Chapter Text
That was the last lock I’ll ever pick, I think. At least, with the hopes that I’ll gain from it.
It happened four days ago, now, only two of which she has spent sitting in the rotting dirt on the floor of this awful cell.
“Nylth is our acolyte, and has earned her place in our intellectual stables, solely by the necessity of circumstance. She is capable, even adroit, at our needs for her, but furtherance of her duties without checking any disastrous impulses could accelerate the decline of our status: that without denomination we are without repute, and without keeping cleanly to our traditions we misplace our capacity to serve a distressed populace.”
The Tiefling’s bruise-blue brow furrows as she leafs through the many papers kept by Interpreter Kenrist. Nylth Keth, stocky under straw-colored priest’s robes, sets her lockpicks atop the study desk in the alcove of the darkened bedroom. She has practiced every footfall of this caper-- from her bunk in the Penitent’s dormitory, across the Sanctuary balcony of the venerable old stonework church, up into the administrative hall and through to the Interpreter’s quarters-- but now her mind has scarpered and her thoughts have gone blank.
A shuffle of movement in the corridor; she rolls together the letters again, rebinding them with the looping twine and breathing on the wax seal to mould it back into innocuousness. No time to read the reply now, she ponders. I’ve pressed fate enough just breaking in once, and I shouldn’t risk it again. She steps into the hallway. I knew that no news for so many days meant bad things. But this…
A dwarf, flaxen-haired and scale-clad, rounds the corner just as she secures the door. Nylth bows her head, shuffling past, but he stops and turns.
“Sister Keth. Or, erm, herrm… as you citydoers hierarchicalize it, is it...”
“Kin Tørslund, you needn’t worry.” She carefully mouths the monophthong, smiling lips pursed around assurances. “We term those in my position ‘Healers’, if we have no vocation in the four Wings. I’ve just come from your room; I mustn’t offend, but I’ve tidied your tossed papers and straightened the linens.” I’m not even lying, she thinks. I finished in his quarters early to excuse my presence on this side of the building.
The sage twists his wrist in a quick, conciliatory gesture. From his throat escapes a raspy, pitched chuckle. “You’re kind. I studied Hieromancy and the Divine Lithography to get away from all these… hemm, pulpy things, then it’s nothing but correspondence and revisions that I handle daily regardless. May Thautam bless your misplaced treasures.”
“No big. And may Mystra find your misplaced glasses.”
The dwarf pauses, eyes quizzical. But Nylth has already tossed her hood up, around her forehead and horns, with a deft roll of the neck. She listens to him pad away, past the door she’d left from, and into his own room, reserved for visitors of the Wing-heads.
She walks the staircase up to the balcony ledge unhurried. Every pace of this place-- the Temple of Three Pillars, just across the plaza from the Emeryville market, her home of fifteen years-- reeks of incense burned and prayers muttered to its three primate gods, as much at this time as any other. Nylth lowers her head, poking it over the banister to gaze down into the sanctuary proper, to view the services ongoing. This evening, she judged from the coarse, itchy-looking robes Confessor Adelin had garbed in, plus the near-total silence of the front half of the church, was a service to Ilmater, the Suffering Martyr. The priest flicks the censer over his shoulder, in time with the woody peal of a small bell.
Adelin’s predecessor had brought the orphaned Tiefling here, at the age of about four. San Parthenic met her in the street, where she had been begging for coin for whatever orphanmaster would let her in for an evening’s rest, like the rest of the street-children. He had knelt down, proffered his hand with a smile, and walked her to her new life in the church, the first of many inscrutable, trustworthy gifts.
She palms the holy symbol in her pocket, a stabbing of seven star-spokes extending around and through a blue-painted wooden circle. She withdraws over the cool stone of the balcony’s edge, careful to not let her face show to the congregation. The window overhead-- balanced scales and a long road juxtaposed over a round sunrise-- shines with the last evening rays, bathing the whole space in warm orange light. Like me, like this place. Lots of beliefs, many influences, symbols, but nothing coherent; I can’t work with this. Goddess of the Weave, show me your weft.
I need an evening to think.
--
But scratched into the slate at the foot of her bunk was a curt message. ‘Confessor Jannah’s office seeks Healer Keth, before the eleventh hour.’ So she wheeled around, and padded back out past the crowd of acolytes getting ready for their evening prayers and rest.
Even without her Tyrian vestments, Jannah must still tower over me, Nylth mused to herself as she cracked the door to the first office in the Confessor’s section of the Administration hall. There was seated a woman, with gray, military-short haircut framing a laughlined face atop a long, angular neck, at a low desk. Her vestments pronounced her Wing-head of Pragmatics, among the leaders of the church, with the red hammer of Tyr emblazoned in the center of her torso. But when she saw the junior priest open the door she smiles warmly.
