Youth Inquisitive

Fantasy. Vizma Riorda, a priest devoted to Oghma, a god of knowledge and truth, meets a young thief who does not lie.

The market in the centre of Merryweather was, as ever, bustling. Crowds milled about the stalls in the square, where travelling merchants had set up for the summer festival, and Vizma walked with her head high, her hands loosely gripping one another in front of her belly, neatly clasped in place.

The crowd parted slightly, for any priest, but especially for the High Priest of the Merryweather Oghmian Order, and she scanned the crowd as she came through, looking for traders selling books or scrolls, although most of them knew the area well enough to drop into the Temple of Oghma as they made their way onward.

The temple would usually pay a small stipend to any who brought new books through and allowed the temple to make a copy of the text for its own library, and there were few merchants who wouldn’t take advantage of the opportunity, but not every trader knew everything. Merryweather was just a dot on a trade route to many, and some merchants didn’t pay heed to the signs or leaflets the Oghmians set out.

It was not, in the end, a merchant that drew her attention.

It was a young boy, clad in blue travelling clothes and a cap, making his way through the crowd and examining people as they went by before his gaze settled on her. She could see the curiosity in his face, watching him as she did in the polished glass of the apothecary’s storefront, and she smiled slightly at the expression of concentrated focus he wore, his brows furrowing together.

It was good, to see a youth inquisitive.

She only glanced away for a moment, but the young man disappeared entirely from view, blending in with the crowd. It oughtn’t have been too difficult, with how little the young man was, scarcely coming up to the chest of most of the elves and humans passing him by in the crowd, and yet the speed with which he dissipated entirely from view was…

She wouldn’t have noticed it, she didn’t think, had she not noticed the young man in the crowd, had she not been more alert. Vizma felt the ever so slight difference in the movement behind her, felt the tug on the fabric of her skirts, and her hand whipped out to catch the young man by the skinny wrist, pulling it up hard.

It forced him up onto his tip-toes, his cap falling back, and he stared up at her face, his lips pressed loosely together, his eyes slightly wide. There were freckles scattered all over his face, dusting his cheeks, his jaw, his forehead, the most she’d ever seen on one person’s skin, and the colour of them was almost the same as the dun-brown of his flat, lifeless hair.

She arched an eyebrow, waiting for the young man to say something, to defend himself, but he remained silent, his expression unchanging.

“What are you doing, young man?” Vizma asked, not relaxing her grip on his wrist, but he wasn’t struggling, and nor was he looking wildly about the square for some way to escape, as most children in his position would be.

His brows knitted together, his mouth twisting somewhat. “Picking your pocket,” he said slowly, as though it were a stupid question. “Unsuccessfully.” He spoke Common naturally, his accent a little more northern than Merryweather, but it certainly wasn’t a city accent.

“You understand that most priests don’t carry that much money on them?”

The knitted brow knitted further. “I didn’t want money,” he said. “You have a book in your pocket. I wanted to see what it was.”

Vizma stared down at him, taking this in, and she managed to suppress the smile that threatened to bubble up as she slowly let his wrist down, allowing him back onto the soles of his feet as she reached into her pocket with the other hand. He made no effort to pull away, his focus on the blue-dyed leather of it as she held it out. He hesitated as she let him go, glancing up at her face, but then he took the book out of her hand, examining its cover before parting the pages.

His eyes moved fast over the page, but it wasn’t the scrambling of an illiterate pretending he understood the paper in his hands: the boy could read, and he studied each line of the cover page before reading the first of them… then flipped toward the back, scanning the indices. He was obviously well-accustomed to the handling of books, and she glanced back to the bookseller, searching for some family resemblance between him and the boy, but there was none that she could make out.

His clothes were well-made, and not the overworn, obviously secondhand clothes of a beggar or an urchin, but they weren’t well-tailored to his body, and there was something uncertain about his wearing a blouse too large for him and a cardigan that was obviously too small. His trousers fit him, but the boots seemed a little too large as well, and the leather of the latter seemed to be of a much higher quality than the rest of his clothes.

“You’re a priest of — Ooghma, then?”

“Oghma,” Vizma corrected. “Rhymes with dogma.”

