Fantasy serial. Godfrey is on a new and miserable adventure, and being flirted with at that!
Godfrey Digbett III, to his anxiety and chagrin, is drafted into a crew of adventurers delving into an ancient elvish catacomb, which is not so silent, nor so dead, as it appears from the outside. Cleric to the minor god Halloran, he stands most of all for servants and their service, and must be a good servant himself to the Oghmian religious order that employs him.
In studying the music of the tunnels, he is forced to reckon with the things that he lacks, and the things that he aches for – and the things the god he is pledged to might give him or deny him.
It wasn’t as if Godfrey was the sort of chap to go out of his way to break a given place’s rules. He was no sort of fanatic, but he liked a set of guiding principles as much as the next chap, liked to know how people expected him to act and where he was meant to be next and all that.
The Grand Hall of Knowledge in Erstwhere was one of the greatest libraries on the continent, perhaps in the world, and apart from its many sprawling halls filled to the brim with books and scrolls and replicated texts, it had a tremendously large and wide-ranging campus. Various craftspeople and oral historians and musicians were ever and always being brought in so that they could teach new students and apprentices, tutor novices, or commit swathes of their knowledge and expertise to crystal spheres that would long outlast their lifetimes. There were beautiful gardens that kept libraries of seeds, seedlings, and sprouts kept separate from one another with runic wards to prevent cross-pollination, preserving their individual existence within the Hall’s library of plants; there were mushroom sheds and cellar-caves that went on and on over land and beneath it; there were grand halls and warehouses where non-traditional records of knowledge, such as music crystals or stone plinths, talking statues, living paintings, and all the rest, were neatly stored and archived.
You weren’t meant to smoke.
And honestly, Godfrey was all for that sort of thing. He spent a good amount of his days in libraries and archives – he was the last chap who wanted to start an accidental fire, or even just leave the smell of smoke clinging to any paper or vellum or fabric.
But for goodness’ sake.
The campus was its own bloody city – apart from the libraries and archives and all the rest, there were the lecture halls, the student housing, the little shops, the working farms, the workshops. People travelled the world over to come here and to learn or to teach or to preserve their knowledge for millennia to come, which made complete sense, certainly, and of course, it meant that the place rather sprawled.
Smoking was forbidden anywhere on the campus, which meant that Godfrey would have to walk out from the central concourse, catch the tram, and ride for forty minutes at least before he was actually allowed to light up.
It had been a long day, he’d been working since the early hours of the morning without so much as a puff, and he really wasn’t feeling up to traipsing halfway across the world to have another one.
So he was hiding.
In a hydrangea bush.
It wasn’t the most dignified of escapades for the old corpus, hunched forward on top of a wooden crate pilfered from the apothecary school and holding his pipe close to his body to smoke, but it was dark enough now that the evening was setting in that none of the priestesses should notice, and as far as hydrangea bushes went, it was quite a roomy one. This was one of the leisure gardens near to the visiting researchers’ lodgings, right next to amateur duelling ring, so there was no fire suppression ward to set off, thank the gods.
It was a tremendous relief when he was finally to inhale from his pipe and exhale a cloud of purple-grey smoke, and he felt his coiled-tight body physically relax a little on his makeshift seat. It had been driving him just a little bit doolally, working in silence in the library, not even able to hum without one of the other researchers glaring at him, even discouraged from fidgeting, transcribing his notes and consolidating relevant papers and research for easy reading and comparison.
He liked libraries, liked books, but as much as possible he liked to go for the more casual village libraries where people were reading aloud or teaching classes or talking quietly between the stacks. He never felt like he belonged in the stricter research libraries, like people wanted him gone as soon as he walked in the door and they watched him trip over a table leg or knock his hip on a shelf – in the smaller ones, he often volunteered to do little sing-song sessions for the children, and people actually smiled at him.
There was an apparent rationing going on as far as smiles were concerned on the Erstwhere campus. Made one feel miserably and uncomfortably at home.
