Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [57]
Reluctantly—because there were dire risks each time he summoned the witch-y talents he’d inherited from his mother—Molin quenched the fire in his toe and stirred from his chair. He summoned the peers of Sanctuary to the Hall of Justice for the first time in five years. He settled himself gingerly on a bench in front of the prince-governor’s empty throne, the slender Savankh, symbol of Imperial authority, in his hands, but he did not give in.
“Rot and rubbish,” he lectured the silk-wrapped peers. Had they all forgotten what had happened two years earlier? The S’danzo had vanished overnight. There weren’t any left in Sanctuary to breathe contagion or anything else on anyone. Frightening as it was, the Quickening was no different than any other plague. It would relax its grip on the town once people—led by Sanctuary’s peers—began enforcing a traditional quarantine. A week—two or three at the most—of strict isolation throughout the city and the Quickening would be just another of Sanctuary’s countless nightmares.
The peers weren’t interested in tradition. The Quickening, they insisted, was different—the Servants had told them so. Moreover, it had slipped over their doorsills (borne, they were certain, by sly tradesmen and flighty maidservants) as easily as it had slithered through the Maze. And while no one would object to burning a few plague-infested buildings in the Maze, it was unthinkable—quite unthinkable—that the peers might find their mansion windows sealed with foul-smelling pitch.
Far easier, Lord Mioklas insisted—far better—to take advantage of an opportunity to rid Sanctuary of its undesirables. “You know they’re still here,” the old man simpered. “Those women and their shiftless kin. They only pretended to disappear. The Servants have a sacred cloth that darkens when the contagion’s breathed across it. Let the guard carry it quarter to quarter, door to door—”
Molin lost his temper—a rare occurrence and possibly the price of the witchcraft he’d used to rise from his chair. He scolded the peers, calling them craven and greedy and swore he would never send the men he commanded—the heirs of the Hell-Hounds, the Stepsons, and all the other legendary units of the Imperial Rankan army—to do the bidding of the Mother of Chaos or Her red-handed priests.
The peers were aghast, made speechless not because they had taken Dyareelans into their marble-walled homes but because Lord Molin Torchholder, upon whom they had truly come to depend for such government as they found convenient, had suddenly gone mad. One had only to look at the Servants in their bleached white robes or listen to their piety to know that they were not—could not possibly be—chaos worshipers. Which raised questions none dared ask aloud in the Hall of Justice: Had Lord Torchholder fallen victim to the S’danzo curse? Was it safe to remain in his presence?
“Go home,” Molin ordered the peers as though they were naughty children. “And stay there. Seal your windows and hang a black flag above your door so everyone will know you’re observing quarantine. The guards will enforce it, and that’s all they will enforce!”
Grateful for any excuse, the peers fled the palace. Hoxa appeared, as he was wont to do, offering his arm to his footsore lord.
“If you ask me,” Hoxa said, though Molin rarely asked his opinion, “it’s the Servants brought the Quickening on us. Them and their chaos god.”
“Nonsense.” Molin sighed as he stood. “Savankala himself couldn’t piss up a plague in Sanctuary. The power’s gone. We used it up a generation ago. These days, whatever befalls Sanctuary is pure chance, fetched up here because there’s no god strong enough—or interested enough—to keep it away.”
Molin took a tentative step. His foot might have been carved from wood or stone for all he could flex it, but there was no pain. Releasing Hoxa’s arm, he began the limping journey