Chapter Text
Mikta dreamed, and knew that he dreamt.
His nightmares were familiar things, worn thin as old lace. Old fears. A dog who’d knocked him over when he was barely walking. The stove that had sprayed him with hot sparks. His grandfather.
His father’s back as he cut through the Zagosur crowd without a backward glance, leaving his son to the demon god.
But now the swamp of images and memories contained new things. A tiny woman with a cloud of snarling ash-blond hair and eyes the color of winter rain, who parted the world around her like a battle-axe. A tall, silver-streaked scarecrow of a man with an oddly diffident and apologetic smile, with eyes that had stared full into eternity and the cerulean favor of the Daughter burning on his brow like a jewel. A slender, rangy woman with gleaming chestnut hair and warm laughing eyes, flushed and joyous below a bride’s crown of flowers as she captured Mikta’s hand (Mikta’s hand? Mikta’s hand was smaller, and slimmer, and certainly not dusted with wiry brown hair and cross-hatched with scars) and held it to her breast, whispering and you are mine, and I am yours—)
These were followed by memories that were even stranger, thinner, almost translucent, like tapestries made of spiderweb that would tear if you looked too close. Mikta snuffled along the ground looking for grubs underneath rotting logs, his body squat and filled with power. In a memory thinner still, Mikta flew, the sun warming his wings…
Mikta awoke with jarring suddenness, crying out as he did so, with a moment of vertigo so crushing that he almost fell backwards into the bed’s soft embrace.
He was in Foix’s room, in Foix’s bed, and even though he’d never been there before, he had memories of being there, and the two sets of memories, at once distinct and opposite, dizzied him. His nausea must have been clear, because a basin appeared as if by magic. Mikta seized it and retched, his mouth filled with the taste of honey and carrion and what he was horribly sure was earthworm. Nothing came up, but he retched until his throat was raw and his stomach hurt. He couldn’t pinpoint when the tears began, only that they did; wracking, tearing sobs that he couldn’t begin to stop.
Mikta realized it was Vallon quickly enough. Vallon who had held the basin, and Vallon who sat on the enormous bed beside him and pulled him close, stroking his greasy, unwashed hair and whispering gentle words. Vallon who held a glass steady and helped him drink.
“Foix,” Mikta managed when he was able to draw a breath. “Did he…?”
“Yes,” Vallon said gently. “He passed to his God three days ago.”
“Three days?” Mikta asked weakly. No wonder he felt terrible. But why was he in Foix’s bed, not in his own, or the infirmary?
“You’ve been asleep awhile,” Vallon said. “Learned Delmer finally got tired of me asking how you were, and told me to see for myself.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Got me out of chores.” Vallon shrugged, before shooting Mikta a shy little smile that sat oddly well on his big half-freckled, half-sunburned face. Mikta managed the tiniest suspicion of an inkling of a ghost of a laugh at that. “Though I do have to go tell them you’re awake. I’ll be right back, alright?”
The room seemed very empty without him. Mikta was still crying, the tears flowing uninterrupted. Why couldn’t he stop?
“Because he is gone, lad,” Mikta said aloud. Or… someone said aloud, and used Mikta’s mouth to do it. “And I have nobody’s tears but yours.”
Mikta slapped his hand to his mouth in sudden fear. When no more uncanny words emerged unbidden from his mouth, he essayed a tentative “...hello?” that went, thankfully, unanswered.
What in the God’s name…?
Someone knocked gently on the door before entering. Mikta was expecting Delmer, or perhaps even Cook, whipped to froth and fury at three days of undone dishes. What he got instead was Learned Anara herself, who looked both relieved and unwontedly grave.
“Mikta,” she said, crossing over to the bed. “No, no, don’t get up.”
Mikta ceased his struggles to sit up; it made the room spin so. Vallon hovered in the doorway with a tray, from which enticing aromas emanated.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” Anara said, but her eyes were searching on his face. She waved Vallon to the other side of the bed, where he set down the tray. Mikta managed to keep his eyes fixed on Anara, and not the food, but it was a near thing.
“Does he… seem himself?” Anara asked Vallon.
“Yes, milady,” Vallon said with a little bob of his knees.
“Mm.” Anara took a seat next to the bed.
“Did I miss the services? For Foix?” Mikta asked after a long moment.
“Yes,” Anara said. “I’ve never seen such a thing, even though I’ve presided over hundreds of funerals.”
“We used the outdoor courtyard,” Vallon said, expression soft with remembered wonderment. “You could hardly see the coffin for all the seagulls. Every white sea-bird on the coast decided to attend.”
“The Bastard takes us as we are, but He is allowed to express an opinion.” Anara signed the Five with a sad, sweet smile.
“And none of them shit!” Vallon said, eyes wide at this marvel of marvels. Anara managed to conceal her startled snort, but it was a close thing.
“Truly a miracle,” Anara said. “Mikta, I’m sure you’re wondering what you’re doing here. The truth is… well, it’s complicated. Did Foix… did he tell you anything about why he and Learned Sellee were here?”
“No, ma’am,” Mikta said, scouring his memories. “I assumed the divine was here for his health.”
“Only in a manner of speaking.” Anara sighed. “Go ahead, Vallon, I’m sure he’s hungry.” She gestured to Vallon, who handed Mikta a slice of buttered brown bread that Mikta made vanish in a way many a starving wolf would have envied.
“One of the highest responsibilities of a Temple sorcerer is to his or her demon, Mikta,” Anara said, while Mikta struggled to balance table manners and his desire to cram three days of food into three minutes of chewing. “Since a well-reared demon can live for generations or centuries, they are a grave trust given by the God. It was… it was our intention that Foix should pass his demon to Learned Sellee, so that he might become a physician-sorceror. But Foix, it seemed, had different ideas.” Anara sighed. “I wonder if it would gratify him to know that he gave me one last headache.” This was said with such rueful fondness that Mikta knew it was no insult.
“Where did his demon go?” Mikta asked.
Anara simply fixed her grave brown eyes on him, and waited.
“Oh…” Mikta swallowed. “Oh. Oh no. It’s—it’s in me?” Mikta struggled to sit up, scrabbling wildly at his chest as though he might claw it out. Some, some thing inside him, chewing his soul to tatters—
“Mikta!” Anara snapped. “Mikta, it’s alright. From what I’ve read, the demon will be quiescent for some time.”
“Get it out!”
“I’m afraid there’s only one way readily available,” Anara said. “And that would be to kill you. Which I would rather not do.”
“Oh,” Mikta said. “I…”
“In the meantime…” Anara made a little face. “I’m afraid there are… difficulties with this situation that would not be aided by your presence. I would ask you to remain here, please, unless escorted by a divine. If the demon awakens within you, be strong and resolute. It was with Foix for over sixty years; it should be… reasonable.”
