Faith of the Fallen (65 page)

How many times had she lectured him with that same moral doctrine? How contemptuous, how venomous, how treacherous it sounded from his lips.

She hated herself at that moment. He somehow put the lie to everything the Order stood for, to everything she had devoted her life to. He somehow made doing good seem…evil. That was why he was so dangerous. That he even existed threatened everything for which they stood.

She was so close. So close to knowing what she needed to understand. The very fact that there were tears running down her face told her that there really was something that made the whole ordeal worthwhile—made it essential. The indefinable spark she had seen in his eyes from the first instant was real.

If she could just reach that little bit more, then she could finally do what was best. It would be better for him. What kind of life could he ever have? How much suffering could he endure? She hated that she was condemned to serving the Creator in such a way.

“Look around, Nicci. You wanted to show me the better way of the Order. Look around. Isn’t it glorious?”

She hated to see one of his beautiful eyes swollen shut.

“Richard, I need the money you saved. If I’m to get you out of here, I’ll need it all. The official told me it had to be all of what you had.”

A hoarse whisper was all he had left. “It’s in our room.”

“Our room? Where? Tell me where.”

He shook his head. “You could never get it out. You have to know the trick to open it. Go to Ishaq.”

“Ishaq? At the transport company? Why?”

“It was his parlor, once. There’s a hidden compartment in the floor. Tell him why you need the money. He will open it for you.”

She held more chicken up to his mouth. “All right. I’ll go to Ishaq.” She hesitated while she watched him chew. “I’m sorry that you have to give up what you’ve managed to save. I know how hard you work. It’s not right for them to take it.”

He shrugged again. “Just money. I’d rather live.”

Nicci smiled and wiped the tears from her cheeks. That was the best thing she could have hoped to hear.

The door opened. “Pull your skirt down, woman. Time’s up.”

As he dragged her out by her arm, she stuffed the last of the chicken in Richard’s mouth.

“Civil infraction!” she called to him. “Don’t forget!”

He had to confess to a civil infraction that could be paid with a fine. Then they would release him. Any other crime was death.

“I won’t forget.”

She reached back toward him as she was pulled from the tiny cell. “I’ll be back for you, Richard! I swear!”

Nicci paced as Ishaq bent over the trapdoor in the corner of the room. He had been at it a long time. He had pushed the wardrobe aside to get at the secret place in the floor. Occasionally he muttered under his breath, cursing himself for having made it so difficult to get into.

“At last!” Ishaq scrambled to his feet.

Nicci hoped that the meager money Richard could have managed to save would be enough to satisfy Protector Muksin. In her head, she was going through a list of people who had offered money to help Richard.

Ishaq scurried close. “Here it is.”

He hurriedly placed the leather purse in her hand. The weight shocked her. The purse filled her palm. It didn’t make sense. She realized Richard must have put some metal items in with his savings—that would account for the weight. She pulled open the top and dumped the contents in her palm.

Nicci gasped. There were close to two dozen gold marks. There wasn’t any silver. It was all gold.

“Dear Creator…” she whispered, her eyes wide. “Where would Richard get all this money?”

It was more money than most wealthy men saw in their lifetime. She looked up into Ishaq’s eyes.

“Where would Richard get all this money?”

He swept his red hat off his head. He waved impatiently at all the gold lying in her palm. “Richard earned it.”

She felt her frown darkening. “Earned it? How? No one man could earn this much money—not honestly, anyway.” She felt her anger building. “Richard stole this gold, didn’t he?”

“Don’t be silly.” Ishaq gestured irritably. “Richard earned it. He bought and sold goods.”

She gritted her teeth. “How did he get this money?”

The man flung up his hands. “I’m telling you. He earned it himself—all by himself. He bought things, and sold them to people who needed them.”

“Things? What kind of things? Contraband?”

“No! Things like iron and steel—”

“Nonsense. How would he move it? Carry it on his back?”

“At first. But then he bought a wagon to—”

“A wagon!”

“Yes. And horses. He bought charcoal and ore and sold them to the foundries. Mostly, he bought metal from the foundry, and sold it to the blacksmith. The blacksmith uses a great deal of metal. He bought it from Richard. That was how he earned the money.”

Nicci seized the man’s collar at his throat. “Take me to this blacksmith.”

Nicci was furious. All this time, she had thought Richard an honest hardworking man, and now she had discovered that he was imprisoned properly. He was guilty of swindling honest working people out of their money. He was profiteering.

