“The basic idea is that time is not linear. Uh… that’s an arrow’s path, for Drexl. It’s only our mortal perception that sees it as such. So the Nones meditate on the divine and seek to cultivate emptiness, so that the divine might fill them and free them from the limited perception.” Zidrist was clearly enjoying explaining, though Zia had to confess she had no idea what she was talking about. “Steeped in the divine, the women of the Nones seek to emulate the timelessness of the One God and send their spiritual energy back in time to before original sin, the better to experience a sinless experience in this life and what comes after.”

  Zia put a hand to her temple. “You’ve completely lost me. But they’re an order of women?”

  “… Yes. Thus our goodbyes outside the cloister.” Zidrist was clearly anticipating an explosion of temper. I’m a little more chill than I used to be. I mean, the ouroboros thing, but also gender. I mean, Mien, for all that the fink tried to have us jailed, didn’t make an issue out of his gender. And look where he got.

  “So at the risk of more explanation I don’t understand, why the cloistered existence?”

  “Because they need to focus on their meditation.”

  Zia quirked a smile. “So you’re just going to bury your head and not think too hard about having spent most of your life devoted to a false god?”

  Darka grinned in reply. “We’re sending our essences back to before we did that, and that may or may not be part of the appeal.”

  ”Alright. Hugs, please. We’ve been through a lot, and this is goodbye for me at least. Drexl can go with you? Or does that intrude upon their cloistered existence?”

  Drexl draped an arm over Zia’s shoulders, the contact stirring old feelings, but only briefly. “I’ll stay outside with Zia. So hugs all around, this is goodbye.”

  The contact was welcome, the camaraderie bittersweet. Zia had made three friends for life on her adventure, a relationship—hah, that used to be a loaded word for me—crystallized in a whitewashed jail cell. Darka pressed the little rag doll that had accompanied them—for all the good avoiding the number four did us—into Zia’s hands. “The practice of emptiness and non-attachment includes forsaking Orthly goods. She’ll be happier with you, I think.”

  Tears formed in Zia’s eyes. “Thank you, Darka.” They hugged again, and Darka patted her arm with a glance at Drexl.

  While they hugged, Zidrist took her turn with Zia. “I think it’s for the best. I don’t know how to function outside a spiritual community, and these old bones are too old for more adventures—or returning to seminary. Fortunately, meditating upon the divine is one thing I can do.”

  “I’ll miss you, Zidrist. Even if you did get on my case more than once.”

  “Bah, you deserved it each time.” Zia didn’t reply, but nodded her assent. Or is that a reply? I was trying to be enigmatic. Old habits die hard.

  The wrought iron grate closed by a None in black garb, and two of Zia’s friends—what a treasure, to have had friends—disappeared into the stone building on its other side.

  Drexl turned to face Zia, hands on hips, stance wide. “I’m impressed, Zia. You were ready to burn down the glade of that moon cult. But you don’t even seem particularly put out.”

  “I’m not religious enough to miss seeing inside a cloister. And spending time where your caste doesn’t matter—and seeing it illustrated,” she added, with a cuff of Drexl’s arm, “had a dampening effect on my belief I should be admitted everywhere I felt I wanted to go. I’m an outsider in their little cloister, and maybe doubly so, I’ll just leave them to it.” Zia gnawed her lip. “You didn’t have to stay out here with me.”

  “Well, I didn’t want you wandering off, even if I am curious. I’ve grown spiritual, even if I wasn’t when we were in the cult.” It really was a cult, wasn’t it. Sigh. I could do with an honest faith. Fief seems to have that. Wait, “doesn’t want me wandering off”?

  “Drexl, are you sticking with… I mean, we’re not Heirrors anymore. There’s all of two and a half of us.”

  Drexl smiled and laced her fingers through Zia’s. That’s the kind of gesture she would have gently rebuffed, before all this…? “You’ve done a lot of growing, and you’ve been my friend for more than a year. And I’d swear they say something about the friends you make in jail.”

  “That they’re a bad influence?”

  Drexl laughed. “I mean, I never got into half so much trouble as when I ran with you. But I’d run with you a bit longer if you’d like.”

  “As friends. I didn’t know how to value my friends properly, and I don’t want to make things weird by failing to now. I don’t even know what a relationship would look like anymore.”

  She kissed Zia’s knuckles. “You won’t make it weird, and we can figure out what it looks like together.” Is she serious? Zia’s eyes widened. Holy herring, she’s serious. Drexl… I mean, it would be social death in Dragold to get entangled with bread, but nobody here knows about caste marks. And I think a relationship with Drexl might be worth it anyway.

  “I’d be game. Even if we were still in Dragold.” Let that be the right thing to say.