“It spoke,” Mikta managed to choke out, suddenly shaking. “Through my mouth. It spoke.”
“What did it say?” Anara asked, standing.
“It was sad. For—for Foix.” Mikta suddenly realized that, for some reason, the Ibran name posed no challenge to his Roknari-accented voice any longer.
“We have that in common,” Anara said, before the door to Mikta— Foix’s —room burst open, and all the Hells broke loose.
“You,” snarled a red-eyed, unshaved Learned Sellee. Anara rose in alarm; Vallon dropped a pottery mug to shatter on the floor. “You wretched, sawed-off catamite bastard—”
“Sir—” Anara said as Sellee was through the door, hands outstretched for (Mikta was sure) his throat. Something inside Mikta roared in sudden fury, and he seized the butter knife off his breakfast tray, and felt his teeth stretch in an unfamiliar and anticipatory smile...
Mikta saw it, though he didn’t think Anara did. Vallon—big, sweet, oafish-looking Vallon—managed to interpose himself between Sellee and the bed, all without looking as though he meant to, babbling incoherent apologies as he expertly tripped the taller man and (for all his size and general mien, Vallon was fast as a snake) planted a covert hand on the Learned Divine’s midsection and sent him flailing to the floor.
“Nicely played,” someone noted, using Mikta’s mouth to do it. Mikta snapped his mouth shut and kept his jaw clenched, for good measure.
Vallon had contrived to trip himself, landing atop the older man like a pile of carpets, still stammering apologies. Sellee, winded and muffled by the enormous quantity of fifteen-year-old boy doing his level best to smash him flat, said things that Mikta hadn’t heard since he left his grandfather’s house.
Anara was at the door, shouting for help; which seemed unnecessary, truly, because Sellee was no more able to shift Vallon—who now, quite by accident to be sure, had the divine in a headlock—than he would be able to throw off an inconvenient rockslide.
“You damned thief, it was meant to be mine, you conspired—filthy Quadrene whelp—”
“Learned Sellee.” Anara’s voice was sharp as a whip, harsh as his father’s wine, and cold as a frozen lake.
Mikta stopped breathing; Vallon’s insincere apologies cut off mid-word. Sellee fell quiet too, memories of some long-ago schoolmistress counseling him to silence.
“Let him up.” Anara jerked her head at Vallon, whose clumsiness abruptly vanished as he rolled to his feet. Two acolytes appeared at the door, both on the burlier side. Anara held up a hand to forestall them.
“You have suffered a disappointment of some magnitude.” Anara actually reached down and seized Sellee by the jaw and jerked his face up, to meet her eyes. “On that basis alone, I am prepared to forgive you for this outrage. But rest assured, Learned, that if you lay a hand on one of my children, or disrupt the peace of my sanctuary again, the Mother’s Order will whisper in the night of your fate to scare the new acolytes for decades. Am I understood?”
Sellee muttered something as he got to his feet. Vallon looked quite prepared to tackle him again, for all that he seemed to be cleaning up the broken mug.
“What was that?” Anara asked sharply.
“Two years,” Sellee said, looking near to tears. “I followed that man for two years, waiting, because it was decided. It was to be me, I was to be the next sorcerer-physician of the Mother’s Order. And it was stolen away, by—” Sellee gestured at Mikta, as though no words were disgusting enough to describe him.
It made Mikta feel… he wondered if there was some philosophical inverse of homesickness, to describe the unwelcome but very familiar.
“Escort the divine back to his room,” Anara said to the acolytes at the door, who didn’t quite grab Sellee by the shoulders and drag him to the hallway. “We will discuss this later, Sellee, when you have had time to compose yourself.”
“Vallon,” said Mikta’s mouth, but not his mind. “Give them back.”
Vallon started, then looked sheepish.
“Here,” he said, passing Sellee what looked to be a small belt knife, and a purse, which Mikta had certainly not noticed Vallon relieving the Divine of. Sellee stared at both in disbelief, before he left, casting a black look at Mikta before the door closed.
“Vallon,” Anara said after a long moment, pinching the bridge of her nose and squeezing her eyes shut.
“Lady?”
“I don’t suppose you brought any spirits on that tray? Wine, brandy?”
“Er, no, ma’am. Just tea.”
“Drat,” she said. “If only Foix was here—I’m sure he had something stashed away.”
“Clothes chest, back righthand corner,” Mikta’s mouth said. “It’s vile stuff, though.”
Anara stared hard at Mikta, before striding over to the chest and digging through it before she found an earthenware bottle. She didn’t drink, though.
Anara inhaled deeply, visibly gathering her thoughts. “I must ask you to stay here. Rest. Recover. I have…” Anara’s gaze turned to the bottle in her hand; she looked sorely tempted. “I have many arrangements to make. If the demon is awake, then trying to keep you confined is a lost cause… but please. For your own safety.”
Recalling the murderous glint in Sellee’s eyes, Mikta nodded. “But… ma’am. Why am I in Foix’s room?”
“Foix dy Gura had no heirs of the body,” Anara explained. “Or at least… none that survived him.”
“Did he have any children?” Mikta asked.
“Three daughters. They have all gone before him.”
“Oh,” Mikta said, feeling a sudden leaden weight in his chest.
“But his choice of heir—and I, at least, have no doubt it was his choice—is very plain. While we make arrangements, it’s fit and proper that you stay here.” Anara’s lips curved very slightly up. “Would you like to have Vallon here, to fetch and carry for you?”
“Yes!” Mikta said. “Er. Yes. If it please you.”
That, that was definitely a smile.
“It pleases me,” Anara said, signing the Five with odd formality before she left the room.
“Wow,” Vallon said into the silence. “You’re a sorcerer!”
Mikta didn’t feel like a sorcerer. Mostly he felt filthy, and weak, and still hungry.
“I’ll go get some more food,” Vallon said. “I’m hungry too. And some wash water. And your clothes.”
“Vallon, it doesn’t… doesn’t bother you?”
“What doesn’t?”
“That I’m--” Mikta waggled his fingers in a sorcerish manner.
“Eh, you’re the same little four-signing whelp you’ve always been.” Vallon shrugged. “Now you’re just a magical four-signing whelp.”
“Oh,” Mikta said, ducking his head so Vallon wouldn’t see his smile. Vallon did, though, naturally, and grinned as he finished putting the tray back together.
Mikta began the laborious process of freeing himself from the piles of fur and bedding.
“Hey, runt?”
Mikta looked up. Vallon was doing his right there thing again, but this time Mikta saw it coming, and met Vallon’s lips with his own. Once bitten, twice shy. Or… not shy, in this case. Vallon’s lips were very soft, even if his chin was a little scratchy, and he smelled like bread and tea and strong soap. Well, and a little like sweat, but he’d been defending Mikta from an attacker, after all. Mikta was prepared to overlook it.
