* * *
The Temple is also in the Eighth Ward, on the east side. It’s the largest in the city, big enough that it distorts the neighborhood around it by virtue of its ecclesiastical gravity. There are dozens of cheap hostels catering to pilgrims, and plenty of winesinks and gambling houses for the less than completely pious. In better times, the Temple’s weekly procession always brought a crowd eager to watch the masked and costumed dancers carrying colorful floats, while supplicators droned prayers and vendors sold fried dough and roast potatoes.
Everything is quiet now, of course. The inns are shuttered, the winesinks silent. Even most of the apartments are empty. The Eighth Ward borders the Third, not more than a mile from the Temple. Many civilians figure that any Imperial offensive will come downhill from the palace, and this will be the first target. Hasaka’s opinion is that this is unlikely, since the walls are stronger here, but that isn’t enough to stop people from seeking safety farther south.
The Temple of the Blessed’s Mercy, on the other hand, is bustling. It’s set back from the streets, its grounds surrounded by a high, spiked fence. The central building, with its distinctive double-curved roof like a broken-down horse, is supposed to be over three hundred years old, but it’s surrounded by more modern constructions spread out through a carefully tended garden patch. Now it seems like every inch of that garden has been covered by tents, and the smoke from dozens of cookfires rises to mix with the steady stream from the temple’s chimneys.
The Returners—the Followers of the Blessed’s Return, as they call themselves—have been growing steadily since the Sixteenth Ward burned. It’s not just here. There’s at least a dozen big temples throughout Kahnzoka that have been converted into camps, with thousands of people seeking shelter behind their fences. They’re nearly a city within a city, and whether they fall under the authority of the Red Sashes is … disputed.
A single guard waits at the temple gate, though what a guard who has sworn not to fight is supposed to accomplish is beyond me. She’s dressed in a gray robe with a white belt, like all the Returners, and she bows deep, her freshly shaven scalp gleaming.
“Miss Gelmei,” she says. They all call me that. “Welcome.”
“I need to see her,” I say.
“Of course.” The guard straightens and looks at my escort of Blues. “Your companions will have to wait outside, or surrender their weapons.”
She seems serenely confident that I’ll obey, and I feel no hint otherwise from her mind. It’s one of the reasons I have trouble dealing with these Returners. I’ve grown too used to hypocrisy; sincerity is unsettling. I send a Kindre signal to the Blues, and they stand back, blank faced. The guard smiles and leads me into the complex.
There are people all around, in the tents that sprawl over the grass. I can see them staring at me, and feel the suspicion rising in their minds. Most of them are still in civilian clothes, rather than Returner robes, and there are a great many children. I wonder how many desperate families have ended up here, terrified mothers gambling that sheltering on temple ground is a safer bet for their kids than helping the Red Sashes. In all honestly, they’re probably not wrong.
We head for the ancient part of the temple. The doors are polished wood, carved with scenes from the Blessed One’s life rubbed into illegibility by centuries of fingers. Inside, the floors are old-style reed mats, the walls pure white, hung with ancient paintings. We’re not going into the main worship hall, but into the warren of chambers that adjoins it, where the supplicators of the Temple lived and worked.
“The Teacher has instructed that you be admitted to see her at any time,” my guide says, when we reach a small sitting room. “Please wait here, and I will tell her you’ve arrived.”
She bows again and bustles off. There’s no furniture, just cushions on the floor. Even by the standards of the Third Ward, this place is old-fashioned, but I suppose that’s only to be expected. I sit, years of etiquette lessons falling into place automatically, and give a polite smile to the boy who comes in with a steaming pot of tea.
Kosura arrives a few moments after that, the boy holding the door open and sliding it closed behind her. She wears a rough black robe, belted in white, and the beautiful hair I remember is shaved peach-fuzz close. Her injuries have mostly healed, but there’s a patchy white scar beside her left eye. Though she moves with her customary grace, there’s still a detectable limp. I suspect there always will be.
My heart does a queer flop in my chest, as it always does when I see her. Kosura was my best friend at Grandma Tadeka’s. She was the only one I trusted enough to talk about my encounter with Garo, and I can still remember her blushing face as she teased me about opening my shirt to help out a boy. Her starstruck certainty as she declared Garo must be in love with me.
It’s hard to imagine the young woman in front of me giggling about a flirtation. There’s a quiet calm to her that belies the horror she’s been through. She was captured by the Immortals, along with Grandma and the rest at the hospital, and was one of the few who survived the attentions of their interrogators long enough for us to rescue them. Even then, bruised and broken, she’d seemed more hurt by Grandma’s death than her own suffering.
And now she’s running a cult, with all these fanatics calling her Teacher. The cynical part of my mind can’t help but sneer.
“Tori,” she says, kneeling on the cushion opposite me and settling back on her heels. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You too,” I say, already feeling awkward.
“You’re well?”
“Well enough.” I scratch the back of my head. “You?”
“Well, by the Blessed One’s grace. We live each day in hope of His imminent return.”
“Right,” I mutter. “That.”
Theology isn’t my specialty, and I never paid as much attention to my supplicator as I probably should have. As best I understand it, some accounts of the Blessed One’s life record that before his ascent to Heaven, he said he would be reunited with believers. While most supplicators have held this to mean that we would go to him, if we were good enough, the Returners have decided it’s the other way around—that the Blessed One is coming back, to punish the wicked and reward the righteous. There are prophecies, apparently.
“You think I’m misguided,” Kosura says quietly.
“I didn’t say that.”
“I know you, remember?” She smiles, and just for a moment she looks like the old Kosura again, laughing as we do laundry. “Stay here with me, Tori. Just for a few days. If you read the texts yourself—”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a few days.” I rub my eyes with my palms. It’s barely noon, and I’m already exhausted. “The Legion is coming, the militia is already pressing us, and we’re running out of food.” I fix her with a level stare. “I need you to open the temple granaries. The soldiers on the wall are on short rations as it is.”
Kosura chews her lip for a moment, then shakes her head. “I can’t.”
Anger flares in my chest. “This is no time for everyone to start looking out for themselves.”
“It’s not about looking out for ourselves. If the temples are well-supplied, it’s because people have entrusted that food to us knowing it would be used in accordance with the Blessed’s principles. If those in need come to us, of course we will help them, but only if they abide by the proscriptions the Blessed One laid down in his teachings.”