Now, with a good sense of the archbishop and the king, I needed to make contacts elsewhere in Sota. So two days later I rode to Sugar Grove again, to ask Pastor Linkon more questions. By that time Lemmi had already left.
I was lucky again; Linkon was at home. He asked what Lemmi and I thought of the archbishop and the king. I summarized without telling him we thought Eldred was insane. Someone who doesn't read auras misses a lot of clues, and he might think we'd based our conclusion on prejudice.
From what Linkon had said before, I'd pretty much concluded that Edward Maltby, Duke of Kato, should be my next serious contact—if his health wasn't too precarious. Linkon turned out to be more helpful than I'd expected: he wrote me a letter of introduction to Bishop Joseph of Kato, a good friend of his from their youth together in seminary—and the duke's confessor. Joseph's opinion on the duke's health should be worthwhile, too, and he could advise me on who else in Kato might be helpful.
I spent the rest of the day exploring the country around the brother house, learning my way around. After supper I talked awhile with two of Carlos and Peng's new novices, ages fourteen and fifteen, local farmboys who'd learned their way around hunting.
We were interrupted by the duty lad, who announced that a royal guardsman was there to see Lemmi, and would I talk to him?
Who in Sota, and a guardsman at that, would be looking for Lemmi? Who even knew he was there, outside the brother house, the Sugar Grove rectory, and Clonarty's and Eldred's offices?
I went down to the parlor, and recognized the throne guard Lemmi'd thought was Dinneh. What, I wondered, is this about? He was eighteen or twenty years old, I guessed, and tall. Not really filled out yet, but strong and tough. Physically. His aura was something else.
"I'm Master Luis," I said. "Who am I speaking with?"
"My name is Stephen Nez," he answered, not meeting my eyes. "I'm a royal guardsman. I was with His Majesty when you and Master Tsinnajinni talked with him. That's how I knew your names, and how to find you."
He looked worse than uncomfortable; judging from his aura, he might run out of the house at any minute. Whatever was troubling him, Nez hadn't been sent by Eldred to spy. To relax him, I offered my hand. He shook it in what Lemmi called "Dinneh fashion"—a soft grip, though his hand was well callused. "Master Lemmi's on a trip," I told him. "How can I help you?"
"I don't think you can," he said apologetically. "You're not Dinneh."
"Let's go outside and talk, where no one can overhear us."
It was still twilight, rich in night singers—tree frogs, crickets—and somewhere in the hedgerow a hermit thrush trilling "sweetly enough to break your heart," as my mother used to say. "All right," I said, "tell me your problem."
That worked better than "how can I help you?" He'd come to confess a sin, he said, one he was afraid to confess to the chaplain at the palace. If he did, it would get him in bad trouble, so he'd hoped Lemmi would hear his confession.
"I can hear confessions," I said, and led him back inside to a confessional off the chapel. Higuchians confess differently than other orders; they confess face to face with a master, or with a brother if no master is available. And if the confessor is a master, he provides more than an ear. Keying on the aura, he helps the penitent find the root of the problem, or nearly enough to handle the grief or guilt.
A few nights earlier, Stephen told me, he'd taken part in a murder. Under orders from a Guard captain, he and a corporal had taken a captive from a dungeon cell to a room used for executions. There, while Stephen held the captive, the corporal had stabbed the man through an eye socket, the dagger going deep inside, mangling the brain. Then they'd wrapped the corpse in a tarp and loaded it into a small horse cart, a sort of cage on wheels, used to transport pigs or sheep or poultry to market. After changing into civilian clothes, they'd hauled the body out of town and buried it, then returned to the guard barracks and a sleepless cot.
One thing that got my attention was the way his aura behaved as he told his story: it shrank, darkened and muddied worse than it was to start with. No recovery at all.
"So," I said, "what part of that was the worst?"
He started to tremble, and sparks flew out of his aura like grinding an ax on a dry grindstone. He'd handled the corpse, he told me, and all Dinneh knew that meant. Then he got hold of himself and thanked me for hearing his confession; said it had helped a lot. "If you'll give me my penance now, father, I'll carry it out, and square myself with God."
There were two things wrong with that. One, he was still caved in. And two, he was blameless in this. If he'd refused to carry out an order like that one, he'd have been buried beside the other victim. "Something's preventing absolution," I told him. "Tell me what it is."
His brown face paled to something like mud. "I can never be clean," he said, "till I am freed of that one's chindi."
It turned out that when someone dies and the soul goes to Purgatory, his people believe that more than a corpse is left behind. Associated with it are all the evil acts and thoughts, all the fears, hatreds and griefs of the dead person's life. Its chindi. And if someone handles the corpse, the chindi sticks to him. That even to say the dead person's name is dangerous.
Fortunately, all this is easily corrected by a religious ceremony called a "sing." It's routine for people who have to handle the dead. But as far as Stephen knew, he couldn't get a sing except in the township he was from—the only Dinneh community he knew of—because it not only required a skilled shaman who knew the ceremony, it took the participation of the community. And he couldn't ask for leave to go home, because he'd have to convince the sergeant major, who didn't know about the murder. A certain captain had ordered it, and no one else was to learn of it. And in any case the chaplain would have to approve, and Archbishop Clonarty had declared sings to be pagan, and mortal sins. If a guardsman asked for one, he'd be locked in the dungeon.
