Mars the Divine (Empire of Time Series) by John Argo

Page 23.

She led me through the main entrance of St. Apollo, where Swat Guards stood with crossed pike staffs and wind-blown plumes atop golden casseroles, as their pot-shaped helmets are called. They snapped to attention as we, ostensible clergy, passed through. I was surprised that nobody checked us. The inside of St. Apollo was breathtakingly large—the largest non-dome building on Mars, in fact. It was capable of holding (so a sign in the vestibule said) 10,000 people under its round concrete dome. It had a ring of pillars around the inside, and between every pair of pillars was a giant statue of some saint. Stained glass windows hung inside suspended on heavy chains, and each window told a story from scripture beginning with the Godpods and ending with the seeding of Mars and the distribution of the first two humans (Madam and Evan from Heaven). In the center was a raised podium on which I recognized the Holy Mother's throne with the legend NASA on the back. At least something looked familiar.

We exited through a small but ornate side door stuccoed yellow and painted all around with grapevines and flowers as well as bunches of purple grapes. We came out into a very dark, ancient looking cobbled street whose uneven surfaces sloped this way and that. She spoke into a tiny cube, and a black limousine cruised around the corner to pick us up. As I got in, and the car lurched away with its doors automatically closing from the momentum, I recognized the two women in the front seat. They were the two priestesses who thought I had killed their Popess.

"How have you been?" asked the redhead as she hung her arm over the seat to look at me with a big, friendly smile. Her fingernails were long and lacquered red in a manner quite unbecoming a priestess. The blonde wore a black business suit and had a black bow in the back, tying a flat, short ponytail together.

"I have been better," I said.

"So, Friar Tuck," said the redhead, "my name is Trinity, but you can call me Trini." She stuck out a pale, firm hand with red nails, and I shook it.

"Singularity," said the blonde, "but you can call me Sindi." She raised a hand with blue-lacquered nails over her shoulder, and I shook its fingers. It was the best we could do as she sped the car along the river road on the Temple side.

"Well," I said, "we've come along way from where you thought I had killed Her Holiness."

"We figured out pretty early that you had nothing to do with it," said Trini, the redhead.

"When did you pick up on me again?"

"We never let you out of our sight," said Sindi. "We had a few other suspects, and you dropped out pretty quickly. You didn't seem to be the killer type." She snickered.

"Nice work on the dufus yesterday, by the way," said Trini with a wink.

"You followed me?"

"We knew who rolled you, and we knew where he lives. It was just a matter of sending an ambulance after you roughed him up."

"Nice work, by the way," said Sindi over her shoulder as she handled the wheel. We were rolling through an industrial zone with tall cranes overlooking warehouses. "You learned fast down in the Triber lands."

"I had to."

Trini continued: "He is one of Balesso's extremely low punks. He has much bigger, smoother staff than that."

I took a greater interest and leaned forward. "So you are not on Balesso's side."

"Oh hell no," said Trini, "we are strictly Upholder. We're both third cousins of King Lee."

"Let me get this straight," I said from the back seat. "King Lee and the Popess rule up here. She rules Temple all over the planet, but here she is like his co-regent."

"Yes?" Sindi said. "You catch on fast."

"Right," I said, "so there is a power struggle going on and I got caught up on the edges of it. Within your group, the Upholder family didn’t like the Eastgardens and exiled them to the Granistons, where Timony then somehow had them fall farther out of favor."

Trini laughed gently. "Timony was next in line to the Eastgarden top chair. He was a contender for King Lee's throne if there had been a dispute within the extended Upholder tribe."

"Timony was just too strong, too radical, too…dangerous," Sindi agreed. "He had to go."

I had a picture of Sudie in my head. "Do you have any idea what happened to him, or worse yet, what happened to his sister?" I was suddenly very angry.

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