It was midday when we caught up to Jenny. She hadn't taken a side road, as Eskir had loudly been theorising, but horses only walked a little faster than people, and we had stopped already for Eskir's meditation.

The wagon bumped as it struck a pothole that Jenny had jumped over. They were common in these parts. We were well past Ghost Lake, but the humidity still remained, and the river ran alongside the road. Frequent freeze and thaw cycles in the winter had water finding its way into the gaps in the cobblestone, then turning to ice to force it apart. Even filled with bramble and dirt, it left a permanent scar on the road. But our wagon wobbled down the cobblestone anyway. It was easier than the rutted dirt cartways designed for wagons, now muddy and hindering from the last night's storm.

"My my," snarked Eskir as we rolled past. "Look at who it is."

"Fuck off," she spat.

"Oh!" said Eskir, "And she's spicy, too. I didn't expect that from a pacifist."

She stopped in her tracks and spun to face Eskir. I reached over to pull back on the reins, signalling the guidance charm to stop the horses.

"I'm not a pacifist!" said Jenny. "And we're not terrorists either. That's bullshit the empire sends out in the papers. I'm just sick of war."

Eskir grinned. "Pacifist."

Jenny leapt for the wagon, climbed up its side, and decked Eskir in the head. He fell over with a "Aah!" half laughing and half shouting from pain.

Jenny straightened up and demounted from the wagon's sides. She brushed off her coat, still wet from the previous night, that she'd wrapped around her waist like a belt. "Just because we're not the ones fighting, doesn't make it right," she lectured. "Just because Kindred are basically gods on a battlefield compared to the rest of us, doesn't mean they should have to be. War should never be waged as a business, and that's exactly what the the guilds are. That's exactly what Kindred are."

Eskir shouted a mock wail. "Hurry Xera, we must flee! Flee for our lives! The pacifist is gonna get us!"

I couldn't stop myself from grinning. With a signalling motion, the horses resumed their march, leaving Jenny scrambling to reach the wagon to hit Eskir again.

"Oh, don't be like that!" said Eskir. "It's better than being a terrorist, right?"

She leapt, catching the wagon and climbing on board. She fell into Eskir, but the tone of rage she had carried in her voice was half gone now, and she was hitting him repeatedly with a thin, sarcastic smile.

"Bite me."

"Not my type, my lady. Sorry."

I let out a sharp huff of hair from my nose, then turned my head to look at the road ahead of us. The mud was clearing to dirt. We were reaching the edge of where the storm had passed by. I signalled the horses to move to the cartway, where the dirt would be easier on both the wagon's wheels and the horses themselves.

There was a figure in the distance, who had been obscured prior to that by the horse sitting in front of me. Whoever it was still had a ways to go before reaching us, and it was only one person anyway, but by habit and instinct, I expanded my senses and took a look.

A soft crunch greeted my ears before anything else. He was walking. His boots were probably soft, not clad in metal or any true measure of armour. Not an ambush, probably not even Kindred, just a lone traveller.

"Xera, help me!" said Eskir, splitting my ears in pain. "She's hitting me! The pacifist is hitting me!"

I squinted my eyes, straining for a better look through a lingering fog. At my signal, the horses stopped.

"Well, isn't that ironic," Jenny shot back at Eskir, then whacked him again.

I looked back to them, reducing my hearing and vision enough to communicate. "You should probably stay with us for a moment, Jenny."

"What?" yelped Eskir. "Why are you inviting her on? I'm being ravaged here!"

My smile was gone. "Well, treating everyone as if they're about to murder you doesn't make for a very pleasant social life," I said.

Both of their expressions faded back into a state of aggravated boredom.

"Wow, killjoy," said Jenny. "And here I was, having fun."

"And if she does murder us?" asked Eskir, still trying to joke. He was more used to my demeanour.

Not this time, Eskir.

"Don't worry," said Jenny, "you're not exactly my top priority right now."

"I'm more worried about that," I said, my voice clear and sharp enough to get their undivided attention as I pointed to the figure approaching us. They looked at me, confused.

"That's a Deacon."

Eskir paled.

"I've never met a Deacon before," said Jenny, tentatively climbing forward over the food and supplies that lay stocked in the wagon. "But I've heard things. Most of the stories don't make much sense though."

