“She remains in the prison cell where you left her. Amaranth the Pure is watching her as we speak,” Harlequin affirmed, her bright grey irises surrounding golden pupils betrayed a hint of elation before dimming into reticence. “But… forgive me for interrupting your prayers. I was instructed to inform y—”
“But what?” Cyan was growing impatient and cut the young woman off with a wave.
Long has the young woman overstepped when he was in his prayers, an annoyance that contradicted his teachings. Ever since the orphan girl had fled Kalderim, his other students had grown bolder, more open to disobeying his orders. Harlequin, although newly raised to the cassock, had seen what Lilia’s disappearance had done to him, so she had been one to grow more brazen. He aimed to do better, to be a stronger taskmaster.
“The Unfettered has made contact.”
Cyan suppressed a groan. It was just like Icterine to send word needlessly. He had found the girl and they would return to Kalderim on the morrow. The Conclave had given him the task when they Sharded him, one he was well-suited for, as well as a desire of a personal nature in the girl. If only they could just leave him to it.
“The old fools of the Conclave can wait until I am finished with my prayers.”
“But… I… I was told you had to come at once.” Dogmatic to the core, this girl. Most new recruits were these days, it seemed. None had the fire since the orphan girl had been placed in Cyan’s hands as a babe by the mysterious bikrome. Seeing his narrowed eyes, Harlequin blustered. “I will tell…”
“No need.” It wasn’t her fault Icterine had sent someone so raw with him. He couldn’t hold that against her. No, by the Arbiter, it was because he resented the fact the orphan had nearly escaped him once again. So much time had he put into her training, a great vicar she would’ve made. “I’ll give into the Unfettered’s trifles.”
“Yes, Vicar Cyan,” Harlequin said, straightening, though she winced when she drew her elbow close to her body. “I shall await you.”
Cyan merely nodded. Harlequin was too young, but then again, Cyan was growing ever older. And ever crankier.
The poor fire-haired girl was not to blame for her over exuberance. He remembered being that young once, twenty-plus years as it was. Being that devoted to a cause after having none for most of his early life. Harlequin had a confidence about her, one that hopefully wouldn’t shatter when their lives would inevitably be thrown into a den of rabid wolves, of which Cyan might consider Drenth as such. Many a faithful had lost their faith along the road set by the Pentax against Nocturne’s guile.
No, he had no reason to be angry with the Bloodless for her constant badgering and questions. No, by Justice, all his bothers stemmed from one person and one person only: the girl he raised.
The Godsblood.
The orphan child had been named Godsblood by the Conclave in the early days of her training, given the name Lilia until she was to be raised to the cassock when she would be given a new name. A name worthy of the Scattered Shards. A name of a Shard color and a title of trait, for that was the way of the vicar.
In the Scattered Shards, names were everything. Given and family names were but constructs that bound a person to earthly endeavors. That wasn’t what Bliss intended when She created humir. Renaming meant a cleanse from everything associated with one’s past, regardless of transgressions. One became reborn with a new name.
The vicars and the augurs, both untainted by their pasts, were given names by the Shards themselves. Only a vicar was given a secondary title upon receipt of their inked runes, a title which described how each individual expressed their devotion to the Pentax. The tainted warriors, the quaestors, were tainted souls, criminals all. Many were murderers given a second chance to become a warrior of the Shards. Their renaming was a meaningful reminder of what their crime was, their punishment was their warped bodies under Shard Form. The ingeniators, they chose simple names to attach to their creations, for they were not warriors.
Cyan shook his head as he returned to the statues thinking about Lilia.
A rare and wondrous find, Lilia had been. The blood of the gods had denuded down into barely perceptible finds since the Fall of Eminence. The Scattered Shards sought out any of the blood, but found less and less each year. Until the orphan babe, they hadn’t found any of the blood in almost two. Since her, they hadn’t found a single child borne of the blood. Seventeen years now. It was almost like the elfir, procreation stunted after the Fall.
People like Cyan were a quadran a dozen. Broken souls in need of guidance. Once set on the road to the Pentax, retribution could be found. Warriors made.
But a Godsblood was inherently different. They were the very fabric in which the gods were made. Godsbloods became the greatest of the Shards. Icterine the Unfettered and Mindaro the Blind, Meadows, all the Conclave were Godsbloods.
