The city was large, and the alley a long path often sloping uphill or angled with steps, so he was sweating when he reached the humble gate through which they entered single-file. Kesh crossed the threshold and crouched to touch the naked feet of a white-clad priest. The holy man frowned as if suspicious of his looks, but gave him the sign to pass into the earth-floored court packed with worshipers: foreigners, slaves, indentured servants, impoverished laborers, the deformed and disfigured, the beggars and the lame. He paid a coin to have a priest fill his bowl with holy water and then he knelt, palms turned upward to face the heavens, as a priest led the sonorous prayer.

“Rid us of all that is evil. Rid us of demons. Rid us of hate. . . .” He dipped a thumb in the water and traced the sign of Straight Order across his forehead. “Increase all that is good. . . .” How easy it was to produce the words, but it was like sowing seed in barren ground. Words are only words, because the gods do not listen, no matter what Zubaidit, or the priests of Beltak, or the Ri Amarah said. They, who believed, were blind, because they preferred blindness. It was easier than seeing the dispassionate cruelty of the world where those in power closed their hands around the throats of the ones they wished to control. They shut their victims behind locked gates and then prayed to their gods to persuade themselves they were doing right.

“Teach me to hate darkness and battle evil. Teach me the Truth.” Bai would scold him for pretending to pray, but by doing so he had escaped the locked gates of the merchants’ compound, hadn’t he? “Peace. Peace. Peace.”

Fine words and noble sentiments. How bright and clean they washed the world. He brushed tears from his cheeks, thinking of Miravia.

Some of the worshipers stood in line for the priest’s cleansing, but Kesh sat down on a bench and rubbed his feet. In courts built farther in toward the center of the temple complex, voices still rose in the extended prayer granted to men of higher rank, and trees offered shade to men who preferred to pray out of the blazing sun. It was already hot, the sun’s light so strong on the whitewashed walls that he had to shade his eyes as he scanned the lingering assembly, wondering if he would see any merchants he recognized from the market, men he might conceivably chat with as they walked back down the alley out of the city. Men who might say too much, or be prone to gossip. Folk did like to gossip. It gave them a sense of power to know what others did not.

“You are a Hundred man.”

Startled, he looked up. Dropped off the bench to his knees. “Holy one. You honor me.”

The priest from the gate stood before him. He had a beard, and his hair was shorn short and shaved bald at the crown. “They are stubborn, the Hundred men, praying to demons who mask as gods. But you pray to the Exalted One.”