“Jannah, evening, hello,” Nylth bowed half a bow, but paused, abruptly unsure of why she had been summoned.
“Good evening, Acolyte Keth,” Jannah said, as slow and precise movements raised her body from her reading materials and brought her to rest leaning against the front edge of her table. She beckoned a hand toward the two high-backed chairs adjacent to the door, facing her.
Even so, she’s got four inches on me. How’d I never notice that? Gosh. Nylth seated herself, legs drawn in against the wooden front of the chair, and drew her hood back from around her hair and ears.
“I must insist, however, that as you’re here to discuss operational matters, that you refer to me by the proper title, as your Confessor.” She issued a solemn nod.
“Yeah. Yes, hello, Confessor Jannah, I am in your service this evening. What can I do for you?” The girl rolled a shoulder under the bulky frock, trying not to fidget. This better not be about… no, nobody saw me.
“I just wanted to let you know that we, ah, the Wing-head council has...” Nylth listened with care, expecting a prewritten treatise, but Confessor Jannah paused to collect her thoughts. Her head cocked slightly, she bit the inside of a cheek, and she started again. “I’ve been the Wing-head in charge of personnel here for fiveodd years. And you were there, you recall when it happened, and you saw what everyone else saw; but do you know why I became your Confessor, how I took up the mantle of leadership here?”
Nylth’s slight eyebrows bowed. “You were appointed as the only logical successor when the previous Confessor retired and the Temple needed a new one.”
“That is the mechanism, yes.” Jannah’s long, thin fingers reached up toward her face, thumb and forefinger pinched together. “But in terms of the reason why, the way I became the person who could do this job.”
Nylth shook her head mutely, bright eyes and thin mouth without expression.
“I sacrificed, and Tyr provided. I worked selflessly for decades, saw in myself nothing I couldn’t give to my community, and built up those parts of myself I needed to to do so faster, more completely. And Tyr rewarded me. Tell me, if you hadn’t been called here, what would you be doing, right now?”
Nylth cast her thoughts back to the book Elren, the church’s Ministrator and head potionmaster, had lent her, the first of three volumes on alchemy and herbalism.
“You’d be reading,” Jannah answered in slow, confident cadence. “Knowledge not for the sake of self-improvement, but to tinker with, correct?” Nylth nodded an affirmative. “Mmhm. Time for yourself, yes. But there is no time for you, child. There is time for Tyr. Think on that.” The tall woman stood, turned away, raised a hand to her chin. But after a step she came around again, eyes probing the Tiefling for recognition.
Nylth mirrored her movements, raising herself on two legs and crossing her hands behind her back. “Is this about my training, with Watchful Dobrun? If my time isn’t my own I half expect you to demand that we cease my martial education, or that you wish to tell me that you will...” she grimaced, and resettled her weight on the heel of one foot. “That you might instruct him to cease working with me. But my duties for the week are done, and I haven’t shirked; so I hope that’s not the case.”
”I could stop him, if I wanted to.” The gray-haired paladin nodded with resignation on her brow. “My word defines the actions of everyone in this temple. But you need the outlet, and he has a good relationship with you-- just, please…” Nylth saw Jannah biting her top lip, a telltale sign she had spoken too frankly. “Just, please, accept what you are given. Tyr provides.”
The Tiefling’s ruby eyes narrowed to thin slits. “This is about the petition Confessor Adelin put forward, my proposal to refit the archives with modern library methods. I’ve seen--”
“Yes, it is. Your ‘proposal’, so called, was to accept the premature resignation of our illustrious Interpreter solely so that you could take up the position.” The Confessor’s sharp nostril-lines flared and glowed in the dim light. “I could not accept.”
The blue cleric’s eyes fell to the floor as she nodded once, and again. Her shoulders slumped. “So that I could finish the work he refuses to!” She found herself touching her tail, willing it not to judder and lash behind her. Fingertips of one hand ran amongst her crown of overgrown hair, black like Ministrator Teregast’s pet ravens, and combed the chin-length strands back abutting her short spiraling horns. “The whole system is in disarray. You’ve been down to the subbasement, too, you know it’s a mess. He barely even reshelves individual volumes, and hasn’t upkept some of the more delicate tomes in months. It needs someone to just care for it, to take each piece of the whole and put it back in its place. He always looks like he resents having to do his job so much, that I hoped I could finally…” She took a sharp breath. “That I could do the thing I’m meant to do. But if you won’t--as you say--put me where the Divines tell me I should be, why do you permit me to stay? Here, in the Temple?”
