The slum-dwellers swamped Floridiana. They tugged on her arms, yanked on her tunic, nearly overwhelmed her with the stench of sweat and rotting teeth.
"Take me!"
"No, take me!"
"I'll go!"
She fought to back up, to get space to breathe, but they were behind her too. When she tripped over someone's cane, only the press of bodies held her upright. "Wait, please, calm down – "
"Here's my son!"
"How much for my daughter?"
"Same bounty as usual, right?"
"Wait, please wait a moment," Floridiana pleaded, "there's been a misunderstanding – "
A mouth that was missing too many teeth, and surrounded by tufts of crazy white hair, shoved right into her face. "I'll fight fer Queen an' country!"
Floridiana was starting to feel faint. She'd forgotten how bad slums were. She'd gotten out, and then she'd done whatever she had to in order to stay out, and she'd never, ever gone back. Had this really been what her childhood was like...?
A long, angry neigh and a clomping of hooves on the muck-covered ground. Dusty's head appeared, followed by his neck and chest, as he forced his way through the mob. The horse spirit planted himself at her side and stamped and blew at the slum-dwellers, and at last they backed away.
Gasping for air, Floridiana ran a hand through her hair and smoothed her tunic, more to buy time to calm herself than because she cared about looking presentable.
"You okay?" asked Dusty.
She nodded, then pitched her voice to carry. "I'm not here to recruit for the army!"
Murmurs. The flood of people from the buildings and spaces between buildings slowed. Bright, hopeful faces hardened back into habitual suspicion of outsiders.
"Then what're ye here for?" shouted a youngish man who was leaning out a broken window.
Ah, perfect dramatic timing! He couldn't have set her up better if she had planted him there to ask that very question. Thanking him inside her head, Floridiana maintained a composed, dignified expression. "I'm here on behalf of the Temple to the Kitchen God!" (She didn't mention Lady Anthea. These people had probably never heard of the raccoon dog spirit and wouldn't care if they had, her existence being far less important than their empty bellies.) "In his infinite love and compassion for those who dwell on Earth, the Kitchen God has commanded the Good Queen Jullia to set up a temple to him – "
"Who cares?" shouted the same man. "What's the Kitchen God done fer us? When's any of the gods cared about us!"
That was a bold statement – but a true one. If you believed Piri's explanation, which Floridiana did, the gods rewarded those who enriched them with offerings. South Serica's poorest residents certainly couldn't compete with the likes of Lady Anthea and the Earl of Black Crag.
Although it was far too dangerous to explain how the Heavenly karma system worked, maybe she could give these people a hint. She fixed the man with her sternest, headmistress stare. "What have you ever done for the gods? Even the Kitchen God, who safeguards the home? Did you think that you deserve Heavenly love and compassion just because you were born onto this Earth?" She paused for the perfect dramatic interval, just long enough to sow confusion in her audience. Then she shouted, "No! That is wrong! You must work for Heavenly love and compassion! You must earn them!"
A fresh wave of murmurs swept through the crowd. She doubted anyone had ever bothered to teach them theology, but they were a cynical lot, and the logic resonated with them.
The mother from before stood on tiptoe and cried over the heads of the crowd, "How? How do we earn them?"
Floridiana flung her arms wide. (Thanks to Dusty, she could do that without hitting anyone.) "Why, through your devotion and your offerings, of course!"
(Just the offerings, really. But stroking Heavenly egos never hurt.)
She checked her audience, confirmed that if she were doing a street performance – and not in a slum – now would be the time to pass the alms bowl. Pressing a hand to her heart, she lowered her voice as if to entrust them with a secret. The crowd rippled as people leaned forward to catch her words. They needn't have worried: She made sure to speak loudly enough for everyone to hear.
"I, too, come from a place like this. My mama and papa – they didn't have much. They couldn't feed all of us, and I was the oldest." Even after all these years, it was still surprisingly hard to say, "So they sold me to a dance troupe. I danced in marketplaces and on street corners for many, many years."
A murmur of comprehension now. Many of the families here had probably already sold or were considering selling their older children. Somehow, their understanding lent her strength.
"So I know how little you have. I know how hard life is for you. I know that you don't have anything to offer to the gods." She paused. "Anything material, that is."
"Ma-tee-rial?" asked someone with a frown.
Right. No big vocab.
"Stuff like food. Silk. Jewelry."
The offerings weren't physically sent to Heaven or destroyed in the process of being offered, of course. Only their spiritual essence was dedicated to the gods, and then the food could be consumed and the silks and jewelry donned or stored in a treasure chest – but that fact didn't help these people in the slightest. If they had the food and silk and jewelry to set on an altar before an image of a god, then they wouldn't be selling their children to dance troupes.
Or, apparently, army recruiters here.
"Ain't none o' that here!" yelled the youngish man who was still hanging out his empty window frame.
"I know!" she shouted back. "That is why I have come to grant you a different way to gain the Kitchen God's favor!"
"How!"
If she didn't know for a fact that Piri had never set a claw in this slum, she'd have assumed that the demon mind had planted him here for this very call-and-response. On the spot, she resolved to take him back to the Temple. "You earn the Kitchen God's favor by serving him in his Temple! We need priests!"
The chatter of the crowd swelled into excited rumbling.
"You will serve the Kitchen God, and in return, the Temple will provide you with food, clothing, and shelter! And a stipend that you can spend as you please, or send back to your families!"
