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“I don’t either.”
Neither Cossi nor Danner seemed too interested in Jino’s arrival, so Pietro and Stollo strolled over to intercept the newcomer. For a moment the three of them just sized each other up, confirming their swift suspicions. Pietro made no attempt to hide the fact that he was glancing at Jino’s hands, and the other man obligingly extended his arms.
On his left wrist, a gold circlet stamped with simple quatrefoils, Cordelan’s most common symbol. On his right, a gold band with the edges bent up and over themselves to make thin channels on both rims. Celibate.
Stollo and Pietro spoke their names and offered their own arms for inspection. Jino nodded. “You’re from Corcannon, then,” he said. His voice was low and pleasant, and he didn’t seem like he was having any trouble remembering the Cordish language.
Stollo hung back, letting Pietro do the talking. “We are. It seems you must have lived there at some point as well.”
“On the continent, at least,” Jino said. “I wasn’t in the city much, though I was an ordained priest. I spent more time as a missionary, visiting the islands and the desert to spread the word of Cordelan.”
Which explained why he wasn’t familiar. Pietro smiled slightly. “The people of those regions tend to prefer their own gods, from what I’ve observed,” he said.
“They do,” Jino agreed. “And after many years of living among them, I found myself in some sympathy with their views.”
“Zessaya has a seductive pull,” Pietro admitted. “Perhaps it is the fact that she seems so unimpressed with Cordelan’s power.”
“That,” Jino said, “and the fact that she has power of her own.”
“I am curious,” Pietro said, “to learn how you moved from those postings to this one.”
Jino motioned behind him toward an arrangement of small logs drawn together around a firepit in the sand. Pietro assumed that this was where islanders gathered to await their sailors when they’d been out on the ocean for a worrisome period of time. The three of them took seats on the logs so they could all watch each other.
“When I was a young man, I was in some favor with the priest who was then high divine,” Jino began.
Pietro thought about it a moment. Harlo had held the post for decades, so this would be his direct predecessor. “Morado?”
Jino nodded. “Yes. He thought I wasted my talents by living among the islanders and the Oraki tribes, and he often tried to lure me back to the city. Promised me an elevation in rank and access to all the secrets of the temple.”
Stollo perked up at that. “Secrets?”
Jino glanced between them. “He doesn’t know? But you are both priests, are you not?”
“He is,” Pietro said. “I used to be. And he doesn’t know the secrets, but I do.”
Jino studied him. “Which is why you are no longer a priest.”
“Yes.”
Jino nodded. “So Morado showed me the lever and taught me how to move it, and I was horrified. And he explained that unless the wheel was turned, the continent would be destroyed and become just like the ruined lands.”
“It must be a speech every high divine has to memorize,” Pietro said. “I heard one very like it.”
“Who has the office now?”
“Harlo. You might have known him.”
Jino nodded. “Another of Morado’s favorites. A good man, I always thought. Devout. Passionate. Unflinching.”
“Those aren’t always good traits,” Stollo observed.
“Yes, they can also describe zealots and martyrs,” Jino agreed. “At any rate, when Morado delivered the speech, I said, ‘Very well, I want to see the ruined lands.’ So we crossed the ocean and cruised between the blasted islands.”
Jino linked his hands and stared down at the sand between his feet. “I did not react as Morado expected. I thought those burned, blackened lands had an austere and terrible beauty, and I was struck with the rich, bounteous flourishing of the areas that had recovered. When the harbors were shallow enough, I insisted that we disembark and attempt to talk with the inhabitants. I was pretty conversant in Zessin, and the language these people speak is not terribly different, so we were able to communicate in limited ways. I was impressed with their strength and resilience and generally sanguine outlook on life. Their oral histories and their few written records contained graphic descriptions of the catastrophic events that had broken their continent apart, but many generations removed from that event, they were quite recovered. Yes, they were confined to small spheres of hospitable land, and yes, they had lost the great mysterious engine that used to power their society—but in their small, interconnected pockets of life, they had created a thriving, successful community.”
Jino lifted his head and looked directly at Pietro, and then Stollo. “And there were no more quakes,” he said. “Once the continent came apart, all that turmoil simply stopped. The land was content.”
Pietro took a sharp breath, but exhaled it without speaking.