“Don’t worry me like that,” Vallon said after a few breathless seconds, before whisking the tray, and himself, away.
Mikta allowed a few moments after the door closed. And for his heartbeat to slow.
“So…” Mikta swallowed; his mouth was very dry suddenly. He took a bracing sip of cool tea. “Demon.”
Silence, but it was somehow decidedly shifty silence.
“I know you’re there. You talked earlier.”
“Mmm,” Mikta’s mouth said in a noncommittal fashion.
“I… I’m Mikta.”
“I know, lad,” the demon said, and while the voice was Mikta’s, the tone was very different; a broad Chalionese accent, for one, and at the very lowest registers of Mikta’s range. Which, admittedly, was not very low, but Mikta sensed the demon was doing its best.
“What should I call you? If we’re going to be together for some time.”
“Some time?” The demon laughed. “Either all of your life, lad, or all of mine. You could call me ‘demon,’ I suppose.”
“That seems wrong. What did Foix call you?”
“He…” Mikta felt his throat tighten. Were these the demon’s feelings, then? Did they have feelings? This one seemed to. “He didn’t talk to me, much. He was… my only human template. It was difficult for us to determine where one of us ended and the other began. I think it will be easier for you.”
“I could call you Foix, then.”
“No,” the demon said sharply. “No. He was… us, but I am not him. No.”
Mikta pushed himself up from the mattress, and planted his feet on the carpeted floor. He tried to push himself to his feet. Not straightforward; his stomach and head had very definite opinions on this course of action. He swayed on his feet.
“Steady there, lad,” the demon murmured. Mikta braced himself against a bedpost until the room stayed put.
“You sound like him.” Mikta took a few hesitant steps.
“Who else would I sound like?” the demon asked. “I suppose in another sixty years, I’ll sound like you.” The demon’s voice went high and flutey, cracking a bit. “Oh, sorry, sorry, yes milord, sorry.”
“I don’t sound like that!”
“Could have fooled me.” Mikta’s shoulders shrugged.
Mikta made his way to the bookshelf. It was, predictably enough, mostly theology, and almost all in Ibran, which he still had difficulty deciphering, especially since the press-printed books tended to have blurry, tightly-spaced lettering.
“What else were you, besides Foix?”
“Long ago I was a bear. Before that, a bird. Before that…” Mikta felt his brows furrow. “I don’t know. Nothing, I think.”
“I could call you Bear.”
“Hm,” the demon mused. “I suppose that is better than ‘Bird’.”
“Er, yes, very—” Mikta pitched his voice low, trying to match the demon’s tones. “—manly.”
The demon laughed, a deep belly laugh that wrenched at Mikta’s heart, as it wasn’t accompanied by Foix’s wicked toothless smile.
“Bear it is,” the demon—Bear—said.
After that, the demon fell silent. When Mikta tried speaking with it— him —again, he got a vague impression of something large and hulking waving a sleepy paw at him with a low grumble.
It was almost certainly a lost cause, but Mikta checked—none of the books of theology were about demons.
<><><>
It took maybe ten hours for the novelty of having nothing to do but lie in bed and eat to pall. Mikta, through Vallon, applied to Delmer; it was decided that since Learned Sellee had left the Rest, and Vallon could take him in a fight anyhow, that Mikta could at least leave the room in his company.
Not that he was ever actually alone. Not anymore.
The next time Bear spoke, Mikta was in the bath-house, finishing his ablutions by scrubbing himself down with a handful of sea-salt. He had the place to himself; Vallon’s ingenuous offer of, er, assistance having sent him into a spiral of stammers and blushes that had made the larger boy hoot like one of the seals that gathered on the beach below. Thankfully, he’d excused himself to grab something to eat. Keeping Vallon fed, Mikta was learning, was a little like stoking a furnace.
“Well,” said Bear. Mikta, in the midst of the always-excruciating process of pulling a comb through his coppery hair, paused. “Let’s have a look at you, then.”
Mikta walked obligingly over to the mirror, which was old and speckled, but would serve. It was just his body, he supposed; nothing surprising. Certainly nothing to warrant the appraising expression on his face as Bear looked him over. Mikta wondered briefly if he should open his mouth, so Bear could check his teeth, a scant second before Bear did exactly that.
Mikta tried to view himself as a stranger would. Short, spindly, golden-skinned, with a mass of untamed and apparently untameable reddish-gold hair. A bit of hair on his arms and below his navel, hinting at an incipient manhood that Mikta wished his stature would hurry up and reflect. His features did an adequate job covering the front of his skull, he supposed; his mother-name, Mikta, came from his large hazel eyes, too big for his face. It meant Barn Owl, in an older dialect of Roknari.
“Hm,” Bear said neutrally. “Well, I've seen worse.”
“Excuse me?” Mikta spluttered.
“Well, it’s not eighty-seven years old,” Bear said, raising one of Mikta’s arms and flexing, then frowning at the decidedly modest effect this produced. “That’s a boon that can’t be overstated. But not to worry, lad, we've turned spindlier boys than you into soldiers, right enough.”
“Am I to be a soldier, then?”
“You can be anything that calls to you, boy,” Bear said, turning Mikta’s face from side to side. “But… not a physician.”
“Foix was a soldier.”
“He was many things,” Bear said. “But you’ll find that a pitched battle is not a place you want me around.”
Mikta pulled his gaze from the mirror and began dressing. “Why is that?”
“What do you know of demons?” Bear asked. “And none of that nonsense you probably learned in the cradle, about how we have bat wings and breathe fire.”
“I—” Mikta pulled his head through the collar of his shirt, which instantly made all his efforts at combing his hair moot. “They’ve said a little, in class. That you come from the Bastard’s Hell, and you’re creatures of chaos.”
“Not wholly inaccurate,” Bear said. “No matter what imprint I take from the creatures I ride, that is still my fundamental nature. Boy, I hope you can curry a horse better than you curry yourself.”
“What?” Mikta returned to the mirror; it helped him ignore the fact that both sides of the conversation were coming out of his mouth.
Bear gestured helplessly at Mikta’s hair. “This. You look like a pony that got dragged through a hedge.”
“Do you care about such things?” Mikta asked, curious. His hair was just… what happened to be on top. In his grandfather’s house he’d never taken care of it himself; he’d had his mother and then body servants for that.
“When you’re choosing a horse, lad, do you go for the sleek, well-fed trotter, or the sawblade-spined nag with the burs in its tail?”
“That’s rude, and in any case I can’t ride.” Mikta scowled at his own reflection; no wonder everyone thought sorcerers were insane.
Bear rolled Mikta’s eyes. “You will shortly discover you can. You will know most of the things I know. It’s already begun.”
Mikta froze, one finger still poking self-consciously at his hair. “What?”
