The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven) (10 page)

‘Phe said, “What about your magic one?”

They entered the sleeping chamber, where Pyra p
lopped down on her couch. “I s’
pose. It was exciting
enough
, but not
what
I’d
hoped
—
fun, but not
deep and rich the way I used to imagine
. The way your mother describes working the Court
always sounds
so high and noble
…
”

Khallio’Phe sat down next to her and cut her off. “Between you and me, Mnemosynae hasn’t worked the Court in decades. Mother tends to romanticize past glories a bit much.
I wonder if middle age does that.
Oh, speaking of my mother, her courier left you a message. She wants you at her shrine after you freshen up. She thinks you might have a gift for divination. The constables have a real need for that in the outer city these days.”

“I heard the noise out there last night from all the way up in the Court of Beasts. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess the war was at our gates.”

“Not
that
war.”

Pyra went to the mirror table, where she quickly checked her appearance. A few quick brush strokes and she said, “I’m off.”

“Greet her for me, will you? Tell her
that
her daughter isn’t too busy for a visit. My sacred concert is still a week off.”

Pyra nodded and rushed out of the chamber.

Mnemosynae’s shrine sat in a small grove of tamarisks on the garden side of the Temple Mound.

The Mistress of the Soul rush
ed
out of her sanctum just as Pyra arrived.
“Ah, good
,
f
ollow
me
, Pyra
. I’ve been called down to the harbor-side to divine for the constables again. Did you hear the ruckus last night?”

“Yes, Mistress
,
I was just telling your daughter that it sounded like the war had reached our gates.”

Mnemosynae slowed her pace and smiled. “How is ‘Phe?”

“She’s the best dorm mistress
ever
.”

“I arranged that for you, darling. You have real talent. I want to see it developed properly.”

They reached the innermost ring avenue and turned onto the stair causeway
of iron pyrite crystal
down
toward the waterfront far below.

“Thanks.
‘
Phe also sends her greeting. She misses you.”

Mnemosynae slapped her own forehead. “Oh! Her concert isn’t this week, is it?”

“No, Mistress, next week.”

“Thank the Goddess! The Council has me so busy and now the constabulary!”

Three ring avenues down, they passed under the gates of the Temple complex into the outer city
, where the golden pyrite
stair
turned into
gray
stone
.
T
he contrast between the Temple’s clean well-manicured grounds and the shabbiness of the city beyond
always amazed and saddened Pyra
. Both zones shared the same
basic
architecture
:
multi-storied fronts with stone pillared colonnades and inner courtyards.

The outer city, except the waterfront, had grown around the Temple in the last century
-
and
-
a
-
half. That made it relatively modern as cities went. Yet it seemed worn out before its time. Garbage spattered the streets, and
roving mobs of young looters had defaced
many building facades.

The Chief Constable met them in front of his fortified blockhouse near the harbor. The tired-looking heavyset man knelt before Mnemosynae and kissed her ring. “Thank you for coming personally, Mistress,” he said with a gravelly voice. “
L
ast night was havoc festival all over the city. This latest cluster attack is worse than any I’ve seen.”

“Cluster attack?” Pyra clipped her words off at a sharp glance from Mnemosynae.

The Co
nstable explained anyway. “N
ight marauders get worse each year. Most are just youths. Used to be they came from poorer families—harbor scum and the shanty sellers. Now
,
most are
middle class
and from the wealthier sections of town—they’re the worst—more gold to pay for their vices. They rove in packs and grab women and children off the street to meet up with other bands at prearranged sites for what they call ‘havoc festivals
,
’ which are
just dru
nk
en
riots and
gang
rape. Occasionally they get crazy and kill the victims
afterward
. Last night was really ugly.”

Mnemosynae said,
“Where?”

“This way, Mistress.” He led them down to the piers, into an old abandoned wharf house. “If my constables had more manpower and hand-cannons we could put a stop to much of it,” he said along the way. “Last night
,
one of my men had a hole blown through him the size of my fist.”

They entered the decaying building.

Pyra had seen cadavers before—had even dissected one in a recent novitiate study at the Temple lab. What she had never seen was so much blood and the frozen terror on so many glassy-eyed dead faces.
About twenty bodies littered t
he inside of the warehouse, all young girls ranging from Pyra’s age on down to
about ten years old. Most had been beaten and strangled
after
multiple sexual assaults. She felt the gorge rise in her throat
,
but managed to force it down until she could hardly breath
e
.

Mnemosynae asked,
“Have your men touched anything?”

The Constable said,
“They left things as they found them this morning, as per your instructions
.
”

“Send a runner up to the Temple. Have him tell the guard that I need a priestly service call to collect samples of hair and fluids. If any creation code patterns show up in our past offender records, we can have the Temple Militia take them into custody quickly for re-education. My assistant and I will begin to divine the scene for you.”

