No sooner had I set foot in the railcar, than I regretted it – because Faith pounced.
“Ishaaaaa,” she pleaded, “can I have a faaavor? Can you acquire a copy of the demon’s holy book, pleeeeease?”
I eyeballed her, ready to lose my temper if she were making another Ixis joke. (The Prince of Shadows would never be so direct as to have his own holy book.) “Which demon’s holy book?”
She widened her own eyes, shocked that I had to ask. “Setarra!”
“How am I supposed to acquire a copy of Setarra’s holy book?” I demanded. Without robbing and murdering one or more of her cultists, that was – which, come to think of it, wouldn’t be such a bad idea. At the very least, it would stop them from sacrificing any more children.
Unconcerned by such petty details, Faith shrugged. “I don’t know,” she replied carelessly. “I thought you were good at this sort of thing.”
Oh, wait. She’d assigned her pet acolyte, Arilyn, to infiltrate the cult, which meant that she must have long-term plans for it. Since I didn’t actually want to spoil any of her projects, revenge would have to wait. In fact, playing along with her plans might count as revenge in and of itself.
So I dressed up as a would-be cultist (in the dark, hooded robes we’d worn for our fake demonic cult) and headed to the Docks. After haunting the same shady taverns that Faith had suggested to Arilyn, I managed to get an interview with one of the recruiters. My air of determination, immorality, and pure rage convinced him to give me a copy of Setarra’s writings, which I promptly handed over to Faith.
As thanks, she flung her arms around me and squeezed the breath out of me. “Thank you, Isha! You’re the best! There must be some way I can repay you. I have these interesting documents on the invasion of Iruvia – ”
Breaking free, I glared at her. “No you don’t.”
“Oh!” she cried, pretending to remember all of a sudden. “I burned them! Aww, well, I’ll find some other way.”
The look she slanted at me showed she was expecting a flat refusal, so I said instead, “That would be better.”
The expression on her face was all repayment I needed.
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At their next afternoon tea, which I monitored as usual, Faith coached Arilyn on how to rise in the cult of Setarra until she got close enough to the leader to assassinate him. “Without the adept, the entire cult will fall apart,” she explained to the wide-eyed acolyte. “Then there will be no more human sacrifice.”
After staring into her empty teacup for a moment, Arilyn lifted her chin, met Faith’s eyes, and stated grimly: “So we will be exchanging the death of one demonic cultist for the peace and safety of all the residents of Crow’s Foot.”
“Exactly.”
Faith nodded her approval but waited until their next meeting, when Arilyn had already begun to impress the other cultists with her zeal, to elaborate on this plan: “If you can get close to the adept, then I can provide poison for his tea. All that’s required of you is to rise very quickly through the ranks,” she instructed, implying that the faster Arilyn achieved this, the fewer innocents would die. At the young woman’s determined nod, Faith laid Setarra’s holy book next to the teapot. “It may be helpful to identify which acolytes are doing well, figure out what they are doing, and adopt their ways,” she counseled. “I’ll send Cricket to watch over you.”
In the middle of flipping through the book, the acolyte froze. She still didn’t like ghosts any more than she had when she started associating with Faith, and Cricket in particular had a disturbing lack of respect for personal space. “Uuuuuh…,” said Arilyn, obviously groping for a more dignified way to reject the little ghost’s aid than, “But ghosts are creepy.”
“That’s okay,” Faith soothed. “Everyone has their flaws.”
But she did accommodate Arilyn’s – which was shared by the vast majority of Doskvolians – to the extent of setting up a dead drop for Cricket to check.
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Part of our daily routine at the orphanage was sending the children out to buy copies of every available newspaper. Ever since Sigmund had scolded me for missing the rising tension between Akoros and Iruvia, I’d made a point of reading all of them every morning to make sure I caught critical developments. Ash, of course, treated the North Hook Gazette like his personal holy book because of the financial insights it offered. As for Faith, she’d assigned the older orphans to hone their reading and analysis skills by skimming all of the articles and reporting interesting tidbits to her.
So it was that two days later, I caught sight of her protégé, Wester, marching down the hall with a copy of the Dockside Telegraph under one arm. I’d already seen the notice buried on page three about how the Bluecoats had discovered half a dozen corpses, all poisoned, in a Docks grotto. (Mass murder wasn’t exciting enough for the tabloid: Its front page was dominated by the headline: “Severed Leg Hops to Infirmary and Kicks Doctor to Death!”) Gliding after Wester, I watched as he strode into Faith’s office, dropped the paper on her desk, and announced, “Looks like someone beat me to it, Miss Karstas.”
She scanned the article, praised him for his ability to separate useful information from sensationalist rumors, and lectured him on the possibilities of gleaning intel from any source.
Wester listened, as cold and hard as Arilyn had been.
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At the next afternoon tea, the murderess herself was very pale and didn’t touch her cup at all but wore that “I’m not sorry I did it” expression that I knew all too well. To help her distance herself from her moral qualms, Faith demanded a formal report on and analysis of the infiltration, which Arilyn delivered with commendable clarity. She finished, “And I thought that, since I had the opportunity, I should take advantage of it to destroy the entire cult.”
