that mysterious ritual which would also signify his final initiation into the creed of Mann.
It had worked well, his change of allegiance – and Belias liked to remind himself of this, and of the subsequent success of that decision, during those darker nights when his conscience plagued him. He was now, after all, the governor of his very own city.
But, despite all such pragmatism, or perhaps because of it, Belias understood his less sophisticated countrymen only too well. An episode like today, a public press-ganging throughout his city, might well be enough to trigger a revolt, despite the threat of total retaliation that would be anticipated by all. If that uprising happened, High Priest Belias was undoubtedly a dead man. He would be the first to be strung up by the populace, seen as the traitorous figurehead that he was. And even if he somehow avoided such a lynching, the priesthood itself would finish him off for allowing such a revolt to occur in the first place. They would denounce him as weak, and no true priest of Mann at all, and he would be disrobed by their favoured method of disrobing one of the order – by sticking him on top of a burning pyre.
And all of this because of these fanatics from Q'os, sitting here at his dinner table, in his own home, in his city, gorging themselves on his food, while their stinking slaves cluttered up his driveway. It would be their fault if the citizens revolted, and their necks might even join his own in the noose. But that would not provide much by way of compensation. Dead was dead, after all.
Mann, the high priest reflected sourly. The divine flesh. Belias had made a point of learning everything he could about this all-consuming religion he had bought into. And he believed he understood it for what it truly was.
The Holy Order of Mann had not always been so holy. Once, it had been nothing more than a dark urban cult, a rumour whispered among the city states of the Lanstrada, where it was used as a threat by mothers to frighten their children into obedience. But that was before the same furtive cult had risen to dominance in the rich city state of Q'os – a populace gripped by fear and superstition induced by years of disease and failing crops – where the cult had seized power in a coup known as the Longest Night.
Driven by their victory and ambitions to consolidate their power as quickly as possible, the cult invested the vast reserves of wealth now under its control into reforming the city's army into a machine fit for conquest; their dream, to spread the Mannian philosophy throughout the known world. At first, their military endeavours did not go so well. But, eventually, armed with a new design of cannon – more accurate, less prone to exploding unexpectedly and requiring a smaller quantity of blackpowder – their fortunes on the battlefield finally turned. This led to an era of invasion and dominance that saw the brutal forging of an empire in little less than fifty years and, in the process, changed the very nature of warfare.
During those five decades in power, the cult had purposely wrapped itself in divinity. Over a relatively short period of time it had grown into a state religion, with many of its earliest customs hardening into tradition. The Cull was one such example. For the neophyte priests it was a ritual of initiation, in which they would lose the tips of their little fingers then proceed to murder an innocent with his bare hands, such a breaking of taboo being intended to hone the primal self into a point unstoppable.
Or so the faith went, though Belias thought it all so much fluff at the end of the day. He had merely felt sickened by his own long night of initiation. While more devout priests repeated the ceremony of the Cull many times during the course of their lives, supposedly honing the divine flesh further still, Belias had never repeated the experience, and tried hard never to dwell on that one and only time. Not once had he ever told his family what he had done to attain these white robes of his station.
Before now it had never seemed to matter that Belias did not believe in any of Mann's more fundamental nonsense. He was an ambitious turncoat priest in a religion that did not concern itself with selflessness or sacrifice, but only with power and self-divinity, and therefore Belias, a man of supreme self-worship in his younger years, had rarely ever felt himself a fake.
It was curious however, sitting at his own dinner table with these obvious fanatics from Q'os – real priests in every sense of the word, with their carefully shaven scalps and their abundance of facial piercings – that Belias was finally feeling himself to be the charlatan he really was. And it was this thought that lay at the forefront of his mind as he sat observing the scene before him, his sense of foreboding growing by the moment. He wondered just what they would do to him if they ever suspected.
*
Kirkus was feeling irritated. The wine was passable, the food at least filling, but it felt as though he had passed the last hour dining with corpses, so stiff and formal were the minor conversations conducted around the table. Not for the first time in the last six months, he wished he was back at the Temple of Whispers, along with his peers.
A sharp cry from outside broke his disgruntled train of thought. Likely, one of their newly acquired slaves was being coaxed into silence by the lashings of a whip.
'About time,' he commented, fumbling to refill his glass yet again. Such arrogance was partly for show, however, for Kirkus was not in every way the spoiled lout that he pretended to be: it simply entertained him to appear so at times such as now.
No one responded to his remark. The tinkle of cutlery and the crunching of food continued around the table.
Kirkus straightened the cutlery before him until each piece was again perfectly in its place. His teeth ground together. If he did not do something soon to relieve his boredom he would go mad.
A quiet conversation flurried for a moment between Kira and the high priest, something about the river, and how far along it the Lake of Birds must be from here. Belias was sweating even worse than before.
'I'm bored!' Kirkus cried out again, louder this time, though still not enough to scatter the polite conversation entirely from the table.
It was enough, however, to draw the attention of the high priest's daughter from her plate of fresh salmon. She turned round and fixed a smoky, indignant gaze on his own. It was the first time she had met his eyes since they had sat down for dinner. He leered back at her, making a show of it, and then he leered at her fiance, too, that slick profiteer who looked up briefly to acknowledge him. As one, the couple returned their attention to their plates. Kirkus watched on, seeing the glances they passed between them after that. They shared something, these two: an unspoken connection.
He's probably riding her like a stallion whenever the parents are away, Kirkus mused broodingly. And, unwarranted, a memory forced itself into his mind: Lara and the last time they too had ridden together, her drugged and debauched hunger for sex driving him to a high he had never before known.
The memory lay like a leaden ball in his belly, and now it caused others to emerge. An evening spent with his grandmother in the cool shadowed room that was her personal chamber, her constant croaking reminding him of things he would rather not have to contemplate during those days in which all he wished to think about was when next he would see Lara. All that mattered to him was the scent of her skin, smooth and supple beneath his touch, or his bite; the sound of her laughter, clear and melodious, and provoked by things he could only guess at; the vision of her perfect face, flushed beneath him, or above him; her gifts of spontaneity and high spirit.
'Little Lara can never be your glammari, Kirkus,' his grandmother had told him bluntly, after spending an hour explaining yet again how only the women of Mann transmitted the power and wealth of their families, for only they could pass down an ancient bloodline with certainty.
'These things you must remain aware of more than merely who pleases your cock the most,' she had chided. 'Remember, Lara's kin are already allied to our own. You, my child, must chose your consort to the advantage of your position, from a powerful family we wish to bring over to our side. For you, Lara can be nothing more than what she already is, and you must be content with that, the pair of you.'
Kirkus had cursed at the old woman and told her to mind her own business. He had said nothing of it to Lara – not even knowing how to. Yet still she had come to hear of it, somehow.
Lara's behaviour had been skittish on the night that would prove to be their last together, though only she had known it as that. After their hours of love play, they had fallen into an argument over something of no importance, some vague misunderstanding that even now he could not recall. Lara had stormed off, shouting about how she never wanted to speak to him again, and he had laughed at her dramatics and thought it nothing more than one of their usual squabbles – not knowing he had lost her.
A few days after that, at the Ball da Pierce, Lara had arrived with a new lover, that ass Da-Ran strutting proudly in his dress armour with its ribbons, and a scar still healing on his cheek, having just returned that very week from putting down some tribes in the north.
