Time in the air. Below them, only sea. A few days of limbo and it says a lot about army life that sometimes limbo’s what you need. The war can’t reach them. It’s packed in the crates and boxes waiting to be unloaded when they touch land.
When Jack comes back from the trial – he still isn’t entirely sure if it was his trial or Lidlet’s – he finds the box gone. Cue much running around, accusations and panic, until Alv – to whom he’d actually entrusted the thing – produces it on demand. She hid it away, she says, because Fellow-Archivist Thurrel was snooping around. The Decanter, in his jingling vest of charms, turned up with a bold word and a piece of paper sealed with his own signature, telling everyone Jack had been sentenced to death and his effects were property of the army. Alv dumped Jack’s box into a larger box and put yet another box on top of it, and sat on that, turning her blistered face to the Decanter when he arrived. And the Pals are leery of Divinati, and Alv is, if not innately magical, then at least the nexus where a great deal of external magic finds its fulcrum, and thus obscured anything the man might have been sniffing for. And so Thurrel departed, frustrated.
Jack stammers his thanks and re-evaluates Alv. Because she’s severe and calm and not even remotely the sort to thumb a nose at authority. That’s a Banders play, or Lochiver maybe, neither of them respecters of the chain of command. Alv is always compliant and obedient. Except, when it came to the bite of the screw, she stands up – or sits down – for her comrades.
So he takes custody of the box again, seeing his three fugitive gods creep out into the open to stare at him. He takes it to the far end of their dormitory tent, the end claimed by the hospital. He tells God that he has news.
“Look at that big show of relief the man has,” God announces, ostensibly to the other two deities. “As though he wouldn’t be glad to be rid of us.”
“I wouldn’t,” Jack tells Him flatly, keeping his voice down so that the others in the department – and the soldiers in the bunks beyond – didn’t eavesdrop, even though it was Maric he was talking. “Though you give me plenty of reasons why I should.”
God puts tiny hands on bony hips. “You hear that?” He remarks to the others. “And who would he get, may I ask, to miraculously restore his warlike soldier friends to health, when they get themselves stabbed and shot and otherwise punctured? Who would he go begging to, for some bona fide divine healing that won’t last until dawn because everybody around here is such a damned savage?”
Jack winces. “Well, it’s not something you have to worry about now, anyway. Not any more.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” God demands. “You developed the healing touch all spontaneous, have you? Or you’re seeing some other god behind my back? Because last I looked, Yasnic, I’m the only spark of grace you have in your life. These other two are plain useless.”
“It’s been forbidden,” Jack tells Him.
God’s already creased face scrunches up further. “Say what, now?”
“I was on trial,” Jack says. “They don’t like it. The healing where people can’t fight again. I mean, it’s an army. There’s an… ideological issue there, I guess. So they said, no more. No more turning people into where they’re a pacifist or a corpse. So I reckon that’s an end to it.”
God has a good line in pop-eyed stares. For a merciful healing deity, He spends a great deal of time apoplectically angry. “They said what? Forbid me, will they? I am the bloody font of forbiddances. If anybody’s forbidding any damn thing around here then it’s Me. I’m not to be talked down to like that by a pack of Islermen thugs like I’m a part of their bloody chain of command!”
“Pals,” Jack puts in, not for the first time. “They’ve been Pals for, like, centuries. Not Islermen.”
But God is far beyond listening to His devotee. “I will bloody well heal who I damn well please!” He spits. “Anyone who swears the oaths, let them be bloody whole. Just you wait until we have another battle, you shrinking milksop. I shall do such miracles as the shrinking eye of humanity has not seen since—”
“Will you just not!” And – because it’s evening and for some of the soldiers it’s been a packed day of getting their jollies – a fair number of people tell him to shut up, and some of them warn him to stop with the filthy foreign lingo or they’ll report him. And he doesn’t need to be up on a charge so soon after weaselling out of the last one. “I will get shot,” he hissed at God, face down close to the box. “And you will get decanted. I am very, very serious.”
