The Hand That Cuts the Seal

Before the white fire rose at the altar, Rea Varen looked first to see where the eyes of the people gathered in the square were pointed. The citizens were not looking at Mika's blessing robe.

They were looking at the sacks of grain piled beside the altar. The overlap of the heir's blessing and the harvest rite on the same morning was not the Church's mercy but the poverty of its schedule, and Rea knew it.

Cramming two ceremonies into one day cut the oil, the candles, and the priests' labor in half. It was not God who had trimmed the cost, but the ledger.

The high priest wound a band woven of gold thread around Mika's forehead. Her fourteen-year-old son held his shoulders straight, but his toes turned faintly toward the sacks.

The boy knew it too. What the people gathered in the square today had come to see was not the heir, but bread.

Beside Rea, Doan swept his eyes along the edge of the crowd. He stood with the bearing of a garrison commander, counting how many people were missing from each alley at the square's edge.

An empty alley meant people were massed somewhere else.

A steady sound came from behind the altar. The sound of a foot pressing a treadle, or a heavy wheel turning.

The drums of the ritual music covered it, but they fell out of time by one beat. Rea heard the mismatch.

She did not ask what had gone wrong. She wanted to know who was making the sound.

The sound had the speed of something turned by a person's weight.

Mika glanced sideways at his mother. As if the band were heavy, the boy kept trying to straighten his head.

Rea did not meet her son's eyes. Her task today was not to reassure him, but not to block what he was about to see.

Doan placed a hand on Mika's shoulder. A father's hand that calmed the boy while also holding him back from stepping forward rashly.

The ingredients went into the brazier. By rite, a pillar of white fire should have risen a person's height.

The citizens craned their necks to see the fire. It did not rise.

Inside the brazier, the light swelled briefly, then settled like a dying breath. A thin haze rose over the ash, and the haze drifted sideways instead of up.

The square fell silent. Somewhere a child cried, and the crying sounded unusually loud.

"Stop."

Yoan, the lamp priest, spoke. The young priest's voice was not loud, but it cut through the music.

He did not say it twice. He only stepped once toward the brazier and raised his hand.

Rea saw that hand tremble. Whether it was fear or anger, she could not read from his face.

The high priest did not look at him, and turned a page of the ritual book.

"Continue. Fire reflects the sins of men. If the fire is weak today, it is because the sins of this square are heavy."

A hand slid out through the gap of the door behind the altar. Palm first, fingers after.

The hand tried to press against the threshold and slipped. Rea did not see what it had tried to grasp.

The hand held nothing. It only spread open toward the cold stone of the floor.

White powder was caught under its nails.

The door opened. People spilled out from inside as though collapsing.

They wore gray. Some touched the stone floor with their knees, others with their shoulders.

The high priest said the penitents had finished their prayers, but instead of listening to those words, Rea knelt beside the nearest person. Doan tried to follow a step, then looked toward the crowd and stayed where he was.

Both of them were counting the same thing. How many had fallen, and how many citizens had seen it.

The man's palm was thick with callus. It was the hand of someone who had long pushed a handle at the same angle, in the same spot.

A different place was worn than a knee worn down by prayer. His breathing was shallow, and warm powder had rubbed off onto the edge of his clothes.

Rea caught the powder on her fingertips. It was white, and lukewarm like body heat.

It resembled the powder that came off grain when ground, but finer. She did not bring it to her nose.

Before asking what it was, she checked first whether this person was alive. She pressed her hand to his neck, and his pulse beat fast and thin.

The fallen woman beside him had the same hand. So did the person beside her.

All the people in gray had the same callus in the same place. One person could have that by chance.

If ten people had the same hand, that was not chance but the same work. Rea counted the hands.

There were twelve. She kept the number in her memory.

She did not know a single name yet.

The high priest pointed at the people in gray and called them believers who had finished their penance labor. Rea neither wrote the words down nor challenged them.

She only asked one thing.

"Do you have a register listing these people's names, and how many days they have been here?"

The high priest answered that the register belonged to the Church. Both Rea and Doan understood that the answer meant a register existed.

No one calls a register the Church's own if no register exists.

"It is because of the irreverent crowd."

