Among the Blessed

High-priest Makaereth stared intently at the boy that had been brought in. He’d been shocked at the initial sight of him but had recovered quickly after noting both the wing color and the lack of a slight scar on the chin. Still, it was truly uncanny.

Like all priests above a certain rank, Makaereth had the miniature wings just behind his ears of a skiridian ‘mancer. They were tucked close to his half-shaven head, mixing with his black hair and reaching to around his chin. He was taller than most skiridians, skinny and strong, and what skin that showed from beneath his blue priestly robes bore tattoos marking his devotion to the deity. He’d been high priest when the prince was kidnapped and had managed to pull his church out of that fiasco to where it stood today.

There was a human as well. After studying the boy, who remained quiet and vacant-eyed, Makaereth turned his attention to that one. He was on his knees, forcibly held there by a spear against his back. The guards had roughed him up more than a little which led the high priest to suspect he had either given resistance at being arrested or was an Alannin. Probably both. The two went hand-in-hand.

He also smelled of salt. Must have come off one of the skimmers then.

“Your name. And the name of your ship and her captain.” Makaereth did not ask questions. He demanded answers.

“Didn’t do nothin’ wrong,” the man spat, “You’ve got no right.”

“You are in Skiridi now,” Makaereth retorted sharply. The man had that thick Alannin accent. Probably didn’t know a single word of Skiridi either. Most of his kind expected everyone else to learn their language and never bothered to do the same in return. “In Skiridi, the church is the law, and I am the head of the church. Your name.”

“The Cadre won’t be happy ‘bout this.”

“The Cadre, and your country, won’t know. And probably won’t care over someone so insignificant. Guards. I’m done wasting my time.”

They’d find out the names for him. Makaereth turned back to the boy as they pulled the man to his feet and took him away.

“And your name,” he said softly.

It took the boy a moment to respond. His eyes cleared for a moment as he realized that someone was indeed speaking to him.

“Sparrow,” he said and then lapsed back into dreamy disinterest.

Nickname. Had to be. And the boy had that slight accent that came from living in Alannis for too long.

“Follow me Sparrow.”

And the boy did. Makaereth couldn’t help but marvel at how easy it all was. He’d just been dropped in their laps – the two had passed by the temple and a priest had seen the boy and had enough wits to have the guards arrest the two while they were still within reach. The boy’s appearance was eerily similar to what their kidnapped and deceased prince would have looked like, were he still alive. And on top of that, this Sparrow was showing all the signs of being both slow and easily controlled.

“Do you know me?” Makaereth asked.

Sparrow nodded but didn’t say anything. Makaereth explained anyways.

“I am high-priest of the church of Ilo. Surely there was a temple in your hometown.”

No answer. Makaereth pressed on anyways.

“Where are you from?”

A shrug.

“Your parent’s names?”

Sparrow just looked away. Makaereth sighed and stopped in the hallway. The boy was looking aside at a stained glass window, eyes vacant and bored.

“Child, listen, I need to know these things. Surely you were raised better than to be disrespectful to an instrument of our god?”

Ah, the trump card worked. Sparrow flinched and looked up fearfully from underneath his mess of brown hair. Haircut, the priest thought. That would definitely have to be taken care of.

“Don’t remember my Skiridi home,” Sparrow said and he spoke very softly, “Just Alannis with my mom. She’s dead of illness. Don’t remember much ‘bout my father. Stayed in Skiridi. Didn’t know how to find him after mom died and went to the streets until Langley found me.”

“Langley?”

“My captain.” He mumbled away into incoherence. Fidgeted.

“Thank you Sparrow,” the priest sighed, “I trust you’ll be more forthcoming in the future?”

Sparrow nodded hesitantly. The priest arched an eyebrow and nodded for him to speak.

“What’s forth-coming mean?”

Sparrow was given a room in the wing of the temple that housed the higher-ranking priests. All ‘mancers. All trained by the temple and thus loyal to him and to his church. The use of a possessive before church should tell a person much about Makaereth’s character – this was his church. Not ‘the church’ as belonging to the people or ‘god’s church’ as belonging to the deity, but his church. It was important that the ‘mancers be his as those that went off to the Academy often came back as troublemakers, if they came back at all. Sparrow would be kept quiet there until Makaereth knew precisely what to do.

He could just let the boy go. Toss him and the human he’d been with out on the street and let them go. No one would care and a commoner who happened to look like the late prince was not a concern. There were no bastard children in the family. The incident would be forgotten and Sparrow would leave with this Captain Langley and things would remain the same in Skiridi. The king would die within the year with no heir and chaos would break out as the various clans tried to claim the throne. The church would continue its decline as Alannis lured away more and more of its power-base to their wretched Academy.

Or Makaereth could carry out that deceitful plan that was taking form in the back of his head. Pass Sparrow off as the prince, retrieved from the kidnappers by the church’s vigilant search through the years. The commoners would believe it. He did indeed have agents searching for the prince when he was kidnapped and they had never really given up searching, out of propriety. That and he was high priest for Ilo. Miracles were what he did. The clans, well, he had other ways of coercing them to cooperate. The wing behind his right ear twitched a bit. This could definitely work. Put a puppet-king on the throne, stop a civil war, and rule from behind the half-witted Sparrow. The church would not fall into decline.

Of course, there was always the potential for this deception to be uncovered. The resulting mess would tear the church in two as the people rebelled with mistrust and the clans scrambled to put their particular claim on the throne. But he hadn’t gotten to where he was without taking risks. Besides, unless he did something those so-called reformationists were going to tear his church in two anyways. The Academy trained ‘mancers that should have belonged to him.

Makaereth was decided. He’d call together his most trusted priests and they would turn Sparrow from a half-wit cabin-boy on some Alannin skimmer to the ruler of all Skiridi. Do something about those wings. Put that scar on his chin that the prince had. Get him a haircut, a bath, and decent clothing. Maybe even refine his speech a bit, although Makaereth planned to do most of the talking for the boy.

But most of all, tie up those nasty loose ends that always seemed to come back around someday. Captain Langley. He’d have some agents sent to the docks to find the name of the skimmer and where he could find this person and the rest of his crew. From there, well, it depended on just what kind of a person Langley and the crew was and how Makaereth wanted to form Sparrow’s history. But yes, with a little effort, this could work.

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