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Chapter Text

Elsi Pebbledrop is on pilgrimage, no matter what that clod Rogerick might have to say about it, and anyway Rogerick is completing his novicehood under Brother Dorth the decrepit pipe organist so what does he know about anything.

Three days on foot to Brekstedt counts as a real pilgrimage, Rogerick, since Elsi was chosen for it specially: the Revered Mother must have seen how diligently she dusted the space behind Ilmater’s altar, or how loudly she said her prayers at Matins even though it wasn’t even dawn yet and the other acolytes always elbowed her about it.

Well, the other acolytes can stuff it. Elsi gets to meet a cleric out of legend.

The Cloakwood is cloaked in browns and oranges to the west, trees undressing slowly in the season’s chill wind. Frost crunches beneath her boots. The sun is a crisp, distant white.

A tall figure rounds the bend toward her, and her pulse quickens.

The Revered Mother had described the cleric-out-of-legend’s cloak specifically: dark blue damask, adorned with clear gems that seem to flicker with captured light. She’d asked Elsi to look for this cloak on the road from Rivington, hand over the sealed holy writ in her satchel, then accompany the stranger to Brekstedt to help carry out whatever order the temple’s given.

That’s the bit Elsi doesn’t understand. To hear the Mother tell it, this wandering cleric had helped kill the Netherbrain, way back in the chaos-times before Elsi was even born. If that’s true, what use could some acolyte be? Even a smart and diligent and promising one who can already cast two and a half spells?

The cleric draws closer, then passes by with hardly a glance. Elsi sees the lovely cloak in detail, its gems tracing the shape of a sun. She swallows down her nerves.

“Honored cleric!” she calls out as boldly as she can. “I carry a missive from the Open Hand.”

The stranger stops, sputtering in offense. “Cleric? Gods below. Your dear Revered Mother is fucking with me again. Presumably this is payback for the temple wine incident.”

He turns to face her, eyebrows arching. “Oh, goody—she’s even sent a gnome. Well, out with it, darling: what does your floundering little church need this time?”

***

Lash opens the door to the vicarage, then immediately sneezes.

“Shit. Dust. When did anyone last live here, the First Flowering?”

“Sits too far from the temple proper, I imagine,” Astarion sniffs, pointedly hanging back from the threshold. “Your brothers and sisters may sing the virtues of adversity, but gods forbid anyone ask them to do so much as jog up a hill.”

Lash could argue. A great number of Open Hand clerics had put their arses on the line to repel the Netherbrain. The temple infirmary’s filled up twice over.

Those are the lucky ones, because others are dead.

“I suppose it’s rude of me to insult our hosts,” Astarion sighs. It’s not quite a concession, but he touches her arm companionably—a press of fingers to her bicep, cheeky and feather-light. “And after they’ve granted us such…charming lodgings.”

Lash steps into the vicarage—a cottage, really, one-roomed and built of cold stone. The windows are too small, moonlight only barely illuminating a rough-hewn bed, but they’ll need to tack down the curtains in any case. Outside, the garden plot is barren. The fireplace is buried in soot. 

Every inn across the Gate’s been given over to refugees. If Astarion hadn’t needed shelter from the sun, Lash would have refused even this.

Astarion leans up against the door frame, clicking his tongue like a gossip at market. “I can’t believe we don’t merit a hero’s welcome at your own godsdamn temple. They should send the kitchen boy up to peel us grapes.”

“Not really our way. Evil’s been thrown down, sure, but somebody’s still got to clean out bedpans.”

“And they really expect that someone to be you? You, who’ve killed gods?”

Lash hesitates. Astarion’s brow is arched in peaceful consideration. She isn’t always good at reading faces, but his eyes seem to follow her with patient interest—as though she’s always on the verge of doing something entertaining or attractive or wonderful. Lash damn well isn’t used to being watched like that.  

“It’s because I’ve killed gods,” Lash settles on, “that I want to clean bedpans. For a little while.”

His expression does something complicated she can’t follow. “Disgusting, but I’ll allow it. Are you going to carry me over the threshold or not?”

“Oh, is that what you’re waiting for?”

“That, or the appearance of said grape-peeling boy. Really, dear, we can’t have your rustic humility affecting my own quality of, er, life.”

“Hmm. Suppose not.” Lash scoops him into a bridal carry easily enough, laughing when he squawks in offense. “What, you didn’t mean it?”

“Give a man some warning, at least!”

But he doesn’t protest when she lays him down on the bed. Just shakes out the worn quilt some acolyte made up for them, tucks it around their shoulders, and rubs his face into his pillow like a damned contented cat.

His hair curls against the pillowcase. Two faint freckles dot the space beneath his eye, but she’ll never tell him that. Cross her heart.

“It’s just temporary,” she says quietly. The space between them warms with her breath. “With my skill set, won’t be long until they send me off on some pilgrimage or other. And we need to find your sun solution, anyhow.”

“Mm. I look forward to tormenting the faithful in the meantime. It’s delicious to think of them putting up with me for your sake.”

Lash tries to hide her laugh with her hand, but Astarion catches it. Dances his fingers along her palm. Half to annoy her and half to caress. 

He looks, for all the world, content. A miracle, after a life like his: that he could count himself content to look at her. 

She swallows. “And you really want—”

“Yes, love, I’ll follow you. You should know that by now.” He strokes the back of his hand down her jawline. Presses a thumb to her lip. “I’ve become rather pathetic about it.”

“Might be bored out of your skull, sometimes. It’s holy work.”

He makes a skeptical noise. “I like helping you smite things. And if you look liable to change any bedpans, I’ll just pop down to the shops.”

Lash kisses him, twice—first a feather-light touch and then something long and lasting. His lips are cool and sweet.

When they break apart, Astarion sighs with an un-self-conscious joy. “Gods. Gods. Ilmater’s a gormless fool—gormless, I said it and I meant it—who doesn’t know what he has. One of his many sins.”

As always, Astarion’s dramatics contain a small measure of truth. Ilmater’s never spoken to Lash—never manifested for her personally. She’s had no such problem with the other temple clerics, though. Brother Aimes has already roped her into serving on the stewardship council, the bastard, and for some reason everyone wants her opinion on how many of the newly-orphaned they should take on as acolytes.

Overnight, she’s become someone people want to talk to. Someone who knows things worth knowing. She doubts it’ll last, given how much more useful she is on the road. Better at scuffling than sermonizing. 

“They try to do good here,” she tells Astarion. “Some of them are right tossers, but that’s people for you. They use the tools they have.”

“Well, I should hope they’re worth something for you to devote all this time and effort, post-world-saving. But I reserve the right to dislike Brother Merret specifically. He won’t let me borrow any books from the archive. Not even the negligibly-holy ones.”

“For a long time, the temple was the only family I had.”

“In that case, I dislike your cousin Merret. And to be very clear, I’m not here to help with any of the do-gooding. Just the gruesome smiting bits.”

Lash makes a noise of amiable aggravation. Astarion pulls the quilt over their heads, smirking. Watches her in the warm dark beneath, shockingly fond, eyes still red as sacramental wine.

