The crack of shattering glass breaks through the warm murmurs in the common room of the Cat and Fox.
There were eight thugs with spiked clubs in hand. The most daring of these bravos held the Cat and Fox’s proprietor by the collar and pulled him halfway over the counter, easy as lifting a child. These were commoners, yes, but vicious and well-trained. They wore the Kolonn family’s red-and-gold and took every opportunity to show it off.
Thousands of people, including the proprietor, Polto, had come to Anthusa years before the fall of the Holy City and the plague to avoid exactly this kind of harassment. It was unbelievably common all across Vintal. In any city or town that wasn’t strictly allied with the Orczy or Kolonn families, or in which the control of one faction had recently slipped, thugs like these spontaneously generated like termites from sawdust. They pushed the locals around, extorted money, stole everything that wasn’t nailed down, and generally did everything in their power to grind the faces of innocent people into the dirt.
This continued until the local powers either plucked up the courage to expel them or joined their alliance. In the former case, wise princes joined the alliance of the opposing faction. If they failed to do this, they could expect the full wrath of the Kolonn or Orczy to come crashing down on their heads and conquer them outright. In these ways, the Orczy and Kolonn swallowed up the entirety of Vintal between them and set brother against brother in the planet’s oldest and bloodiest feud. The families with the foresight and power to remain genuinely neutral in this conflict, like the Feretrio at Mount Coffin, were rare, but they garnered immense power so long as they could maintain their balancing act.
Anthusa had been an Orczy stronghold for as long as anyone could remember. There were more Orczy elders here than anywhere else but the Holy City itself. At least, there had been. But the Conclave deciding the next Holy Son ran for so long, with so much contention between the leading candidates, that all their supporters massed at the Holy City in order to suppress their opponents’ discontent in the face of their inevitable victory. The soldiery called this a ‘target-rich environment’, one which the Demon Sultan must have found absolutely irresistible.
In the course of a single night, the most powerful elders of both factions were massacred, and the younger generations of both families were suddenly left in charge of their ancestral alliances.
Some hoped against hope that the destruction would shock the feuding families into a new peace and the recognition of a common enemy. It almost did.
But it came about that both of the frontrunners had survived the attack. Ippolito Tor, a powerful old cardinal from the planet Yvex who had forged close ties with the Orczy powers, fled to the fortress-comet Helvetra and declared himself the Holy Son Fulminous I. His close rival Dante de Resol, powerhouse of the Holy City and successor to the battle-mad Zealous II, who had fully a dozen of his close relatives appointed to cardinalships and lost almost all of them in the attack, fled back to Fleur and declared himself the Holy Son Magnanimous VIII.
With the Orczy firmly on the side of Fulminous, the Kolonn reflexively took to the defense of Magnanimous, and the vast, interplanetary conflict over the legitimacy of the Holy Son fueled their blood feud once more.
One might think that, with both families greatly weakened and the most powerful representatives of each gone, this would be a time for each faction to lick their wounds and consolidate their forces. Indeed, that would be the most strategically prudent option. But the Orczy-Kolonn feud had not been governed by anything so quaint as logic or restraint for over a millennium, and was instead based on the seething, volcano-hot hatred between families whose great-great-grandparents had killed each other for… Cato really wasn’t sure what. He was informed that the rivalry started because of a disagreement over the proper relationship between the Holy Son and the Gulphay emperor, but nobody, including the Gulphay emperor and the Holy Son, took that into account when making alliances anymore. The feud continued for its own sake.
Still, everyone agreed that these colossal, historical forces required that this particular thug steal a barrel of wine from this particular innocent innkeeper.
“All of you sit down and shut up!” The second-most daring bravo threatened a crowd of civilians with his club. The third-most daring, evidently the most enterprising, piped up, “We’re collecting for the church, you see, so hold out your purses for God!”
It so happened that those same historical forces now required that Cato do something about this.
“So much for a secret meeting.” He and Remiro stood up from the dark corner of the common room and doffed the hoods of their dark cloaks.
“Hey! Wait your turn!” Number two turned to threaten them. Numbers four through eight held their clubs menacingly.