"They're true," said Eskir. "Doesn't matter what you've heard, they're true. Each and every one of them. Xera, we need to leave. Turn the horses around, have them break into a gallop. Or we can hide in the trees, untie the horses and flip over the wagon, make it look like we got attacked by bandits."

I didn't say anything.

"Please," he urged, "we need to go."

"We'll stay," I said. "It's fine. Just stay calm."

"Xera!"

"He'd see us anyway," I reasoned. "He's not so far away that he can't recognise that we're not already flipped over or racing away from him. It wouldn't do us any favours to make ourselves look suspicious."

"By the path, you're an idiot sometimes!"

My hearing and vision were enhanced again. I could hear Eskir's heartbeat, louder than mine. I could smell the sweat dripping down his sticky skin.

Before any other part of the Deacon came into proper view, I recognised his eyes. To this day, I cannot tell you what colour they were. From that distance, my focused senses were far greater than a Deacon's, and I knew he would not have been able to make out any details. Yet still, when I found his eyes, they found mine.

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"Please," he begged, coming over to lay his hands on my legs in supplication. "We need to get as far away from here as we can."

"It's just a Deacon," I said.

He scoffed in disbelief. "Just a Deacon? Just? Do you have any inkling what's walking towards us right now?"

"I've spent my life in court," I said. "I've met more Deacons than you have."

He grimaced. "Right, so you have no idea then. The stories are just stories to you. You haven't seen." He grabbed my shoulder and shook me. "We need to get out, NOW."

"We'll wait," I said, shaking him off.

The Deacon was still far away, but close enough now to see him properly. He was dressed formally, as Deacons were in court. Most likely, he had been at the site of a battle. He may have even fought.

He wore grey robes, covering him down to the ankles. Around his neck, he wore a sash the same colour as blood, which also adorned his cuffs. Across his chest, and would have been on his back as well, sat the three cardinal stars of Pathoticism, and the central star in the heart of them. Each star shone with an ethereal light, woven from an arcane fabric. I never knew what it was. There was an ironic venerance in their clothes.

He was young, this one. Older than me, certainly, but young for a Deacon. In his forties, at most. I could see, even from there, the barely greying hair and the lack of creases on his skin.

"I'm about to start running myself," said Jenny. "If the stories... if any of them are true. I thought they were just myths. Superstitions."

"They're true," I said. "But we're going to wait here."

"Nope," said Eskir. "Nope, nope, nope. Fuck that. I'm out."

"I thought you were going to help me," I said. He had already braced his hands over the side of the wagon.

"I didn't think you'd just sit there and wait for a Deacon to walk right past you!"

"If you leave now," I warned him with a growl, "that Deacon will be the least of your problems."

Eskir gulped. Jenny shot me an alarmed look. She knew the threat wasn't intended for her, but it worked just as well to keep her in the wagon too.

He'd had some training at identifying Kindred, he had said. He could see the flash of power in my eyes. I knew that from his expression.

"Please," he whimpered.

"We'll be okay," I repeated, and turned back to face the Deacon. My ears had begun to ring from the conversation, but I kept them perked.

He was close now. So close. I could make out his fingers, worn from time and use. Even for someone who spent so much time writing, the Deacon's hands were aged, as though he had in fact been twenty years older, and all the passage of time had been concentrated into them.

Eskir vaulted over the wagon, then crawled under the thing and kept himself off the ground by securing himself above the body bar. I rolled my eyes. I could feel everything he did, every shuffle of the wood. If there would be trouble, he was more likely now than ever to cause it.

"Don't let him know I'm here," he hissed.

"Yes," I said flatly, "I'll make sure not to tell him."

He was almost upon us now. The scatterings of dust and rain and fog that had been laid down into the earth by the seasons greeted his arrival, and the world opened up to him.

"Xera," Jenny started, but I reached by and placed my hand on her shoulder. It was as much reassurance as I could offer. I released my focus. If I kept my senses heightened with a Deacon nearby, my body would never have forgiven me.

The Deacon's footsteps shook the resolve of the earth, and he came up to the wagon with a smile.

"Xera," he said. "Is that you?"

"It is."

He chuckled. "You are dutiless now. There is no need to be so formal."

"I understand." The blood in my veins ran cold.

"Who are your companions? This one here, and the man hiding under your wagon."

I felt Eskir shift in his position and swear under his breath.