After that, she fell silent and stared sightlessly into her tea.
Faith studied her hunched figure and told her, “As members, they were all complicit in the crimes of the cult.”
I could tell from the wording that she was hiding her irritation at the collateral damage, but Arilyn lifted her head and squared her shoulders.
With a deliberate smile, Faith changed the topic to the acolyte’s reward: “Now, I think it is best if you get away from things for a time. I have arranged something for you, if you will come with me.”
And so saying, she led Arilyn down the street to – the Sensorium, of all places. While the receptionist gave the young woman the obligatory introductory tour and overview, Faith directed Madame Keitel to prepare a concoction of memories of pure hedonism, interspersed with glimmers of the Church as a demonic cult from Faith’s own past.
According to the archivist, who snuck into the high-security archive after them, Madame Keitel objected, “Isn’t that dangerous? She might realize who you are.”
Faith’s response was a dramatic sigh. “But, Madame Keitel, what’s the point of a life without danger?”
Her friend sighed too, for a very different reason. “I’ve been pretty content with a life without danger, Faith.”
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Faith smiled at her. “Yes, but you’re human,” she said, sounding almost fond. “I’m me. There’s a reason I am not running the Sensorium with you, and instead have all these crazy adventures and terrible taste in friends.”
Madame Keitel’s lips quirked in resigned amusement. “You’ve made worse choices than your current batch.”
(At this point in his report, the archivist eyed me briefly, silently asking what friends could possibly be worse than me.)
After a moment’s thought, Faith shrugged. “Well, what can I say? I just get along with demons.”
“Except that one.” Madame Keitel’s voice was flat.
Faith puffed up in righteous indignation. “That’s just her!” she screeched. “She started it!” When her friend only stared at her, she faked a self-conscious moue and turned to the drawer of her bottled memories. “Ahem. But I think the appropriate memories are this one and this one.” As she spoke, she pulled out vials and handed them to Madame Keitel, who pressed her lips together but took them. “A little bit of Dunvil giving me orders. Maybe something of the preparation for the Ascension ritual. A couple flashes of the Church’s architecture, to hint that this is something she could learn more about, but not quite enough information for her to comprehend what’s going on…. I want her to investigate of her own volition, so she believes that she is acting of her own accord.”
Pocketing the vials, Madame Keitel promised with no enthusiasm whatsoever, “I’ll do what I can.”
Faith gave her a warm smile. “Thank you, lovely. You’re the best.”
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Whatever mix Madame Keitel prepared, it must have been incredibly potent, because Arilyn spent the better part of the next two days at the Sensorium.
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While Arilyn was enjoying her reward, Faith’s other apprentice was having a much less pleasant time. In the middle of the night, Cricket popped up in Andrel Helker Kinclaith’s bedroom and led him out of the mansion on a wildly circuitous route through Six Towers. Per Faith’s instructions, she drifted further and further away, forcing him to attune as hard as he could to track her. At last, frazzled and sweaty and only half-dressed, he stumbled into a random house to find Faith waiting in her most outlandish Whisper costume. (Since I’d never seen that particular explosion of black ruffles, feathers, and lace before, I could only assume that she’d bought it for the occasion.)
“And the lesson for today,” she said as if they were in the middle of a conversation, “is going to involve a lightning hook and a blindfold. I want you to attune to the ghost field and target ghosts using your inner eye rather than your physical vision.”
Andrel finally stopped gaping at the two bunches of feathers that jutted up from either side of her neckline to frame her face. “Yes, Miss Karstas.”
Adopting a stern air, Faith warned, “Well, my young student, I assume you’ve done your reading.” At his emphatic “Yes, Miss Karstas!” she proceeded to barrage him with technical questions about how to distinguish between different types of ghosts that had suffered different types of deaths. When he answered every one correctly, she continued, “Now, the lesson is going to be simple. Here’s a blindfold. You have your lightning hook. You are going to walk back to the house where we usually have our lessons. That’s all.”
A short pause, while the boy stared blankly at the strip of cloth.
“What are you still here for?” she snapped. “Be on your way.”
(I could only assume that she was copying her own teachers’ impatience, because she certainly didn’t experience emotion the way normal humans did. Arguably, she might not experience emotion at all.)
“Yes, Miss Karstas!”
He jumped, knotted the blindfold over his eyes, and scurried out of the house. Sweeping his lightning hook in front of him like a blind man’s cane, with Cricket leading the way and bouncing in and out of his attunement range, he set off determinedly down the street. He wasn’t even surprised when ghosts started diving at him, one or two at a time. The poor boy was painfully slow and clumsy and had some terrifyingly close calls, but he managed to fend off all of them.
And then, of course, right at the end, when he was just a hundred yards from his goal, Faith shouted from the porch, “You’re almost there! It’s safe in the mansion!” and shot an entire swarm of specters at him.