Godfrey relaxed and didn’t doze, exactly, but just allowed himself to disconnect from it all, to focus on the plummy glow from the pipe chamber brightening and dimming, feel the satisfaction of the inhalation, then exhale.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when someone casually tapped him on the shoulder.
Godfrey automatically shoved the pipe in against his armpit under his jacket, turning to stare wide-eyed at the figure behind him, and coughed as he exhaled the heavy cloud of smoke he’d been attempting to hide in his mouth as he realised who it was.
“Gosh, Maven,” he said hoarsely. “You gave me a fright!”
“Hello, Godfrey,” said Maven. They gave him the sort of quick, half-second’s strained smile they usually do – it’s not to do with any issue Maven has with Godfrey particularly, he simply gets the impression they were perhaps taught to smile in some sort of high-pressure schooling environment and never took the attached sentiment to heart – for politeness’ sake, and then said, “They said you were in the library, but I couldn’t find you. I thought you’d be hiding somewhere to smoke.”
“Not hiding, old thing,” Godfrey demurred, “just, erm… Not making a show of it, you know. Don’t want to cause a commotion. How’s tricks, anyway?”
Maven was a pleasant enough sort, Godfrey thought. They weren’t religious basically at all, but their degrees were in geology and then in elemental magics, and they regularly contracted with various academic institutions on one expedition or another. Godfrey had worked with them a few times – Maven had offered their services as a guard on various transport caravans, and protected parties Godfrey had been a part of when accessing abandoned sites and the like. They were blunt by their nature, but really not cruel or unkind, and Godfrey could appreciate a business-like approach to…
Well.
Business.
“Fine,” Maven said, “Are you familiar with Siofra Dhuibhne and Bearchán White?”
“No,” Godfrey said. “Or, wait, perhaps I am, actually. Is Siofra a sort of frighteningly handsome sort of woman, very tall and dark-haired, and, erm… Severe?” He didn’t entirely successfully keep the dread out of his voice – he’d once passed by Siofra in the corridor of the library in Merryweather and nearly crammed himself behind a bookshelf when she’d stalked past him to engage in a shouting match with the Abbess. Bearchán White, he assumed in retrospect, had been the rather good-looking chap casually walking along in her furious wake, who had given Godfrey a winning smile as he’d nervously stepped out from his hiding place.
“She’s actually fine, once you talk to her,” Maven said, looking at him somewhat sympathetically. “I don’t think you’ll be nearly as scared of her once you’re in, like, conversation with her for a second. Her and Bearchán and I are being brought on for the old Elvish catacombs that run through the valley between Erst and Passon.”
“Oh?” Godfrey said, feeling his eyebrows raise. “That’s quite the expedition. Not that it’s, erm, that far, I mean, just that it’s, er, well. Very deep and dark and dreadful, and all that. The Silent Caverns, they call them, locally, or there’s an old orcish name for them, literally it translates to something like… The Tombs, or the Gravesites, Where Screams Will Not Echo. Or, Will Not Be Heard, in some translations, there’s a bit of argument about what constitutes as “echo”, if the original name implies the first instance of the sound or its reverberations. Spooky stuff. I suppose that sort of thing is old hat for you and your friends.”
Not interested in any of his good-natured wittering, apparently, Maven demanded, “Didn’t you say that Buran Highfield was a good chap?”
Godfrey blinked, staring at them as he coughed quietly again and rubbed at his throat. “I can say with certainty, old thing, that I did not.”
“I’m sure you did,” Maven said, all business as they typically where, and Godfrey laughed, shaking his head as he lit the packed leaf in his pipe and then took a thoughtful toke.
“You might well be sure I did, old thing, but I’m very sure I didn’t. That’s really not the sort of thing one says about the chap in question. He’s, erm… Gosh, how to describe him?” Godfrey exhaled, enjoying the simple pleasure of slowly blowing it out in one stream, watching it lazily rise up between the hydrangea leaves they were crouching in and up toward the sky. “Buran. He’s, erm…”
Impatiently, Maven interrupted, “He means well?”
