Chapter 86 - High Priestess Problems

I followed the high priestess up to the third floor where she kept a private office with a small shrine to Lucita. She lit a set of votive candles while her paladins took position outside the room. I waited for her to complete her ritual and then take her time settling into one of the sedans. Serpentine tails make most chairs and couches awkward for drakkyn. It’s difficult to judge drakkyn ages, as well, but I put her at about forty summers.

“These are strange times to be welcoming a seeker into a temple of our Lady of Wagers,” said the high priestess.

I shrugged. “It’s always odd times in Drawgonmaw, priestess.”

“Alas, true enough.”

At a knock on the door, the paladin opened it to reveal an attendant with two cups of something. The high priestess gestured to the squat table between us and took one of the steaming cups almost as soon as they were set down. She sniffed at it. “Tea from my home province. Quite unpronounceable for you, unfortunately. And perhaps just as unpalatable. But it is tradition to offer it when offering names.”

I took the cup and took a tentative sip. It was bitter, tasting of pollen and a slight spicy aftertaste that made me incredibly thirsty. I did my best not to cough, but one small sputter slipped out. “That’s a bit rough on the back end,” I said. The high priestess chuckled.

“My own name, I’m afraid, you would find equally unpronounceable,” said the priestess. She said something sounding akin to the word problems, with sibilants somehow inserted after the p, b, and, as best I can describe, underneath the e.

“High priestess Problems,” I said.

“Close enough,” she laughed, hissing. “Apt, as I have no shortage of them, these days.”

I took another sip of the tea and immediately regretted it. “Such as the Mayaz moving in where they’re not welcome.”

Priestess Problems shook her head. “I don’t understand it. Hollowdown’s abyssal cults have never had more than a passing enmity for us. Despite our similar trades, little crossover persists in our clientele. Their sudden aggression caught us off guard. We’re a faith of influence by coin, not strength of arms. Wars ill-suit us.”

“So you don’t know why they attacked?”

Problems shook her head.

I pulled my deck from under my robe and unsealed it. I didn’t even know a reptile woman could purse her lips, but the high priestess managed it at the Deck of Wills in my hand. I nodded to the alter. “With her permission?”

Problems closed her eyes for a moment, and then nodded.

I leaned forward, curious. “She speaks to you?”

“Not exactly,” said Problems. “Her guidance is like a peculiar weight to the dice, to lean a decision one way or the other.” she spread her hands. “To leave this to fate is to invoke Her will.”

“I don’t understand theology,” I admitted, shuffling and cutting the deck. I noticed Problems shift slightly as I sent my will into the cards. The Wills were strong and certain as I skimmed the top three cards and flipped them. The lovers arcana, the four of streams, and the five of storms.

I studied the cards, chin couched in my elbow. The high priestess sipped her tea and watched with interest. “This,” I said, tapping the lovers, “represents a new partnership. With Them? With us? I couldn’t say. The middle one, the narrows, represents an acceleration of sorts. And the swell of storms? A growing power.” I hmmed. “Mother Mayaz is a seeker as well. If she foresaw an alliance and wanted to stop any potential partnership between us. Ironic that such a thing might have been galvanized by her interference. Self-fulfilling prophecy, that would be. But the strands of fate form eddies around gods of odds and fortunes. Though, in truth, she might have other reasons. Perhaps I’m missing a variable.”

“Not so much an exact science, is it?” asked the priestess.

“If that’s not the pot calling the kettle black…” I muttered, sweeping my deck back together.

Problems giggled, nodding in commiseration. “Priests and fortune tellers. We who interpret the whims of those above our mortal ken must make do with what such base creatures as us can perceive.” At another knock on the door, she set her cup on the tray and gestured for her paladin to open it before continuing. “Still, I hold hope this matter with Mother Mayaz might be resolved peaceably.”

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I stacked and squared my cards. Just as I started to relax my control over them, they pushed back and a fourth card shot out into the air. I snatched it from the air. Both Problems and her paladin stared at it. I laid it down. The four of demons, inverted. Failure of intelligence, Enemies at the threshold.

“Your attendant,” I said, standing, “Had a very different knock this time.” I drew the four of knaves and sent a quick deviltongue ping to Annalisa, and, after a moment’s consideration, to Mithra, as well.

The paladin let go of the knob and slipped on his holy knuckle dusters.

I moved to the side of the door opposite the paladin as the knock came again. I slid my dagger from its sheath beneath my robe and held up three fingers to the paladin. Then two.

Before I could get to one, a loud crash of glass and a splat shook the walls. The paladin looked at me and jerked the door open. The Mayazian on the other side staggered, hand to his head. Beer soaked his front, and several shards of glass stood out from his flesh.

“I was WINNING!” screamed Annalisa, who hurled a second glass at one of the other two knifemen in the hall.

