The Book of the Blue House

He came to it in the grey before the sunrise. It was the only building on its whole block, and surrounded by a long grey walk on all sides, the grey paved street was empty this time of morning, and the blue house rose high and square with a grave and heavy atmosphere all its own. It was built like a rock, a great butte of deep blue stone, and the façade, though patterned and pillared, had only one opening, a door, twice the height of a man, but seemingly small because of the height and width of the silent building, and.the door standing between two great pillars, was bright red and deep as blood.

Conn crossed the empty street and stood on the walk, looking at the door and it called to him with a mocking magneticim, for the more he resisted it, the more powerful was the silent call and yet he knew the door was not for him. Conn did not know how long he stood before it until, at last he walked to his right, to the left of the door, and began to walk along the lengthy southern side of the Temple. When he looked up, there were were narrow windows, though these were all high up. He walked along the grey street as the sky began to silver with morning and, after some time he found, deep in the wall, between two other pillars, still high, but a little squatter than the Red Door, a black double door. He knew he could knock at this one, and yet he didn’t dare. He just sat there, hungry, as the sun rose and people began to come out onto the streets. Carters moving toward the bazaar, young seminarians in robes, the last of the night police carrying their lanterns. And this was when the door opened and the one that Nialla told him was called Cal, looked down at him.

Calon did not resemble any priest Conn had ever seen. His wide blue eyes were supremely merry looking, and he had a head of springing auburn curls. The same size as Conn he was well made, strong with the body of a man that made Conn feel still much like a boy, and he wore a well fitted tee shirt and faded dungarees. He did not have the look of cruelty beautiful people often had, but he leaned across the door and said, “You’ee early. You look lost, bug. Are you lost?”

He had a not quite southern accent, or at least what Conn through was a southern accent, and Conn said, “I was looking for my sister.”

“Did you find her on the sidewalk?” Cal said, and laughed at himself, and then at Conn’s look said, “It’s just a joke.”

“Her name is Nialla. She wrote me. She said she lives here. Maybe I’m wro—”

“Oh!” Cal exclaimed. “Come in, Come in!”

Conn followed the young man through the black door, and he was in a lobby lit with grey morning ligh from above and hung with evenly spaced stain glass lamps.

“She’s probably upstairs, but… have you eaten?”

There were other young men in the lobby, some coming down the corridor that stretched ahead, Some wore dress shirts and dress pants, some wore robes and some wore the formal doublets and trousers of the upper classes while some were dressed in simple tee shirt and jeans like Cal, but now Conn realized they were all in blue.

“No,” Conn said. “Not really. I had some soup last night in the park.”

“Soup last night in the park? How tragic. Sanjo,” Cal called to a shaven head brown skinned Blue who was dressed like him, but whose shirt was even more snug on his chest, “Can you take Bug to the commissary for food? This is Nialla’s brother. His name is… What is your name?”

“Connleth. Conn.”

“Connleth Conn,” Cal said.

“It’s not Connleth Conn, it’s just…”

But by now Cal was saying, “I’m going to find that girl and send her down to you,. She’ll be so glad you’re here. She talks about you all the time.”

That was how Conn had entered the Blue Temple, and now he was finishing his meal, and his sister was leading him to the kitchen to put his bowls away.

After they went through the kitchen and Nialla said good morning to the dishwashers and the cooks and told them, this is my brother, he’s with us now. A few of them named themselves and tipped their fingers to their heads and Conn did the same, though he was sure he would forget them in five minutes. The whole place, his whole first day here, was a blur. Past the kitchen they went down a dark hall, and Nialla explained.

“Everything you’ve seen is in the stoa. The room is for all the visitors and you may never eat there again. Or, if you like,” she shrugged, “you might eat there all the time. When people stay for the night, or for several nights, they stay down there.”

Down there she said, for now they were climbing up a narrow stone stair, and when they came to the landing there were passages leading left, right and ahead of them, but Nialla simply kept walking up the next stair to another landing where there were similar passages and then to one last landing where they finally went down the hall ahead of them, and emerged into a sunlit,but quite corridor.

“I’m going to the library to study because I promised I would,” Nialla said.

Conn was about to ask who she had promised this too but, carelessly, a nude young man came down the hall not looking entirely awake, and pushed the door into what might have been a washroom, disappearing.

“You could use some rest,” she told her brother.”You’ll stay where I stay. In Derek’s room.”

Again, Conn didn’t see the need to ask, but simply followed his sister down the corridor The light came from behind him, but he didn’t look back. There were only lamps here, and it was dim in the hallway of pale blue stones. Dark blue doors were almost evenly spaced, and now Nialla pushed open one and there was sunlight on the other side of a heavy blind, and a large, well made bed in a well appointed room.

“You just go to sleep here, and when you wake up you can take a nice shower. Or a bath. Whatever suits you. I use this bathroom over here.”

She walked across what was a large room and touched the door to her right. “The other bathrooms are for the Blues. I wouldn’t use them. Maybe you could, but I know I shouldn’t.”

And then Nialla flung herself on her brother and said, “I’m so glad you’re here. Everyone will be glad you’re here, and you can meet everyone tonight!”

Conn lay down to sleep, and his head had hardly hit the pillow when he heard bells ringing. There was a slight hurried shuffling of feet for a while, and then silence again, and Conn sat in the room of someone named Derek, where Nialla slept and where she had assured him Derek would not mind. No sooner had he put his head to the pillow than he had the need to explore. He didn’t understand this building. He thought he was somewhere on the third floor and he had come up through a thin passage like a worm’s burrow into this hall. The bed lay under the blinded window and he sat down on it, looking at the door through which he’d come. To his left was the uninteresting wall, but to his right was a door. Conn rose, opened the door and was nearly blinded by sunlight. To his right a window overlooked the city, but to his left was a plain door and on the other side of it he heard a shower running. Was this the Blue bathroom that Nialla would not go into and he should think twice about? At the end of the corridor was another door but it was half open and when he entered it, he found himself in a room larger and messier than Derek’s with clothes all over the place and sofas and a bookshelf. Books were on the floor too, along with paper and pencils. Conn crossed into the room, wondering what he would say if someone came in, thinking he would say, “I’m Nialla’s brother,” and see where that got him.

