seventh and smiled. She was making an impact. People knew who her father was. The government couldn’t ignore her for long. And it didn’t. Mail arrived shortly after the paper indicating she would have her audience with Sena Iilool.
Taelin tried to contain her joy—and her anxiety. Don’t be rash. Be persuasive. This was her chance. The one she had been waiting for. Everything else she had tried in her life had ended in disaster. But this was going to be different. Deep inside, Taelin knew she was still young and inexperienced, perhaps even a bit naive. But she also knew that she was special because, unlike so many other people, she had the desire to do great big fabulous things and that was what she hoped to accomplish here in Isca.
She wanted to unleash something that would change the world, something they would remember her for. Forever.
But before attempting to bring public censure down on Sena Iilool, Taelin wanted to meet the woman face-to-face. After all, none of the papers or magazines Taelin had read indicated that Sena’s church had been established by her. Rather, the phenomenon had come out of the Pplar. Whenever a journalist had put forth the question about people worshiping her, Sena had always politely declined to comment. It gave Taelin hope that eventually the blasphemy would end.
Taelin spent the rest of the morning rehearsing what she would say. She left the midday meal service in Palmer’s hands, caught a streetcar at five before the hour and arrived on time, eighty minutes later.
The gates of Isca Castle were free of snow and a traditional Stonehavian carriage shuttled her from the gatehouse, through the south bailey and up to the castle doors. It was a cold ride.
A butler with the name GILVER pinned on his lapel signed her in.
After a brisk walk they arrived in a distant wing of the castle. Gilver stopped outside a set of oaken doors, knocked lightly twice then turned the polished porcelain handles and stepped partway in. His body expertly fenced Taelin off in an unobtrusive way. “My lady, the missionary Taelin Rae to see you from the new—”
“Reestablished,” corrected Taelin.
Gilver gave her a tight smile then continued. “Reestablished Church of Nenuln.” His voice echoed as if he were talking into a metal drum.
Though Taelin heard no response, Gilver stepped aside, granting her access to the chamber. This single gesture, and the demeanor with which he performed it, seemed to elevate her from stranger to guest.
Taelin walked into the stark room.
A sheet-draped piece of furniture despaired in the southwest corner. Aside from that and a ticking thermal crank the space was empty.
A woman in tight black riding pants straddled a wooden stool. Blond as a candle flame, she perched proud, silent and eerie.
Maybe it was her irrational sense that this was an ambush that caused Taelin to look up at the frescoed ceiling. Against the gray plaster, resplendent egg temperas of creepberries and vines had darkened with the centuries.
The ticking of the thermal crank was deafening.
Is she going to welcome me?
Despite the chill, the High King’s witch wore a white summer blouse. Ruffled off the shoulder. It revealed too much of her in equal directions, up and down. Taelin found herself staring at the woman’s bare trunk and the gem, like a lustrous black currant, that occupied her bellybutton. A heady mix of sensual physicality and dream-like etherealness volatilized the air. A fever-dream.
Gods! Those eyes! Empty and glyptic—litmus blue—so different from the billboards and yet—
Gilver shut the door. The sound tipped Taelin back on her heels. Stiffly, she looked over her shoulder but the butler was gone. When she turned, Sena’s eyes pierced her.