“Isha! Slow down! We need to talk about logistics.”
Ash’s tone was one big eye roll, while Faith’s voice held only compassion and empathy. “She can’t slow down, Ash. If she delays, a drove of demons might depart the clinic and devour her.”
I didn’t bother to turn, but I did decelerate to a rapid trot so they could catch up. Together, we wound through the open-air market with its clutter of wooden stalls. “So what are the logistics?” I asked without looking at either one. “How much time do we have until the next Church holiday?”
With a shrug, Ash tipped his head at our resident Ecstatic expert. “Faith? You seem to know more about the Church than the rest of us.”
Faith’s green eyes widened in injured innocence. “Would an assiduous ascetic like myself be able to ascertain the details of church holidays, especially since none of their assemblies ever ascend to match that assignation?” she cried energetically.
Oh dear. She was in one of those moods.
Ash widened his eyes too, meaningfully.
“Oh, very well.” Capitulating with surprising speed, she darted over to a stall that sold fresh cut flowers and pretended to admire some pink floral arrangements. “Next week is, of course, Ascension Day.” She sneezed noisily and jerked back from a particularly foul-smelling bouquet.
“Which is a holiday, yes?” Ash clarified patiently. “It’s important to the Church and hence a Tycherosi might vanish around that time?”
Regretfully shaking her head at the stall owner, Faith sighed, “That is the Church’s assessment.”
“All right,” decided Ash as we continued on our way. “Then I propose that I question the Tycherosi community in Charhallow about the disappearances. They’re more likely to talk to me than either of you. Isha – ”
Before he could suggest any unpalatable activities, I preempted him: “I’ll survey Morland.” No matter his extracurriculars, the curate, at least, was entirely human. Human with unsavory hobbies, I could handle.
“Faith?” The third member of our crew had once again stopped by a stall, this time to admire a selection of silks. Ash called her to order. “Can you identify candidates for the next disappearance?”
In between buying enough pink ribbon to trim a dozen ballgowns, she assured him, “I assent to the task assigned.”
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Charhallow, which my archivist so disdained, was a roughly triangular district that huddled directly south of Crow’s Foot and to the northwest of Coalridge. To an even greater extent than Crow’s Foot, it was crammed with buildings – tenements that teetered like stacks of children’s blocks, taverns that sagged in the most alarming way. As if unaware that they might get crushed by a collapsing wall at any moment, packs of skinny, dirty children streaked through the twisty alleys, shrieking as they played hunt-and-peek and catch-the-ghost. After the dislocations of the Unity War, the population was heavily refugee, meaning that the district endured both Hutton’s anarchic pro-Skovlander-rights revolutionaries and the racists who vandalized bars and shouted catchy slogans such as “No Skovs!” and “Skovs go home!” In the midst of this seethe of poverty and racial tension, a small group of Tycherosi hunkered down and labored in the stockyards and eeleries.
Following the directions of a heavily-muscled laundress, I found Morland’s church in the middle of the Sheets, a neighborhood of washers, tailors, and seamstresses. His tiny, crumbling wooden shack bore no family resemblance whatsoever to the Sanctorium, that voluptuous cathedral in Brightstone. If Charhallow’s house of worship had any curves, they came from warped wood, not avant-garde architectural design. Disguised as an unsuccessful seamstress, I loitered in its vicinity and casually questioned street sweepers about any strange doings. While I was chatting with a Skovlander beggar, the side door creaked open, and out shuffled a disheveled, middle-aged Akorosian man garbed in a shabby black cassock that fit him about as well as a burlap sack.
“That Morland?” I inquired in a heavy Skovlander accent, pretending to swig deeply from a hip flask.
I passed it to the beggar, who quaffed the awful moonshine I’d bought in Charhallow Market, squinted rheumy eyes at the man, and hacked up a gob of mucus. “Aye, that’s him all right.”
The curate let the door bang shut behind him and then bumbled eastward. A frayed satchel banged against his thigh with each step, the protrusions in the fabric suggesting the outlines of books.
“What’s he got in that bag o’ his?” I asked, pretending to consider robbing him.
The beggar cackled moistly. “Jist books, dearie. For service. Nuthin’ worth takin’.” She took another long drink and added, “He does that ev’ry week, does he. Goes to that big church with all them tops.”
After a bit of mental translation, I figured out that she meant the Sanctorium, aforementioned voluptuous cathedral, which I confirmed after I bade her farewell and tailed Morland there. Indeed, curates were converging on it from all directions for what seemed like a fairly standard service, after which they attended a meeting with what must have been the church elders (at least, their cassocks were made from silk and glowed in deep reds and purples). Then, perhaps depressed by the contrast between Charhallow and Brightstone, Morland plodded back to the Sheets and drowned his thwarted career ambitions in horrible beer at his favorite pub.