But God is very angry, and no need to keep His voice down given it reaches only Jack. “I am God, you collaborating little shit! I am the all-powerful healing God and I have had temples and priests and sacrifices, the fires of sandalwood, the sweet incense, fine music played on lyres of griffin-bone with inlays of gold and the fair words of an at least moderately talented bard praising the greatness of my beneficence and I will not be told what to do or not do by some Pal bean counter!”
Jack stares at Him. “What’s got into you?” he demands, sotto voce. “You don’t even like doing it. I had to get on my knees for Lidlet and Klimmel. You say it hurts every time they die. You hate it. You bitch about it. What’s this heal-the-world all of a sudden? Even back in Ilmar you never wanted to do it.”
God folds His arms defiantly. “Well Ilmar was back home, wasn’t it. And now we’re on the run, you and I. We’re fugitives. We’re fleeing Pal justice. We’re running mad in the world. Why not?”
“We’re not any of those things,” Jack points out. “They caught us – caught me, anyway, and gave me the choice of sign up or swing. On account of the healing that they now won’t even let me use. So my position here is pretty damn precarious. And you hate healing people almost as much as you hate people. So knock it off.”
“You will not talk to your God like that!”
“I will talk to my fellow fugitive like that, who will end up fuelling a score of tablethi if anything happens to me.”
God sticks His lip out. “This isn’t over,” He said. “I will not be constrained by secular authorities.”
“You will,” Jack tells Him. “That is literally why we’re here.” But God patently doesn’t agree. Jack can only hope that the miniature divinity’s ability to directly interact with those in need of healing remains profoundly limited or probably he’ll be in trouble sooner rather than later.
“You’re just setting yourself up for more pain.” He sets the box beside him. “Me, too. I mean I didn’t like Klimmel, honestly. But I wish he wasn’t dead.”
God’s drawn Himself up for another broadside, then lets it all out and sits on the box edge, feet dangling. “Aye well, I felt him go. And yes, it hurt. And yes, it was inevitable. I just don’t take being dictated to, not by them, not by anyone. If there’s any dictating going on, it should be me. I’m God, after all.”
Jack nods slowly. “It sounds like Lidlet’s going to try and lawyer her way through, though. Honestly, I have some questions about doctrine.”
God considers that, heels knocking against the box. “Who the hell is Lidlet?”
This was where things went even further off course than Jack had thought. “The other one you healed, out on the battlefield.”
“I thought you said they were dead.” God’s on His feet again, jabbing a finger into Jack’s ribs.
“Klimmel died. Lidlet talked her way into being a stretcher bearer. She’s joining us here. So she doesn’t have to fight.”
And God chuckles in a way that Jack doesn’t much like, and after that God doesn’t let up about being taken to see Lidlet. Wanting Jack to talk to Lidlet. Wanting Jack to slip snippets of doctrine into the conversation, when Lidlet was around. And after far too much of this Jack works out that God is rather impressed by the lawyering and maybe wants Lidlet as a convert. Literally the first time in Jack’s lifelong service to the faith when God actually wants to expand the congregation.
“I mean she’s mine now anyway,” God insists. “She lives by my beneficence. So why not?”
“Because,” and by this time Jack’s being loud again, to the annoyance of his neighbours, “she is a Pal and they do not take to religion. That’s kind of their thing.” And God continues to insist and Jack continues to refuse until a large Pal soldier, deciding that having a crazy Maric shouting at himself in the dorm tent is also not his thing, evicts Jack unceremoniously out into the evening.
So here Jack sits, he and God not speaking to one another. Follower of a forgotten god, and how many times in his life has he been desperate to share that burden with someone. Back in Ilmar, it had happened occasionally – often not for long given God’s punitive stance towards those who bucked His commandments. And that fellowship of faith had never actually brought Jack any real benefits, yet he had still craved it. God’s refusal to engage with the world had been only frustrating.
