The False Martyr (102 page)

“
This is more than the
crowds and silly miracles. So what is it? Is it the boy?” Garth
asked, rumbling voice rising from the great shadow his form had
become. He stood with his back to the door, arms crossing his
chest, face and features lost to the darkness.

Teth did not know what she
had expected when Garth pulled her in here, but she supposed this
should have been it. She had spent nearly two weeks in the Morg’s
company, and he had never done anything to threaten her beyond
knocking a sword from her hand or casting her to the ground in a
wrestling move. He had been, in many ways, the ideal teacher and
protector even if he never allowed that to cross into
friendship.

“
He is angry with you,
isn’t he? Well, he is right to be,” he continued when she failed to
respond. “You treat him poorly. You cannot blame him for thinking
you untrue.”

“
Untrue?” Teth mulled the
word, tried to understand what it meant. When she finally realized,
she could not help but laugh. “Untrue as in . . . as in . . . but
that’s absurd. I mean, I would never . . . .”

“
It is not so crazy,”
Garth grunted, sounding hurt. “You are a woman. I am a
man."

Teth laughed again. She
had never even considered herself with Garth. When she tried to
take her mind there, it became lost somewhere between his beard,
size, and age without ever making it to the act. “I’m sorry,” she
said eventually. “But that’s not it. He has every right to be mad
at me, but he’s not.”

“
Then what is your
problem?”

Teth tried to think of a
way to explain. “It’s me.” Her thoughts swirled as she tried to
find a way to placate the Morg without revealing all her secrets.
Finally, she gave up and blurted everything out. “I . . . I am just
not sure that it can work between us. I . . . I think we have
different paths, and I’m trying to move away from him so that he is
not too hurt when those paths split.”

“
Then be done with it,”
Garth leapt a bit too quickly. “In the Fells if a woman no longer
desires a man, she does not invite him to her bed, and they find
partners who suit them better. They do not carry on like this.
Maybe that is why he is not angry, because he has already let you
go. Now, you must do the same.”

The words hit Teth harder
than any blow the Morg could deliver with the wooden swords they
used for training. And they were all the harder for the truth
contained in them. Wasn’t that exactly what she wanted? Shouldn’t
she be relieved that Dasen finally seemed to have accepted their
separation, that he had barely spoken to her in a week, that he
almost seemed to have forgotten about her? Wasn’t that what she
needed to be able to let him, let everything, go when the time
came?
It’s what needs to happen,
she told herself.
You’re
doing what’s best for both of you
.

“
You’re right,” she said,
forcing her voice to be resolute despite the emotions that
threatened to overwhelm her. “We both need to move on.” She took a
deep breath, building herself up for the conversation she had been
dreading for most of the week, for the real reason for her
distraction. “But I . . . I need your help.”

“
What is it?” Garth smiled
and stepped closer. His hands came toward her.

Is he reaching for
me?
Teth maneuvered instinctively around
the flour sacks to keep the space between them, sudden
uncomfortable being close to the man she had spent countless hours
wresting. “I need you to get Dasen out of the city,” she said
defensively as if, even more than his help, she needed to clarify
the kind of help she wanted.

It was only after the
words were out that she realized how reckless they had been. If
Garth was loyal to Kian or, more likely, Lareno, they were as good
as done. But even more than that, saying the words made the plan
seem real. All of a sudden, she could see it all happen, could see
Garth smuggling Dasen from the city, putting him on a boat, taking
him away while she . . . .
He can’t leave
someone who’s already gone,
she told
herself as she came to terms, yet again, with her fate.

Garth took a step back.
The thought of her own death, once so satisfying, had paralyzed
Teth so that she missed his reaction. Only too late did she look
into the gloom that was his face.
Did he
look hurt?

“
I don’t understand,” he
mumbled, seeming to have lost his stoic poise for the first time.
“Dasen is needed in the city. If you want to be away from him, why
don’t I take
you
away?”

Teth shook her head. This
was all going wrong. She was saying it wrong, was thinking about
what would happen in the coming weeks rather than what needed to
happen right now. “Kian and Lareno are planning to betray us to the
invaders,” she blurted. “They . . . ,” she cut herself off as she
realized what she’d said. She was supposed to keep it to Kian, had
rehearsed this in her mind a thousand times, so why had Lareno’s
name slipped out? She knew that Garth disliked Kian, but hadn’t
Lareno saved him from the river? And with Morgs’ overblown senses
of honor would that make him beholden to the valati? “It’s Kian
really,” she tried to backtrack, but everything was muddled now.
“You’ve seen how he acts. I don’t know what he’ll do if he’s in
power, and I don’t want to find out. Imagine if he has Dasen’s
power. We can’t be here to find out what he does if he takes
control of the city.”

“
So you’re both going?”
Garth sounded like he was trying to get his head around the plan
and failing.

“
The Tappers are arranging
for a boat to take us down the river to Onaway.” Teth was just glad
the Morg hadn’t turned on her yet and couldn’t seem to stop herself
from giving the entire plan away. “When the city falls, they think
that Kian will have you protecting Dasen. It will be our only way
to get away, so can . . . .”

“
What about
you?”

“
I . . . I,” Teth built
herself up to tell the lie that was required. “I . . . it will
depend on what is happening, but Kian may have me somewhere else.
That’s why we need you. At least one of us is likely to be with
Dasen. If it’s me, I will go with you. If not, I’ll meet you at the
boat.”

Garth stared at her for a
long time, an unreadable shadow in the darkness. “I will see he
makes it to the boat,” he said finally in a taciturn rumble that
was impossible to read.

