"I came here with the Prince, thinking to build a temple. The talk in Ranke was of war with the Nisibisi, and it was not a good time for an architect-priest. I would rather lay the foundation for a temple than undermine the walls of a city. It should have been quiet. Vashanka's attention should have been drawn to the north with the war and the armies, but He was here, almost from the beginning, and I never understood that.
"Now, the war goes on without victory. The troops are disheartened, rebellious, mutinous. They have slain the Emperor along with all of his family, and mine, which they could find. Now, the war belongs to Theron, and it goes no better for him, perhaps because it was not that the Emperor was a bad war-leader but because in a forgotten backwater of the Empire a Rankan god has been banished.
"I've been left with a cesspool of a city to govern because no one else is interested or able. My temple was never built, and will not be built now. My Prince, the only legitimate heir to the Imperial throne, lives in perpetual innocence, and there are two thousand Beysin in Sanctuary, not counting snakes, birds, and fishermen, who are planning to wait here with their Empress, their gold, and their revolting customs until their goddess bestirs herself to win a war they couldn't win with their own hands and weapons back home!"
His voice rose again, and it frightened the rook, which promptly bit the hand that fed it squarely between the thumb and forefinger.
"Lately I've begun to understand that I will not be going back home," he said more softly, binding the wound with fabric from his sleeve. "Or, rather, I've been forced to accept that Sanctuary-of all the forsaken places in creation-is going to be my home until I die. I will not have my dream of dying in peace in the temple where I was born. Do the S'danzo think much of their birth-homes? I was born in the Temple of Vashanka in Ranke. My substance is one with that temple. Some part of me: my eyes, my heart, whatever, is as it was when I was born and belongs more to that temple than to me. But now, look, the bird bites me; blood flows and new skin is formed. Sanctuary skin, Illyra. For me it will always be a very small part, but for you- isn't Sanctuary within you even as the S'danzo Sight is within you?"
He had drawn her in to look at his wound, and played her with his best arguments as he would have done had she been the Emperor himself. His eyes stared into hers.
"Illyra, if you won't help me, then I can't help Sanctuary, and if I can't help Sanctuary, then it doesn't matter if you save your son. Use the Sight to look around you. There is hope, need; there is a great vacuum where Vashanka reigned "
Illyra jerked away from him. "The S'danzo have no gods. It does not matter to us which of the gyskourem becomes the Gyskouras, the new god other men bow down to."
"Before Vashanka was vanquished I made a grand ritual for Him, to consecrate his worship here, to establish Sanctuary in his eyes and, in truth, to control Him. A Feast of the Ten-Slaying and the Dance of Azuna. The girl was a slave trained in the temple in Ranke, and Vashanka was the Imperial Prince Kadakithis himself. It was, perhaps, the greatest of my offerings to the god, and my worst. The girl, remarkably, conceived, and a boychild was born not two weeks before... before Vashanka was lost. That child is" about the same age, I would guess, as your own son.
"He is a strange child, much given to anger and ill-humor. His mother and the others who care for him assure me that he is no worse than any other child his age, but I am not so sure. They say he is lonely, but he rejects all the palace children brought to him. I think, perhaps, he has needed to choose his own companions-and then, this morning, I heard of your son..." He paused, but Illyra did not complete his sentence. "Shall I give you an old Ilsigi coin like the boy gave you yesterday? Do the S'danzo only speak to gold? Is your son to be the companion to Vashanka's last son? Is he the new god I must serve, or is he the Gyskouras of some other hope which I must destroy?"
"Why do you ask these things?" Illyra repeated helplessly as the priest's words stirred the Sight within her.
"I was high priest and architect for Vashanka. I am still high priest and architect for the Stormgod-but I must know whom I serve, Illyra. And, if I must, I must try again to bring the Stormgod into an understanding with his people. I could take your son out to that altar and make a sacrifice of him; I could bring him to the palace and raise him as the god's son instead of the one I have there now. Do you understand the choices I will have to make?"
Illyra Saw the high priest's choices, all of them, as well as the gods watching nervously as gyskourem were drawn to Sanctuary's maelstrom of hope and need. The web of confusion she had Seen around the city was focused on the place where Vashanka had been and, for the moment, all other magic and intrigue were controlled by the hopes and needs which the emergent Stormgod must take into himself.
She put her hands over her ears and was unaware of her own screaming. When she was aware of anything again she was lying in the dirt of the atrium and Myrtis's cool hands were holding a damp cloth to her forehead. Dubro was glaring down at the priest with mayhem in his eyes.
"She is a strong woman," Torchholder informed the smith. "Stormgods do not choose weak messengers." He turned to Illyra. "I had not named Vashanka's last son; I had no name that was right for him. Now I think I shall make a naming ceremony for him and call him Gyskouras-at least until he chooses a different name for himself. And, Illyra, I think your son should be at that ceremony, don't you?" He summoned his servants with a snap of his fingers and left the atrium without formal farewells, the great rook shedding feathers as it struggled to clear the steep rooftops of the Aphrodisia.
"What did I tell him?" Illyra asked, taking hold of Dub-ro's hand. "He isn't taking Arton? I didn't say that, did I?"
She would never surrender her son to the priest or the gods, not even if there was the silver of true Sight in Torch-holder's request. Dubro would never understand and, above all, the S'danzo did not acknowledge the interference of gods. They would leave the town, if they had to, sneaking out at night the way Shadowspawn and Moonflower's daughter had, since the Torch had already decreed that no one would leave Sanctuary without his permission.
While she'd been with the priest, Myrtis had gotten the little boy to swallow some honeyed gruel, but when she put the child back in Illyra's arms the madam made it plain that she did not expect him to survive and, with the high priest showing such an interest, she certainly did not want him surviving or dying at the Aphrodisia.
"We will take him with us," Dubro said simply, gathering up his daughter as well and leading the way out to the Street. They could not have remained much longer at the Aphrodisia in any event.
Through years of labor Dubro and Illyra had amassed a small hoard of gold which they kept hidden where the stones of Dubro's forge became the outer wall of their homestead. But with the Beysib, and all the gold they brought with them, not even gold was as valuable as it had been and they could ill afford another day of idleness. A squall rose out of the harbor while they were walking, a sudden, damp inconvenience that should not have been remarkable in a seacoast town except that the raindrops striking Arton's face did not wash away his clouded tears but made them darker. Without saying why, Illyra clutched her son tighter and raced ahead through the storm-quieted Bazaar.
It took several days, even for the gossips and rumor-mongers of Sanctuary, to discover the coincidences: The recurrent, violent squalls; Molin Torchholder's unprecedented visit to the Aphrodisia House; and the S'danzo child who cried silent, storm-colored tears. The story that someone had smuggled an unfriendly serpent into the Snake-Bitch Empress's bedchamber had lent itself easily to lewd embellishment, while the tale that half-rotted corpses were walking the back alleys of Downwind was more frightening. But when the fifth storm in as many days dumped hundreds of fish, some as large as a man's forearm, on the porch of Vashanka's still-unfinished temple, interest began, at last, to grow.