“Enter then, and address Them,” the second priest pronounced solemnly.
Naturally, I followed this brilliant recommendation from these two old men who had nothing else to do but roast themselves in the hot sun while greeting and seeing off every visitor.
Interestingly enough, there were no guards at the entrance of the cathedral. I’d heard the priests had forbidden it. And in principle they were right, since the plug-ugly faces of the servants of the law could very easily frighten away half of the city’s residents, depriving the cathedral of a substantial element of its income.
But there were guardsmen strolling about inside the grounds—around the flower beds and whispering fountains, the statues of the gods and their shrines—gradually going insane from the heat in their cuirasses and helmets. Of course, they were all as bad-tempered as orcs on the march. And the reason for their bad temper was no great secret, either. The guards sent to the cathedral were those colleagues of Frago Lanten’s who had committed some offense or been caught taking bribes and extorting money.
A pair of the poor souls in orange and white went parading past me. Their glances slid searchingly over my figure, probing for something to take objection to, an opportunity to stick the handle of a halberd in my side without a priest noticing. But I simply smiled amiably and couldn’t resist giving the dourly furious martyrs a cheery wave.
Ah! How I love teasing a giant in a cage!
The guards frowned darkly, took a firmer grip on their weapons, and started toward me, with the clear intention of battering my sides. But, just as I expected, they didn’t get very far.
A priest appeared in their path as if out of thin air and started reciting the divine moral teaching. The soldiers’ unshaven faces immediately assumed such a bored and weary expression that I very nearly shed a tear for them. The lads were strictly forbidden to argue back or to show any disrespect to the servants of the cathedral. On pain of losing their pensions. And so all they could do was listen, listen, and listen again for the thousandth time.
I walked along a neat pathway paved with square slabs of stone, rounded a sparkling and foaming fountain in the form of a knight running his lance through a massive ogre at full gallop, and came out into the cathedral yard, where the statues of the gods stood, with supplicants and visitors from the city and the neighboring regions constantly weaving around them.
There weren’t many pilgrims from other parts of the kingdom to be seen as yet. They usually came flooding in for the spring festival of the gods, and so right now the yard wasn’t very crowded. There were just a few men standing beside the statue of Sagra. From the way they were dressed I recognized them as soldiers.
I cast a casual glance over the eleven male and female statues, the gods and goddesses of Siala standing there before me. And then I looked at the empty pedestal where the twelfth statue ought to have stood, the statue of Sagot.
Somehow it had happened that in all the world there was only one image of the god of thieves. Evidently he didn’t really welcome close interest in his own person.
This statue of Sagot was in the Forbidden Territory of the city. When the fiasco with the Rainbow Horn happened, it had wound up on the other side of the wall. And no one had been able to re-create the image of the god of thieves. Even the priests didn’t know what Sagot was supposed to look like, and so they had decided not to take any risk of committing sacrilege, and for the time being the pedestal on which the god ought to stand had been left empty.
The patron of thieves and swindlers clearly had no objections to this. In any case, the priests had not seen any signs, except for a few after the fifth jug of wine, but they were so vague and mysterious that no one had taken them seriously. And so now empty marble pedestals stood in all of Sagot’s shrines.
Right now, though, there was a vagabond in dirty boots sitting cross-legged on the pedestal in front of me and holding out a coarse clay bowl. Strangely enough, the priests didn’t seem to notice the blasphemy of it. Overcome by curiosity, I set off along the row of the other gods toward the beggar in the farthest section of the small green yard. As I walked along I took off my cloak and wrapped my crossbow in it.
“You have a fine seat there,” I said in a friendly manner as I halted in front of the stranger.
He cast a rapid glance at me from under the dark hood concealing his face and shook his cup for alms.
“Are you quite comfortable? Haven’t your legs turned numb?” I asked, pretending not to notice his gesture.
“I’m a lot more comfortable than you are just at the moment, Shadow Harold,” a mocking voice said.
“Do I know you?” I was beginning to feel annoyed that every last rat in Avendoom seemed to know who I was.
“Oh no.” The tramp shrugged and rattled his cup again. “But I’ve heard about you.”
“Nothing but the very best, I hope.” I had already completely lost interest in the beggar, and was about to set off along a barely visible path, overgrown with tall grass, into the depths of the cathedral grounds, when the beggar’s voice stopped me:
“Toss in a coin, Harold, and you’ll get a free piece of advice.”
“That’s strange,” I said, turning back toward the seated man. “If the advice is free, why should I give you a coin?”
“Come on, Harold, I have to eat and sleep somewhere, don’t I?”
The stranger had intrigued me. I rummaged in my pockets, fished out a piece of small change, and laughed as I flung it into the bowl he was holding out toward me. The copper disk clattered forlornly against the bottom. The beggar raised the bowl to his nose to see what I had given him and heaved a sigh.
“Is that just the way you are, or are all thieves that mean?”
“You ought to thank me for spending time here and at least giving you something!” I exclaimed indignantly.
“Thank you. So shall I give you that advice, then?”
“If you would be so kind.”
