When True Night Falls by C.S. Friedman Page A

little was left—but all that he’d saved was a faint glow, a fleeting warmth, a mere ghost of the Church’s most powerful Working. He held it for a moment, drawing strength from the memories it conjured—then put it away carefully, reverently, deep within the folds of clothing inside his trunk.
    Then: clean hair, neatly brushed. Spotless fingernails. Fresh shave. He ran down the checklist in his mind, the do’s and don‘t’s that a man must observe when going from the field to the court. Damien had done it so many times now that he could no longer remember whether the list had been one of his own devising, or the parting gift of a well-meaning tutor.
    At last he was finished. There was a crude mirror among his possessions, a polished flat of tin twice the length of his hand; he held it so that it reflected his face, then moved it slowly so that he might observe the whole length of his person. Which was as it should be: the person of a priest, not a warrior. He stood transformed.
    Now, he thought, Now I’m ready.
    With a prayer on his lips, he went to join the captain.

    The ship was even larger than it had seemed from a distance, with a span that dwarfed the Golden Glory and made its small rowboat seem like a minnow flitting about its prow. If they meant for it to impress us , Damien thought, it’s working . The graceful curve of the hull as it swept clear of the water hinted at structural dynamics more complex than anything the Glory’s designers had been familiar with; when Damien looked at the captain he saw stark envy in the man’s eyes, and a cold calculation that said if they survived, if they were permitted to make contact with the natives, he was damned well going to get a look at the schematics for the thing.
    A ladder was dropped from the starboard side, along with grappling lines of braided steel. The sailor who had rowed them across brought them in with such precision that it was no trial to catch the lowest rung, and no great challenge to affix the great hooks—foreign in form though they were—to the iron rings provided for that purpose.
    “You first,” the captain said, holding the ladder taut.
    “Don’t you think—”
    “I’ve done this more times than you have, Reverend. Go up while I’m bracing it and count your blessings.”
    He did so, not mentioning that if he had climbed ice-clad ropes with his bare hands over Death’s Gorge in Atria he could certainly handle this. It didn’t seem a good time to argue.
    They were waiting on the deck, a crowd of people as still and silent as the wood they stood upon. As Damien gave the captain and his crewmen a hand up, he studied them, trying to do it as unobtrusively as possible. Twelve guards, in meticulously tailored uniforms ill-suited to naval service; that meant Someone Important was probably on board, who had brought his soldiers with him. They were all armed, and ready for trouble. Four men and a woman, in uniforms not unlike that of the Glory’s crew: officers of this ship, perhaps? Three men and two women who could not be identified by their dress, save that it looked expensive; their stance proclaimed them to be civilians. Several figures moving in the background, swathed in dun robes that covered them from neck to wrist and ankle. And one man in the center of it all, whose bearing would have proclaimed his power even if his attire had not. Tall, proud, openly suspicious, he wore the robes of Damien’s Church as if he had been born to them. White silk split open down the front to reveal close-fitting civilian garments, a mixture of priest’s regalia and common attire that might have seemed blasphemous but for his attitude, which made it clear that everything he did and everything he wore was utterly correct. His skin was a rich brown, doubly dramatic against the white of his outer robe, and the sun picked out copper highlights along high cheekbones, a stern forehead, a strong jawline. His features were broad and well-formed and his