Godfrey wrinkled his nose. “Not really, no.”
“He means well in the end?”
“The end?” Godfrey repeated, and laughed faintly. “I don’t like to think about reaching the end where Brother Buran is involved, one gets the impression he might be happy to bring it about.”
“He’s not a bad sort?”
“Er. Well—”
“Godfrey, I need your actual input here,” Maven said irritably, leaning on their staff in absence of their own crate to awkwardly sit down on. They weren’t quite so tall as Godfrey was, but they weren’t exactly diminutive, and neither of them was really made for crouching in bushes, even rather large ones. “Is he the sort to stab you in the back?”
“Buran Highfield? You do mean the little chap in the dark robes with the freckles and the unfortunate centre parting? Good Gods, Maven, no, never.”
“Oh,” Maven said, seeming to relax. “Right.”
As they were making to go – perhaps Godfrey was a little bit too relaxed now – Godfrey said, “More of a stab you in the front sort of person, is Buran.”
This was apparently not what Maven had been hoping he would say, because now they were looking at him rather miserably. “And why,” they pressed, looking as if they were putting in quite a lot of effort to show patience with him, “would he stab somebody in the front? Is he, is he greedy?”
“No, no.”
“He has a temper?”
“Not really. He sort of— He can be angry. Or, I think his neutral just seems rather more rage-ful than most people’s. You oughtn’t touch him if you can avoid it, he’s not a fan of being touched at all, that makes him very angry indeed. But he doesn’t shout and throw things and that sort of rot, or, you know, curse and stamp his feet as some chaps do. He just says very upsetting things, and comes over all cold and frosty, like an aunt about to send you to bed without supper.”
“Is he insane?”
“I’m no expert,” Godfrey said, taking a more thoughtful toke of his pipe now – he offered it to Maven, who shook their head no – and exhaling, “but there’s a certain derangement about him, yes. In the quiet and usefully punctual way, though, obsessive and focused, not in the hearing voices or more unpromptedly unstable way. If he did hear voices, I expect he’d just ignore them – he ignores most people. He ignores me.”
“And would you say that he’s trustworthy?”
“I’d trust the chap with my life,” Godfrey said immediately, no need for hesitation there. “Not the sort of fellow you’d take out for a drink – he’s not a drinker – but I’d generally trust him not to let me die if he could step in and prevent it. We generally serve for the ultimate shared purpose, after all, and I don’t get the impression he dislikes me more than he dislikes the average person he meets. He wouldn’t do it out of heroism, though, or because he’s particularly against people dying. He’d do it because I do useful things for the Oghmian Temple.” It really didn’t sound all that nice when he said it like that, and he wrinkled his nose slightly. He did try to see the best in people, he really did. “He’s principled, is the thing, just not in the way of a normal individual. He doesn’t lie, for example.”
Maven frowned. “Well, good,” they said.
“Oh, it can be good,” Godfrey said. “Great stuff, that he doesn’t lie to me, or another researcher alongside him in the field, or somebody doing guard duty for his party. But when I say he doesn’t lie, I mean he doesn’t tell any lies, none at all. No white lies, no lies for the sake of politeness, none of that – and he also won’t lie to say, border officials trying to shake down a religious order like his or mine passing by with valuables, or some other thief or burglar trying to shake him or you and I down for money. He won’t lie to a guard who’s just caught him and is asking what the Hells he’s doing here in this heavily off-limits environment with a bag of stolen texts in one hand and a lockpicking kit in the other. No lies, ever, to anybody. For his own preservation or yours.”
Maven stared at him, their thin lips parted. They were human, Godfrey thought – maybe a bit of orcish blood in them, although they’d never really talked about their respective backgrounds – and they had a very wide, rounded jaw, big eyes, and a wide mouth, but not a plump one. Godfrey had liked Maven’s face as soon as they’d met them. It was a nice face, quietly expressive, and it matched their voice very well. It was the sort of face that would look very striking as a bust, or perhaps even something more useful than that – a doorknocker, maybe.