“Your accent,” Bear said. “And other things, besides. Including grooming. How you ever hope to attract a fine young woman—”
Bear fell abruptly silent, perhaps noting Mikta’s sudden furious blush, and that he was no longer making eye contact with himself in the mirror.
“...Ah,” Bear said. “Er, apologies. So you and the big lad…?”
“Yes,” Mikta said. “Or… no. I don’t know. I have…” Mikta made a strangled sound that one might, if one were feeling unwontedly generous, consider a laugh. “I have a lot to occupy my mind, just now.”
“True,” Bear conceded ruefully. “Like me, for instance.”
Mikta wondered if being unable to make eye contact with yourself was a sign of madness.
“He… seems nice. Big,” Bear repeated, as he hunched his shoulders.
“Maybe you should have gone to him, then,” Mikta said, mostly joking, but slightly annoyed by the fact that Vallon was a scant seven months older than him, and had over a head on him in height and a jawline covered in scratchy hair.
“No, oh no,” Bear shook his head. “I wouldn’t have dared.”
This remark made very little sense to Mikta, but Bear fell silent afterwards—did demons sleep? It was another question for the future.
<><><>
Mikta felt adrift, loosened in time. It was a familiar feeling; an uncomfortable echo of his first few days in the Bastard’s care, shattered and grieving, while well-meaning adults wondered what in the God’s name were they supposed to do with a half-grown Roknari aristocrat left without warning or explanation at their temple. It divided his life clearly, starkly, into before and after.
And then this, again, somehow even stranger. He was already damned, by Quadrene standards; born the Bastard’s through whatever perversion of nature had resulted in his inclination away from the fruitful union between man and woman decreed by the Four. Having a demon sometimes felt like just one more thing to add to the pile.
It had been a week since Mikta had awoken. He was kept from the other novices, and when he inquired of Delmer what exactly would happen to him, the divine gave him reassuring non-answers that were beginning to make the hair (such as it was) on Mikta’s arms stand on end. Bear remained quiescent, most of the time—there was never any telling when he’d stick his, Mikta’s— their nose in it?
Mikta and Vallon were sharing a picnic lunch of sorts on the beach, in a little hidden alcove along the cliffs that shielded them more from the wind than the sun. The sun was out for once, but rather chill and sulky with it. Vallon sat with his back against the rock, an arm around Mikta. It felt the most natural thing in the world to curl into the larger boy’s side, enjoying his warmth. Periodically he would crane his head to drop a kiss onto Mikta’s curly hair; at least Vallon seemed to like it, unruliness and all.
Mikta was almost more unsettled by this than his other, more recent affliction. Vallon wanted him, which was a novelty in itself, and while his kisses certainly set Mikta’s blood on fire, Vallon never pushed any further (which, considering Mikta’s near-comprehensive ignorance of what further would even entail…), treating him with a grace and affection that frankly baffled Mikta. It was… not at all what he’d been led to expect. To seek one’s own sex was base, vile, something done in the dark, in shame. His grandfather made much of so-called men who bedded with other so-called men—he had never, to Mikta’s recollection, inferred that such an arrangement could involve friendship. Affection. Love, perhaps? At least, eventually.
“Oh, I got you a present,” Vallon said suddenly, sitting a little upright, rummaging through the basket recently emptied of food.
“You didn’t have to—”
“Hush hush hush shhh yes I know,” Vallon said cheerfully. “But look at this.”
It was a book, not thick, but well-bound. The close Ibran lettering on the cover was in a slightly older style, but Mikta’s eyes had no difficulty with it—perhaps Bear was right.
“Essentials of Sorcery and the Management of Demons,” Mikta read aloud, growing excited. “The work of Learned Ruchia…” Mikta’s voice trailed off as his eyes skated down the long list of collaborators. “Compiled with addendums and translated into the Ibran tongue by Learned Penric of Martensbridge, Lodi, and Orbas. Who’s Learned Penric?”
“Dunno,” Vallon said. “Some boring old bugger, I expect. But they keep that book locked up, so I figured it must be good for something.”
“Locked—” Mikta nearly dropped the book, suddenly convinced that Learned Delmer and the Librarian must be moments away from swooping down on them from the clear blue sky, possibly with eyes of flame. “Vallon, how did you get this?”
“I picked the lock, obviously,” Vallon said, as though this were the most ordinary thing in the world. If they taught lockpicking in the seminary, this was new information to Mikta, even if the Bastard was the god of thieves.
“You what?”
“Have you… not heard how I came to the Order?” Vallon looked a little sheepish. “I figured everyone heard that story.”
“You could tell it, if you like.”
“Well. Uh, I’m an orphan, like you probably guessed. I was born in Cardegoss. My parents…” Vallon made a little face. “I don’t remember much. I’m actually not sure they died, though sometimes I hope they did—it wouldn’t make a difference, really, but it feels different to think they couldn’t help it, rather than left me behind.”
Mikta stiffened. Different, indeed. He hadn’t told a soul about his own journey to the Order; it wasn’t Vallon’s fault, he didn’t know—
“But I was taken in, I suppose, by… it doesn’t matter now. But Anor was a thief, and he had a whole cadre of other children. And he taught me to steal.” Vallon’s lips quirked into an odd sort-of smile. “He wasn’t… unkind, and I was warm, and fed, and he kept the bigger from preying on the smaller. And I learned quickly.
“But the first time I went out with a couple of my older brothers to steal, and I lifted a few purses…” Vallon made a face. “I had the most terrible dreams that night. A great white monster stalked the streets, bellowing for the return of what had been stolen. I snuck off that very night and they found me asleep under the Bastard’s niche, half-frozen. They were very confused that I’d picked the lock on the offertory and placed a whole trove of stolen items in it. I’d all but cleaned out the little hideout he kept us children in. I have since learned that bribing the White God is not exactly accepted practice. But it worked, so…” Vallon shrugged. “Here I am. Some people would call it childhood idiocy, but the Divines called it a vocation. They sent me here because it turns out Anor was a little annoyed.”
“Annoyed?”
“Apparently he was going to slit my throat and feed me to Roya Fonsa’s sacred crows,” Vallon said, grinning as though this was funny. “Now, Anor threatened that when I spilled soup or kept him awake with my singing, but they took it seriously enough to send me far away.”
“I had no idea,” Mikta said. But he burrowed a little closer, which seemed to be the correct response.
“Have you done any magic yet?” Vallon asked.
“No,” Mikta said. “I don’t think I’m supposed to. He’s, uh, spoken with me, though.”
“The demon?” Vallon’s eyes widened. “Can I talk to him?”
“I…” Mikta frowned. “Maybe? He’ll speak through my mouth, I don’t know how I’d prove it to you.”
Vallon guffawed. “As though you could lie any more than you could sprout wings and fly us both to Darthaca. Hullo, Demon!” Vallon spoke very loudly and very clearly; as though he were speaking to one of the deafer residents.
