They shouldered their way closer. When Pellin could make out the face of the man with the banded hem, he reached into his tunic for the badge that signified his rank as a bishop in the Merum church. Mark’s tug at his sleeve brought him up short, and Pellin had to strain to hear him.
“Will he know that you’re in the Vigil?”
“No. Even within the monolith of the southern continent, we are kept secret from all except the emperor and the council of revelators.” He nodded to Elieve. “Say nothing and keep anyone from touching her.”
Mark looked around, his expression disbelieving. “In this crowd?”
“Put her between you and Allta. There is a member of the southern Vigil here, and they must touch one of us first.”
Pellin left Allta’s protection and stepped toward the concentric arcs of soldiers, his right hand gripping the heavy silver badge of a Merum bishop. Unlike the Servant’s emblem of a foot resting in an open hand, this was simpler. It showed the two intersecting arcs with their common endpoint on the left and overlapping tails on the right. In the years that Pellin had carried the sigil, it had tarnished and been polished so many times that the metal no longer wore a uniform thickness, but that it was made from purest silver would be obvious to anyone with a passing knowledge of the metal.
A glint of reflected light from the emblem caught the interpreter’s eye as Pellin stepped forward, and he halted his conversation with a burly wagon master to point in Pellin’s direction, snapping a command. A squad of four soldiers peeled off the inner arc and came toward him in formation.
Turning to Allta, he waved the rest of the group forward to join him. The soldiers advanced until the space between them narrowed to a yard. Then one of them in the middle, a man with jet black hair and a single circle emblazoned on each side of his tunic, edged closer until his face was hardly more than a handsbreadth from Pellin’s.
“You and your company are permitted forward.”
The guards closed around them, each pair of hands resting on the hilt of their sword and dagger. “They have a pretty funny version of permission here in the south,” Mark muttered.
“Funny!” Elieve said laughing, but when Mark didn’t respond, she returned to her quiet inspection of the strange world around her.
The interpreter watched them come, his dark skin and fine features similar to the people from Elania, but where blue eyes bred true for Toria Deel and her countrymen, the interpreter’s eyes were the vivid green of seawater close to the shore, striking, but not friendly at the moment. Taller than their Elanian cousins, the interpreter overtopped Pellin by a few inches, though Allta still dwarfed him and most of the guards surrounding them.
Pellin lowered his eyes to the man’s hem. “Interpreter, this is an unexpected honor.”
“I am Arcadial.” He paused as if expecting the name to be recognized. When it wasn’t, his tone sharpened. “Is it?” he asked.
Pellin shook his head, raising it to meet that gaze. “I don’t understand your question.” The interpreter’s skin held the unbroken smoothness of youth, but his hair was shot with gray.
“Is it all of those things, Bishop? Unexpected? An honor?”
Pellin’s answering nod didn’t mollify him.
“What business does a bishop of the Merum have on the southern continent?”
He bowed, using the opportunity to check the soldiers. They all possessed the bearing of military men, and none of them had moved their hands from their weapons, but that told him little. The interpreter’s attitude told him more. He wore the demeanor of a man unused to taking orders who’d just been given one he didn’t like.
One of the soldiers surrounding them coughed, and the interpreter’s eye twitched. “You and your party will accompany us through the gate, Bishop.”
Pellin nodded, his gaze returning to the interpreter’s hem in a show of respect, but Arcadial had already turned away, raising puffs of dust where his heels smote the ground. Another four soldiers joined the original quartet and they progressed through the open gates.
No tradesmen or foreigners trafficked the southern half of the city. As a result, the streets of this part of Erimos seemed empty compared to the concentration they’d just left. A market of sorts, remnants from a time before the quarantine, still stood ready to do business with the few permanent residents of the city, but the men and women who manned the stalls wore the expressions of those who’d surrendered hope.
“They’ll have to relocate to the other side of the gates if they want customers,” Mark said. “They should have seen this coming.”
Pellin kept his eyes on their escort, still ready to intervene if one of them tried to touch Elieve, but Mark’s observation piqued his interest. “Seen what, exactly?”
“That the bottleneck created by the church would create a whole host of desperate sellers on the far side of the gate. With a bit of coin and a little time, any citizen of Erimos could set themselves up as a merchant.”
“The meirikio is perceptive,” Arcadial said without turning. “Indeed, a number of the citizens of the city have contrived to do just that.”
“Meirikio is the southern word for lad,” Pellin said to Mark.
“Or apprentice,” one of the soldiers, the one who coughed, amended.
Mark nodded. “Whether they can succeed as a merchant when that advantage disappears would be interesting to see.”
“Truly.” The soldier nodded.
Pellin came to a turn where the street narrowed between market stalls and their column narrowed, forcing them to walk three abreast until they reached the end of the turn. Here. If one of the soldiers accompanying them was in reality a member of the Vigil, he or she would attempt a delve as they jostled past one another. It’s what he would do.
Darting a glance behind, Pellin saw one of the soldiers stumble as if the man after him had accidentally kicked his feet. Flailing,
