“Let’s not talk about that,” Shalle said. “I prefer to remember him as he was.”
“As he was with you,” Tephe said.
“As he was,” Shalle said, firmly. “Don’t discount that part of who he was just because you didn’t know it. None of us are all of who we are to any one person.”
“What are you hiding from me?” Tephe said.
Shalle smiled and lightly slapped his chest. “None of your business. Obviously.” Tephe laughed.
There was a quiet knock on the door. Shalle groaned, got up, found the robe and answered the door while tying its stays. A voice Tephe recognized as Lade whispered something.
Shalle looked back at Tephe. “Lade says the Gavril is at the door of the rookery.”
Tephe frowned. Ysta had been dead asleep when Forn had him checked on, and should have been for hours yet. The captain dressed quickly and went to the rookery door, where Lt. Ysta stood, a troubling shade of gray.
“Lieutenant,” Tephe said.
“CAPTAIN TEPHE,” said Ysta in a voice clearly not his own. “BY ORDER OF THE BISHOPRY MILITANT, THE RIGHTEOUSIS TO BE BROUGHT TO BISHOP’S CALL. MAKE ALL HASTE. YOU ARE EXPECTED PRESENTLY.”
Ysta choked, vomited and collapsed. Shalle slipped out of the rookery to attend him.
“He’s all right,” Shalle said, after a minute. “He’s just worn out. We should get him the healer’s bay.”
“No,” Tephe said. “Once Andso finds out we are to be brought to Bishop’s Call, he will want to use him again, even if he is laid out in a healer’s crèche.” He nodded toward the rookery. “Bring him into the rookery. Andso will not step foot in it. Ysta will sleep all he needs. When he is awake, send him to me.” With that Tephe went to the bridge, to halt preparations for Triskell and begin the preparations for Bishop’s Call.
To begin preparations for going home.
Chapter Four
Captain Tephe nodded to the guards. “Open the gate,” he said. The guards gave the order and the heavy iron gate of the landing citadel creaked open, revealing the city beyond it, and the mile-long thoroughfare connecting the landing citadel and the godhold on its other end. In between were tenements whose inhabitants hung out of windows and stood on street corners, waiting.
Waiting for him to parade the god.
Neal Forn came up to Tephe, bearing two bags, and handed one to the captain. “Your coppers, captain.” Tephe nodded, and took the bag. Inside were coins, which he would throw to the crowds lining the streets as he passed them. They would reach for the coins with one hand and throw trash and rotten things at the passing god with the other, shouting as they did so.
“I remember being on the other end of this,” Forn said, and gestured to the west. “I was a child six streets from here. When these gates opened, wherever we were and whatever we were doing, we came running. The captains and their mates would toss their coins and we would fight for them, and then take what we had and buy bread. When we were older, we would buy drink.”
“You remember this fondly,” Tephe said.
Forn snorted. “No, captain, not fondly. A thrown copper was often the thing that decided for the day whether I ate new, warm bread or what I had scraped out of a barrel to throw at the god.” He jerked his head out toward the tenements. “This is not a place to grow well as a child, captain. I do not think half those I grew with made it to an age to leave, and most of those who grew to that age never left. I do not doubt I will see some of my childhood fellows down this street today, shouting pieties and hoping for copper.”
“Toss them a coin, then,” Tephe said. “They will praise you when they drink tonight.”
Forn shook his head, and then looked out to the street. “I throw to the children,” he said. “They need the coins better. And one of them might yet leave. As I did.” Then the first mate gave his captain a small, bitter smile and took some distance from him.
Tephe gave him his distance and instead looked back toward the god, secured in an ornate rolling cage whose iron bars were too thick to allow the god hope of escape, but wide enough to let through the trash flung at it. Surrounding the cage were a dozen of the godhold guard, dressed in livery of red, gold and black, holding pikes of second-made iron. The pikes were meant to be ceremonial but were nevertheless sharpened and balanced for attack and discipline. Gods were known to attempt escape on their brief journey to the godhold, or their few remaining worshippers to attempt to rescue their lords.
Where either the gods or their followers would go from there was another matter entirely. The inner city of Bishop’s Call was sealed by The Lord Himself, a mosaic ring of first-made iron circling it. No enslaved god, weakened and stripped of its native power, could hope to pass. Nor would The Lord’s followers approach the ring, although for another reason entirely. While even the smallest nugget of first-made iron could bring a man more copper than he might see in a year, stealing iron from the Sealing Ring condemned the thief to have his soul consumed. Death beyond death.
Tephe shuddered at the thought, and looked up to see the god, in its cage, staring directly at him.
Between Tephe and the god Priest Andso interposed himself. “Captain, we are ready,” he said. The priest was dressed in fine robes of green and gold and held a long prieststaff in his right hand. The priest, Tephe knew, would parade close enough to the cage of the god to imply it was he himself who caged and controlled it, but not so close that he would be struck by the trash thrown at it. “We are ready,” the priest said. “And it is a glorious day to parade!”
Tephe glanced at Forn, who discreetly rolled his eyes. They both turned back to the street, whose edges now swarmed with crowds, jeering and readying their refuse to hurl at the god as it passed by. The guards at the gate nodded to the captain; the gate was now fully open.
Tephe took a deep breath, jammed a hand into his bag of coppers, and stepped forward toward the street, and toward the godhold.
“Are you well, Captain Tephe?” asked Bishop Major Chawk. Chawk and two other bishops sat at a long, curved table of dark soapwood, sheaves of documents in front of each. Tephe stood in front of the desk, in a meeting room in the sprawling Bishopry, which in itself was nearly as large as the city which putatively contained it. “You appear distracted,” the Bishop said.
“My apologies, Eminence,” Tephe said. “I was recalling the parade upon our arrival.”
“Ah, yes,” Chawk said. “Did you enjoy it, Captain?”
“It is always an honor to show to the faithful the power of Our Lord, to whom even the gods submit,” Tephe said.
Chawk chuckled. “A very politic answer, Captain. But you do not need to be politic here.”
“Yes, Eminence,” Tephe said, and kept his true opinion about that statement to himself.
“We have read your report on the events surrounding your defeat at Ament Cour,” said another of the bishops, whom Tephe recognized as Stei Ero, the Bishopry’s Vicar of Archives, charged with intelligence gathering. “Also your late addition of the incident with the god. And it will come to you as no surprise that we have collected additional accounts of both incidents, both from your ship’s priest and from other sources.”
“You have a spy aboard the Righteous,” Tephe said.
“Does this offend you, Captain?” Ero asked.
“No, Eminence,” Tephe said. “I hide nothing from the Bishopry Militant, or the Bishopry in general. Your spy will not tell you anything I would not. Therefore he is no harm to me or to my ship.”