Realizing that there was no way he could fight all of them at the same time, Andrel sprinted for the front door, one hand splayed in front of him, the other clinging to his lightning hook, tripping over loose cobblestones and going sprawling over and over. (In his panic, he didn’t notice that no matter how many times he fell, the ghosts never got close enough to possess him.) At last, he skidded into the foyer, slammed the door behind him, and leaned against it, panting.
Before he had time to remove the blindfold, Faith started bombarding him with more questions on his reading. When he hesitated, she barked, “You need to answer these in seconds, or someone might die!”
He’d forgotten a couple of the more obscure points, but it was clear that he’d been doing his readings and at last Faith relented.
“I think we’ll call that a night,” she told him, and his entire body drooped with relief. “In Boden’s Primer, you’ll find a diagram for a Dernashian spirit ward. It’s an essential component of most practical work. You should be able to draw it blindfolded, one handed, in a capsizing boat. You’ll be tested on it next time.”
Sounding exhausted beyond belief, he replied, “Understood, Miss Karstas.”
“Cricket will show you the way home, but I’d like my blindfold back.”
He handed it over willingly and followed Cricket home.
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The next time Faith reported on his progress, Irimina casually mentioned that if Andrel drowned in a capsizing boat, she was breaking up with Faith.
“Well, that wasn’t my intention for the practical, dear,” Faith assured her sweetly. “I was thinking…maybe during an active demon summoning instead.”
And then she distracted Irimina with kisses.
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By then, Arilyn had finally staggered out of the Sensorium and resumed her duties as both acolyte and secret agent. At their next afternoon tea, Faith presented her with a moth-eaten, decaying, leatherbound tome, saying, “I propose that you write your final paper on how to improve the usefulness of Hollows via the infusion of demonic essence. I have spent a coin – ” at the price, Arilyn’s eyebrows shot up, and she touched the cover gingerly – “to acquire this very obscure but very interesting book that details how some of that might work.” In an earnest tone, Faith warned, “Some of this is absolutely horrifying, but it’s very important for me to know how the Church responds to this line of inquiry.”
(A couple tables over, I craned my neck until I glimpsed the runes on the cover. I could read just enough ancient Hadrathi to parse the title: On the Creation of Gualim. Great.)
Arilyn skimmed the first few pages. Her eyes widened briefly – and then her expression went hard.
Over the course of their next few meetings, she brought drafts to show Faith, who critiqued them and suggested thinking points for future directions. That final paper must have been a resounding success, because at the end of the liturgical season, Arilyn was elevated straight from junior acolyte to junior priestess.
When she reported this unprecedented promotion, Faith congratulated her with, “Pursue your studies diligently. I imagine there is a lot you will need to learn as a junior priestess.” Feigning distress, she hinted, “But I find it interesting that they responded so positively to such a horrifying research direction. I suspected that they might, and I think this reveals something that we really would have preferred not to be true.”
“Yes,” Arilyn agreed at once. “They have indicated that they will start to tell me more about their inner mysteries. I will let you know once they have.”
Faith commanded, “Do so.”
At that, the new priestess suddenly had qualms about betraying the institution she’d dedicated herself to serve. “What happens then?” she asked in a small voice. “Presumably the Wardens step in, right? But then what happens? To all of it?” Leaning forward across the table, she appealed, “Is there just not a Church anymore? But then what about people’s souls?”
With a solemn sign, Faith declared, “It’s a messy political situation, and honestly, the resolution is above even my pay grade. You know how inter-factional politics works.”
The daughter of the Strangford clan certainly did. She dropped her eyes and picked at the tablecloth.
“And we can’t dissolve the Church. It is absolutely essential to the lives of Imperial citizens,” Faith went on, making Arilyn look up hopefully. “However, not all aspects of the Church are. The saving of the body from the soul, the exaltation of time spent during life: These are core tenets that are entirely dissociated from anything else that the hierarchy might be doing. If we identify those responsible, it may be possible that they can be purged without erasing the Church as a whole, and replaced with someone sympathetic. The Wardens can’t be seen doing this, and the Wardens wouldn’t want to be. The Church is a critical institution in the Imperium – as I’m sure you’ve written about plenty of times.”
The wryness of that statement was lost on Arilyn, who exclaimed, “Well, obviously! Yes! But…okay. Something will be done, right?”
“When we have verified the information that we have received,” Faith assured her. “We need more evidence before we move.”
“I understand. I will keep you updated.”
Faith rewarded her with a warm, approving-mentor smile. “Thank you, Arilyn. As always, let me know if I can be of assistance. There are twists and tangles in the Church’s hierarchy that my other assets may be able to inform me about. If you encounter something that seems unsolvable, I may have a solution. Do not hesitate to ask.”
From the look on Arilyn’s face, she wouldn’t.
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Since that conversation took more time than usual, I was curious how long Faith could maintain her serious Spirit Warden act. Sipping my tea, I watched the two bid each farewell and waited.
I didn’t have to wait long.
As soon as Arilyn was out of earshot, Faith scoffed, “Ugh! Playing a Warden! Being serious for more than twenty minutes straight is truly headache inducing! The sacrifices that have to be made to take down the Church!”
Then she winked in my general direction.