At that moment, she was not sorry at all for what they were doing to him in the prison. He deserved it all, and more. He was a criminal, cheating honest hardworking people out of gold. She burned with humiliation, knowing she had been deceived by him.

Nicci had seen the site of the palace before, but at a distance as she went about her business in the city. She had never been this close. It was going to be everything Jagang said it would be. It filled her with awe. All the inspiring words of Brother Narev from her youth were like a sacred choir singing from the depths of her memories as she looked upon the sweep of scenes being erected.

The walls were already up over the openings for the windows on the first floor. In some sections, beams were being laid, spanning the interior walls, to support the next story.

But it was the outside which took her breath. The stone walls were banded with carvings on a scale she had never imagined. Just as Brother Narev would have directed, the carvings were inspirational, and convincing. Nicci saw people gazing upon the scenes, weeping at the events recounted in stone, weeping at the depiction of the miserable creature that was man, and the unattainable glory that was the perfection of the Creator. With such moving visions, there could be no doubt that the Order was mankind’s only hope of salvation. Just as Jagang had said, this would be a palace to stir the people with overpowering emotion.

“Why are those poles there?” she asked Ishaq as they marched along the wide cobbled path where people stood and watched the construction, while others knelt and prayed at various horrific scenes depicted on the walls.

“Carvers.” Ishaq removed his red hat as he looked at the sight. “It was said they took part in the revolt.”

Nicci’s gaze passed among the rotting corpses hanging at the tops of the poles. “Why would the carvers take part in the revolt? They have work.” More than that, they were working on the scenes of the glory of the Order. They, of all people, should have known how their only hope of reward in the next world required suffering in this.

“I did not say they took part. I said that it was said that they took part.”

Nicci didn’t correct the man. All men were corrupt. There wasn’t a man who could not be put to death without it being justified. That included Richard.

Many of the stones under protective roofs where men had worked now sat idle. Ramps were constructed, along with scaffolding, for the masons to work on the palace walls. As they placed their stone, other men, slave labor, worked at hauling huge blocks up the ramps to them, carried baskets of mortar or dirt and rock, or worked in trenches building the underground cells where the Order would purge the world of the worst sinners and where criminals would confess their crimes.

It was a terrible business, but you couldn’t have a garden unless you got your hands dirty first.

The blacksmith’s shop, up on the side of a hill overlooking the colossal undertaking, was the largest she had ever seen. With a project of this scale, it was understandable. She stood outside while Ishaq hurried in to fetch the blacksmith for her.

The sounds of hammers ringing on steel, the smells of the forge, the smoke, the oils, the acid, the brine, all brought back a flood of memories of her father’s shop. For a brief moment, Nicci’s heart beat faster—she was a girl again. She almost expected to see her father come out and smile at her with that wondrous energy of his showing in his blue eyes.

Instead, a brawny man stepped out of the shadows into the daylight. He wore no smile, but a menacing glare. At first, she thought he was bald. Then she saw that his full head of hair was simply cropped close to his scalp. Some of her father’s men who worked with hot iron did the same. His scowl would have set any other woman back three paces.

He wiped his hands on a rag as he walked through the milky sunlight toward her, appraising her eyes more carefully than most men—other than Richard. His thick leather apron was speckled with hundreds of tiny burn marks.

“Mrs. Cypher?”

Ishaq backed away, contenting himself to be a shadow.

“That’s right. I’m Richard’s wife.”

“Funny, Richard never really spoke of you. I guess I just assumed he had a wife, but he never said—”

“Richard has been taken into custody.”

The scowl changed in an instant to wide-eyed concern. “Richard’s been arrested? For what?”

“Apparently, for the most base of crimes: cheating people.”

“Cheating people? Richard? They’re out of their minds.”

“I’m afraid not. He is guilty. I have the evidence.”

“What evidence?”

Ishaq swooped in close, unable to contain himself any longer. “Richard’s money. The money he made.”

“Made!” Nicci’s shout drove Ishaq back a step. “You mean the money he stole.”

The blacksmith’s scowl had returned. “Stole? Who do you think he stole this money from? Who are his accusers? Where are his victims?”

“Well, you are one.”

“Me?”

“Yes, I’m afraid you were one of his victims. I’m here to return your money. I can’t use stolen money to rescue a criminal from his just punishment. Richard will have to pay the price for his crime. The Order will see that he does.”

The blacksmith tossed his towel aside and planted his fists on his hips. “Richard never stole one silver penny from anyone—least of all, me! He earned his money.”