He nearly voiced the thought, but they were distracted by what he’d just said.
“What the fuck?” they asked, aghast.
“Deranged, as I said,” Godfrey said, smiling. “Is he going on this expedition with you?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Maven said, “it’s not just Buran, it’s—”
“Godfrey Digbett! What are you doing!?” demanded a sharp voice as the edges of the bush abruptly parted, and Godfrey jumped so sharply this time that his pipe flew into the air, where it was swiftly snatched by Reverend Mother Effily. “Smoking is expressly prohibited on these grounds!”
“Yes,” Godfrey said, aware the lie wasn’t very convincing as he tried to reach for his pipe back and had his hands slapped back for his trouble, “yes, sorry, I, erm, I forgot.”
“Is that why you were hiding in a bush?”
“… Yes. Well. It’s a dreadfully nice bush, Mother. A bit of privacy and shade, what, and… and a pleasant scent from the flowers.”
The pipe in Mother Effily’s hand went white as she covered it with frost to dampen its flame, and Godfrey looked at it miserably, knowing he was unlikely now to get it back. Even if he did, it would be a menace to thaw out.
“Two of the sisters have been looking for you,” she said scowlingly. “I hoped I was wrong, when I thought I had an inkling where you might be and what you might be up to. We are guests on this campus, boy, would you set the place ablaze?”
“I wasn’t setting anything ablaze, Mother, I was just having a quiet smoke, I had to go all the way into the city yesterday for—”
“Come on,” Effily ordered crisply, turning on her heel and stalking away. “You too, Mx Ramses.”
Godfrey miserably trudged after her – although slightly less miserably when the old woman took pity on him and tossed his pipe back to him.
It was dreadfully cold against his fingers, but at least he had it back.
* * *
Effily Heron was the reverend mother of the Oghmian Order in Thrend a few days’ travel from here in the city of Erst – Thrend was not a sprawling metropolis like Erst was, and obviously lacked the attached campus of Erstwhere, which was a city all of its own, but it sat on a well-trafficked crossroads.
Most Oghmian temples, made to preserve knowledge, were stationed along popular highways, near to borders or ideally in city centres or near to market squares – the Oghmians paid travellers for copies of any books or records they might be travelling with, but they only paid for books they hadn’t been given before, and they didn’t pay a lot. The easier it was for people to walk their way, the more likely it was that they would take the time to let the priests look through and then take copies of any books they wanted.
Mother Effily had taught at the campus in Erst for some time before rising within the order – she was somewhat more wide-reaching in what she felt was valuable knowledge, was worth spending resources to preserve, than the average priest, thus why Godfrey had worked so closely with her these past few years. His work was most of all in music study and preservation, after all, especially ancient forms of music that had yet to be transcribed on paper, and many priests within the broader sprawl of the order would not feel comfortable putting so many resources into its preservation.
“Digbett, close your mouth, you look like a caught fish,” she snapped at him as she settled behind the desk she was currently borrowing on the campus. It was a pleasant enough office, somewhat bland – Effily’s office in Thrend was a rather darker room, larger and cosier, decorated with rugs and quilted blankets that belied the woman’s affection for textile arts and their capacity for communicating cultures and histories.
Godfrey did close his mouth and ambled to the back of the room, leaning against one of the back cabinets and picking up a folded tea towel, using it to wrap his hands around his pipe to begin thawing it out.
Buran Highfield, man of the hour that he was, was sitting straight-backed in the chair in front of Mother Effily’s desk, and beside him was Siofra Dhuibhne – even seated, she really was dreadfully tall and narrow, and handsome in that intimidating way that some women were. Every hair in her tight bun was perfectly combed into place – he imagined not a one of them would dare try to break free for fear of being plucked out for insubordination.
Leaning against the back counter beside him was the gentleman Godfrey was now reasonably sure was Bearchán White, a handsome chap with pale brown skin and ashy blond hair bleached lighter than the darker stubble on his face, and scattered about the rest of the room were other members of Siofra’s party, four more people Godfrey didn’t know at all, but who Maven seamlessly settled in amongst.
