Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

Mother smacked her mouth again, harder the second time. “I’ll not have you disgrace me before Brother Narev and my friends with such insensitive talk. Do you hear? You don’t know what made him do it. Perhaps he has sick children at home, and he needs money to buy medicine. Here he sees some spoiled rich child, and he finally breaks, knowing his own child has been cheated in life by the likes of you and all your fine things.

“You don’t know what burdens life has handed the man. Don’t you dare to judge people for their actions just because you are too callous and insensitive to take the time to understand them.”

“But I think—”

Mother smacked her across the mouth a third time, hard enough to stagger her. “You think? Thinking is a vile acid that corrodes faith! It is your duty to believe, not think. The mind of man is inferior to that of the Creator. Your thoughts—the thoughts of anyone—are worthless, as all mankind is worthless. You must have faith that the Creator has invested His goodness in those wretched souls.

“Feelings, not thinking, must be your guide. Faith, not thinking, must be your only path.”

Nicci swallowed back her tears. “Then what should I do?”

“You should be ashamed that the world treats those poor souls so cruelly that they would so pitifully strike out in confusion. In the future, you should find a way to help people like that because you are able and they are not—that is your duty.”

That night, when her father came home and tiptoed into her room to see if she was tucked in snugly, Nicci clutched two of his big fingers together and held them tight to her cheek. Even though her mother said he was a wicked man, it felt better than anything else in the world when he knelt beside the bed and silently stroked her brow.

In her work on the streets, Nicci came to understand the needs of many of the people there. Their problems seemed insurmountable. No matter what she did, it never seemed to resolve anything. Brother Narev said it was only a sign that she wasn’t giving enough of herself. Each time she failed, at Brother Narev’s or Mother’s urging, Nicci redoubled her efforts.

One night at dinner, after being in the fellowship several years, she said, “Father, there is a man I’ve been trying to help. He has ten children and no job. Will you hire him, please?”

Father looked up from his soup. “Why?”

“I told you. He has ten children.”

“But what sort of work can he do? Why would I want him?”

“Because he needs a job.”

Father set down his spoon. “Nicci, dear, I employ skilled workers. That he has ten children is not going to shape steel, now is it? What can the man do? What skills has he?”

“If he had a skill, Father, he could get work. Is it fair that his children should starve because people won’t give him a chance?”

Father looked at her as if inspecting a wagonload of some suspicious new metal. Mother’s narrow mouth turned up in a little smile, but she said nothing.

“A chance? At what? He has no skill.”

“With a business as big as yours, surely you can give him a job.”

He tapped a finger on the stem of his spoon as he considered her determined expression. He cleared his throat. “Well, perhaps I could use a man to load wagons.”

“He can’t load wagons. He has a bad back. He hasn’t been able to work for years because of his back troubling him so.”

Father’s brow drew down. “His back didn’t prevent him from begetting ten children.”

Nicci wanted to do good, and so she met his stare with a steady look of her own. “Must you be so intolerant, Father? You have jobs, and this man needs one. He has hungry children needing to be fed and clothed. Would you deny him a living just because he has never had a fair chance in life? Are you so rich that all your gold has blinded your eyes to the needs of humble people?”

“But I need—”

“Must you always frame everything in terms of what you need, instead of what others need? Must everything be for you?”

“It’s a business—”

“And what is the purpose of a business? Isn’t it to employ those who need work? Wouldn’t it be better if the man had a job instead of having to humiliate himself begging? Is that what you want? For him to beg rather than work? Aren’t you the one who always speaks so highly of hard work?”

Nicci was firing the questions like arrows, getting them off so fast he couldn’t get a word through her barrage. Mother smiled as Nicci rolled out words she knew by heart.

“Why must you reserve your greatest cruelty for the least fortunate among us? Why can’t you for once think of what you can do to help, instead of always thinking of money, money, money? Would it hurt you to hire a man who needs a job? Would it Father? Would it bring your business to an end? Would that ruin you?”

The room echoed her noble questions. He stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. He looked as if real arrows had struck him. His jaw worked, but no words came out. He didn’t seem able to move; he could only gape at her.

Mother beamed.

“Well…” he finally said, “I guess…” He picked up his spoon and stared down into his soup. “Send him around, and I’ll give him a job.”

Nicci swelled with a new sense of pride—and power. She had never known it would be so easy to stagger her father. She had just bested his selfish nature with nothing more than goodness.

Father pushed back from the table. “I… I need to go back to the shop.” His eyes searched the table, but he would not look at Nicci or Mother. “I just remembered… I have some work I must see to.”

After he had gone, Mother said, “I’m glad to see that you have chosen the righteous path, Nicci, instead of following his evil ways. You will never regret letting your love of mankind guide your feelings. The Creat

or will smile upon you.”

Nicci knew she had done the right thing, the moral thing, yet the thought that came to haunt her victory was the night her father had come into her room and silently stroked her brow as she had held two of his fingers to her cheek.

The man went to work for Father. Father never mentioned anything about it. His work kept him busy and away from home. Nicci’s work took more and more of her time, as well. She missed seeing that look in his eyes. She guessed she was growing up.

The next spring, when Nicci was thirteen, she came home one day from her work at the fellowship to find a woman in the sitting room with Mother. Something about the woman’s demeanor made the hair at the back of Nicci’s neck stand on end. Both women rose as Nicci set aside her list of names of people needing things.

“Nicci, darling, this is Sister Alessandra. She’s traveled here from the Palace of the Prophets, in Tanimura.”

The woman was older than Mother. She had a long braid of fine brown hair looped around in a circle and pinned to the back of her skull like a loaf of braided bread. Her nose was a little too big for her face, and she was plain, but not at all ugly. Her eyes focused on Nicci with an unsettling intensity, and they didn’t dart about, the way Mother’s always did.

“Was it quite a journey, Sister Alessandra?” Nicci asked after she had curtsied. “All the way from Tanimura, I mean?”

“Three days is all,” Sister Alessandra said. A smile grew on her face as she took in Nicci’s bony frame. “My, my. So little, yet, for such grownup work.” She held out a hand toward a chair. “Won’t you sit with us, dear?”

“Are you a Sister with the fellowship?” Nicci asked, not really understanding who the woman was.

“The what?”

“Nicci,” Mother said, “Sister Alessandra is a Sister of the Light.”

Astonished, Nicci dropped into a chair. Sisters of the Light had the gift, just like her and Mother. Nicci didn’t know very much about the Sisters, except that they served the Creator. That still didn’t settle her stomach. To have such a woman right there in her house was intimidating—like when she stood before Brother Narev. She felt an inexplicable sense of doom.