Paia toys with her breakfast. Usually she is infused with a reverent, energetic calm for many days after worshiping the God. Usually she goes about her Temple duties with a pious intensity that inspires both her subordinates and the Faithful alike.
“What does he say to you?” Luco ventured once, as they prepared the Sanctuary for a water ritual. He smoothed the red altar cloth absolutely flat and lined up the twelve candlesticks just so, six to either side of the sacred golden bowl.
“It’s not what he says, it’s what he does.”
A candle poised in each hand, Luco gazed at her, his lips slightly parted. His blue eyes were particularly clear and guileless.
“He fills me with light.”
“Light.” Luco sighed. “How wonderful. I would give anything to . . .” He stopped, abashed. “Forgive me, my Priestess. I don’t mean to presume.”
Deeply into her calm that day, Paia was feeling generous. “Perhaps if you went to him, Luco . . .”
The priest’s bronzed cheeks paled visibly. “Enter the Sanctum? Me? I can’t imagine it.”
Luco, First Son that he is, has never touched the God, has never laid a palm to the vital heat of the God’s shimmering skin. Not even once. He says his restraint is born of worship and profound respect, but Paia sees the primal terror barely submerged in Luco’s eyes when the God is near. She is often amazed herself that her love for the God so readily overcomes her fear of him, that she alone, of all the God’s servants and Faithful, can bring herself into contact with his physical presence without swooning in terror. Luco is a brave man, for all his fussiness and vanity. His big muscular body bears the scars of his service in the God’s Wars of Conversion, before he was elevated to the priesthood. Not many men or women have made that leap. It’s a testimony to Luco’s management and political skills, but to his nerve as well. Yet he cannot bring himself to face the God alone in the dark furnace of the Sanctum. Paia tries to imagine Son Luco in holy ecstasy. It might all be just a little too messy for him.
Bringing her attention back to her uneaten breakfast, she sees there’s no melon on her plate this morning. The kitchen will surely put up the defense that it’s unhealthy to eat the same thing every morning, and that the delicate egg-and-cheese pastries are a worthy substitute. But Paia suspects that they’ve run to the end of the melons earlier than usual in the Temple garden, like with the spring strawberries, and she’ll see no more until next season. For no particular reason, she recalls all those blank blue screens on the House Comp’s monitor bank. She should have asked him what they meant. She would have, had the God not summoned her. Paia slumps in her chair, inexplicably disconsolate. Perhaps the blackberries will be bearing soon.
She pushes the plate away, gets up, and finds herself pacing. This odd restlessness. It’s so unfamiliar, she doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s like she’s waiting for something to happen, but there’s no reason to be expecting anything. Except for the occasional attempt on her life, there are no events in the life of the Citadel, only the endless rolling out of the Temple calendar: daily, monthly, yearly routine and ritual. Perhaps it’s this most recent attempt, not only the threat but the humiliation of it. Perhaps she’s absorbed some of the God’s concern about these enemies he mentioned. She wishes he had told her more, but he’d refused to discuss the matter further.
Paia wonders if Luco knows anything about the God’s enemies. She’s aware that he and the God have long sessions together in Luco’s office when the God is safely in man-form, to deal with the management of the Temple and its estates. Do they discuss other things as well? Would Luco even tell her if they did? She checks the Temple calendar. Luco has the morning free until the noon Call to Worship, which she allows him to officiate at without her. She throws on an off-duty red Temple robe and hurries downstairs to look for him.
The affairs of the Temple and the Citadel are managed out of a suite of rooms on the second level, rooms that Paia’s father, in happier days, had used as reception rooms for meetings with members of the local communities, with village elders, with the occasional hardy visitor from outside. In one of Paia’s earliest and most vivid childhood memories, she is watching from the balcony of her nursery, as dozens of shining hovers arrive, one by one, and settle on the narrow valley floor like a gathering of dragonflies sunning their wings. Each is met by her father’s last functioning APC, and the passengers are transported in armored safety to the Citadel. This is a Big Important Meeting, her nanny explains, so we mustn’t bother Daddy and Mommy while they’re tending to their guests. The conferences and receptions went on for days, and late into the nights, and then the hovers went away. Paia saw one or two after that, dropping in for brief visits, but soon they stopped coming altogether. And the reception rooms fell into disuse, especially after her mother died. Her father let his chief steward assume the day-to-day operation of the Citadel and increasingly withdrew to the Library and his collection of precious books.
When Luco was promoted to First Son, he asked for these rooms to use as his office. Paia, eager to see them alive again, readily agreed. Just as she’d expected he would, Luco made their cleanup and restoration his first major project as operational head of the Temple. Not until their teak moldings and parquet floors were gleaming again, and their coffered ceilings were repainted and regilded, could he settle himself and his staff into them comfortably. Though Luco would protest that he is most fulfilled by his Temple duties to the God, Paia thinks he’s at his most satisfied when seated behind her father’s vast fruitwood desk, with a pile of production reports and levy accounts in front of him.
But it is quiet in the office today. Luco’s staff, four handsome young Second Sons, glance up from their work as Paia barges through the front doors. They fall to their knees right there at their desks.
“Mother Paia,” they murmur in unison.
Paia stops, inclines her head graciously, then motions them to rise. Luco has them so well trained, it’s a pity to waste it. She has some difficulty telling the lesser Sons apart, as they all seem to look a lot like Luco, who—of course—is trying to look like the God. In desperation, she resorts to classification by body type and skin tone. “Is the First Son available to speak with me?”
“In his quarters, High Priestess,” replies the taller, darker one, the one with the almond eyes, Luco’s current favorite.