“Has Mx Ramses told you what we want you for, Digbett?” Mother Effily asked. She was somewhat less angry now than she had been a few moments ago, but she was still frosty in her demeanour.
“Erm,” said Godfrey, an unpleasant feeling making itself known, beginning in his breast and slowly insinuating itself downwards. “Oh, dear. Want me for?”
“Quite.”
“They do call them the Silent Caverns, Reverend Mother,” Godfrey said miserably. “Does one really need a musicologist?”
“The silencing wards are only at the outer edges and entrances of the catacomb sprawl,” Siofra said in her strong, confident voice. “The wardbreakers have managed to overcome them and their disorienting effect – for the first time in centuries, it is possible for a party to reach deeper into these tunnels, to begin mapping them without going mad or falling ill. It was your work replicating temple music stones that enabled the wardbreakers to begin decoding these ancient security measures, Cleric Digbett. We’ve been contracted to lead the expedition party – and the wardbreakers have requested you join us.”
“Did they request you too?” Godfrey asked, directing the question to Buran, and Buran glanced his way. Effily leaned forward and tried to get him to look forward again, but Buran ignored her and concentrated on Godfrey.
“Mother Effily will only agree to send you if I come as your personal guard,” he said in his typically uncompromising way, and Godfrey smiled blandly at him, glancing sidelong at Maven, on whose face was dawning a pained comprehension. “She doesn’t believe Miss Dhuibhne’s party will feel compelled to prioritise your safety once they’ve seen how clumsy you are, and she already feels their asking price is too high.”
“Buran,” Effily said sharply out of the side of her mouth, and Godfrey sighed, because it wasn’t entirely intended as an insult – this was, after all, Effily looking out for his safety, and if Buran was trying to insult him, he would have said something far nastier than “clumsy”.
Maven was looking at Buran with the fascination they normally reserved for particularly dangerous-looking monsters they had absolutely no intention of getting any closer to; Siofra and the rest of their party were looking at him with mixed expressions of interest, offence, and bafflement. Buran, naturally, was unaffected by anyone’s thoughts or opinions of him, and was sitting still in the placid, slightly bored way he sat anywhere when he didn’t have a book or his viol in his hands.
“Right ho,” he said. “Don’t know that I’m terribly fond of needing to go anywhere I need a dedicated guard, Mother, although thanks awfully, Buran.”
“I didn’t volunteer,” Buran said helpfully.
“… Yes, alright,” Godfrey said. “But for goodness’ sake, Mother, these are all capable and enterprising adventurers, trained warriors. I’m just, you know. An ordinary chap.”
“You do have combat training,” Effily said. “You’re just a coward.”
Godfrey frowned, concentrating on thawing out his pipe. His hands were growing damp and chilly through the tea towel.
As Effily began talking about remuneration and insurance and the caravan, Godfrey turned to Bearchán and said quietly, “I wouldn’t say I’m a coward,” which earned him a friendly grin. Even seeing it in passing a few years back, the last one he’d been on the receiving end of had stuck fast in his mind – this one, delivered up close, was even more dazzling.
“That’s alright, mate,” he replied in breezy tones, and his eyes flitted down Godfrey’s body then up to his face again. Godfrey almost felt he could feel the weight of the other man’s gaze on his body. “A tall drink of water like you? I’ll pitch in to keep the monsters from ripping you to shreds if that freaky little bastard needs a break. A handsome fella on the team is good for morale.”
“Oh,” Godfrey said, feeling his cheeks burn with heat, feeling his lips wanting to twitch up and into a smile but thinking it might be too obvious if he actually smiled, that it might seem overly smug, or arrogant, or something else. He felt rather abruptly like he might vomit, and he concentrated very hard on not gagging, because he thought it might undermine his professionalism, or perhaps make him seem less… handsome.
His belly gave a little lurch, and he pressed his lips tightly together.
