The Cult Closes Ranks

Year 0, late evening through morning. Valdris.

Two of the seven were dead by the second bell of the night.

The first was a man whose name had been on Lord Malrien's list as the third entry. He had been a junior secretary at the Maradel House. His father had been Edrin. Edrin had arranged the consultation that kept Malrien from the road in Year –20. The son had been Edrin's heir to that small Cult role for nineteen years. He had hanged himself in his Maradel House study at the second bell of the evening, in a way that Captain Moren's men had described to Kaelith as intentional and final. He had left no note. He had, the maid who found him reported, left an open ledger on his desk with a small piece of paper at the page he had been writing on. The paper said, in his hand: I cannot be the next Edrin.

The maid had not understood the paper. The maid had been instructed by Captain Moren, on Kaelith's behalf, to give the paper directly to Captain Moren and to no one else. She had complied. The paper was now in Kaelith's chambers.

The second of the dead was the fifth name on Malrien's list. He was a senior paladin of the Order of the Silver Dawn, not Nyra's chapter house, but the central chapter house in the Sunspear foothills. He had been killed at a chapter house gate by a young paladin who had been waiting there for him. The young paladin had been instructed to be there by an order from a senior, and the senior was, the next morning, found to have signed the order under a name that was not his ordained name. The young paladin had not yet been arrested. The paladin had reported the killing and had asked, formally, to be remanded to the Order's central council pending the investigation.

Nyra had received the report at her chapter house in Valdris at the third bell. She had come to Kaelith's chambers with the report at the half-bell of fourth.

"The young paladin will not be punished," Nyra said. She was standing at the chamber window. The lower Sward, in the late winter night, had begun to put out lamps at the corners of the alleys. A shutter, three roofs over, had not yet been closed. "She did what she was instructed. She believed her instructor. The investigation will fall on the senior who signed the order. The senior will, by morning, be dead also. There are not many ways for a Cult-aligned senior to survive once his name is in motion."

Kaelith stood at the table beside the bed.

He had not, in the last two days, moved the small wooden horse. He had also not moved the packet of seven names. Both rested where they had rested. The packet had a piece of paper folded into it now: the paper from the Maradel study. Kaelith had not yet opened the paper a second time.

The unworn silver chain was still on the desk. He had stopped noticing.

"How many of the seven, then," Kaelith said.

"Two. Plus Edrin's son, who was Cult but not on Malrien's list. Three confirmed deaths in the past forty-eight hours. There will be more."

"Why are they killing each other."

"Because Lord Malrien, by talking to you, ended the Cult's secrecy. The Cult does not survive its names being spoken. Each member who knows another member's name must, by Cult doctrine, kill the named member before the named member can confirm. The doctrine is what has held the Cult together for nineteen years. Once the chain begins to break, the chain breaks all the way down."

"So they will kill each other."

"They will. They have stopped being a Cult, in this hour. They are only, now, men who have been Cult, who have done what they have done, and who cannot bear to have done it without the doctrine to hold them. The doctrine cannot hold them anymore. Some will kill themselves. Some will kill each other. Some will, perhaps, run."

"And the new Ash-Wolf."

She turned from the window.

"My lord, that is the question you have been holding since the council. The new Ash-Wolf. Yes. The new Ash-Wolf will not, this week, kill themselves. The new Ash-Wolf is the mechanism the Cult intends to keep alive past the dissolution of its name. The new Ash-Wolf will be appointed by whatever remains. The new Ash-Wolf will not be on Lord Malrien's list, because the appointment is new. We will not know who they are by name. We will know only by their work."

"Their work."

"The attacks will continue. The targets will be smaller. They will be people no one will trace to a Cult action. They will be common people. The Cult is, in this hour, abandoning its noble-house targeting and moving to the small. They are doing this because they have been told, by their last instructions before the dissolution, to do it. The instructions came from a man who, I now believe, was once a senior in my Order before I was an apprentice. I will not, this morning, name him to you. I do not yet have the proof. But I have the shape."

"Lady Brightblade."

"My lord."

"What do you need from me to find the proof."