And now God wants to flex His muscles, if only because the Pals had said not to. Jack finds himself terrified that an active, troublemaking God is a far worse prospect than the guttering ember he’s been carefully husbanding all his life. What do you do when your insignificant and long-forgotten deity suddenly remembers His own purpose?
When Lidlet turns up, a kitbag slung over her shoulder and asking for Banders, Jack turns away and won’t look at her. Not to salve his own conscience, but so he doesn’t infect her any further with his curse.
*
Lidlet has always been career military, because if you’re born on the Archipelago it’s a good career. See places, meet people, perfect them at the point of a baton. She was never phalanstery material, to be taught the finer points of Correct Thought. She just follows orders. Except, as a long train of superiors would tell you, that’s not quite what you get from Trooper Lidlet. Lidlet, it turns out, would probably have made quite a good jurist or critical scholar. Not a corkscrew mind, more a prybar. Good at finding the seams of things and prising them apart in case there’s something useful within. Not the soldier always on a charge and in trouble, but the soldier always almost on a charge, standing at the very periphery of trouble with the toes of her standard-issue boots edging over the line. For someone with no great amount of book-learning in her past, she has a very good head for rules and how to play them. Because the problem is, when you condense anything down to a set of rules there’ll be someone who can game it.
And right now, Lidlet feels she’s pulled the ultimate fast one. Lidlet has gamed death. Not that she’s the credulous sort but there’s precious little leeway in interpreting what happened to Klimmel. She saw him die in the camp of the wound he received days earlier on the field. She herself has a punctured lung on credit, waiting to be delivered post haste the moment she breaches these new rules that she finds herself penned in by. Learning the tenets of whatever mad Maric curse she’s under is a matter of life and death.
Do no harm. As a soldier, in an army, in a war.
She is beset by nightmarish thoughts that even this, her current strategy, might not be enough. What if she jogs the stretcher too hard when she’s manhandling some casualty to the hospital? Does that count as harm? What if the malingering son of a bitch is complaining and she gives him a jolt just to shut him up? She is going to have to pin this Maric Jack in a corner and give him a thorough grilling about how their deal works. She never found a system she couldn’t twist to her advantage, but the stakes were never this high before.
But Jack is avoiding her. Oh, he tried to make it look like he was a man with an errand but Lidlet’s played that game before, too. She knows when it’s turned back on her. Well, she’ll stalk him. She’ll ambush him. She’ll grab him by the throat and shake—
No. No she won’t. And even the thought gives her a sudden tightness in her chest, a faint flower of pain where the shot went in. Which, she reflects, is handy enough.
So it’s Banders she finds. She and the former Cohort-Monitor square up against one another, each recognising something of a kindred spirit. Someone who’s adapted to thrive in the army ecosystem by filling the niche of parasite at least some of the time.
“Name and rank?” Banders asks, filling in the papers.
“Trooper Lidlet, formerly Third Company.”
“Nicknames?”
“What?”
“Any amusing nicknames? Stinky? Jug-ears? Beefy? Beefy Lidlet has a ring to it.”
Lidlet who, truth be told, is broad across the shoulders, whose cropped hair does make her ears stick out a bit and who could stand to wash a little more frequently, shakes her head. “None of that. You start with that and I’ll…” A tautness, just there, behind her left nipple. “You just watch it.” Her comrades in the Third called her Claws, sometimes. A Pel joke, because she’d been quick to rough-and-tumble if she considered she was being disrespected, but also a pun on ‘clause’ because of how she could reel off regulations, chapter and verse to the last sub-section, when she was getting out from under trouble.
She puts a hand to her chest. This feels like trouble she’s going to have difficulty getting out of.