“Oghma,” the boy repeated, not looking up at her face and remaining concentrated on the pages of the prayer book. It was a collection of prayers and blessings, as well as a few excerpts from the holy texts, and without context or previous study, no doubt they seemed as if they branched across a maddening array of topics, but if the boy found them confusing, it didn’t show in his face. He glanced up from the text, his thumb pressed loosely to the symbol printed upon the page, and to the silver amulet she wore over her breast: a carved scroll, Oghma’s symbol.

“Most young men wouldn’t admit to thievery, even when caught,” Vizma said.

“I don’t lie,” the young man said. “Do you need this? Surely as a priest, you would have all this memorised from rote use alone?”

“Perhaps so,” Vizma said. “But that book is not for my use alone. If someone asks me a question, what help will it be if I just recite a passage? Better to sit down with the questioner and allow them to see it written on the page. What’s your name?”

“Buran Highfield.”

“Is that your real name?”

“Yes.”

“Your family are merchants?”

“They sell things, sometimes,” Buran said, paging through the text and examining in detail a prayer of thanks to Oghma — it was the prayer most devotees said before going to bed, and it was one of the most worn page in the book, undoubtedly. “But no, they’re thieves.”

“And they let you wander strange towns?”

“Not let me, no,” Buran said. “That’s my father over there, the frantic looking man in the blue travelling clothes. He doesn’t want to start calling for me because it’s too suspicious, but I’m not wearing the clothes I was wearing this morning, so he’s struggling to find me in the crowd. It helps that I’m talking to you, of course.”

Vizma took this in, once more struggling not to laugh, and she looked toward the man Buran had nodded to. He was a broad man, somewhat shorter than Vizma herself, with the same dun hair as his son, and she could see the panic on his features as he searched the crowd from the top of the square’s steps.

“It doesn’t bother you that he’s so worried?” Vizma asked.

“He’s always worried,” Buran said. “One becomes inured.”

Vizma put her hand over her mouth, turning her face away, and then she raised her hand, waving toward him. The broad man looked from her to the little figure beside her, and he began to rush forward through the crowd. He went very pale as he approached, the natural ruddiness leaving his cheeks, and it made his freckles stand out all the more.

“Mr Highfield,” Vizma said.

“Buran,” he said, catching the boy by the shoulders, and Buran looked up at him, still holding the prayer book neatly in his hands. Expectantly, he raised his chin, and he didn’t look at all surprised as his father tilted it slightly further up to look at his face, then leaned one way and then the other, apparently examining his son for signs of injury.

“We told you not to wander off,” Highfield said, desperately.

“I didn’t wander,” Buran said. “I moved with purpose.”

“And to meet us at midday if you did.”

Buran shrugged. “I was busy.”

Highfield looked anxiously at Vizma, and his hand squeezed Buran’s shoulder a little bit more tightly, although judging by the boy’s expression, it wasn’t tight enough to really bother him. “And what have you been speaking with this priest about?”

“Mr Highfield,” Vizma said again, and put out her hand to shake. Highfield took it, his palm dry but his grip a little bit too tight to be relaxed. “You’re passing through Merryweather as part of the merchant train, I take it?”

Highfield opened his mouth, glanced down at his son still buried in the prayerbook, and then met Vizma’s gaze.

“We’re moving toward Planton, to the east,” he said, sounding as though he were measuring the words very carefully. “We’ve been selling furs along the way, but I’m a bard, so I’ve been playing music along the way too, of course.”

“Big family?”

“No, no,” Highfield said, and Buran raised his head, frowning at his father.

“How many brothers and sisters do you have, Buran?” Vizma asked.

“Ten travelling with us,” Buran said. “Seventeen overall. I’m the youngest.”

“A family we need to go back to,” Highfield said, and now as he squeezed Buran’s shoulder, the boy noticed, and frowned pointedly at his father’s hand. “Thanks very much, Mother, very nice to meet you, I’m sure, but we have to go — ”

“Mr Highfield,” Vizma said as Highfield moved to pull his son away, “I would like to speak with you about your son.”

“Look, I don’t know what he told you,” he said, and she didn’t miss the way he glanced behind her and about the market, pin-pointing where the guards were stationed at the square’s main entrances, “but my son tells people all sorts of things, often gets taken away with silly flights of fancy.”

