Alanna was exhausted after using so much godly power lately, and so I got to the beach well before she did, to find that, despite her orders, shipwrights were already at work on the ship. Although my godly senses suggested the black fire was almost entirely extinguished, I had great faith that she knew what she was saying when she forbid them return. So, having just ambled quietly across half the town, I immediately dashed back and awakened her.

As I expected, that found us both rushing right back over, with her being very disheveled and cursing with every other breath. The first words out of her mouth when she arrived at the scene were amplified by some magic, enough that the workers and probably most nearby homes and businesses were startled out of whatever they were doing. The foreman, a greasy man with black hair and one permanently deformed cheekbone (I assume it was crushed and healed wrong long ago) simply gave his workers a wave and moved to intercept us.

"Two days I said, you lumbering baffoon," snarled Alanna--Lucile. "Certainly your termite-infested brains can count up to two, can you not?"

"Ain't up to you, lady," said the foreman, and looked at me. "Nor you. Mayor asked us politely to make sure it got done sooner, and unlike her, you ain't payin'."

I was distracted from listening to their arguments by a sailor mysteriously walking off the ship and breaking his leg with a snap when he hit the sand. A wave of cries rose up from the rest of the workers, and suddenly the entire group scattered away from the ship, and I could hear a chorus of cries from them that sounded suspiciously like "cursed" and "ghost".

Alanna grabbed the foreman by the shoulder of his shirt before he could do so much as turn around in surprise, and she yanked his face down to meet hers. "Necromancy, you bollard-headed dreck, is a sin against the gods not because it's unpleasant or icky. It warps souls, and the world is a fouler place simply because it has ever been done. The people on the ship, and the wood from the hold, even the sand where the necromancer and his puppets fell, all those contain evil magics. One prayer, one brief prayer, to Alanna is all it took before she--not only her, but TWO gods departed the Heavens to interfere here in person. No god nor goddess makes that trip without reason, and you refuse to listen to a priestess of her faith, on the very grounds the gods stood?"

I could feel a slight tug, and noticed that Alanna was now being highlighted just slightly by a beam of light from above, with a matching one rising from the temple. Along with that effect, the sand at her feet was swirling as though a small whirlwind were directly on top of her--but I felt no wind at all. Conscious of the fact that she was going out of her way to put on a show, I immediately bowed and kneeled, hoping the foreman would take a hint that something godly was going on.

"Gods an' all, I wager, they have their reasons. An' I'll not argue that th' goddess should'na showed herself, seein' as somethin' truly awful was goin' on in there. But you is just a priestess, an' no offense, but there's no magic you can show me what will convince me--"

"CURTISS STORMWALL, YOU IMBICILE!"

The Mayor's voice was so sharp and loud that I was sure she was right behind me, but she, like Lucile, must have found some way to amplify her voice--or perhaps she was just very practiced at snarling insults from a good thousand feet away, because when I turned, she was nowhere close. Her voice cut through the foreman's argument immediately, and even knocked Lucile out of her focused state. Grinning, Lucile let go and stepped back to give the other woman room.

I also noticed that the shipwright's workers had all scattered and were trying to sneak back into town undetected, clearly much more scared of the mayor than the priestess or her talk of necromancy. All, of course, except the worker who had plunged off the ship, as he couldn't walk. I started to raise a hand and interject, but Mel's voice wouldn't have let anyone else get a word in, save perhaps Alanna in her divine form.

"TALK to her, I said. I did not say to go behind her back and venture into gods-cursed... necromancy-laden... WHATEVER the hell that is. Believe me Curtiss if I had my way that ship would be gone--"

The foreman, whose name was apparently Curtiss, started to object as loudly as he possibly could, but he was drowned out effortlessly by the mayor, who was loud enough that I had to plug my ears and back away.

"--but when a servant of the same Goddess who arrived in this town manages to convince me that the place is not safe, you ought to take that as a thrice-cursed SIGN that you were to respect the rules that she sets forth. NO BONUS!" By now she had just arrived, and snagged a fistful of the man's shirt and pulled him down to her face. "And any trouble you've caused will be paid for out of your stake, and don't even THINK of arguing against the penalties if you're late. This is all because you--!"

At that point the foreman, in some combination of fear and rage, swung and hit Mel in the face with a meaty fist. It was enough to cause her to drop the man, but not enough to cause her to fall or even stumble more than a step. Lucile was the first to retaliate; she punched him in the nose, breaking it, and had him by the hair in a fluid motion, dragging him down. Mel, with a fluid motion, dropped an axe kick onto the back of his head, driving him straight down into the sand and probably straight into unconsciousness.

I say "probably" because they both kicked him a few more times just to be sure. If he stirred after the first kick, he didn't after the next few. Me personally, I couldn't move, still stunned that the mayor of the town was strong and limber enough to raise her foot above her head and bring it down with enough strength to knock the man down.

And frankly, that left me feeling reasonably good. I had heard many times that it was un-ladylike for women to fight, but as the only man on the scene, I was very glad that both of these two women were far better at fighting than me--and far better than the foreman, since he was a giant turd who didn't deserve to win either the argument or the fight. I kept expecting that someone was going to turn and accuse me of being less than manly for leaving it to them, but Mel just wiped her mouth and spat at the man, then started apologizing to Lucile, who returned the apology, and then they both started talking about men, meatheads, incompetents, and those who were all three.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

When it seemed like their conversation was not going to immediately stop, I did have to clear my throat and get their attention. "Madam Mayor... Miss Lucile?"

Both turned to me, the grouchiness of being messed with so early in the morning clear on both their faces.

"What should we do about the worker who fell?" I nodded towards the ship. "Do you want me--I am not strong enough to carry him out, and that looked like it broke something, probably pretty badly..."

