Changes

“When I was a child, I wanted to be a priest. I’ve always wanted to be a priest. But I didn’t have the money for the love-offering to become a black-robe, or the Sun’s Blessing to command demons to my will as a red-robe. So... so they told me, if I served the Son of the Sun in another way, they’d—they’d—” He shook his head. “All my life, all I ever wanted was to serve. All my life. And this was my chance. They sent me here. They told me how to fit in. They got me a position in the kitchen. All I had to do was wait.”

“Wait a moment.” The presiding Herald was leafing through some papers. “It says you’ve been serving in the Palace and Collegia kitchens since you were thirteen! That’s a good twenty years ago!”

Pawel nodded, then hung his head. “I thought they’d forgotten about me. But I stayed quiet. I did what I was supposed to. I prayed, I waited for signs, I stayed quiet. I began to think that this was just their way of getting rid of me, or that the Sunlord had chosen another path for me. Maybe I was supposed to learn that you were not so bad after all. I never saw the demons that they said you commanded. I never saw all the evil things they said you White Riders did. You weren’t oppressing your people, or forbidding them to follow the Sunlord’s teachings. Down in Haven, things might not be that good everywhere, but they weren’t any worse than in Echtsten. Maybe I was supposed to come back on my own, and tell the priests myself what I had learned. But I was faithful to the duty I had been given, and I stayed. Then those foreigners—the trading delegation—one of them gave me the sign. I didn’t think there would be any harm in just doing what I’d promised! All I ever did was tell them what I saw and heard! There’s no harm in that!” His tone grew increasingly desperate, and then he sagged back down over his knees. “It was nothing, I never saw anything that was important! I never heard anything but what the Trainees were gossiping about! I didn’t know any secrets! Where was the harm in telling what I knew?”

Th’ harm? Tellin’ ’em ev’thing ’bout how t’ get on up here? Pawel had given those men what they needed most, the intimate knowledge of Palace life. That was how they had been able to come and go at will, and who knew how much they had been able to learn with their own spying?

“They told me they were from home. I didn’t know... I never traveled much beyond Echtsten on the north Border until the black-robes sent me here. They told me they were from the South, so I believed them, even though they didn’t pray to the Sunlord at the proper times or—” Pawel shook his head like a weary beast. “But I told myself that this was all because they were in disguise, as I was, so of course they wouldn’t give themselves away. But then—there was something wrong with them. The magician started seeing demon-eyes everywhere; he said the eyes were watching him.”

“Magician?” someone said, sounding puzzled. “What—” but whoever it was never completed the thought.

Pawel’s shoulders shook. “I began to think maybe I was wrong about you, that you were hiding something after all. And when the magician went mad, I was sure of it.”

“That wasn’t us, Pawel,” said one of the Healers, as the Herald in charge whispered to Nikolas. “We don’t know what that was—”

“You don’t understand,” he wept. “I realized that when they tried to hurt the boy Bear and then when they tried to kill all the Companions. After all this time, I saw—I finally saw it, I finally believed it, completely, you’re good people. The priests are wrong about you. Oh, sometimes you treated me like I wasn’t there, but... wasn’t I trying to act as if I wasn’t there? So you wouldn’t notice me and I could see more? I tried to make myself angry about that, but then one day when I spoke up, because I wanted to help Lady Amily, those youngsters listened to me, respected me, even though all I ever did was clean up their plates.”

Mags blinked, remembering when Pawel had helped with the solution to Bear’s bone-break modeling problem.

“They told me that you were demon-summoners, that the Companions were demons, and for a while I was afraid of them. Until I saw the truth. The Companions, they aren’t demons, they’re nothing like the demons that the red-robes command. Lady Amily was always kind to me. The worst that has ever happened to me here was the cook shouting at me when he was out of temper. You’re all good—you do good things.” He shook his head violently. “So when the newest ones came and they told me that once I answered all of their questions and did what they asked of me, I could go home, I thought—I thought, this is why I’m here after all. I’ll finish this and go home, and if I just tell the truth, if I just tell them back home what you’re really like, they’d see that they’re making a mistake. And once I got back home and they made me a priest, I could keep telling our people about you, and there would be peace.”

He broke down again, weeping. “But then—then they told me I had to get them Guard uniforms. So I did, a piece here, a piece there, out of the laundry. I tried not to think about what they might want uniforms for; I told myself it was just to slip out of Valdemar safely. Then they told me that I had to help them take away Lady Amily and the Magpie Trainee. I told them I wouldn’t—and one of them—he got into my room! A locked room! He got into my locked room in the middle of the night! He told me that he was a red-robe and a demon-summoner, and that if I didn’t help him, he’d bring his demons to eat my soul, and the demon would wear my body and I would never see home again, I would die forever and never walk in the Sun’s Light!”

He was shaking with grief and fear now. The Herald in charge looked at Nikolas. “Isn’t there a Temple of Vkandis Sunlord somewhere down in the city?” he asked.

“Yes... ah, I see where you’re going. I’ll Mindspeak one of the City Heralds to bring a priest up here.”

But Mags was shaking Pawel’s shoulder until the man looked up at him again. “Fust thing, thet bastiche ain’t no priest’a nothin’,” he said, sternly, putting all the force of his mind behind his words to make the servant believe him. “Neither of ’em is. Ye know thet, Pawel! Ye seen ’em do stuff no priest ever did! Ye ever heard tell’a priests learnin’ t’ run rooftops like cats? Heard tell’a priests thet’d sneak ’bout like thieves? Heard tell’a priests thet fight as good as Weaponsmaster?”

Pawel shook his head.

“Wha’s more, you ever ask ’em fer a blessin’? Bet they wouldn’ do it, right?” Pawel nodded, slowly. Mags snorted. “What kinda priest won’t e’en say a liddle blessin’? E’en th’ wust priest, the falsest priest, he’ll say a blessin’ t’ any that asks! Not them. It’s cause they weren’t no priests, an’ they weren’t no Karsites. They knew they didn’ know ’nuff t’even fake a blessin’, an’ ye’d know thet when ye heard ’em. Mebbe yer people hired ’em. They knowed ye was here and knowed th’ right signs, an’ they got ye t’help ’em, an’ they had t’learn that from some’un, so I reckon they got told when they got hired. But they ain’t Karsites. They ain’t priests. They’re jest... fancy killers.”

Mags turned on his heel and walked back to the wall, leaning against it with his arms crossed. His head burned. He hadn’t much liked using his Gift that way, but neither Nikolas nor the other Herald had stopped him. And it wasn’t as if he’d put anything into Pawel’s head that wasn’t already there. All he’d done, really, was make Pawel see and acknowledge what he already knew.