Page 94 of A Serpent in the Garden

The white. It was overbearing, an irritant to the eye. Everyone we passed wore it. To match the city, as a tribute to Luceric’s light, as a sign of purity? The buildings went from pink to red to gold as the sun finished its ascent and chased off the shadows. Banners began to unfurl beneath every window, a field of white with a golden sunburst snapping in the salty air. Wares with the same symbol cropped up in neat little wooden carts.

“Is this the crest of the city?” I tipped my head back to gaze upon the silken banner swaying above an arched doorway as we passed it.

“A symbol Luceric has taken up for himself.” Valic glowered at every little sun he spied. “Finn says he’s seen it up and down the wealthier cities.”

The din of the fish market starting up floated out from the harbor, the cries of merchants echoing through the streets. Clean, happy children pounded over the cobblestones, turning in dizzying circles, twirling white ribbons on wooden sticks. Not a bare foot in sight, no tattered clothes.

Nobody here was hungry, that much I could tell. Nobody seemed unhappy, but of course those things were hard to measure. Nobody worked out in the sun for long stretches; most every face was pale as mine, but I’d been stuck beneath thick clouds and fogs for years. How could people live this way, insulated from hard times, so far removed from my reality? I didn’t think a city could look so universally prosperous, busy as a beehive, humming with laughter and happy chatter. I felt like a player who had entered the wrong stage set into an unfamiliar production. Monde’s End never exactly stank of misery; we were all too tired for that much fuss, but our smiles were always worn and ragged, our laughter stilted and swallowed, as if we were afraid to wake anything. That something like The Crossing could exist in the same reality as Monde’s End was a difficult thing to reconcile.

And I must have looked a mixture of awed and indignant, if Valic could read it on my face. He smiled slightly. “Finn says there’s a lot of merchants here. They do a good business. They probably beg blessings from Luceric to give their ships safe passage. They’re beginning to worship him as much as they used to worship his father.”

White streamers swirled in the breeze like serpents caught underwater, ribboning from every cart, crisscrossing above our heads from between buildings. Children with wide blazing eyes stared at Valic as we passed, and not, I thought, simply because of his height or the way he moved. His was the only dark skin in the entire city, so far as I could tell, and children, generally unaware of even basic social etiquette, had not always learned that staring was considered rude.

“I don’t understand how this place can be so wealthy when other villages struggle not to starve. This is a city; they have no crops, no livestock. They’ll depend on farms and the people who work them to get their food, and every farm has bad years.”

“You’re forgetting that big blue thing up ahead.” Valic pointed toward the sea. “They have an ocean at their feet to get seafood. They have their imported goods. And I wouldn’t be surprised if certain farms have been blessed. This place is not the product of simple human hard work.”

We saw no flashes of white light as we walked, heard no whisper of wings. The streets were thickening with bodies, though we cut through them easily enough. I pulled up short at a baker’s cart and Valic nearly dragged me a couple feet across the cobblestones before realizing I wanted to stop.

Try to lull him, I said, as the baker rattled off a list of his goods and Valic groped in his jingling pockets for coins he’d probably picked up from the floor of Hell’s antechamber.

Remy tipped my head, focusing on the man’s guileless blue eyes as if he hoped to shovel into them. The baker was a lump of clay to be molded, a scab to be prodded, a wastebasket to dump out across the floor and sort through.

My throat welled. It felt strange, like honey coated my mouth, softening my tongue as my eyes sharpened. “What’s this I hear about Luceric?” he asked with my voice, sweet as poisoned wine. “Is it true he plans to speak?”

The baker’s eyes flicked out of focus for a moment, then he blinked furiously and gave himself a little jerk.

Help me out, Des, Remy said restlessly. Smile at him or something, I have to focus on his eyes. I’m not an expert at this.

Well, you can practice on the people in the streets. I tried on a smile for the baker. Nobody’s good at anything they don’t practice.

“I’ve heard as much,” the baker said on Remy’s second try, handing over a loaf of bread. “Though I’ve seen no sign yet today. They say he shines with the fury of a thousand suns.”

I’m sure he walks on water as well, Remy said. Keep moving.

Valic led me off through the crowd. “How do you know if it’s worked if you just ask about Luceric?” A little blonde girl with oversized blue eyes watched Valic and I as if we were escaped curiosities from a freakshow. Beside her, a small boy who I assumed was her younger brother gawked at us as well. “These idiots are obsessed with him. You can’t know if you’ve lulled them if you bring him up. Ask them how they lost their virginity. Ask them what they really think of their wives. Something embarrassing. Anything they wouldn’t just offer up freely.”

I stopped dozens in the street so Remy could practice while Valic inhaled the bread we’d bought. The last victim, a gangly older boy with skin like freckled milk, was particularly talkative, and I heard more than I ever wanted to about his masturbatory habits.

“That one may have been lulled,” Valic said, unimpressed as the boy walked off red and shaken, “but the sun was hitting her dress just right. I’m sure he got an eyeful.”

“Great.” Remy threw up my hands. “Fantastic. Maybe the priest will be a lecher.”

“Luceric could be hidden in human skin,” Valic mused a moment later. “Wouldn’t it be like him to do that, slip between everyone unseen, listening to the praise? Prick.”

“We’d still see his light. He was invisible down by the In Between too, but he couldn’t hide that.”

The city was in a fever as time wore on, and from all around us came excited conversation and an aromatic jumble of bread and cooking meat, honeyed melon, spiced wine, the sharp smell of the sea. Laughter turned surreal, keening. Every gust of wind had them turning their eyes hopefully to the brilliant, burning blue skies, and Valic and I exchanged furtive looks. It was almost as if the people of The Crossing were sick with an illness that had turned them strange, and he and I alone had somehow been inoculated.

“They act as if God himself is coming to visit,” I said.

“Maybe he’s told them he is.” His shrug sent ripples down his white cloak. “He takes enough liberties to make them think he might be.”

The Crossing suddenly looked, to me, like a fool’s promise. These people had no idea they might lose all they had, if Luceric were to die.

I asked another vendor what he truly thought about his mother-by-law as Valic stood beside me, tapping a fingernail against a golden sunburst pin and making a face as though he thought little of its quality.

“She’s more use to me dead than alive,” the vendor said. “But the fat old toad might live forever just to spite me.”