Chapter 10: The Candle At Home

Flickering lamplight from out on the street casting pleasing shadows across the illuminations in the Candle’s book. Wyrms and stars seemed to dance around the borders of the pages of precise script. He sat with his windows open to the mild night air. The day's troubles had been set aside for an old wine and a far older text. It was a remembrance of a philosopher by the pupils of his school, a school which was now more myth than memory. The Candle had been reading for an hour without pause, when a missing page jolted him back to his surroundings. Three sheets had been cleanly cut from the book. He pursed his lips and shifted in his chair, suddenly aware of discomfort in his back.

Distracted now, the Candle looked out the second floor window at the foggy street below. A muffled set of footsteps on the damp cobblestones came and went quickly, but the Candle saw nobody. The pages would have been interesting. The authors had been describing the debate that had discredited the philosopher's mentor. The philosophies in question were steeped in superstition and old beliefs, but the Candle knew that truths uncovered by brilliant men with limited perspectives can still be fascinating when approached with better understanding, and these were the foremost minds of their time. The Candle had sympathy for the mentor, a Tyletian by the name of Ramos, who had left his own school in disgrace and had narrowly avoided being ritually dismembered. Three hundred years of hindsight made it clear that Ramos was a necessary casualty in the expansion of the Church. At the time, Tyrus the Undying had only recently proclaimed the Empire in the name of Quelestel, and there had been a very real notion that heretics from the north might march in force on Merendir. Those were precisely the days where no stance but the absolute was acceptable. In a public debate against his most brilliant pupil, Ramos had passionately defended plurality and the coexistance of the old rituals with the doctrines of Quelestel. Ramos had lost, and now the most intimate account of the debate was likely gone forever.

The Candle wondered whether the pages had been excised purposefully, or had merely been reclaimed when materials were scarce. He had decreed that no pages should be cut from old texts, but that was a new policy. For many decades, scribes had taken pages from older works and scrubbed them clean when new paper was not available.

The Candle suspected that the pages had been cut from the book because they had been deemed an ideological threat to Church and Empire by one of his predecessors. The irony of this was that only those who were most devoted to Church and Empire had access to the library, aside from the scribes who were illiterate by tradition, and the knights who were dutifully uninquisitive. One of many massive undertakings of the Church during the reign of Tyrus the Undying had been to collect and organize the scholarship of the Empire in the impenetrable fortress that was the Library of Merendir. A few old manuscripts or reproductions were still at large, prized in underground circles of men and women who fancied themselves renegade philosophers, but honest people were not concerned with such things.

There was a slow knock on his door, and the Candle looked over at it curiously, mildly surprised that he had not been startled. He rarely had callers, and never at this hour. He struggled to his feet, went to the door, and threw back the bolt, thinking as he opened the door that he should have given more consideration to his safety.

It was only the Lash, standing motionless, already stooping in anticipation of moving through the door frame. Perhaps with slight cruelty, born of annoyance at having been disturbed from his reading, the Candle said nothing and merely watched. The Lash’s mouth hung slightly open, waiting expectantly on the stair. The man was a giant, and oddly proportioned, with huge hands and broad shoulders.

"You said to tell you when I knew something," the Lash said. His voice was a hesitant rumble. He seemed to sense that he had done something wrong.

"Please, come in." The Candle stood aside, and the Lash moved through the door, removing his battered hunting cap and straightening to his full, considerable, height. The Candle sighed, confident that the Lash would not perceive the sigh as an insult. He did not bother to explain that the Lash’s report might have waited until morning. Such subtleties of instruction confounded the man, and the ensuing circle of explanations left the Lash disheartened and the Candle aggravated.

"Well, what have you discovered?" The Candle asked.

The Lash had been interviewing a prisoner of particular interest to the Candle, a woman who was somehow wrapped up in the blackmail scheme involving the Lord Commander’s failings and the Candle’s Harvest Festival meeting at the palace boathouse. The letter that the Candle had received demanded the release of a certain prisoner who had been accused of heresy, and he had bowed to their demands. The Candle’s vote had denied the consensus for conviction at the Tribunal. The prisoner had gone free, but the Candle had him followed. He had immediately gone to meet a woman— the Lash’s current guest. Letters in her room matched the handwriting of the blackmail letter. They had arrested her, but the man had escaped.

