Faith of the Fallen

In honor of all her good work, and her father's service to the government, the king granted Mother a pension that allowed her to stay in the house, with a reduced staff. She continued her work with the fellowship, trying to right all the injustice that she believed was responsible for the failure of the business. She hoped one day to reopen the shop and employ people. For her righteous work, the king awarded her a silver medal. Mother wrote that the king proclaimed she was as close to a good spirit in the flesh as he had ever seen. Nicci regularly received word of awards Mother was given for her selfless work.

Eighteen years later, when Mother died, Nicci still looked like a young woman of perhaps seventeen. She wanted a fine black dress to wear to the funeral-the finest available. The palace said that it was unseemly for a novice to make such a selfish request, and it was out of the question. They said they would supply only simple humble clothes.

When Nicci arrived home, she went to the tailor to the king and told him that for her mother's funeral she needed the finest black dress he had ever made. He told her the price. She informed him she had no money, but said she needed the dress anyway.

The tailor, a man with three chins, waxy down growing from his ears, abnormally long yellowish fingernails, and an unfailing lecherous smirk, said there were things he needed, too. He leaned close, lightly holding her smooth arm in his knobby fingers, and intimated that if she would take care of his needs, he would take care of hers.

Nicci wore the finest black dress ever made to her mother's funeral.

Mother had been a woman who had devoted her entire life to the needs of others. Nicci could never again look forward to seeing her mother's cockroach-brown eyes. Unlike at her father's funeral, Nicci felt no pain reach down to touch that abysmal place inside her. Nicci knew she was a terrible person.

For the first time, she realized that for some reason she simply no longer cared.

From that day on, Nicci never wore any dress but black.

One hundred and twenty-three years later, standing at the railing overlooking the great hall, Nicci saw eyes that stunned her with their sense of an inner value held dear. But what had been an uncertain ember in her father's eyes was ablaze in Richard's. She still didn't know what it was.

She knew only that it was the difference between life and death, and that she had to destroy him.

Now, at long last, she knew how.

If only, when she had been little, someone had shown her father such mercy.

CHAPTER 12

Trudging down the road between the edge of the city of Fairfield and the estate where the three Sisters had told her Emperor Jagang had set up his residence, Nicci scanned the surrounding jumble of the Imperial Order's encampment, looking for a specific station of tents. She knew they would be somewhere in the area; Jagang liked to have them close at hand. Regular sleeping tents, wagons, and men lay like a dark soot over the fields and hills as far as she could see. Sky and land alike seemed tinted by a dusky taint. Sprinkled through the dark fields, campfires twinkled, like a sky full of stars.

The day was becoming oppressively dim, not only with the approach of evening, but also from the dull overcast of churning gray clouds. The wind kicked up in little fits, setting tents and clothes flapping, fluttering the campfires' flames, and whipping smoke this way and that. The gusts helped coat the tongue with the fetid stench of human and animal waste, smothering any pleasant but weak cooking aroma that struggled to take to the air. The longer the army stayed in place, the worse it would get.

Up ahead, the elegant buildings of the estate rose above the dark grime at its feet. Jagang was there. Because he had access to Sisters Georgia, Rochelle, and Aubrey's minds, he would know Nicci was back. He would be waiting for her.

The emperor would have to wait; she had something else to do, first.

Without Jagang able to enter her mind, she was free to pursue it.

Nicci saw what she was looking for, off in the distance. She could just make them out, standing above the smaller tents. She left the road and headed through the crowded snarl of troops. Even from the distance, she could distinguish the distinctive sounds coming from the group of special tents-hear it over the laughing and singing, the crackle of fires, the sizzle of meat in skillets, the scraping rasp of whetstones on metal, the ring of hammers on steel, and the rhythm of saws.