“I do not — ”

“Hush, Buran,” Highfield said, with desperation.

“I would like to speak with you and Buran’s mother,” Vizma said. “This isn’t about your thievery.”

Highfield set his jaw, just slightly, and Vizma took a step forward, smiling slightly. “Why don’t I walk with you, Mr Highfield?”

“Yes,” he said, resigned. “Why don’t you?”

---

The caravan was set apart from most of the others in the merchant train. It was two fairly big roofed carts, each of them very well taken care of, the wood painted all over with complicated murals and little portraits, with curtains hanging over the doors and opened windows. A few other tents were neatly set about the clearing, and over the fire bubbled a pot of stew, a few more cast iron pots set into the fire itself. Four horses were grazing alongside, a few chickens pecking about the fire, and she did see a few children rushing back and forth.

Buran couldn’t be older then nine or ten, and these children were around the same age, four of them running and tumbling in the grass. It was plain they’d been taught acrobatics: they leapt over one another and did complicated cartwheels, walking on their hands as well as they did their feet, and their laughter rang out over the clearing.

Others were milling about the fire, two young women who looked to be about sixteen playing a complicated game of strings she couldn’t follow, their hands were moving so fast. Now that she looked at them more carefully, she could see that some of the children had the elvish features, their eyes larger, their colouring darker and richer, their ears pointed, but that others looked more human, as Buran and his father did.

This was explained by the two women who moved back and forth in the camp, one of them a tall, strong-shouldered human with plum-coloured cheeks, and the other a shorter elven woman, a wood elf. When they saw the three of them approaching, both of them immediately abandoned their work by the fire and rushed over, the elven woman dropping to a crouch in front of Buran and putting her hands on his hips to look at him, the human putting her hand in his hair and pulling his head back to look at him.

Buran obediently moved his head one way and the next, raising his arms upon being prompted, and then showing each of his palms to the elven woman when she pressed at his hands.

“Are you hurt? At all?” she asked, and the boy sighed long-sufferingly.

“Not to my awareness,” he said.

The elven woman swore under her breath, taking him by the hand, and Buran went along as she led, complaining in fluent Elvish the whole of the time, that he didn’t need to be checked over, that he was perfectly well.

He never let loose his grip on the prayer book in his hand, and finally the other woman turned to Vizma, seeing her for the first time. The glance to her husband was subtle, and although Vizma didn’t quite catch the movement of the man’s hand, she was aware that non-verbal signals were being passed between them.

“My name is Vizma Riorda,” Vizma said, putting out her hand. “I’m the High Priest of the Oghmian Temple here in Merryweather. I was speaking with your son back in the marketplace.”

“My name is Rena,” she said slowly, “and you’ve met my husband, Wendell. Our wife, Eline…” She gestured after the elf as she led Buran up into the caravan, and Vizma watched two more elves come out from the caravan, young, lanky boys who looked to be about sixteen or seventeen, talking at length with another adult man. He didn’t look like the others, his hair pure black, his skin seeming opalescent in its pallor compared to the other elves about the camp.

“You seem so convinced that your son is hurt,” Vizma said. “You think he would lie?”

“He wouldn’t lie,” Rena said. “But he… He doesn’t always notice, when he hurts himself. Why are you here?”

“I wanted to speak with the three of you about your son,” Vizma murmured. “He tells me he doesn’t lie.”

“He makes things up,” Rena said immediately. “Very strong sense of imagination.”

Vizma smiled, drawing herself up to her full height, her hands still neatly clasped before her. She didn’t allow her expression to change, retaining the slight quirk of her lips, and both Rena and Wendell drew back slightly.

“He picked my pocket,” she said mildly. “Said that he came from a family of — ”

“Listen,” Rena said sharply, pointing into Vizma’s face, “my son — ”

“If I wished for any of you arrested, Mrs Highfield, I would have called for the guards to join me, or perhaps to look into the papers for the furs you’ve been trading in town, to search your caravans for stolen goods.”

Once more, Wendell’s skin had gone very pale, and Rena kept Vizma’s gaze, a challenge in her eyes. “I suppose you could have,” she said tightly. “But we are not thieves, we are not — ”

“I don’t mind if you are,” Vizma said, interrupting cleanly. “I am not interested in your crimes, Mrs Highfield. I’m interested in your son’s potential.”