***

Elsi learns three things about Astarion by the time they’ve reached Brekstedt.

Firstly, he’s not a cleric—if there’s such a thing as the opposite of a cleric, Astarion is probably that. He doesn’t even worship Ilmater. 

Secondly, he knows a startling number of Ilmatari clerics anyway. He calls Sister Agatha, a formidable woman nearly as ancient as the Revered Mother, “Aggie, that misshapen cuntress.” He claims Brother Kycus owes him money.

Thirdly, and perhaps most pertinently, he knows how to pick a lock.

“That’s the value of an independent contractor,” he says breezily, tinkering with a back-alley door in the wall that cleaves Brekstedt’s old town district from its outskirts. “Some of your ilk disapprove, of course—I get an earful every time I’m back on temple grounds—but your Revered Mother is a practical sort. Likes to use the tools she has.”

Selûne is half-full, wreathed in ragged clouds. Rather than creep through the shadows, Astarion’s demonstrated an uncanny instinct for keeping out of strangers’ eyelines: no patrolmen or late-night drunks have caught so much as a glimpse of them. He’d reversed his distinctive blue cloak and lent her a dark hood, the fabric unnecessarily fine for a sneakthief’s kit.

“I don’t understand all this sneaking around in the first place,” Elsi grumbles. “We’re on a holy mission. We’re helping this town.”

“Oh yes, by all means, let the enemy’s spies know we’re coming. Why don’t you try waltzing through the main gate? I’ll hang back a bit. Provide constructive criticism.”

“I—I didn’t know there was an enemy here! You won’t show me the stupid writ.”

The lock goes clunk. Astarion gives her a smug look. Something about his mouth looks strange in the moonlight, but Elsi’s too busy rolling her eyes at him to figure out why.

Brekstedt is said to be growing quickly, farmers selling their fields to take up new trades within its walls. The effect is still underwhelming. Austere wooden buildings crouch along the main road, with only a humble chapel steeple rising high enough to breach the skyline. The wall seems suddenly disproportionate: as though the thane had found himself master of a town on the rise, rose to meet the occasion, and overshot the mark. 

“Really? Here?” Astarion mutters at the same time as Elsi says, “They could at least pave the streets.”

Astarion shoots her a delighted look, which only makes her more irritable. “I’m only saying.”

“You know, I’m lost guessing gnome ages, given the…” He gestures vaguely at the space over her head. “You don’t seem entirely shriveled, but you’re saucy enough that I’m starting to guess maiden aunt.” 

“I’m thirteen!” she says hotly. Astarion hisses at her volume, pulling her into a byway between two houses.

Chastened, she lowers her voice. “I’m just not used to places like this. I grew up in Baldur’s Gate.”

“No, you grew up in Rivington. In a temple. Dear gods, aren’t you too young for rescue missions?” He considers her skeptically. “Not that you’ll grow much.”

Her ears perk up. “We’re on a rescue mission?”

“Mind your bloody business, that writ was addressed to me. I just need to know if your Revered Mother is going to kill me if you die.”

“I’m more suited for a sacred pilgrimage than you are.”

“Oh my, they’re not really letting you call this little traipse a pilgrimage, are they? Saint Liwan argued you needed to be on foot for three tendays to call it a pilgrimage.” He pauses, mouth twitching strangely. “Oh, no. I hate knowing that.”

Elsi throws up her hands. “I can cast protective blessings! And Silence spells! I can…almost heal!”

“Wonderful. So will the Mother almost kill me if you die?”

“She believes novices should spend time in the real world. On the road, when we’re still young, just like she did.”

Something strange happens to Astarion’s face, then: it goes soft all at once, like a pile of knives melting. It’s so disconcerting Elsi takes a step away from him.

“That does sound like her,” he says with frightening fondness. “Always a practical woman. Using the tools she has, and all.”

Elsi squints at him. “Are you a tool the Revered Mother has?”

Astarion tugs her hood down over her eyes.

***

Yenna finds him in the garden.

He’s taken to sprawling out on his birch chair after vespers, once the sun’s slipped down past the horizon and the flowers have all gone ruddy in dusk-light. Such are the charms of springtime, though he’s seen two winters since the Netherbrain attack and found them even nicer. It’s a relief to venture out safely in that early darkness, reading to Lash as she hauls out the crock to cook outside.

But in spring, there are the flowers.

“Where’s Lash?” Yenna says tearfully, tripping over her tentlike acolyte’s robes. “I want to talk to her.”

Astarion sighs, closing his book over his finger to keep place. “And hello to you as well, gremlin. You’re out of luck—her meeting’s gone long, can’t remember which. I hope it’s the ecumenical council: she hates Father Shastik and is always very funny about it, after.”

Yenna sniffles, rubbing her face on the cat in her arms. “That’s alright, then. ‘M sorry to bother you.”

“You should be,” Astarion says, reopening his book.

Yenna starts back down the hill, gangly teenage legs dragging. He doesn’t remember her being half so annoying as a tiny redheaded camp freeloader, but then, grief is a fickle beast that likes to hide in the backwoods until you think it’s extinct. 

He tears his eyes away from her slumped shoulders. The vicarage garden’s become a chaos of clumsy projects: a herb patch, a pottery wheel, barrels for fermenting ale. Lash has, to his amusement, become someone who tries to make things. Little gentle arts, in what time she has between the field trips they take together to slaughter things on the road. 

She’s found no particular skill in crafting or cultivating, but that doesn’t stop her from trying. Headstrong vines climb the vicarage walls.

Astarion sighs again, louder. “Alright, you may as well tell me the problem. I’ll pass the message along.”

Yenna jogs back to him eagerly, opening her arms to let Grub explore the flowers. “Um—I’ve just been—I’ve started work in the infirmary this year. All the novices do it for awhile.”

“Bedpans,” Astarion says knowingly. “Not a fan of your new duties?”

“Today we had a—a family, who’d been attacked on the road. Their son was—he was three years old, maybe, and they’d—”

She chokes, overcome. Her pale eyes look washed out in dusklight, their color hard to see. “He didn’t bleed so much, because he was small. And then he was gone. And there’s the sick people, too, who can’t afford tonics, or spent their savings on colored water someone said was a cure. We can’t help them all. And there’s never enough money and every bed is always full, and—”

“You’re beginning to see it, then.”

“I—are you going to say something awful?”

“Yes.” Astarion sets his book on the ground. It’s an old saga pilfered from the archives, and Brother Merret will be very upset with him. Serves him right, for letting Sister Chet illuminate the manuscript so poorly. He suspects the translation is flawed as well, though there are no Reghedjic-speakers in the temple to ask.

“I think,” he says, “you’re beginning to understand that your ministry is hopeless.”

Yenna makes a choked noise. 

A wind stirs, carrying the scent of rosemary through the garden. The last bees of the evening are bumbling back to the apiary along the vicarage wall. The hive had been one of Lash’s many experiments, but Astarion quickly found himself tending to the colony more than she did. He doesn’t know why. 

The thought amuses him: a vampire beekeeper with no use for the honey. 

