Chapter Fifteen
The new tattoo on his middle two fingers still stung a little. Inked in skin-matched colors, only the redness of the half-healed flesh showed where it sat. Healing spells could only work so fast on Mendhite tattoos, and this tattoo had been applied only just this morning But, so long as he kept his family’s attention elsewhere, it should pass unnoticed.
Showing up late to luncheon should do the trick, Krais thought wryly. The Temple’s bells had clanged noon before leaving Pelai’s quarters, and the great hour-hand on the highest tower over the Temple Sanctuary now stood slightly but visibly off of straight. He didn’t bother with the bellpull; this was technically his home when he wasn’t being a penitent or out on assignment. Krais just opened the front door and walked through the foyer hall into the atrium.
Rain drizzled lightly through the square holding the enclosed garden open to the elements, but since he was already damp, Krais simply crossed to the two spirit trees sitting in splendor on the spirit rock—not just a table, but an ancient, weathered, moss-edged rock—at the heart of the ornamental garden. Each miniature tree had been carefully clipped and tended and carried from home to home. Younger sons and daughters had the right to carry a cutting from the parental tree; Dagan’thio and Karei were both younger siblings, so they did not have the ancestral trees of their family line. Those sat in the original homes, Karei’s far to the east along the coastline where her fishing village family lived, and Dagan’s to the northwest among the rice terraces, still in the possession of his magesmithing family.
Krais touched the leaves of the Puhon spirit tree to remember his paternal kin, living and dead, then the Aldis tree for his mother’s kin. One day, his father’s tree would be his; their mother’s tree would be Foren’s, and Gayn would have the right to claim a cutting from either one, or perhaps from both if he wished. What an irony that I would rather be the one with a mere cutting from each, and let Gayn have father’s spirit tree for his inheritance.
Giving the little bush-sized trees a final pat of fondness, he followed the winding path through the rest of the garden to the porch on the far side. Two steps up, and he passed into the inner receiving hall, the one reserved for actual friends of the Elder Disciplinarian. Common visitors who were strangers but who did not have formal business used the parlor on the right side of the atrium. Those with formal business used the library to the left. Krais was family.
A youth of about fifteen or sixteen, his hair braided and beaded, his worn blue kilt pinned with a black-enameled pin at the knee, hurried into the inner hall. “This is Family Day for the Elder Disciplinarian. You are not allowed inside. Only family may ent . . . oh.”
The youth blinked and stared at the flecks of wax still clinging to the older male’s skin. Pelai had used beeswax mixed with a bit of red ink for colorant. It blended well with the deep red kilt and lighter vest Krais wore—that was, if by well, one included the fact it looked like he’d suffered from rolling around on burning embers for a while. With his arms bared by the usual sleeveless nature of Mendhite vests, the wax did not quite cover up the linear welts of the quirt she had used on his torso, shoulders, and the backs of his arms. Krais watched the youth size him up and come to the correct conclusion.
It was obvious he had been punished, which meant his unannounced, boldly entered presence in the Elder Disciplinarian’s home logically meant he was Puhon Krais, the eldest of the sons. The youth bowed and gestured toward the corridor leading out of the mid-hall at the back, not the one to the right leading to the formal dining hall nor the one to the left leading to the pantry, kitchen, and servants’ quarters. Family Day meals took place in the family room, one of the few times in a high-ranking household where it was correct to be informal at a meal.
Nodding, Krais continued forward. The sound of utensils clacking against pottery met his ears; someone had decided to go ahead and serve the food, despite him not being there. A typical fatherly reaction to punish a wayward son, I think, he decided, trying to soothe the underlying sting of it. I’m not that late, but I am in disgrace . . . although Mother just might be behind it. Part of me quails at the thought of Mother’s displeasure . . .
“Krais!” His mother called out his name, blinking and looking up from ladling vegetables and meat in a thick nutty sauce over the mix of rice and wheat that in turn had been boiled in flavor-rich broth. Steamed greens already sat on the plate next to the mound of rice, dark and pungent, drizzled in bean sauce and dusted with tiny seeds.
