“The monastery was always mostly underground,” Sir Kodelai says easily. His voice is like gravel. “It’s why everyone is so excited. Down there, most of it should be intact, though the outer facade fell into the sea.”
He gestures around at the tumbled masonry and chunks of riven stone that had once been buttresses and beautifully worked doorways. They look now as if a giant child lost his temper and flung the last bits of it about.
There’s a single statue left whole, a woman with an innocent expression still obvious on her white, marble face. I almost find it unsettling that she remains while the rest is devastated.
“And you haven’t gone to look?” Hefertus asks. “Not even a single step?”
“Not one step until all are assembled,” another voice orders. It’s deep and thick. A voice for commanding others. That’s a Majester General or I’m a stuffed owl. My lip curls before I can prevent it.
This one is arrayed like a general, sitting in a camp chair, and eating a roasted pheasant. He must have made it himself, as there are no servants here. Impressive. The best I can do over a fire is fresh fish.
He sees me looking. “Pheasant? Might make you less pale.”
“I thank you,” I say coldly. Nothing will make me less pale except time or the expulsion of the magic the pain is generating within me. “But none for me. Hefertus?”
My friend waves it away. “Who are we waiting for? Let’s see.” He points at us as he speaks — or rather, he points at the medallion each one wears. “Engineers, General, High Saint” — the Saint in question flinches — “Inquisitor.” He gets a salute for that. “Seer, Hand, Penitent.” He waves at the last fellow, a man cloaked head to foot in a cassock that disguises all but his beardless chin. He’s kneeling on the rock in prayer. I can feel the ache in his knees from here but if you’re going to pray like that, there’s little I can do for you. The hunch in his shoulders is worse. He’s disguising old pains and new. So many that I can almost feel the constant buzz of them. “Poisoned,” Hefertus says, flicking a finger at me, “and Prince.” He lays a hand across his chest. “Missing the Beggars, then?”
The High Saint clears his throat. “The Aspect of the Rejected God,” he corrects, “has yet to send a representative.”
“Well, beggars can’t be choosers,” Hefertus says lightly.
“Generals can,” the Majester General says calmly. “And I say we wait.”
At his words, I feel it again. That terrible draw to dive deeper into the ruins here. It pulls me almost like the call of the God. It pulls me so hard, in fact, that I lift my head and ask.
“Has Terce been said yet?”
“It has not,” the High Saint says with grim enthusiasm. “We heard your hooves on the rocks and determined we would wait.”
“Hooves,” the Majester agrees through another mouthful. I’m certain he would gladly postpone prayers well past Vespers. Most of us are not so observant as the Aspect of the Sovereign God.
“Let us gather,” the High Saint says, making chivvying motions with his hands.
Hefertus shoots an accusatory look at me, annoyed that I’ve stirred this up. He may be good-natured, but he’s not as easily entertained as I am by the quirks of others.
“At least let us tend our horses first, brother,” he says.
The others give us brief directions and I follow him to where the horses are tethered a little ways from the camp.
Which is where we find the golems.
There are two of them. I am well acquainted with the shambling creatures that the Holy Engineers pour the gift of the God’s own life into. In cities across the earth, they are commonplace enough, but somehow out here on the very edge of man, these seem more than unnatural. They seem as though they loom.
“Oh, don’t mind Cleft and Suture,” the less ugly Engineer says, hopping up from behind us as quickly as a man can when one of his knees is no longer functioning well. His longish white curls tumble in the breeze as he hops and skips to join us. The top of his head is bald, but he’s making up for it with the bottom. He bears a friendly grin.
I am not feeling quite as friendly.
I disapprove of golems on principle. I do not think the God ought to let men breathe life into stone. Especially not when they are then allowed to command that stone to fetch and carry and do it all mutely. It feels too close to slavery to me.
The church allows the kings of the east to keep slaves. I find the practice appalling.
“What does it matter,” they say. “We are all slaves of one thing or another. Slaves of the God, slaves of our appetites, slaves of our circumstances. Who is to say it is worse to be slave to our betters?”
“Who is to say who the betters are?” I’d countered, and been cuffed across the face for it. Not by my paladin superior. He was not given to violence, but he turned his head when a Majester General cuffed me and he offered no healing for the wound.
I still feel my lip curl a little whenever I see one of those red-tabarded devils.
Which brings us back to golems. They have no mouths. No way to protest how they are treated. They have glowing bright eyes, as if demons reside within them churning out the fires of hell in inner furnaces. If looks could kill, they would level cities. But their bodies are massive and crudely formed. They’re made of metal and rock and bone — whatever the engineer fancied.