“Well, you and I, we’ve met,” Banders tells her. “And you know Jack and Masty. Suppose I’d better show your face to the others.” Handing over Lidlet’s identification. No more Third Company. Hospital Department for her, for however long she can keep from lamping someone. There’s no rank on the card, no trooper, and she queries this as acidly as she feels she’s allowed.
“We don’t have troopers in the department,” Banders tells her with a shrug. “I don’t know what you are now, honestly.”
Lidlet realises that she doesn’t, either. She has found a stretch of dead ground that the Pal army regs don’t cover. She isn’t sure if that means freedom or torment, honestly. A fish denied the medium it swims in, not sure if it can turn its fins to legs in time.
*
So, the department has a new orderly. Ollery, a reasonable judge, doesn’t feel that Lidlet is a good fit. Not that he’s privy to the details of her recruitment, but he has a temporary feeling about this new trooper-turned-stretcher-bearer. The department has had plenty of people come and go, over the decade and change of his tenure. First as a mere Accessory under the stalwart leadership of Erinael, of fond memory and miserable fate, then as Chief Accessory under Prassel. Fellow-Inquirer Prassel, only the most recent officer to be given the poisoned chalice of the hospital. Far from the worst.
Over the next day he watches the others react to the introduction in their own ways. Tallifer wants to know what Lidlet can do, insofar as the business of the department goes. The answer being ‘precious little’ as far as Ollery can make out. Lochiver gets fresh with her, because he’s a horrible old man and that’s how he gets his jollies here at the shallow end of his life. Ollery sees Lidlet set her jaw and tense up to give the nasty creature what for, then deflate suddenly, looking pale and vulnerable. He’s seen enough of it in his line of work to recognise the pain of an old wound. And Masty and Lidlet have met. He’s cautious around her, unsure how or even if she’ll fit in. All of which leaves the woman, once Banders herself has departed, sitting on a bedroll looking entirely abandoned and friendless. So more’s the pity Ollery has no need of any more friends. Not the gregarious type, is the Butcher.
Two nights later he sits up until close to midnight, reading another of the contraband pamphlets that Banders gets hold of for him. In this one, some Loruthi princeling is having his cherry well and truly plucked by a cruel… well, she’s some kind of cult officer but the translated term is a Lor concept that presumably doesn’t work in Pel. But that does not, frankly, detract from the spiciness of the contents. Ollery, a connoisseur, feels he owes Banders a bonus for this one. Then it’s time, by his ineluctable inner clock, and he stows his banned smut and kicks his boy awake.
“Get your coat on,” he says. “It’s bitter out. Bring the satchel, I’ll do the crate.”
The kid fights his blanket a bit and then sits up, eyes mostly closed and hair sticking up all over. He glowers when he thinks Ollery isn’t looking, and the Butcher wonders moodily when the kid will start answering back, trying to meet force with force. Not that it’ll get the boy anywhere for years yet, but it’ll represent one more source of friction in a life not free of it. And maybe Ollery will find him a place then. Orphanage, school. Phalanstery even, if he can pool enough favours. Set the kid up, send him into the world.
Not yet, though. Too soon for those thoughts. He shoos them into the dark. And, hurrying after them, Sentimental fool.
The boy has his coat and his satchel, that clinks with glass. Ollery hefts his crate with a kindred rattle. They cross through the camp, avoiding those sentries they can, exchanging pleasantries with those they can’t. Ollery’s role is sufficiently outside the turf of the regulars that his wandering about at odd hours isn’t as suspicious as it might be. Probably they assume he’s delivering pox medicine to someone in Higher Orders. Which, in their defence, he has done.
Instead, his path takes his feet and the boy’s beyond the camp entirely. Inwards, to the village of the Galletes. Not to the handful of larger buildings commandeered by Forthright Battalion’s officers, but to a building where two families are now crammed in, including an elder of the village. A herbalist, in fact, with whom Ollery has already exchanged a few notes after seeing the stock in trade of the woman’s garden.