Luco’s living quarters are in the Temple proper, which means that if Paia should encounter one of the Twelve on the way there, the foolish woman will insist on dropping whatever she’s doing in order to follow and attend the High Priestess. Paia does not wish to be attended. She wishes to speak to Luco in private. She takes the back way. She has become very skilled at this by now. It’s simply a matter of running counter to their extremely rigid expectations. It confuses them completely. Paia arrives at Luco’s door free of encumbrance.
Originally, the God assigned a single guard to the First Son’s door. The number appears to have risen to three. Paia wonders whose idea this was. Is Luco feeling some greater concern for his own security, or has the God’s estimation of the value of his First Son risen accordingly? As High Priestess, Paia enters any door in Citadel or Temple without warning. Out of respect for Luco, she makes an exception in his case. She directs one of the guardswomen to announce her.
Luco is freshly shaved and washed and wrapped in a soft white towel when Paia enters the second of his string of three windowless rooms. The first is a parlor done in red and gold, stiff little chairs and all, borrowed from the most formal of the three unused dining rooms upstairs. The middle room is more stripped down, a domestic space lined with exercise equipment and cedar taken from one of the Citadel’s defunct saunas. Paia’s never seen the third room, his bedroom. She wonders what it’s like. Like Luco’s fantasy of the God’s Sanctum, perhaps. She’s tried before to get a glimpse of it, but the door is always firmly shut.
Luco is seated on a padded stool, having his long hair combed out by his chamberboy. The boy kneels when he sees Paia and does not look up. Paia takes the comb from his hand but has to tap him on his thin shoulder to get his attention in order to dismiss him. When he’s gone, she moves around behind the priest to continue what the boy had started.
“I’m not sure this falls within your description of duties, my priestess,” says Luco wryly. But he makes no move to stop her as she works the comb and her fingers through his damp and tangled locks. “What can I do for you?”
“Can’t I just come visiting?” She works her way around a particularly knotted tangle, her fingers brushing the soft skin of his neck.
Luco wraps his towel a little tighter. “It would surprise me. No, let me put it this way. It would worry me.”
“Oh, Luco. Are you afraid I’ll try to seduce you?”
“The thought did cross my mind.”
She laughs and sets the comb aside, slipping both hands into the mass of his curls. Gently, she begins to massage his scalp.
Luco lets out a ragged breath. “You’d be very good at it if you picked the right guy.”
“I thought I’d picked the right guy last time, and look what it got me.” She leans over, kisses the top of his head. “There, there, don’t worry. I know I’m lustful, as you say, and way too old to be a virgin, but what I really need is a friend. Someone to talk to.”
“I’m your friend,” he protests. “We talk.”
“We talk about the Temple. We talk about business.”
“We talk about the Suitors . . .”
She squeezes his head between both palms and gives it a little shake. “Yes. Because you enjoy it so much.”
“Well . . .”
“I mean, really talk.” She goes back to her massaging.
Luco lolls his head back a little, letting her strong hands do their pleasurable work.
Paia laughs. “You are such a sensualist, Luco. Whatever are you doing in the priesthood?”
His eyes are closed. He grins. “Are they mutually exclusive?”
“They appear to be in my case.”
“Ah, but you have the God.”
His grin fades. Paia feels new tension in the strong muscles of his neck. Her reply has come back at him too sharply, and as often happens, she’s alarmed him. “Forgive me, my priestess. If I misspoke . . .”
She smoothes her hands over his unlined forehead. “Oh, Luco, you know you can say anything to me you want.”
But the moment of real intimacy is over. Now he will just play at it, as he usually does. He lets her keep working on him, but he sits up a little straighter now and his eyes are alert. “So what did you want to talk about?”
“Just stuff. Things I’ve been wondering about. Like, what goes on in the villages . . . or outside.”
Luco is silent.
With her fingertips doing detailed work at his temples, Paia asks, “Has the God said anything to you recently about some enemies he’s concerned about?”
Now Luco is both silent and very still. She can feel his stillness translating through her hands as they cradle his skull. “Enemies? Of the Faith, you mean? Has another heresy been discovered?” He sits up and out of her grip and turns to face her. “Why wasn’t I told of this?”
“He didn’t say anything about the Temple. He said it was an old heresy, ‘the oldest one of all.’ He said these were ‘ancient enemies.’ What did he mean, do you think?”
Luco studies her a moment, as if assessing not so much the truth of her report, but her motive in offering it to him. “You mean, enemies from outside? Did he say from ‘outside’?”
Somehow, it had not yet occurred to Paia to put that particular two and two together. But of course, it makes sense. The God had originally appeared from outside, after all. “He didn’t say it, but what else could he mean?” She recalls now her surprise that the God could only “sense” these enemies. “I think he doesn’t exactly know where they are.” The priest frowns, and instantly Paia catches his anxiety. “Luco, what kind of enemies could the God be worried about? Who could be that powerful?”
“Or, what could be . . .?”
Now they both fall silent. Paia knows she’s veering dangerously close to questions about the God’s claims of Omniscience and Omnipotence. Luco knows it, too, and he definitely does not want to go there. He picks up the comb from where she’s laid it, to finish where she left off. “I have to get ready for the noon Call.”
Paia sighs. “Of course you do.”
“I’ll let you know if I hear anything about this myself.”
“I know you will.” She watches him struggle to comb his hair out for braiding and keep his towel firmly about his waist at the same time. The towel, she notes, bears her father’s initials. “Here, sit. Let me do it.”
And while she braids his hair up in the triple plait he favors for daytime rituals, Paia is pondering where she should go next to find someone to talk to. That is, really talk to.