“Lash would tell you the same thing, you know. The world is buried so deep in shit there’s no way you’ll dig it out again.”

“She wouldn’t,” Yenna says, pleading.

“Oh, yes she would. She’d say it, then keep on killing slavers anyway. Or slogging through pointless clergy meetings with her least-favorite elders. Or whatever.”

Yenna toys with her wide sleeves, suddenly shy. Her robe has grass stains at the knees. “So…you think I should keep trying to help people.”

“No, I think you should ditch your novicehood and join up with a small criminal outfit. But no one ever listens to me.”

Yenna gives him a wobbly smile. “Really? Not even your best friend Brother Merret?”

Astarion gapes at her. “Brother Merret? You think Merret is my best—”

“You do argue with him about books,” Lash says, conquering the last of the hill. “Figure that’s a deep-seated need of yours.”

She wears no robe: just a pair of rough breeches and the tunic he’d picked out for her the last time they’d passed through Waterdeep. He did her hair up in braids this morning, but by now it’s a mess again. She’s smiling.

“Hello love,” he says softly. “Care to weigh in?”

Yenna watches her with something like awe. “Astarion says the world can’t get fixed.”

She shrugs. “Bit of a right of passage, figuring that out.”

“Oh.” Yenna watches Grub’s upright tail move through the freesia blooms. Slowly, a weight seems to lift from her. The oversized robe slides further down her shoulder.

“Come here,” Astarion says on impulse. He slips inside the vicarage to find his sewing basket, detangling a length of ribbon.

“I keep telling you we’re not allowed accessories,” Yenna says from the doorway.

“Oh, just hide it in your pillowcase. You’re of an age where it should physically pain you to wear that sack.” He brandishes the ribbon at her. “Use it for a belt when you sneak out at night to see pretty youths from the village.”

“I don’t sneak out to see—”

“You will,” he promises.

He gives her a bit of honeycomb and sends her on her way. 

After Yenna leaves, Lash sits out with him in the dark garden. She kindles the firepit, using hickory for the sweet smell, and tells him every bit of petty nonsense that happened at council. At least, she tells him what she notices—not always one to catch a subtle slight, his love. 

“They just keep appointing me to things,” she says in bewilderment. “Elder Thomat wants me to give a homily tomorrow. Don’t know how to do that.”

“Are you really so shocked they see you as wise?” She gives him a startled look, and he clicks his tongue. “Oh, come now. You’ve lived through war. You’ve saved the world. And like it or not, love, you give good advice. That’s a tactical error on your part, because now they’ll never leave you alone.”

A flush unfurls across her grey cheeks. She grabs his hand, rubbing a thumb over his palm. The fire crackles sweetly. 

That’s the problem, of course: Lash will quietly let the world take from her so long as she sees a chance for its betterment. A guilty conscience may have kickstarted her career, but the vows have long since become a part of her. He wishes quite often that she’d leave all this behind, but then she’d be someone else.

She says, “They never used to ask my opinion on things. Not sure I like the change.”

“You’d rather be their mechanism?”

Lash shoots him a sharp look. “I’d rather…I’ve always wondered what it would be like, to be gentle. To be a cleric who’d never raise a mace unless it’s all gone to shit. But I don’t—” She blinks down at their joined hands. “I still don’t feel soft, in those rooms. When I’m at council, it’s politics. When I’m on the road, it’s violence. None of it feels gentle.”

“We use the tools we have.” 

Lash huffs a laugh under her breath. She looks at him out of the corner of her eye—sly and secret. Like sharing a joke without words. The stars are bright and clear. 

“We’ve gone on fewer pilgrimages lately,” she says. The temple’s amusing little euphemism, denoting travel to warzones just as often as to holy sites.

He waves a hand at the vicarage behind him. At the garden they’d tended from seed. “Still insisting this place is temporary?” 

“No. Guess not. But you could spend time travelling without me, if you’re feeling cooped up.”

“One day I might, should the whim take me. Perhaps when you’re too creaky and ancient to come along. But love—” 

In one fluid motion, he straddles her lap. He toys with the little hairs at the base of her neck, memorizing the broad planes of her face. “My life will be very long. I want to steal all of your time. To be with you.”

Chapter Text

Elsi’s tired of walking in stupid circles.

The frost’s built up on the windows again. Astarion’s led her around the entirety of Brekstedt, which of course took twice as long with all the sneaking. He’d peered peevishly at every shop sign and household doorpost, doubling back to read small print. 

Several grand houses are being raised along the main road, a testament to the town’s future, and Astarion takes the time to walk through each unfinished worksite. He seems, almost, to be testing whether he can.

“What are you looking for?” Elsi hisses for the fifth time. Even the harvest fruits carved on the chapel door are starting to make her stomach growl. 

“I’d figure it out faster if you’d kindly shut your mouth for two seconds—”

“Just tell me! I’m supposed to be helping you.”

“Helping—no, my sour little half-pint. I know how the venerable old Mother thinks. You’re here to learn from me.”

“Oh, really! How so? I suppose she wants me to take up lockpicking?”

“Mm, well, to make a wild guess: you lack a certain…flexibility in your thinking. Moral rigidity tends to bother her. She’s had an excellent teacher in that regard.”

He shoves a hand over Elsi’s mouth as a patrolman passes by. Really, this is getting ridiculous. She’s a divine servant, not a thief in the night. Surely the local authorities would be happy to help a very promising young acolyte—one who can cast two and a half spells!—conduct a rescue mission.

A cleric of Ilmater stands firm against evil. She doesn’t scurry in through the back door.

Once the patrolman’s gone, Astarion slips across the road. He doesn’t spare another glance at the chapel. But Elsi does: the shutters are in disrepair. Strange, for a town on the rise.

“Desanctified,” she says under her breath.

Astarion stops walking so suddenly she runs into him. “What did you say?”

“It’s—see Chauntea’s symbol over the door frame, the rose and wheat? They’ve carved a line through the bloom. No one worships here anymore.”

“You’re certain?” 

“Of course I am. Chauntea blesses the harvest. Farmers worship her.”

“Not quite so many farmers in Brekstedt these days.” Tension, or excitement, thrums beneath Astarion’s whisper. He cranes his neck for a better look.

Wooden beams throw strange shadows around them, half-constructed houses rising like humpbacked creatures. One of the buildings seems bigger than the rest, with a foundation laid in stone. A new temple, she realizes—much grander than the chapel. Probably for a god more useful to the kind of city Brekstedt wants to be.

Astarion murmurs, “I’d been looking for a written invitation. Some…unwisely-worded shop sign, perhaps, or a house with a twee platitude inviting friends to come make merry. To come inside.” 

“An—an invitation?”

“I hadn’t thought to try a chapel, because…well. But if it’s desanctified, all bets are off. They probably think it’s very funny to make a lair somewhere that used to be holy. They’re not wrong.”

“Astarion,” Elsi hisses, “are we rescuing people from vampires?”

He smiles at her, and his teeth look strange. They gleam sharp in the moonlight.

Elsi stumbles back from him.

