“Yes, Your Grace. What should the message say?”
“Tell her that the archbishop uses the morning sermon to incite fury,” Alexanda said grimly. “Tell her that she should expect a riot, at the very least. This sermon will be identical, the length and breadth of Petrodor. Gods forbid they hear it in Riverside, though I'm sure they will. Gods curse that bloody-handed tyrant of an archbishop.”
Others were filing down the stairs now, donning furs against the rain. A number were scowling in fury as evident as his own. Some others seemed bewildered, as though they did not know why their duke had stormed out of the sermon, but had felt obliged to follow. Yet more appeared uncomfortable, and hesitated on the wet steps as if wondering if he would now go back inside. Walking out on a sermon would not look good if word got back to their holdings…or indeed to the archbishop himself. Many others, it was clear, remained inside the temple, keeping their seats for reasons of faith, etiquette, dislike of their duke, or outright agreement with the priest's words. Well, Alexanda thought darkly, as Captain Faldini rushed to give orders, at least now he'd know for certain who was who.
Varona took his hand on the steps, and squeezed. “I'm sorry, my love,” she said quietly. “You were right, I should have let you stay in bed.”
“Not at all,” said Alexanda darkly. “It's well that you dragged me out in the rain. Now, we must be prepared for anything. That blasted archbishop has no idea of what he's just done.”
When Sasha climbed to the pier from Mari's boat, a box of crabs on her shoulder, she found Errollyn running with long strides along the planks toward her. He looked alarmed, dark grey hair flying, unconcerned of his footing on the wet pier. Sasha lowered her box.
“Father Berin is dead,” Errollyn announced as he arrived, his green eyes hard. “Murdered.”
Sasha swore. “Mari!” she called. “I have to go, there's trouble!” From down on the boat's deck, Mari waved her off impatiently, toiling with several more boxes.
“What do you know?” she asked Errollyn, as their boots thumped on the planks.
“The sculptor Aldano found him in the workshop after morning sermon,” said Errollyn. “His throat had been cut.” Sasha cursed again. “Sasha, the morning sermon was trouble. Elsewhere there's uproar, apparently the archbishop wrote a speech saying nasty things about serrin.”
“Not Father Berin, surely?” Their boots hit the paved dock, and they turned right. There were few stalls this morning, partly thanks to Varansday and partly the rain. It fell light and cold from a grey sky, but Sasha was already sodden from a morning exposed on deck. A few sailors and locals walked the dockfront but most seemed intent on business, not wandering the sparse stalls in search of a bargain.
“No, not Father Berin,” Errollyn agreed. “Those who attended his sermon said he spoke of tolerance. A passage from the scrolls where Saint Tyrone encounters a starving pagan and gives him food and water although he was starving himself.”
“Oh aye,” Sasha muttered as she ran, “I'm sure the archbishop's men would have loved that.”
There was a crowd around the temple doors when they arrived, a forlorn cluster of men and women standing in the rain, and praying. A pair of caratsa let them in and they walked fast down the aisle, beneath the ceiling scaffolding. Several Nasi-Keth were guarding the door to the workshop, Sasha recognised them as Alaine's men. Beyond the doorway, standing amidst statues and ragged blocks of uncarved rock, stood Alaine himself, arguing furiously with another three of his men.
“I don't care if they protest!” Alaine was shouting. “I want every man, woman and child who attended morning service questioned, and their person and residences searched!”
“Alaine,” said Marco, a wide man with long hair, “it is most unlikely to be one of the common folk who did this thing…”
“In the name of the good gods, man, how will you know until you start asking questions?”
“It will require the consent of either Kessligh or Gerrold,” another man warned him.
“Damn Kessligh and Gerrold to the hells!” Alaine exclaimed. “Gerrold's too busy licking the serrin's boots to care what happens to our poor Father Berin, and Kessligh cares only for the greater glory of Kessligh!”
Marco looked at Sasha as she approached, and then others did too. Alaine turned. Sasha ignored his glare and looked to the left. Father Berin's body lay before a magnificent statue of Darshan, the Verenthane God of Fire. He had fallen forward, hunched on his knees, as if in prayer at the feet of the gods, and the statues, he had loved. A round, brown bundle of cloth, the pavings before him awash with blood. Darshan towered over him, strong and beautiful, as his follower had been weak and stunted.
“Take good care of him,” Sasha wished the statue, swallowing hard against the pain in her throat. “He was one of the very few of you lot I ever liked.” No wonder the others had killed him.
“Father Berin did not read the archbishop's prescribed sermon this morning,” Sasha bluntly told Alaine and his men. “It seems he made the archbishop angry.”
“You're very quick to assign blame,” Alaine snarled at her. “I'm sure the notion appeals to your pagan notions of Verenthanes.”