A look of bewilderment took over the careful visage of the Confessor, a downpour of concern wracking her forehead. “You must understand. You’re fine enough at what you do. Your presence is a gift to us all, but you don’t need to take on more, and you’re simply not suited to the thoughtful rigors of library work. I’ve discussed this with the relevant members of our hierarchy and it’s agreed that you are not yet suited to it. That’s my decision. You may go, Acolyte Keth. With Tyr.”
“And you with Mystra.” Nylth gazed once more at Jannah’s downcast face, flipped the hood up on her cowl, and turned to the open door. A safe distance down the hallway, she whispered to herself in the Infernal language. If I’m not yet suited for it, who in the hells else might be?
--
The next day was a pleasant one, warm and overcast, and on the wide, gilded steps from the market up into the city proper Nylth sat alongside a stubby-legged, rugged-faced boy, with his cloak untied around his waist and his bulging pack plopped haphazardly by the wayside. He drew from under his cloak a linen-wrapped block of hardtack, with handfuls of bright red and yellow berries pressed in all sides of the bundle, and cracked it down the middle, pouring half into his tunic’s lap. The other half he rewrapped only enough to not dump to the pavement before his long reach shuffled it over to the exasperated healer, who accepted it and tucked it to a more subtle place out of view. “Just beat him up,” the roundcheeked youngster said. “They can’t kick you out, right? And it’s not like they’ll make more work for you, because that’s more work for them. Just, y’know, hit him hard enough that there’s no way they’ll let him keep his job.”
Exasperated, lava-toned eyes followed a leisurely cloud between tall nearby buildings. As always, in public, a Tiefling must watch her surroundings, keep her horns, tail, and skin covered, and not make commotion. And today was no exception for Nylth, legs extended in repose on the cool stone steps. She responded, unfolding the linen bundle. “Bruk, you’ve known me ungodly-long. I’m not going to beat up the fuckin’ priest.”
His hands alternated short punches at the air. “Nobody has to know it’s you. Sounds like there’s just too much bullshitting around, and old farts chattering and whinging on about duty to the gods. What’s the worst that would happen to you, huh?”
“The goblins have a saying. Rougly translated, it means, ‘What would a larval Ankheg need to do to get thrust from its hive?’” She drew her waterskin from one hip, and craned her neck to it.
“What? You weren’t listening.”
“No.” Nylth slagged down a thick mouthful of bready paste and masticated fruit. Two fingers met at her forehead, rolling the too-short blunt black fringe just beneath her curt, twirling forehorns. She had chopped the bangs into her hair last night, as her consternation over the uninterpretable letter spilled over into her midevening reading. “But her argument was right; I can’t prove they’re holding me back unjustly, so without provocation she’ll side with Kenrist, and I don’t blame her. But I sure as hell can blame him for seeing me differently, and I have to do SOMEthing to indicate my worth to them. Since Confessor Parthenic passed some couple years ago, the only ones I know are on my side are a handful of frocks in the lower Affiliations who know me well.”
The council would never turn her out, she agreed; but they could absolutely thrust her back into the most unpleasant roles of the Sanctum and domiciles. She hoped never to have to scrub chamberpots again before her own offspring demanded it.
An elven boothworker shuffled by, redfaced, holding court to nobody at all on what would happen to the ruffian who stole his bread. Bruk’s head didn’t raise as the man passed through, a baker oblivious to the two chattering picnickers just in his periphery.
“So how does it go down, then?” he asked. “You talked to her, she says you’re not good enough because old whatsit gave his shitty old opinion, and just like that you’re screwed out of the job?” He swallowed a sour berry, barely chewed. “You’ve been breathing library mold since before I met you, and you clearly want to be able to implement this thing of yours, this new way of doing things, but he’s holding you back.” His jaw shuffled, mulling alternatives to violence. He sat up and turned to face her. “So you can show them that he’s wrong, and that you have what it takes.”
“I dunno.” Nylth watched the gutter, drawn by the sound of a scrabbling rat. Three-legged, it wrenched itself out of the nearby sewer into the tallowy dust of the ashery adjacent. Its ropelike, grubby tail rolled and coiled amongst the uneven rhythm of skittering claws. “I can’t give it up.”
She and Bruk met, she recalls, after a particularly bad brawl left him and two friends sprawled and gutsliced on the wooden floor of a tavern. Since she had been the one buying him drinks, it was nice enough of her to remove the slivered glass and quarrelshafts from his stomach and hips, she reasoned. Even after the rest of the crowd had fled either the commotion or the sight of her, he didn’t bitch that his healer was a Tiefling.
