silence. The dead were gathered and wrapped in preservative bandages. June recited a Rite that heavily slowed the rate of decay. Then they were stacked in the back of the caravan near the bales of horse feed.
One of the horses had died; its throat had been slit. It dangled on its side, leaning into the restrains of its harness above a pool of black red earth. They tore it down and dragged the corpse into the trees. One Rite of Calming later and the simple beasts of burden were ready to move again. Only four non-combatant passengers had died; those had been the overconfident ones who had left the cars to help fight. Ten runners were dead. No one talked about it. June wondered if they would be mourned. It was usually the youngest heirs of noble houses that joined the Karavane or started at the lowest rungs of the military. Their siblings might be glad of the resulting larger piece of inheritance. Either that or they were the children of wealthy families looking to gain favor with the state and join the nobility. The loss of a child to their own incompetence wasn’t a dishonor, but the natural course of things.
As the caravan quietly went under way again under Yavi’s leadership, June wondered what it was all for. All these people dead because consumers in Terilein, their destination, needed to spend coin on goods they didn’t really need, at least not anything worth losing a human life over. Their memories would be dismissed by their families as the cost of failure in a meritocracy. No one cared for the youngest son or daughter in an estate with dozens of older, more talented siblings. June mourned for them instead. She found LaRein’s manifest, looked up their names, and prayed for them.
“May they find their place in the Resting Spires.”
Maybe that was the ultimate goal of the Order.
The nobility needed to be Faleria’s standard, and so they discarded their weaknesses. Their example bred strength, and if they had been just the tiniest bit weaker, they’d have lost to Aldren. So the Order must supplement that loss of humanity with kindness and empathy. It was the Order after all that found work for the dispossessed after the war and integrated refugees into an enemy culture. Was that their Raison D'être? June didn’t like that conclusion. The idea would haunt her for all her life: that the foundational strength of an empire was inimical to human empathy.
She stayed in her quarters that night, staring at a piece of paper on the small desk her room allotted. A bulb of light hovered above her head providing a meager candle’s worth of illumination. Beside the paper, a steelfeather waited in ink, its hollows filled with black, unwritten words. She wanted to, but what would she say to Archbishop Vulka? That it was her first assignment and already she was having a crisis of faith? Those without the Order mocked her for her meek demeanor. Those within pitied. June drained the steelfeather and stored it, then capped the ink bottle. She bade the light away and it did. Her room was plunged in the dark. Somehow she felt better basking in nothing but the moonlight cascading through the small port in her room. Outside, people ate in relative silence. What little conversation June could hear was usually about nothing at all.
Knocks at her door. June had fallen asleep leaning against her bedside hugging her knees. She stood at attention and said, “Who is it?”
“It’s me.”
June opened the door.
“Hi Lisŗa.” June tried not to look unsuccessfully. The runner looked much better than before, although her face was still pale and her movements came with a noticeable sluggishness. “Are you alright?”
“It just nicked an artery is all,” Lisŗa said.
June knew that of course; she was the one who pulled her tissues together and fused them back. It seemed much of what talk they could have was just for the purpose of exchanging their voice between them. What could they talk about after what had just happened?
“I just came to check up on you,” Lisŗa said, breaking the silence. “You should eat something.” She began to leave. June stopped her with a palm on her shoulder.
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“Can you stay for a few minutes?”
“Of course.”
They sat together in the dark against the bed. Lisŗa absorbed the cramped surroundings, wrinkling her nose in disapproval.
“Why do you stay here of all places? Can’t the Order secure you a cabin in the staterooms car?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m not supposed to do anything but sit still anyways.”