“Hello, grimy boy child,” Bear said after a long moment, his voice neutral.
“Wow,” Vallon said. “What’s it like, being a demon?”
“I couldn’t rightly say,” Bear responded cheerfully. “What’s it like, being an idi—” Mikta clamped his jaw shut and slapped a palm over his mouth, flushing. Vallon, being Vallon, thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, bent over double and laughing at Mikta’s mortified expression.
“We should do some magic,” Vallon said. “Come on. Come on come on come on. Do a trick.”
“Fine,” Bear said, and Mikta got a very definite sense that there was some sort of masculine head-butting going on here, like two rams in a snit over an ewe. Which made him the ewe, he supposed. “Gather some driftwood.”
The two boys did as the demon asked; most of it was damp, but they soon had a small pile of gnarled and twisted wood in their little cove.
“Dig a pit,” Bear commanded. Once they did so, arranging the wood in a haphazard pile within it, Bear held a hand out over the pit, and Mikta was hit with sudden, summery warmth as the wood burst joyously into flame.
Vallon whooped with elation, seizing Mikta and actually spinning him around; his and Bear’s protests fought for space in his mouth, further muffled when Vallon set him down and kissed him soundly.
“My little sorcerer,” he said fondly. “You’re a wonder, did you know? And look at the colors! Is that because it’s magic fire?”
The fire was low and smokey—to be expected from such damp timber—but the flames themselves were blue and green, tinged with gold and occasional sparks of white.
“No,” Bear said. “Driftwood always burns like that.”
“Magic fire.” Vallon nodded sagely.
Mikta felt Bear quirk his lips upward, unwilled. Vallon could charm the birds and children and timid undersized Roknari sorcerers; even demons, it seemed, weren’t immune. Was the Bastard Himself as besotted with Vallon? From his story, Mikta had to allow for the possibility.
When they left, they made sure to kick sand over the fire, a little regretfully; Bear muttered something about the waste.
<><><>
As they made their way back up the walkway, keeping barely a sliver of daylight between them, they encountered a harried-looking acolyte looking for Mikta, who brought them at speed to Learned Delmer’s tiny office next to the foundling dormitories.
Delmer looked pale; he dismissed Vallon with a curt gesture, who left promptly but cast a worried look over his shoulder.
“What is it, sir?” Mikta asked after allowing Delmer a few moments to gather his thoughts.
“Learned Sellee has made a charge against you, with the Father’s Order,” Delmer said, jaw tight. “That is you in the plural, by the way. He has accused you, Mikta, of theft, and the demon of heresy.”
“Nothing less than I was expecting,” Bear said. Delmer looked up sharply. “Ambush is the only way, with sorcerers. I expect you’ve all been waiting to hear back from that Saint of the Bastard in Oby anyhow.”
Silence descended. Bear lifted their hands and raised their brows, in what Mikta imagined was a well, what have you? gesture.
“Mikta, was that…”
“That was Bear,” Mikta clarified. “The demon, I mean. His name is Bear.”
“Bear,” Delmer said slowly. “How… unexpected.”
“Pleasure to meet you, so to speak,” Bear said with remarkable aplomb.
“There is a Saint? Why would you be calling for one?” Mikta asked, confused. “Surely not-”
“To take me back to the God, I expect, if He so wills,” Bear said. “Like Ista in all those children’s picture books you read, lad.”
“If you know this…” Delmer said, swallowing. “If you know this… why haven’t you ascended, taken the boy’s body, and fled? Surely you know the odds do not favor your preservation.”
Bear was silent for a few minutes, considering. Then he opened their mouth and spoke, rather reluctantly.
“The first thing he asked of me, back when we were first joined, was to make flies march in a line, as a lark,” Bear said, and Mikta felt his throat tighten with Bear’s sudden grief. Mikta only caught the barest edges of it, but it was vast and oceans-deep. “The very last thing he asked of me was to take care of the boy, here.”
Take good care of him, Foix had said. Almost the very last thing he had said, before he died. Mikta hadn’t understood.
“I… see,” Delmer said. “At least… perhaps I’m starting to. Mikta, boy, you should know that we stand by you. The charge of theft is ludicrous; I may have known Foix dy Gura a few scant weeks, but he was not a senile relict to be gulled by a boy. And as for heresy…” Delmer shrugged. “That is to be left, it seems, in the God’s hands. I don’t know what Sellee even imagines is to be done about the situation.”
“You do?” Mikta asked, bewildered. “You—you stand with me?”
“Of course, boy,” Delmer said, baffled, as though this were something completely obvious. “You’re one of ours.”
This came very close to undoing Mikta completely; he managed to keep his tears unshed until he was out of the office, and heading back to his room.
“Hey now, it’s alright—” Bear said, before Mikta wrenched control of his mouth.
“We have to go,” Mikta said, desperately. “We—you said we can ride? We can, we can go somewhere else. We—”
“Woah, lad, slow down,” Bear said. “What nonsense is this?”
“If the Saint—” Mikta signed the Four, then let forth a curse that would have resulted in a ringing clout to the ear from Delmer, and tapped his lips with his thumb twice, for apology. “If the Saint… if you fall into their hands… what will happen to you?”
“I will return to the Bastard’s Hell,” Bear said. “I would return to the chaos from which I originated.”
“You would die.”
“And so?”
“I… don’t want that to happen?”
Bear’s—Foix’s—warm chuckle felt very inappropriate to the discussion. “That makes two of us, lad.”
“Bear…!”
“Think this through,” Bear said patiently. “Say we run. What happens then?”
“They’d follow us,” Mikta said faintly. “Of course they would.”
“No, they would not,” Bear said. “If you’re picturing Delmer saddling up his spavined donkey and pursuing us into the heath. The Bastard’s Order works closely with the Locators for hunting down rogue sorcerers. They’re the best there is, and I expect they would ride us down within a week. Then I would be destroyed without fail, and you might escape consequence if they decide I ascended and took off against your will, but after your little performance in Delmer’s office, I wouldn’t put money on it. We could flee to the unconquered Princedoms or the Archipelago to escape their jurisdiction, I suppose, but even presuming your tender young arse could secure a berth on a ship, lad, the Roknari would burn us the minute they caught on. Tactically, it makes far more sense to let the Saint come to us. Think about it. Gods know I have.”
“Why was this worth the risk? Why did you come to me?” Mikta’s head was beginning to hurt. “Why didn’t you go to Learned Sellee?”
“I don’t like that stuffy fathead, and neither did he,” Bear said. “Would you want to be stuck in his mind for forty years, even without gradually becoming him?
“You’d rather be stuck in mine, and become me?”
