Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

The meetings were torture. Nothing worthwhile ever came about at the meetings. They sometimes lasted hours. There were people, though, who lived for the meetings so they could stand up in front of others and talk about the glory of the Order. It was their shining hour, their time to be somebody, to be important.

Those who didn’t show up for the meetings were used as examples of people who weren’t properly committed to the cause of the Order. If the absen

t person didn’t mend his ways, it was possible he could end up being suspected of subversion. The lack of truth to the suspicion was irrelevant. Stating the charge made some people feel more important in a land where equality was held as the highest ideal.

Subversion seemed to be a dark cloud hovering constantly over the Old World. It wasn’t at all unusual to see the city guard taking people into custody on suspicion of subversion. Torture produced confessions, which proved the veracity of the accuser. The people who spoke at length at the meetings had, by this logic, accurately pointed a finger at a number of insurrectionists, as evidenced by their confessions.

The undercurrent of tension in Altur’Rang left many worried over the constant scourge of insurrection—coming from the New World, it was said. Officials of the Order wasted no time in stamping it out whenever it was discovered. Other people were so consumed with fear that the finger would turn toward them that the speakers at the workers’ group meetings were assured of having a large number of zealous supporters.

In many a public square, as a constant reminder of what would happen should you fall into the wrong company, the bodies of subversives were left to hang from high poles until the birds picked their bones clean. The running joke, if an incautious person said anything that sounded at all out of line, was “You looking to be buried in the sky?”

Richard yawned again as they turned down the street toward the meeting hall. “I don’t remember the stain that looks like a horse’s rear end.”

Rocks crunched beneath their boots as they walked down the side of the dark street. Off ahead of them, in the distance, he could see Ishaq’s lantern swinging as the man hurried to the meeting.

“You were paying attention to something else at the time. It’s the room where those three live.”

“Three what?”

A number of other people, some he knew, most he didn’t, hastened along the street on their way to the meeting.

Richard remembered then. He stopped.

“You mean the place where those three bullies live—the three with the knives?”

He could just barely see her nod in the dim light. “That’s the place.”

“Great.” Richard wiped a hand across his face as they started out again. “Did you ask if we could have a different room?”

“New people in the city are fortunate to get rooms. Rooms are assigned as your name comes up. If you turn it down, you go back to the bottom of the list.”

“Did you have to give the landlord any money, yet?”

She shrugged. “Just what I had.”

Richard ground his teeth as he walked. “That’s all we have for the rest of the week.”

“I can stretch the soup.”

Richard didn’t trust her. She probably somehow saw to it that they got that particular room. He suspected that she wanted to see what he would do about the three young men, now that he was forced into the situation. She was always doing little things, asking odd questions, making bold statements, just to see what his reaction would be, how he would handle matters. He couldn’t imagine what it was she wanted from him.

He began to worry about the three. He remembered quite clearly how Cara’s Agiel had caused Kahlan to suffer the same pain as Nicci. If those three abused Nicci, Kahlan would suffer it, too. That thought made him go cold and sweaty with worry.

At the workers’ group meeting, Richard and Nicci sat on benches at the rear of a smoky room while people up front spoke about the glory of the Order, and how it helped all people to live a moral life. Richard’s mind drifted to the brook behind the house he had built, to the sunlit summer afternoons watching Kahlan dangle her feet in the water. He ached with longing as his mind’s eye traced the curve of her legs. There were speeches about every worker’s duty to their fellow man. Many of the discourses were given in a droning monotone, having been repeated so often that it was clear that the words were meaningless, and that only the act of saying them mattered. Richard recalled Kahlan laughing as he caught the fish he’d put in jars for her. Many of the people, the group leaders, or citizen spokesmen, delivered with passion and fire their praise for the ways of the Order. A few people stood up and talked about those who weren’t there, giving their names, saying what poor attitudes they had toward the welfare of their fellow workers. Whispers passed among the crowd.

After the speeches were given, some of the workers’ wives stood up and explained that they had extra need of late because they had just had new children, or their husbands were laid up, or the relatives they cared for were ill. After each spoke, there was a show of hands. If you agreed to do the right thing and have the group help them, then you raised your hand.

