“Good. Now, we are going into the next room. Be careful where you tread.”
Hands guided him upright and across the floor. Through the mists of incomprehension he felt the brush of the curtain, and then was jolted down some steps and into a sandyfloored room. The hands spun him a few times, firmly but without apparent ill-will, and then led him along a passageway. There was the swish of another curtain, and then the indefinable sense of a larger space.
Afterward, long afterward, Brutha realized: there was no terror. A hood had been slipped over his head in the room of the head of the Quisition, and it never occurred to him to be terrified. Because he had faith.
“There is a stool behind you. Be seated.”
Brutha sat.
“You may remove the hood.”
Brutha removed the hood.
He blinked.
Seated on stools at the far end of the room, with a Holy Legionary on either side of them, were three figures. He recognized the aquiline face of Deacon Vorbis; the other two were a short and stocky man, and a very fat one. Not heavily built, like Brutha, but a genuine lard tub. All three wore plain gray robes.
There was no sign of any branding irons, or even of scalpels.
All three were staring intently.
“Novice Brutha?” said Vorbis.
Brutha nodded.
Vorbis gave a light laugh, the kind made by very intelligent people when they think of something that probably isn’t very amusing.
“And, of course, one day we shall have to call you Brother Brutha,” he said. “Or even Father Brutha? Rather confusing, I think. Best to be avoided. I think we shall have to see to it that you become Subdeacon Brutha just as soon as possible; what do you think of that?”
Brutha did not think anything of it. He was vaguely aware that advancement was being discussed, but his mind had gone blank.
“Anyway, enough of this,” said Vorbis, with the slight exasperation of someone who realizes that he is going to have to do a lot of work in this conversation. “Do you recognize these learned fathers on my left and right?”
Brutha shook his head.
“Good. They have some questions to ask you.”
Brutha nodded.
The very fat man leaned forward.
“Do you have a tongue, boy?”
Brutha nodded. And then, feeling that perhaps this wasn’t enough, presented it for inspection.
Vorbis laid a restraining hand on the fat man’s arm.
“I think our young friend is a little overawed,” he said mildly.
He smiled.
“Now, Brutha-please put it away-I am going to ask you some questions. Do you understand?”
Brutha nodded.
“When you first came into my apartments, you were for a few seconds in the anteroom. Please describe it to me.”
Brutha stared frog-eyed at him. But the turbines of recollection ground into life without his volition, pouring their words into the forefront of his mind.
“It is a room about three meters square. With white walls. There is sand on the floor except in the corner by the door, where the flagstones are visible. There is a window on the opposite wall, about two meters up. There were three bars in the window. There is a threelegged stool. There is a holy icon of the Prophet Ossory, carved from aphacia wood and set with silver leaf. There is a scratch in the bottom left-hand corner of the frame. There is a shelf under the window. There is nothing on the shelf but a tray.”
Vorbis steepled his long thin fingers in front of his nose.
“On the tray?” he said.
“I am sorry, lord?”
“What was on the tray, my son?”
Images whirled in front of Brutha’s eyes.
“On the tray was a thimble. A bronze thimble. And two needles. On the tray was a length of cord. There were knots in the cord. Three knots. And nine coins were on the tray. There was a silver cup on the tray, decorated with a pattern of aphacia leaves. There was a long dagger, I think it was steel, with a black handle with seven ridges on it. There was a small piece of black cloth on the tray. There was a stylus and a slate-”
“Tell me about the coins,” murmured Vorbis.
“Three of them were Citadel cents,” said Brutha promptly. “Two were showing the Horns, and one the sevenfold-crown. Four of the coins were very small and golden. There was lettering on them which . . . which I could not read, but which if you were to give me a stylus I think I could-”
“This is some sort of trick?” said the fat man.
“I assure you,” said Vorbis, “the boy could have seen the entire room for no more than a second. Brutha . . . tell us about the other coins.”
“The other coins were large. They were bronze. They were derechmi from Ephebe.”
“How do you know this? They are hardly common in the Citadel.”
“I have seen them once before, lord.”
“When was this?”
Brutha’s face screwed up with effort.
“I am not sure-” he said.
The fat man beamed at Vorbis.
“Hah,” he said.
“I think . . .” said Brutha “. . . it was in the afternoon. But it may have been the morning. Around midday. On Grune 3, in the year of the Astounded Beetle. Some merchants came to our village.”
“How old were you at that time?” said Vorbis.
“I was within one month of three years old, lord.”
“I don’t believe this,” said the fat man.
Brutha’s mouth opened and shut once or twice. How did the fat man know? He hadn’t been there!
“You could be wrong, my son,” said Vorbis. “You are a wellgrown lad of . . . what . . . seventeen, eighteen years? We feel you could not really recall a chance glimpse of a foreign coin fifteen years ago.”
“We think that you are making it up,” said the fat man.
Brutha said nothing. Why make anything up? When it was just sitting there in his head.
“Can you remember everything that’s ever happened to you?” said the stocky man, who had been watching Brutha carefully throughout the exchange. Brutha was glad of the interruption.
“No, lord. Most things.”
“You forget things?”
“Uh. There are sometimes things I don’t remember.” Brutha had heard about forgetfulness, although he found it hard to imagine. But there were times in his life, in the first few years of his life especially, when there was . . . nothing. Not an attrition of memory, but great locked rooms in the mansion of his recollection. Not forgotten, any more than a locked room ceases to exist, but . . . locked.
“What is the first thing you can remember, my son?” said Vorbis, kindly.
“There was a bright light, and then someone hit me,” said Brutha.
The three men stared at him blankly. Then they turned to one another. Brutha, through the misery of his terror, heard snatches of whispering.
“. . . is there to lose? . . . “Foolishness and probably demonic . . .” “Stakes are high . . .” “One chance, and they will be expecting us . . .”
And so on.
He looked around the room.
Furnishing was not a priority in the Citadel. Shelves, stools, tables . . . There was a rumor among the novices that priests towards the top of the hierarchy had golden furniture, but there was no sign of it here. The room was as severe as anything in the novices’ quarters although it had, perhaps, a more opulent severity; it wasn’t the forced bareness of poverty, but the starkness of intent.
“My son?”
Brutha looked back hurriedly.
Vorbis glanced at his colleagues. The stocky man nodded. The fat man shrugged.
“Brutha,” said Vorbis, “return to your dormitory now. Before you go, one of the servants will give you something to eat, and a drink. You will report to the Gate of Horns at dawn tomorrow, and you will come with me to Ephebe. You know about the delegation to Ephebe?”
Brutha shook his head.
“Perhaps there is no reason why you should,” said Vorbis. “We are going to discuss political matters with the Tyrant. Do you understand?”
Brutha shook his head.
“Good,” said Vorbis. “Very good. Oh, and-Brutha?”
“Yes, lord?”
“You will forget this meeting. You have not been in this room. You have not seen us here.”
Brutha gaped at him. This was nonsense. You couldn’t forget things just by wishing. Some things forgot themselves-the things in those locked rooms-but that was because of some mechanism he could not access. What did this man mean?
“Yes, lord,” he said.
It seemed the simplest way.
Gods have no one to pray to.
The Great God Om scurried towards the nearest statue, neck stretched, inefficient legs pumping. The statue happened to be himself as a bull, trampling an infidel, although this was no great comfort.