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Although I felt satisfied with my reconnaissance, Ash returned to the railcar in a state of extreme distress. Prowling around the common room, he growled, “It’s worse than Coalridge! It’s even worse than Crow’s Foot! They’re dirt poor and hungry and desperate and the Church is their one source of momentary escape from misery!”
Tying extra bows onto the arms of her favorite chair, Faith graced him with a fleeting glance. “Whom better to target than poor, desperate people no one will miss?”
“Did you figure out how Morland picks his victims?” he demanded in response.
“Probably.” Faith’s energy drained out of her, and she slumped all the way down in the chair. Her head sagged until her chin bumped into her chest.
“Aaaaand?” Ash prompted. “Did you identify his next target?”
Her voice muffled by the ruffles around her neck, Faith mumbled, “There’s a young woman – sorry, Isha, I meant ‘a young part-demon’ – named Kallysta. She’s been having the worst time. She was floating from job to job, and then she got fired and kicked out of her flophouse, so she stayed with a friend, but then the friend got kicked out too, and she’s been living on the streets since then. She clings to the Church as the one bright spot in her life. I really can’t fathom why Morland would pick her of all people.”
Ash and I exchanged glances. “Did you find out his vice, Isha?”
“Yes. He’s an alcoholic. Most nights, he goes to The Old Rasp to drink among his parishioners. They treat him.”
“It just gets worse and worse,” Ash snarled. “Well, we have a reputation to uphold.”
“Mmmm, it does seem poetic for the Poets to murder him there,” Faith agreed.
“The Poets?” I asked before I could stop myself.
With a malicious gleam in her eyes, she explained, “Yes, the Poets! We serve as the agents of poetic justice! Incidentally, did you know that the term ‘poetic justice’ originates in – ”
“His parishioners could discover a slightly different version of the truth,” Ash loudly cut off her etymological lecture, “that turns them against both the curate and the Church. The curate could commit diabolical acts that are anathema to human decency. Torturing children, um….” He quickly ran out of ideas for what might offend human decency. “We can come up with whatever we desire.”
Faith seamlessly transferred her enthusiasm to this new endeavor. “We can spread rumors about torture to the victims’ loved ones! Screams can be heard from the curate’s house at all hours of the night!”
“And then we bring them all to the bar where they turn against him in a fit of drunken rage,” I finished.
“His health certainly won’t fare very well,” pronounced Ash with satisfaction. “I can certainly think of many stories of sadism – ” he looked pointedly at Faith – “and abhorrent behaviors.”
She gave him a look of shocked innocence, which he ignored.
“Come on, Isha,” he ordered. “This is a Slide job.”
Faith’s protestations that she could think of even more stories of sadism and behaviors abhorrent to human decency trailed us halfway across the Old Rail Yard.
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To our surprise, drumming up fervor among Morland’s flock proved well-nigh impossible. His parishioners were convinced that they knew what had happened to their vanished friends and family.
“She was taken into the arms of the Church,” whispered one, making a ritual gesture of reverence. “She was selected to be Hollowed. It’s a great honor, miss.”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
When we tried to convince them that Morland was disappearing people for his own nefarious purposes, they grew increasingly hostile.
“He’s a good man, Kender Morland is.”
“Here now, I won’t hear any talk against Curate Morland.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave now.”
“I can’t believe them!” Ash fumed. “They’re all just going along with him! They’re all enabling him!”
In disgust, he enlisted a small band of Tycherosi from outside Charhallow, plus a handful of locals who weren’t resigned to losing loved ones. The star recruit was an aspiring actor who was just starting to wrangle some critical notice under the stage name of Vey Weaver. (His real name was the unpronounceable and un-rememberable Oryxus, and he lived in a commune on the edge of the Ease in Silkshore.) Relevantly for us, he’d just played a ghost who possessed his best friend in order to avenge his poisoning by the best friend’s sister. (Suffice to say that things didn’t go so well for anyone involved; it was a tragedy, after all.) For the price of one coin, Vey agreed to reprise this role on the stage of The Old Rasp.
We provided him with the information he needed to impersonate one of Morland’s victims, plus a small stipend for cosmetics and costuming. Then we paid the rest of our miscreants to show up at The Old Rasp and act as agents provocateurs. At the sight of hard slugs, they were more than happy to oblige.
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And so it was that on one rainy evening (what other kind was there in Doskvol?), I found myself perched on a wobbly stool in a horrible pub with a leaky roof. Between tables, icy water dripped into sawdust that hadn’t been changed in months. In the entire bar, there was a single unbroken chair – and naturally, the parishioners reserved it for their beloved curate, who was draining mug after mug of revolting “beer” with grim determination while ignoring the antics of Ash’s Tycherosi. The tightness of his jaw suggested that he couldn’t quite tune out the two sitting nearby, one of whom was loudly doubting the sexual exploits of the other.
