Grunting at the weight of the cheese, Wrend carried the crate up the steps and out the doorway. He blinked in the sunlight and stopped on the boardwalk as Teirn emerged with his own crate.

“Just think of it,” Teirn said. “Sardo cheese. Or just-right testouri.”

Wrend shrugged. “I’m not debating the value of cheese. It’s how the Master would react to my stealing it.”

Teirn rolled his eyes. “You only lose your soul if you’re caught. Besides, if you do get caught, at least you’ll know why the Master ends up wringing your neck.”

Wrend shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “Knowing why you’re having your head popped off is a definite plus. Although the dying part kind of spoils it.”

When Wrend was two, the Master—as tall as clouds and as angry as thunder—came into the playroom. The mothers started to sob. The more experienced children began to cry. From the midst of toys and playmates, the Master lifted a four-year-old girl and twisted her head off. The crunch still haunted Wrend’s dreams. He and Teirn had clung to each other and cried.

He’d witnessed scores more deaths since, and hundreds of other siblings had died outside of his sight. They simply disappeared. Wrend had probably only ever known why a dozen of them had perished, although the mothers and priests promised that the Master never killed without a reason. So the Parable taught.

Teirn made a skeptical sound and shook his head. “Cheese is worth it. Put it on the scales.”

Wrend imagined his soul on one side of a scale, and cheese on the other. “Hmm . . . danbo cheese?”

Teirn sniffed. “No—sardo. Or testouri.”

The scales tipped in Wrend’s mind. “Well, that makes it easy. The cheese wins.”

With a laugh, Teirn darted ahead of Wrend and down three wooden stairs to the white and blue pavers. Wrend followed. To their right, a sea of wagons filled the Courtyard of the Wall, each with a red-tiled roof and iron-shod, shoulder-high wheels.

Wrend and Teirn had spent the morning and most of that afternoon loading a handful of the boxy wagons with supplies bound for various parts of the country. They’d carried everything from sacred books to barrels of wheat to tiny boxes of saffron and other exotic spices. Now, they worked on the last of their duties: loading the cheese wagon. It waited near the top of the courtyard, almost the last in the many columns and rows of wagons.

As they headed up the courtyard, Wrend gamed at getting ahead of Teirn, to reach the cheese wagon first. He feinted to the right or left and tried to get ahead, but each time he made a move, Teirn responded by dodging aside and blocking his path. He’d already learned that trying to take a different route to the wagon didn’t work, since it made the trip up the courtyard longer.

To their left, a series of two-story buildings stretched up the canyon, toward the rear of the courtyard. The buildings—each painted a different color: red, blue, green, yellow, white—shared side walls, so it looked like they could have been a single building. A boardwalk ran along their fronts, up the entire length of the courtyard.

Each wooden building had a different shape, although each bore carved curls and twists of polished spruce around the windows and doors. The second level of some structures extended out over the boardwalk, while others simply had an awning. One had a balcony on the second level, with a fine white railing along the front. Others had gabled roofs with red shingles, and some had flat roofs. Most of them had rain gutters carved with vines, and hosted at least several draegon gargoyles stretched out in various poses of flight or attack.

Wrend could never walk in front of the buildings without suspecting an ambush from the gargoyles. It seemed they’d descended from the steep canyon walls behind the building, from among the pines and firs, and waited for just the right moment to attack.

A similar stretch of buildings lined the opposite side of the courtyard. Between the two lengths of buildings, at the front of the courtyard, stretched the Wall—although calling it a
wall
was a misnomer; it was really just a towering stone structure that reached from one side of the canyon to the other.

In preparation for the Reverencing, red cloth covered the Wall, starting at the top, where red and black bunting stretched across the entire length of the parapet. Serving girls had sewed the bunting so that it looked like the lower half of a target, with concentric circles of black and red. The bunting also stretched over the thirty-foot recessed gates in the Wall’s center, and hung on the balconies at the tops of the stairs set at even intervals along the Wall’s base. It dangled over the doors that gave ingress to the inner bowels of the Wall, where priests and serving girls lived in tight quarters.

