Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1

Twenty One: Gods

Blane chose not to grace this with a response. They had just passed the local Kelian shrine. It was a small thing – most of Kona's residents worshipped one of the heretical deities instead – and showed signs of neglect. The water that filled the fountain was murky and had bits of rubbish floating in it. The fountain itself no longer ran, only leaving a turquoise stain on the copper statue it had spouted from as evidence that it had ever run at all.

Blane paused, looking up into the copper-wrought face of Kiel – smiling, always smiling, Blane thought, a miracle in itself – and then fished in his pocket and pulled out three Flint.

"You know some local brat will hook those out as soon as you leave, sir," the young man said behind him.

"Maybe it will do them some good," Blane retorted, throwing in his first coin. "Kiel teaches charity, doesn't he?"

He closed his eyes. O Kiel, Lord of the Light, Saviour of the Kindred, Brother of all Men...what am I saying?

He opened his eyes again and frowned, flicking in another coin. If you're listening, sir...

He sighed and flicked in his last coin, wearily adding, I'd really like to stay alive tonight, your Holiness, if you have room in your schedule for it.

Feeling negligibly better, Blane turned away from the statue and its copper smile and continued on his way without waiting to see if his companion would catch up. He couldn't explain his unease, or his sudden compulsion to appeal to a god with whom he had always had a patchy relationship. Something just felt wrong tonight.

His unease wasn't improved any by the presence of a death priest coming towards them on the other side of the road.

Death priests weren't an uncommon sight in the fringe quarters, but Kona was a long way from the Nict house temple. It wasn't a particularly dedicated area of worshippers of the death god, either. Aside from the one Kelian shrine, all the shrines and churches he had passed were dedicated to the Heretical Orders, and the two Houses got on like oil and water. The only House that Nict had a worse relationship with was Kiel, and despite not being an ardent worshipper, Blane felt a bristle of disgust.

A member of a House which had a twenty-foot stone cadaver standing in front of their temple and was rumoured to have close connections with the Devils was generally considered unsavoury company.

"Well met," Blane grunted, keeping his sigh to himself when the death priest showed signs of wanting to stop and talk. He was not a large man, and looked like a reanimated corpse himself. His dark hair stuck up in such a way that it looked as though his head was playing host to a very elderly shadeling.

"Well met," the priest replied, voice solemn. "Quiet night."

Blane offered a tight smile. "It is indeed. Seen anything on your travels today, sir?"

"Actually, yes." The death priest sniffed as if it was of no great consequence. "A rather large sack hanging outside an ironmonger's forge on the West Way."

Blane balked. "A body, you think?"

There were several named criminals that Blane knew who liked to leave their kills in sacks and hang them somewhere prominent, and none of them had ever been caught. The genius of the Devils' strategy; everybody knew them well enough to know who it was safe to report and who to pretend they had never seen. The Devils' revenge on tattlers was fast and terrible.

"A possibility," the priest said, still looking unconcerned. Blane had never seen a death priest look happy; he supposed it came with organising the entirety of your life around the end of it. "I thought I would mention it, in any event."