It's time you came along and began learning about the needs of others, instead of just your own wants."

At her friend's house, there were a few men and several women sitting and talking in serious tones. When they politely inquired after Father, Nicci's mother reported that he was off, "working or whoring, I don't know which, and can control neither." Some of the women laid a hand on her her arm and comforted her. It was a terrible burden she bore, they said.

Across the room sat a silent man, who looked to Nicci as grim as death itself.

Mother quickly forgot about Father as she became engrossed in the discussion her friends were having about the terrible conditions of people in the city. People were suffering from hunger, injuries, sickness, disease, lack of skill, no work, too many children to feed, elderly to care for, no clothes, no roof over their heads, and every other kind of strife imaginable. It was all so frightening.

Nicci was always anxious when Mother talked about how things couldn't go on the way they were for much longer, and that something had to be done.

Nicci wished someone would hurry up and do it.

Nicci listened as Mother's fellowship friends talked about all the intolerant people who harbored hate. Nicci feared ending up as one of those terrible people. She didn't want the Creator to punish her for having a cold heart.

Mother and her friends went on at great length about their deep feelings for all the problems around them. After each person said their piece, they would steal a glance over at the man sitting solemnly in a straight chair against the wall, watching with careful, dark eyes as they talked.

"The prices of things are just terrible," a man with droopy eyelids said. He was all crumpled down in his chair, like a pile of dirty clothes.

"It isn't fair. People shouldn't be allowed to just raise their prices whenever they want. The duke should do something. He has the king's ear."

"The duke. ." Mother said. She sipped her tea. "Yes, I've always found the duke to be a man sympathetic to good causes. I think he could be persuaded to introduce sensible laws." Mother glanced over the gold rim of her cup at the man in the straight chair.

One of the women said she would encourage her husband to back the duke.

Another spoke up that they would write a letter of support for such an idea.

"People are starving," a wrinkled woman said into a lull in the conversation. People eagerly mumbled their acknowledgment, as if this were an umbrella to run in under to escape the drenching silence. "1 see it every day. If we could just help some of those unfortunate people."

One of the other women puffed herself up like a chicken ready to lay an egg. "It's just terrible the way no one will give them a job, when there's plenty of work if it was just spread around."

"I know," Mother said with a tsk. "I've talked to Howard until I'm blue in the face. He just hires people who please him, rather than those needing the job the most. It's a disgrace."

The others sympathized with her burden.

"It isn't right that a few men should have so much more than they need, while so many people have so much less," the man with the droopy eyelids said. "It's immoral."

"Man has no right to exist for his own sake," Mother was quick to put in as she nibbled on a piece of dense cake while glancing again at the grimly silent man. "I tell Howard all the time that self-sacrifice in the service of others is man's highest moral duty and his only reason for being placed in this life.

"To that end," Mother announced, "I have decided to contribute five hundred gold crowns to our cause."

The other people gasped their delight, and congratulated Mother for her charitable nature. They agreed, as they sneaked peeks across the room, that the Creator would reward her in the next life, and talked about all they would be able to do to help those less fortunate souls.

Mother finally turned and regarded Nicci for a moment, and then said, "I believe my daughter is old enough to learn to help others."

Nicci sat forward on the edge of her chair, thrilled at the idea of at last putting her hand to what Mother and her friends said was noble work. It was as if the Creator Himself had offered her a path to salvation. "I would so like to do good, Mother."

Mother cast a questioning look at the man in the straight chair.

"Brother Narev?"

The deep creases of his face pleated to each side as the thin line of his mouth stretched in a smile. There was no joy in it, or in his dark eyes hooded beneath a brow of tangled white and black hairs. He wore a creased cap and heavy robes as dark as dried blood. Wisps of his wiry hair above his ears curled up around the edge of the cap that came halfway down on his forehead.

He stroked his jaw with the side of a finger as he spoke in a voice that almost rattled the teacups. "So, child, you wish to be a little soldier?"

"Well. . no, sir." Nicci didn't know what soldiering had to do with doing good. Mother always said that father pandered to men in an evil occupation-soldiers. She said soldiers only cared about killing. "I wish to help those in need."

"That is what we all try to do, child." His spooky smile remained fixed on his face as he spoke. "We here are all soldiers in the fellowship-the Fellowship of Order-as we call our little group. All soldiers fighting for justice."

Everyone seemed too timid to look directly at him. They glanced for a moment, looked away, then glanced back again, as if his face was not something to be taken in all at once, but sipped at, like a scalding-hot, foul-tasting remedy.

Mother's brown eyes darted around like a cockroach looking for a crack.

"Why, of course, Brother Narev. That is the only moral sort of soldier-the charitable sort." She urged Nicci up and scooted her forward. "Nicci, Brother Narev, here, is a great man. Brother Narev is the high priest of the Fellowship of Order-an ancient sect devoted to doing the Creator's will in this world. Brother Narev is a sorcerer." She cast a smile up at him.

"Brother Narev, this is my daughter, Nicci."

Her mother's hands pushed her at the man, as if she were an offering for the Creator. Unlike everyone else, Nicci couldn't take her gaze from his hooded eyes. She had never seen their like.

There was nothing in them but dark cold emptiness.

He held out a hand. "Pleased to meet you, Nicci."

"Curtsy and kiss his hand, dear," Mother prompted.

Nicci went to one knee. She kissed the knuckles so as not to have to put her lips on the spongy web of thick blue veins covering the back of his hairy hand floating before her face. The whitish knobs were cold, but not icy, as she had expected.

"We welcome you to our movement, Nicci," he said in that deep rattling voice of his. "With your mother's caring hand raising you up, I know you will do the Creator's work."

Nicci thought that the Creator Himself must be very much like this man.

From all the things her mother told her, Nicci feared the Creator's wrath. She was old enough to know that she had to start doing the good work her mother always talked about, if she was to have any chance at salvation.

Everyone said Mother was a caring, moral person. Nicci wanted to be a good person, too.

But good work seemed so hard, so stern-not at all like her father's work, where people smiled and laughed and talked with their hands.

"Thank you, Brother Narev," Nicci said. "I will do my best to do good in the world."

"One day, with the help of fine young people like you, we will change the world. I don't delude myself; with so much callousness among men, it will take time to win true converts, but we here in this room, along with others of like mind throughout the land, are the foundation of hope."