“Enough!” growled the bartender at last. “Get out.”
They replied with the most offensive (and anatomically implausible) suggestion imaginable.
By this point, half of the people in the bar were eyeing the door warily, debating whether to leave, while the other half were eyeballing the confrontation hopefully, wondering when it would turn into a brawl so they could all pile in.
In the midst of all this, a local shuffled up to Morland and whispered urgently in his ear, with many pointed looks in our direction. With a sigh, the curate put down his mug, as if preparing to leave.
Sliding off my stool, I hustled to the bar and bought an entire round of beer, all of which I spiked with the Black Lotus I’d bought from Mylera using my employee discount. (I’d selected the drug for its hallucinatory effects, which would hopefully slow Morland’s reaction time when the bar fight broke out and thus make him easier to kill.) Heaving up the tray so everyone could see it, I sang out, “This round is in honor of the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh!”
Cheers rose from all corners, the would-be brawlers temporarily distracted by free booze.
As was only proper, I served Morland first, bobbing an awkward little curtsey and sloshing beer onto the tray while he scrutinized my features. “I haven’t seen you around, miss,” he said, not bothering to hide his suspicion.
Shifting the tray onto my cast to free my right hand, I stuck it out for him to shake and explained with all earnestness (plus a strong Skovlander accent), “I just moved to Charhallow, sir – I mean, reverend sir! I went to your sermon last week and it opened my eyes about how I should live my life! I am so grateful to you!”
Morland nodded in a perfunctory way, as if he heard such testaments to his persuasive powers all the time. Selecting the cleanest-looking mug for himself and handing another to me, he spoke a ritual blessing over the drinks, raised his halfway, and looked at me expectantly.
I was all too aware of large Tycherosi males – and not Ash’s bunch, either – pressing up around me, staring intently at me. There was no way I could avoid the toast, not if I wanted Morland to drink. Faking a servile smile, I hoisted my mug. “To the Church!” I cried. Throwing my head back so everyone could see me put the glass to my lips, I glugged noisily at the same time as my target.
Their suspicions thus allayed, the locals eagerly lifted the tray off my cast. I heard little clinks of glass as people began to pass around the mugs, but I hovered by the curate, beseeching him for guidance and observing him closely for signs of intoxication. As the minutes dragged on, though, I started to lose interest.
The bar – why had I thought it looked horrible before? It was beautiful. The bluish light from the bare electroplasmic bulbs sparkled through every raindrop that fell from the ceiling and limned every blade of straw on the floor. And just look at the coarse, picturesque costumes on the pubgoers, the way they clumped up into little knots at the bar, the way they leaned towards one another, chatting, arguing, laughing, gesticulating. The Old Rasp was a painter’s dream, was what it was.
I babbled some stock saying I’d heard at the Sanctorium service, or maybe I made it up on the spot, but whatever it was, it seemed to work because the curate mouthed it back at me…. Faith! Faith would know! There she was!
Swaying to the back table where Faith dozed over a full mug of beer, I half-clambered, half-fell onto a stool next to her and dropped my head on her shoulder. Those ruffles were really nice and soft. Who’d have thought Faith would make such a good pillow? Although – pillows were ruffly, weren’t they? The ones that weren’t embroidered?
“There, there.” For once, Faith sounded amused, not bored at all. “Don’t worry,” she assured someone over my head. “She’s fine.”
Rotating my head sideways, I spotted Ash staring at me worriedly. Why was he worried about me? He was the one sitting next to a burly Tycherosi and plying him with drinks. I grinned and waved, trying to sign “I’m fine” at him, except that I couldn’t remember how it was supposed to go.
Ash shook his head slightly, then made a complicated hand signal at someone else. I couldn’t remember its meaning, even though I was pretty sure I’d invented it. But it didn’t matter. I was too comfortable to care.
A minute or an hour later, Vey Weaver walked jerkily into the room, like a human body piloted by a ghost that couldn’t quite remember how to move in the flesh. Who was he playing this time? Oh yes – one of Morland’s victims. Sev-something-or-other. In fact, Vey looked an awful lot like that dude sitting next to Ash. I was about to comment on that when the actor staggered over to a man at the bar who was minding his own business, bellowed “Murderer!” and wrapped his hands around the guy’s throat.
Huh?
The locals froze.
The dude next to Ash opened his eyes so wide I thought his eyeballs would drop right out.
“What’s going on?” I mumbled into Faith’s ruffles, but if she answered, I couldn’t hear her over the murmurs of the crowd.
“Is that – ”
“It sure looks like – ”
“But it can’t be – ”
Across the room, Morland rose unsteadily to his feet, gripped the edge of the bar, and squeaked, “What is the meaning of this?”
Then he stared intently at the actor, like Ash trying to attune to the ghost field. Faith’s chest rumbled under my head in a little chuckle, and Morland groaned and rubbed his temples as if he’d just gotten a very bad headache.