“Potential?” Wendell repeated, and Vizma watched the young man come out from the caravan. The other adult elf caught him by the shoulder, speaking to him seriously, and Buran nodded at whatever it was he was saying. He tried to pull away, but the elf caught him by the chin this time, gripping him by the jaw and making Buran look up at his face, not letting him break eye contact or get away.

“Why don’t we sit down?” Vizma suggested.

The inside of the caravan was surprisingly spacious. Bedrolls were very neatly set against one wall, beneath the bench that made up one side of the caravan’s wall, and Vizma sat upon one of the chairs that was set neatly in place, alongside Eline.

She was a full-blooded wood elf, it was plain to see, as she lacked the softened features of her children, and she kept glancing toward Buran, who sat on the bench between Rena and Wendell, still focused on the book under the hanging lantern that lit up the caravan. Vizma could see the resemblance between him and his parents either side of him.

The other elf had stepped inside, and stood against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, his lips loosely set, his gaze focused on Vizma.

“Seventeen children between you,” Vizma said. “It’s a lot to keep track of. Even with, what, seven, having grown up and left to pursue their own lives?”

“You told her that?” Rena asked.

“She asked,” Buran said.

“For the love of — ” Rena muttered, pressing her fingers tightly to her mouth as if to prevent herself from saying more, and Buran rolled his eyes.

“Compulsive honesty in a family of charlatans,” Vizma said softly. “Where does that come from, do you think?”

“Is there a point to this interrogation?” asked the other elf. His voice was low and silken, and Vizma looked from his face to Buran’s. For the first time, the young man looked genuinely uncomfortable, his grip a bit more tight on the prayer book.

“The boy is intelligent, capable, he reads well. He’s a skilled pickpocket, it seems, and stealthy enough to avoid the entirety of his family when he chooses, but if he won’t lie, I imagine that’s difficult for you. I imagine compulsive honesty can prove dangerous, if your son is questioned by the wrong person.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Buran muttered.

“He’s our son,” Eline said sharply. “What business is it of yours whether he’s dangerous or not?”

“I should like to take the boy into our order as a novice,” Vizma said. Silence rang out in the little wooden caravan, and she saw Rena’s hand curl in Buran’s hair, pulling the boy to her breast. Buran grit his teeth, letting his mother pull him closer, but then he softened, just slightly, reaching up and touching the back of her hand with his fingers.

“No,” Rena said.

“Listen to what she has to say,” Eline said slowly.

“Eline — ”

“Are you thinking about Buran, or our lives without him?” Eline asked, raising her chin slightly, and Rena gripped more tightly at the boy. Buran’s expression was one of shame more than anything else, and he was staring at the book in his hands before looking to Vizma.

“What does a novice of Oghma do?” he asked slowly.

“Read,” Vizma said. “We expect our postulants to be able to move about our libraries with ease, to be able to read fluently in at least three languages, and ideally to be able to play an instrument, or have some skill with specialist tools. We would prepare you for that potentiality — you would learn alongside the other novices, primed with as many skills as you were able to learn. The worship of Oghma is the worship of knowledge, and in its acquisition; equally, it is in the spreading of that knowledge to others: our treatment of our novices reflects that.”

“I wouldn’t have to lie to anybody?” Buran asked.

“No,” Vizma said. “In fact, our order values honesty above many other values, although most of us lack your dedication to it, I’m sure.”

“Do you lie?”

“Frequently.”

“Why?”

“Different reasons. At times, lying is advantageous, for myself and my order; at others, it’s simply kinder, where the truth will do more harm than good. Sometimes one deceives merely by being silent when the question is asked.”

“I am familiar with the premise,” Buran said icily.

“The boy sustained some spell damage when he was a young child,” said the male elf, with more condescension than sympathy. “It has rather deadened his nerves, thus why he doesn’t always notice when he injures himself. No doubt deception is beyond his capabilities.”

Buran set his jaw, even as Eline shot the other elf a dark look, and Wendell aimed a hand gesture at him that Vizma guessed was an unpleasant one.

“You want us to abandon our son here?” Rena asked.