The nutty-sauced vegetables were a common dish cooked by his parents; Family Day was for family, and she and Dagan’thio always cooked one meal together. The parents always cooked, until they were too old to cook, and the children set the table, cleared and cleaned it, washed the dishes, swept the floor. . . . Grandparents tended truly young children, and once in a while, aunts and uncles brought their families to such gatherings, if they lived close. Both the Puhon and the Aldis extended families lived too far away to visit each other more than once or twice a year, however.
Krais bowed to her as the first one to have seen him. “Ava, Mother. Ava, Father,” he greeted formally, bowing to his sire next. After him were . . . Gayn in Krais’ seat at the low table, seated on the solitary cushion placed on that long side. Foren sat in his usual seat on the other side, closer to their mother’s place on the left. Gayn usually shared that side of the table, closest to their father, but not today. “Ava, Foren. Ava, Gayn . . .”
He debated saying something about reclaiming his seat as the eldest and the heir . . . but decided against it. Maybe this is part of the punishment I’m not to protest? Krais wondered, moving around behind his father as the quartet greeted him in a ragged chorus of formal greetings as well. He would not have dared take my place without Father’s position, so I think it is. Out of the corner of his eye, he felt his father’s attention on him, the focus of that dark brown gaze, though his father’s head did not move.
Dropping gracefully into a cross-legged seat on the low, green-dyed cushion, he spoke . . . and caught himself before he mentioned Doma Pelai’thia by her full name and title. “D . . . Despite my freedom to visit on Family Day, my doma insisted I finish today’s punishment before I could leave. I apologize for being late. It is solely my fault.”
Form the subtle way his father relaxed, Krais knew he accepted his eldest son’s apology. Karei sighed and continued to dish up the meal at her end of the table. Dagan’thio, in turn, poured the tea into their cups and passed them the other way. When he finished, a subtle sway of the eldest Puhon’s upper body, a little lift to his chin, let the Elder Disciplinarian peer at Krais’ back when his eldest son accepted the plate Foren passed to him.
“Quirting?” he asked. “Under the beeswax?”
“Yes, Father.” Krais said nothing more.
“How many strokes?”
“I . . . lost count after a hundred. I’m sorry, Father,” Krais added in apology. In truth, he’d lost count around eighty, the blows coming harder and harder as he’d stroked himself to . . . things he was not supposed to think about at the dining table. She had kept going for a ways after that, however, so he was fairly certain it had been more than a hundred strokes.
“A hundred?” Foren protested, jaw dropping a little. “What in the Goddess’ name does she think you did? Robbed the Temple altar?”
“Foren, don’t be vulgar!” Karei ordered.
“He failed his father,” Dagan’thio retorted sharply at the same time. When his wife fell quiet, he added sternly. “What punishments have you endured, Foren?”
“I . . . I was judged to my soul, as is proper,” Foren stammered, apparently falling back on his training as a Disciplinarian apprentice. “Whatever the Goddess saw in me, Domo Anso has seen fit to make me help outlanders navigate the Great Library.”
“You navigated the Library?” their mother asked. She finished filling the last plate for herself and set the serving spoon down. “Which departments? I haven’t seen you in the Maritime Hall. I’ve been working there, lately.”
“A couple of different places. The Index Hall several times, Gateway magics, Transportation magics, Shoe Repair magics . . .” Foren listed.
“Shoe repair?” Dagan’thio scorned.
“They walk a lot, some sort of traveling brotherhood,” he dismissed. “They claim to be trying to raise a Patron Deity in doing so. As a result, their shoes wear out a lot because of it.”
“Hah, sounds like the group I helped this morning,” Gayn offered. “The Order of the Traveling Brotherhood.”
“—You’re helping them, too?” Foren asked, black brows rising high in surprise.
Krais lifted his head from his next mouthful of sauced vegetables and grains. Wait—what? They’re both helping the same group? Pinching his ring and middlemost fingers together, he tapped the reddened outline of the right-hand “mirror handle” of the sigil. Kept tapping it, until Pelai’s frowning face appeared in front of him.
“What? Did something come up?”
Krais pushed his thumb on the two half circle tattoos that, pressed together, formed the “mirror” of the tattoo. Projecting what he heard and saw to her.
“ . . . Yeah, that sounds like the same group, only my fellow hasn’t really mentioned this priest person,” Gayn said. “They’re all about trying to manifest this Patron of the Exiled and Bullied.”
“Mine says their brotherhood is torn between her and some god-concept of Traveling Wisdom,” Foren said.