“Immensely,” Bear said. “Even to the last, I didn’t expect him to do it, though we were both thinking about it. He didn’t want to hurt you, boy; he didn’t want the keeping of his promise to me to destroy you. I… I can’t betray that trust. He did me the greatest service imaginable, at the end of his long life. To reward that with disloyalty would be… abhorrent.”
“Why me, though, for Bastard’s sake?”
“I like you,” Bear shrugged. “And so did he . He—we never had a son. He loved his daughters, more than I can rightly say. But I don’t think he ever quite stopped looking for a son.”
Mikta didn’t respond, didn’t trust himself to respond. He didn’t need a father, didn’t want–
“You have a heart, and a brain, and a spine,” Bear said roughly. “I don’t think that fool Sellee has better than one of three.”
Mikta’s face burned with sudden shame, as though caught in a lie; shame that he’d somehow deceived a sick old man into seeing such things in him, encouraged such wishful thinking.
“He commanded men, you know. For years. We were noted for having a knack for personnel,” Bear said. “If he thought you could do the job, it’s because you can do the job, lad.”
Mikta managed to pull himself together, and returned to his room.
<><><>
The book proved to be unexpectedly fascinating, and in different ways than Mikta had supposed. The demon’s Sight, for instance, had been growing slowly for days on end without Mikta realizing; the reason the room seemed brighter with Vallon in it was not, it turned out, an entirely figurative phenomenon. Even before it began to truly show for others, Vallon’s soul lit up the air around him, edged with a glittery whiteness that waxed and waned, and left dazzles in Mikta’s spirit-eyes.
“God-touched,” Bear said one afternoon, after Vallon had collected his usual goodbye kiss and absented himself to go tend to his other responsibilities.
“Really? Vallon?”
“Oh yes,” Bear nodded. “Without question. And it’s all very well to make him chase you, lad, but turnabout is fair play.”
“What?”
“I mean it’s very polite,” Bear said, his amusement radiating through Mikta like the warmth from a freshly-lit brazier. “If you were a pious maiden, I expect you’d win full points. But I should think he would appreciate it if you, ah, initiated. Perhaps he’d like a bit of a chase himself.”
“Is this romance, or riding out for the hunt?” Mikta asked, flushing red. He was beginning to realize that Bear considered all things relating to what had to be described as their body to be very much his business; when Mikta had awoken with—in a state of, of, theological readiness at the Father’s sacred point, Bear had made some bright comments about the advantages of a young body that had made Mikta want to slither under a carpet and disappear forever.
“Yes,” Bear said drily. “And while he never rode out for this particular quarry, I can’t imagine it’s much different. One might flush a mink with the same hawk as a hare, after all. I doubt it matters much to the bird.”
“It’s different,” Mikta said after a long moment. “It… must be.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s not…” Mikta swallowed. “It’s not normal.”
“Said the apostate to the demon,” Bear said. “I shouldn’t worry about that if I were you, lad. The sixty years of human life I was privileged to share showed me that most men are men or dogs, as dictated by their nature and the sum of their choices, and whatever sex they pursue has no bearing on it that I ever saw.”
To buy himself a moment of silence, he reached over to the tray beside the bed. He was hungrier than he could remember being; between what he prayed was his long-delayed growth spurt and his new passenger, he was starting to require nearly one-third as much food as Vallon at a sitting. His hand paused over a savory pastry, full of leeks and soft goat’s cheese.
“Lad,” Bear said, and licked his lips. “Could you maybe… eat something crunchy?”
“Crunchy?”
“Do you have any idea how long it’s been?” There was a note of real longing in Bear’s voice.
Mikta grabbed a tart green apple instead, raised it to his lips, and took a bite; awareness of Bear’s almost sensual relish suddenly amplified his own, and Mikta nearly dropped the apple with the intensity of the sensation.
“Teeth,” Bear sighed after Mikta had eaten the apple down to the core. “Take good care of yours.”
“I’ll go tend to them now, shall I?”
“Smart,” Bear said. “First though, I don’t suppose there’s anything… sweet?”
<><><>
Mikta had cause to put Bear’s advice into practice, later that day. He and Vallon were walking back from the library—where Mikta had been delighted to learn that he was suddenly able to read Darthacan, Wealden, and Old Ibran, and speak them as well—when Mikta, struck by sudden inspiration, pulled Vallon by the wrist into a disused antechamber full of cleaning supplies, shut the door firmly behind them, and pounced.
From Vallon’s dazed expression and stumbling gait a few entertaining minutes later, he enjoyed being the quarry quite as much as the hunter. Vallon’s default expression, always affable to a degree that caused others to assume he was a touch simpleminded, now crossed the line into cheerfully concussed.
Mikta couldn’t deny it was a pleasure to not be the one blushing, or at least not blushing the most, for a change.
When they had a moment alone, Bear congratulated him on a job well done, but gave some advice relating to ears and tongues that made Mikta’s own ears burn, even as he took mental notes and wondered how he might steer them in the direction of that broom closet again on the morrow…
<><><>
“Listen to this,” Mikta said, curled into the window seat with Learned Penric’s book. He enjoyed the slushy sleet outside, now that he wasn’t obliged to be out in it, salting flagstones and clearing gutters.
“I can read along perfectly well,” Bear replied.
“I know, but hush.” Mikta’s finger brushed the passage in question; it was still easier for him to read if he used his finger or a stylus, but Bear opined that it wouldn’t be necessary for long; Foix’s scholarship had been substantial, which was not something Mikta had quite expected of the man, from the stories of the Bear Knight.
“‘Demons, by their very nature, exist only on sufferance, and can be abided in our realm, to which they inimical, only insofar as they are willing to be placed in the service of the White God and His Temple,’” Mikta read aloud. “‘While they cannot be free, once they have attained sentience through the imitation of many and varied lives, they should, like honorable prisoners, be allowed to give their parole, and have as much freedom as they can within the restraints of their servitude. This must include the freedom of choice.’” Mikta set the book down on his lap.
“No wonder they keep that book locked up,” Bear snorted. “Whatever this Learned Penric intended, that is not in line with the canon teachings for the care and handling of demons.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not a person, lad,” Bear said simply. “In the literal and legal sense. After all, I have no form but what I can borrow, no being besides what I can copy.”
“That seems… wrong, somehow.” Mikta frowns down at the book. “We humans are the sum of our experiences, too, and as much at their mercy betimes.”
“Perhaps you’ll have to write a new chapter,” Bear said. “But he said something similar, that I should have a choice. Or at least, the option to say no. I didn’t realize, at first, how ill-suited I was to Sellee, or to the life he proposed to share. I shared in his old age and infirmity, and shared his longing for younger days. For clear vision, for clean exertion, sword in hand. To be out in the world, and changing it, instead of constrained to watching it, and leaving it behind. He suffered so, lad. Without our Liss, in his ailing body. I think he wanted some part of himself to be… free again.”