A few eelery workers moved too quickly for me to follow their actions, but when the dust settled, some were hanging onto Vey, who flailed and gibbered, and some were bending over the other guy and asking if he were okay.
The dude next to Ash suddenly burst out, “But that’s me cousin!” People furtively glanced at him, then looked away as if embarrassed. “But he went to the Church!”
“That can’t be right!” Ash exclaimed. “Ellis, are you sure?”
The dude bounded off his stool, tripped over his own feet – yay! Someone else who couldn’t walk straight! – and staggered over to Vey. He peered at him with a horrified expression. “Sevraxis! It can’t be you! You were saved!”
Ash rushed up to brace the dude when he nearly toppled over. “Is it really Sevraxis?” he demanded, his voice ringing around the room. “If that’s Sevraxis, then what about the others? What about – ” and he rattled off an entire list of weird names. Why did the Tycherosi use such weird names?
Rumbles began to rise from all sides.
“What is the meaning of this?” Ash yelled at Morland.
Providing appropriate sound effects, the crowd growled ominously.
Pointing a dramatic finger at the curate, Ash declaimed, “I will have answers for what happened to me sister! And I will have them now, Curate, or there will be blood!”
Even through the haze of Black Lotus, I could sense the crowd teetering right on the edge.
Swaying on his feet, Morland tried frantically to regain control of his flock. “No, no, no,” he gabbled. “That can’t possibly be Sevraxis. He was definitely taken into the arms of the Church. There must be another explanation for this. Ellis, calm down a moment. You’re very drunk.” He turned to Vey. “Explain yourself.” He stared intently, trying to compel the “ghost,” but then clutched at his temples in the most hilarious way. Faith noticed me watching him and winked.
Our fake ghost burbled incoherently about murder and vengeance.
Oh, right. We were here to murder the curate, weren’t we?
Standing so suddenly that the whole world cartwheeled, I shrieked, “So was everything you said at the service a lie? I thought you would save us all! Everything was darkness, and I thought you were the only light in this darkness, and now it’s just more darkness!” Then I collapsed back into Faith’s arms and buried my face in my hands, sobbing hysterically.
A soothing hand petted my hair. “There, there.” If anything, Faith sounded even more entertained now.
Shouts. Smashing glass. The crash of shattering stools. Above the din rose Ash’s anguished cry – “Is the Church selling Hollowed bodies to ghosts?” – and the curate’s panicked plea – “It’s all lies! Lies! I swear, they were taken into the arms of the Church – !”
Nearby, fabric rustled and a voice called urgently, “I’m going to get the wardens!”
Opening my eyes, I caught a glimpse of a local wading past on his way to the door. I reached out, snagged his arm, slid off my stool, and babbled frantically about how the curate was a lie, and the Church was a lie, and the Hollowing was a lie, and everything was a lie….
He shook me off. “We have bigger eels to fry,” he said brusquely, and disappeared out the door.
Faith made a tiny pushing motion with her finger.
Glowing faintly, the guy slammed back into the bar and shouted, “I changed my mind!” He stabbed a thick, hairy finger at the curate. “This is all your fault!” And he plunged into the fray.
A second ghost swirled hungrily around Faith and tried to possess her, but she just batted it away, as if it were an annoying child distracting her from a good show.
“It is all his fault!” I screeched, climbing onto the table, waving my arms, and searching for the curate. “He lied to us!”
Kender Morland had long since vanished under a large pile of angry Tycherosi.
Our leading man, brilliant actor that he was, had stayed in character the entire time, screaming bloody murder. Now Ash hauled him off to the side and brandished a lightning hook at him while the “ghost” convulsed and wailed.
Faith’s eyes lit up. She bounced off her stool. “An exorcism?” she cried in delight. “Can I help?”
Together, they performed a fake exorcism with much chanting and arm waving. It was a waste of a fine performance. No one was paying them any attention.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Ash said soothingly to Vey, who burbled and rolled his eyes in confused terror that didn’t look entirely feigned.
“I’m staying,” Faith declared. “I mustn’t miss a minute of this mayhem!” She selected a different table with a better view of the frenzy and propped her elbows on the table.
Ash and I hustled the actor onto the street.
Against a backdrop of incoherent shouting, Ash muttered at me, “Can you get him home?” His entire body angled back towards the door, as if he mustn’t miss a minute of the mayhem either. “That Which Hungers wants to watch.”
Of course it did.
“Of course I can!” I proclaimed, flinging my arms wide. I listed to one side and grabbed Vey’s arm for support. “Come, friend! The night is young!”
Although the actor regarded me doubtfully, that was exactly what Ash wanted to hear. “Good. I’ll see you later.”
True to my word, I walked Vey Weaver all the way back to his commune in Silkshore.
I even remembered to pay him the rest of his fee.