“So it is the same group, each of them asking for your help. A bunch of priestly men exiled from somewhere, wandering around the Library, looking for information?” Krais pressed as soon as he had a break in their conversation to interject.
A soft “Oh!” floated to his ears from the transparent, hovering, shoulders-up image of Pelai’thia. Her eyes widened and she quickly waved a hand at him and hissed, “Don’t let them know this is something special!”
“Yeah,” Gayn agreed, eyeing Foren, who nodded. “It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?”
Thinking quickly, Krais nodded and joined the conversation. “Kind of, yeah . . . but from the sounds of it, they have several of these brotherhood members wandering all over, looking for information, right? Now that I think about it, it probably would’ve been odder if you hadn’t bumped into one of them. I know Domo Anso has been working in the Library on some research projects for the former Second Disciplinarian, and that you’ve had to accompany him.”
Foren nodded thoughtfully. “You’re probably right. . . . But anyway, I’ve been helping them gain access to writings on why mirror-Gating is now so terrible and constrained. We ran across an interesting theory proposed by someone at the Jenodan Academy of Free Thought, yesterday.”
“Oh?” Karei asked. “They produce a lot of thoughtful articles. If they’d been founded a few thousand years ago instead of just a few hundred, they might even have had a chance of rivaling the Great Library. Of course, they’ll never catch up to us.”
“What was the theory?” Dagan’thio asked, his tone hinting just a tiny bit at impatience over the side-trail the conversation had taken.
“Yes, tell us about it,” Karei encouraged her middle child.
“Well, the observation is that the sudden constriction of distances that mirror-Gates can travel happened just a handful of days after the Convocation of Gods and Man resumed,” Foren stated blithely. He looked at his mother as he spoke, and missed the tightening of his father’s hand into a fist, the muscle flexing in that aging, sun-brown jaw. “The thought is, there was a God or Goddess that manifested somewhere around the world right after the invocation, but because They were not formally Named, They decided in jealousy to make it difficult for people to travel.”
“I’ve got the Tower recording this—get the subject back onto that group of exiled men!” Pelai hissed at Krais. “Get them talking! We need details!”
Manufacturing a brief chuckle, Krais said, “That almost sounds like it could be that this Traveling Brotherhood you two encountered has a proto-God or Goddess who is upset at the Convocation of Gods and Man resuming, and is making it difficult to travel as a sign of protest at being excluded—or maybe it’s even both proto-deities. Have they mentioned Him or Her manifesting to any of their fellows yet?”
Exchanging curious looks for a moment, Foren and Gayn both shrugged in the end. The youngest of the two added, “I really only helped them today, and a tiny bit a few days ago, when we literally bumped into each other in the city streets.”
“What were you doing in the city streets?” Dagan’thio asked.
Krais wanted to steer the conversation back to the outlanders, but the censure in his father’s tone said the Elder Disciplinarian was determined to see his sons properly punished.
“I was following my doma’s orders as a good penitent should,” Gayn stated dryly.
“And what orders are those?” their father asked, resting both forearms on the edge of the table. “How is she punishing you, my son?”
“She’s been taking me out and around the city on charitable works. Seemingly at random. I’ve been wiping the noses of old crones and the bottoms of orphaned babies for the last three days,” Gayn stated. “Helping this Brotherhood of the Traveling Goddess was far more useful, in my opinion—it gives the outlanders a good impression of how advanced and superior Mendhite civilization is.”
That seemed to mollify their father, Krais noted. The next part of the conversation got lost, however, because Pelai interrupted him again, recapturing his attention. “Kerric says the demonic invasions are getting worse—we need to control what these outlanders are researching. Can you offer to help your brothers in helping them?”
Krais came back to his surroundings to hear his father lecturing his youngest brother on what a proper punishment should be. “ . . . And if Doma Dulette doesn’t do a proper job of it, I may have to have a word with her—law or no law, you three disappointed me grieviously, and you failed the Hierarchy. Mendhite is diminished because of your failure. Your punishments should reflect that!”
