Faith of the Fallen (12 page)

“The prices of things are just terrible,” a man with droopy eyelids said. He was all crumpled down in his chair, like a pile of dirty clothes. “It isn’t fair. People shouldn’t be allowed to just raise their prices whenever they want. The duke should do something. He has the king’s ear.”

“The duke…” Mother said. She sipped her tea. “Yes, I’ve always found the duke to be a man sympathetic to good causes. I think he could be persuaded to introduce sensible laws.” Mother glanced over the gold rim of her cup at the man in the straight chair.

One of the women said she would encourage her husband to back the duke. Another spoke up that they would write a letter of support for such an idea.

“People are starving,” a wrinkled woman said into a lull in the conversation. People eagerly mumbled their acknowledgment, as if this were an umbrella to run in under to escape the drenching silence. “I see it every day. If we could just help some of those unfortunate people.”

One of the other women puffed herself up like a chicken ready to lay an egg. “It’s just terrible the way no one will give them a job, when there’s plenty of work if it was just spread around.”

“I know,” Mother said with a tsk. “I’ve talked to Howard until I’m blue in the face. He just hires people who please him, rather than those needing the job the most. It’s a disgrace.”

The others sympathized with her burden.

“It isn’t right that a few men should have so much more than they need, while so many people have so much less,” the man with the droopy eyelids said. “It’s immoral.”

“Man has no right to exist for his own sake,” Mother was quick to put in as she nibbled on a piece of dense cake while glancing again at the grimly silent man. “I tell Howard all the time that self-sacrifice in the service of others is man’s highest moral duty and his only reason for being placed in this life.

“To that end,” Mother announced, “I have decided to contribute five hundred gold crowns to our cause.”

The other people gasped their delight, and congratulated Mother for her charitable nature. They agreed, as they sneaked peeks across the room, that the Creator would reward her in the next life, and talked about all they would be able to do to help those less fortunate souls.

Mother finally turned and regarded Nicci for a moment, and then said, “I believe my daughter is old enough to learn to help others.”

Nicci sat forward on the edge of her chair, thrilled at the idea of at last putting her hand to what Mother and her friends said was noble work. It was as if the Creator Himself had offered her a path to salvation. “I would so like to do good, Mother.”

Mother cast a questioning look at the man in the straight chair. “Brother Narev?”

The deep creases of his face pleated to each side as the thin line of his mouth stretched in a smile. There was no joy in it, or in his dark eyes hooded beneath a brow of tangled white and black hairs. He wore a creased cap and heavy robes as dark as dried blood. Wisps of his wiry hair above his ears curled up around the edge of the cap that came halfway down on his forehead.

He stroked his jaw with the side of a finger as he spoke in a voice that almost rattled the teacups. “So, child, you wish to be a little soldier?”

“Well…no, sir.” Nicci didn’t know what soldiering had to do with doing good. Mother always said that father pandered to men in an evil occupation—soldiers. She said soldiers only cared about killing. “I wish to help those in need.”

“That is what we all try to do, child.” His spooky smile remained fixed on his face as he spoke. “We here are all soldiers in the fellowship—the Fellowship of Order—as we call our little group. All soldiers fighting for justice.”

Everyone seemed too timid to look directly at him. They glanced for a moment, looked away, then glanced back again, as if his face was not something to be taken in all at once, but sipped at, like a scalding-hot, foul-tasting remedy.

Mother’s brown eyes darted around like a cockroach looking for a crack. “Why, of course, Brother Narev. That is the only moral sort of soldier—the charitable sort.” She urged Nicci up and scooted her forward. “Nicci, Brother Narev, here, is a great man. Brother Narev is the high priest of the Fellowship of Order—an ancient sect devoted to doing the Creator’s will in this world. Brother Narev is a sorcerer.” She cast a smile up at him. “Brother Narev, this is my daughter, Nicci.”

Her mother’s hands pushed her at the man, as if she were an offering for the Creator. Unlike everyone else, Nicci couldn’t take her gaze from his hooded eyes. She had never seen their like.

There was nothing in them but dark cold emptiness.

He held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Nicci.”

“Curtsy and kiss his hand, dear,” Mother prompted.

Nicci went to one knee. She kissed the knuckles so as not to have to put her lips on the spongy web of thick blue veins covering the back of his hairy hand floating before her face. The whitish knobs were cold, but not icy, as she had expected.

“We welcome you to our movement, Nicci,” he said in that deep rattling voice of his. “With your mother’s caring hand raising you up, I know you will do the Creator’s work.”

Nicci thought that the Creator Himself must be very much like this man.

