hands on the acolyte’s shoulders.
“The Storm God will welcome Aldwist no matter what wood we use for his pyre.
Come, we three will carry him back to his rooms and you will be his chorus.”
They bore their burden in silence. Molin chanted the first chorus with them,
then departed for his quarters hoping that the sincerity of the young men’s
grief would compensate not merely for the missing bitterwood but for Vashanka,
Himself, and for his own heart’s silence. The priest used another set of
passageways to reach a curtained vestry behind his priest’s sanctum. A robe of
fine white wool was waiting for him and Hoxa, his scrivener, could be heard
prodding the brazier on the other side of the tapestry-though just barely. His
wife, and whatever gaggle of disaffected Rankan women she’d gathered since dawn,
were clambering in the antechamber that separated his sanctum from their
conjugal quarters.
He pulled the tunic over his shoulders and winced as the cloth reopened a wound
he didn’t remember taking. Fumbling in the darkness he found a strip of linen,
then emerged into his sanctum clad in boots and loincloth; his robe draped over
one shoulder; blood running from his left forearm and a strip of linen between
his teeth. Hoxa, to his credit, did not drop the goblet of mulled wine.
“My Lord Torchholder-My Lord, you’re injured.”
Molin nodded as he dropped his robe on top of Hoxa’s carefully arranged scrolls
and studied the pair of bloody horseshoes on his arm. The street urchins,
possibly, but more likely Gyskouras. With his good arm and teeth he ripped the