Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [67]
Life as a grain exporter wasn’t impossible, either. Lord Serripines was a fool when it came to his home, his family, and his undying belief that Imperial glory would be restored no later than next year. But he was a genius in the ground. He bought up land that had lain fallow since the Imperial families of Prince Kadakithis’s reign had abandoned the city. Then he went to the villages ringing Sanctuary and made himself useful to the villagers that Molin Torchholder, like other city-dwelling men, preferred to ignore. Serripines had added the treasury of Sihan to his own before he left the city and he spread his coins like autumn manure, convincing the villagers to work his fields before they worked their own. Two years after his arrival, there was more land under the plow and scythe than there’d ever been, and big-bellied argosies were sailing high into Sanctuary’s harbor, sailing low in the water when they left.
But life that wasn’t unbearable or impossible wasn’t necessarily good. Slowly, inexorably, the Servants of Dyareela squeezed the priests of Ranke and Ilsig out of their Promise of Heaven temples. The High Priest of Ils got himself flayed for preaching against Dyareela’s plans, but most of the city’s clergy either changed their allegiance—the Servants were accommodating that way—or slipped out through the walls. Dyareela’s justice was swift, and few were tempted to take up the underbelly life once they’d seen a man bled out or a woman peeled of her skin.
Molin Torchholder’s little apothecary shop bought more than herbs, of course, and it sold more than syrups and powders. Though Molin had become inconspicuous, he hadn’t disappeared, and the secrets of Sanctuary—even the secrets of the Servants of Dyareela—made tracks through his shop, especially its back room.
There wasn’t a large market for knowledge within Sanctuary while the Servants gripped it, but the city’s harbor was the last deepwater anchorage between Ranke and the Hammer’s Tail at the southern tip of the Spine Mountains—or the first, if the ship had sailed around from the Ilsigi side of the Spine. Strangers floated frequently into Sanctuary. Some were drawn there by the grain Lord Vion Serripines grew on the hills above the city, some by misfortune or accident. All strangers, though, eventually made their way to the unassuming shop in the old jewelers’ quarter.
Lord Vion Larris Serripines got wind that there was an officer of the old Imperial court—an archpriest of the old Imperial storm-god—selling potions in Sanctuary. Scarcely a day went by when someone from that lord’s new Land’s End estate didn’t cross the apothecary shop’s threshold. Those habits would have tragic consequences eventually, but in the Empire’s eighty-fifth year, it was simply good business for both the Serripines and Molin Torchholder, so long as the Rankan exiles kept their youngsters safe at home.
“Don’t be deceived,” Molin warned Lord Serripines. “The Servants are like an arrow wound—you think it’s healing, then one day your leg’s swollen purple and the next you’re lying on your deathbed. I can’t get an eye inside the palace anymore—no one can, including the Servants who’ve set up housekeeping in Savankala’s temple. They’re not there for worship, Vion, they’ve been tossed out by their brethren. That alone would be a bad omen, but I know for a fact, the Servants still in the palace have snatched many a child from its parents to keep their so-called orphanage filled. Had I a son or daughter, I’d never let them out of my sight.”
The golden-haired Rankan aristocrat straightened the sleeves of his impeccably Imperial robe. “I’ve sent word of the Servants to Emperor