Scar Night Page 0,6
“I won’t name names.” The wrinkles deepened. “It was Borelock, that bloodless pickthank. Skulking in the shadows like a damn Shettie saboteur, watching everything, as if it were any of his business. At least he came to me this time….” His voice trailed off.
“Still,” the old man added eventually, “can’t say I approve. Parts of the temple roof are rotten through.” He rapped his stick against the window ledge. “Dangerous. Don’t want you falling off and breaking your neck.”
Dill stole a glance at the Presbyter but saw no trace of insincerity there. “It won’t happen again,” he said, and right then he meant it. The whip scars on his back tightened, reminding him that Borelock hadn’t always taken his discoveries to the Presbyter.
Presbyter Sypes was examining the window ledge, as if he expected the stone to crumble at any moment. “Just be careful,” he said. “The temple is no place for foolish mistakes. Dangerous, you understand?”
A gust of wind shook the window glass in its lead surrounds, howled in the chimney. The fire crackled, wavered. Candles guttered. Dill felt the night outside crowding in on them, a pressure behind the windows, pushing, searching for a way in. He swallowed, nodded quickly.
The Presbyter sucked in his cheeks, then let them slacken. “I’d better be off,” he grumbled. “Far too much paperwork for me to be wasting my time here.” He rose unsteadily, his eyes focused inwardly on whatever toils lay ahead of him. “Power shifts among the nobles,” he muttered. “Trade, sciences, censuses, accounts, everything from supplies to bills to taxes to wages to stories to recipes to…hah!…poetry.” His shoulders slumped. “It never ends. The Codex grows fatter, the pillars in the temple library are full of books, stuffed to bursting, and I’m buried under the pages yet to be squeezed in. No place to put it all. How long does it take to build a new storage pillar, eh? Stonemason’s been at it for months now, for months.” He glanced around. “You haven’t seen him, have you? The stonemason?”
“No, Your Grace.”
“Thought not. I think the fellow’s died. Or gone and thrown himself into the abyss.” He sighed. “The fools still do that, you know? One whiff of hard work and they jump, disappear, slip down between the chains like heathens. As if Ulcis would accept unblessed corpses!” The Presbyter rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know, Dill. I don’t know where it will end.”
It seemed to Dill that Presbyter Sypes was ageing ten years for every one that passed. His fingers were wasted, ink-stained, curled into claws, as though still clutching his quill. But the Presbyter would struggle on, year after year, collating, ordering, and binding the city records, filling the pillars in his library with books that no one would ever read.
Until it finally kills him.
Back hunched, the old priest shuffled across the cell. “God help me,” he said, “if I spot him down there, plotting with the dead, I’ll wring his neck. I’ll have no skulduggery in my temple, or under it. None. I won’t stand for any of their nonsense.”
Dill rushed to get the door.
“Someone’s got to keep an eye on them.” The Presbyter jabbed his walking stick at the floor. “Got to make sure they aren’t up to anything unsavoury. This blasted wind, I swear it’s them. Listen to it: the dead moan more than the living. They’re restless, always restless before the ceremony.” He paused on the landing, and his expression softened. “Not nervous, Dill?”
“No, Your Grace.”
“Good lad.” Presbyter Sypes squeezed Dill’s shoulder, then released it. “About tomorrow…” He looked uncomfortable. “Your overseer will be here to collect you in time for the mourners’ bell. Your instruction will begin after the ceremony.”
Dill had been expecting this. John Reed Burrsong had been overseer to his father and to his father’s older brother, Dill’s uncle Sewender. A highly respected soldier and scholar, Burrsong had been instructing temple archons for more than fifty years. Dill had been eight or nine when he’d last seen the old overseer. Burrsong had looked to be more than a hundred years old back then, but he was as tough as old armour—still able wield his great iron sword to best men half his age.
“That’s right,” the Presbyter said. “Your sword. You ought to know how to use it, yes? And there are other things: poisons, decorum, and diplomacy.” He waited for an acknowledgement.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“The overseer can explain it all better than I can. Be here in the morning. You’ll get along—bound to