From all the things her mother told her, Nicci feared the Creator’s wrath. She was old enough to know that she had to start doing the good work her mother always talked about, if she was to have any chance at salvation. Everyone said Mother was a caring, moral person. Nicci wanted to be a good person, too.

But good work seemed so hard, so stern—not at all like her father’s work, where people smiled and laughed and talked with their hands.

“Thank you, Brother Narev,” Nicci said. “I will do my best to do good in the world.”

“One day, with the help of fine young people like you, we will change the world. I don’t delude myself; with so much callousness among men, it will take time to win true converts, but we here in this room, along with others of like mind throughout the land, are the foundation of hope.”

“Is the fellowship a secret, then?” Nicci asked in a whisper.

Everyone chuckled. Brother Narev didn’t laugh, but his mouth smiled again. “No, child. Quite the contrary. It is our most fervent wish and duty to spread the truth of mankind’s corruption. The Creator is perfect; we mortals are but miserable wretches. We must recognize our wicked nature if we hope to avoid His righteous wrath and reap our deliverance in the next world.

“Self-sacrifice for the good of all is the only route to salvation. Our fellowship is open to all those willing to give of themselves and live ethical lives. Most people don’t take us seriously. Someday they will.”

Gleaming, mousy eyes around the room watched without blinking as his deep, powerful voice rose, like the Creator’s own fury.

“A day will come when the hot flames of change will sweep across the land, burning away the old, the decaying, and the foul, to allow a new order to grow from the blackened remains of evil. After we burn clean the world, there will be no kings, yet the world will have order, championed by the hand of the common man, for the common man. Only then, will there be no hunger, no shivering in the cold, no suffering without help. The good of the people will be put above the selfish desires of the individual.”

Nicci wanted to do good—she truly did. But his voice sounded to her like a rusty dungeon door grating shut on her.

All the eyes in the room watched her, to see if she was good, like her mother. “That sounds wonderful, Brother Narev.”

He nodded. “It will be, child. You will help bring this to be. Let your feelings be your guide. You will be a soldier, marching toward a new world order. It will be a long and arduous task. You must keep the faith. The rest of us in this room will not likely live to see it flourish, but perhaps you will live long enough to one day see such a wondrous order come to pass.”

Nicci swallowed. “I will pray for it, Brother Narev.”

The next day, loaded with a big basket of bread, Nicci was let out of the carriage, along with a gaggle of other people from the fellowship, to fan out and distribute bread to the needy. Mother had attired her in a ruffled red dress for the special occasion. Her short white stockings had designs stitched in red thread. Filled with pride to at last be doing good, Nicci marched down the garbage strewn street, armed with her basket of bread, thinking about the day when the hope of a new order could be spread to all so that all could finally rise up out of destitution and despair.

Some people smiled and thanked her for the bread. Some took the bread without a word or a smile. Most, though, were surly about it, complaining that the bread was late and the loaves were too small, or the wrong kind. Nicci was not discouraged. She told them what Mother had said, that it was the baker’s fault, because he baked bread for profit, first, and since he received a reduced rate for charity, baked that second. Nicci told them that she was sorry that wicked people treated them as second-rate, but that someday the Fellowship of Order would come to the land and see to it that everyone was treated the same.

As Nicci walked down the street, handing out the bread, a man snatched her arm and pulled her into the stench of a narrow dark alley. She offered him a loaf of bread. He swiped the basket out of her hands. He said he wanted silver or gold. Nicci told him she had no money. She gasped in panic as he yanked her close. His filthy probing fingers groped everywhere on her body, even violating her most private places, looking for a purse, but found none hidden on her. He pulled off her shoes and threw them away when he found they had no coins hidden in them.

His fist punched her twice in the stomach. Nicci crashed to the ground. He spat a curse at her as he stole away into the shadowed heaps of refuse.

Holding herself up on trembling arms, Nicci vomited into the oily water running from under the mounds of offal. People passing the alley looked in and saw her retching there on the ground, but turned their eyes back to the street and hurried on their way. A few quickly darted into the alley, bent, and scooped up bread from the overturned basket before rushing off. Nicci panted, tears stinging her eyes, trying to get her wind back. Her knees were bleeding. Her dress was splattered with scum.

When she returned home, in tears, Mother smiled at seeing her. “Their plight often brings tears to my eyes, too.”

Nicci shook her head, her golden locks swinging side to side, and told Mother that a man had grabbed her and hit her, demanding money. Nicci reached for her mother as she wailed in misery that he was a wicked, wicked man.

Mother smacked her mouth. “Don’t you dare judge people. You are just a child. How can you presume to judge others?”

Stopped cold, Nicci was bewildered by the slap, more startling than painful. The rebuke stung more. “But, Mother, he was cruel to me—he touched me everywhere and then he hit me.”