“He cheated you.”

“He sold me iron and steel. I need iron and steel to make things for the Retreat. Brother Narev comes in here and growls at me to get things made, but he doesn’t deliver me the iron from which I must make them. Richard does. Until Richard came along, I nearly got buried in the sky myself, because Ishaq, here, couldn’t get me enough iron and steel.”

“I couldn’t! The committee only gives me permission to bring what I bring. I would be buried in the sky myself if I bring more than I have permission to bring. Everybody at the transport company watches me. They report me to the workers’ group if I spit wrong.”

“So,” Nicci said, folding her arms, “Richard has you over your own brine barrel. He brings you iron at night and you have no choice but to pay him his price, and he knows it. He makes all this gold by gouging you. That’s how he got rich—by overcharging you. That’s the worst kind of thievery.”

The blacksmith frowned at her as if she were daft.

“Richard sells me iron and steel for a lot less than I can buy it through the regular transport companies—like from Ishaq.”

“I charge what the committee on fair pricing tells me! I have no say!”

“That’s just crazy,” Nicci said to the blacksmith, ignoring Ishaq.

“No, it’s smart. You see, the foundries produce more than they can sell, because they can’t get it moved. Their furnaces have to be heated whether they make one ton or ten. They need to make enough iron to make the heat worth it, to pay their workers, and to keep their furnaces going. If they don’t buy enough ore, the mines close and then the foundry can’t get any ore at all. They can’t exist if they can’t get raw materials. But the Order won’t let Ishaq, and those like him, move as much as the foundries need moved. The Order takes weeks to decide on the simplest request. They consider every imaginable person who they fancy might conceivably be hurt if Ishaq were to move the load. The foundries were desperate. They offered to sell their extra to Richard at less money—”

“So they are cheated in Richard’s scheme, too!”

“No, because Richard takes it, they sell more, so it costs them less to make. They make more money than they would have otherwise. Richard sells it to me for less than I have to pay from the regular transport companies, because he buys it for less.”

Nicci threw her hands up in disgust. “And to top it off, he is putting working men out of jobs. He’s the worst sort of criminal—making his profit off the backs of the poor, the needy, and the workers!”

“What?” Ishaq protested. “I can’t get enough people to work, and I can’t get enough permits to haul the goods people need. Richard puts no one out of work—he helps create more business for everybody. The foundries he hauls for have each hired more men since they are able to sell through Richard.”

“That’s right,” the blacksmith said.

“But, you just don’t see it,” Nicci insisted as she raked back her hair. “He’s pulled the wool over your eyes. He’s cheating you—milking you dry. You’re getting poor because Richard—”

“Don’t you get it, Mrs. Cypher? Richard has made half a dozen foundries money. They are working now only because of Richard. He moves their goods when they need them moved, not when they can finally get some asinine permit with seals all over it. Richard has, by himself, enabled a whole string of charcoal makers to earn a living supplying those foundries, along with a number of miners and any number of other people. And me? Richard has made me more money than I ever thought I’d make.

“Richard has made us all rich by doing something that is desperately needed, and doing it better than others can do it. He has kept us all working. Not the Order and their committees, boards, and groups—Richard.

“I’ve been able to keep men on because of Richard. He never says it can’t be done; he figures a way to do it. In the process, he has earned the trust of every man he deals with. His word is as good as that gold.

“Why, even Brother Narev told Richard to do what needed doing to get me the iron I needed. Richard told him he would. The palace wouldn’t be this far along if not for Richard keeping everyone going with what he gets for us, when we need it.

“The Order owes Richard a debt of gratitude, not torture and punishment. He has helped the Order by doing what they need done. Those piers standing out there would not be built yet, if Richard hadn’t found me the iron to make the bracing ties. Those carvings on the palace walls down there would not be done if he hadn’t gotten me the steel I needed to make the tools to carve them. The goods down there are only moved in by wheels turning on iron bands I make to repair them because Richard got me the steel. Richard has done more to raise that palace up out of the ground than any other single man. Besides that, he’s made friends doing it.”

Nicci couldn’t make it work in her head. It had to be true; she remembered that Richard had met Brother Narev. How could someone make so much money, help the Order, and have the people he deals with still trust him?

“But he has made all this profit…”

The blacksmith shook his head as if she were a snake among them. “‘Profit’ is a dirty word only to the leeches of the world. They want it seen as evil, so they can more easily snatch what they did not earn.”