There was an open doorway across from the one he’d entered, so this room opened to another which Conn saw was a messy, messy but very large kitchen. Plates, half drunk orange juice and old coffee were on a table where the sun came through, and a cooling box hummed with its cold energy. The last of the rooms was revealed by a half open door that revealed a much cleaner bedroom. This room was larger than the last one, andwhen Conn went to its door, instead of the silence of the hallway, he again heard shower water. It was, Conn thought, a very curious set up.

He immediately set about cleaning, searching under the sink for soap and gloves, pulling them out and filling the sink with hot water. He fouind a dish rack below, and for the first time he felt a purpose in being where he was. Conn always wanted to be get something done, and there was a satisfaction in the scrubbing of plates and the washing of glasses. He hesitated throwing half eaten food away, but figured the eaters were clearly done with the rinds of toast and fruit. The edges of everything he tossed away, then place the dishes in the suddy sink.

Conn was not sure how long he’d been up, but he was in the large common room, the one which now he realized had a bed in the corner off of the wall it shared with the kitchen, As the second oldest in his family, he knew how to clean. His mother never thought that was just a woman’s job. He had opened up the shades to allow the sun in, and he imagined by now it must have been nine in the morning, though it seems as if he’d been up forever. Conn yawned a little now, gathering up scattered clothes. He couldn’t rightly tell to who they belonged, but he could tell that under things were done with, so with very little care, he picked them up and moved them to a hamper. The trousers and the shirts he put in another pile for their junky owners to understand, and he began to stack the collection of books and notes imagining that, as messy as they were they were there for a reason. Scarves and shirts he folded, and it was now that the shower cut off and a few moments later, out of the bathroom door in the little hallway came a tall young man. He was white as marble or snow, with red lips and black hair that might have been wavy if it weren;t half plastered to his head. He was like the girl from the fairy tale who bit the apple and went to sleep in the dwarve’s cottage, except he was no girl and he was slender but well muscled like something cut from marble and his cheeks were red and he was laughing,

“You must be Nialla’s brother,” he said, and he stepped forward as if he wore more than a great towel and was holding more than the second towel with which he dried his hair.

“I’m Derek.”

So this was Derek.

“I’m supposed to be… I was sleeping in your room. That’s where my sister…”

“I never stay there, Not much these days. In the House no one really stays where they’re supposed to.”

Derek’s voice was quiet and reedy despite his strength and height, and his eyes sparkled from behind long dark lashes so that he almost appeared to be asleep. He moved like a deer, Conn realized and Conn, still holding a book in his hands, also knew he could barely stop looking at him.

“You’ve really made something nice out of this place,” Derek said. “And you’ve only been here a day. You might be just what we need. Not that Nialla isn’t great, but…” Derek had opened up a cupboard and he was pulling out oils and perfumes, bottles that might have been lotions, He was combing his hair which indeed was black and lustrous and wavy, and slapping some sort of aftershave on his cheeks, spraying lightly his chest and wrists with cologne, and rubbing oil into his white skin. This was not the first time Conn has been entranced by a slightly older man, but this was the first time he had been allowed to be in the presence of a man who seemed to mind him being entranced. In the north there were people like Conn who were often called white, but like Conn they were the color of gold or ivory and mixed with the Old Blood. Derek very much appeared to be truly descended from the Reavers.

“You know, when I first came here,” Derek chatted on, “I didn’t do a thing for days, just walked around, and here you are, cleaning up the junkiest room we have. And look, you’re yawning, you need ot relax. Go in that room and grab a pomegranate juice from the cooler. If you’d be kind just get me a water too.”

The whole time, Derek had been talking he had, with no consciosuness whatsoever, unwound the long towel from about him, and began to lightly dry his thighs, his buttocks, and what Conn turned his head from. Well, this man as a Blue, perhaps they didn’t care for things like that. Once he’d known a boy who would corner him when no one was around, and then pull down his trousers to get a reaction from Conn, but Derek wasn’t doing this at all. He was naked and very beautiful, combing his hair, looking himself up and down in the mirror as if he were fully dressed and on his way to an appointment.

But when Conn came back and handed Derek the water, the other young man said, “Thanks. I’m so exhausted. I’ve been working all night. Looks like you have been too. I’m not doing another thing until lunch, and that’s the truth. Say, we should all have lunch up here. All of us.”

Conn did not ask who all of us was, and Derek quickly climbed into the large, slightly messy bed and pulled the great comforter over himself.

“Come along,” he turned around patting the bed. “Time for you to sleep. And shut those curtains,”

“Ah, that’s nice,” Derek said, as Conn pulled the curtains close and the yellow light went to amber darkness.

Derek had turned the cover over and Conn realized he was supposed to climb in the bed with him. What a strange place this was, and how tired he was, and he knew he needed a bath, but he also knew he was terribly tired despite what he realized was the confused hardness of his cock.

Quickly, in the dark, Conn threw off his cothes and climbed into the big bed, taking the pillows Derek had pushed toward him and wondering what he was supposed to do. But Derek was already snoring, and weariness was the highest thing on Conn’s mind too and so, the first time that Connleth Ipwick ever slept with a Blue Priest, all he did was sleep.