She did not answer immediately. She came back from the window and stood at the discipline-distance from the table. She looked at the small wooden horse. She looked, also, at the silver chain.

"I need three days," she said. "I need the Sunward house's quiet support. I need the second-courtyard inn at Maradel to be available to me without Maradel's permission, which is a request I should not be making but am. I need access to the chapter house in the Sunspear foothills, which has been closed to me since the senior who signed the killing-order signed his own writ to keep me out. I need Captain Moren to ride with me, although I will not, before the riding, tell Captain Moren why."

"You will have all of it. Be back by the fourth bell of the third day."

"Yes, my lord."

She did not, this evening, move from the discipline-distance.

Kaelith looked at her.

"Lady Brightblade. Will you eat before you go."

The question was the kind of question he had been raised to ask senior visitors to the Sunward house. It was, also, in this evening, not that question.

She held his look for a long pause of perhaps four.

"Yes, my lord."

"Bread and cheese. A cup of warm wine. The Sunward kitchen still does the small late-supper for travelers. It has been doing it for eleven years without occasion. It will be glad of an occasion."

"Yes, my lord."

She went to find the kitchen.

Kaelith stood at the table for a long moment after she had gone.

The new Ash-Wolf attacked at the half-bell of fifth, in the Lower Sward, on a baker.

The baker's name was Geren. He was forty-one. He had a son who was twelve. The son had been awake at the half-bell because the son had been waiting for his father to come back from the late kneading at the bakery on Silvergrove Lane. The kneading, on the Sevenday eve, ran late.

Geren did not come back at the half-bell of fifth.

The son went looking at the third bell of the morning.

He found his father in the alley between Silvergrove Lane and the Lower Sward's bread-cart yard. His father was breathing. His father had been struck by what looked like an animal, but not by an animal Geren or the boy had ever seen.

The son was twelve. He had the presence of mind to go to the next-house and wake the cobbler. The cobbler had the presence of mind to send a runner to the second courtyard of Valdris. The runner had the presence of mind to ask, at the courtyard, for the Sunward.

Captain Moren came to Kaelith's chambers at the fourth bell.

Kaelith was already awake. He had not slept. He had been standing at the window, watching the lower Sward put out its small lamps and put on its small lamps for the morning, holding the warmth in his sternum, which had begun, in the past few hours, to do something he had not yet learned the name of.

The warmth was grieving with him.

He had not, since Mareth, used Light of Unity. He had not, in those two days, let the warmth do anything. He had been holding it. Holding had become, this evening, a different thing than it had been at the second bell. The warmth, when he held it without using it, did not stay the same. It grew. It also thinned. It was finding shape.

The shape, this morning at the fourth bell, was the particular shape of Anlie's three months of salary, of Aria asleep on the kitchen table at midnight, of the seventy seconds of his mother's face. The shape was also, more lightly, of the Maradel son's I cannot be the next Edrin, of the senior paladin's death at the chapter house gate.

And the shape was, beneath all of that, of Sanctuary Seven. Of an overturned cart. Of a small girl whom Kaelith had never seen, behind a cart, for three days. Of a guardian who had watched.

He did not know, at the fourth bell, where this last shape had come from. He had never seen Sanctuary Seven. He had never seen an overturned cart on a road in a place whose name he did not know. The shape was in his warmth anyway, and the warmth was, by the fourth bell, heavier than it had been the night before.

He had been crying, again, without the small physical signs of crying. His face was steady. His shoulders were steady. The crying was internal.

Captain Moren came in.

"My lord."

"Captain."

"There is a baker in the Lower Sward. He is not yet dead. The new Ash-Wolf has struck."

Kaelith took his coat from the chair.

"Take me."

Geren was, when Kaelith reached him, breathing in the way a man breathed when his lungs had been punctured. The wound was not the kind of wound a knife made. The wound was deeper, and made by something that had moved with the speed of a wolf and the patience of a thinking man.

The son was kneeling beside him in the alley. The son had been holding his father's hand for an hour. The son's hand was the same color as his father's, which was the color blood made when blood was still arriving at the surface.

Kaelith knelt opposite the son.

"What is your name," he said.