“How’s working for that gemsetter?”
At the mention of his employment, Bruk lay his head flat against the stairs, eyelids fluttering closed. “Terrible. I’d rather liberate my eyes from their sockets then have to hear another winging retort about cat-eye cuts or refraction or octagonal setting fittings.” He drew a hand out of his cloak. In it, a small gemstone glittered and danced with midday light. “At least it’s the sort of work where I can lift the fruits of it, just to show them off.”
Nylth rolled her head, and smirked at him. “You stole that? From your own workshop?”
“Well, yeah! It’s the first thing I produced that doesn’t completely suck.” He held it up to the sunlight peeping through clouds, as Nylth watched it glimmer and shine with innumerable tiny patterns. “’Smooth-cut opal cabochon’, it’s called. Y’know, they could just say ‘circle’, but no.”
“Words gotta mean shit.” Nylth shrugged, and leaned back, having finished her meagre lunch, and brushed the crumbs and dust from her habit.
“I’ll return it, work on it more, and if master Frie sees me take it from my cowl I’ll claim I didn’t know it was an issue. Besotten old dwarf.” He extended his thumb and pinky finger, and mimed a deep swig of ale. “Hey, at least you could just bail if you need to. No, you’d never take off from that undersized owlery, even though you know they don’t deserve you.” Bruk’s tongue waggled out of his mouth, and Nylth laughed, legs kicking up.
Carefully she stood, cocked her head to one side. “Na’ah. Sarcasm aside, I’ve no place else to go, save the library. Three Pillars is my home, and I stand by them, even if they take his word over mine.”
“My idea stands,” said the thief, who heaved himself up, and rolled his shoulders back with akimbo arms saluting the sun. “You only wear those big cloaks, surely you could make your way to his side of the building without knowing, and, enh--” he turned the two fingers into a knife, thrusting pointedly in the direction of her kidneys.
She brushed his hand away, and smirked. “I can conceal my face, but not the horns. No, I’d rather not give him something more concrete to hold against me; if he thinks the scornspawn was prepared to stab him through in recompense for a snub, it’d prove everyone right.”
“Suit yerself. Time for me to get back.” Hooking a hand over the stone edge of the stairs, Bruk rolled off, heading back to drudgery.
“Thanks for lunch.” Nylth stretched, sighed, and gazed around. The baker-elf charged back through, having been unable to find the two of them, still scowling and muttering. “Hey, give alms to the poor,” Nylth hollered at him as he careened by. “Who steals bread if not to eat it?”
“Fuck you, devilkin,” he murmured in Elvish.
“Up yours, ya pointy ears fuckboy,” she spat back, mirroring his tongue. She turned away from his astonishment and ascended the steps back toward the Three Pillars.
--
That night, Nylth stalked back into the sanctuary proper after, at the behest of some visiting scholar or diplomat, delivering a missive crosstown. Far from empty, the room held some thirty congregants, finishing up evening prayers. She slipped along the periphery, mind on her own tasks. Adelin needs the week’s batch of holy water, that dwarf needed a letter copied, and perhaps I’ll get a free moment to negotiate tasks with Acolyte Nirn to open up tomorrow evening for arms practice. But a hand caught her shoulder, breaking her attention and turning her to face its owner: Kenrist, pockmarked face and full beard visible under his widebrimmed traveler’s hat. His grimace betrayed concern, and for a moment she wondered if she was being mocked. “I’m so sorry,” he began, “to hear of the failure of your proposal. As anyone would, I wish for the best for our archives, and...”
Nylth failed to attend to the rest of his ramblings, for her own inchoate rage bloomed across her face and down to the tip of her tail. She barely managed to wait for him to finish the meandering thought at hand before she spoke, none too quietly. “This is your fault.” She unclenched a fist, shook her head, and dragged her rucksack up her shoulders to stand tall, just barely meeting his height. “You did this, with your foolish, outdated nonsense, your need to feel important, your demand to do things the old way instead of the thricedamned right way.” She glared at him, and he stepped back, blinking. He pulled his hat from his head, rumpling it.
“But-- such arrogance, to believe that you know better! This is the way our archives have been arranged, for so many--” His tremulous voice didn’t match the volume of her own, but just the same Nylth felt the searing attention of two dozen pairs of eyes against her scalp, up her horns, down her blue neck.
“No. No excuses! You have no reason to fight me here, no possible argument to outweigh the need to just do it better. I know how!” She pulled back her cloakhood, willing all onlookers to gawk. “My life has been building to this, and despite everything you have no right to deny me.”