“I, too, am doing research in the Library, Father,” Krais found himself saying. That jerked Dagan’thio’s gaze to him, taking the heat of his displeasure off of his younger sons and boring it squarely into his eldest. Krais didn’t flinch. He continued smoothly, steadily. “My doma, the Elder Mage, has instructed me to do some deep research in the Restricted Sections on her behalf, as she has no time to do it herself while she gets settled properly into her new office—she is proud of our family’s skill at such things,” he added, bowing his head to their mother while his brothers blinked and their father frowned. “Indeed, it is obviously apparent, given how even outlanders can recognize our mother’s deft hand in our education.
“I think, Father, it might be appropriate for me to offer to help each of my brothers in their research. If I help them, their domae will notice how I carry out my research while simultaneously bearing the welts of my disciplining without complaint, and perhaps be inspired to be . . . more diligent . . . in the expression of their duties.”
“That sounds commendable, my son,” Dagan’thio stated. “I am pleased to see you leading by example.”
“Well, they do seem to be getting off very lightly, for Painted Warriors who have failed the Hierarchy,” their mother agreed. “Like your father, I also find it disgraceful that you two aren’t being punished more thoroughly for your failures. You should learn from Krais’ example.”
That earned him a dark look from Gayn and an outright glare from Foren, replete with enough of a flush to his cheeks to see it under the tan and tattooing of his hide. Without missing a beat, Krais stated, “The failure of our mission was mine, Father. My brothers merely followed my lead, as they thought right and proper. It is simply a kind of justice that I am punished more harshly . . . and I accept that harsher punishment.”
“Hmph.”
“Well. Enough talk of punishment. This is Family Day. Finish eating your food before it grows cold,” Karei added firmly. “Your father and I worked hard to ensure you would be filled and strengthened by our efforts. When the main meal is finished, the three of you will clean up, and then we will go to the atrium for the trimming and pruning of the spirit trees, and the acknowledgments of our ancestors.
“And we will discuss inviting my kin into sailing out to Mendham from Cliffton for a visit. I was thinking it would be nice to have my brother’s family brought out here for the Equinox Festival. Your father cannot in good conscience be asked to leave his work for that long . . . and I would far rather host them here in the luxuries of the Temple compound than be crammed into an inferior inn that reeks of sailors and fishermen.”
“Good hospitality is a mark of success in life,” Gayn agreed piously. “You and father are clearly the most successful of any of our kin, living or dead. Plus, our fireworks here in Mendham are always superior to anywhere else.”
“Gayn, eat your vegetables,” Dagan’thio ordered. A pointed order, used often over the years because Gayn tended to go straight for any meats, nuts, and grains in his meals, skipping everything else. Sighing, the youngest of the Puhon sons dug into the sauce-slathered pile he had tried to discreetly tuck to the side of his plate.
That seemed to put an end to actual conversation for a while. At least, as far as the family of the Elder Disciplinarian was concerned. Krais saw the floating, transparent portrait of Pelai moving her lips from time to time, nodding and shaking her head, talking with someone he couldn’t see. Finally, she addressed him.
“ . . . Right then. The other Guardians and I want you to investigate this group. Seeing as it’s clearly Fate at work, guiding the same group into contacting both of your two brothers, and how the three of you are tied together via Prophecy, we’re taking that as a clue on what to do. We had a majority of us agreeing that you need to get involved, like I suggested on impulse just now . . . and as soon as we agreed—this was after you made the suggestion to help with the research—Kerric reported that the future-scryings of the demonic invasion went away again. So that has to be the correct course of action.”
He nodded subtly, disguising the movement by using the ducking of his head to blow on the steaming mound of sauce-and-rice on his spoon.
Pelai grimaced. “Unfortunately, we’re having an argument over exactly how you should work to sabotage their efforts. Some of the others—outlanders without a single clue—are suggesting we plant false information in the Library to—“
Krais choked on his food. Hastily covering his mouth, he coughed several times, catching the detritus. His coughing made his mother sigh and gesture toward the nearest refreshing room. Bobbing his head, Krais twisted away from the table, managed to get his feet under him, and carried his coughing self into the privacy of the simple refresher-and-sink chamber tucked between the stairs to the upper floor and the rear atrium gardens, which the family chambers overlooked from the upstairs balcony.
Ducking inside, he nudged the door shut, flipped the lever on the sink, and scrubbed the food from his hands, coughing. Under the cover of the rushing water, he muttered, “Are they insane? Planting fake information in the Great Library could get me killed!”