“
Thank you,” Teth
breathed, feeling like a week a pent air was rushing from her. “By
the Order, thank you. I will let you know all the details when the
Tappers get them finalized.”

“
That is fine,” the Morg
brushed off the details. “Is this is what has been bothering
you?”

“
Yes,” Teth smiled. “I
think I can concentrate now.”

“
So it’s just the boy’s
safety that has you concerned, not . . . .” He trailed off as if
losing his words.

“
Yes,” Teth answered a bit
too quickly. “I feel so much better knowing that you’ll help us
when the time comes.”

“
And you’ll go with him
despite . . . ?”

“
We’re joined,” Teth
nearly choked on the word but somehow managed to make it seem
convincing. Garth, above anyone, could not find out what she really
planned to do while they were escaping the city. “I am bound to him
until I die.” Again, the words nearly got stuck in her
throat.

“
I see. We should get
back.” Garth was gruff, distant even beyond his usual indifference.
He turned and opened to door, flooding the storeroom with
light.

Teth let out a long slow
sigh and followed him from the storeroom.

A crowd filled the hall.
Every eye closed on Teth as she emerged. Garth seemed to not see
them, walked toward them as if he would go over them if they failed
to move. Teth had no such power. “It was just the heat,” she felt
obligated to say. “I was light headed. My man took me into the
storeroom to cool down.”

The crowd grumbled and
muttered as Teth made her way through them. “Your mind is not in a
place for training,” Garth pulled her attention from their stares.
“Run to the camp and help your sister.”

Teth was stunned by that.
Was Garth upset with her? “I . . . I don’t want to go to the camp,”
she answered, falling perfectly into her role as a teenage boy. “I
want to keep training.”

“
Not today,” he answered
and walked away. “I will do my part when the time comes but not
today.”

Teth was left to watch him
go, wondering what she could have done to upset the stoic
Morg.

#

So how do you do it?”
Dasen asked Valati Lareno. He looked at the empty burlap sacks in
the back of the wagon, then to the crowd of onlookers milling at
the temple’s entrance, and finally, to the soldiers standing in a
cluster near the path that led to the fortress above. None of them
seemed to be watching.

“
I’m surprised you haven’t
asked sooner,” Valati Lareno answered as he casually reached into
the wagon and shifted one of the sacks. Dasen’s eyes darted to it
without his head turning. Even in the twilight gloom, he saw the
hole covered by the sack. “The sacks are already full,” the valati
explained while gesturing toward the temple for anyone watching –
clearly offering the lady a place to wait. “The top of each hangs
out of the hole, covering the false bed of the wagon. As we add
food, we simply pull the bags up, allowing the false bottom to
fall, and the food to rise.”

Dasen looked to the back
of the wagon. The bed had been lowered, he now realized. Another
false one had been placed on top with holes cut through it for the
sacks. When the wagons arrived each morning, they already held most
of the food that would go to the camp hidden between the two
layers. As Dasen had already known, there was no magic at play
here, no miracles, just carefully planned slight-of-hand. He
nodded, reassured that the ground beneath him was still firm. The
only way to explain the food they’d stolen was through a miracle,
so Valati Lareno had created one and the saint to go with
it.

“
Sorry to disappoint you,”
the valati chuckled. “But the only thing miraculous about Deena
Esther is that she doesn’t actually exist.”

Dasen nodded again. Took a
step away from the valati and stared down the road. He glanced at
the western horizon then at the soldiers. It was nearly dark, and
he was getting nervous about making it down that road before the
governor’s men had an excuse to arrest him or the cover of night to
do something more permanent. After the miracle of the first day had
been repeated for four more with word spreading throughout the city
and the crowds of disciples swelling to the hundreds, the governor
had finally taken notice. A dozen guards had been waiting at the
inn when the wagons arrived that morning. Claiming that the
governor had sent them to protect Lady Esther and the supplies she
was collecting, they had shown Dasen every courtesy, but he
suspected that had more to do with the crowd that followed his
every movement than any concern for his safety.

Their real mission, Dasen
knew, was to discover the truth behind the miracles and discredit
the city’s new saint before things got any further out of hand.
Thwarted in their attempt to see the secret behind the miracles –
just as the actual Lady Esther had been up until the valati
revealed it – they had accompanied the wagons on their trip to the
camp and come face-to-face with Deena Esther’s second miracle. The
sickness was gone, the refugees were returning to health, no one
had died in days. And the people there, including the guards, gave
every scrap of credit to Lady Esther and her miraculous connection
with the Order – accepting a miracle even over the medicine they’d
been drinking daily for a week.

The soldiers spent the
entire trip back talking among themselves, trying to understand
what they’d seen and how they would tell it to the governor. From
what Dasen had caught of their conversation, the governor had
largely dismissed the impact that Lady Esther’s miracles were
having on the psyche of the people. He had believed her a fraud
from the start and had been only surprised that she had not been
unmasked already. The nervous looks of the soldiers now showed that
they did not relish the idea of telling their leader what they had
seen this day, of relating yet another miracle, the growing crowds,
the devotion of those followers, and no evidence to discredit any
of it.

The question was how the
governor would react to that, especially if the source of those
irksome miracles happened to be standing a few hundred paces away
in clear violation of his curfew. During the day, Dasen felt
sufficiently protected by the crowd that accompanied him. To hurt
or arrest him in their presence would almost certainly lead to the
riots that Lareno and Kian sought. But that crowd was nearly gone
now. The pending curfew had reduced their number to those who
relied on the charity of the Church to keep themselves out of the
camp. And they would be forced the final feet into the temple in
only a few minutes, leaving Deena Esther alone with the soldiers,
out after curfew, perfectly positioned for arrest, and whatever
else might happen after.