“Make sure Polto is fine, I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Yes, lieutenant.”
“What are you-”
Thugs one and two flew out the open door and into the street. Cato followed close behind, and as he kicked thug number one into the far wall his cloak blew open, revealing the white-and-red Orczy colors.
The Kolonn thugs didn’t hesitate to fight back against their opposite number. They rushed toward him. Anthusa’s citizenry screamed and scattered. Clubs cracked the ground at Cato’s feet and shattered the masonry inches from his head, but never made contact. He responded with opportunistic strikes at their sides, a hard cuff at the temple, a stomp at the knee. His sword remained sheathed on his hip.
They hadn’t been tangling for more than a minute when the two thugs realized they were thoroughly overpowered.
“Surround him!”
Their compatriots flooded out of the Cat and Fox, as much summoned by their leader as pushed by Remiro’s precise, disciplined bladework.
That was the discipline Cato was trying to replicate. The well-practiced movements of someone who spent his entire life learning how to stand up to superior opponents and take down his inferiors quickly, cleanly, and if at all possible, nonlethally.
His body screamed in protest of such a style. His native strength alone could punch holes in these amateurs, none far past the first round of alchemic transformation. If he summoned the power he used back in Beroli, he could cook these jackasses through in just a few moments. Those were the habits inscribed in his body: crush your opponent with overwhelming force, and let the golden lions and other protective spells on his body handle the rest.
A spiked club came down hard on his forearm, tearing his clothes but deforming on impact. The thug holding it was stunned for a short moment, and Cao responded with a hard kick to the stomach that sent the man tumbling down the street.
That didn’t hit too hard… right?
The smell of human flesh charred by lightning came back to him unbidden. Cato hardly avoided the whistling arc of a dagger aimed for the side of his neck, and was pressed backward one, two, three steps before he regained control of the space and tore his opponent’s arm out of its socket.
Was that scream too loud? Too agonized?
He was not going to let this be like Beroli again. Cato wouldn’t permit it.
More and more memories came flooding back. The flight from Beroli. His one-sided fight with Benicio Cecchini. Brother Julius’ screams as the revelers carried him toward the bonfire.
Remiro outskilled these men, but he couldn’t hold out against their numbers. Cato overpowered them, but wouldn’t bring that strength to bear. Four, five, six, of the thugs surrounded him, forgoing their own weapons in favor of holding him down. He squirmed, but they held him fast. Another one, with a bleeding arm hanging loose from its shoulder, held aloft the knife, ready to plunge down into Cato.
It wouldn’t hurt him. It wouldn’t even break the skin, he just needed to think and get out of the envelopment.
He felt those hands on him again, the ones delivering him to be eaten alive.
Cato just needed to stay calm.
He felt the rush of flames. He smelled the carrion rotting between the fangs of that primal devouring god.
There were nine agonized screams, and then there was silence on the street. Cato felt like someone had driven an icicle through his skull.
“Master…”
Remiro’s wheezing cut through the blinding haze of pain. Cato crawled over to him, less with his eyes or ears than with his sense that this pain was coming from somewhere, like a powerful wind blowing from the east. His hands closed on Remiro and batted clumsily towards his face, where Cato’s fingers felt the blood pouring out from his nose and eyes. With a gentle push of energy, the worst of the pain was soothed, and Remiro’s breathing steadied as he passed out.
The street in front of the Cat and Fox gradually filled again as people peeked around corners had ended, seemingly with all the combatants injured or dead. Polto dragged the two Orczy men back inside and shoved them in the back, where Remiro began on the slow path to recovering from an injury to his soul and Cato set about regretting every decision he’d made since arriving in Anthusa.
After Cato… died, there was no other way to put it, he awoke on the riverbank surrounded by the people of Inillo, with no notion of how he had gotten there. His body was transformed: it looked and felt younger than before, and he seemed now to be a man in his early rather than late twenties. This rejuvenation was accompanied by a distinct sense of loss, as though there were invisible limbs he had never been able to control, but now knew their absence. With days of meditation, he learned that it was the golden lions. That spell which had both protected him and marked him as a relation of House Gulphay were no longer there, and wouldn’t come to his rescue.