Mother smacked her mouth again, harder the second time. “I’ll not have you disgrace me before Brother Narev and my friends with such insensitive talk. Do you hear? You don’t know what made him do it. Perhaps he has sick children at home, and he needs money to buy medicine. Here he sees some spoiled rich child, and he finally breaks, knowing his own child has been cheated in life by the likes of you and all your fine things.

“You don’t know what burdens life has handed the man. Don’t you dare to judge people for their actions just because you are too callous and insensitive to take the time to understand them.”

“But I think—”

Mother smacked her across the mouth a third time, hard enough to stagger her. “You think? Thinking is a vile acid that corrodes faith! It is your duty to believe, not think. The mind of man is inferior to that of the Creator. Your thoughts—the thoughts of anyone—are worthless, as all mankind is worthless. You must have faith that the Creator has invested His goodness in those wretched souls.

“Feelings, not thinking, must be your guide. Faith, not thinking, must be your only path.”

Nicci swallowed back her tears. “Then what should I do?”

“You should be ashamed that the world treats those poor souls so cruelly that they would so pitifully strike out in confusion. In the future, you should find a way to help people like that because you are able and they are not—that is your duty.”

That night, when her father came home and tiptoed into her room to see if she was tucked in snugly, Nicci clutched two of his big fingers together and held them tight to her cheek. Even though her mother said he was a wicked man, it felt better than anything else in the world when he knelt beside the bed and silently stroked her brow.

In her work on the streets, Nicci came to understand the needs of many of the people there. Their problems seemed insurmountable. No matter what she did, it never seemed to resolve anything. Brother Narev said it was only a sign that she wasn’t giving enough of herself. Each time she failed, at Brother Narev’s or Mother’s urging, Nicci redoubled her efforts.

One night at dinner, after being in the fellowship several years, she said, “Father, there is a man I’ve been trying to help. He has ten children and no job. Will you hire him, please?”

Father looked up from his soup. “Why?”

“I told you. He has ten children.”

“But what sort of work can he do? Why would I want him?”

“Because he needs a job.”

Father set down his spoon. “Nicci, dear, I employ skilled workers. That he has ten children is not going to shape steel, now is it? What can the man do? What skills has he?”

“If he had a skill, Father, he could get work. Is it fair that his children should starve because people won’t give him a chance?”

Father looked at her as if inspecting a wagonload of some suspicious new metal. Mother’s narrow mouth turned up in a little smile, but she said nothing.

“A chance? At what? He has no skill.”

“With a business as big as yours, surely you can give him a job.”

He tapped a finger on the stem of his spoon as he considered her determined expression. He cleared his throat. “Well, perhaps I could use a man to load wagons.”

“He can’t load wagons. He has a bad back. He hasn’t been able to work for years because of his back troubling him so.”

Father’s brow drew down. “His back didn’t prevent him from begetting ten children.”

Nicci wanted to do good, and so she met his stare with a steady look of her own. “Must you be so intolerant, Father? You have jobs, and this man needs one. He has hungry children needing to be fed and clothed. Would you deny him a living just because he has never had a fair chance in life? Are you so rich that all your gold has blinded your eyes to the needs of humble people?”

“But I need—”

“Must you always frame everything in terms of what
you
need, instead of what others need? Must everything be for you?”

“It’s a business—”

“And what is the purpose of a business? Isn’t it to employ those who need work? Wouldn’t it be better if the man had a job instead of having to humiliate himself begging? Is that what you want? For him to beg rather than work? Aren’t you the one who always speaks so highly of hard work?”

Nicci was firing the questions like arrows, getting them off so fast he couldn’t get a word through her barrage. Mother smiled as Nicci rolled out words she knew by heart.

“Why must you reserve your greatest cruelty for the least fortunate among us? Why can’t you for once think of what you can do to help, instead of always thinking of money, money, money? Would it hurt you to hire a man who needs a job? Would it Father? Would it bring your business to an end? Would that ruin you?”

The room echoed her noble questions. He stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. He looked as if real arrows had struck him. His jaw worked, but no words came out. He didn’t seem able to move; he could only gape at her.

Mother beamed.

“Well…” he finally said, “I guess…” He picked up his spoon and stared down into his soup. “Send him around, and I’ll give him a job.”

Nicci swelled with a new sense of pride—and power. She had never known it would be so easy to stagger her father. She had just bested his selfish nature with nothing more than goodness.

Father pushed back from the table. “I… I need to go back to the shop.” His eyes searched the table, but he would not look at Nicci or Mother. “I just remembered… I have some work I must see to.”

After he had gone, Mother said, “I’m glad to see that you have chosen the righteous path, Nicci, instead of following his evil ways. You will never regret letting your love of mankind guide your feelings. The Creator will smile upon you.”

