They were burning—had burned—their Matria.
It had happened in other cities, Damien knew. They had heard of it as they traveled up the shore, and once they had seen its gruesome aftermath. But never this. Never these thousands of people, so hungry for suffering. Never this palpable sense of corruption, so powerful that he could feel it Working the fae around him. So overwhelming that at times he felt he would surely choke on it.
A sudden, movement by the platform caught his attention; beside him he felt Tarrant stiffen as a mounted figure robed in white and gold rode up to smoldering ashes. He was tall and regal and the horse he rode was one of Mels
Lester’s finest, a broad-shouldered stallion with a champagne coat whose glossy white mane and elegant tail rippled in the wind as it moved. It rode up to where the crumbled body smoked and then turned to face the crowd; the man on its back saluted the assembled with a motion that was half-religious, half-military in nature.
Toshida.
His power was tangible, his presence overwhelming. In a land where chaos and violence now held sway, he clearly controlled the reins of his city as surely and as firmly as he did the reins of his lustrous mount—and the crowd responded to him as obediently as that beast did. When he gestured for silence, they subsided; when he commanded attention, they listened; when he proclaimed Mercia’s triumph over its adversaries, they cheered with a passion that was near hysteria in its intensity. The energy was the same as in the other cities, Damien noted, and every bit as volatile. But here it had a focus, a control. Here the hatred had been channeled, refined . . . used.
The spectacle was over at last. Slowly the crowd dispersed, as firemen saw to the safe removal of the still-smoldering debris. There would be parties aplenty tonight, as Mercia celebrated her freedom. None would question the fact that the Matria’s death had freed them from rakhene domination. None would stop to consider that in dozens of cities up and down the coast, this burning would not have been a triumphal end but a dark beginning.
Damien looked at Tarrant; the Hunter said nothing, but nodded ever so slightly. As the crowd thinned out about them, they began to walk northward, and as they moved, the Hunter conjured an Obscuring that kept the masses looking elsewhere, moving elsewhere—in other words, out of their way. It took them little time to reach the Regent’s Manor—or was it now the Patriarch’s Manor?—and they had no trouble with the guards. The few who were allowed to notice them were carefully controlled, smoothly manipulated. Thus the two gained access to the building, the upper floors, Toshida’s private wing. Thus they gained audience to the Patriarch himself.
“Your Holiness.” It was Tarrant who bowed first, a deep obeisance that acknowledged and glorified Toshida’s new status. Damien followed suit. He could see the man’s eyes glitter with pleasure as he accepted the offering. How long had he been waiting for this? Damien wondered. How great had his hunger become?
“I thought you might come here,” he said to Damien. “Verdate. Although I will admit I expected you to travel with members of your expedition,” he nodded toward Tarrant, “not locals.”
Tarrant smiled coldly. “I came east on the Golden Glory along with Reverend Vryce. However, as I chose to disembark before the ship reached Mercia, I regret we haven’t met yet. Sir Gerald Tarrant, Neocount of Merentha.” And again he bowed.
“Ah. No doubt you are the western sorcerer the Matrias warned us against.” He smiled tightly. “I think I can say with some certainty that any enemy of theirs is welcome in my city.”
“Are all the Matrias dead?” Damien asked.
“Not quite all. Some have fled for the mountains, and will have to be tracked down. And they have their own citadel in the far north, where they train more of their kind; that has yet to be stormed. But give us time, Reverend Vryce. Only recently did we learn what the true situation was; day by day our knowledge grows. Give us time, verdate, and soon all the human lands will be cleansed of their taint.”
Damien tried hard not to let that phrase turn his stomach; given what he had, seen in the past weeks, it took considerable effort. “We were hoping you could tell us what happened to the ship that brought us here.”
Toshida hesitated. There was something in his expression that warned Damien all was not well, so that when at last he said, “The Golden Glory is gone,” it came as no real surprise.
“Left?” he asked. Knowing the real answer even as he asked.
“Wrecked. Off the shore of Almarand, in a squall. Most of the crew made it safety ashore, but the ship itself was destroyed, along with the cargo it was carrying. I’m sorry,” he said, and there seemed to be genuine regret in his voice.
“Captain Rozca? Pilot Maradez?”
A muscle along his jawline tensed. “The captain is in Penitencia, negotiating for a replacement vessel. Rasya . . .”
Damien’s heart sank. “Drowned?”
He shook his head stiffly; his expression was strained. “She made it ashore. Spent a week in Almarand, studying their old sea charts. Then she set off for Lural Protectorate, seeking some old log book that supposedly was stored there. An expeditional relic, I believe.”
“And?”
Toshida turned away. “She was a stranger,” he said quietly. “This is a bad time for strangers.”
Oh, my God. He pictured Rasya lost in an angry crowd, her height and her coloring and her accent branding her as an outsider, an unknown, a threat . . . he pictured her falling victim to one of the crowds he had seen and he trembled inside. Not that. Please, God. Not her.
“It happens,” Toshida said. Though he might have meant the words to be comforting, to Damien they sounded harsh. Inhuman. “The price we pay, Reverend.”
“For what?”
“For freedom. For an end to tyranny. The land must be cleansed, and if in the end that cleansing causes pain—”
“God in heaven!” Damien exploded. “Do you really buy that crap? I would have expected more of you than that, Patriarch.”
Toshida’s expression darkened. “Who are you to judge our ways? If the people need violence to heal, then let them have it. You can’t expect emotion like that to stay bottled up forever; sooner or later it must express itself, and if that expression is uncontrolled—”
“And is this controlled! Is that what you call it?”
“They’re killing rakh. I call that justice.”
“They killed Rasya!” His voice was shaking—with rage, with grief, with incredulity. “And hundreds of others. Thousands of others. Anyone who gets in their way, or disagrees with their cause, or just plain isn’t lucky—”
“That’s the price we must pay, Reverend Vryce. Verda ben.”
“For what?”
“For unity.” His expression was hard. “Or have you forgotten? The great tenet of the Church we both serve. Unity of faith. Unity of purpose. Unity of fate, at any cost—”
“No,” Tarrant interrupted. “Not at any cost.”
Toshida turned on him. “Will you teach me my own religion now? I was raised in the Church; I think I know the Prophet’s teachings well enough.”
“You may know them,” Tarrant said coldly. “But you clearly don’t understand them.”
Toshida’s eyes blazed with rage; his skin blushed copper with fury. “How dare you! As if any outsider can ever understand the world we’ve built here, or what it takes to maintain it—”
“You want to see what it is you’ve built here?” The Hunter’s anger was filling the room, chilling the air within it. Rage—wraiths flitted about his head, trembling in time to his speech. “You want to see the precious world your religion of hate, will foster? I’ll show you!”