From each half-circle of bunting along the parapet, or along the balcony in front of a doorway, a curtain of red cloth stretched down, so that all of the Wall except for the doors was covered with red. Here and there, the breeze stirred the curtains, making them billow or lift, revealing the Wall’s smooth gray stone.

The red, representing blood that would soon be willingly given, matched the red and black livery of the paladins standing along the parapet, at attention with shields and pikes, wearing masks that covered their rotting faces.

In a week, demigods would strip all of the bunting away, but they wouldn’t stop there. They would also tear down the ornamental woodwork—the carved rain gutters, gargoyles, and trim. They would rip the pavers up from the ground, destroying the intricate design of red swirls against a white background. Then the demigods would spend the next year rebuilding and redecorating the courtyard as part of a final test of ability and readiness to leave the Seraglio.

In two years, Wrend would undertake that test. He already had plans on what kind of design to create with the pavers. With luck, he would win the right to that task.

Other demigods, some of Wrend and Teirn’s siblings—although typically much older than Wrend and Teirn—also worked among the wagons. As they carried equipment, repaired a wagon, or completed any of a number of duties, they sang in unison about a demigod who’d lived out his days in service to the people of a southern district.

Teirn joined in the song for a few words, using a false bravado, and rolled his eyes.

“Why did they choose this insipid song?”

“I like it,” Wrend said. “The tune is catchy.”

He tried to squeeze past Teirn, to get ahead, but Teirn blocked him, nearly ramming him into a wagon. So he settled for adjusting his grip on the box and looking for an opening as they continued up past the wagons and buildings. He joined in the song, but without the sarcasm.

When they’d almost reached the top of the courtyard—the last building on their left, and the top of the row of wagons on their right—Wrend looked back at the double gates and frowned.

“I guess we were wrong,” he said. “The gates won’t open while we’re here.”

Teirn shrugged. “Too much to hope for, apparently.”

More than anything, Wrend wanted to get out of the Seraglio, to finish his education and get out into the world, serve the Master’s followers, and see more than just canyon walls. He chaffed at classes and trade lessons and lectures. He needed to get out and live life, but couldn’t until age twenty, when he would receive an assignment as a Caretaker. How lucky the other demigods moving around the courtyard were. How blessed the lives they lived out in the open world. They returned to the Seraglio only once each year, for the Reverencing.

As Wrend and Teirn approached the cheese wagon at the top of the courtyard, Wrend dodged to the left and surged forward. But Teirn jumped in front of him, nudging him so that he nearly fell against the boardwalk. With a laugh, Teirn reached the wagon first. At the base of the three steps that led up to the open wagon door, he smirked and looked back at Wrend.

“Sixteen for me. Fourteen for you.”

Wrend didn’t acknowledge the defeat with even a shrug.

Once Teirn had deposited his crate and exited the wagon, Wrend ascended the steps and entered. Inside, the dimness smelled like heaven, with the scents of half a dozen cheeses mingling into a greater temptation than a vast majority of things that ended up getting other demigods killed. Wrend would have liked to take a brick. Or five or six. It was as if the priests who’d given them the assignment knew his weakness and wanted to test him.

He deposited the box with the others, exited the wagon, and shut the door behind him.

“Finally done,” he said. “Now, to the square?”

Teirn frowned. “Why torture ourselves. The priests won’t let us take a peek at the decorations.”

“It’s worth a try.”

As demigods who hadn’t reached their majority, they couldn’t attend the Reverencing—though they’d done plenty of work to prepare for it. But everyone did. The Reverencing was the feast where the Master honored the demigods he would soon sacrifice to the people.

Voices called their names from behind. They turned to see two mothers striding up the boardwalk, past a bowing handful of serving girls in yellow dresses. One of the women, Calla, waved. Wrend smiled and waved back. The other mother was Rashel.

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