Nicci knew she had done the right thing, the moral thing, yet the thought that came to haunt her victory was the night her father had come into her room and silently stroked her brow as she had held two of his fingers to her cheek.

The man went to work for Father. Father never mentioned anything about it. His work kept him busy and away from home. Nicci’s work took more and more of her time, as well. She missed seeing that look in his eyes. She guessed she was growing up.

The next spring, when Nicci was thirteen, she came home one day from her work at the fellowship to find a woman in the sitting room with Mother. Something about the woman’s demeanor made the hair at the back of Nicci’s neck stand on end. Both women rose as Nicci set aside her list of names of people needing things.

“Nicci, darling, this is Sister Alessandra. She’s traveled here from the Palace of the Prophets, in Tanimura.”

The woman was older than Mother. She had a long braid of fine brown hair looped around in a circle and pinned to the back of her skull like a loaf of braided bread. Her nose was a little too big for her face, and she was plain, but not at all ugly. Her eyes focused on Nicci with an unsettling intensity, and they didn’t dart about, the way Mother’s always did.

“Was it quite a journey, Sister Alessandra?” Nicci asked after she had curtsied. “All the way from Tanimura, I mean?”

“Three days is all,” Sister Alessandra said. A smile grew on her face as she took in Nicci’s bony frame. “My, my. So little, yet, for such grownup work.” She held out a hand toward a chair. “Won’t you sit with us, dear?”

“Are you a Sister with the fellowship?” Nicci asked, not really understanding who the woman was.

“The what?”

“Nicci,” Mother said, “Sister Alessandra is a Sister of the Light.”

Astonished, Nicci dropped into a chair. Sisters of the Light had the gift, just like her and Mother. Nicci didn’t know very much about the Sisters, except that they served the Creator. That still didn’t settle her stomach. To have such a woman right there in her house was intimidating—like when she stood before Brother Narev. She felt an inexplicable sense of doom.

Nicci was also impatient because she had duties waiting. There were donations to collect. She had older sponsors who accompanied her to some of the places. For other places, they said a young girl could get better results by herself, by shaming people who had more than they deserved. Those people, who had businesses, all knew who she was. They would always stammer and ask how her father was. As she had been instructed, Nicci told them how pleased her father would be to know they were thoughtful to the needy. In the end, most became civic-minded.

Then, there were remedies Nicci needed to take to women with sick children. There wasn’t enough clothing for the children, either. Nicci was trying to get some people to give cloth and other people to sew clothes. Some people had no homes, others were crowded together in little rooms. She was trying to get some rich people to donate a building. Also, Nicci had been assigned the task of locating jugs for women to bring water from the well. She needed to pay a visit to the potter. Some of the older children had been caught stealing. Others had been fighting, and a few of them were beating younger children bloody. Nicci had been pleading on their behalf, trying to explain that they had no fair chance, and were only reacting to their cruel circumstance. She hoped to convince Father to take on at least a few so they might have work.

The problems just kept mounting, without any end in sight. It seemed like the more people the fellowship helped, the more people there were who needed help. Nicci had thought she was going to solve the problems of the world; she was beginning to feel hopelessly inadequate. It was her own failing, she knew. She needed to work harder.

“Do you read and write, dear?” the Sister asked.

“Not very much, Sister. Mostly just names. I’ve much too much to do for those less fortunate than myself. Their needs must come before any selfish desires of my own.”

Mother smiled and nodded to herself.

“Practically a good spirit in the flesh.” The Sister’s eyes teared. “I’ve heard about your work.”

“You have?” Nicci felt a flash of pride, but then she thought of how things never seemed to get better, despite all her efforts, and her sense of failure returned. Besides, Mother said pride was evil. “I don’t see what’s so special about what I do. The people in the streets are the ones who are special, because of their suffering in horrid conditions. They are the true inspiration.”

Mother smiled contentedly. Sister Alessandra leaned forward, her tone serious. “Have you learned to use your gift, child?”

“Mother teaches me to do some small things, like how to heal little troubles, but I know it would be unfair to flaunt it over those less blessed than I, so I try my best not to use it.”

The Sister folded her hands in her lap. “I’ve been talking to your mother, while we waited for you. She’s done a fine job of getting you started on the right path. We feel, however, that you would have so much more to offer were you to serve a higher calling.”

Nicci sighed. “Well, all right. Maybe I can get up a little earlier. But I already have my duties to the needy, and I will have to fit this other in as I can. I hope you understand, Sister. I’m not trying to get undeserved sympathy, honestly I’m not, but I hope you don’t need this calling done too soon, as I’m already quite busy.”