The high priest spread his arms toward the crowd.

"Their sins are heavy, and the blessing has settled low. The rite ends here today. Go home, all of you, and repent."

The crowd did not go home. They were looking at the storehouse door.

Doan came to Rea's side.

"There are too many starving people in the square."

He said it low.

"If we close the door, there is a riot tonight. Even if we don't, if grain runs short there is a riot tomorrow. Either way, we won't last three days."

Yoan heard it. He hesitated a moment, then spoke while pretending to trace a line of the ritual book with his finger.

"There is white barley in the storehouse. Not for ritual use, but food that can be eaten. The seal belongs to the Church, and I have no authority to break it."

By saying he could not break it, he spoke without saying who could. Rea understood what he was asking.

Saying there was no authority also meant that someone with authority was here.

Doan caught Rea's sleeve briefly.

"If you break the seal, the relationship with the Church ends today. A report will go up to the capital, and it will be written that the margrave desecrated a holy relic."

He was not opposing her, but a man who named the price first.

"Even so, if it must be broken, break it. But the hand that breaks it must be yours. Not the priest's, and not mine."

Rea understood what he meant. Responsibility should not be divided.

Divided responsibility later becomes a blade turned on each other.

A seal woven of gold thread bound the storehouse door. It was a knot stamped with the Church's seal.

A knot that once cut could never be tied again. Rea looked at the ritual knife.

It was the knife just used to cut and retie the gold thread band on Mika's blessing robe. It was in the priest's hand.

If she asked for the knife, the request could be refused. If she cut it after being refused, that would become theft.

She did not hold out her hand. She walked toward the priest, but did not say she would take the knife either.

She simply went to the ritual stand where the knife lay and picked it up. The high priest called her name.

Margrave. The title carried a warning in it.

Rea did not answer. An answer would only buy time, and time was something the people inside the storehouse did not have right now.

Rea stood before the seal. She set the blade against the gold thread knot.

The knot was harder than she expected, and the knife did not cut it in one stroke. On the second try, the thread parted.

The seal fell to the ground and rolled apart in two pieces. The sound of the Church's seal breaking was surprisingly small.

It was like the sound of cloth tearing. Everyone in the square heard that small sound.

"From today, this storehouse is placed under the management of the domain."

Rea said it. She added no excuse and no apology.

"Count them. Divide the mouths to feed from the seed to keep, and take from the first sack for rationing. Carry the fallen inside and give them water. Do not ask questions. Not now."

The high priest tried to block her way. Yoan stepped between them and ordered the clergy to bring stretchers to carry the fallen.

It was the greatest defiance he could manage, and at the same time an act that looked, to any eye, like nothing but mercy. The high priest glared at him, but could not stop mercy in front of a crowd.

Sabin went into the storehouse first. As soon as he entered, he began counting the sacks.

The first sack came up onto the ration table. A citizen at the front of the line received it.

He held it to his chest and stood there for a long while, like someone who could not believe he had received it. The line moved behind him.

Relief spread slowly through the square. Only after people confirmed the weight of grain in their hands did they breathe.

One woman, even after receiving her sack, did not leave the line, and watched the next person receive theirs.

Before that relief could spread all the way through, the sound of hoofbeats came from the entrance of the square. It was a royal herald.

Without even dismounting, he unrolled a scroll stamped with a wax seal and read it aloud. His voice was clearer than the ritual music.

"Hear this, the March of Rohern. As a tithe for the holy war, two thousand sacks of white barley are ordered sent to the capital within ten days. Failure will be treated as treason."

The knife that had cut the seal was still in Rea's hand. The storehouse had just sent out its first sack.

The count Sabin had been keeping stopped. He stood with his fingers still spread, looking at Rea.

His expression spoke first of the distance between the number of sacks just counted and the number two thousand just heard.

Rea did not step toward the herald. She stood still before the storehouse door and set the knife she held down on the ritual stand.

A single strand of gold thread still hung from the blade. She did not remove it.

Ten days. Two thousand sacks.

Before winter had even come to Rohern, the king's holy war arrived first. And in the square, the people who had just taken their first bread into their hands were still standing in line.