The Constable grunted. “Meaning no disrespect, Mistress, but most of the young men we pick up for this sort of thing have been through Temple re-education before—some repeatedly. Your ability to divine the identities of the offenders is uncanny and much appreciated, but you might want to look again at your re-education program
—meaning no offense, Mistress
.”

Mnemosynae seemed irritated by his suggestion, which shocked Pyra almost as much as the Constable’s candor.
Could such a thing be true?
Pyra had encountered several re-educated people in her work. They had always seemed fully rehabilitated to her. Often they even appeared to have a deeper understanding of their own personal weaknesses and were more apt to be open about their struggles during worship.
That’s healthy, isn’t it?

“It’s an imperfect system, I know,” said the Mistress. “Do you not notify the neighborhood whenever a repeat offender moves in?”

“Every time. But many sections of the city have at least five or ten repeaters living there, so it does little good. What can the neighborhood families do anyway except keep their children under close
guard?
I’ve heard of parents who pay huge ransoms to re-educated offenders so they’ll move away. Some of these jokers even make their living resettling each month from street to street and collecting payoffs.”

“What do you suggest we do to improve, Constable?”

The Constable shook his head. “Frankly
,
Mistress, I’m for going back to just hunting them down. Kill them like the carrion wurms they are!”

Mnemosynae’s violet eyes flared at him. “That would just lower us to their level!”

“Maybe
, b
ut at least a woman might walk to market and back in safety. At least their children could play like—well, children.”

Pyra had never seen anyone rattle Mnemosynae before—least of all an uncouth constable who probably could barely read, much less have an understanding of human nature that compared with the Mistress of Memory.

The Constable left them to send off his courier. Pyra watched Mnemosynae pace around the derelict building, as if hearing and seeing the events of the previous night. The Novice didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought, but it was awkward and terrifying to just stand there.
How do I learn to divine such a slaughter?

“It’s really a process of observation and deduction,” Mnemosynae said, as if she had heard Pyra’s silent question.

“Mistress, I don’t understand what you want me to be doing here. I’ve never seen anything so terrible.”

Mnemosynae stepped over a body—a girl about Pyra’s age—who resembled a younger version of Khallio’Phe. “I would have preferred to start you with something less intense. There’s really little for
us to conclude until the sample—
gathering team combs the site.”

“Can we go outside to wait then?”

“No, Pyra. We must appear engaged to the constables. It inspires confidence, plus there are details that are easier to observe without a crew of priestly attendants milling about.”

“Such as?” Pyra
could
not completely
hide
her shaking
.
A
cloying evil lingered
,
a leviathan barely held at bay just beneath the surface of a polluted lake.

“There were about
thir
ty
to forty
offenders here, I think.”

“How can you tell?”

“It would take several boys to control and subdue each female long enough to gather them and keep them here for even a few minutes. Since there are twenty-one bodies, and recent food scraps
…
”

Mnemosynae lifted the neck of a broken clay jug. “
…
I can still smell ale on this vessel. It seems they stocked the site earlier. Perhaps the girls even came willingly—thinking it a harmless youth gathering. It’s possible the offenders lured the victims under such pretenses—which could mean fewer offenders. Either way, there was planning and preparation. I’m sure the Constable is right that they intended to kill the girls afterward.”

“Why would anyone want to do that? If they had sexual needs they could come to Temple and find priests or priestesses to suit any taste.”

The Mistress shrugged. “
This does not happen every day
;
not at this scale. This is not about sex, but power and rage.
It is unlawful to injure a priestess, unless she initiates and then only in minor stylistic ways leav
ing
no
permanent
mark.
T
he internal violence of lingering patriarchal ideas
corrupts some men to the point where
killing is the only thing that gratifies them. It
comes out
in different ways, some worse than others. You heard how even the Chief Constable was eager to go back to the primitive methods of hunting and killing—it’s the dominant male impulse.”

“
Not all
our
re-educated sex offenders are men
.
We
of the Temple
also kill when necessary.”

Mnemosynae checked some disturbed dust prints by a side entrance. “Yes, when necessary. That’s the difference between our way and the old ways. The Temple learned that difficult lesson with much pai
n—before we began the Divine Breeding P
rogram. It was a different time and situation.”

“How?”

“At first, when we pacified the Far South Inland Seas City-States, we engineered plagues designed to infect only certain bloodlines of people descended from the warrior-queen Aertemissa. We grew the disease in
ampoule
s, and sprayed the demon strain from aerodrones. Whole villages and even several major cities full of our enemies died within weeks.”

Pyra’s legs went weak. “How could we ever do such a thing? It’s against everything you’ve taught us!”

“It was many years ago, darling
,
and we learned from our mistake. We saw the devastation and grieved over it. The gods punished us for using their gifts to manufacture death. For a time
,
we had given in to the old patriarchal lust for conquest and we paid a heavy price for it. The plague mutated as it spread, until it began to kill thousands of our own occupation forces before it eventually burned itself out.