northeast, curving up and around stately Stable Hill. From the side of the road, through a green curtain of tall lindens, he could look down on the river, and on the square, brutal warehouses and sunken alleys of the docks. The road was clogged with traffic: carriages painted with the livery of a dozen lords, gilded palanquins, rude wooden carts hauling produce from the docks. Passengers the length of the road had dismounted to stare into the sky. As he passed, the traffic slowly wound itself into motion again. It began to rain.
Cato Road ran north under another arch, this one squarely built of white stone, topped by two rearing horses, and dedicated, according to the plaque, to one Chairman Cimenti. North of the arch loomed a row of grand marble buildings. Broad steps stretched down from colonnaded facades to the tree-lined street; ranks of anonymous office windows towered into the sky. The steeples and domes of vast temples rose in the background.
Clarion Street cut off south from Cimenti’s arch. It took Arjun, as he had been told it would, into the dignified red-brick houses of Foyle’s Ward. He turned onto Mullen Dial, where a ring of discreet professional offices marked off a small open space in the heart of the Ward. The cobbles shone slick and black in the rain. Arjun walked clockwise around the Dial, counting off numbers on the brass plaques. Seventeen was his contact.
The week after Arjun went before the Council, Father Julah had handed him a yellowing letter. It came from some vault to which Arjun did not yet have access. Nearly one hundred years ago, Julah explained, the letter’s author, Father Alai, had gone north to Ararat. The Choirmen of the time kept no record of his reasons. Kindly, Julah did not say the obvious: that they had considered Alai’s travels to be a shameful vanity.
Three years later they had received a letter. The Voice alone knew how it had crossed that unthinkable distance. It was clearly not the first letter Alai had tried to send. Alai boasted cheerfully that he had founded a small choir in Ararat, that he was well on his way to adding the Voice to Ararat’s crowded pantheon. He had reported that Ararat’s people were very friendly, and very kind, and very generous. He left an address.
Arjun frankly doubted Alai’s sanity. Who would leave the Voice behind to go preach in a distant city? What did the Choir care what Ararat worshipped? What was the point of another Choir in another place, a world away from the Voice? Still, this was his only contact. This man’s successors would surely help him. Perhaps they had even found the Voice themselves. Perhaps, even, it was they it had come to. It was at least a place to start.
He banged the brass clapper, and waited.
A fterward, he walked back down Cato Road in the rain.
Of course
there was nothing left of Alai’s hundred-year-old outpost.
It had been reconsecrated to some local Power, then reconsecrated again, then turned into lawyers’ offices.
How fast things change here!
The woman behind the door had been intrigued to meet him and hear his story: she’d wondered what former owner had installed the huge organ that occupied the third floor and could not, she said, be removed without bringing down the structure. There was no other trace of the man.
He walked back to the docks, and sat down back at Gies Landing. He wondered how he had come this far without thinking past this point. There was no one to help him, and no place to start. He could not think what to do next or where to go.
He wrote his letter. He filled it with tinny, false confidence—very much like Alai’s letter, he thought. He folded it and put it in his pack between the covers of the Girolamo, and wondered if he would ever be able to send it, and whether the Choirmen were waiting to receive it.
The sun went down behind the jutting roofs of Barbary Ward. Thick fog came in off the water, muffling the sounds of the docks as they wound down for
Cato Road ran north under another arch, this one squarely built of white stone, topped by two rearing horses, and dedicated, according to the plaque, to one Chairman Cimenti. North of the arch loomed a row of grand marble buildings. Broad steps stretched down from colonnaded facades to the tree-lined street; ranks of anonymous office windows towered into the sky. The steeples and domes of vast temples rose in the background.
Clarion Street cut off south from Cimenti’s arch. It took Arjun, as he had been told it would, into the dignified red-brick houses of Foyle’s Ward. He turned onto Mullen Dial, where a ring of discreet professional offices marked off a small open space in the heart of the Ward. The cobbles shone slick and black in the rain. Arjun walked clockwise around the Dial, counting off numbers on the brass plaques. Seventeen was his contact.
The week after Arjun went before the Council, Father Julah had handed him a yellowing letter. It came from some vault to which Arjun did not yet have access. Nearly one hundred years ago, Julah explained, the letter’s author, Father Alai, had gone north to Ararat. The Choirmen of the time kept no record of his reasons. Kindly, Julah did not say the obvious: that they had considered Alai’s travels to be a shameful vanity.
Three years later they had received a letter. The Voice alone knew how it had crossed that unthinkable distance. It was clearly not the first letter Alai had tried to send. Alai boasted cheerfully that he had founded a small choir in Ararat, that he was well on his way to adding the Voice to Ararat’s crowded pantheon. He had reported that Ararat’s people were very friendly, and very kind, and very generous. He left an address.
Arjun frankly doubted Alai’s sanity. Who would leave the Voice behind to go preach in a distant city? What did the Choir care what Ararat worshipped? What was the point of another Choir in another place, a world away from the Voice? Still, this was his only contact. This man’s successors would surely help him. Perhaps they had even found the Voice themselves. Perhaps, even, it was they it had come to. It was at least a place to start.
He banged the brass clapper, and waited.
A fterward, he walked back down Cato Road in the rain.
Of course
there was nothing left of Alai’s hundred-year-old outpost.
It had been reconsecrated to some local Power, then reconsecrated again, then turned into lawyers’ offices.
How fast things change here!
The woman behind the door had been intrigued to meet him and hear his story: she’d wondered what former owner had installed the huge organ that occupied the third floor and could not, she said, be removed without bringing down the structure. There was no other trace of the man.
He walked back to the docks, and sat down back at Gies Landing. He wondered how he had come this far without thinking past this point. There was no one to help him, and no place to start. He could not think what to do next or where to go.
He wrote his letter. He filled it with tinny, false confidence—very much like Alai’s letter, he thought. He folded it and put it in his pack between the covers of the Girolamo, and wondered if he would ever be able to send it, and whether the Choirmen were waiting to receive it.
The sun went down behind the jutting roofs of Barbary Ward. Thick fog came in off the water, muffling the sounds of the docks as they wound down for
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