“I want you to give your son the opportunity to pursue a vocation he seems tailor-made for. It’s a short life for a thief who will steal from you and then tell you what he’s done, when pressed. It seems plain to me it isn’t lack of ability that prevents you from lying, Buran, but lack of desire.”

“He’s only ten,” Wendell said. “He can learn — ”

“I don’t wish to,” Buran said.

“You’d rather we leave you here so you can become a priest?” Wendell asked, sounding pained. Buran’s expression was unchanging.

“I’d rather not be asked to lie all the time,” Buran said. “The priesthood doesn’t bother me.”

“You don’t care about us, then?” Rena demanded. “You don’t want to stay with your parents, your brothers and sisters? You care so little about us that you’d choose life in a dusty old library over spending time with us?”

“I don’t see why I can’t care for you from the library in question,” Buran said. “What does proximity have to do with it?”

Vizma felt for Rena and Wendell. Both of them looked hurt in their own ways: Rena flinched, then stiffened; Wendell reached up to rub at his eyes, which looked just slightly red. Eline’s expression changed more subtly, her lips down turning at their edges, but she reached for Buran rather than leaning away from him.

The boy allowed himself to be pulled up to his feet, letting her press her lips to the side of his temple. “I would be permitted to write to you, I presume,” he muttered. “I don’t see why it’s any different to Helena and Alex, or Eloise, or — ”

“The difference is that they’re all adults,” Rena said. “Men and women in their own right.”

“No,” Wendell said. “We’re not abandoning you to a priesthood.”

“Very well,” Vizma said, standing to her feet. “I’ve made my proposition, but I appreciate that your boy is yet young. Family is important to you, I see that.”

Resignedly, Buran held up the prayer book, half-read, and she shook her head.

“You keep it,” she said. “Perhaps one day you’ll come back to us.”

Every other child was gathered outside of the door of the caravan when Vizma stepped out, and she looked between them all, the contrast between the paler, human children and the darker-skinned half-elves, all of them with cold, solemn expressions, their mouths scowling.

They parted to let her go, and he felt their stares on her back as she went.

---

It was a week later that Keel Howe, one of their initiates, knocked on her office door, and brought in a somewhat disheveled boy with a cut on the side of his neck and grazes all over his hands. His shoulder was held stiffly at one side, and Vizma gestured for him to sit down in front of her desk.

“Will you get one of the healers in here for me, Keel?” Vizma asked, and he nodded his head, stepping out. “You realize you’re injured?”

“I landed on my shoulder when I climbed under the border wall with the next kingdom over,” Buran said. “Fell down a ditch.”

“Do your family know where you are?”

“I told them I would come back when I first had opportunity. I had opportunity. So, unless they’re idiots — ”

“And when they come back for you?”

“They can’t, for a while,” Buran said. “There was difficulty at the wall with our papers, and Uncle Soren managed to smooth it over, but they wouldn’t be able to come back through for at least a few months without it raising additional suspicion. They’d have to go all the way around to come back through, and they want to make the summer festival in Constantown. So, unless one of your priests wants to drag me over the border…”

“Gods above,” said Brother Chestra as he entered the room, and Buran stood up from the chair, allowing himself to be looked over. “What happened to you, lad?”

“Fell down a ditch. Walked quite far. You’re a cleric?”

“I’m a wizard,” Chestra said.

“But you’re a dwarf.”

“That I am. Palms up. You’re familiar with healing magic?”

“Yes. My uncle is a wizard.”

“He any good?”

“His main focus is in illusory magics, but he’s healed me of a lot of ills.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t do magic.”

“You want to?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like how it feels, and I’m not good at it.”

“You don’t want to get good at it?”

“I’d rather read.”

“Quick tongue, haven’t you?”

“I suppose.” He let out a low noise as Chestra drew magic over the cuts on his palms, his neck, and his face, healing them up neatly before he reached for the young man’s shoulder.

“That hurts?”

“Feels odd.”

“It shouldn’t do.”

“I’m sensitive to magic.”

“Spell damage?”

“Yes.”

“What from?”

“My brother accidentally hit me in the back with a lightning arrow when I was five.”

“Where’d he hit you?”

Buran moved his other hand to the small of his back, and Chestra whistled under his breath.

“It’s a miracle you can walk, lad. You sure it was an accident?”

“He cried quite a lot after, so, yes.”

