“You know what makes my skin crawl?” he began. “Men—or women, I’m an equal opportunity despiser—who thins they’re so damned holy that their shit smells like plum pudding…”
He went on after that, but Maeve wasn’t listening. Instead, she turned and started down the street, confident that the magician would follow, confident, too, that he would bitch the entire way. People changed, sure, but in her experience, they didn’t change all that much.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
What to say of Valden Abereth, the man known simply as “Priest?”
This historian has rarely met a wiser man, a kinder one.
During our travels, we sometimes sat in council, the two of us, and, more often than not, the conversation turned to his goddess, to what a man might expect when moving beyond life’s veil.
Valden seemed to know much on the subject, particularly about the world beyond this one.
But then, I suppose that is no great surprise, for he sent many there himself.
For Valden Abereth was a kind man, a wise one.
And he was also, as it happened, one of the world’s most talented killers.
—Exiled Historian to the Crown, Petran Quinn
The boy stood before him dressed in filthy rags most people wouldn’t have allowed their dogs to lie on. Valden bowed his head to him, retrieving a hard piece of bread from the basket beside him and offering it to the youth. “The road to peace,” he said.
“Is taken one step at a time,” the boy responded instantly. He, like those two dozen or so other street waifs standing in line behind him, knew what was expected of him, for he had said it often enough when Valden or one of his brothers or sisters came to the poor district to hand out food. Likely, the poor souls said it not out of some true belief but out of a simple wish not to anger the man on whose food they had come to rely, but Valden did not mind. Perhaps, in time, they would say the words enough that they might even come to believe them. And if they did not? Well, that was fine as well, for at least they would be fed. He could not give them a place to live, could not give them coin with which to buy the things they needed—for he had no coin himself just as he had no personal possessions as none of those within his order did—but he could at least make sure they ate. Not every day, perhaps, but today.
The boy did not thank him, did not even offer him a smile, only hurried away, clutching his chunk of hard bread against his chest as if it were some great prize he was in fear of losing or—more likely—having taken from him. Cradling it to his chest as if his life depended on it. Which, when one was a starving orphan living on the streets, it did. Valden wanted to help the boy, wanted to take him aside and tell him that Raveza loved him—which was true—and that everything would be okay—which may or may not have been. In the end, of course, he knew that Raveza would take all of those who passed from the tortured veil that was the mortal world into her loving embrace, but among the many promises she had made to mankind, there was not one that they would not suffer or feel pain before their day came.
The path to peace, Valden told himself, is taken one step at a time. He could not save the boy—he could only do what he could. He took a moment to offer up a silent prayer for the boy then took a slow, deep breath, and turned to the next in line, this one a young girl. How many times, he wondered, can a man’s heart break? How many times can he witness the world’s suffering and not despair? But though he did not feel it, he forced a warm smile onto his face, reaching into the basket—the basket which, he could see at a glance, did not contain enough bread for those in line—and handed it over. “The path to peace,” he said.
“Is walked a step at a time.”
Valden smiled. “Taken, young one.”
“Sure,” she said, then she snatched the bread and hurried away at a jog.
Valden watched her go, gave a heavy sigh, and reached into the basket for a third time, withdrawing a piece of bread. “The path to peace—”
“Fuck your peace, old man. Give me the food—now.”
Valden frowned, looking up. He was surprised to find that, at some point during his distraction, the line of children had vanished, scattering like mice before a flood. In their place stood three men—boys, really, who looked to be in their late teens, perhaps early twenties. Boys, but ones at that most dangerous age, the age where they believed they were men grown. Old enough to think themselves capable of making their own decisions but not old enough to understand that so many of those decisions would inevitably turn out wrong. “I know that you are hungry,” Valden said, “but this is not the way, lads. Darkness, heed me, is an abyss, one which a man might easily fall into with but a single misplaced step. And should you fall, it is very hard to—”
“Shut your damned mouth,” the second snapped. “Nobody’s got time for your lessons, Priest. Now, hand over the bread, or—” There was a pause of several seconds as he fumbled at his ratty trousers, finally producing a small, rusted knife of the kind fishermen used to shear their lines, “or I’ll cut you.”
Valden glanced at the knife then back to the boy. “Of course you may each take a piece of bread and