“Your party will primarily be responsible for guarding the wardbreakers – standing guard over the camp during off-hours and rest periods, accompanying them into newer parts of the tunnels as they’re mapped, and of course, working as a vanguard as you enter new parts of the catacomb complex. Ideally, it would be just yourselves – Mx Ramses, you’re an accomplished wardbreaker, I’m informed, and Mr Harrow, you are well-studied in various curses, poisons, and magical traps, the two of you usually work in conjunction with… Ms…?”
“Alfa is fine,” said a breezy looking elf with her long, lilac-streaked dark hair worn loose. She had rather intimidating eyebrows, and these too had a little lilac in them, natural highlights at the furrow of her brow before they darkened again.
“Alfa,” repeated Effily. “You are familiar with a wide range of magical beasts and creatures, and apart from your study of magical zoology, you also have a qualification in the study of disease and virology?”
“Uh huh,” said Alfa.
Godfrey did his best to hold in his wince – a few of the party members did shift uneasily on their feet as the room dropped a degree or two in temperature, but Alfa just kept Mother Effily’s gaze, her expression blank.
“Well,” Effily said archly after a few long seconds of making her disapproval silently known, “the wards in these catacombs being so ancient, they are in various ways arcane and utterly obscure, even to our wardbreakers. They seem to employ a shared standard that is based on elven religious music theory, employing a series of triggers and plates that have to be operated in confluence with one another, creating certain harmonies or audible chords, rather than a linear set of enchantment symbols.”
Godfrey still wasn’t best pleased at being dispatched into a place of such peril that they had both a set of dedicated wardbreakers and a team of pricey adventurers going in, let alone needing a dedicated bodyguard, but that, to be fair, did sound genuinely very interesting.
“What’s with this Silent business, then?” Godfrey asked. “I’ve heard about these tunnels since I was a boy at my nanny’s knee, terribly spooky place, deathly quiet – can’t even hear one’s footsteps, what? All the literature I’ve read suggested that the silence was a likely enforcement on behalf of the dead, or something like that.”
“That was the previous theory, yes,” Effily said, sorting through the papers on her desk before finding a particular packet of pages and handing it over to Siofra, who immediately passed it back to Godfrey. As he unfolded the paperclip and paged with interest through the notes, scanning the titles – Background Research; Necromantic Theory; Notes on Silence and Erasure of Names by Ancient Elves; Harmonic Resonance; Musical Dissonance and Auditory Trauma – Effily went on, “Their working hypothesis is that the silence was to keep out trespassers, which of course, has worked very effectively to now, but also so that when certain musical tones were played or triggered, visitors would be surrounded by the sound. The magical silences are broken when the correct chords or chord series are played.”
“Great stuff,” Godfrey murmured, quickly scanning through some of the notes that the wardbreakers had made on his own work, analysing the meaning of various chord sequences based on their occurrence in different temples.
The past year or two he had primarily been employed entering ancient elvish sites and making notes on their architecture – the old elves had very intentionally destroyed almost all records of their culture when they had abandoned their gods centuries upon centuries ago, destroying artworks and portraits, burning papers, smashing tablets, and even magically erasing their own names from the depths plumbed by prophets and diviners. The specifics of the divorce, naturally, were impossible to make out, but they knew through current elven records that at some point there had been a turning point in their relationship with their old gods, and they had abandoned them.
This was why so many records had been destroyed, including changing their names or even going nameless for the generations following this great abscondment – it had all been done to erase any connections they had to those gods, to break even the smallest chains that might still be linking them.
The valleys and canyons where the ancient elves’ enclaves had historically been situated had been flooded by said angry gods, drowning any elves that were too slow to flee once their gods understood what was happening, but what the ancient elves had not destroyed had been their architecture – including the architecture of their temples and worship grounds.