“He cry more than you did?”

“Yes.”

Chestra laughed, which Buran seemed genuinely surprised by, leaning back, and he looked at Vizma for help, but Chestra was focused on fixing his shoulder, now, pressing on the strained muscle until it settled smoothly back into its place.

“You joining us as a novice?”

“Yes.”

“You have any questions for me?”

“How long have you been here? Were you always a healer? What drew you to Oghma? What — ”

“One at a time, maybe?” Chestra asked, smiling slightly, and Buran looked as disarmed as before, his lips pressed together, but then he nodded. “I’ve been here in Merryweather sixteen years, been a sworn brother for a hundred-and-forty-four. Used to be an adventurer, got the call, took up healing instead of offensive magic.”

“The call?”

“Went into a dungeon, got to the end, picked up a scroll, thought it was a spell. It was an Oghmian scroll — compelled me to return it to the temple it had come from. Trekked about six hundred miles… liked the look of the place once I got there.”

“That seems deceptively simple.”

Chestra glanced at Vizma, arching his bushy eyebrows, and Vizma could only shrug in response before Chestra said to the boy, more sagely than was really in his character, “Matters of faith often are.”

The boy took this with grave focus on his face, nodding his head.

“Where did you get this boy?” Chestra asked.

Vizma opened her mouth, but Buran was already answering. His explanation was curt, delivered without unnecessary trim, and he seemed all but incognizant of the expressions that crossed Chestra’s face in the face of it.

“Should I take him to the head of novices, or…?”

“First, he can write a letter to his parents,” Vizma murmured. “But — Ask Roland to clear a space for him, would you?”

Chestra nodded, clapping Buran hard on his now-healed shoulder. Buran looked at him blankly in retort, and once more Chestra did his best to hide his laugh as he left the room.

“Your parents are going to be very hurt,” Vizma said.

“They would hurt more if I got them killed,” Buran said bluntly. “I don’t like to lie. I don’t want to do it. If someone asks me a question, I answer it. It’s better for them, if I’m here. They will see that.”

“Why choose such a devotion to truth, if it’s at odds with your family’s safety?”

Buran hesitated, opening his mouth, closing it. His eyes searched the air between them, as if trying to grasp hold of an answer. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I won’t lie.”

“Can you?”

“I expect so.”

“You mean to tell me you’ve never tried?”

“I’ve withheld answers. Not often. I’ve avoided people who I know will ask questions I don’t wish to answer.”

“But you couldn’t, for example, tell me a ball was blue when it was orange?”

“Why would I?”

“Very well, if your brother was hiding from a guardsman and you knew where, would you tell him where he was?”

“Yes.”

“Even if that meant putting your brother in harm’s way?”

Buran fidgeted, but then he nodded.

“You’ve done that before?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“I stabbed the guard through the ribs, punctured his lung.”

Vizma stared at him.

“From the back,” Buran added, as if this was the missing point of clarification that made it acceptable.

“You wouldn’t say that that was some deception? Hiding from him that you were going to kill him?”

“He soon found out,” Buran said.

“The god Oghma,” Vizma said, “does not ask of us to be morally good, or morally bad. There is no specific behaviour he asks of us except to value knowledge in all its forms. With that said, I would ask that you not murder anybody in the foreseeable future.”

“I will endeavour not to,” Buran said seriously, and Vizma once more pressed her lips tightly together, swallowing the laugh that threatened to make itself known.

“Let’s look at that letter to your parents,” she murmured, and reached for some parchment from her desk.

Buran’s handwriting was messier than she would have expected, printed in block script rather than in cursive, but his spelling was good. The former would only improve with time.

---

It was seven years later, at the age of seventeen, that Buran swore his vows as a brother.

The ceremony had been done in the morning, and Buran had stepped from the bounds of the temple to meditate for a time elsewhere. He had written to his family, Vizma knew, because several wrapped pages of barely passable handwriting had gone out with the rest of the outgoing post.

If she asked him, he would tell her where he’d been, and what he’d been doing.

She wouldn’t ask today.

“Come sit with me, Brother,” Vizma said, and Buran glanced up at her, but nodded his head, ascending the stairs toward her. He looked well in his vestments, well-suited to them, to the black cloth and the silver ropes about their waist, the silver scroll he wore around his neck. In his pocket, Vizma knew, was the same prayer book he’d taken from her so many years before.