I had to duck back so it didn’t hit me. It crashed against the wall at the far end, but then I was out in a flash, driving my knife into the chest of the dazed shark before. The paladin was out the door after me, and I saw his knuckles light up with holy power. He swung at the next Mayazian. I watched from behind, eager to see the smite in action. Unfortunately, there’s a problem with serving a goddess of chance. His attack fizzled on contact, leaving the Mayazian free to sweep his thin knife across the stunned paladin’s front. The man fell back, hands grasping at the wound as he gurgled his last breaths.

I scowled, cursing the worthless bastard—or rather, his lack of luck, and fanned out my deck. The other paladin lay sprawled on the carpet near the priestess’ previous attendant. Her throat had been bitten out, and the third Mayazian had the red-stained, eel-like jaws to mark him as her murderer. I think he might have been part drakkyn, but the abyssal cult of Mother Mayaz had warped him. Annalisa sailed past me with a wild haymaker that the knifeman had managed to block, though it set him off balance. He took a step, but a frost portal opened up below his foot, and he fell to the side, right into Annalisa’s rising knee, which sunk into his gut. I’m surprised he didn’t pass out then and there, but he somehow manage to get his arms around my partner and toss her to the ground.

The eel spun his daggers and hissed, charging me, but hesitated, looking down at my hand. The eye on the hilt of my blade was open, and it was fixed on the eel. I looked up at the Mayazian, grinned, and opened my grip. He flinched back as the knife shot from my palm—straight towards him. He managed to deflect it, where it wedged in the wall and fought to get free. But I was already feeding my will into the two of knaves, which I threw at him. The eel was quick, managing not to get skewered by the spinning card. But it still tore a hole through the side of his coat, which he twisted his sinuous neck to look at. He quickly reversed his grip on one of his knives and threw it at me. About that time, my own knife worked itself free of the wall and sunk into the eel’s calf.

Momentarily distracted, I charged my cards with the three of dragons and whipped the heated deck at the pair of Mayazians. A bright welt appeared across the eel’s face where it struck him, but I couldn’t get a good angle on the other with Annalisa tangled up the way she was.

“What is that?”

I hadn’t even heard the high priestess come out of the room, but I glanced back to see her staring at the ceiling, which had the leg of a Mayazian thug coming out of it, courtesy of Annalisa. I wrapped the chain of cards around it and yanked down, pulling him further through the portal. He panicked at the sudden pain, allowing Annalisa to get the upper hand.

The eel-looking one flipped one of his own knives and hurled it at the high priestess. With a quick burst of the two of towers I bolstered her resilience, but the blade still left a red line across the side of her neck and she dropped with a cry. The eel grinned, but missed the demon dagger pulling itself free and slamming into his side. He gasped and screamed, clutching at the hilt, but it wriggled deeper. He had the double jaws of a predator eel.

“Good knife,” I muttered, closing in. He saw me coming and tried to raise his own blade. I charged my entire deck with the three of knaves, and it turned into a storm of phantoms, disguising my own actions. I reached down and slipped the iron knuckles off one of the paladins, putting them on my own fist and taking a page from Annalisa’s manuscript. I came through my own cloud of cards with my fist raised.

He ducked my punch and his jaws snapped out, grazing the sleeve of my robe with needle-like teeth. I grabbed his wrist with my other hand before he could bring the knife up.

“Darcent!” shouted Annalisa, somewhere behind me. A blast of cold hit my cheek, and her foot appeared from below, ramming up into the chin of the Mayazian. Stunned, it let go of my sleeve. I wound up and and drove the knuckles home right on the eel’s forhead. His eyes rolled up and his lights went out.

I shook off my hand, I didn’t realize how much using false knuckles could hurt. How the hell did Annalisa do this with bare hands?

I bent double, gasping, and turned to my partner. She’d somehow gotten around to the other shark’s back and currently had him in a complicated-looking choke hold. I stumbled over and repeated the punch that had put the other Mayazian out. By now, more of the paladins had responded to the scuffle. It had lasted only a few moments, from start to finish. They took in the dead and dying, Annalisa and myself, and their high priestess on the ground. Their knuckles started to glow.

I raised a hand. “Easy, lads,”

One of them advanced eyes glowing with celestial power. A hand shot up from the floor, wrapping around his ankle. He looked down at the high priestess.

“Priestess?”

“Don’t,” she ordered. “They’ve just saved my life.”

The budding smite dimmed and winked out, and the paladin knelt beside the head of the shrine and propped her up. He turned to his companions. “Make sure there aren’t any more,” he ordered.

I slumped to my haunches as the other Lucitian paladins moved by me to check on the others and secure the floor. I looked across at Problems. “Still think you can settle this peaceably with Mother Mayaz?”

“Fuck no,” she rasped. “We’re going to war.”