Father Portus stood by the first pew before the altar, gazing upward. Sasha stopped beside him. “You've never been here before?” she asked him.
Portus shook his head. “No. It is…remarkable.” A priest of the high slopes would rarely visit those of the lower. The priesthood of the Porsada Temple were wealthy men of the families. These small, dockfront temples interested them as little as did the poor, uncivilised labourers who frequented them.
“The artist's name is Berloni,” said Sasha. “That's him up there.” She pointed to one man, high on the scaffold. “He drew the original outlines. Now he's filling them in, and his assistants do the details.”
Across one side of the ceiling, a beautiful mosaic was unfolding. Half-naked figures, scenes of the Verenthane Scrolls of Ulessis, in majestic, sensual poses. Sasha recognised no more than a third of the scenes, but it hardly mattered. The mosaic background was blue, like the sky on a warm summer day, and the figures seemed to fly. Indeed, some had wings-angels, the Verenthanes called those.
“I love this fellow here,” said Sasha, pointing to a figure high on the wall opposite. A muscular man with a great beard, mostly naked, holding a babe in the crook of one arm. Both seemed to be emerging from the sea, draped in bits of seaweed, while a beautiful lady in a flowing dress looked on with love in her eyes. “He looks a bit like some Lenay men I know.”
Father Portus gave her an odd look. “You must know these men well. He wears so little. They all do.”
Sasha shrugged. “It's the style in the Saalshen Bacosh. You recognise the scenes?”
“Of course!” Father Portus looked somewhat…uncomfortable. “That's Ronard, God of the Oceans, and his son Trione. The woman is Deyani, Goddess of Love.”
“I didn't do so well in scripture class,” Sasha admitted. “But if classes were this beautiful, I might have done better. Don't you like it?”
“It's…it's…” the priest shook his head, helplessly. “They wear so little! Archbishop Augine would turn green.”
“I knew there was a reason I liked it,” Sasha said edgily. “Who cares what they wear or don't wear, look how beautiful they are! How godly!”
“I fear…I fear these may be considered indecent,” said Father Portus. “The indecent cannot be beautiful. Indeed, it cannot be art.”
“And yet here they are,” said Sasha defiantly. “Beautiful, naked, thoroughly indecent, and most certainly art.”
Father Portus shook his head, and made a holy sign with one hand. “Such thoughts come out of the Saalshen Bacosh,” he murmured. “Whatever shall they dream up next?”
Sasha repressed a smile with difficulty. If he disliked that, what followed would be amusing indeed. “Come, we can talk in private, just through here.”
She led Father Portus through a door at the back of the temple, where the priests’ private quarters might be expected to be, but instead they stepped into a wide, open space of bare brick walls and a plain floor littered with statues. The high ceiling echoed to the rhythmic taps of chisels.
Directly confronting them as they entered the room was a man-sized nude-bearded, muscular, and hauling a great rock on one shoulder. Father Portus stared. Statues of Saint Sadis were common enough in the Endurance, but those were naked only to the waist. Here, even his manhood was lovingly carved in fine detail and (to Sasha's amusement and appreciation) considerable proportion. Father Portus made another holy sign.
“Oh please,” said Sasha, stepping about to admire the statue of Sadis from another angle. “Look at the balance, the shift of weight on his hips from the stone he carries. I fight with the svaalverd, Father-trust me, I know all about balance. He captures it beautifully.”
“Most ingenious,” said Father Portus, averting his eyes. But there was nothing more to see but many other statues in varying degrees of nudity. Some were women, but most were men, fighting, posing, wrestling and stretching. Stone transformed into flesh, so real and sensual in form that it seemed it should feel soft to the touch and not stone-like at all.
“Father Berin loves his art,” said Sasha as she led Father Portus on toward the nearest, loud chiselling. “He could have extended the temple with this space, but instead he lets the artists use it. The serrin love it, and some of the Saalshen Bacosh traders now are taking interest, they say Petrodor forms are unique, and demand grows there as well. Father Berin takes a share of commission for upkeep of this and other temples, and the artists support their families with the rest.”
A man appeared behind several statues, working on a large block of haggard stone. He saw Sasha and stopped his chiselling with a grin. “Sasha! When are you going to pose for me?” He was a young man, in his mid-twenties, with long, wild hair that would have been entirely black were it not spattered white with stone dust. He wore a long leather apron, and little more than a loincloth beneath that, his limbs slick with sweat from the heat.
“Just as soon as you learn to do women, Aldano,” Sasha teased.
Aldano gaped. “What do you mean? Have you seen my fine Princess Felesia? Look, look here…” He pointed to a nearby statue-a lady clad in little more than a silk scarf that wound around one outstretched arm and curled languidly down one shapely hip. Elegant, high class and…a little bored, Sasha reckoned.