June looked up, gathering the words. “Decades ago, it was discovered that the Order, or rather it was called the Faith of Wodan back then, was using its familiarity with the emperor to take advantage of its tithes. They enjoyed taxation free operation but higher privileges than some noble families. All one had to do was pretend to be a legitimate branch of the faith to shirk responsibilities to the state. It weakened Faleria with hedonism, wanton waste, rings of degeneracy where powerful people preyed on children… This was how the true believers survived. We dismembered the High Speaker and split the authority of the faith into a court of Archbishops, so no one bias could sway the faith. And we swore humility and abstinence from the luxuries of currency.”
“That why that big ugly thing can be seen from every street in Cadeau?”
“The basilica?”
“Yep.”
“No, our rooms within are all pretty much this size. Even the Archbishop’s. Those marble halls are everyone’s privilege.”
Lisŗa patted June’s knee. “That doesn’t mean you need to subject yourself to squalor, just to prove you’re not the same as the old Order.”
“That’s the consequence of history isn’t it? Change everlasting, even if most of the public could barely remember such a corrupt time. Even if they don’t care anymore. Lest we return to the ways of old.” June shook her head. “Sorry, I’m talking too much.”
“I think you need to talk,” Lisŗa said, moving closer. She leaned just a little onto June’s shoulder. June felt the roughness of the runner’s garb through the softness of her robe. “And I need someone to listen to that isn’t Yavi.”
The company warmed June more deeply than any fire. She resisted the urge to cry. She knew she didn’t deserve to, for in the long quiescence alone she had had time to unravel that uncanny feeling from before. She knew she had done something. It saved the caravan. But it wasn’t something anyone could be proud of. Worst of all she had no idea what it was. She mustered her courage to ask Lisŗa if she had seen anything.
A rattle in the dark. Metal rubbed against metal.
“What was that?” June whispered.
“Let’s go see,” Lisŗa said. They walked further towards the rear cars of the caravan, past the storage areas for horse feed and the preserved casualties. In the back of the last car, there was a cage, a brig reserved for troublesome passengers. June saw movement.
“How about a little light?” Lisŗa asked.
June pinched a candle’s worth of flame between her fingers. The cage bars casted a striped shadow against a large form sitting lazily against the wall. Her eyes widened. It was a man. More bear than man judging by his bulk. Dense, brown hair covered his head. A thick, unkempt beard hid his mouth. He was dressed in a loose cape made of fur and some sort of black scale. Even as he snored he had a large black axe in a death grip.
“He didn’t fight back when they found him stumbling about in the area,” Lisŗa said. “Badly hurt too, but none of the runners recalled fighting someone like this. You’d think they’d remember if they had, too. Man looks like he crushes boulders for a living. We think he was just in the area when those highwaymen attacked and fought off a few of them.”
“What are you planning to do with him?”
“Yavi hasn’t said. He doesn’t seem to be able to speak our language.”
“You let him bring his weapon?”
“Couldn’t pry it from him. The thing weighs a ton too.”
June examined the barbarian, peering a little deeper than the eye can normally see. She sensed thoughts, dreams. She shook her head.
“Strange,” she said.
“What is?”
“The man’s Soul is different. In flux.”
“What does that mean?”
“Our Souls complete over the course of our life, just as the Mind is less receptive to new teachings as we age. The effect should be obvious in an adult. His is… not so. I’ve heard of people like this. I shouldn’t speak further.”
“Why? It could be useful-”
“No. It’s nothing. Let’s leave before our conversation wakes him.”
They left at June’s insistence to talk of other things, more interesting topics, ones that didn’t involve death and strangers. When the night reached its zenith, Lisŗa left to go catch a few hours rest, bidding June good bye. While the passengers slept, June paced. She brought out her steelfeather and ink again, wondering if she ought to.
“They are the harbingers of evil, my dear disciple. The bringers of calamity. Their Forms will be alien, their Minds untenable, their Souls receptive to corruption. Stay clear of their ilk, June.”
But the stranger was none of those things. When June peered into the man’s mind and saw his dreams, they weren’t about destruction or evil. Could it be a deception? She knew of no one that could lie whilst in dreams. What evil could rest in a man dreaming about wrestling a fish?