“No no, don’t lose your nerve now, darling. Would you like to learn how to pick a lock?”

“You’re…” 

“A good friend of the temple, to my continued embarrassment. I haven’t lied to you. At least, not about anything important.”

He pulls her by the wrist to the chapel door. She kneels beside him numbly, staring at his pale throat. The twin marks that mar it seem suddenly vivid.

Elsi remembers arguing with that clod Rogerick. She’d been so smug about being chosen to go out into the world, where the right answer isn’t written in a book somewhere. Where everything is terrible and frightening and strange. Where an evil creature can pretend to be your friend, and you can be stupid enough to believe him. 

Astarion puts a finger to his lips. Reaches for the thieves’ tools at his belt. 

***

“Love,” he says softly, thumbing a line across her forehead, “you’re dreaming.”

Lash startles under his hand. Her eyes snap open, darting around the vicarage: he watches her take in the candles, the moonlight through the window, and—finally—his face. 

She exhales, long and careful. Her shoulders relax against the sheets. 

“I’ve made tea,” Astarion says. “Or at least hot water. It’s that terrible sage concoction that Chet drinks; I was a bit too effusive about it when I was trying to convince her to show me that manuscript in from Calimshan and now she thinks I like the taste. While we were gone she sent more up with, oh, who’s the brat with the unibrow. Yenna’s friend.”

“Aggie,” Lash sighs. She runs a hand through her sweaty hair. 

The windows are open. The breeze of a warm summer’s night stirs the suncatchers, then flutters in the dried bouquets hanging from the rafters. A cloak is laid over the rocking chair, blue damask and shining, but Astarion refuses to look at it. 

“You were already up?” Lash murmurs, leaning back against the headboard. She winces at what’s probably a pulling soreness in her back, common for her now after long journeys. And their journey had been very long.

He sits on the edge of the bed to hand her the mug. “No, I’ve had a lovely meditation. The gods smiled upon me, I found a lasting inner peace, and then I still had time to take a jaunt through the Outer Planes. Lae’zel says hello.”

“Right.” Lash takes a slow sip, wincing at the taste. “What was yours about, then?”

“Slow dismemberment, as per usual. Specifically the time Cazador fed me my ring finger.”

“Mm. Did he mean it as a sort of—”

“Metaphor? Probably, but I didn’t follow. What was yours about?”

“A village we rubbled. Got a commendation for it. I met a girl and her mum, after, while my company was still camped nearby. They were eating clay to survive.”

“Rude of them to be such striking symbolism.”

Lash snorts like she can’t help it, giving him a look that’s half guilty and half fond. He almost feels better, except he catches a glance of the blue cloak in the corner of his eye and feels despair bubbling up again.

Lash pats the bed. He clambers over her, dragging it out for the sheer pleasure of being obnoxious until she calls him a tosser and shoves him the rest of the way there.

He settles in beside her, their shoulders pressed together. “Do you know, a part of me thought the dreams would stop?”

“Do you mean in general, or after this trip specifically?”

“Both. Either.” He lets himself look at the cloak: it’s woven in beautiful patterns of blue on top of blue, studded with clear gems in the shape of a sun. “I mean, a family reunion to fetch that darling addition to my wardrobe was the greatest gift I’ve ever been given. We fought a death knight’s horde. Bartered with the ettin. Wyll solved a fucking riddle. And yet…”

Moonlight illuminates each sprig of dried lavender. The room smells of orange peel and sage.

He scowls. “We’ve stolen a miracle, you understand? I had resigned myself to never seeing the sun again. But that pretty bit of fabric let me finish the journey in broad daylight, and there it sits for tomorrow, and I’m still—”

“Still you,” Lash says. “Nightmares and all.”

Astarion thunks his skull against the headboard. “It’s infuriating! I suppose I thought that if I got the sun back, I could just…it would all just…”

He swallows. “Do I have to be like this forever? For centuries?”

“Dunno. Maybe.”

“Oh, very comforting. Very wise.”

“Would you rather I said healing takes time?” 

He glares at her, defeated. Lash holds her mug up to his lips, insistent, until he relents and takes a sip. She chuckles when he makes a show of gagging, and the wedge of ice in his chest starts to melt.

He leans back against her breast, and her broad arms envelop him. 

“I hate this,” he says quietly. “What do you do with your dreams, pray about them?”

“Mostly I just tell you, these days.” 

He’s touched despite himself. Ilmater’s rather neglected Lash, in his opinion. She’d saved the world in his name, and he can’t even be bothered to manifest for tea and sympathy. As though Astarion needed any more reason to scorn the gods.

All he can do is be a contrast: a helpmeet, peculiar and heretical but no less loyal, for as long as he’s allowed to keep her. 

And he will keep her. Lash was no youth when they met, but they’ll get to do the dishes together for decades yet—an unfathomable wealth of time compared to dimly-lit pleasure seekers who’d disappeared by morning. Not enough time, of course, but how could it ever be? Even if she were some hardy little drow due a thousand birthdays, it’s the nature of the thing. 

And he loves her. And so.

“Sorry,” Lash says suddenly, “I’m going to be trite because I don’t know how else to say it. Healing does take time, if it happens at all. In the meantime, you find one thing you care about, one thing to fix, and fix it.”

“Until it breaks again.”

“Yes.”

“It—you know me better than that, love. My pain doesn’t make me want to save the world.”

“You weren’t listening. Neither does mine.” Her low voice rumbles against his ear. “I pick away at a smaller knot. Something to save.”

He swallows down a wave of habitual bitterness. “And what do you expect me to save?”

“Me.” Lash hands him her mug. “This is disgusting. Put some of your honey in, will you?”

Indigo and cornflower wave through the window, flavorful flowers for his bees. The blue cloak catches moonlight in its gems. The quilt is warm around their thighs.

“Sweet tooth,” he says, surging up to kiss the ticklish spot beneath her ear.

***

A cloud moves over the moon. Astarion’s finally shut his mouth, working the chapel door in silence.

Why in the gods’ names did the Revered Mother choose Elsi for pilgrimage? She only knows two and a half spells! It’s gross negligence on the Mother’s part. Mismanagement. It’s hardly Elsi’s fault she’s being held captive by some vampire who’d impersonated a friend of the temple.

The lock goes clunk. Elsi thinks quickly.

She doesn’t know how to turn the undead, and Silence has proved an utterly useless addition to her repertoire. But she can cast a blessing; any stupid novice can. Ilmater’s power might at least frighten a vampire. Or, who knows, give him a stomachache.

The blessing embraces her, warm and safe and light. Golden motes rise from her skin, and from Astarion’s. 

But rather than sending him cringing back to the shadows from whence he came, this just seems to annoy him. He examines the back of his hand with distaste. Then he raises an eyebrow at her, gesturing at the door with his head—as though to say, you’ve chosen now to be tedious?

Well, that was stupid. Either she’s in deeper shit than she’d realized, or—

…or he’s telling the truth. A friend of the temple. Which is impossible, surely, since Ilmater hates evil things.

