Lord Hew was in her sitting room, rather than her office, evidently intent upon taking a midafternoon repast and not expecting company. It was only Zia’s intensive blustering, still riding high on what had just transpired, which got them into her mansion. “I assure you, Lord Hew will be most interested in what we have for her, and for that matter that I will be most displeased by the derogation of my abilities implied by it taking any longer than absolutely necessary for her to see the fruits of my labors.” My, our, what is the difference. They’re my Heirrors. The butler, beset and rather less thuggish than the manservants of Lady Amorous, eventually gave a long-suffering sigh and asked if Zia had a card. In place of the card, which she did not have, not having anticipated any High Society—or Royal Society, to be fair—shenanigans, she deposited the ring of Lord Amorous on the tray. The butler was evidently too well-trained to indicate surprise, but merely welcomed them into the foyer. The brief interlude of inactivity was long enough to take the edge off Zia’s adrenaline, and she was beginning to dwell upon the day’s activities. My flame failed me. My token of the Mother. I mean, it disabled those thugs, but I felt the fire go out before I meant for it to. My faith in Izkarzon is… less. And evidently I never cultivated a very strong faith in the One God. I will have to talk to Zidrist about it, and she’ll sentence me to say Our Dragon of Mercy’s—well, she might not. She won’t excommunicate me. Or if she does, does it really matter what she says this far from Dragold? Except I need Darka because I lack the silver to… her train of thought was mercifully interrupted by the butler’s return, which had most certainly not taken more than a sandglass to occur. So it was that they were before Lord Hew as she enjoyed a ham and mustard sandwich, already wearing the thief lord’s wedding band that Zia had gained at the expense of so much peril. “I assume you are duly impressed?”
Lord Hew, evidently impressed but not intimidated, finished chewing and swallowed her bite before replying to Zia. “I must confess, I am. I sent you away this morning and told you I would be checking your credentials, and nonetheless you move out. That’s not terribly practical attire for housebreaking, Heirrors. If I might ask, how did you acquire Lady Amorous’ ring so quickly?”
Zia swelled at the opportunity to show off her competence, and launched into a telling of what had transpired. Drexl, scouting and finding the limits of the Lady’s domain. The show of significance, boldly sallying forth in formal attire. The careful falsehoods regard Lord Born. Stealing the ring right off Lord Amorous’ finger. And finally the gout of fire that bought them time to flee—to strategically withdraw, Zia remembered the term in the nick of time. Much more dignified than fleeing. However, Lord Hew did not seem caught up in her story. She started off still attending to her sandwich, set it down by the halfway mark, and bore an incredulous expression by the end. Zia, briefly bolstered by the retelling of her heroism, did not immediately notice, until Darka spoke up and asked, “What is the problem, Lord Hew?” Problem? There’s no problem. We circumvented her intent to speak to Lord Born and find out what our actual competence is—Zia did not pay much mind to the fact that her definition of success was staying ahead of her own reputation—and we got the ring. Without killing anyone.
Lord Hew, however, made clear that she had other conceptions as to their success. “Are you out of your mind?! You were well aware this was a game of status, you insistently stuck the title ‘thief lord’ to those involved… I suppose it is my own fault, I should have recognized an unsubtle tool when I saw one. Your actions are not even one grade above common thuggery, bandying social status about that, in Fief, you do not even truly possess, implicating Lord Born in foolhardy actions—I suppose I don’t particularly care about that, but—”
Zidrist interrupted. “Your stated intent was to bring low Lady Amorous. Does this not do that? Not a single death, a group of four taking her husband’s wedding ring from her very home, and as you said we bandied about social status we do not possess. She can’t even claim it was a Fief noble she had to entertain, her hireling was so focused on physical security—”
“You dare speak of that? You literally kicked in the door! You sounded proud of it!”
Drexl spoke up, and Zia startled, so rare an occurrence had that been in Fief. “Your Lordship… as you said, you should have seen us as unsubtle tools. Perhaps the best thing for everyone would be for you to give us directions and send us on our way? Even killing us will not change what has happened.” I should have been the one to say that.
“I should kill you as a lesson to other fools, except nobody has even heard of you. Yes. Fine. You should continue east to the gate leading into the sphere of Eating Fog, from there to—” Zia cleared her throat. “Yes, problem child?”
“Might we get this written down? Each gate is a day’s travel, I’d hate for us to get lost.”