There is light glimmering around the edges of the shutters, and they let him in with a hushed word. Inside he finds more people up and about than he’d like. Not just the old herbalist ready for a clandestine trade, but a good half-dozen people kneeling around a low table. One of them on the table, in fact, and mostly naked like Ollery’s walked into a rehearsal for one of his books. Except there’s one person present who isn’t a Gallete and belongs here no more than Ollery does. He might not have known except for the clothes. Galletes and Marics have a similar coloration, same hair. But of course Jack is in uniform while the locals wear smocks and tunics and baggy trews tied off at the ankle to keep the warmth in.
Jack starts, obviously no happier to see Ollery than Ollery is to see him. He’s been doing something to the man on the table, and now Ollery looks closer, he reckons he can see the signs. A gauntness, as of not eating. A yellowness to the skin. Lemon blood fever, it’s called. And in amongst the bottles he’d brought is a tonic that can stave off the malady. But it looks as though this case had already gone beyond the reach of his potions, until Jack rolled up.
“Accessory Jack,” he says into the nervous hush of the Galletes, “a bird told me that Higher Orders told you to knock off your tricks.”
He expects cringing, because Jack’s that type. Like Masty, someone who gets through life by covering his head and bending when struck. Not that Ollery’s criticising. Meet everything head on and sooner or later you’ll break your nose. Except this time Jack rises to meet him. A man who’s been beaten enough that there’s no more give left.
“They’re not soldiers. They’re not army. What’s it to you or the generals if I heal them?” And then, even though Ollery hasn’t even put a word in edgeways, “It’s a compromise, all right. Because He… Look, I’ve got a lot of demands on me right now. This seemed the easiest way of giving everybody what they wanted. Are we going to have a problem?”
Ollery sits down at the table, as the mostly-naked man scrambles off it, quite disgustingly healthy.
“I didn’t see you here, right? And you didn’t see me. We were neither of us in the neighbourhood.”
Jack’s a smart enough lad to grab that rope when it’s thrown to him, so Ollery says, “Fine. While you’re not here, you can help out with the stowage. Put these where she says,” nodding to the herbalist. “That’s if you’ve got what I’m after.”
“Oh I gots,” she confirms in truly barbarous Pel. And she’s old, and the Galletes as a whole get real old, and probably she can remember when they didn’t have to speak Pel at all and had the skies to themselves.
She hustles off, and for a moment it’s just Ollery and Jack and the boy at the table, the kid resting his elbows there in imitation of the Butcher’s own pose, trying to look very serious-business indeed.
“They hate you so much. Or us. Maybe I mean us,” Jack says softly.
“Fair,” Ollery allowed.
“Your army. They say there’s not one island that isn’t in Pal service. How does that even happen? A whole nation of flying islands, and it’s got Pal colours all over it.”
“You’re going to learn,” the Butcher says heavily, “that when the Commission of Ends and Means sets its mind to something, that thing happens. Maybe not straight away, maybe not without a lot of blood and sweat, but always. Flying islands, magic sun temples, an army of wolfmen? Some special ideas department back home has the answer. That’s why they’ll bring perfection to the world, just like they say. Eventually.”
“You say, ‘they’,” Jack noted.
The Butcher taps at the tabletop with a blunt finger. “What’s my rank, Jack?”
“Are you standing on that right now? I have to call you Chief?”
“Chief what?”
“Chief… Accessory?”
Ollery nods. “And me born on the Archipelago. That sound like the rank of a man who claims the army as kith and kin?”
Then the herbalist is back with a basket. Herbs, flowers, even just vegetables that don’t appear in the army rations crates. And all of them grown in the soil of a Gallete island, suffused with their peculiar brand of magic. Subtly different to mundane varieties, touched by the energies that keep this impossible nonsense in the air.
