“Did you see it?” Vaelin asked. “Did you see the city burn?”
“I saw it.” Brother Sellin took a deep pull from his flask. “I saw it all right. Lit up the sky for miles around. But it wasn’t the sight of it that chilled you, it was the sound. We were anchored a good half mile off shore and still you could hear the screams. Thousands, men, women, children, all screaming in the fire.” He shuddered and drank again.
“I’m sorry, brother. I shouldn’t have asked.”
Sellin shrugged. “Times past, brother. Can’t live in ‘em. Just learn from ‘em.” He peered out at the gathering dark. “You’d best be getting back elst you’ll not get a meal tonight.”
He found Sister Sherin in the meal hall, eating alone as was her habit. He expected a rebuke or outright rejection when he sat opposite her but she made no comment. The kitchen staff had placed a good selection on the table but she seemed content with a small plate of bread and fruit.
“May I?” he asked, gesturing at the array of food.
She shrugged so he helped himself to some ham and chicken, gulping it down ravenously, drawing a plainly disgusted glance.
He grinned, taking guilty enjoyment in her discomfort. “I’m hungry.”
There was the faintest ghost of a smile as she looked away.
“No one eats alone in the Sixth Order,” he told her. “We all have our groups. We live together, eat together, fight together. We call each other brother with good reason. Here things seem to be different.”
“My brothers and sisters respect my privacy,” she said.
“Because you’re special? You can do what they can’t.”
She took a bite of apple and gave no reply.
“How’s the thief?” he asked.
“Well enough. They moved him to the upper floor. The sergeant put two men on his door.”
“You intend to speak for him at the hearing?”
“Of course. Although it would help his case if you spoke as well. I feel your word would carry more weight than mine.”
He washed down a mouthful of ham with some water. “What is it, Sister, that makes you care so much for one such as him?”
Her face hardened. “What is it that makes you care so little?”
Silence reigned at the table for a few moments. Finally, he said, “Did you know my mother trained here? She was a sister, like you. She left the Fifth Order to marry my father. She never told me she had served here, she never told me about this part of her life. I came here seeking answers, I wanted to know who she was, who I was, who my father was. But the Aspect would tell me nothing. Instead she paired me with you, which I think was an answer in itself.”
“An answer to what?”
“Who my mother was, at least. Perhaps partly who I am. I’m not like you, I’m no healer. I would have killed that man today if I could, I’ve killed before. You couldn’t kill anyone, and neither could she. That’s who she was.”
“And your father?”
Thousands, men, women, children, all screaming in the fire... Loyalty is my strength. “He was a man who burned a city because his king told him to.” He pushed his plate away and got up from the table. “I’ll speak for Gallis before the magistrate. See you at the fifth hour.”
In the morning it transpired that their presence at the magistrate’s court would not be necessary; Gallis had escaped during the night. The guards had entered his room on the top floor to find it empty and the window open. The wall outside was nearly thirty feet high with hardly any visible hand-holds.
Vaelin leaned out of the window to peer at the courtyard below. “Gallis the Climber,” he murmured.
“With the wounds he had he shouldn’t have been able to walk.” Sister Sherin moved close to inspect the wall outside. Vaelin found her proximity both intoxicating and uncomfortable but she seemed unconcerned. “I’ll never know how he managed it.”
“Master Sollis says a man doesn’t know his true strength until he fears for his life.”
“The sergeant said he’d track the man down if it takes him all his days.” She moved away, leaving Vaelin in a confusion of regret and relief. “He probably will. That or I’ll see him again, dragged through the doors with another wound for me to heal.”
“If he’s smart he’ll get himself on a ship and be far away by nightfall.”
Sherin shook her head. “People don’t leave this place, brother. No matter the threats against them they stay and live out their lives.”
