Vanyen collapsed back into her cot, shaking and sweating. She licked her dry, cracked lips. A splitting headache pounded. At long last choked down a few morsels only to lose it vomiting. The violence of the heaving left her ribs aching.

Through it all, Semon sat serenely. When not relaying her prayers to well-wishers, directing his disciples, or accepting severed Wretch heads to pile on the grisly pyramid in the corner of his mud-brick apartment, he dribbled water into her mouth and comforting words into her ears.

"Semon," she whispered. "What's happening, Semon?"

"You have the Wretch Plague it seems."

"I can't! Am I going to die? I don't want to die!"

"Few do. Want to die, I mean. How deadly this illness proves remains to be seen. The Chants of Inoculation appear powerless against it. Our fates rest in the hands of the Ascen. I should say they lie in the hands of the Mother now." He stroked her head.

"I just wanted people to listen." She clutched at his hand. "I wanted to be heard. To matter."

"The Mother will guide you, I'm sure. It would be better if she went away and stopped contradicting us, however." Semon shook his head. "Protecting the Wretches after all that? Fortunately, our faithful are preoccupied looting estates, raping servants, and fighting over valuables to question. Yet."

"I don't care about any of that!" Vanyen rasped, clutching at his arm as he tried to pull away. "I'm dying!"

"Have some dignity," Semon snapped, jerking his hand away with a glance at the hovering disciples. "You want to lead the faith you've started, don't you?"

"I don't care. I just want to live, Ascen help me."

"You mean Mother help you." Semon dipped the rag into the water again and dribbled blessed moisture onto her lips. "If we slip up among ourselves, we'll slip amid the faithful. How can we expect anyone to believe us then, hmm?"

She sucked at the water greedily. "I'm so hungry, but it all comes up again."

"I know." He shook his head. "You've wasted decent bread and ruined my best blanket."

"Semon." She clasped his hand again, pinning it to her chest. "Do you think the Mother has powers? Could she heal me?"

"They say she can destroy with a word. Killed another Dynast by shouting a spell that made his strider explode or some rubbish." He wiped the towel on her forehead. "Perhaps she bears some barbarian Lineage, but even if such were the case you know they all specialize."

"What're you saying?"

"It means spearmen make wounds, not mend them. Even if our Mother kills with her voice, I doubt she heals with it."

Vanyen broke down sobbing.

"Be strong, Vanyen," Semon said, kindly at first, firmer with each repetition. "Be strong. You must be strong to get through this. Our disciples here hold the faith regardless, but if you're going to lead you need to present a consistent image. What would your people think if they saw you this way?"

"I have no people, just lies and dead Wretches heaped around me," she croaked. "They did me only kindnesses and now they're dying for it."

Semon dipped the towel again. "You did well choosing them. And don't worry too much. Wretches survive as insects do when such things happen. They scurry into cracks and crevices, hiding until no one wants to haul their own shit to the fields or deliver bodies to the Crowmen again."

"Look!" Vanyen rasped, thrusting a finger towards the heaped pile of blood-soaked heads. "They aren't surviving! How can you say such things with their dead stacked before us?"

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

He stood, his one good eye regarding her at length. "If you could read the Book, you'd find two types of creatures. Two only: those who eat and meat. Hunters and hunted. Users and used. Takers and taken. You hear me girl? If you're not strong enough to become the first, you will be the second."

"Not like this." Dragging herself out of bed, Vanyen crawled to the heads despite the pain in her leg. Semon scoffed. She forced herself to look over every Wretch killed at her word, dying inside a little more with each pair of vacant eyes. "They had nothing to take."

Semon knelt beside her, looking over the pile dispassionately. "On the contrary. They gave their lives to prove the strength of the faith you started. We'll have to manage things carefully when Ocyl's troops finally come down on the mob and they trickle back here with their tails tucked, but we'll not let their sacrifice be wasted."

"I don't want to." Vanyen rolled away and closed her eyes, unable to look at them any more. "This isn't what I wanted."