“Hello there, are you a collector?” Aldano asked, suddenly noticing Father Portus.
Father Portus cleared his throat. “An appreciator,” said Sasha, smiling.
“Of course you are, of course! Tell me, sir, have you ever seen as fine a pair of breasts as these? And what an arse! Have you ever seen as fine an arse?” He slapped the statue on the backside. Father Portus looked as though he'd swallowed something the wrong way.
“Every time I look back,” said Sasha. Aldano roared with laughter, and slapped his thigh. “Only better…look, look, your women, Aldano…they all sag.” She gestured with a hand, across one stone hip. “This is formless, all…all soft and pudgy.”
“I believe the term is ‘womanly,’” quipped Aldano, highly amused.
“No! No, you live on the dockside of Petrodor, you have all these serrin women around, and Nasi-Keth like me-”
“Very few Nasi-Keth like you, dear Sasha.”
“Look! Look at this!” Sasha pulled up her shirt to expose her midriff. Father Portus nearly toppled over. “Do you see this? Six equal portions. Flat and hard, and accentuates the line, here, to the hip, and the thigh…” She indicated, but not quite at the point of having to remove more clothes. “Now look at her.” Indicating the statue. “Shapeless, no form or tone of muscle, nothing. You have the frame right, but there's nothing on her bones.”
“You'd rather I did her as a man?” said Aldano with consternation.
“No!” Sasha nearly laughed for sheer exasperation. “This is exactly my point…this is womanly, Aldano! I am a woman and this is what I look like!”
“You're an amazon!” Aldano protested.
“So do a statue of an amazon! That's what you can call it! ‘Amazon with a Sword’! You've…you've done gods, and muscular heroes, and old men, and young boys…all these different types of men…why aren't women allowed to come in different types too? Some women look like this, sure…but why do they all have to look like this?”
Aldano looked at her for a long moment, unconvinced. “I'd be laughed at,” he said reproachfully.
“You'd be the first!” Sasha retorted. “You'd be original! No one would have seen anything like it!”
That caught the young sculptor's attention. Everyone wanted to be at the forefront of the new trends in Petrodor. “You would pose for me?” Aldano asked. “If I did this?”
“Of course! If I can find the time, and if the gods don't sink Petrodor into the sea for its many sins.”
Aldano laughed. “Oh, but carving is all about sin, dear Sasha! It is all form, and shape, and my hands all over your body, feeling its curves, testing its firmness…” Sasha only grinned, enjoying the teasing. With Aldano, that was all it was.
She found a quiet space behind several rough, uncarved blocks of stone as Aldano took up his chisel once more. “Young lady,” said Father Portus, somewhat grimly, “I do fear for your soul. You should seek absolution.”
“I am a Lenay pagan, Father Portus,” Sasha told him. “I don't need your absolution.” Father Portus seemed to swallow whatever he was going to say next. He was a tallish man with a homely face, a large nose and a narrow chin within a thin white beard. “Now of what did you wish to speak with me?”
Thunder rumbled outside, a long echo beneath the high ceiling. Father Portus looked about, but there was no one to see them hidden behind the stone blocks. “I carry a message from your sister Marya,” he said in a low voice.
Sasha blinked at him. “Marya sent…Why?”
“She fears that you were right about her family. She knows that her husband had Father Gilbrato Halmady killed. There is tension between Halmady and Steiner. Steiner suspects Halmady of plotting against them. Now, some of Halmady's key allies are meeting with accidents, particularly within the priesthood. Everyone blames the old enemy Maerler, but not everyone believes it. Father Andrel Tirini is missing, and Father Jon Amano has fallen down some stairs and is yet to wake. I am an old friend of your sister's. She fears I may be next, like my nephew Randel. I ask for your help, in her name.”
Sasha took a deep breath and wiped sweat from her brow. She took a sip from her waterskin, needing the time to think. Conflict between Steiner and Steiner's closest ally, Patachi Halmady. It did not seem likely that Halmady was seriously plotting anything. Kessligh thought it was Rhillian's work, sowing seeds of suspicion between the two, weakening Petrodor's strongest alliance from within. She'd used Randel Ragini's interest in things serrin to form a relationship with him, thus making Steiner suspect all of Family Ragini, and all of Halmady too, by connection. Halmady and Ragini remained close. Circles within circles, as ever in Petrodor. Had Rhillian truly set up poor Randel for the fall? She didn't want to think about that right now.
Father Portus Ragini. One priest per family, sometimes two for big families. Portus was Family Ragini's representative in the Porsada Temple. So why would Steiner, or anyone, want to start killing priests?
“The priesthood is supposed to be neutral,” she said. “It's only useful to get rid of priests if they're planning something. What's going on up in that damn temple, anyway?”
“Dear girl,” said Portus with irritable temper, “you really must watch your language! If I knew why my life was in danger, I would hardly need your help, would I?”