Faith of the Fallen

Richard was overcome with a blissful smile. "Ali, Victor, you will see for yourself soon enough. The dedication is only a couple weeks off. I will be ready. It will be something to bring a song to our hearts. . before they kill me, anyway."

Victor dismissed such talk with a flourish of his hand. "I am hoping that when they see such beauty again, and at their palace, they will approve."

Richard held out no such illusion. He remembered then, and reached into a pocket to pull out a piece of paper. He handed it to the blacksmith.

"I didn't want Priska to cast words on the back of the dial because I didn't want the wrong people to see them. I would ask you to engrave these words on the back surface-about the same height as the symbols on the front."

Victor took the paper and unfolded it. His grin melted away. He looked up at Richard with an open look of surprise.

"This is treason."

Richard shrugged. "They can only kill me once."

"They can torture you a long time before they kill you. They have very unpleasant ways to kill people, too, Richard. Have you ever seen a man buried in the sky while he was still alive, bleeding from a thousand cuts, his arms bound, so that the vultures could feast on his living flesh?"

"The Order binds my arms, now, Victor. As I work down there, as I see the death around me, I am bleeding from a thousand cuts. The vultures of the Order are already feasting on my flesh." With grim resolve, Richard held Victor's gaze. "Will you do it?"

Victor glanced down at the paper again. He took a deep breath and then let it slowly out as he studied the paper in his hand. "Treason though these words be, I like them. I will do it."

Richard clapped him on the side of the shoulder and gave him a confident smile. "Good man. Now, look here, where the pedestal is to be attached."

Richard lifted the tarp enough to uncover the base. "I've carved you a flat face tilted at the proper angle. I didn't know where the holes in the casting would be, so I left it for you to drill the holes and fill them with lead for the pins. Once you attach the pedestal, then I can calculate the angle of the hole I'll need to drill for the gnomon."

Victor nodded. "The gnomon pole will be ready soon. I will make you a drill bit the proper size for it."

"Good. And a round rasp to do final fitting in the hole?"

"You will have it," Victor said as they both stood. He waved his hand toward the covered statue. "You trust me not to peek while you are off carving your ugly work?"

Richard chuckled. "Victor, I know you want more than anything to see the nobility of this statue when it is finally finished. You would not spoil that experience for yourself for anything."

Victor let out his rolling belly laugh. "I guess you are right. Come after your work, and we will have lardo and talk of beauty in stone and the way the world once was."

Richard hardly heard Victor. He was staring at what he knew so well.

Even though it was covered from his eyes, it was not hidden from his soul.

He was ready to begin the process of polishing. To make flesh in stone.

-]--

Her head bent, her scarf protecting her from the chill winter wind, Nicci hurried down the narrow alleyway. A man coming the other way bumped against her shoulder, not because he was rushing, but because he simply didn't seem to care where he was going. Nicci threw a fiery scowl at his empty eyes. Her fierce look fell away down a bottomless well of indifference.

She clutched her sack of sunflower seeds closer to her stomach as she moved on through the muddy alleyway. She stayed close to the rough wooden walls of the buildings so she wouldn't be jostled by the people going the other way. People bundled against the current cold snap moved through the alleyway toward the street beyond, looking for rooms, for food, for clothes, for jobs. She could see men beyond the alley sitting on the ground, leaning against buildings on the far side of the street, watching without seeing as wagons rumbled down the roads, taking supplies out to the site of the emperor's palace.

Nicci wanted to get to the bread shop. She had been told they might have butter today. She wanted to get butter for Richard's bread. He would be home for dinnerhe had promised. She wanted to make him a good meal. He needed to eat. He had lost some weight, though it only added distracting definition to his muscular build. He was like a statue in the flesh-like the statues she used to see, long ago.

She remembered how when she was little her mother's servants made cakes out of sunflower meal. She had been able to buy enough to make him some sunflower cakes, and maybe she would have butter to put on them.

Nicci was growing increasingly anxious. The dedication was to take place in a few days. Richard said his statue would be ready. He seemed too calm about it, as if he had come to some inner peace.

He seemed almost like a man who had accepted his imminent execution.