Astarion takes the time to roll his eyes at her. Then he does several things so fast she can hardly follow: rolls to his feet, throws open the chapel door, draws the twin blades at his sides. His blue cape flashes, then he’s gone. 

Inside, people start shouting. 

Elsi shuts her eyes very tightly. She kneels on the chapel threshold, hands trembling. The night isn’t so quiet, anymore: there’s steel and shrieking and shattering glass. She wants to go home.

But—

But she’s a very promising acolyte. Smart and talented and brave.

She opens her eyes. 

Astarion is beset by monsters in the shape of people: vampires with glowing red eyes. They wear filthy rags and their feet are bare. They charge down the aisleway and over the pews, throwing themselves at him bodily. Candles hang over the nave.

Astarion is a blur. He seems almost to dance between them. Elsi’s blessing glows golden on his skin.

A woman stands before the altar. From Elsi’s place on the ground, she seems to rise above everything. She doesn’t, at first, seem undead: she wears fine silken clothes and many rings. She looks nothing like the wretches attacking Astarion.

But the woman barks a word, and yet another vampire bursts from behind the lectern to use its body as a battering ram, no concern for its own safety, about to be skewered on Astarion’s blade—

Except, somehow, it isn’t. The creature tumbles to the ground behind him, unharmed—and Astarion dances forward. Dances between the bodies, always forward. 

His blades, she realizes, never make contact. Not with the vampires dressed in rags. He moves like a wild hare, or a hummingbird, and he glows. 

And when he at last breaks through to the altar, when the rich woman shrieks in rage and terror, when the blade in Astarion’s right hand glows suddenly radiant and plunges deep into her throat and out through the other side—

Astarion laughs. Wild and cruel and free.

Elsi struggles to her feet, leaning hard against the door frame. Astarion savages the body until it vanishes into mist. 

A strange energy moves through the other vampires—a sea change—and she tenses. They’re going to attack her, crafty creatures of the night, and she’ll be defenseless and she’ll die.

But the creature—the girl—who’d thrown herself at Astarion just makes a keening noise. She sinks to her knees, the red glow fading from her eyes. “The coffin—she’s gone to her coffin. Please.”

Her hands, Elsi realizes with a jolt, are tied together. Strips of skin and muscle have been peeled down her legs, dragging behind her on the dusty chapel floor. A line of nails drive into her forehead. She’s filthy.

Astarion grabs her face, forcing her to look up at him, and his expression changes again: not to fondness, the way it had for the Revered Mother, or to the bloodlust from before. He looks, almost, to be in pain. Pity, maybe—if pity hurt the giver.

“Poor wretch,” he murmurs. “It doesn’t fix anything, but if you tell me where the coffin is, you can strike the killing blow.”

Elsi understands, quite suddenly, who Astarion was sent here to save—and that no patrolman, no earthly authority, would have ever helped him do it. They wouldn’t have risked their lives for monsters. Astarion was on his own from the beginning. 

Except, of course, for Elsi.

The chapel pews are coated in dust. So are the carvings of wheat and fruit along the moldings. Someone had lit every candle: they hang from the ceiling on thin black chains, or sit in rows along the altar. It’s sacrilegious for monsters to kindle an altar fire, but Elsi finds she can’t begrudge them the light. 

The vampires murmur or shout or sob. That’s no good: the townsfolk might hear and give them trouble. Elsi wraps them all in Silence. A gift, she hopes, though it feels paltry. Like tossing scraps in the face of their suffering. 

It’s a curious feeling, to be godly and not enough. To be smart and moral and yet still not enough.

Astarion’s eyes flick to hers, approving. Then he kneels in front of the vampire girl.

The strange expression still contorts his face: grieving, almost, and turned inward. Elsi’s seen its like somewhere before. She watches Astarion cup the girl’s hands—still bound in ragged cord. He touches her almost kindly, traces of Elsi’s blessing still glowing on his skin. 

Ilmater’s symbol is a pair of bound hands. Elsi thinks things about Astarion he’d rather not know.

Chapter Text

They walk home in the sun. 

Warmth eases the bone-deep ache that’s dogged Lash since Waterdeep. Gale’s portal had cut out most of the journey, and he’d made up a wonderful bed for their stay, but there’s only so much she can do to stave off soreness at her age. 

Like it or not, her traveling days are numbered. Doubly so, if the Council of Elders get their way. She’s been turning their offer over in her head for tendays.

Astarion’s hand rests on the small of her back. “Think you could spur those venerable legs to a bit more speed, love? I need to make sure Yenna didn’t fuck up and kill all my bees.”

“Just for that, I’ll find some rock to sit on for hours. Gives her more time to make good on her threat to name them all.”

Astarion clicks his tongue. “I miss when she was a people-pleasing little gremlin. Why is it that when I show someone an ounce of affection they commit to needling me into their forties?”

“Because she adores you, and you’re easy to needle. Just look at Brother Merret.”

“Excuse me, I needle Merret. Which reminds me that the collection from St. Fanal’s has probably arrived by now. I’ll have to help him index, the useless sod.”

Lash sneaks a fond look at him. She’s never much identified with the intellectual life of the temple—far from it—but at some point Astarion had fallen ass-first into a hobbyist role. He claims to only enjoy it because half the archive masters suspect him of inserting sly heresies into the books.

The Open Hand’s grand gate is open, but they forgo it in favor of the dirt path to the vicarage. A gaggle of acolytes pass by, daring each other to steal from the kitchens. They shut up as soon as they notice Lash, guilty and slightly awestruck. She does her best not to laugh. 

The ones who really need a listening ear—struggling new novices whose previous lives are millstones around their necks—will find her far away from the temple. They’ll sit out in the garden with her while Astarion bitches about freeloaders taking their chives.

Sometimes a novice’s self-involved misery frustrates him so much that he bursts into a tirade of mostly good advice. He claims to hate the novices, but they take to him like ducklings. It’s very funny. It also makes Lash very thoughtful, after.

But damn it all, things will be different if she gives the Elders what they want. Becoming the Revered Mother would mean meeting novices in cramped, consecrated rooms. So much for telling bawdy jokes where the others can’t hear. 

So much, she tries not to think, for honesty.

“Your coneflowers are still alive,” Astarion notes. “It was touch and go for awhile, there.”

There aren’t enough hours in the day to keep a perfect garden. The strawberries are shriveled and the basil’s gone leggy again. But her windchimes catch the breeze and the sun together, singing gently, and Astarion’s apiary keeps the bees buzzing through. Yenna’s a competent keeper and he knows it.

“Think I’ll lie down for a bit. Save energy for evening rounds.”

“Oh, wonderful, you’re working again already. No rest for the—well, the righteous. I find being wicked perfectly restful.”

Inside, he helps remove her traveling cloak. He plants a line of kisses down the back of her neck. He seems to enjoy this so much that she takes off her other layers so he can kiss the rest of her, which means she does end up lying down but not getting much rest at all. 

He is, nevertheless, gentle. A pillow cushions her lower back. Pleasure washes away all her thrice-cursed aches as suncatchers cast fleeting rainbows on the wall. 