Just stepping inside a temple in the time of the ancient elves would often produce a tone that rang through the building, with each step further inside adding to the sequence. As more worshipers and priests moved through the building, the whole place would come alive with sound, melodies and progressions of sound crossing over or cutting through one another: stairwells, plinths, altars, pews, candle holders, any and all of these became an instrument in the process of worship, so that in the process of any ceremony or service, the whole building rang out with music.
Godfrey’s most recent work had revealed a few automatic processes within the building as they’d activated certain now-familiar chord progressions and melodies, making window shutters open – presumably to let in sun or moonlight – and making an altar rise higher in rhythm with the music, but this work in the tombs was far more complex than a bit of automation through the process of a religious ritual. This research implied that the melodies themselves were, if not being used to communicate specific messages, certainly employed to lock or unlock passageways and, as Effily had just said, enforced silences.
“Godfrey!” Effily said sharply, in the tone of one who had said his name rather a few times, and Godfrey raised his head from the research notes, looking at her wide-eyed. The papers were gently removed from his hands by Maven, who set them on Effily’s desk, out of his reach, and he shame-faced tried to pay attention to the rest of the Reverend Mother’s presentation.
His still-thawing pipe, forgotten for the past ten minutes, had left a wet patch under his arm where he had hastily stuffed it against his elbow in his haste to take the notes into his hands.
As Effily continued to speak, the cold drip of melting ice didn’t exactly help his concentration.
* * *
Three days later found Godfrey half-dozing in the cart, looking out at the passing hillsides, as the horses drove them toward the border with Passon. They were going to go over the huge bridge over the canyon and into King Lara’s lands before they made their way down to the catacomb entrances. Mother Effily had gone on for rather a while about how this was a complicated agreement between Kind Lara’s court and the Erst democratic government and the Oghmian priests and what seemed like half a dozen other committees and so on, but all that was rather over Godfrey’s head.
The benefit of serving such an as-yet unappreciated god was that he didn’t actually have to deal with all this business. Godfrey was a cleric of the god Halloran, who only had two small temples of his own and probably had less than twenty dedicated priests across the continent. There was only so much bureaucracy less than two dozen religious leaders could get up to, no matter how hard they tried to create it.
Beside him, Buran was reading about modern elvish necromancy contrasted with the theorised necromantic traditions of the ancient elves, and even just glancing at the page made Godfrey’s head swim awfully – he got terrible motion sickness trying to read text whilst in a cart or even on the tram, and he had no idea how Buran suffered it so easily, especially with such tiny lines of text.
“Maven said you’re not actually an Oghmian, Godfrey,” said Bearchán, and Godfrey opened his half-closing eyes a little bit wider, glancing across at him. He had an open tray in his lap, strapped to his knee to keep it from tipping when they went over a pothole, and with apparently effortless practice and ease, he was making some sort of chainmail garment, each ring of silver metal shining gold for a moment as he used pliers to knit it against its compatriots. It looked very fiddly work to be getting up to on a moving cart, even shielded as they were from the breeze by the enchanted canopy, but Bearchán didn’t seem to be having difficulty.
Observing him in the last few days, Godfrey was under the unfortunate impression that the handsome Kithman didn’t experience difficulty with basically anything at all, except perhaps with Buran, who was difficult by nature.
“Er, no, I’m not, as it happens,” Godfrey said. “I serve Halloran, he’s a minor god of servants and service, but he’s part of the same divine order. Halloran is the son of Lord Veritum, Lord Oghma’s scribe.”
“Ah, I see,” Bearchán said. “So that fella kneeling on your ring, he’s just, what, shining somebody’s shoes? Nothing more fun?”
Godfrey laughed nervously, not able to meet Bearchán’s glittering brown eyes for fear he’d actually explode if he did, being on the receiving end of their charm and mischief in such incredibly close quarters. He was already painfully aware of Bearchán’s cologne, which was rather musky and sweet and the sort of thing one wanted to fill one’s lungs all the way up with before one was forced to go elsewhere and smell something else.
“Yes, erm, he’s not very fun,” Godfrey said. “Or, well, he can be, erm, he can be fun, but the point isn’t the fun, it’s, ah, aha ha, yes, it’s, you know. Duty. Are you, are you religious, Bearchán?”
