When the monk came to Bahn, he realized he had given all his money to the street-girl, and was now without coin. He was forced to mutter an apology to the shaven-headed young man. It irked Bahn, anyway, this needless interruption to the ceremony. In his youth, they had simply allowed you to leave what you could on the way out after the service was finished. But times had changed it seemed, even here.
Marlee produced a coin from her own purse and offered it instead. Her eyes inquired if he was all right, sensing the tension in him, and he nodded, placed a palm against her back, drew her closer.
The monks bore the couple's daughter high in the air now. Their chanting was in old Khosian, sounds as smooth and fluid as water sluicing over stone. They recited her given name and prayed that she would receive the Nine Deliverances during a long and fruitful lifetime of good work. Little Ariale giggled as they lowered her again, kicking her legs within her bundling garment. The old monk Jerv smiled down at her.
In another life, Bahn might have been performing this ceremony for someone else's child. His mother had always wanted him to become a monk, being the youngest of three sons, his elder brother Teech already committed to their craft of shoe and leather mending, and the middle brother Cole enlisted young in the army against her wishes.
Bahn might have made a fine monk, too, for at heart he was a gentle man. The result of too much mothering, his father had always declared in his own, quiet way. But Bahn's love for Marlee had swayed him from that course.
In the proceeding years, his eldest brother had died of unknown causes, suddenly dropping dead as he sat eating his supper. A heart defect, the local healer had suspected. It was not long after this that his other brother Cole, Reese's husband, had deserted his family along with the cause of Bar-Khos. With two sons so quickly gone from him, his ailing father had wasted away from grief within the space of a year. Bahn's mother had struggled on alone, her simmering, unvoiced resentment towards Bahn, her only remaining son, turning in the months following into open animosity towards him. She cut him regularly with remarks aimed at provoking a sense of guilt. She compared him constantly with those sons she had already lost. It was as though she believed he was in some way responsible for his brothers' plights, and had brought down on them the injustices of Fate for his shunning of the cloth.
And now what was he? Bahn wondered. A soldier, yes, though certainly no warrior.
Only his own little family offered Bahn a sense of having achieved something right on this path he had chosen with Marlee. He worked hard at being a good husband, a good father, so it cut him even deeper than his mother's words did when he failed them.
Well, no more, he thought. I will hold this family together no matter what the cost.
*
Once the ceremony was over, and his daughter returned to them flushed with excitement, the smell of smoke still lingering in her fine hair, the family gathered in the small square outside the temple in the bright sunlight they had almost forgotten during their time inside. They would return to his aunt's house only a few streets away, where she would hold a family reception with food provided by all, in whatever meagre spread they had been able to fashion together.
Reese walked together with Bahn and his family. She fussed over Ariale and Juno, equally playful with them both. She and Marlee chatted about the ceremony, small things inconsequential, while the sound of the guns roared to the south so steady and regular that Bahn could tell it was merely the daily exchange between the opposing sides. Perhaps the Mannians had given up for the time being, Bahn thought, and truly wished for it to be so.
He and Marlee walked arm in arm while Reese carried their daughter, and their son trailed behind. Marlee looked to him, as though to say, Well then, ask her. He nodded.
'Have you heard from Nico yet?' he asked Reese, and she hefted Ariale more firmly upon her hip before she replied, 'A letter arrived last week, half drowned in the sea by the looks of it. I couldn't make out what it said but, yes, it was from Nico. I could tell that much from the terrible handwriting.'
'Good news at least,' said Marlee. 'Even if you could not read it. I'm sure he's thriving… wherever he might be.' And Marlee left her words adrift in the hope that Reese might tell them more about where her boy had gone, but she did not.
As they left the square, they saw a hedge-monk squatting on the ground with a bowl sitting before him. The man was of middle years, and he stood up as he saw the group approach, then stepped before them, offering his blessings and shaking his bowl. Save for his grubby robes, he barely even looked like a priest. A livid scar ran down his face from forehead to chin. His skull had not been shaved for days.
Another fake monk, Bahn realized. Ever since the council had decreed all begging illegal save on grounds of religion, men in desperation had donned robes and shaved their heads and pretended to be monks such as this one.
The sham of it, Bahn thought, simmering anger suddenly arising inexplicably within him.
'Blessing be upon you,' the man in the black robes declared kindly enough, a few coins clinking in his bowl.
Bahn shoved his way past him, pushing harder than he had intended. A yelp of surprise come from the fake monk's throat, as his bowl went tumbling to the ground and the coins scattered, spinning sunlight.
The family, all of them, stopped to stare at Bahn. Even his son Juno blinked up at him.
I'm sorry, Bahn thought of saying to them all. I watched our men die last night while you all slept in your beds safe and sound because of them. And then, this morning, I ploughed a young whore likely riddled with infection, driven to this condition by poverty and the warped needs of wayward husbands like myself.
But he did not, not on this day. Instead, Bahn performed the apologetic smile of the good husband, the good father, and took his son by the hand, and walked on.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Shay Madi The chief whip enjoyed his job. At least it seemed that way to Nico, as the stocky man dragged him roughly from the holding pen deep beneath the stadium floor, occasionally spitting the word 'Rshun' from his plump, stained lips as though it was the worst of curses. Twice his whip lashed out against Nico's back, though Nico barely felt it. It was merely one more pain to add to many.
'In you go,' he snarled as he shoved Nico through a rusty barred door. Nico stumbled into a narrow caged passageway which he saw led some six feet to another sliding door, now also being drawn open from the outside.
A guard stabbed at him through the bars with a pronged stave, blunt but painful, forcing Nico through it into the cage beyond.
He tripped over a prone body and sprawled to the floor, crying out as fresh agonies shot through his shattered hand.
Nico could feel pain everywhere, and he was increasingly feverish from it. His left eye had swollen shut; he couldn't even tell if the eyeball was still there. His lips were a swollen mush. Most of his front teeth were broken or missing. It hurt even to breathe.
The door clattered shut behind him and was locked by one of the guards, while the chief whip laughingly called out to the rest of the unfortunates confined in the cage.
'Make way for the mighty Rshun,' he declared. 'Perhaps, if you're kind enough to him, he will save you all.'
Nico curled into a ball and lay shivering. He could smell his own stench and, above it, that of many others. The cage was crowded with men and women waiting to die.
He felt a hand settle on his arm. He peered up from his one good eye to see a man's face looking down at him with concern.
'Here,' he said softly, as he offered a ladle of water. Nico sipped, instantly choked it back up. 'Easy,' soothed the man. Nico drank some more.
With care he tried to sit up, if only to breathe a little better. Almost instantly his ribs were suffused with white heat. Nico gasped.
The man helped him along, and a few of the others cleared a space so he might rest his back against the bars of the cage. He noticed the man's head was shaven and he wore a black robe.
'Yes, I'm a monk,' said the man, in response to Nico's surprise.