  “See, ‘even if we were still in Dragold’ is part of why I’m interested.” Yes! “I’m not supporting you, though. You’re going to be polishing pews or whatever else you can find as work.”

  “What were you thinking you’d do?” Show interest in the actions of others.

  “While Zidrist and Darka were narrowing down their religious options, I got in touch with the local criminal element.” I thought she was all about defying stereotypes. Then again, I guess “enforcer” isn’t a marketable skill in a town with a town guard. “I’ll be digging up the freshly interred to sell corpse meat on the black market. Evidently it’s even cheaper than squab. I’d believe it, for all the pay I’ll get, but it’s more than nothing. And it’s a foot in the door.”

  Zia tucked a lock of hair behind her ear as a delaying tactic. Asking for help still didn’t feel entirely natural. “Uhm… do you think I could get a job of some kind? Through your contacts?”

  Drexl raised an eyebrow, an expression at which she was now quite accomplished. “You want to do criminal work?”

  “I mean, unless penmanship and the least subtle or useful of sorceries has become a job that will find me employment.”

  “They could. It would be bad work and long hours, but they could.” But I’d rather work at the same place as you! “How can I say no to those puppy dog eyes?” You did. For a year. “I’ll talk to the boss. Anything else you can suggest you’re good at?”

  “Arrogance, bravado, near word-perfect recall of the Daring Kaliskast? I can even mimic his signature.”

  What? What? That last got a reaction. “It’s a dirty business, as you might have gathered from Mien getting us involved in it, but forged deeds are lucrative. They use property rights in place of ridiculous piles of gold. Which you might remember.”

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  “It’s one signature. I’d need to practice.” And I need to practice practicing, honestly.

  Drexl laughed and blew out a breath. “You’re going to get us both hanged. Alright. Arson’s also a capital crime, but it’s also a great talent for insurance scams. And they’re both pretty ambitious. I got my foot in the door, but you might swing it open.”

  “Well, I’d need your help, at least at first. I’m not… well, nearly as competent as I like to think of myself.” That stings a little less to admit each time I do.

  “It might be a week or two, the underworld likes to do its own checks to make sure you’re not a stoolie.”

  Zia waved a dismissive hand. “I’ll sell my dress. It’s silk, and in decent condition despite our adventures. I can buy something made of cotton to replace it, or just live in leather like you live in your armor.”

  “You want me to take on another foreigner? Her accent gives her away.” Well sarx. That’s not encouraging.

  “She doesn’t need an accent to, ah, imitate papers.”

  “She’ll be distinctive for arson though, and that’s bad.”

  Drexl spread her hands. “Boss. You’ve seen I do good work, and I haven’t gotten myself on the wrong side of the law yet. Sure, she was straightedge for a long time, but she learns fast, faster all the time. She’s sharp.” Wow. Thank you for the extreme vote of confidence! Zia thought sincerely.

  “But does she dig like the dickens? That’s really all you’ve shown you can do.”

  “I also duck behind tombstones pretty well, shovel and all.” I’ve seen her do it. I’ve helped. I have the calluses to prove it.

  “So she’s going to duck behind a desk when a forgery doesn’t come off right and be in the first place they look when she’s not there?”

  “If she does her job right, they won’t come looking for her.”

  The woman Zia only knew as “Boss” steepled her fingers. “Let me see that signature again.” Oh yes! Foot in the door!

  Things were proceeding similarly well between Zia and Drexl. At Zia’s insistence, terrified at the prospect of losing her last link to the world she knew, they were taking things slowly. They had spent a quiet evening that night over a bottle of all-too-sweet wine and cheap bread and cheese.

  “Did you ever think things would turn out like this, Drexl?” Zia asked, reclining against the close wall of their room.

  “Drinking fine wine and decent food with a woman I love?” Holy sarx! What?!

  “You love me?”

  Drexl’s brow furrowed. “Are you telling me you don’t love me?” And right after she says that I put my foot in my mouth.

  Zia flushed. “I wasn’t—I was trying to take things slow! I don’t know my emotions so well, I know I’ve been focused on you for a year and change, and I love the time we spend together…”

  “Zia, love isn’t some fancy philosophickle thing. You answered the question. You love spending time with me. You keep spending time with me. We have a flat and a meal and that’s what you’d rather do than go adventuring. That’s love.”

  “You’re better at ‘philosophickle’ things than you seem like you would be. So if I want to spend time with you, and make you happy, and cherish you…”

  “That’s love.”

  “Then yes, I love you, Drexl.”

  “I could have told you that, dork. I wouldn’t have taken advantage of the weird obsession you had when we met.”

  “Hmm. Principled, for a common criminal. Well, not so common.”

  “Because of the principles?”