“What would you have done, if Foix hadn’t agreed, or I hadn’t been there?”
“I might have stayed,” Bear said after a long silence. “I might have chosen to die with him.”
Bear fell silent then; Mikta was beginning to sense a gradient to his quiet, when he might be cajoled into further conversation and when he’d said all he had to say. This was—emphatically—the latter. Mikta let it lie, but something about the image of Bear forsaking potentially centuries of existence to die with Foix was… somehow terrible, in a way that Mikta couldn’t quite explicate to himself. Like a library choosing to burn itself.
<><><>
It was three weeks to the day after Foix’s death and Mikta’s abrupt sorcererhood that a grey-robed Justicer of the Father arrived, Learned Sellee in tow.
Mikta was in a state of blind panic, failing to absorb Bear’s philosophical calm about the whole situation as he absorbed the languages. He managed to make himself presentable—he was dressed in the heavy cream linen tunic of a novitiate, not the bleached castoffs of a foundling; they looked to have been hastily altered to fit his, erm, lack of tallness. Someone—he suspected Delmer—had embroidered little rats and seagulls around the collar and sleeves in bright silver thread. Contemplating this heavy-handed show of support added just one more thing to the raging forest fire that was his mind, so Mikta resolved to ignore it, and his welling eyes, and focus on the present.
“Perhaps I should just cut it off,” Mikta scowled at his stormcloud of hair in the mirror. Brushing it in a panicked, hand-shaking rush didn’t help matters, as it turned out.
“With your hands shaking like that, you’re more like to cut your own throat,” Bear replied, a touch acidly. “Which, since I would be obliged to jump into the 79-year-old dowager next door, I would prefer you refrain from doing.”
“Learned Neema is a delightful old lady.”
“I would still rather not have any closer an acquaintance with her, if it’s all the same to you. Lad, calm down.”
“How?” The word escaped Mikta’s throat as a kind of choked howl. “What if they clap me in irons for theft?”
“They would shortly have cause to regret it,” Bear said.
“And when the Saint arrives, and they judge against you?”
“Then I will suffer a moment’s disappointment, and you shall return to the scullery,” Bear replied. “Be brave. I know you are.”
Not so anyone else had ever noticed. “You said…” Mikta swallowed. “You said that Foix. That, he, uh, thought I could do this. This… being a sorcerer. Thing.”
“He knew you could.”
Mikta blew out his breath and squared his shoulders. He rather liked the clothes; not so itchy and he thought it made him look… like he belonged .
“That’s a brave boy,” Bear said. “Soonest begun, soonest finished.”
“Right,” Mikta said, as he—they—went forth to meet judgement.
<><><>
Mikta was forcibly reminded that the Bastard was the God of coincidence, once again. Anara’s office, whose plush furnishings (though there was not, Mikta noticed immediately, a chair for him) and rich appointments were lost under piles of papers and hastily scattered books, contained herself, Delmer, and Learned Sellee, who looked less haggard but in no better of a mood.
Also there, seated with crossed legs and a certain wire-tire poise was a man whose grey robes and somber grey-and-black shoulder braids proclaimed him a Justicer. Unlike most of the Divines of the Father of Mikta’s experience, he was barely in his forties, though his birdlike crest of hair was shot through with white, as was the hair that shadowed his jaw.
The last person drew a strange inner hiss from Bear, as though he’d spotted a serpent among the plush chairs and furnishings. She was a rangy, faintly androgynous woman in perhaps her early twenties, wearing mud-spotted travelling gear of cream-and-white, with ashen blond hair queued and cabled to her waist. Her attention seemed taken up with the pasty in her hand, from which the delectable scent of gravy, onions and vinegared beef emanated. She looked, in fact, like someone who had just concluded a journey of a few hundred miles in the rain.
She also glowed with a steady white light that caused Mikta’s eyes to squint and water, though that did nothing to block it out. Bear obligingly lessened his Sight. He seemed… cautious, though Mikta was still learning his moods. He was not, however, hiding in a cringing ball deep inside Mikta’s body, wailing for mercy, which Learned Penric’s book had said was common for demons encountering the soul-searing presence of the Five.
Exposure, lad. Bear’s silent inner voice was still thready and faint, as though it came from a long distance; time would strengthen it, assuming he and Mikta were to be given time. I stood by Ista for near to thirty years. I got used to it. Eventually.
Ista was like this? Mikta said, even has he made a low bow to the Father’s Divine, Learned Galwick, as Anara introduced him.
Insofar as a burning torch is like a bonfire, Bear replied. There was nobody like Ista.
“And Mikta, this is—”
“Blessed Lady,” Mikta said, and at a subtle prod from Bear fell into a deep obeisance he had never practiced before, but knew was the proper bow of piety given to a living saint. The saint’s eyes narrowed a little as Bear moved Mikta’s body through the motions, but she nodded politely, albeit with a tiny smile that seemed on nodding acquaintance with a smirk.
“Lovely manners,” was all she said. “Lynne, at your service. And His.” Lynne gestured absently about her, as though the Bastard might be hiding behind the bookcase or creeping out from under a nearby rug.
“Blessed Lynne, Galwick, as I’m sure you’ve surmised, this is the subject of our discussion, Ikaross, son of Udellan,” Anara nodded towards Mikta, who managed to conceal a flinch at hearing his father’s name.
“I go by Mikta,” he said. “As I am no longer a member of my father’s lineage, I do not, that is, I am not entitled—”
“Understood, young one,” Galwick said with a nod. He had a deep and surprisingly beautiful voice, and seemed quite relaxed, considering the proceedings. Though since the Saint herself was putting muddy-booted feet up on Anara’s desk, perhaps he was the model of decorum.
“This is your diabolical thief, Sellee?” Lynne said, clasping her hands and resting them on her stomach, leaning back in her chair and looking for all the world like she was settling in to take a nap. “This is the rogue newborn sorcerer that dragged me across three provinces and five sleet storms?”
“Just because he seems harmless, does not indicate that he will remain so,” Sellee snapped, nearly drowned out by a deep inner snarl from Bear. “Regardless, no fourteen-year-old boy has the strength of character or depth of will necessary to resist a powerful demon. It should be dealt with at once.”
“You understand I can’t pop the big fellow out and pass him to you, yes?” Lynne asked drily. “It doesn’t work that way. If I take him, he will go to the God.”
“I am quite aware of that,” Sellee snapped. “That the demon overruled his rider once, in conspiring to be passed to this callow adolescent, is proof that it cannot be trusted in this world any longer. I speak out of concern for the boy— Mikta’s soul.”
“Like Hell,” Delmer muttered from the corner, notably uncowed by the mild look Anara threw him that made Mikta want to crawl along the stone floor scrubbing flagstones in penance.