Light crests through the window; carries her. Her home smells of orange peel and sage.

“All this and a day of travel,” Astarion murmurs after. “Maybe you do have the stamina to be their Revered Mother.”

She smacks at his shoulder half-heartedly. They keep a basket of towels near the bed, easy to reach, but she doesn’t feel much urgency. A breeze from the window cools her skin.

“Still not sure I’ll accept the mantle,” she says finally. 

“Oh, don’t tell me this is a self-esteem issue. I thought we were well past all that.”

“Since when do you want me to do more for the temple?”

“I absolutely don’t. I just want you to turn it down for the right reasons: stubbornness, your delicious tendency towards heterodoxy, the fact that you’ve already worked harder for less reward than all of their mild-mannered noncombatants put together.”

Lash hums, pulling him closer. “A lot of clerics would call this appointment a reward.”

“A lot of clerics are idiots.”

“You’ve got me there.”

Astarion tangles their limbs together. His cool fingers trace her jawline; the space behind her ear. Her face is different from when they’d first met, collecting a lifetime’s worth of lines and liver spots. Sagging in strange places. Astarion’s never looked at her any differently. Fair enough: he’s pretty enough for the both of them.

“I just,” he starts, then trails into uncharacteristic silence. She squeezes his wrist until he continues. “Take it from a vampire: they’ll take from you until you tell them to stop. You’ve given more than enough already.”

“Don’t think I’d be much good at retirement,” Lash says ruefully.

He sighs, rubbing his face into her collarbone. “You once told me to find a little knot in the world and untangle it. I disregarded that advice immediately, of course. But you’ve untangled a thousand little knots. You’ve—shit. I’ll be trite. You’ve untangled me.”

Her breath leaves her. Astarion’s white curls press into her neck. The tips of his ears are just barely pink—her blood, after all this time. They go pinker the longer she stares.

“You untangled yourself,” she says gently.

“I wouldn’t have had the chance without you. I’d have committed to a headlong stampede into self-annihilation. Though I’ve no doubt I’d have made a very stylish dark lord.”

Lash stares down at him, struggling to take his words on faith. Closes her eyes.

She hasn’t looked at the red cords in years. Turns out that sacred insight into other people’s pain is less useful than hearing it from their own lips. Better to be a warm presence knowing fuck-all about what’s wrong than to steal the specifics from a distance.

Still: she looks. Ilmater’s cords spiral out from Astarion’s dead heart. A few tie him to Lash, while many more stretch into the darkness. His suffering, ever present. Vivid red and impossible to erase. 

But the cords, to her wonder, are less knotted than before. They form clean, understandable loops: a pain that mostly knows itself. A pain that can be touched and thought about without panic. 

She opens her mouth to say—she doesn’t know what she means to say. A fierce joy shakes her. She holds him tight to her chest and cries.

“Cheating again, are you?” he says very softly. Runs a hand through her tangled hair. “Good. Better than being obtuse. I could name off the ways you’ve improved my life in alphabetical order and never make it through, I don’t know, dagêz. I’m better than before. I’ll stay that way.”

“You—you can’t know that. Damn near nobody can see the future.”

“Well, I can. Because I’m overconfident.”

She chokes on a laugh. Rubs a hand over her nose. 

Astarion goes wandering sometimes, mostly when the temple’s bickering starts feeling like a vise instead of free entertainment. But he seems otherwise content to spend all their time together: to hoard the minutes like stolen jewels. To strut about the grounds henpecking the archivists and insulting the Open Hand brew.

His life will be very long, after all. He insists he can spare the time. 

“You don’t have to worry about me,” he murmurs. Sweet, yes, but urgent too.

Her voice is still stuffy. She hates crying. “Who says I worry about you? Without me you’ll be a right terror to the cellarer.”

“A bold assumption, that I’ll hang about the temple after you’re gone.”

Hang about, maybe not. But Astarion and Lash had fermented Father Grady’s favorite blueberries in a dozen jars of honey in exchange for the new quilt lying rumpled on their bed. Astarion could have commissioned a fine luxury comforter from any maker in the Gate (he had, after all, commissioned silk sheets). Instead, he’d gone to an Open Hand cleric. He’d traded for it, art for art. 

Lash says, “I assumed you’d come back for my funeral rites, at least.”

“Don’t be morbid, you’re still strong as an ox. And anyway, I’m still deciding on that. Ilmatari services are dreadfully boring.” He rolls out of bed. “Another reason not to become Revered Mother, by the way. You’ll have to officiate that kind of thing.”

He heads for the cellar they’ve built onto the western wall, then pauses. “The point is, you’ve more than made up for whatever sins you think you carry. I wish you’d be selfish, but—”

“—but you won’t hold your breath,” Lash finishes. Wry and a bit apologetic.

“I know you too well, love. Would you like a honeycomb?”

It’s an indulgence she’s grown fond of in old age: honey overflowing straight from the comb, coating her mouth in mortal sweetness. She used to feel guilty about it. Now she doesn’t. Astarion had helped with that.

He brings it to her, the way he always brings sweet things.

***

They leave Brekstedt a few hours after dawn.

Astarion’s somehow cleaned himself of all mud and blood—and sweat, perhaps, though Elsi doesn’t know if vampires get sweaty. The gems of his cape glint in the cold light of late autumn. He spends a moment standing outside the town gate like an idiot, basking, his face turned toward the sun.

She’d thought vampires burned in daylight, but she must’ve been mistaken. Turns out that even a smart and promising acolyte can be wrong about things.

The road winds away from Brekstedt’s walls. A few miles away, it will branch into many roads: one to the Gate, yes, but others to Elturel or Amn or the Cloud Peaks. She finds herself wondering what those roads look like. Who lives on the other side.

“Are you headed back to the temple?” she asks Astarion.

He wrinkles his nose at her. “Damn. Now you think we’re friends. This always happens; I really should tell her to stop sending novices on life-changing excursions with me.”

“Why does she do that?” Elsi says before she can help it. “You’re not a cleric. I mean, God on the Rack, you’re not even respectful.”

Astarion considers her. His face looks good in sunlight: a mischievous light in his red eyes you could almost mistake for contentment. “The Mother told you she wants novices traveling while they’re young? Well, she and I met traveling. She was younger, then—much younger—and her hip was less liable to snap sleeping in rugged campsites.”

“Gods, you must be ancient.”

That startles a bark of real laughter out of him. “Alright, you little terror, I’ll admit: you give as good as you get.”

“It’s just I can’t even picture the Mother young. She’s just—all my life, she’s been a little old lady who prays all the time. And keeps bees, I suppose. She lives in some cottage up a hill.”

“And she teases you, I’ll wager.”

“I—” She crosses her arms indignantly. “Only a bit.”

“Ah, she teases everyone.” Again, that fond expression. “She didn’t used to, you know. I’m afraid that’s my influence. You’re already outpacing her on that front, so you do have at least one skill.”

He turns on his heel before she can retort. She follows him into the countryside proper, holding her cloak closed against a chill wind. The hood he’d leant her is tucked into her bag.