  “No. Because you’re smart and sweet and ‘philosophickle.’”

  “And principled.”

  Held hands had turned into kissing, and then Zia had broken things off as much as one could while sharing a one-room flat with the object of one’s desire and trust.

  By the time they met with the Boss, Zia had sold both her leathers and her dress in pursuit of pleasant experiences with Drexl, an expense she did not for a moment regret. What she had, she would be generous with, where she had been sparing when she’d had regular pin money. One thing Drexl had firmly insisted, before allowing Zia to buy her gifts, was that she pay the outrageous expense of a ‘Loon message to her parents in Sasson, warning them of the probable tumult to come and giving them her address.

  Zia’s penmanship was refined enough to pass for that of an official scribe. There was an incident where she was tracked down using invasive air sorcery to get her likeness, but her own sorcery meant there was only ash to incriminate her. Evidently, Drake held a grudge, because Zia found out the air sorcerer who had led the investigation was none other than Gnosis. But there was only so much incrimination the testimony of a single air sorcerer could carry. Which is a good thing even aside from me not wanting to end up in jail, because otherwise they would probably be running Fief by now. Which… is a spooky thought. Gnosis has the White Queen’s ear, I hope he’s not meddling. Then again, it’s probably more than his life’s worth to dig through the thoughts of royalty.

  Drexl kept her night shift for a while, until a gang war broke out and Boss hired Drexl with hazard pay to end it quickly and decisively by taking out Baron—what is it with men named Baron? Zia wondered.

  “You want your grave robber to kill a guy?”

  “You were an enforcer. You haven’t run afoul of the law or of any of Baron’s mooks. I can deny having anything to do with you.” Demon dung but I hate to hear Drexl be “deniable.”

  Drexl shrugged, as though it were no matter, cast a look at Zia, and then went on at her small shake of her head. “I can’t kill someone. I may not be going straight, but I have to draw the line somewhere, Boss.” Meanwhile, I’m trying not to feel ill that once again our well-being hinges on killing someone. I guess I’m not doing the killing. I’m just here because Boss treats us as a matched set. …we are, aren’t we. Drexl just turned down a prestigious job because I wasn’t comfortable with it.

  “So hand him over to the guard! What do I care?!”

  “He won’t fink. Finks don’t last long or make it to his level.”

  “No, but he will be out of my way, and that’s all that matters. Have your forger leave some papers on his person and he’ll be out of my way just as permanently.”

  Drexl glanced at Zia again, who shrugged. She turned back to the Boss and nodded.

  Baron was found in an alley outside a guard post, reeking of blittero and nursing a headache. Aside from his infamous visage itself, several property deeds found to be forgeries were on his person. After that, jobs that called for subtlety went to Drexl, who was kept on retainer by “Boss Egregious.” Evidently taking out a rival puts you on last name terms with the Boss.

  By the time they’d lost their accents, Zia and Drexl had a child. Also a wedding, but that was possibly a less raucous affair than the infant. They named her Patience, in both the tradition of Fief and the Wholist practice of virtue names, at Drexl’s insistence. “If she’s like me, she’ll have it. If she’s like you, she’ll need it,” Drexl had said with a laugh. Drexl being on retainer, and Zia’s work being more art than trade, they were both able to see to it at least one parent was on hand to supervise her, though both of them gave Patience her head when she wanted to wander after a certain point. She’d Zia’s talent for fire sorcery, and took to inspiring fatigue or inattention in the available parent until they sighed and shrugged. “She’s more like you,” they’d both said more or less in unison, after making that decision.

  Patience’s adventures, of course, were another story entirely.

  Worship God

  We all love to worship God!

  If you don’t I would find it odd!

  And we all go ‘round saying sing Gloria sing Gloria sing Gloria!

  Yessir I worship God

  I’ll sing His praises no need to prod!

  Gladly we’ll go ‘round saying sing Gloria sing Gloria sing Gloria!

  The Lord is gracious and He’s giving,

  Thanks to Him that we keep on living

  There’s never strife, when you live this life.

  And when we go into Church we bring a song in our hearts

  Singin’ a song, all the day long.

  So if you adore God, give praise to the Lawd,

  And we’ll all go sing Gloria sing Gloria sing Gloria!

  Yes, he’s a righteous God!

  He was a kind and merciful God!

  Spoiled His Child and He spared the rod!

  ‘Til he was murdered, executed!

  Yes my friend I know,

  The One God has a holy glow

  There’s never strife, when you live this life.

  Just pray a few times with your heart and soul and

  You will know, the One God is so

  Wonderful-u-u-ul.

  It was for us that the Savior died!

  Thanks to Him the Enemy is denied!

  Because he died to pay for our sins pay for our sins pay for our sins!