“Oh, come now,” Pelai retorted, rolling her eyes. “Anya’thia isn’t that much of a beast when it comes to the rules.”
“Who cares about the Elder Librarian!” Krais hissed at her, coughing to clear his throat. He glared at her image, which perched itself an inch or so past the wall behind the running sink. “My own mother will kill me! She’s a rabid knowledgist when it comes to the purity of the written word! And to have her son plant it? That’d just forever cement in her mind the determination to kick men out of the Library as custodians and guardians of the truth!
“Whose crazy idea was that, anyway?” he added under his breath, pausing to scrub his face with water and soap to get the other bits of food off his skin.
“Guardian Ilaeia,” Pelai told him. “In her defense—which isn’t much of a defense—she is an outlander. She doesn’t understand what she asked.”
“I should think not,” Krais muttered. Wiping his skin dry, he shut off the water, cleared his throat a couple more times, brushed at his vest, and eyed Pelai’s ghost-image through the wall. “I’m going back out there,” he whispered to her. “Try not to shock me again like that.”
“I’ll make no promises, other than that I’ll try. Although it has occurred to me just now,” she added, “that we can simply ask Anya’thia to do it. She has the right to insert materials into the library . . . and she can mark them with a hidden sigil that they’re fake prophecies. We just need to figure out what to fake, and how to fake it, and then where to plant it—well, that part’s easy; obviously in the Prophecies section—and then figure out how to introduce it to your brothers so that they can pass it along to this Brotherhood group, and thus control where they go. Would you be willing to help if we do it that way?”
“Of course,” he whispered. “But I do have to get back to Family Day now.”
“Right. I’ll consult with the other Guardians, then. Enjoy.”
“If I can,” he breathed, rolling his eyes. Bracing himself for more parental disapproval and stiffness, Krais returned to the family room and resettled onto his cushion on the floor with an apology. “Please, forgive my disruption. I inhaled at the wrong moment.”
“So long as you’ll live, then all is well,” Karei replied.
Foren asked their mother about the news from their extended family over the last nine months. Gayn and Krais continued eating. His youngest brother, Krais noticed, cradled his arm and his elbow more and more as the meal went on. Gayn picked desultorily at his nut-sauced vegetables, more interested in eating the last little kernels of barley and rice than in the greens or the slices of onion and lotus root. The sour look on the youngest Puhon son’s face, pulling down at the corners of his mouth, told the eldest son that Gayn still hadn’t had a chance to see if anyone here in Mendham could heal his arm right.
Eventually, their mother came to a pause in her recitations, and ordered, “Right, that’s enough for now. Clear the table, my sons, and wash the dishes.”
“Yes, Mother,” they murmured in ragged unison.
Rising, Dagan’thio and Karei moved off toward the entrance atrium, or rather, to a storage cupboard on the edge of that atrium that contained the tools needed to tend the spirit trees. Foren got up quickly and headed for the kitchen to fetch a cleaning rag. Gayn eyed his brother, eyed his arm pointedly, and started pushing plates and bowls and utensils Krais’ way.
“You can carry the bowls with the food to the stasis cupboards,” Krais pointed out. “Just do it with your good hand and take a few more trips.”
“Just do it with your good hand,” Gayn mocked, mincing the words with a sneer on his lip. Then he added, “As I work, their domae will notice my injuries, and be more diligent in their own duties . . . Are you honestly trying to get Foren and I beaten?”
“I’m just doing what you always do, Gayn, which is kiss Father’s feet verbally to make him happy,” Krais muttered back, retorting out of sibling habit. Foren came back with the damp rag for wiping down the low table, returning in time to hear Krais’ next few words. “But my offer is sincere. You’ll please your domae if you give good service to these outsiders.”
“What use would your help be?” Foren asked dryly, dubiously. “We all three know equally well how to move around the many halls of the Great Library.”
Krais tapped the side of his left eye, the one where the brown lines blended in with his skin. “I have been given high-ranked access to the highest of the Restricted Archives by the Elder Librarian herself.”
Both of his brothers started, and Foren quickly knelt down on a cushion, leaning over the table. “You what? How?”
“Who cares about the how,” Gayn dismissed roughly, leaning closer over the table as well. “I want to know the why! Not even Mother has that kind of authorization!”