It takes an hour’s walk to reach the crossroads. Astarion stops there, stretching his arms above his head. 

“There’s more to it,” he says—casually, as though their conversation had never stopped. “I’ve no illusions of saving the world. It can’t be saved: not by god nor mortal nor cynical immortal egotist.” At this, he sketches a little bow.

Elsi squints up at him through sunlight. There’s a trace of that inward-facing expression she’d seen in the chapel, but it seems softer now. Like a rock worn down by time. 

“But I’m allowed my preoccupations, in any case. She gives me these jobs as a sort of…mutually-beneficial exercise. A scraggly little knot, all for me.”

Elsi considers this, standing in the crossroads. The low line on the horizon might be the Cloakwood. To the west, she knows, is the sea.

“Will you come back with me? To see her?” she asks finally.

Astarion grins as though she’s missed something, or said something very funny. Then his expression softens. “Since you asked so nicely, dear.”

***

Astarion sets off to get a drink in town with Brother Tai and his friends. “They begged me to come. Tai is about as charismatic as roofing tile, but he’s infatuated with a barkeep. Haven’t decided yet if I’m going to help him or make it worse.”

“Your ministry,” Lash agrees. Then she gathers up her comfrey soap and palliative tonics, leaving for her rounds.

The last wisps of sunset color the dark sky. Malformed pots stand stacked along the vicarage wall, or hold redcurrant shrubs and new saplings. She’d like to spend time improving her pottery, but there’s too much to do at the temple. More and more every day.

She descends the hill slowly, wary of her weak ankle, but half-orcs are half-hardy stock. Some of her patients are hardly older than she is and fully bedbound. She expects her mind to go before her body does, if one of them has to.

Hospice duty—care for the dying—is the least-favorite task of many an acolyte. Even initiated clerics find death frightening to be around: the damned disgusting things a body can do, the somber families, the muddy sound of a death rattle. Lungs can get very loud when you die. 

The task is considered beneath a senior cleric. But Lash had never finished her deathbed stint, too useful to the temple as a hammer on the road. She finds it requires an odd half-gentleness: the dying need care, yes, but they also need honesty. Someone who’s seen worse things, and isn’t much fazed by the sight of bodies shutting down.

At the first house, she changes bandages on bed sores and distracts the family with stories of the druid’s grove. At the second, she helps a woman to her outhouse. 

After, she stands at the well washing flecks of shit off her hands. Breathes the night air and thinks: wouldn’t it be nice to have just this? No politics, no title. No more mace to swing. Just comfrey soap and tonics for the weary. Stark kindness; blunt care.

At the third house, she expects to find Yenna, who often joins her for rounds. She’s blossomed into a lively cleric with an irreverent sense of humor. Explains why Astarion is so damned fond of her, though he’ll never admit it.

There’s only so much shit even the sweetest curate can take from him before they learn to give it back. 

But instead of Yenna, she finds a stranger sitting at her patient’s bedside.

Lash pauses in the doorway. Then she steps inside, setting her bag on the nightstand. 

“I suppose you’re here to keep him company.” She nods at the sleeping patient: a butcher whose family had lived in Rivington for generations. His daughter died of pneumonia last spring. His husband had gone on long before.

The stranger holds his hand.

Lash fills a bowl of warm water from the pump in the corner. Rummages through the butcher’s cabinets for a clean cloth. “Wanted to get him cleaned up a bit. He might not wake up again, but if he does, want him to feel like himself. He’s usually clean-shaven.”

She drags a stool to the bed, across from the stranger. Props the butcher against his pillows. Lathers up his face.

The little house is sparsely appointed, but lit by a roaring fire—the visitor had beaten her to it. Warm oak walls lend a closeness. The Open Hand belfry reaches for the moon outside.

Lash runs the razor carefully down her patient’s cheek. “Used to wonder why my god never spoke to me directly. Never appeared to me the way he does in stories, even after we saved the world. Thought maybe I didn’t deserve it.”

A battered clock ticks away on the nightstand. A heirloom with no inheritors. Lash frowns as she does the tricky bits around the butcher’s ear. 

“But I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and now I figure I was wrong. Who I was, when I left my regiment—I didn’t need a god. A divine calling didn’t fix me.”

She swallows. Lowers the razor, for a moment, as her hand trembles. 

“I’m glad, now, you never spoke to me. That was a gift, wasn’t it? I was so tangled up in my own head, I would’ve clung to your voice so tight I never heard anyone else’s.”

She thinks of Astarion, and Karlach and Nephmos and all the others. Of Yenna and Father Lorgan. Of a hundred souls bustling through the temple, petty and mortal and glad to have a drink with her while they bitch together about a barbarous world. 

She meets the stranger’s eyes. “The work would have meant something else, that way. The people would have meant something else. I didn’t need you, but I needed your people.”

He’s a bit of a butterface. His expression is grieving, almost, and turned inward. 

Lash listens to his answer. Nods.

Then she finishes shaving the butcher. Pulls him to a sitting position, struggling with his bulk. The stranger moves to help her, maneuvering her patient—gently, yes, but firmly too—until his forehead rests on her collarbone. She supports the weight.

“Help me wash him,” she says.

The stranger picks up a cloth. They do the work.

***

By the time they reach the Open Hand, Elsi’s spent three interminable days yammering to Astarion about chore rotation and how mean the cellarer is and some brat named Rogerick. Why do acolytes always believe that whatever’s going on in their sheltered little lives is the most interesting thing in the world?

She peels off from him to unpack in the dormitory. People flow through the temple’s gate in anticipation of the midday meal: parishioners and paladins and cooks clutching last-minute cartons of eggs. The usual city smells permeate: burning coal and spices and a perennial undertow of shit. 

Astarion uses the little door that leads through the archives. He’s never had much trouble entering the temple’s auxiliary rooms, so long as he avoids the grand front doors with all their holy symbols. The main sanctuary hall is also right out—not that he much feels the need to attend services.

A dwarf and a dragonborn argue inside, ignoring a young acolyte whose knees buckle under the weight of a massive pile of books for shelving.

“Lazing about again, archive master?” Astarion calls. “Your codexes look a state.”

“Astarion!” the old dwarf beams, hopping down from his desk with less agility than he used to—it happens, when you’re pushing three hundred. “Settle a bet for us, will you?”

“Oh, Merret. You know better than to think Kycus will pay up a bet.” 

The dragonborn harrumphs. “Lying sod. If anyone owed you money, which they don’t, it’d be impossible to find you to pay up. You’re like a damned feral cat.”

“That’s the truth,” Merret says, patting Astarion hard on the back specifically to annoy him. “Come visit me more often, will you?”

Astarion smiles pointedly and pointily. “Cats come around when fed. Are you volunteering?”

A thump as the acolyte drops all her books. She looks at Astarion with horror. Kycus slaps his profoundly oversized forehead, sighing heavily.

“Stop scaring the novices,” Merret chides, “or they’ll never take their vows, and the gods know we need the bodies. Get back to shelving, Leeta. Don’t stare.”

“Please, the whole temple used to know about me. Good for the constitution, to get a scare or two when they’re young.”