"Passersby," I said. "I'm offering them assistance in their journey."

"That is good," he said. "I trust you are keeping to your Path?"

"I am."

"And when was the last time you entered battle, girl? I see no blood on your clothes. I see no armour on you at all, barring your vambraces."

"Ereyesterday." It was some twisted luck that I wasn't technically lying.

"I see. Well done then, I applaud you. It is not easy to wage violence on the road." He did not applaud. He did not move his hands at all. They were unnaturally motionless at his sides.

"Hello mister Deacon," piped Jenny with a squeak in her voice.

I wanted to tell her to shut up.

He smiled, and said "child" in acknowledgment. "And you down there, hello," he said, nodding his head to where Eskir was hiding.

"What's your name?" she asked. Why was she still talking?

He laughed. "Am I your first Deacon, girl? Well met, then. I was not given a name."

"How do people call you?" Shut up, shut up, shut up. She continued anyway. "Your relatives? Your followers? What if you married?"

"I will never marry. No Deacon will. I have no relatives, and anyone who chooses to follow me will call me Deacon. I am the Fifth Deacon of Senvia. That is all."

I turned in time to see her expression shift from awe to fear. I could see her eyes ask, that's all? That was all he was? Not even the first, but the Fifth Deacon. And he said it so passively, as if he truly were humble in the statement.

"I have a question, if you don't mind."

The Deacon's gaze was the only thing that stopped me from slapping her. I gave her as cold of a warning look as I could without letting the Deacon see it.

"Be wary of answers you assume to need," the thing in front of us said.

She eyed me, then asked it anyway. "I need to find someone. How? Is there a spell, or a—"

The Deacon raised his withered hand. "If your Path takes you to them, you will find them. If not, then it is not your duty. Pursue only enlightenment, my child."

I could feel my fingers reflexively tightening, forming fists that I braced against my legs. His focus moved away from Jenny and settled back on me. "We must all stick to our Paths," he said.

I nodded. "Good day to you, Deacon."

He smiled. "It has been copacetic. Yes, good day, Xera."

I could feel his first step hit the dirt, even without my senses. I knew the other two must have felt it too. His second step parted the dust like a giant stepping into the ocean and crashing a towering wave against the shore. I held my breath as he walked away. I could feel each of his points of impact on the ground reverberate in my bones. Only when the rumbling stopped, and he had almost turned the corner of the treeline, did I finally allow myself to breathe.

It took Eskir several minutes more before he finally asked, "Is he gone?"

Jenny sat rooted next to me, unmoving. I couldn't bring myself to muster the horses. They hadn't panicked, at least. To them, Deacons were like anyone else who might have given them hay. Horses didn't know the stories. Their souls, or minds perhaps, were different enough that they could ignore his presence. At most, it would have made them feel uncomfortable, but his departure eased them again.

"He's gone," I said. His words still hung in the air like the words of a god commanding the earth to remember him. It has been copacetic, he'd said. The very thought of it gave me dread.

Eskir collapsed from the position he'd been holding himself in and fell to the cobblestone below.

"Ereyesterday?" said Jenny. "What are you, a fucking scribe?"

"They like formality," I said. I tried to accompany it with a shrug, but my shoulders didn't cooperate with such a lax motion.

Eskir stood up, his front plastered in mud, and shot her a judgmental look.

She looked at him innocently, then whispered "Ashran." A small spout of water shot from her wrist and drenched the man, cleaning off most of the mud. He raised his arms in a tee. His eyes had slammed shut in rapid reaction.

I turned to her in shock. "You know Ashran?"

"I've been studying," she said.

"That's a difficult spell," I remarked.

"Well, it's not like I'm slowing time."

Eskir spluttered out a mixture of mud and water. "I hate both of you. So much."

I grinned. "Well, you're going to have to walk until you dry off. Don't want mud and water all over the food."

"Or us," Jenny added.

"How are you both so calm?" he demanded.

My hands were still shaking. I had hardly noticed, but the adrenaline was evaporating from my system. Every part of me ached, and there was a tensing pain in my back. I could see Jenny's expression shift to a grimace as well, and I wondered if she'd even realised how much her body had been on alert.

"I guess we've just got bigger balls," I chuckled.

It was difficult to stop the tremble in my voice, but Jenny also forced out a quivering laugh.

"I hate you both," he repeated. "Let's not do that again."