It was distressing, yet oddly freeing at the same time. He and the people of Inillo came to Anthusa to disappear among its throng, and while powerful protectors like the lions were useful, they also attracted far too much attention.
Cato burdened Father Andrea alone with the truth of what happened after he separated from the caravan. His doomed battle with Benicio, whose fate was still unknown to him, their capture by a hopelessly more powerful opponent, the mad horrors he saw in the firelight, and his own death. Father Andrea decided this was a sign of divine favor; that Cato was protected from on high by God, and that no mortal power could kill him.
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But Cato could feel the priest’s hesitation. Cato’s disappearance had shaken everyone, and though his miraculous return strengthened their faith, Andrea was coming to learn that his master might not be what he believed.
Still, he kept these things secret, and placed his faith in Cato. When the caravan finally arrived at the high gates of the City of Spires, Anthusa, one of the planet Vintal’s great centers of culture and commerce, he spoke for them and demanded they be allowed to enter and settle within the city. He was pleasantly surprised when, only a few short hours later, they were permitted inside with a minimum of fuss. And then he learned that Baron Inillo had taken out considerable loans from the great Manzi bank of Anthusa, which he had acquired using his castle, lands, and subjects and collateral.
These loans went towards buying extravagant clothes, gifts, and bribes to offer at the Holy City to the new Holy Son. He expected these expenditures to rapidly turn him a profit. Now they, and everything they were supposed to buy, were ashes on the wind. The Manzi bank was overjoyed to locate the Baron’s elusive next of kin, upon whom the debts now fell, since the lands and castle had become all but worthless with the blight spreading from the Holy City.
Cato could do little more than curse his fictional father’s misfortune and settle down to find a way to pay off his debts. The quantities were staggering. It would take centuries for the people of Inillo to pay them off through labor. But the world was more fragile than it had been for quite a long time, and Anthusa was no exception. The Orczy-Kolonn feud, from which Anthusa had been safe for generations, was once again spilling blood on the streets. The most influential members of the city’s younger generation, including Archbishop Forna’s sister Julia, the youngest son of the Tor family, and the heir to the Manzi banking dynasty, were holed up in the highest tower of the Cathedral Severe and thus, for all intents and purposes, prevented from having any real influence on the city’s governance for another year and change.
In their place the young Otto Orczy, an untested nephew twice removed of the late Orczy patriarch, was left in charge of Anthusa while his elders mustered armies and put out (or started) fires elsewhere on Vintal. His opposite number, the young warrior Konrad Kolonn, took up residence in the city along with a host of soldiers and was somehow sneaking hundreds of Kolonn partisans through the walls and doing everything he could to undermine Orczy authority in one of their traditional seats of power.
It was a time of complete and utter chaos in which the unknown son of a minor noble became a valuable pawn. After a short discussion with a certain Captain Apostolis, the Manzi bank neglected to call Cato’s debts due, and he was inducted as a lieutenant of the Orczy forces, with Remiro serving under him as a sergeant.
For the last three months, Cato wore the red-and-white, busted Kolonn heads when they popped up, and stood around looking intimidating when the circumstances called for him. The Orczy weren’t stupid enough to entrust a newly recruited officer, barely different from a mercenary, with anything sensitive. Cato got paid less than a mercenary as well, and the Maniz bank took most of his paycheck to service the interest on his debts. The specifics of his financial situation were covered in enough misdirection and technical obfuscation to make his head spin, but he estimated that he might be able to pay them off… in a few hundred years.
But as discouraging as the whole situation was, it could be much, much worse. The people of Inillo had more than just his protection now: though the old Baron Inillo had Kolonn leanings, the villagers were far away enough from the centers of the conflict that they never identified very closely with it. In short order they were subjects of the Orczy alliance under Orczy protection. Those were the bonds of loyalty that governed this world: Cato offered to bleed for them, and they took care of his people in turn.
