A Completely Different Game

Havec crossed the square to the barracks in order to begin with the daunting task of becoming a citizen. It turned out not to be as bad as he had feared, though, not on his end. There was a great stack of forms to fill out, filled with questions he mostly couldn’t answer: he had no residence, no references, and there wasn’t a piece of paper attesting to his existence anywhere in the country, let alone in his possession. He was an Avatethura Master, so the man who was helping him filled the forms out for him, drawing lines through every blank he couldn’t fill, which was most of them, and telling him not to worry about it.

It still took more than an hour and he was still glad when it was done. He received a piece of paper at the end, less official-looking than the ones he had seen on Smooth Guy and Qanath but signed by the lieutenant and stamped with the Imperial Seal. Since he had no home to send the next round of paperwork to, they told him he would have to present himself in one of the regional capitals sometime in the next three months to finalize his naturalization and get a real passport. Telling himself that he had always wanted to travel anyway, and that nice people would surely go on helping him navigate this bureaucratic maze, he thanked the clerk and wandered away.

Lost in contemplation of the future, he took a wrong turn on exiting the building. He found himself walking along a hallway he didn’t recognize, which dead-ended after only about ten feet, depositing him in a tiny octagonal room. He moved a few steps into the room and turned slowly in place. A small fountain trickled water into a bowl like a flower centrally beneath a vaulted ceiling that mirrored its petals’ shape. The walls were painted in an intricate mesh of yellow and bronze that made the room seem larger than it was. It was lit by the flickering light of a hundred candles set on shelves along the walls, every one of which looked to have been kindled at a slightly different time.

After a minute’s inspection, he decided he must be in a shrine. He had never seen one before and bit his lower lip as he peered about. He turned in another circle, wondering why there were no paintings or statuary. It was a pretty space but curiously sterile; in light of what little he knew about these people, he had imagined their religion to be flamboyant, full of colorful violence and sex.

He heard boot heels approaching a moment before someone entered the room at his back. His companion was a man a few years his senior with a strong jaw and aquiline nose, hair shaved along the sides of his head. He wore the low-slung beige trousers, thick-soled boots, and blue-and-red shirt that were the everyday uniform of the soldiery, although he wasn’t armed.

The building was wall-to-wall with people wearing the same thing, and it took him a moment to think why this fellow looked familiar. Then he smiled and Havec knew: this was the guy he’d met on the day they got here. A priest, although he didn’t look like it today. Out of the shapeless cassock, he had the physique of a wrestler and moved with the confidence of one supremely at ease in his skin.

“Can I help you?”

“I got lost,” he admitted.

The fellow huffed an understated laugh and came to join him in the middle of the room. “The building is a labyrinth.”

“You’re not going to claim the gods led me here?”

“I don’t think even you have gods following you around every moment of the day.”

Taken aback, he couldn’t think what to say.

The soldier-priest smiled again. “I doubt your friend would approve. Even the gods wouldn’t wish to offend. It is, after all, considerably older than them.”

“Oh,” he said cleverly.

The man looked into his face, thoughtful and serene. He blinked, then blinked again, and for the space of a second his eyes became an uncanny, brilliant green. That quickly, they were brown again, but Havec was sure of what he’d seen.

He couldn’t decide whether he found this more unnerving or thrilling. “What god do you…?”

“Serve? Goddess. Mahudar.” Perceiving his interest, he added, “She is the patron of the mentally ill.”

“You’re joking.” Only after he had said it did he realize he could have found a better way to express his surprise. “I mean…”

“Someone has to care about the miserable. There are gods of lepers and paupers, shall no one serve those who are most truly alone?”

“Huh.”

“She has a long tradition in the Scolate,” the soldier-priest confided, eyes on the wall of flickering candle flames. “Volakras and Miel and Urb all have their followers, of course. Deities of glory, martial prowess, death,” he clarified, glancing at Havec. “But war is hard and crime is unpleasant, and sometimes our people find it hard to find their way off the battlefield.”

Unsure how to take this, he said awkwardly, “This is her place?”

“This is a place. All are welcome here.”

“Does that bother you?” he asked curiously.

Finally he had managed to surprise the man, but his brows only rose a little, smile fading. “The individual who sweeps this floor changes over the years, but the need of those who come to pray remains the same.”

“So anyone can come here and pray to whatever?”

“Of course.”

“Even if they’re not, you know…”

“Unhappy?”

“Yeah.”

The soldier-priest studied him, and Havec almost thought he could hear all the questions running through his head as he discovered that, Avatethura Master or not, Havec was still mostly a foreigner who knew little of their ways. What he chose to say was, “If we had a temple to every god in every town, there would be nowhere left to live.”

He could think of no witty response and nodded, hoping it looked sage. He cast about for something else to say, something that would keep the man’s attention on him. “Which came first? The robe or the uniform?”

He laughed faintly, eyes turned briefly inward. “I was a chicken that broke from its shell already laying an egg. My mother served during the Philibrax Incursions. I grew up admiring her fiercely… and cleaning up after her, making sure the bills got paid. Trying to help her get her head on straight.”

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“You don’t take up a calling like this without expecting people to ask what you were thinking. It seemed worth it to help as I could.” A faint frown crossed his face, the first Havec had seen. “Then I got posted to a sleepy border town.”

“That must suck,” he said frankly.

“Will you look down on me if I confess that I sometimes get bored?”

“I’m bored and I’ve been here two days. I haven’t made it my life’s work to fight battles and helped fucked-up people who’ve seen too much blood.”

“Then again,” the man said, “you never know when the opportunity might present itself.”

Havec glanced at him sidelong and said nothing.

Suddenly somber, the soldier-priest said, “Mahudar wants me to warn you: smoothing away the scar tissue doesn’t mean the wound wasn’t there.”

“You think you’re going to fix me?” he asked curtly.

“No, but I would be honored to help.”

Havec had meant to make some cutting comment about how they could sit down over cups of tea and talk about the experience of being kidnapped and then held prisoner by a wicked giant until he felt better. The man took a step closer to him, though, and one of his knuckles grazed the back of his hand. He was close enough now that Havec could smell his sultry odor of metal-polish, incense, and sweat. He froze like a rodent in a hawk’s shadow, throat so tight he could barely breathe.

The man blinked, blinked again, and again Havec saw the there-and-gone vivid green of his goddess’s eyes. It might have been repellant, but he found it compelling. Neither of them were truly alone in their own heads, but this man had chosen it for the purpose of saving people no one else was willing to help. Havec didn’t really care that it was noble and selfless; it was daring, that was what interested him.

“My name is Farait, by the way.”

An innocuous statement, but the words were little more than a rumble in his chest. “Nice to meet you,” Havec answered witlessly, and his voice sounded strange to his own ears. He found himself wondering when the last time was he blinked.

“When you’re ready,” the man said, not specifying for what. “It may be easier with someone who expects nothing of you and understands you at least a little.”

“I’ll remember that,” Havec said shrilly. Then he fled.