"Hush now. Don't say that." Semon gently stroked her hair. "Do you want their deaths to be in vain, to go to waste?"

"They already have!" Vanyen curled into the fetal position. "If this is what you have to do to be a prophet, then I don't want it. I can't do it."

"Don't say that. Come now, you just need to-"

She shoved his hands away, snarling. The sudden motion heaved her guts and she choked back bile. "I won't do it, Semon. If I live through this I'll tell them I lied, made it up. I'll beg the Wretches for forgiveness. Live among them as their slave if need be."

"Wretches can't own slaves." Semon turned to his disciples, scrutinizing them each in turn.

"I don't care." She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. A resolution struck a chord down into the fiber of her being, guilt fading as purpose lit a flame deep inside. "Was it a fever dream when I heard someone say the Mother sheltered the Wretches from the fury I loosed on them?"

A pause. "No. Another thing I'll have to finesse."

"Has there ever been a Dynast to do such a thing?” Vanyen opened her eyes to see Semon directing several followers off on some task. “They say she treats menials as equals and fights other Dynasts to protect us. I thought it rumor, but if she even protects Wretches it must be true."

"If she's smart, she'll play that down in the future." Semon paused to whisper something to a disciple. "If being equals with Dynasts means also having to be equals with Wretches, I doubt she'll find nearly so many followers as she thinks."

"I'm going to live, Semon," Vanyen whispered, crawling to the cot. "I didn't lie when I said I heard the Imminents talk about her. They said she's going to rewrite the Book. I'll help her. I'll never make right what I've done, but I'll die doing what I can to level my balance before the Ascen."

Semon helped her back to bed. "I've seen you trying to follow in my footsteps, you know. I mocked you and slighted you at every opportunity. Yet for all your ignorance and youth you managed to do what I in all my years of trying never could."

"It's all right." Vanyen smiled, clasping Semon's hand. "I forgive you."

"Here we are, you the Prophet of the Mother's Will, holding the reins to a movement that, properly steered, might spread across the entire Book and our names with it. Me her First Disciple, knowing exactly how to handle the reins. But now you want to sunder them, throw them into the sewage channels like they are nothing."

"Who needs a Prophet when they have the Mother herself?" Vanyen pulled the covers up, shivering. "I thought I wanted to be like you and lead people. Help them find hope and faith again. I know now I'm no prophet. I held the reins long enough to know I never should've been given them."

"Indeed." Semon kissed her hand before laying it down and carefully tucking the blankets snug. "I see that now too."

"You've been so kind." She closed her eyes. Sleep pulled at her, the pain and discomfort somehow less scary, less immediate, less unendurable. "Thank you."

"I am your First Disciple, Vanyen." He stroked her hair for a moment. She begin to drift off as he spoke. "And that I will always be, my Prophet. I was so much like you when I started out: striving, starving, ignored, ignorant, but now I know how it all works."

He kissed her forehead. "Don't worry, dear. I won't let what you created die with you. I will do the great good you could've done had you lived. The Dynasty will pay for what they did."

She barely heard his words. Murmured a sleepy reply. "I'm going to live, Semon, I'm not going to let this Plague beat me."

"Everyone will remember you, Vanyen, Prophet of the Mother. You won't suffer any more. For so long as people talk of this time your name will fall from their lips: the Martyred Prophet."

The pain in his tone startled her and she fought against the sleepiness. When she opened her eyes, she saw him carefully and methodically cutting his arms with a knife. His disciples lunged forward towards her bed.

"What are you doing?" She struggled weakly against them as they held her blankets tight, pinning her to the cot. "Semon!"

"I tried to defend you against the Dynast's assassin, but to no avail." He smeared his face and robe with blood before kneeling beside her. "Your sacrifice here will never be forgotten."

“Semon? What? I don't-”

He slit her throat in a smooth motion.

"There there now, it's all right. Shh shh. It's all right." He gently brushed her hair from her face, stroking her forehead as she died.