After that, Neeka was very glad that Lokos walked before her and Koominon behind, for it seemed that each patch of darkness, each shadow cast by the lamp was a skull-faced warrior in antique armor, skeletal hand gripping rusty sword or rotted spearshaft. Under her breath, she breathed half-forgotten prayers to Christ, to His Holy Mother and to every other saint she could remember, temporarily forgetting that identical prayers for deliverance had availed her nothing those endless days and nights in that horrible cell in the fortress walls.
Down a flight of worn, stone steps lay a cellar, also stacked with bales and crates, but then what looked to be but a stretch of blank wall pivoted at the touch of Koominon’s hand and swung shut behind them as silently as it had opened. They went a few paces along a narrow corridor, down another, steeper flight of stairs, these set at a right angle to the corridor, then along a wider passage to a bivalve door of verdigris-covered bronze. Koominon drew a dirk from beneath his cloak and tapped sharply with its steel ball-pommel on the green-crusted door in a distinct pattern of raps and pauses.
“Open your mind, child,” Lokos mindspoke Neeka. “Lower your shield that they may be sure who and how many we are.”
Neeka did so and, shortly, one of the high, broad doors swung back. Lokos led the way into another corridor, this one with a down-sloping floor and a clean tang of the sea about it. The ramp curved gradually to the left and, at the foot of it, was another bivalve bronze door. Both halves of the door swung open before them, flooding the sloping corridor with warmth and light from the torches, lamps and braziers within a large, oval chamber.
Out from a knot of soberly garbed men and a few women strode Komees Petros. Taking both of Neeka’s small, cold hands in his large, warm ones, he bent stiffly from the waist and kissed the right one, but retained his hold when he stepped back, straightening.
“Neeka, until we investigated, none of us were aware that you were of noble birth, that your late father was an ahstoonohmos.” He half turned to the group and added, “We have no such title here, not any longer, but we did in ancient times; ahstoonohmos is a hereditary office and its holder is the deputy to the lord of a city or a district, being roughly the equivalent of our vahrohneeskos, though an ahstoonohmos is salaried and does not actually hold land, as does a vahrohneeskos. This poor child’s entire family died in an epidemic of summer fever. Her care and her dead father’s office were both then assumed by his younger brother, her uncle; he gave her in marriage to a lowborn cur dog of a priest, who then sold her to a ship captain and put about the word that she had deserted him.”
The nobleman went on, giving a brief account of Neeka’s nearly two years in Esmithpolisport. He was an accomplished raconteur. Consequently, there were few dry eyes amongst the throng when he was done.
Koominon had disappeared during the monologue. When he reappeared, he was cloaked in the vestments of a priest of the Old Ehleen Rite and all those present repaired to a canvas-enclosed section of the room for the religious service which always opened a full meeting of the membership. Then, while some members were preparing precooked food and others were laying boards on trestles and bringing chairs and stools from the enclosed area, a woman and three men—Komees Pehtros, among them—took Neeka aside and began teaching her the complicated hand grasps and signals, the childish-sounding passwords and the significance of the oaths she soon must swear.
The oaths were sworn before dinner. They were designed to be solemn and awe-inspiring to those who were deeply religious, but the nobility of the north could take religion or leave it alone, generally the latter, and Neeka’s firsthand knowledge of the frankly mercenary philosophies of the Church and churchmen, gained from her brief marriage, had rendered her deeply irreligious. So, though she behaved as she assumed she was expected to behave, she actually found the oath-taking ceremony as childishly silly as the secret signs and words.
At dinner she was seated beside the woman who had earlier shared in her instruction, Lady Rohza Ahnthropoheethees, widow of a former shipping magnate, scioness of a house of the petty nobility and a distant relative of the one-time ruling house of Karaleenos when still it had been an independent kingdom. As big and as powerful looking as Djoy Skriffen—with broad shoulders, slender hips, flat thighs and buttocks, very small breasts and a set of craggy features—Rohza affected masculine garb, right down to jackboots, hanger and dirk. She spoke loudly and often, shouting down the length of the table in her deep contralto, frequently slapping her thigh as she guffawed at her own and at others’ witticisms.
There was something about the middle-aged woman that put Neeka’s little white teeth edge to edge; not even the evil virtually oozing from Djoy Skriffen’s very pores had so afflicted her. It was not that the brawny Rohza was cool or unkind to Neeka; indeed, the very reverse was the case—her attendance was so warm and constant that she seemed to Neeka more like a courting swain than a dinner companion. With almost every word she spoke to the girl, the woman’s big hands were placed lingeringly on shoulder or knee, neck or arm. Such uncomforting familiarity prevented Neeka from truly enjoying her dinner, and, at future dinners, she saw to it that she had other dinner companions.
Though she was, of course, not privy to the meetings or decisions of the Heritage Council, Neeka could see nothing of a practical, political nature that was accomplished by ee Klirohnohmeea. It seemed little more than one of those secret fraternal organizations with which noble Ehleen society abounded in the north, in Kehnooryos Mahkehdohnya, save only for the religious aspect which the northerners lacked and which, she shrewdly guessed, was a part of this group’s format only because it was forbidden by law.
True, at almost every meeting of the full membership, certain hotheads loudly prated daydreams of armed uprisings against the hated Confederation, but a dream that sort of talk assuredly was, for very few of the members had had any sort of war training, and if the Heritage had any popular support in Esmithpolisport, Neeka was never able to discern it. A conversation one day with Komees Pehtros confirmed her suspicions.
“Engaging together in an illegal act tends to bind the membership more tightly together, Neeka. But were it entirely up to me, I’d do away with anything pertaining to the Old Faith, for I was a young ensign in the Nineteenth Infantry Regiment during the Great Rebellion and I personally witnessed the perverse extremes to which religious fanaticism can go. Faced with such, I can see why High Lord Milo had no choice but to proscribe the Ehleen Church and all its clergy. Indeed, child, I would have done the same in his place. Crucifixion, burning, even impalement was really too good for many of the black-robed animals.”
“Even Koominon?” asked Neeka.
He shook his head. “Father Ahreestos, who calls himself Koominon, is truly a devout, good and humble man. That he, who never subscribed to the perversities which condemned his faith, was tarred with the same brushstroke is a tragedy. That he insisted on remaining in direst peril here is even more of a tragedy, for he could go far, could contribute much, were he to enship for a place wherein the Faith still is legal—Kehnooryos Mahkehdohnya or Greeah Ehlahs. Here, he is living on borrowed time and, soon or late, will suffer a long, agonizing, messy death. And ee Klirohnohmeea will be in a large part responsible, for did he not have a congregation, he might depart for more salubrious climes.”
“Then … then you must tell Master Lokos this,” insisted Neeka. “Tell him quickly, for he is Koominon’s friend. He will persuade him to leave.”