The names of these who didn’t raise their hand were noted. Ishaq had explained to Richard that you were allowed not to raise your hand, if you didn’t agree, but if you did it very often, you were put on a watch list. Richard didn’t know what a watch list was, but it was easy enough to surmise, and Ishaq had told Richard that he didn’t want to be on one, and to see to it that he raised his hand more often than not.

Richard raised it every time. He didn’t really care what happened. He had no interest in taking part, no interest in trying to make things better, and no interest in how well or poorly people’s lives went. Most seemed to want the comfort of the Order running their lives, relieving them of the burden of thinking on their own. Just like Anderith. Nicci seemed surprised, and occasionally even disappointed, to see his hand go up every time, but didn’t object or question.

He was hardly even aware of his hand going up. He was smiling inwardly as he recalled the wonder in Kahlan’s expression, the astonishment in her green eyes, when she saw Spirit for the first time. Richard would have carved a mountain for her, just to see her tearful joy in seeing something she admired, something she cherished, something she valued.

Another man spoke, complaining about the conditions, how unfair they were, and how he had been forced to quit rather than subject himself to such abuse by the transport company. He was the man who had quit and left Richard to handle the loads by himself. Richard raised his hand along with all the others to grant the man full wages for six months in recompense.

After the show of hands, and some whispering and scratching on paper as all the obligations were figured up, the healthy working members were assessed their just share to help those in need. Those who were able, Richard had been told, had a duty to produce with all their effort in order to help those who couldn’t.

When men’s names were called, they stood to hear the share to be taken from their wages the next week. Because he was new, Richard’s name was called last. He stood, staring off across the dimly lit room at the people in moth-eaten coats sitting behind the long table made of two old doors. Ishaq sat at one end, going along with the others in everything. Several of the women still had their heads together. When they finished, they whispered to the chairman and he nodded.

“Richard Cypher, being as you are new, you still have some catching up to do on your duty to your workers’ group. Your next weeks wages are assessed as due in aid.”

Richard stood dumbly for a moment. “How am I to eat—to pay my rent?”

People in the room turned to frown at him. The chairman slapped his hand on the table, calling for silence.

“You should thank the Creator to be blessed with good health so as you can work, young man. Right now, there are those who are not as fortunate in life as you, those with greater need than you. Suffering and need comes before selfish personal enrichment.”

Richard sighed. What did it really matter? After all, he was lucky in life.

“Yes, sir. I see what you mean. I’m happy to volunteer my share toward those with needs.”

He wished Nicci hadn’t given away all their money.

“Well,” he said to Nicci as they shuffled out into the night, “I guess we can ask the landlord for the rent money back. We can stay on where we were staying before, until I can work some more and save up some money.”

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“They don’t give rent money back,” she said. “The landlord will understand our need and let our debt build until we can start paying on it. Next meeting, you just have to go up before the review board and explain your hardship. If you present it properly, they will give you a hardship charity to pay your rent.”

Richard was exhausted. He felt like he were having some kind of silly dream.

“Charity? It’s my wages—for the work I do.”

“That’s a selfish way of looking at it, Richard. The job is at the grace of the workers’ group, the company, and the Order.”

He was too tired to argue. Besides, he didn’t expect any justice in anything done in the name of the Order. He just wanted to go to their new room and get some sleep.

When they opened the door, one of the three youths was pawing through Nicci’s pack. Holding some of her underthings in one hand, he aimed a smirk back over his shoulder at them.

“Well, well,” he said as he stood. He still wore no shirt. “Looks like the two drowned rats have found a hole to live in.” His leering gaze slid to Nicci. He wasn’t looking at her face.

Nicci snatched the pack away first, then her things from his other hand. She stuffed her personal clothes back in the pack while he watched, grinning the whole time. Richard feared she might abandon the link to Kahlan in order to use her power, but she only glared at the youth.

The room reeked of mold. The low ceiling made Richard feel uncomfortably hemmed in. The ceiling had once been whitewashed, but was now dark with soot from candles and lamps, making the room feel cavelike. A candle sitting on a rusted bracket by the door provided the only light. A wardrobe stood crookedly in the corner in front of dirty walls spotted with flyblows. The wardrobe was missing a door. Two wooden chairs at a table under one small window on the far wall were the only place to sit, other than the warped and gouged pine floor. The small squares of window glass were opaque under a variety of different-colored layers of paint. Through a small triangle in the corner where the glass was broken out, Richard could see the gray wall of the next building.