*
Later, the last day of the island’s journey before Forthright Battalion disembarks, Fellow-Archivist Thurrel is looking at that very nonsense. The heart of the island. A cave, its walls studded with finger-sized crystals so that the entire interior bristles with them, glowing with a faint, lambent white. By the traditions of the Galletes, outsiders are not allowed here. Most of the Galletes themselves aren’t. But nobody’s going to tell a Fellow-Archivist No. He has his thaumatic gauge on, using the vision it grants him to see the way the magic threads its way from one to another. Strands as thin as spiderweb, so tenuous that, if he were to stare too hard at any one, it would fade into nothing under the sheer pressure of his regard. And yet all together they keep the island in the air, all the many tons of it. Such a gossamer construction to prevent the whole battalion and all its baggage from plunging into the sea!
Because he has a lot of hats he wears, as well as the thaumatic gauge, but the one he likes most is the pure scholar’s. To know. To see all the little flames of mystery before perfection extinguishes them.
Thurrel’s fingers twitch with a sort of generalised acquisitiveness, a tell he’s never been able to master, and the reason he doesn’t play games of bluff and chance with his fellow officers unless he’s happy leaving with emptier pockets than he came with. But then, when you’re the duty Decanter for an entire battalion then somehow you always have a new stake. Amazing what sticks to the fingers when you’re charging up the tablethi. And his family back home is a cut above well-to-do and so it’s not like he’ll be going without the good tea or nice boots any time soon.
“Go on,” says a voice from behind him. “Filch a little. What could it hurt?”
“Hello, Maserley,” says Thurrel, his voice bright but allowing his eyes to roll a bit where the demonist can’t see them. “I mean it was tried. You hear of Jovekrigg?” He assays the foreign name with more confidence than accuracy. “We did actually get some usable data from that, for study. Mostly that you can remove enough puissance from this sort of thing to have the island drop out of the air, and yet still not actually have very much to do anything with. It’s one of those balance things. All the big force went into getting the thing up in the air, centuries ago. After which it’s just sort of coasting. Owing the ground a debt but skipping out on the bailiffs every second so that it doesn’t come down yet. Always going to come down, you understand, but always getting another extension on the assignment at the last moment. I’m sure you were just the same, at the phal.” He’s composed a very pleasant smile for when he turns around. Beaming at Maserley’s face, that’s whitewashed by the unnatural light. Cocking an eye at Caeleen who’s in default sultry mode behind her master, the alluring lines her face falls into when she’s not particularly inhabiting it.
“Do these clowns know what your job involves?” Maserley asks acidly. The Gallete magician-engineers whose work it is to calibrate this web of threads are clustering nearby, powerfully anxious that these two Pals will break something in what is, after all, a rather important part of their culture.
“They know I’m a Fellow of the Schools. I find that tends to open enough doors,” Thurrel says mildly. “What do you want, Maserley? Not fencing lessons, I take it. I’m rusty, if so.”
The man’s face clenches briefly before the smooth mask goes back on. Thurrel chalks up a point, internally. It’s not that he doesn’t like Maserley – actually, he doesn’t like Maserley but doesn’t particularly dislike him. Same for Prassel. Same for a handful of others. There’s just a very small pool of peers to socialise with, at Fellow level, within a battalion. Given the actual battlefield officers keep their own company and look down their noses at specialists. So Maserley’s company becomes something to be endured, savoured like a particularly bitter blend.
“Well, all right,” he confesses. “Yes, I did put in the request. I think there’s a good three or four racks of tablethi to be had there. Enough for an extra shot for every soldier in the battalion maybe. You’d think that would be enough for them to give the Maric over, but apparently he’s more useful mopping the brows of our poor wounded.”
“Tell me,” Maserley insists.
“And you’ve suddenly become a student of defunct religions? I’ll have you over and we can get a debating circle going.” Thurrel folds the thaumatic gauge down over his eyes. For a moment, before he turns its powers on the crystals again, he has the dubious pleasure of examining Maserley, seeing all the fingerprints of dealings with the Lords Below, the inevitable unsoundness that sort of thing brings. The bright chain that leads from his hands to the throat of Caeleen. Who, herself, is a kind of nebulous suggestion of corruption and monstrosity, the potential to destroy from within, to poison with sweetness. Thurrel turns away, not from horror, but because he’s seen it all before.