He turned back to the window. The southern quarter was waking up to the day, the pale morning sky just taking on the stain of chimney smoke that would hang over the rooftops until nightfall, the shortening shadows revealing streets soiled with mingled refuse and excreta, dotted here and there the huddled forms of the drunk, drugged or homeless. Already he could hear vague shouts of conflict or hatred and wondered how many more would come through the doors today.
“Why?” he wondered. “Why stay in a place such as this?”
“I did,” she said. “Why shouldn’t they?”
“You were born here?”
She nodded. “I was lucky enough to complete my training in only two years. The Aspect offered me any posting in the Realm. I chose this one.”
The hesitancy in her voice told him he was probably the first person to hear her reveal so much of her past. “Because this is… home?”
“Because I felt this is where I needed to be.” She moved to the door. “We have work, brother.”
The next few days were hard but rewarding, not least because he was constantly in Sister Sherin’s presence. The parade of injured and ill coming through the door provided plenty of opportunity to increase his meagre healing skills as Sherin began to impart some of her knowledge, teaching him the best pattern to use when stitching a cut and the most effective mix of herbs for aches in the stomach or head. However, it quickly became obvious the skills she possessed would never be his, she had an eye and an ear for sickness so unerring it reminded him of his own affinity for the sword. Luckily there was no further need for him to display his skills as the level of aggression amongst patients had declined considerably since his first day. Word had spread through the southern quarter that there was a brother from the Sixth here and most of the more shady characters turning up to request treatment wisely kept their tongues still and violent urges in check.
The only negative aspect to his time in the Fifth was the constant attention of the other brothers and sisters. He had continued to take his meals with Sister Sherin late in the evening and they soon found themselves joined by a cluster of novices eager for Vaelin’s tales of life in the Sixth Order or a retelling of what they termed his ‘rescue of Sister Sherin’, a tale which seemed to have become a minor legend in only a few days. As ever, Sister Henna was his most attentive audience.
“Weren’t you scared, Brother?” she asked, wide brown eyes gazing up at him. “When the big brute was going to kill Sister Sherin? Didn’t it frighten you?”
Beside him, Sherin, who until now had borne the intrusion on her meal time with stoic calm, pointedly let her cutlery fall onto her plate with a loud clatter.
“I… have been trained to control my fear,” he replied, instantly realising how conceited it sounded. “Not as well as Sister Sherin, though,” he went on quickly. “She remained calm throughout.”
“Oh she never gets bothered by anything,” Henna waved a hand dismissively. “So, why didn’t you kill him?”
“Sister!” Brother Curlis exclaimed.
She lowered her gaze, a flush creeping up her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.
“It matters not, sister.” He patted her hand awkwardly, which seemed to make her blush even more.
“Brother Vaelin and I have had a long day,” Sister Sherin said. “We would like to eat in peace.”
Although she wasn’t a Mistress, her word evidently commanded obedience because their small audience quickly dispersed back to their rooms.
“They respect you,” Vaelin observed.
She shrugged. “Perhaps. But I am not liked here. I am envied and resented by most of my brothers and sisters. The Aspect warned me it might be this way.” Her tone indicated little concern, she was simply stating a fact.
“You could be judging them too harshly. Perhaps if you mixed with them more…”
“I am not here for them. The Fifth Order is the means by which I can help the people I need to help.”
“No room for friendship? A soul in whom to confide, share a burden?”
She gave him a guarded glance. “You said it yourself, brother. Things are different here.”
“Well, although you may not welcome it, I hope you know you have my friendship.”
She said nothing, sitting still, eyes fixed on her half-empty plate.
Was this how it was for my mother? he wondered. Was she so isolated by her abilities? Did they resent her too? He found it hard to imagine. He remembered a woman of kindness, warmth and openness. She could never have been as closed to emotion as Sherin. Sherin is formed by whatever happened to her beyond the gates, he realised. Out there in the southern quarter. My mother would have had a different life. A thought occurred to him then, something he had never considered before. Who was she before she came here? What was her family name? Who were my grandparents?