Lilia could have been the best of them all. Should have been.
Her flight from the Shards was a stain upon Cyan’s soul. A failure. A bane feasting upon his pride. Determined he was to find her again, bring her back into the fold. She would be the greatest warrior of the Pentax. He knew it for certain.
Cyan retreated into the temple, kneeling once more. His hand lifted the Gauntlet of Justice. Kissing the sapphire gemstone on the underside of the Gauntlet, Cyan stood, faithful gaze upon his god. Held to his breast, his heart beat furiously as he started to pray. “Take thy blood, the blood of man. Take thy heart, the heart of man. The fire in the soul, the forge it bequeaths. Show thy soul, let it burn in the pyre. Molded when white hot. In thy name, the vicars are yours. My soul is yours.”
Aether of the Four Tenets sparkled from the gemstones held in the hands of the five statues of the Pentax.
Zenith in all His Glory in the center, in His hands the image of Eminence, a diamond in the middle. All the colors of the Shards filled it. Aether flashed.
Beside was His Holy Wife, Mother Marrow, and in Her hands was the image of Her Hammer. A green emerald vibrated to Cyan’s words, like a quake of earth.
Justice held a set of scales in one hand and His dual-bladed axe in the other. A sapphire adorned the Arbiter’s aegis and water dripped down His face like tears.
The younger children of Zenith and Mother Marrow, Brio and Bliss, were carved as young spirits. Bliss in Her virginial state and Brio in His wanton. Bliss held a flower of peridot, its gemstone whistling like air. Brio’s mantle of fiery garnet blazed like a pyre.
Nocturne, the Master of the Pit and twin to Zenith, lay amongst the shadows, no candles alighting Him, aether sucking into the void.
Feeling a wave of aether swim through him, Cyan took a deep breath. He leaned forward to kiss Justice’s feet, slipped the Gauntlet onto his right wrist, the holy weapon of The Arbiter linking with his inked runes, then left the temple.
Harlequin fell in beside him as the two vicars marched through the sixth sector of Drenth known as the Revered Mark. The lone temple to the Scattered Shards was one of a handful of churches or temples within the sector, but the only one of a true religion, the rest were nothing but mummery in Cyan’s eyes.
“Have you prepared the means of our return, Harlequin?” Cyan asked, hands held behind his back as he walked through the City of Sands.
“I have secured transport, Vicar Cyan,” his acolyte said. He didn’t look her way but knew she would be relieved that he was speaking to her again after his rebuke in the temple. Try as he might as a tough taskmaster, the girl known as Harlequin the Bloodless was ever full of gaiety. It was one thing Cyan wished he had more of, but his childhood hadn’t been pleasant, nor allowed him to be such. “They will expect us at dawnbreak.”
“Very good, vicar.”
Harlequin beamed beside him. She was one of the best acolytes he’d ever trained, he had to admit, second only to Lilia. But Lilia had been like a daughter to him, and she’d reminded Cyan too much of himself.
She would have been his greatest achievement had she been raised to the cassock.
Most vicars raised to the cassock underwent strict training until their eighteenth nameday. But Cyan had been an exception to the rule. Growing up in the slums of Qarthage, he’d learned to fend for himself at an early age, fighting tooth and nail. That was the way of Qarthage—a mega-city in the eastern reaches of the Imperium—under the pall of the Fallen. His parents had been killed in a riot when he was only five, and his older brother conscripted into the Fallen’s army three years later.
Scraping to get by, he learned the only way to finding your way in the world was to fight. Live and die by the blade. Only strength existed in survival. Strength of body and of mind, but most of all, strength of heart and faith. Fleeing Qarthage had been the best decision he’d made because that’s when the Arbiter had come into his life, bringing a clarity to what was once a wayward soul. He had forgone any semblance of a normal life, given up a family, given up his name, all because the Pentax provided everything he needed.
And he needed to find the Godsblood’s wayward soul and show her a better future.
Minutes later, the vicars climbed a ladder attached to the rear of a rundown apartment complex, making for the fourth-floor balcony of the empty room they’d confiscated and made their short-term abode while they searched for Lilia.