“As you’ll know, Tipa’thia, the former Elder Mage, died in the middle of the night a few days ago,” Krais told his brothers. He looked around, made sure their parents weren’t on hand, and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “But what isn’t widely known is that the new Elder Mage—my doma—didn’t have full control of the Fountain. There are certain procedures involved in the transfer of full control. Things written down in the archives that the average person isn’t supposed to know.”
His brothers blinked and exchanged a look. Foren raised his brows. “Can you see the hidden files?”
Krais nodded, though he did not admit anything out loud. Foren whistled softly, sitting back at that revelation. Gayn leaned forward, however. “So, they do exist?”
Again, a nod of nonverbal affirmation. Of course, I hope Anya’thia and Pelai’thia both forgive me for this little confession . . . but I’d imagine any Prophecy predicting that a Netherhell invasion could succeed would indeed be hidden from the average peruser’s view. I’ll have to tell Pelai I thought of that, so she can work it into the . . . ugh . . . Mother forgive me for this blaspemy . . . the falsified prophecies to control this Brotherhood thing.
“So . . . what have you found so far?” Gayn murmured, eager for an answer. He leaned on his good arm, keeping his bad elbow off the table so that the nerves weren’t pressured.
Krais rolled his eyes and gave his little brother a flat look. “I can’t tell you because the Elder Mage cast a geas on me to keep her business private. I’ll probably even have the access tattoo removed as soon as all her spells are researched . . . so if you want to look good for your domo and your doma, you’ll want to take advantage of this offer. I won’t be able to give my help forever.”
“And what do you get out of it?” Foren asked skeptically, starting to mop the table where their mother had sat, moving each dish out of his way, closer to Krais.
Again, the eldest flicked his eyes skyward in a show of impatience. “Impress upon my doma that I’m doing an excellent job, so she can stop beating me so hard.”
Foren eyed him, then gave a half grin and reared way over the table, reaching for his brother’s shoulder. He flicked at the wax on Krais’ right deltoid with a fingernail. “Yeah, you’re looking a bit flaky, there, Brother.”
“Knock it off,” Krais ordered, batting his hand away.
“But still, you’ve offered to encourage them to beat us,” Gayn said. “I’m not interested in being beaten. I just said that to kiss Father’s feet.”
“And that’s the only reason why I’m suggesting it, so that it looks like they’re doing more of what our father wants,” Krais said. “The three of us know that Domo Anso and Doma Dulette are not going to exaggerate what they read. Whatever they read, whatever the Goddess writes of our need for punishment, that’s what we will get, in whatever measure, large or little, She decides we deserve.”
Gayn arched a brow at him. “Are you implying that some of our Disciplinarians ignore the Goddess’ judgment?”
“I’m saying some of them might exaggerate it, in order to curry favor with the Elder Disciplinarian . . . and with his fellow Partisans. Who sent us on a mission that ended up pitting us against the Gods Themselves,” Krais stated quietly.
“Father lost a lot of face when we failed,” Foren murmured, following his elder brother’s meaning. “That’s why he’s still so angry. I think he promised the others that Mendhi would be restored to the pinnacle of the world. We failed, which meant he failed.”
“It is true that Father does not like to fail,” Gayn muttered, forced to be fair. “But we did fail . . . though my arm is punishing me more than enough—while you’re looking up things for these outlanders, why don’t you look up a spell that’ll get my elbow healed right?”
“I’ll do what I can,” Krais promised. An absolute truth, in the midst of . . . well, setting up his brothers for a horrible fate. To be the instruments of Fate . . . and for one of the two to end up betraying humanity somehow. The food in his stomach soured at that realization. Clearing his throat, he started gathering up plates in earnest. “We need to get the table cleared and the dishes washed . . . and since we’re all suppressed under our penance spells, we’ll all have to do it by hand.”
Both of his siblings groaned in disgust at the reminder. None of them had scrubbed dishes by hand in years, but being dutiful sons, they did move. Gayn grabbed the dish of uneaten grains to carry to the stasis cupboards for storage, and Foren resumed scrubbing the low table clean. Stacking some of the dirty dishes in his arms, Krais rose and carried the first load through the kitchen to the scullery.
Yesterday, there had been someone who would scrub these dishes—probably that youth that had answered the door. Tomorrow, there would be someone as well, and probably for breakfast and supper today, too. But today, luncheon was Family Day.