had no choice but to scuttle along with his chastened underlings.
Dace feared more than the haughty man’s enmity, stoked to avenge the shameful embarrassment. Instinct had not erred. His impetuous glimpse through the study door showed the stranger’s doffed cloak, draped over a chair. Unveiled, the gilt braid and white vestments that had been concealed underneath. Badges differentiated the Sunwheel priests. Lysaer’s secretive visitor likely came as an inside informant, positioned amid the ranked hierarchy of the True Sect Temple.
Disadvantaged, disgraced, Dace jockeyed to outpace the punitive speed of event. He elbowed past the grumbling Quince, reached the kitchen ahead of the irate steward, and reclaimed his discarded yoke buckets. Luck deserted him as the blindsided cook hounded him in reprisal.
“Larking off, were you? D’you think I’m a fool? Mooners who squat over-long in the privy cut no slack with me. I’ve sent Manda after the water. You’ll fetch her dust-bin and shovel, forthwith. On with you, then! Clean out the grate in the sitting-room fire-place.”
Dace tossed the implements into the ash bucket and bolted, before the steward burst in and sacked him on the spot without pay.
The sitting-room’s drawn curtains plunged the room’s marquetry furnishings into airless stillness and gloom. Spared in brief reprieve, Dace crossed the vacant carpet to the mantel and knelt in despair on the marble apron.
Davien had warned that his course would be harsh. A moment’s impatience may have wrecked his best chance to temper Lysaer’s cursed nature. Bent to a scullion’s task, Dace shovelled up cinders and swore. “Ath above, what I’d give to uncover the report delivered by that slinking spy!”
An intrusive movement flickered in the shadow behind. Dace started, head turned, fearful he had been followed. Yet he encountered no flesh-and-blood presence. Only the fugitive impression of Kharadmon, dapper in lace cuffs and velvet, a sardonic finger touched to his lips.
The room still loomed empty. Frowning, returned to the ash in his dust-bin, Dace beheld a perfect red rose, there and gone in an eyeblink. Two such apparitions were not prompted by nerves. Stilled in thought, Dace picked up the faint sound of voices funnelled through the flue from the master suite’s upstairs fire-place.
In hindsight, the cook’s remedial punishment suggested the sly meddling of a Fellowship shade.
Poised, Dace listened in as Lysaer demanded, “You insist you have proof?”
“… beyond question,” the temple informant responded. “Confirmation by direct pigeon, the High Priesthood endorses the cleanse. Most agree that a sweep to root out clan blood-lines is long overdue.”
Lysaer’s murmured answer at tensioned pitch, then, “Oh, yes. The sealed order’s already mustered the war host’s remnant companies. The Hatchet’s busy as the weasel tossed into the hen coop. Defeat by the High King of Havish has badly scorched his towering pride. He’ll enforce the mandate to kill, and damn all to the wave of red slaughter unleashed upon folk who may never have been in collusion with Shadow.”
The pause hung. Breath stopped, his grip on the dust-bin white-knuckled, Dace strained to fathom the tenor of Lysaer’s suspended opinion.
The mask of the statesman must have prevailed, for after a moment, the Sunwheel agent resumed, “You’re keen for the list?”
Lysaer’s stiff annoyance could almost be felt.
“Here’s the copy, then, with the active roster.” A brief lag, while a document changed hands. “Straight off the pen of my man in the copyist’s chamber at Erdane.”
To a friend, Lysaer’s suave response sounded frayed, “This selection was made by a damned astute eye!”
“You have no idea.” The stranger chuckled. “Diviners selected the most faithful. They picked for strong stomachs and unquestioned zeal to enforce Canon Law without qualms. His Hallowed Eminence, the Light’s Priest Supreme expounded upon needful slaughter. With reason, or hadn’t you heard? The clanblood condemned among Torwent’s crofters escaped from their execution by fire. The captain in charge was stripped of his insignia and flogged a fortnight ago.”
Lysaer’s murmur broke in.
“Guilty? Beyond doubt.” The stranger’s contempt echoed down through the chimney. “His own sergeant attested to his craven weakness. More, the men who failed to secure the Light’s prisoners were put to death under evidence. Trackers with hounds confirmed someone helped the heretics break out of the barn that confined them.”
Lysaer paused in stark disbelief. “I was told that all of the able young men were killed outright on the field.”
“So they were,” verified the temple informant. “Shut in for the pyre were their women and babes. Telling fact, the nailed doors failed to hold them.”
This statement also raised a poisoned silence. Dace could picture Lysaer’s composure, a chipped-stone facade that armoured the gut wrench of horror beneath. The dawning awareness about froze his blood: this exchange must be the covert report garnered from a secret network high in the ranks of the True Sect temple.
Dace dared not presume he was the sole witness to the sensitive meeting upstairs. The flue in the sitting-room also connected to the bread oven’s stove-pipe, a convenient conduit during the summer, when the day’s baking was done before dawn.
Above, a deliberate tread indicated that Lysaer strode to the casement. Not for an innocuous breath of fresh air. Grey daylight would punch-cut his features like sculpture, a trick he often used to harden the appearance of invulnerability. Distance from the hearth obscured his next words.
“But they have dared to extend their reach beyond Tysan,” the temple informant contradicted. “While the whirlwind campaign razes the clan enclave at Orlan, the companies fragmented by casualties will be re-formed and drilled back to fitness. Mid-season, they’ll be dispatched to Rathain for the next course of brisk action.”
“The priesthood’s bid to consolidate True Sect rule at Etarra by force of arms?” Lysaer’s acid surprise framed rebuttal. “There’s an arrogant trespass not to be borne.”
“Temple gold’s been allotted for staging.” Perhaps the priest smiled before he resumed. “You’ll soon hear more than rumours. Galleys are being chartered for the troops’ passage across Instrell Bay. The campaign under The Hatchet will take Rathain’s shore before the autumn storms disrupt his supply.”
Lysaer’s oath inflected sheer disbelief.
“The invasion’s no feint,” the visitor insisted. “Our Lord Highest Examiner claims to hold evidence that Fellowship interests cannot intervene. You’ll have to choose which advance to endorse. Blessed Lord, I suggest that you favour Etarra. Because Erdane’s foray into the Thaldeins confronts the most pernicious of the clan outposts, that thrust will involve the leagues’ finest trackers and the most gifted True Sect diviners.”
Lysaer’s diction bit. “You insist the temple’s sealed orders will target children and babes without quarter?”
“No question,” the visitor snapped, and killed hope. “The command calls for a sweeping extermination, backed up by the resource to route every hidden survivor.”
Lysaer’s venomous stillness this time carried a palpable force that unsettled the sen Evend ancestral instinct. Dace shivered, raked by the visceral certainty his liege’s disastrous sentiment showed. Lysaer was human and fallible. A True Sect devotee beguiled by the dangerous myth he was god-sent perhaps beheld a crack in the immortal facade.
If the avatar’s closing phrase was too low to discern, the brisk rap of his informant’s step in departure suggested an ominous quittance.
Dace bottled his helpless fear and applied himself, shovelling. The reek of carbon seemed chillingly apt. The True Sect High Priesthood would move with alacrity to defend temple interests if today’s visitor played his avatar false. Worse, atop pending calamity, the door-latch clicked open before Dace