“Can’t what?”
“Find a way to be worth something.” Embarrassed to have said it, Neri looked away once more.
Part of Jacen’s function as a priest was to counsel through trying times, and thus, he had heard more than his share of disturbing statements. Had Neri been one of Jacen’s congregants, he might have been able to help. But for a grandson of the High Lord—an undiscovered telepath, no less—there was next to nothing Jacen could do. He could only say, “Send me a pigeon. Please.”
Little as he relished the prospect, he ought to have a word with Seth about this, too.
Before Neri could reply, an irate voice thundered across the courtyard. His father strode toward them.
“Neri!”
At six and a half feet tall with a physique that looked chiseled out of boulders, Ged Semira resembled his youngest son like a vulture resembled a sparrow. Had Jacen not been a telepath, he might have doubted the two were related at all. But there was always a certain similarity between blood relatives, apparent to anyone with extradimensional senses, and Neri had more of Ged in him than most tended to notice.
Jacen straightened abruptly. “If anyone asks, we were talking about . . . er . . . prayer.”
He made to leave, but Neri said, “Wait! Are you going to do anything about Lady Ancarath?”
He looked at Jacen with a hope that was almost pleading and altogether too sincere. Jacen forced a nod and lied, “I’ll speak with my superiors about it.”
He departed before Ged could catch up to him, leaving Neri standing alone beneath the shadow of the goddess.
4
HERESY
JACEN
Jacen returned to his chapel late that night. He dragged Nines back and forth across the Knots to an interminable number of house calls, where he put on the performance of a lifetime to take confession, pray over a sick man, give a child’s first birthday blessing, and assure a hysterical couple that their adolescent child was not, in fact, demonically possessed. Nines proved rather inattentive, which was understandable, given the day’s events.
They picked at a meager dinner of beans and cornmeal. Neither had much of an appetite. As Jacen clenched his hands to quell their shaking, telling himself he’d wait until she was asleep to open his liquor cabinet, Nines toyed with the pale pink seashells woven through her moon-white curls.
Seashells. Where in the world had she gotten seashells? They couldn’t be from home, or the Church would have confiscated them years before. By her complexion, Jacen guessed she hailed from somewhere in the Fractured Peninsula, in the southernmost reaches of the Black Sun’s dominion. She musthave swiped them from a merchant, one of the boatmen who traveled the deepriver Esh, who might have passed through her homeland.
Memory erasure was an imperfect art; some things always remained. Jacen himself had vague recollections of his childhood, somewhere far to the west in a place called Alendal. He remembered snowy crags and warm hearths, and sometimes he still woke with the scent of pine needles fresh in his nose. When Hesaya’s mind wandered, she hummed an old lullaby, to which she’d forgotten the words. Taoro liked to cook spicy pepper stew, a secret family recipe with no origin he understood. And Nines wore seashells in her hair.
Jacen was capable of taking that from her. Brother Marez would have done it to Jacen, probablyhaddone it more than once. Just a nudge to erase the seashells, the lullabies, the recipes . . . all the little details that made them more than instruments of gods’ will.
Nines wasn’t experienced enough to notice. She wouldn’t miss it.
She wouldn’t know there had ever been anything to miss.
Jacen did nothing. He told himself it wasn’t only cowardice that stayed his hand.
After a great deal of awkward silence, Nines finally asked about Neri. “Are you going to report him?”
Jacen set down his fork. “No. I . . . would appreciate it if you didn’t say anything, either.”
He had never asked such a thing of Elyas. Jacen had kept secrets for Brother Marez, albeit of a more-sordid variety, but it was far less dangerous to lie about a mistress than an unregistered telepath. Guilt gnawed at him.
“These are complicated circumstances.”
“I understand.” Nines stared at the table. “He’s different.”
Perhaps she wanted to say more but lacked the confidence, so Jacen was left to guess at her feelings. Did she resent Neri? Did she wish she could have lived a life in which her gift was kept secret—in which the gods had no interest in her and she was fated to become neither their servant nor their sacrifice? Jacen often thought he would have been a priest in any lifetime, but the same was not true of all his Brothers and Sisters. It had not been true of Elyas.
Jacen said softly, “This won’t be like at the Cathedral. You’ll have much more freedom.”
Nothing.