"A sty-pend?"
"What's a sty-pend?"
"Sounds like a good thing!"
Oh, she'd gotten a little carried away. Maybe she shouldn't have promised an actual salary. But surely Piri, who had wrangled enough funding to commission silk robes for the priests they didn't even have yet, and who intended to build temples all over Serica, could scrounge up enough coppers to pay her priests. It would surely cost less than the lavish Temple adornments she was plotting.
"A stipend means money!" Floridiana called. "You'll make money for serving the Kitchen God! Who wants to come with me?"
"Me!"
"I'll go!"
"Take me!"
The crowd surged forward with even greater enthusiasm than when they thought she was recruiting fodder for the army to feed to the demons. Once again, Dusty stamped and neighed and blew at them to keep them from crushing her.
"Line up by my wagon!" she bellowed.
A tidy line was, of course, too much to expect, but in the end, she and Dusty got their new priests separated from their families so she could inspect them. The pair of siblings from before was among them, the sister cowering between her brother and a wagon wheel. Her brilliant call-and-response partner was there too. There were also a few toothless old women who must have decided to remove the burden that they placed on their families, and two middle-aged men who were waving goodbye to their wives and children.
Floridiana's magical scan told her that one of the two men was a spirit. And Piri's instructions in this regard had been explicit.
Steeling herself, she approached the spirit man and said quietly, hoping he wouldn't make a fuss, "I'm sorry, but we're only taking humans at this time."
His smile evaporated into disbelief. "Only humans? But why's it matter?"
"I'm sorry, but we will not be able to take you at this time."
"Why's it matter?" he asked urgently. "You said you need people to serve the Kitchen God, right? Why's it matter if we're human or spirit?"
She had to force herself to meet his eyes. "Unfortunately, I do not set the policies. At this time, the Temple is only accepting humans into its initial priest cohort. If that policy changes, you will be the first to know."
"But...but...." The man looked as dazed as if someone had run off with his full alms bowl while he was performing.
Floridiana knew the feeling. She wavered.
Then Dusty caught her eye and shook his head.
Dusty was right. It would be far, far worse to take this spirit to the Temple, only for Piri to reject him and send him back to the slum.
"I am sorry," she said, with feeling. "I will have to ask you to step aside."
The man didn't protest further. Shoulders slumped, he trudged back to his confused family.
Feeling filthier than the muck on the street, Floridiana ordered the rest of Piri's new, human priests to climb into the wagon. Then Dusty pulled it out of the slums and back to the Temple to the Kitchen God.
I was overseeing the installation of a new bench by the pond behind the mansion when Floridiana's voice bellowed, "Piri! Where are you? I need to talk to you right now!"
At the sound of my real name, I jerked so violently that I nearly fell off the windowsill, and Bobo swiveled so fast that she nearly twisted herself up like a washcloth.
"Piri?" Bobo called back, a little too quickly. "Who's Piri? There aren't any Piris here!"
Floridiana's footsteps got louder, and then the mage charged into the room, hair straggling down in messy strands, tunic askew, and boots caked in – ugh, I didn't even want to know what that was. Through the doorway, I could see the steward, Camphorus Unus, calmly instruct a maid to scrub the floor.
"Piri!" Floridiana cried again.
I hopped around so I could face her head on. I am not Piri. My name is Pip. I will thank you to remember that –
"Please!" she cried, skidding to a half before me. Her eyes were wide and crazy and, oddly, red-rimmed. For a moment, I thought she was going to grovel, but instead she clasped her hands so hard the knuckles went white. "You have to take spirits as priests too! Not just humans! Please let me take the spirits too!"
That was not what I'd been expecting.
Are the humans not up to your standards? I mean, I hadn't expected much from slum humans, but could they really be so much worse than the Jeks when I first met them? Could they really be untrainable?
"No, no, it's not that. They're all so desperate – and I had to kick out a man – 'cause he was a spirit – and it was so, so sad – " By the end, she was half-sobbing.
Floridiana, the unflappable mage, sobbing?
Dusty trotted in after her, spreading more unspeakable muck on the floor. "Okay, I got them settled in – whoa, what's going on here?"
"Um, I'm not sssure either," Bobo told him. "But Floridiana wants ssspirits to be priesssts too?"
Dusty pawed at the floor, simultaneously scratching the stone and leaving more gunk on it. "It was really sad. I've never seen anyone so skinny. And even Lord Magnissimus' pigsties are cleaner."
"Please," Floridiana begged me again. "We don't have to restrict ourselves to humans. We can take spirits too. It's about the offerings, isn't it? As long as we get people to give offerings to the Kitchen God, why does it matter if the people accepting and presenting the offerings are human or spirit?"
You know the reason, I reminded her.
"Yes, but – surely, it can't make that much of a difference – to our karma totals, can it? If we just take a few spirits?"
I looked at her, torn. I wanted to say yes. Such a small thing, to say "yes."
But it wouldn't work.
I'm sorry, I said, and I actually meant it. I really am. But Anthea is already refusing to pay our bills. If we get even more priests, do you think you can convince her to house and train them?
"What d'you mean, refusing to pay? Did she say something while we were gone?"
Unfortunately, yes.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, Autocharth, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, Lindsey, Michael, Pizzatiger, TheLunaticCo, and Anonymous!