Mel immediately turned to Lucile, who sighed and started trudging towards the man. I hurried to follow, but she held up a hand to stop me without even looking.

What happened next confused me more than a bit. I was half expecting Lucile to pull some kind of divine-magic thing, but she seemed to use only mundane magic, first poking and prodding at the man's body, as he whimpered and apologized and was eventually told to shut up. Then, with a use of magic that I felt but didn't understand, she seemed to set and splint the broken bones in his leg, as well as his hip, using something like fused sand as the material for the splint. Next was giving him a crutch made of the same sort of sandstone-ish substance, after which she snapped at him until he hobbled his way away from the wreckage under his own power. Satisfied, Lucile went back to the necromancy-tainted ship area and, with a vague yell that sounded like a threat if anyone were to disturb her, went to work doing... something. I assume the same sort of something as yesterday.

That left myself, a wounded man, an unconscious man, and a very pissed off mayor.

Mel looked exhausted already, but leveled a very grouchy, level stare at me. "Guess I owe you thanks for getting Lucile involved. Keep people away and deal with the normal tasks. Try... TRY... to keep the trouble to a minimum." She glanced at the unconscious and the wounded man, but left without giving me any orders or advice about them.

Which I suppose left resolving that little difficulty on my shoulders.

The shipwright with the bad leg ...well, he looked pretty bad. Up close I could see that Lucile had indeed splinted all the way around his hip. I'm no doctor, but assuming that meant his hip was broken, or maybe even shattered, the chances of that healing wrong... seemed significant. Maybe this world had healing magic of a type that would lower the chance, but then, the foreman seemed to have a damaged skull that healed wrong.

In the end, I just shook my head and turned to the man. "It'd be best if you rest as much as you can until that heals," I cautioned, not knowing what else to say. "I don't know how bad you are, but if that doesn't heal, you won't walk again, for sure."

The shipwright nodded and swallowed hard, and started to shuffle off home. I felt bad for him, but I also had to deal with his asshole boss. I decided the best thing to do with him was drag him back to his shop, something which nobody, including him, would ever thank me for. Still, a worker there, short and squat but at least eighty percent muscle, carried the man off as soon as I had him in the door, and didn't seem to have anything to say to me about it at all.

That left me idle. It wasn't a good feeling.

I spent part of the day standing outside just to make sure nobody bothered Alanna and nobody needed help at the docks. But because that was a terribly boring way to spend hours, I ended up reading through the papers that Manne had left in the office, wondering if there was anything odd to be found. After all, I'd witnessed him taking bribes at least once, so there could easily be other ...irregularities.

When I didn't immediately find any hidden boxes of gold, I ended up looking at his stack of reports on gold taken in as tax, and going through the stacks of shipping ledgers that he had intended for me to look over anyway. The good news was, Manne didn't seem to be misreporting taxes; at least the last several months, the report matched the records. He, as I already knew, took too little in taxes, but that seemed to be an honest mistake.

After searching his office, I did eventually find a false bottom in a drawer, leading to a stack of papers that I immediately knew I was not going to like. They were cryptic, written in code, but it wasn't really clever; or put differently, it was as clever as you'd expect a poorly educated port master from a sleepy town to be.

Manne wasn't dumb enough to keep records of his shady dealings, but he did have to keep notes so he wouldn't forget.

"Black needs help finding quality goods" was on top of the most recent. "Pointed north. Must contact wolf. No friends involved." There were a few places where a thin strip had been cut off the surface of the thick paper (was it paper? on closer examination, it might have been some kind of animal hide parchment, but I was no expert), taking only the layers that had ink on them, so there was no sign of what had been written. Then, "East man says fall", more removed lines, "Black guarantees passage".

The other pages that were hidden looked mostly to be older, because they had far more removed portions. One had brief coded descriptions of people: "Wolf looks like old barkeep. Branch has a bad lisp. Tooth isn't the older one. Black gets signals." Another had what was clearly a map, but that didn't help me one bit, not knowing anything about the geography of this area--or any other area. Another had a very well done portrait of a naked woman--in chains. My lips curled into a sneer and I didn't look at it very long.

In all, I didn't find much more in the office that was damning. So, after checking on things one last time, I hurried over to the mayor's house. I half expected that she wouldn't be in, but I actually found her sitting on a bench just outside, her head in her hands.

"Mel... Madame Mayor." It only took me a moment before I realized I probably should have come back later, or at least given her a minute, since she looked very out of sorts. "Is this a bad time?"

"Yes." Mel looked up, taking a deep breath, and let it out. She forced a smile. "But the office comes with responsibilities. What can I do for you?"

I pressed my lips together tightly, wondering if more bad news was what she wanted, but I offered the stack of papers. "These were Manne's. A secret drawer in his desk."

Mel got a nasty look on her face and took them, but after glancing through them, the one she ended up focusing on was the portrait--which I realized standing there might well have been a portrait of her, when she was younger. I wouldn't have thought of it, but the proportions, and the face...

"That useless cowardly--" she immediately tore the paper in half, then quarters, then smaller pieces. I suspected she'd burn it, later. Taking a moment to calm down, she looked over the rest. "Fine. Useless garbage notes. Any idea what they mean?"

"Not really..."

"Then we're done." She set them down on the bench beside her. "Leave me be."

I left.

I got back to find Lucile making her way back from the ship. It wasn't quite dusk yet, but I got the distinct impression that Alanna was burning a bit of juice to hide the signs of exhaustion until she got back to her temple. So I joined her silently, expecting that I would be making dinner again.

But when I opened the door to the temple, I was shocked. Somehow, I had been so caught up in my own part of things that I had forgotten about the refugees from the ship. Refugees that, for the moment, were all gathered in the temple.

I felt a headache going on, but Lucile and I both plastered smiles on our faces and walked in.