“If it’s to be done, it should be done immediately,” Galwick allowed. He gave Lynne a respectful nod.
Lynne stood with a yawn and a catlike stretch and strode over to Mikta; who managed not to shake only by clenching his fists so hard his nails dug into his palms. The Bear Knight in the stories always faced danger square-on; Mikta straightened his back and tried to do Foix proud.
You have and shall, Bear whispered. Mikta, lad, if this is goodbye—
I will miss you, Mikta thought, a little desperately. For the rest of my days, I will miss you.
As I will miss you for the rest of mine, Bear said. Which, granted, is not saying much.
Bear gave a deep whine of fear as the Saint raised her hand; but all she did was rest it gently on Mikta’s face. For a brief instant it was like staring down a cliff, a moment of vertigo so shocking that Mikta felt like he might pitch forward and fall forever into the sudden infinity that opened up behind Lynne’s soft grey eyes.
“All has been taken from you once before,” Lynne murmured, a bare whisper for Mikta’s ears only. Or… Someone murmured, and used Lynne’s mouth to do it. “Not again, I think. Not today.”
Mikta shook, his eyes welling with sudden tears as Lynne’s hand fell, giving his shoulder a squeeze in passing.
“It’s alright, pretty boy,” she said. “It’s alright.”
“Well? Is it gone?” Sellee’s face and voice were intent. “Did you take the demon?”
“No,” Lynne said. “No, and I shan’t.”
“Blessed one, surely you must see—”
“Oh I see, alright,” Lynne said, her affability evaporating like smoke with a suddenness that made Galwick’s eyes widen in shock and Anara rear back in her chair. Even without a God behind her eyes, Mikta was devoutly glad that that glare wasn’t directed at him; it would have reduced him to a greasy smear on the carpet. “I see plenty. If the God trusts my judgement, so perforce must you. Argue with the Bastard about it, Learned. Only be sure to give me time to pull up a chair, so I can watch.”
Mikta fancied he could track the exact moments that Sellee’s bones turned first to water, then to ice, under Lynne’s steely eyes.
“Well, that simplifies matters,” Galwick said, brows raised. “Or… simplifies one, and causes a half-dozen more, which I gather is how your God likes it. He shall need training, you know.”
“Of course,” Anara said. “We can’t keep him here, but I have some thoughts I would love to discuss with you, if you can tarry awhile.”
“I am at your disposal, lady,” Galwick said with a courtly nod.
“But, what of the charges?” Mikta asked, confused.
“Yes, what of what was stolen from me?” Sellee’s face was going from grey to red with slow-building outrage.
“An outcome nobody foresaw, that causes untold chaos, leaves everyone's plans in disarray, sending people scurrying back and forth and dragging women from their warm toasty houses to ride two hundred and fifty miles in the sodding rain,” Lynne asked, seemingly of the air. “Did you all forget what God we serve?”
“Some of us did not,” Anara said, before turning and addressing Mikta. “The charges have been dismissed.”
“Dismissed?!” Mikta and Sellee asked in unison; both disbelieving.
“Jurisprudence, as well as regular prudence, dictates that I should not argue with the Gods,” Galwick said, making a little dismissive gesture. “Especially not this God. Whether it was meant for some higher purpose or not, it seems the boy is to keep his demon. If it is not a crime or sacrilege for him to keep it, it can be assumed it was neither to receive it.” Galwick’s urbane mannerisms concealed whatever feelings he might have about the situation, but Mikta had an inkling that the Justicer had no great fondness for wastes of his time.
“I’ll take Mikta back to his rooms,” Delmer said, standing, radiating smugness as hearth did warmth. “Come along, boy.”
Mikta’s mind reeled. The adults had already forgotten his presence, it seemed—Anara and Sellee talking over each other, Galwick providing trenchant commentary—but Lynne gave him a little smile as she stood and made her way to the door, plainly uninterested in such mundane matters. She signed the Five at him by making a vague wave up and down her torso.
Huh, was all Bear said. Take a look at this, lad.
Mikta’s demon-sight brightened, and he glanced at the Saint; if Vallon’s soul was edged in glittering comet-trails of the Bastard’s passage, Lynne burned with the clear-white radiance of dawn after a storm; it almost hurt to look upon her. And… one other thing. At the Father’s sacred point… it seemed that Lynne was not a woman. Or, not just a woman; she was both man and woman in one body, as many peoples believed of the Bastard.
The Bastard was the god of those whose souls were sexed out of alignment with their bodies, who in His Order chose to dress and live as their body’s opposite; but this was something new to Mikta. It seemed He cast an even wider cloak than Mikta had supposed.
Wide as the world, lad, Bear murmured. Now, attend.
You brought it up!
"Congratulations on your new vocation,” Lynne murmured in passing with a grin. “I would say that I hope it’s less exciting than mine, for your peace of mind… but somehow I doubt it will be. I shall look forward to the stories.”
“Blessed Lady,” Mikta replied, with a little bob. “I must ask… your words to me. Was that…?”
“I’ve never had much difficulty getting Him to talk,” Lynne replied, rolling her eyes as though she and Mikta were discussing a beloved but incorrigibly drunken uncle. “It’s getting Him to shut up that’s the problem. Now, if you don’t mind, pretty boy, I need a bath, and a meal, and a bed.”
“Of course, Blessed Lady.”
“Call me Lynne.”
Mikta bobbed his acceptance of this, while simultaneously knowing to his bones that he would never, ever, in his life, be able to do that. He watched her leave, her white radiance fading from his Sight.
Mikta allowed Delmer to lead him from the room, feeling oddly weightless and shaky in all his limbs.
So I’m a sorcerer now?
You have been for weeks, lad.
No but… officially. Delmer, after three attempts to engage Mikta in conversation resulted in nonsensical monosyllables, seemed content to walk beside him with a hand on his shoulder.
It would be hard to imagine anything more official than that, Bear said. All of your life, boy, or all of mine.
And what will we do with it? Mikta felt again that feeling of being unmoored in time, separated from his past; how different it was, though, to know he was not alone any longer. Bear, close to him as his own blood; Vallon, Delmer, the Bastard’s folk… perhaps even the Bastard Himself. A father who did not want him seemed less an indictment of Mikta, since there were so many people (and others, and Others) who did.
Even the Gods do not know what lies ahead with perfect certainty, Bear replied. And I am no God. But I can hazard a guess.
Vallon, waiting in Mikta’s room, seized Delmer and capered the startled old divine in a circle with glee when he heard the news. He quickly abandoned his sputtering dance partner to seize Mikta in a crushing embrace, crowing with all the triumph Mikta could have wanted.
Whatever we do, we shall do it well, and Mikta’s eyes welled once more with tears, but joyous ones this time, as Bear’s thought carried with it a memory of Foix’s smile so vivid it was like the man himself stood before them. And we shall do it together.