Kycus snorts. “Yes, well, the Most Honored Revered Mother, may she be ever a light unto the lost and broken, has a whole…graduated godsdamn curriculum around it. You’re an object lesson, like it or not.”

“I’ve noticed,” he says dryly. “Do you know where I can find her?”

“Out in the cloister, last I saw.”

“Good.” He starts for the inner door, then pauses. “What was the bet about, anyway?”

Merret gives him a shit-eating grin. “We couldn’t remember whether St. Ulrach had prayed for courage or peace in the Delimbiyr Vale. It’s recorded in the northern annals, but—”

“Courage,” Astarion says miserably. “And foresight. Gods damn you. I only remember these things because Chet used to misspell them so memorably when doing copy work.”

“May Ilmater rest her slapdash soul,” Merret says. “Come for a drink later?”

“If it’s wine, and you pay.”

“There’s our feral cat.”

Astarion curses him heartily, then makes for the cloister. 

The covered walkway opens onto a square courtyard. In a warmer season, the garden would overflow with greenery. Instead, only the pine trees maintain their color. There is, at least, the sun.

He finds the Revered Mother on a stone bench between hedgerows. Her face is nut brown and shriveled, but her eyes light up just the same.

“Gremlin,” he greets her.

“Heathen,” Yenna nods. “How’d my acolyte do?”

He sits down beside her. Smoke from the cooking fires mingles with coal-gray clouds. Somewhere a choir is rehearsing, though they’re not much good. 

“Well, you sent me a gnome,” he says reasonably. “Rather a low performance ceiling, I’d think.”

“Oh, but she’s very good at saying Matins. Louder than anyone else in the temple.”

He must be doing something awful with his face, because she laughs at him. Her vestments are a warm grey, and she wears a talisman of bound hands. In her hair is a length of ribbon.

He sighs. “Alright, to give you the specifics: she was a self-righteous little shit who was actively offended by the idea of picking locks. She was too smart for her own good, she never shut up, and she had a competitive streak a mile wide.”

“So, full marks?”

“Full fucking marks. You also have an acolyte by the name of Rogerick who sounds like an utter prick.”

“Absolute wanker,” Yenna agrees. “I’m working on that.”

“Yes, well, don’t send him to me. I return novices to you with a shakier set of morals than they left with. Serves you right for tormenting me with young people I never asked for.”

“You’re good for them,” Yenna says simply. “You’re good for us. And besides, it was—”

“—Lash’s idea, I know.” 

A gull flies overhead, bearing toward the Gate. The choir finishes their number and bursts into excited chatter: headed to lunch, perhaps, or sneaking off to fuck each other in the belfry. Staid robes never stopped anyone.

“The bees are doing well,” Yenna says. “One of the hives fell in last month’s storm, but I smoked them to sleep and set it up again alright.”

“Helpless things.”

She fiddles with her fingers. “Will you visit her? The door’s unlocked—take a jar or two of honey from the counter.”

“I can’t taste—”

“Oh, barter it away, I don’t care. It’s no good making the stuff and keeping it for yourself. You know that.”

He shakes his head, well aware he’ll leave temple grounds burdened by more junk than he'd arrived with: gifts, for the most part, though he’s never been above a bit of thievery. Kycus has been very annoying.

Yenna squeezes his wrist. Her freckles are buried under years of weathering, but her eyes crinkle just the same when she smiles. Astarion isn’t so naive as to think he’d helped raise her—the temple as an organism did that. But she used to find him in the garden. Beg for ribbons. 

He gives her hand a sharp squeeze in return. Then he stands, brushing down his cape. 

“We’ve an envoy of Selûnites coming in a tenday,” Yenna tells him. “An ecumenical delegation. I’ll have a bed made up for you if you’d like to stick around for it.”

“I suppose I can spare the time, if it means needling Shadowheart about all the dog hair on her robes.” 

“You’re welcome here for as long as you’d like,” Yenna reminds him. “As always.”

He nods, headed for the back door through the dormitories. He returns greetings or snubs from any Ilmatari old enough to remember him. Brother Jardem’s been petitioning to ban him from temple grounds for a decade, which at this point is mostly adorable.

If the Revered Mother gets her way, more clerics will know him again soon enough. A graduated godsdamn curriculum. Gods below. 

He ascends the hill slowly. Rivington’s spread beneath like a child’s toy: provincial and quaint from a distance, chipped and scratched all to the hells up close. Well-loved.

The vicarage garden has spread. Most of the plants are dormant for the season, but the plot now stretches past the shed Lash had built and a ways down the hillside. Yenna’s added a regiment of scarecrows and a raised herb box—safer, perhaps, from the rabbits.

Several rosemary bushes live in Lash’s best planters: the ones she’d perfected after long hours at the pottery wheel. She’d had more time to practice in retirement. Or quasi-retirement, really, since she kept up with her hospice work. Said it took firmness and gentleness all together.

The rest of it, she’d turned down. Told the Elders she wanted to take time for herself, for once. For the ones she loved.

He pushes open the door. Yenna’s furnishings have replaced most of their old ones, though he recognizes his sewing basket and one of the suncatchers by the window. 

He takes a breath—ceremonial, really—and steps over the threshold. The vicarage lets him in just as well as it ever did, which always makes him stop and wibble for a moment. He listens to the wind chimes. Watches dust motes drift between the rafters, little sunlit emissaries far more blessed than a blessing.

Lash used to call the vicarage temporary, back before she understood how much the temple wanted her. She’d expected to be dumped back out on the road: a pair of strong arms without a head worth mentioning between them. But for all their many faults, the Open Hand clerics rarely sent her away for long. And never alone.

He shakes himself, then grabs a jar of honey from the counter.

Behind the vicarage, the woodpile’s stacked high for winter. The climbing vines are evergreen. The other plants will bloom again soon enough. 

Everything in its season, alive to dead to alive again.

He gives the headstone a little tap. “Hello, love. Keeping well?”

She’d have a good view of the Gate, were she tied to her grave. But it doesn’t work that way, and thank the fickle gods for that.

The vicarage was temporary. Which of course only made it lovelier: she’d chosen to share it with him, a strange and selfish lover, moment to honey-gold moment. They’d fit a century’s worth of sunlight into forty-odd years, and now the road before him seems lit with its afterglow.  

Sentimental, perhaps. Mawkish. But entirely true. Embarrassing, how many things manage both.

Chickweed tangles dot the hillside, spotted with white flowers yet. Roads lead to and from the Gate.

He addresses the rolling hills rather than the stone. “As always, love, thank you for letting me steal your time. And for using whatever tools you had to love me. And for—for showing me. All of it.”

He doesn’t say any graveyard prayers. Instead, he opens the honey jar. Tips it forward until a glop pools on the headstone. It catches the light, amber and sweet.

He sits with his back to the stone until the sun slips past the horizon, watching birds and the occasional chipmunk. He tells stories aloud: a slippery mark in Elturel, a visit to Halsin’s commune, a little gnome novice with bite. 

Then he brushes himself off and starts down the hill for dinner.

END