She poured port for the both of them, and he took his glass, but didn’t drink from it right away. He didn’t care much for concentrated alcohol, and rarely drank any, but this was as good a time to celebrate as any.

“What now?” Vizma asked,

“I still have a few crates of the books from the Chapel estate to go through,” Buran said. “The vast majority of them are copies of books we already have, but there are a number of rare edi — ”

“Buran,” Vizma said, and Buran stopped. “I meant in a broader sense than work here in the temple. You’re a sworn brother, now — you could travel to other temples, to any of the monasteries… There’s nothing exciting you’d like to do?”

“Exciting,” Buran repeated, as though it were a foreign word to him.

“I have been waiting for you to commit to the priesthood,” Vizma said. “You’ve noticed the Oghmian order has a mix of races, a broad mix of different sorts of people. Artisans, scholars, bards, ex-adventurers — all sorts contribute to the ranks of our acolytes.”

“Yes,” Buran said. He said nothing else, staring at her in that disconcerting way of his, not yet sipping from his drink.

Seven years as a novice and then a postulant had done little to improve his capacity for conversation. On matters of technicality, he came alive — he would ask a hundred thousand questions in succession, if it were about some sort of device or mechanism, history or story, but general talk did nothing for him, and he made no effort to appear it did.

Buran lacked the penmanship to be a suitable scribe, whether it was to recopy old volumes (some crumbled and were difficult to read, and needed to be rewritten for the sake of legibility) or to take down oral tradition. He had a tremendous capacity for learning music, but although dexterous with his viol, he played woodenly, without feeling. He was… difficult for others to interact with.

He answered questions, certainly. He answered them curtly, in neat detail, and rarely shared extraneous details if they weren’t asked for. It was mostly the librarians and the clerks who did the best with him, and the more straightforward clerics treated him like a reference book, which Vizma was fairly certain he preferred to being treated like a person.

But he was rude, and standoffish, and did not enjoy it when people talked to him about morality, or emotion. He preferred to be given a task and then complete it, ideally with as little interaction with others. It was not to say that he didn’t like to exert himself physically — he was one of the more acrobatic members of the priesthood, and he had fast reflexes, enjoyed using his tools, enjoyed playing music.

He didn’t like to play games. Very occasionally, he could be drawn into a complicated game, if one of the right people needled him into it — he mostly enjoyed card games with several hundred arcane rules to them, or multi-level chess games — but he mostly preferred to observe the behaviour of others, ideally from afar.

Sometimes, Vizma thought, he wanted to get closer. There was something in the way he leaned forward, very subtly, in the way he studied certain people when they spoke, and seemed at a loss once he’d run out of questions to ask.

“Buran, you’re a thief,” Vizma said.

“Yes,” Buran agreed.

“You’re proficient with a wide array of thieves’ tools, a craftsman with a set of lockpicks. You’re stealthy, you’re an admirable pickpocket, you’re a great safecracker.”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t thought about using those skills to acquire books for the order?”

A flicker of light showed in Buran’s eyes, and after a moment’s pause, his lips curved ever so slightly at their edges. It was a small smile, a gentle curve of the lips — she had never yet seen Buran show his teeth when he smiled, and for that matter, had never heard him laugh — but on Buran’s face, it made the constellations of freckles shift on his cheeks, made him look all but alight with his enthusiasm.

“I would like to,” he said quietly.

“Good,” Vizma murmured, and held out her glass. Buran stared at it, uncomprehending, before he glanced to his own glass, and then — the motion unnatural and awkward, as though it needed rehearsing — he clinked their glasses together, and sipped at his port when Vizma drained hers.

“Vizma,” Buran said quietly.

“Yes, Buran?”

“Thank you,” he said. “Very much.”

Vizma smiled. “It’s always a good thing,” she murmured, “to have a brother acquisitive.”

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Johannes Evans is a writer, photographer, and bug enthusiast from the South of Wales, now living on the West Coast of Ireland. He loves playing with humour, contemporary fantasy ideas, and fae lore.

His first book, Heart of Stone, is an 18th-century romance between a vampire and his personal secretary, and can be purchased here.

Find him on Twitter.