David Dalglish - Blood Of Gods

It had been Karl Dogon, King Eldrich’s bodyguard, who demanded action.

“The Judges may be the swords that stalk the night, and the Sisters the ax that rules the day,” Karl had said, “but the arm that wields them both is a single man. Joben Tustlewhite is the true ruler of this city. Were the mumbling priest out of the picture, it would be left to the acolytes to carry on in his wake, and they are but boys. The cowardly councilmen who remain in the priest’s employ would turn on them in a heartbeat and lock the Judges away for good. We need to kill him. How difficult can it be to take the life of a single man?”

As it turned out, very .

The mumbling priest spent his evenings in Karak’s Temple in the undeveloped far eastern corner of the city. Every morning just after sunrise, a carriage containing twelve Sisters would ride up to the temple to retrieve him. They accompanied him all the way to the castle. The priest would them remain in the castle all day, never once showing his face outside until an hour before sunset. Then he would reappear, again accompanied by twelve Sisters-it was impossible to tell whether they were the same twelve or not-and the wagon would carry him back to the temple, where the acolytes waited for him to arrive. The man was never alone.

For the last seven days, Laurel and her cohorts had charted the man’s movements, hoping that his routine would change. Yet, he always kept the same schedule, the time only shifting because the days were growing longer. At first they thought they could secretly place one of the former Sisters among them, perhaps Harmony or even Lyana, and slip a poison into the cup of cider and brandy they brought him each morning. Pulo insisted that was too risky, as a man of Tustlewhite’s importance would most likely choose his guardians carefully, perhaps even make them stand before the Judges to prove their loyalty. They couldn’t chance attempting the kill close to the castle, for with all the Sisters around, whoever did the deed would be subject to death or, even worse, capture. Also out was attacking the carriage once it reached the Road of Worship. Twenty men wouldn’t be enough to overpower the Sisters before Tustlewhite called the Judges, as Dogon claimed he could. Two hundred men could easily run through the Sisters, but the same problem remained: Should the priest summon the lions before he was killed, whatever size force they brought would be decimated.

And so they watched, and they waited, hoping to find an opening they could use. But it seemed the only thing going their way was the warming of the weather. It hadn’t snowed for almost three weeks now, and though there was still ice on the ground, the snow within the city was almost gone.

Laurel watched as the sun finally drooped near the horizon. The other sellers began packing up their carts, so she did the same. The exhausted women then shoved their wares along the road, flanked by the Sisters. One of them joined Laurel as well, and she needed to check twice to make sure it was Lyana. She breathed a sigh of relief and steered her cart around the corner, allowing the other street merchants and their tails to pull ahead of her. As usual, none seemed to even notice she had fallen behind. Someone always had to be the last in line, after all, and she appeared to be an old woman. By the time she rounded the corner onto South Road, the others were far ahead.

Once out of view of the castle, she and Lyana glanced around to make sure no one was looking and then hastily shoved the cart into a slender alley, cutting between an abandoned apothecary and a smithy. They slid open the side door to the smithy and pushed the cart inside, careful to not make much noise. Then Laurel stripped out of her heavy, beaten shift and fur jacket. The cold made her teeth chatter as she reached below the cart and slipped her arms into a padded jerkin.

“That’s better,” she whispered.

“Ready?” asked Lyana. Laurel turned to her, saw the girl’s expression shift beneath her wrappings. It looked like she was grimacing.

“Ready,” she said.

They shut the door and climbed to the top of the smithy, which allowed them a clear view of the castle and its walls. The roof was the safest place to be at this time of day, as the Sisters were now making their way home and no longer watching the city from above. The Castle of the Lion was just south of the great fountain at the hub of the city, and the area around it had at one time been densely populated. The buildings lining South Road were set close together, their roofs often separated by mere inches. Because of that, when Laurel peered over the edge, it was like gazing at a landscape of pointed clay dunes and flat drab platforms.

“He’s coming,” Lyana whispered.

Laurel narrowed her eyes at the distant castle and saw the wagon exit the portcullis, five Sisters hanging off either side of it. The driver, another Sister, cracked the reins, and the two horses pulling the wagon began to trot. They turned west out of the castle, heading their way.

“Let’s go,” said Laurel.

The two of them hopped from rooftop to rooftop, taking care to keep themselves out of sight, as the Sisters were still present on the streets. At one point Laurel slipped on a slanted roof, sending a clay shingle sliding over the side, where it smashed on the ground below. “Shit,” she muttered, her fingers tightly gripping the roof while she panted. No Sister came to investigate the noise. After a look from Lyana, they kept on moving.

The wagon was a half mile behind them, slowly lumbering along the road. Whenever it came upon another conveyance, the Sisters would stare menacingly at the driver until they gave room to pass. The sun dipped lower. In less than an hour, it would sink below the horizon, and the roars would begin.

Laurel and Lyana didn’t follow the road directly to the fountain; instead, they veered off to the right, heading for the residential sections that sat in the elbow between South Road and the Road of Worship. The buildings were spaced farther apart here, forcing them to descend and walk on the road, but it was actually safer there than it had been on the rooftops. With nearly three-quarters of Veldaren’s residents now gone, either to Karak’s Army, beneath the Bend, or to the grave, the place was nearly deserted. It was also the area where some of the Sisters resided during the night, which meant they would be free to move as they pleased until just before sunset.

Soon the houses ended, and the foundations of unfinished buildings and stacks of rotting timber peppered the landscape. Laurel and Lyanna kept far out of sight, dashing through the field a good half mile away from the Road of Worship. Here the snow was still present, and they ran through the tall grasses, recently uncovered by the thaw, to hide their approach. On the distant road they could see the wagon lumbering along behind them, the Sisters peering out, hands cupped over their eyes to block out the low-hanging sun.

Finally, after running for nearly forty minutes, they arrived at Karak’s Temple. It was an unseemly rectangular structure, five stories high and black as midnight. The onyx lions outside its front entrance were captured in mid-leap, their mouths hanging open in an eternal roar. Lyana grabbed Laurel’s hand, pulling her across the field and toward the building. The wagon was close, almost close enough for the Sisters to see them. Once they reached the small thatch of evergreens that stood on their side of the road, Lyana helped Laurel climb one of the trees before bounding up effortlessly after her.

Finally at a vantage point where they felt it safe to watch without risk of exposure, they sat still and waited.

The wagon pulled up in front of the temple as acolytes stepped outside. The mumbling priest got out of the wagon, what remained of his white hair flapping in the breeze. He pulled his cloak up over his head and approached the boys in red robes. The acolytes escorted him inside. The door closed. The Sisters piled back into the wagon, the driver turned it around, and they plodded away.