“While I think I would love it. Yes.” Lord Hew gestured to the butler, standing unnervingly close behind them, and he strode from the room. “Take your directions and go. And now that I know the tactics you consider subtle, do not think that you can outrun your reputation forever.” Now what does she mean by that?! Was that a threat? Do we need to… ulp. Killing is not an option. I don’t even know whether fire is an option. Zia looked around at her comrades. They didn’t look happy but they didn’t look especially intimidated. Why?! She wailed, internally. I had the plan, even if it was something right out of Daring Kaliskast, nobody objected, but now nobody is defending me! Well… no, Zidrist and Drexl defended me. But they’re letting her needle me and—the butler returned with a small scroll of directions, simply names of spheres and the meridian direction that would take them closer to their intended thief lord. “May we never meet again. Find some other town to frequent should you contrive to return.” Dungbag.
Outside Perimeter, the sandstorm resumed in full force, and the sun was still obscured. East was, very generally, straight out of the gate. Drexl had that bread common sense and suggested they veer to the right, and then if they encountered a wall before they found the gate, they would know to head left. “Guys? Did I make a bad plan? I thought you all approved of it.”
Zidrist sighed. “We did, but criminal capers are not something I have a great deal of experience with. I am a mere deacon for lack of the guile my superiors hold.”
“Drexl, you’re a—”
“We’ve been over this, Zia. I am a thug. I hit people over the head with planks. I don’t ideas, I don’t aspire, and I had a good job standing outside storefronts and getting rained on. At this point, I’d be happy to return to that job, it seems like this is more adventure than we really counted on.” Amen to that, I was hoping to be home by now. Isn’t this even just the journey to find the guy who knows who knows what we need to know, and then we have to find the heir herself?
The wall was a gale of wind which was impassible to them, so they leaned into it and let the sand weather them a bit until they found and passed through the gate. The far side was not silent, there was the sound of running water, but it was quiet compared to the howl of winds inside the previous sphere. Fog rolled in from the wall, and they struck out for the center of the sphere upon realizing that it was eating away at their skin and clothing. Rather than being distressed at the damage to her possessions and looks, Zia chewed her lip, working on summoning the nerve to admit her heresy to Zidrist. They were in sight of some kind of structure when she finally blurted out, “I am doubting the supreme sovereignty of Izkarzon and I know that’s a heresy but you’ve been talking to priestesses here and theoretically the One God is the Father Supreme and yet we were never taught that and in the Lady’s estate my flame failed me because I realized that Izkarzon may have been a God-King but he’s not God and he’s not much of anything anymore and—”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Zidrist swept her arm to cut Zia off. “Take a deep breath. I have acknowledged that perhaps Izkarzon was not a God figure. The heresy you fear to speak is not much of a heresy at all. Now I know why only the most fanatical were chosen to be missionaries. From my talks with clergy in Fief, I am not concerned that lack of faith in Izkarzon will damn me, I am concerned that lack of understanding of the One God might condemn my soul to Hell.”
Zia moaned in dread. “I’m definitely going to Hell. I corrupted a deacon of the Church of Izkarzon with my half-baked idea to find the heir of Izkarzon.”
“Zia, relax. I corrupted myself. It is not the duty of the laity to defend the souls of the clergy. Rather the opposite.”
Darka chimed in. “Besides, I was here to keep her out of trouble, remember? That was my job. Yours was just leadership. And silver, but that was as much bluster as got us into Lady Amorous’ estate.”
Zia gave the two of them a hangdog look. “But I killed a bunch of people. For what I thought was a holy cause. Now I did it for nothing. Doesn’t that mean I go to Hell?”
Drexl scowled. “While I would have loved for you to think of that before you killed him, you killed one thug. A fire on the upper floors is easily escaped. You killed one person. One. Tops. Two if someone was asthmatic and a heavy sleeper.”
“But Krask said—”
“Krask knew what we told her, which was intentionally inflated to try and impress.”
“Oh. Right.”
“For all your bluster, Zia, and you do have a lot of it, you are a soft person. You want status and wealth, but you were raised with those and then lost them and this is just your latest get-rich-quick scheme. An ambitious one, but just the latest. You didn’t have the patience for standing outside storefronts like I do, remember?”
Zia nodded, her misery easing by degrees. “So the one man I killed… he was going to kill us. So that’s self-defense, right?” Drexl nodded back to her. “Zidrist?”