"Iven."

"Iven. I am going to put my hand on your father's chest. He will not feel it. The thing I am going to do will, with luck, fix what has happened to him. While I am doing it, you will sit beside me. You do not need to speak. You do not need to look. You may, if you wish, hold his other hand. The hand you have been holding for an hour. You may keep holding."

"Yes, my lord."

Kaelith placed his right palm over Geren's heart.

He held.

The chamber, this time, was not a kitchen. The chamber was the small room above the bakery where Geren had grown up. The room had a window. The window looked out on Silvergrove Lane. The window had been Geren's first window at the age of three.

Geren's worst memory was not, this morning, the obvious one. The obvious one would have been the death of his wife, three years before, in childbirth with Iven's younger sister, who had not survived. That memory was in Geren. It was not, however, the worst.

The worst memory was a small one. It was the memory of an afternoon eight years before, when Iven had been four, when Geren had been at the bakery and Iven had come running in from the alley, and Iven had asked Geren whether, when Iven grew up, Iven could be a baker too. Geren had been tired. The afternoon had been long. Geren had said, without thinking, No, Iven. You will be more than a baker.

He had meant it kindly. He had meant: I want for you what I did not have.

But he had said it carelessly. And Iven had heard, in the carelessness, that being a baker, being his father, was not enough.

Iven had not said anything. Iven had nodded, the way a four-year-old nodded when he was filing something for later. Iven had filed it.

Geren had spent eight years trying to undo it. Iven had spent eight years quietly believing that his father, who he loved, did not want his son to be like him.

Geren's worst memory was the carelessness. It was the small unconsidered sentence. It was the eight years of trying to take the sentence back without ever saying out loud that he was taking it back.

Kaelith, in his palm, received all of it.

The wound in Geren's chest mended.

The threads finished their work.

Kaelith took his hand away.

Geren breathed.

Iven was still holding his father's other hand. Iven had not, this morning, looked up to watch Kaelith. Iven had been looking at his father.

Geren's eyes opened. He looked at Iven. He said, very quietly, the careful sentence he had been trying to say for eight years and had never quite found the words for:

"Iven. If you want to be a baker. I would be proud."

Iven, who was twelve, did not respond immediately. He had not, this morning, expected this sentence. He had expected, perhaps, I love you, which had been said many times, or Thank you for finding me, which would have been new. He had not expected the sentence about the bakery.

He looked at his father.

"I want to be a baker," he said.

Geren cried then, properly, the first proper crying Kaelith had heard from a man in many years. Geren cried with the small physical signs of crying. Iven, beside him, did not cry. He held his father's hand.

Kaelith stood up, slowly.

He did not, at this morning's mending, tell Captain Moren who Geren was. He did not need to. Captain Moren stood at the alley's mouth, watching, and Captain Moren's face had been the face of a man seeing his lord do something his lord could not have done at the third bell two days ago. The face had not yet returned to its Captain Moren expression. It would, by the seventh bell. But not yet.

Kaelith walked back to the chambers.

He held what he had been given.

Geren's carelessness joined Anlie's three months and Aria's kitchen and Mareth's easily. Geren's carelessness joined, also, the seventy seconds of Aelfryn's face through the carriage window.

The window that morning had a fourth thing in it now, which Kaelith was holding for the first time. The thing was the eight years of a father who had spent eight years trying to take back a sentence he had said when he was tired.

Kaelith's mother had said many sentences when she was tired. He had filed all of them. He had not, in the last eleven years, considered whether any of them had been the kind of sentence she had wanted to take back.

He thought, this morning, about it.

He was twenty-three. He was, this morning, twenty-three years and four months. He was carrying two worst memories that were not his. He was carrying, also, the four worst memories of his own. He had, he understood, just begun.

He did not, in his chambers at the seventh bell, sit down. He stood at the window. He watched Iven walk his father home up Silvergrove Lane, slowly, in the morning light. The light was, this morning, the kind of light that flattered nothing and was therefore beautiful.

The new Ash-Wolf was still somewhere in Aerros.

The Codex, behind his sternum, grieved with him.

He held it.

End Chapter 7.