“Thurrel,” Maserley says, in what he fondly believes is his warning tone of voice.
“Oh Maric cults are fascinating. Not the current state religion thing that’s still clinging on, but they had about a million gods back in the day,” Thurrel says over his shoulder as he makes notes. “A lot to sift through but yes, I’ve pinned our medico friend down, I think. Weird kind of cult, big in its day, extinct now, according to my book. Obviously needs an amended second edition.”
“Don’t bother,” Maserley says. “I have a feeling reality’s going to catch up with the textbooks soon enough. Tell me.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s Prassel’s and he’s an irritant and I don’t like him.”
“I mean if you stick a knife in his ribs, it probably won’t matter what denomination he is,” Thurrel observes.
“I don’t even want to kill him. If he spontaneously went up on flames I wouldn’t piss on him, but what’s the point? I want to ruin him. Spiritually. Tell me.”
“Do you ever feel that all this demon business is having an effect on you?” Although Thurrel knows full well that Maserley has always been a nasty piece of work. It’s how the man climbed the spiky ladder of combative academia to get to Fellow rank. Thurrel, who basically had his certificates handed to him by a well-placed uncle, can only admire the gumption.
“Thurrel.” There’s that warning tone again. Thurrel sighs, wondering if he and Maserley will actually have a throw-down at some point. It would be tedious and unpleasant for anyone within collateral damage range, honestly. Or maybe Prassel will kill the man and save Thurrel the effort. Or Maserley kills Prassel and… gets disciplined for it? Honestly there isn’t really a satisfactory resolution to the barbed knot that is Maserley.
“So it’s one of those stupid religions where it’s mostly stupid lists of things you’re not allowed to do,” Thurrel says. As opposed, he thinks wryly, to the army, which is mostly entirely sensible lists of things you’re not allowed to do. “The priests especially, and it certainly says priest on his papers. Not allowed to harm anyone, for starters, so go pull his hair and tweak his nose as much as you like. Not allowed to marry, no intimate relations, no drinking, no swearing. No fun. You know, that kind of religion.”
“And if he does…?”
“I mean loses his powers, I suppose? That’s the answer you’re looking for, isn’t it? Has to do some kind of humiliating abasement. Grovel, fast, self-flagellate. Probably not that last one, given the whole non-violence. Maybe self-flagellate but only with something very soft. I mean it’s religion, Maserley. It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s what some deranged earth spirit decided was a good idea a thousand years ago. You want me to tell you what you want to hear? Screw with his oaths and he’ll be very miserable. You get your snackies the way you like. Enough mortal misery for a half-dozen mid-grade demons. Now, if you don’t mind, some of us have actual tangible things to study that don’t involve bartering with the Miserable Powers.”
He waits, pretending to be engrossed in his scrutiny, until he senses Maserley and his pet demon have gone. Even then, the space between his shoulder blades continues to twitch a little. Thurrel makes a point of turning his back on the man every chance he gets, to show he’s not bothered. Not remotely worried that the man will plant a knife there, metaphorically or literally. Because what is life without a little thrill of risk?
Maric Jack is, Thurrel divines, going to have a rough time in the near future. Possibly he’ll end up as Maserley’s creature, or else just wrecked in some entertaining way. And then Prassel will have to decide how to make a countermove, and it’ll all be terribly fun and games unless, say, the army is actually mid-battle at that point. Which seems overwhelmingly likely.
Still, there’s an off chance that Maserley’s games will ruin the Maric in a way that will leave Thurrel in possession of his kit, that box where the power surely resides, given that there wasn’t much of a trace of it in Jack himself. In which case, what’s a lost battle between friends and peers?