“Armies have marched on less justification than that, and nobody claims Hell is full with the souls of legionaries.”
They finally reached the spots on the horizon, an assortment of low, granite buildings. Zia was working on not scratching at the raw skin eaten by the fog and privately hoped, perhaps there’s a healer Darka could charm into healing this. Except we’ll just get burned by the eating fog on our way out. Sigh. This sucks. I’m ready to go home. Except I’d have to eat so much crow. At least I didn’t actually sell any of my jewelry to finance this.
Darka secured room and board for them, she really is a talented singer. Zidrist is lucky. She realized as she thought on Zidrist’s luck that she no longer envied Zidrist and Darka per se. She hoped to find a relationship like theirs, but she thought of them first as friends and as romantic prospects… not at all. Similarly, Drexl she hadn’t considered for a liaison… she hadn’t considered anyone for a liaison in a while. It just… didn’t appeal. I’m just tired. I’ll get back to my adventuring ways… tomorrow. As she lay on the granite floor, the bed having been given over to the more aged Zidrist and Darka, per usual, Zia fell asleep before committing to memory the fact she was lying to herself.
The next day, after a spare breakfast, they continued on their way. The next sphere they entered was mercifully milder than the last two, identified in the scroll as Lushland. It was a swampy, boggy land, reminiscent of the slums of Sasson and the off-roads path they had taken to get out of Dragold. Drexl was evidently reminded of it as well, because she asked that, now that they could navigate using the sun, they seek out a settlement. “I want to see what the poor live like in Fief.” Is she thinking of staying behind? “This place reminds me of home a bit. We were always told how bad people have it outside Dragold, but so far… well.” Drexl shrugged. It was a big piece of fortune that I had clothes specifically for getting covered in mud. It will royally suck drawing enough water to get the mud out of my boots. They found a settlement, called in typical Fief fashion “Bogtown,” and Drexl immediately set out for the tallest buildings in sight. “Drexl, you’re heading for the wealthy district.”
“The poorest district will be one middling district over from the wealthiest. It was that way in Sasson, it was that way in the villages around Sasson, and if you talk to the merchants it’s that way everywhere.” Sure enough, Drexl’s sense of direction served them true. While the tallest buildings were still made of wood, they were painted or polished, but in the slums they were raw and worn and covered in rot and moss. Nobody much trusted their carpentry either, because the buildings were universally one story tall. It looks like they just wait for something to collapse and then put a new board over it. The smells were much like those of Sasson’s poor districts. Sewage, inadequately drained, spices, to preserve inferior meat, and the composting buildings themselves. Songs carried on the air, not often on-key, most often bawdy or heretical even as Zia was coming to understand heresy, but universally joyful sounds. The people around them were dirty and their simple plant-fiber clothing worn, but Zia had to admit they looked a touch less nervous than the bread of Sasson. Things are stable here. Bad and stable is better than bad and unstable. But I’m going to find the heir, because good and stable is best of all. Drexl strode along, looking for Iz—One God knew what, before pronouncing herself satisfied and suggesting they find an inn somewhere nicer. Now what was that all about?
(Saved) From Sheol
One God, I find it rather odd
That people could deny you’re true
I’ve hurt, I’ve lost my very shirt
But I never lost my faith in you.
I don’t believe that anybody
Could save the way You do
So praise you Lord.
I’ve sinned, I’ve done it yet again
It’s something I feel bad about
Oh Lord, you’ve heard it all before
But I’m repenting without a doubt.
I don’t believe that anybody
Could save the way You do
So praise you Lord.
And every road’s lit by the light of Spirit
He prays for us, in wordless groans, you hear it?
My faith is everything to me
I’d show you I had faith to spare if I only knew how
I’d move that mountain now
The Savior
Has come because He’s gonna
Save your
Soul from Sheol
He’s gonna save us all.
Our Lord, I never will be bored
Singing out my praise like new.
Tortured, thrown into a forge
I’ll still say the only One is you.
I don’t believe that anybody
Could save the way You do
So praise you Lord.
And every road’s lit by the light of Spirit
He prays for us, in wordless groans, you hear it?
My faith is everything to me
I’d show you I had faith to spare if I only knew how
I’d move that mountain now
The Savior
Has come because He’s gonna
Save your
Soul from Sheol
He’s gonna save us all.
The Savior
Is gonna save your soul from Sheol
Is gonna save your soul from Sheol
Is gonna save your soul from Sheol
