He supposed dead right, but after a shocked silence the matriarch prodded Melja in the ribs and she vanished into the back room and came back almost immediately with the end of a loaf and a block of greyish cheese that looked startlingly like the medium-grit waterstone he used for sharpening halberds. Nothing to drink with it, but of course he hadn't asked for it; the moral being, with rubes, specify exactly.
As it turned out, the cheese was too crumbly to have made a good waterstone, though the bread would probably have done the job at a pinch. 'Is that all you want, then?' the old woman asked when he couldn't face any more. He nodded. She shrugged. 'That'll be just two quarters, then,' she said.
He paid up, dipping his head to her in sincere respect as he did so. He'd been to a lot of places, been rooked and shaved by some of the best short-changers and cheese-scrapers in the business. This old woman, though, was something else.
They were all still there, of course. Seven pairs of needle-sharp eyes, pressing on him like a headache, and they showed absolutely no sign of moving so long as he was there. So he stood up, wincing slightly at the touch of very wet, cold cloth against his skin. 'Do you think you could tell me who's in charge here?' he said.
'You what?'
Something under the table was sniffing his leg, pressing a cold, wet nose against his ankle. He really didn't want to know what it was. 'You know,' he said, 'like a town council, parish board, levy and muster committee, burial club-anything like that,' he added, trying not to sound as wretched as he felt. 'I've got some questions to ask, and I need to know who to see.'
The old woman appeared to have lost the power of speech. 'Nothing like that here,' My Daughter Melja said eventually. 'No call for it in these parts. Bloody fuss,' she added, dismissing all hierarchies everywhere with a rather magnificent hint of pride. 'What kind of questions?' she added, her eyebrows crowding together.
'Nothing terrible,' he replied, smiling weakly. 'I'm not the government or anything. Truth is,' he ground on, feeling like a man pouring wine into the sand, 'I'm a scholar.'
'A what?' the old woman interrupted.
'A scholar. I like to learn things about-well, things. Religion,' he added quickly, before any of them could ask What things? 'Not that I'm a priest or anything. I'm just interested.'
There was a long silence; then the old woman shook her head, as if wondering sadly how it had come to this, and said that maybe he should go over to the old man's place, because he knew all manner of interesting stuff. The edge she put on the word interesting would probably have cut silk in its own weight.
'Thank you,' the brother said. 'Which old man would that be?'
The old woman pursed her lips; then she reached out sideways and grabbed the eight-year-old boy. 'Ebit'll show you the way,' she said. And then he'll come straight back, or I'll clip his ear so it'll make his head spin.' The boy muttered something and took a short, nervous step forward. 'Straight back, mind,' the old woman added.
Ebit led him down and across the street. They were all still there, under their porches and up in their lofts. Absolutely nothing whatsoever better to do, he guessed. Ebit stopped outside a plank door that was grey with age where it wasn't green with mould, and lifted the latch. 'In there,' he said, as if he was feeding a condemned man to the timber wolves at Torcea Fair.
'Thank you,' the brother answered, ducking his head as he walked in.
It was almost completely dark inside, apart from a faint orange glow from the last embers of a fire. He found a table by walking into it, and leaned his hands on the rough-sawn top. No sign of an old man, or sound of breathing apart from his own. Rustic humour? Or had the old boy died and nobody had noticed yet? In support of the latter theory was the extremely strong smell; though nauseating, however, it wasn't quite the odour of decaying flesh. Or at least, not exclusively.
'Over here,' said a voice in the shadows. 'By the fire.'
'Ah,' the brother said. 'Sorry, I didn't see you there. My name's-'
'Monach.' It was a very dry, thin voice, tenuous as the glow of the dying coals, but it wasn't a rube voice. The brother was very good at accents, but this was one he couldn't begin to place.
'That's right,' he said. 'How did you know my name?'
The voice laughed. 'Lefit Melja's eldest girl was listening under the window when you told her mother,' it said. 'She guessed they'd send you over here when they'd taken some money from you. So you're the priest, are you?'
Shrewd, too; as if it had experience in interrogation. 'Well,' Monach replied, 'sort of. Actually, I'm not a priest-not ordained or anything. I'm more of an amateur scholar, a bit of a dilettante really.'
Slight pause. 'It's all right,' the voice said, 'I know what the words mean, I'm just thinking about it.' Thin laugh; essence of laughter, strained and purged so many times that all the flavour had been lost. 'I've passed your test, but you haven't passed mine, or at least not yet. It takes me so long to think things through these days.'
Monach shifted uneasily. 'What's to think through?' he said. 'I haven't even told you what I'm here for yet.'
'Don't need to,' the voice replied gently. 'I ask myself, what's a priest-I'm sorry, what's a scholar doing in Cric, assuming he's not hopelessly lost on the road? It's got to be something to do with the god in the cart. And if it's something to do with that, then yes, I suppose you could be a gentleman scholar, or you could be a priest; and there's all sorts of different kinds of religious, so if you're a priest, what sort are you?' A soft, dry chuckle. 'Twenty years ago I'd have had the answers before you were through the door; not now, though. So suppose you help me along and tell me the answer. It'll save you an hour or so, if you're in a hurry.'
Definitely not a rube. 'By all means,' Monach replied. 'My name is Sens Monach; you may just have heard of my father, Sens Reuden, if you were ever in the military. I'm his younger son. Anyway, I've been making a study of manifestations of the divine for twenty years, gathering material for a book, and so when I heard about this god in the cart business-'
Loud coughing fit; then: 'Yes indeed, I've heard about General Sens. I never heard he had two sons, never heard he didn't. It's perfectly possible, I suppose; if Sens had a younger son, he could well have turned out idle and bookish-often the way with a self-made man. I'll say this for you: if you're a liar you're a conscientious one.' Slight pause, and a muffled scraping noise, possibly the foot of a chair on a stone floor. 'So you want to hear about the god in the cart.'
Monach perched on the edge of the table; it wobbled a bit. 'Yes please,' he said.
'All right. You'll have to excuse the dark, by the way,' the voice added. 'It rests my eyes and I can't afford to waste charcoal. If you've brought your own lamp, though, you can feel free to light it.'
'Left it in my saddlebag,' Monach replied truthfully. 'It doesn't matter. I can remember well enough without having to take notes.'
'Good.' Pause, and more scraping. 'I expect you're curious about me, too,' the voice said (still the same weary, strained tone, slow delivery of words). 'And yes, I'm wandering off the subject, but you'll have to bear with me, sometimes I like to talk while I'm thinking. I don't suppose they told you my name.'
'No.'
'That's good, too. Let's see. My household name is Joiect, and my family name's nothing to interest you; but you may want to have a name to call me by. You're Monach and I'm Joiect.' Another of those laughs. 'For the sake of argument, at any rate.'
'If you say so,' Monach replied.
'Now then. Who I am, I'm a retired soldier. I was born here, and when I was through with my work, I came back here, and here I've been ever since. But I've seen a thing or two, Brother Monach-oh, I'm sorry, there I was still thinking you're a priest. I've seen a thing or two around the empire, let me tell you, and I know a little more about some things than my neighbours. Is that about in line with what you'd imagined?'