“I have all the reason I should need.” The Interpreter’s arms dropping to his sides, he seemed to shrink and crumple into himself. “You have a brilliant mind for languages, but you lack the inborn spark. It would be, well, uncouth. It’s not done!”
“Spark?” She took a step around him, to his left, just gazing at him for a while, willing for an explanation. “Uncouth?” His eyes followed her as she moved, watching her own. “Not done?”
“Organization, I mean. The, the mind for...”
“There is a system! We have a system! And now, I never get a chance to do it better, because--” she brings up a hand abruptly, almost despite herself. A finger extended, accused the petty being in front of her. She heard the words come out before she could will herself not to think them. “Because you had to write out those words, ‘without denomination we are without repute, and without traditions we cannot serve’. I read your letter,” she hissed, face scrunched, “I know what you’ve done.”
An infant wailed. All color drained from the world in front of her, starting with the shriveled old man and down to every last torch and windowpane behind him. Nylth willed it, for a moment, to swallow her whole, for a yawning fissure to end her. Then the venerable priest took a step to circle her in the other direction. “You could have been better than this,” he said, moments later. His face finally drew in its own anger, chin raising and lips pursed. “You could have risen above this, despite yourself, and let this nonsense matter of prestige and pomposity go. But that was never going to happen, was it, Tiefling?”
Nylth felt the length of his staff impact her gut before she saw it, and the air rushed from her lungs instantly. She barely maintained her footing enough to catch the end of the weapon, staggering upright again, and her fist connected with his antiquated jaw. In that moment, her eyes shone their full, wrathful red, and the fires lighting the room flickered and shook. She took another swing, finding the archivist’s shoulder, now bent on delivering as much pain as she could before the two men sweeping up from her periphery could stop her. But one of them hooked chainmailed arms underneath her armpits. They dragged her away from her adversary. The other disarmed the old scholar with his staff under their boot. Ministrator Elren and Watchful Dobrun had set upon them, and pulled them apart, and everyone else in the room receded from the ruckus to their duties and lives. But Kenrist spoke again; blood trailed from just behind his lower teeth. “Rise above your people, little girl, and you may yet live among society, with us traditionalists you so fear. Abjure the shadows.”
A voice rose above his. “We saw everything; Oefun, kindly release her.” Feeling Dobrun drop her to the ground again, Nylth bowed her head, recognizing the approach of Confessor Jannah as heralding the end of her career as a seeker of truths. But Jannah’s hawkish glare was reserved for the battered man in the red-lined robes opposite her. “I see now that your motives were more pathetic than I’d ever hoped, and that your fear of some new truth debilitated you from the basic tenets of your Orders.” She shook her head. “I tried to take your side in all this, to save our organization a heap of trouble and disorder. But you’ve forced my hand.” She raised her hand, beckoning to the man beside her. “My Confessor, I revoke my refusal of your proposed venture on behalf of Acolyte Keth. Adelin? Would you please.”
Beside her, Confessor Samek Adelin’s dark arms crossed. He stepped forward, and with a nod, gave curt instructions. “Terran Kenrist, you’re banished from these dormitories and have surrendered your position as Interpreter of this Temple. Your rights, privileges, pay, and rooms are forfeit likewise. I just can’t believe you’d level such derision-- not to mention your weapon!-- against a lifelong devotee of our church, much less one who has spent her life idolizing your position and seeking to improve our archives.”
Kenrist, still restrained by Teregast’s thin frame and juddered with falling adrenaline, let his mouth hang agape. But whatever he said next went unheard by the young Tiefling, who had already tossed her cloak up as she stumbled out onto the front steps of the church, sobbing.
The scene had already been reported to the city guard by passersby as some sort of row. When a blue-skinned woman with blood coating her fists exits the scene of a fight, responding guards frequently fail to ask questions before hauling her off to the barracks to restore peace. When Teregast and Adelin sought her in the streets, they found only the bustle of evening market traffic heading back towards the poor quarter of the city behind them.
--
Dobrun visited her in the stinking, mudfloored jail the next day, and dropped off her personal effects, plus a few snacks to take the edge off of the prison gruel and muddy water. He gave her the news of her promotion, but while he could laugh about her beating the tar out of some backwards old fool, she merely winced at his retelling, arms and tail wrapped around folded knees and chin sat atop them. He promised more training to come, focusing on fisticuffs, in case more old priests attempted to batter her.
Bruk showed up likewise, and asked if she wanted to borrow his lockpicks to leave. She refused, even while she told him that his plan had inadvertently worked, because she knew that she deserved exactly what she had received.