"Stephen," I told him, "I have the solution. No one, not even guard commanders—not even kings!—can prohibit someone from joining a religious order. That's Church law. And if you join the Order of Saint Higuchi, I guarantee you can go home for a sing. Afterward you can resign from the Order if you want to, without penalty as long as you haven't completed your novitiate and been accepted as a brother. Master Carlos is the chief of the brother house and school, so if you want to do it, and Carlos agrees, your problem is solved. It's up to you."
He brightened a little, and so did his aura, tentatively, but he needed to get used to the idea, so he asked some questions and I answered them. He brightened a little more and said he'd do it, so we talked to Carlos. Briefly it seemed we might have a problem after all, because Stephen liked Eldred. It seemed the king had been friendly to him—a king friendly to a Dinneh from the northern frontier! So Stephen wanted to go in to Hasty and tell the king he was leaving to join the Order. "It's the honest thing to do," he said.
Which was true, but I was pretty sure that if he did, neither I nor anyone else outside the palace would ever see him again. "Stephen," I said, "if you do that, the king will surely ask you why. And you'll tell him the truth, and who knows what will happen then. You could be put in the dungeon for helping murder someone. You could be! And while you're in there, still infected with the dead man's chindi, that captain you were worried about might have you murdered too."
Luckily that was real to Stephen.
From there I went to the washroom, filled a bucket and bathed, then went to my cell and meditated for half an hour or so. After that I went to the brothers' quarters. Paddy and Kabibi had been supervising novices in their studies and training, while waiting for me to assign them mission duties. It gave Carlos and Peng more time to visit parishes round about, recruiting for the Order. But the evening study period was over, and Paddy was in the quarters he shared with the other male brothers, meditating in preparation for sleep. I walked in quietly and laid a hand on his shoulder. His eyes focused, and he looked up at me.
"Paddy," I whispered, "we need to talk. I have an assignment for you."
He got up grinning, and followed me without a word. In my cell, I gave him the chair, sat down on the cot, and told him about Stephen Nez. There would, I went on, be a vacancy in the royal guard, and I wanted him to apply for a job there. The next morning. I'd give him money for room and board in town while he waited.
"Tell them you're from Allegheny," I said. That part of the world is known for wars and fighting men. "From Galway Town—" that much would be true "—and that you served three years as a guardsman for the Count of Connemara." That's where the lying began. "If they ask why you left, tell them you got a wanderlust, came down the Ohio as a crewman on a freight raft, then took a job guarding a party of merchants headed for . . . for Kato. That you have kinfolk there, or used to. But when you got to Hasty, you knew this was the town for you."
He was grinning again.
"I know that's laying it on pretty thick, but they'll like it, even if they're skeptical. Recruiters are used to bullshit, and if they like your sword forms, they'll not likely worry about the rest. Be good enough to get the job, but not so good they'll start wondering. Fit in."
He laughed. "It sounds interesting," he said in his Connemara brogue. "Will it be all right to get promoted?"
I looked at that for a moment. "It's fine with me," I said. "I trust your judgement."
When he left, I changed into my night shirt for bed. I had several busy days ahead of me before starting for Kato to meet its duke. But where I might go from Kato, I had no idea. And if things soured, or even if they didn't, I needed to know my way around the Royal Domain—the king's personal duchy, so to speak. Especially within a half-day's ride of Hasty. And Hasty's back alleys, and what the country and townsfolk thought of their king, and the state of the kingdom. Maybe even find some people who seriously disliked him.
Before I lay down though, I realized something I needed to do before I slept. I'd been ignoring Kabibi, maybe because she was Jamila's baby sister, and now I'd given Paddy an assignment without having anything for her. So I dressed again, went to her cell, and rapped on the door. "Who is it?" she asked.
"Luis. I need to talk to you."
"Just a moment."
Not just a minute. Just a moment. I'd noticed before, she used language more carefully than most do.
She stepped into the hall wearing her loose meditation blouse and trousers. I told her what Paddy would be doing, and that I hadn't forgotten her. That when something came up, I'd get back to her. Saying it, it seemed like a lame sort of comment, but she set me at ease.
"Luis," she told me, "I know you will. Meanwhile I enjoy helping Peng with the novices. He's as good as Freddy at martial arts." She put a hand on my sleeve then, and smiled a little sadly. "Am I as good at martial arts as Jamila was?" she asked.
Her question wrung my heart. "I'm not sure any of us is," I answered. "Tahmm I suppose. But you're very good. Very good."
"Some day," she said, "when we both have time, I want you to tell me all you can about her." She teared up then, a little, but her calm quiet voice didn't change. "She was such a good big sister. But I was only a tiny little girl when mom and dad were murdered, and I never saw Jamila again."
"I will tell you," I said. "That's a promise."
"And I want to hear how she died. Fedor and Freddy didn't seem to know, except that the Kelgorath cult killed her."
Lord spare me that, I thought. "I'll tell you all I know about it," I said. And I would, God help me. "But this isn't the time."
As I walked back to my own cell, I wondered how much she knew about Jamila and me. Not everything; no way she could. But she surmised there'd been something between us. Comradeship if nothing more.