The job had plenty of other perks as well. Though warriors as powerful as Cato were dime-a-dozen in Anthusa, unlike in the much smaller city of Beroli, he stood head and shoulders above the common citizen. If he gave them respect, he was given respect in return, and if he did them certain small favors, they would do him favors in return.
Favors like setting up a covert meeting with someone who knew where to find a certain witch, for example.
Polto fussed and fretted over the two injured men, wiping their foreheads and trying to wake Remiro with smelling salts no matter how many times Cato waved him off. Orczy reinforcements came around to clear out the bodies and debrief Cato. Then, several hours after she was supposed to arrive, a little old lady in a green hat appeared in front of the Cat and Fox. She was surprised to find that Cato and Remiro were still there, and their recent spat clearly hadn’t passed her by. But after some coaxing and many reassurances, Signora Galatina was able to give Cato his first solid lead on Agatha.
Two years earlier, not long after found the witch’s hut empty and abandoned except for the Book of Zevon and a note, a woman came to Anthusa who was skilled in medicines and surgeries. She practiced her craft charitably and healed many sick Anthusans who could not afford to see a doctor, and according to Galatina not a single one of her patients had died under the knife.
But to those in the know, Agatha also offered her services in fortune-telling and, though Galatina didn’t know for sure who to count among her victims, in curses and diabolism. Galatina had long confided in Polto and confessed her temptation to report the miraculous healer to the church, but held her tongue out of gratitude for Agatha curing her nephew’s gout.
With that, Cato and Remiro, the latter leaning on his master for support, sent her on her way with a tip and yet more assurances of their good intentions toward the healer.
It took a while to convince Remiro and Andrea not to condemn the shepherds for consorting with a witch. It took longer to convince them both that they should seek her out. But Cato was convinced she didn’t quite add up. Inna and Myshkin were too terrified to even open the Book of Zevon, never mind study it, but they wouldn’t have been able to either way. It was written in an archaic, scholarly tongue, and it was a wonder that even Inillo’s priest could understand it. Agatha knew that.
So why would she leave it behind, along with a note telling them to study it? Why tell the shepherds where she was going? Why continue to use the same name?
It was a long shot, he admitted. But Cato couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a trail he was meant to follow, and he was dead set on following it to the end.
For the moment, however, Remiro needed to rest, and he needed to center himself. After dropping his sergeant off at the crumbling manor house in which he and his closest followers had settled, he wandered over to the Cathedral Severe.
It was the most beautiful building Cato had seen in either of his lives. Colossal and intimidating, yes, but crafted with such incredible artistry that sang to his soul. The exterior walls portrayed hundreds of saints, each in their own niche with their own, incredibly lifelike statue painted in bright, luminous colors. The tiers of saints rose dozens of stories, until they reached the grand egg-shaped dome, similarly tiled with statues of angels. Around the crown, four archangels dominated: Michael to the north, Uriel to the south, Raphael to the west, and Gabriel to the east, each one inspiring awe and devotion. At the very apex there was only a tall spire, reaching up to heaven. It was only slightly overshadowed by the much taller tower on the eastern wing, so tall that it pierced the clouds. The city’s nine official rulers dwelt there for two years at a time, Cato was told, though he got the impression that they never did much of anything.
Anthusa was by no means short of cathedrals and chapels, but the Cathedral Severe was by far the grandest. Some once claimed it compared favorably to the Sanctum Summum itself. Nobody made those comparisons anymore.
As to why Cato came here, the reason was simple. It was very easy for him to speak with the voice inside him. It sometimes came unbidden when he looked in the mirror or into a body of water. But talking to the other guy, the voice like cool spring water on a hot day, was much more difficult. When he meditated on the people of Inillo, the love and faith they felt for him, and the love he felt for them, he felt it moving, and could almost grasp it. But when he came to the Cathedral Severe, admired its beauty, and laid his spirit bare, it would sometimes appear just beside him and speak without reservations.
When his turn in the file came, Cato climbed into the confessional.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been five days since my last confession.”
Cato was answered only by the gentle echo of his own voice.
“Father?”