Errollyn paid them no attention, and walked slowly around the body of Father Berin, green eyes searching.
“You'll search the homes of hundreds of local worshippers before you suspect the archbishop of wrongdoing?” Sasha asked Alaine. “You'd blame your own people before that perfumed lunatic on his clifftop?”
“This is our faith!” Alaine shouted, dark eyes blazing, his jaw tight. “We shall not be dictated to by highlanders, pagans or little girls! Where the hells is Kessligh, anyhow? Does not the murder of Dockside's most loved father concern him enough that he should make the journey here himself?”
“Kessligh has the concerns of Petrodor on his shoulders,” Sasha retorted, “as did Father Berin.”
“I think it quite likely that your great uman did it!” Alaine said. “To then point the finger at the Torovan holy father and sow division amongst Verenthanes! Nothing would please Kessligh better than to convert all the Nasi-Keth to his pagan ideologies and win support away from me!”
“Is this another of those childish accusations that you know you'll never have to back with cold steel?” Sasha asked him. Alaine's words did not sting or anger her as they might. “So brave you men of Petrodor become when you know you'll never have to suffer the consequences of your accusations.”
“If it were up to me,” Alaine snarled, “I would revoke that rule in an instant!”
“And you'd die as much the fool as you were born.”
“The murderer was left-handed,” came Errollyn's voice from the foot of Darshan's statue. Both Sasha and Alaine turned and looked. Errollyn was crouching alongside Berin's body, examining the wound on his throat. “The cut begins on the father's right, then across. It's a clean cut, the mark of someone who has experience. I've seen murders committed by common thieves, they lack precision, sometimes they make a terrible mess, their hands are shaking so. This assassin is an expert. There are also no signs of struggle, no bruises on the face or neck, although there may be some on his body.”
“So he knew the killer?” Sasha wondered.
“Perhaps,” said Errollyn. “Also, his neck chain is missing. There is a mark here that suggests it might have been torn.”
“Someone thought he no longer deserved it,” Sasha said darkly.
“Whatever evidence you find, your mind is already made up,” Alaine snorted, turning away in exasperation.
Sasha looked at the other three men, Marco in particular. He looked uncertain. Wary. “What do you think, Marco?”
“I think all these dead priests make a trend,” said Marco. “I think there shall be a special hell reserved for whomever has been killing them.” Sasha gazed at him, almost pleadingly, wanting more. Marco looked uncomfortable.
“It's sad,” said Errollyn, sombrely, gazing down at Father Berin. “He dies amongst the statues of his gods. His faith was free, open to reason, to art and interpretation. I think whoever killed him found that offensive.”
“We should have posted guards,” Alaine muttered, running a hand through his hair.
“Father Berin would never have accepted,” Marco replied. “We could never have anticipated that the archbishop would…” He stopped himself short. Alaine glared at him. And then beyond, as Errollyn made a holy sign to his forehead, and rose.
“You!” Alaine demanded. “You have no business making that sign in this place! You have no idea what it means!”
Errollyn regarded him coolly. “Wear your sword at your hip and no longer fight with svaalverd, Master Nasi-Keth,” he replied. “You have no idea what they mean.”
“That's completely different!” Alaine bristled.
“Most serrin would be intrigued at the debate you propose,” said Errollyn, returning to Sasha's side. “I find you boring, Alaine. Tedious and predictable. Come,” he said to Sasha, “let's go. If that sermon was as bad as I hear, we'll be needed elsewhere.”
“I don't know!” Sofy exclaimed in anguish, pacing in the little inn chamber. Teriyan stood by the curtains that had been pulled across the patio windows, leaving only a little of the morning light spilling through. Byorn sat on one of the two single cots, and Ryssin leaned by the door, one ear to the outside. “I don't know how they knew!”
It had been Ryssin who'd seen them bundling Jaryd out the rear exit of the inn. Ryssin was a tracker and hunter who lived in the woods a short ride from Baerlyn. He was a skinny, weathered poker of a man, who Teriyan insisted could turn invisible in the faintest shadow. He and Byorn had taken a different route to Algery than the others. He'd been watching the inn from the stables, suspecting any dangerous activity would come through the rear way, not the front, where half the guests were cavorting. They'd taken Jaryd down a narrow alley, posting several guards behind. Ryssin had tried to skirt around, but his quarry had disappeared. The tracker was apologetic, not liking to hunt in cities half as much as he did in the wilds.
“Sounds like they took him without a fight,” Byorn said grimly. “Considering our boy's state of mind, I'd say they had him trapped from the beginning. Otherwise he'd surely have died fighting.”
“Like I said,” Teriyan said. “A trap.” His stare was fixed hard on Sofy, his arms folded. “And so I'll ask again, Your Highness…how did they know, do you think?”