A new Tribunal had been convened. Tribunals were rare, and this was the second in a matter of weeks. The Candle had observed the fervor with which certain ambitious men in the church had pursued the honor of being appointed to these Tribunals and sent a Rider to the the Most Holy Confessor. The Candle had expressed concern that the instruments of holy justice were being used to play politics. The Most Holy Confessor had replied that, while the Candle was correct in his concern, righteous zeal was to be applauded in these days of decadence and turpitude, and that there could be nothing wrong with a Tribunal, which was by nature a truth-seeking entity.

“They were both in the Order,” the Lash offered, hopefully.

“Which Order?” The Candle asked, wearily.

"The Order of Learned Children of Old Blood. They call it ‘The Order.’"

The Candle knew vaguely of this group. As he understood it, the Order of the Learned Children of Old Blood was a loose confederation of heretics and superstitious peasants who claimed to preserve long forgotten customs and rituals and dabbled in every dark art that came their way. They were enthralled with secrecy, and posed no threat.

"What else?" The Candle asked.

“Then somebody broke in to try to get her out,” the Lash said, relaying his discoveries in matter-of-fact chronological order, “…so I subdued him, and questioned him, too.” The Candle could only stare at him with a bemused smile. The Lash’s interrogation chambers were far below the ground, in the middle of the compound outside the city walls that housed the administrative and training facilities for the Knights of Merendir. A break-in would have taken a remarkable combination of skill and stupidity. It was disturbing that the attempt got as far as it did, but the Candle would consider that later.

“He’s her friend. He’s a commoner. I haven’t questioned him yet. He told her the Council will get them out, because he wanted to make her feel better. I moved him to another room, so they can’t talk, but they’ll still be able to hear each other scream.”

“The Imperial Council?” The Candle asked. That seemed improbable.

The Lash shook his head, looking ashamed for having to correct the Candle.

“The Dark Council.”

“How dramatic,” the Candle commented, then smiled reassuringly when the Lash looked confused. The story of the foiled break-in had softened his disposition toward the Lash, in spite of the inappropriate hour.

The Lash took a deep breath, nodding, and answered, “The Council is part of the Order, but it’s a secret.” He stopped and squinted, then corrected himself. “It’s even more secret. Her uncle is in it and she doesn’t want him to get in trouble. Other people are in it who are important.” The Candle scoffed. The Lash looked at floor ashamed, then said, “The Dark Council had Shervin arrested and executed by the Hidden Guard.”

“The Hidden Guard?” The Candle asked intently, suddenly taking this more seriously. The Lash would not have known of the Hidden Guard. Only a few people did. “Who is Shervin?”

“Shervin is her enemy. He’s in the Cult. He got her arrested.”

“And so the Hidden Guard executed Shervin?”

“Yes.” The Lash said.

“What else? What is the Cult?” The Candle asked.

The Lash shrugged, brushing his hair out of his eyes and looking at the Candle with huge, watery, eyes. If it was true that the Hidden Guard had arrested and executed a man named Shervin, Mardis Dantley would know. The Candle wrote a note to Dantley, admiring the elegance of his own script, sealed the hot wax with his stamp, and gave it to the Lash.

“Deliver this to Mardis Dantley’s quarters, please. Do not wake him. You may leave it in his doorway.”

The Lash nodded, and stood staring at the Candle for a while, until the Candle said, “You may go.”

The Candle returned to his book, but just found himself staring out the window at the drifting fog. The Lash’s account was troubling. He did not believe that any of the heretical organizations in Merendir posed any threat to the Church. But among these trifling conspiracies, but there was— supposedly— at least one person who held a position of great authority. Mardis Dantley would root him out, and the Candle would see him punished, swiftly and viciously. Perhaps that would earn him a reprieve from the Most Holy Confessor, who seemed to have become obsessed with deterring heresy of late.

The Candle sighed. As tired as he was, he doubted that he would sleep that night. He sipped his wine and wondered about the Order, the Council, and the Cult. He sat with his book in his lap, staring out the window at the slowly lightening sky. Eventually, still sitting in his chair by the window, a restless half-sleep came upon him. As the street outside began to wake, the Candle dreamed of conspiracies inside conspiracies, and he wrote letter after letter to the Most Holy Confessor, going over each word again and again, unable to break his obsession, and every word he wrote condemned another person to death.

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