“Go on, my son.”
The priest’s voice was low and shaky, but Cato thought nothing of it. He confessed his attack on the Kolonn thugs, his instinctive attack on their souls which might leave them crippled for life, his threatening of debtors as a favor to Polto, and numerous other, smaller sins.
“This is all I can remember. I am sorry for these and all my sins.”
“Then go forth, my son, and sin no more.”
Cato was surprised the priest made no mention of penance, but left as commanded. Unlike Andrea, the Anthusan priests were businesslike sorts, and he had no desire to take a tongue-lashing from one for taking up too much time.
As he stepped back into the evening air, the four suns descending in an arc and making multicolored, striated shadows as they passed between the city’s innumerable towers, Cato felt a presence like a mother’s reassuring touch settle on the crown of his head, and he spoke with it at length as he returned home.
⚜ ⚜ ⚜
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been five days since my last confession.”
Rosso Sen froze in the confessional.
That voice. It couldn’t be.
He was supposed to be dead.
There was no mistaking it. This was the voice that had threatened everything he loved during the Conclave.
“I know what you did and with who, and soon her father shall know as well.”
“The bull will thrash and trample and gore until all you hold dear is bleeding underfoot!”
“You foul seducer in the guise of a righteous man, venomous poet!”
“ The letters in my hand are sufficient to damn you, and to raise a wrath greater than any ever suffered since the devil rebelled against God!”
A sheen of cold sweat covered Sen; once a cardinal, one of Vintal’s greatest living scholars, now a priest living in hiding because of the threats made by the man now sitting opposite him in the confessional. His pulse roared, and only Sen’s considerable cultivation and mental discipline kept him from fainting.
“Father?”
“Go on, my son.”
Sen answered out of habit. The terrible penitent listed his recent sins economically, in a practiced fashion. Of course he did. Such a prolific sinner would have confession down to a science.
Sen had to remind himself that the confessionals and the screens of the Cathedral Severe were enchanted and reinforced. Many of the city’s elite preferred it here, and the priests took steps to ensure that even the most powerful penitents did not know exactly to whom they were confessing. Even the confessor’s voice was magically altered.
So Tenorio Kyno couldn’t possibly know to whom it was he was confessing. If he realized, he would tear through the screen and throttle him. Logically, Sen knew that this was far beyond Kyno’s abilities. But in the priest’s mind, he was not human, but a monster, a devil in the flesh with no regard for physical laws.
“This is all I can remember. I am sorry for these and all my sins.”
“Then go forth, my son, and sin no more.”
Had he given himself away? What priest would forget to assign penance?
But he left, and the next penitent came without incident.
Rosso Sen kept accepting confessions well into the night as if his life depended on it. When a lull came in the constant stream of penitents, he dashed out of the confessional and rushed to the cathedral’s back entrance. There, a squadron of Tor family soldiers awaited him, their captain a veteran in the third realm of alchemic transformation, and they escorted him, shivering with fear and darting at shadows, to the Tor family’s towering mansion. He didn’t stop until he reached the uppermost floor, and entered a den of luxury and hedonism that would make the most dedicated simoniac blush. Candles of unicorn tallow burned on rugs shorn from the back of dire ermines. The balcony had the second-best view in Anthusa. But there reclining on the couch with a glass of port in hand, was the very best sight in the city: the most beautiful woman in the world, whose intellect burned through the dark of ignorance like a star, for whom he had given up everything and gained yet more. His one true love. Dresses of velvet and cloth of gold were a poor imitation of her radiance, and the sapphires like quail eggs that hung from her ears were an affront before her sparkling eyes.
“Rosso, Rosso, are you back already? What happened to that determination of yours, hm?”
He slunk toward him, put a lovely arm around his waist and brought the perfumed glass to his lips, but found him cold and stiff to her touch, rather than soft and pliant.
“Rosso? What’s wrong?”
For a moment, Rosso Sen really did consider the sacred vows he took, and the promise that a penitent’s confession is private. Then he thought of all the other promises he broke in order to pursue his love, and told Ursula Tor everything.