“Not really,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “My family generally do basic dedication to Lua and Torc, the town I’m from on the coast obviously has a lot of sea-god stuff, but we were nearest to a little temple to Torc, and so it was his priests I was most familiar with. I wear a boar’s pendant and I give what tithes I can, and he’s probably the first god I’d call on if I felt I was in a real pinch, but I’m not very dedicated.”
Godfrey nodded – Torc and Lua were cousins of Oghma, both warriors, but where Lua wielded a spear and was generally called on as a soldier, Torc was more a god of the hunt, and it was interesting, that a fighter like Bearchán should think of him more than another warrior god.
“What about you, Buran?” Bearchán asked.
“I serve Lord Oghma,” Buran said, not looking up from his book, his eyes continuing to trace the lines of tiny text.
“Well, yes,” Bearchán said, “but I meant, erm…” He faltered, apparently unable to remember what he had meant, and Buran didn’t look up and wait for him to finish – he just turned a page and kept on reading. Looking somewhat helplessly to Godfrey – for goodness’ sake, what business did a man having looking so handsome whilst helpless? – Bearchán asked, “You do a lot of work for the Oghmians, don’t you?”
“With Halloran being such a minor figure in the scheme of things, I’m able to make more money for our order through serving Oghma,” Godfrey said, “and I’m able to perform outreach in the process – it’s not really a direct proselytization, I will say. Halloran’s work is typically done in backrooms or in the early hours.”
“A god after my own heart,” Bearchán said, voice laden with implication, and Godfrey laughed nervously once again, rubbing idly at his own cheek – he needed to shave, which he was at least able to think about in this moment more than the flush on his own cheeks. “Are you allowed to marry?”
“No,” Godfrey said immediately. “I was actually about to be engaged to— Well, it doesn’t matter. Marriage is a, aha, well, you know, a holy contract, a binding contract. I’m pledged to Halloran, and no other.”
“And fucking?”
Godfrey stared at Bearchán, astonished – although he didn’t know why – that the other man had said it so openly, and so easily. He was even smiling at Godfrey (he had handsome dimples at the corners of his mouth, and up close like this, the mischief in his eyes mingled with a certain hypnotising kindness) before he looked back to his work. Godfrey listened to the rhythmic shimmer and clink of links joining the mail he was making, each new piece glowing with magic as it was knitted into place.
“I,” he said, surprised at the crack in his own voice, and he hurriedly pulled up his water skin and drank greedily from it. Bearchán waited patiently, continuing to work.
He really did smell terribly good.
“Not really, erm,” Godfrey said, and then, “We’re hardly, I’m not banned, or, it’s not forbidden, it’s just, it’s—”
“You’re welcome to join me in my tent tonight before we head into the tombs tomorrow, that’s all,” Bearchán said casually. “Two handsome men together under canvas, we could get up to all sorts – and you look like the sort of fella who could do with someone else kneeling for you once in a while.”
Godfrey felt somewhat faint.
“So long as, uh, Brother Buran is alright with it, of course,” Bearchán said.
“I don’t care what you do together,” Buran said. “My employ as Godfrey’s guard begins tomorrow, and the work does not extend to protecting him from sexual escapades.”
“Best not,” Godfrey said. “Need— I’ve got such a lot of, of reading to do, ahead of the, such an important mission, you know, and so, so fraught.”
“No worries,” Bearchán said immediately, still cheerful, still so incredibly casual. “Feel free to grab me if you change your mind – I’m an easygoing sort, me. I like sex, men mostly, but like I said, I’m easygoing.”
“Right,” Godfrey whispered.
He stewed painfully for the next few minutes, casting about for something to say, anything, before Bearchán said idly, “Do you have any favourite music?” and he was able to launch into talk about local orcish drinking songs, anything to move on from sex.
Bearchán to his credit, took the change of subject easily in his stride, but his eyes still glittered, and his smile was still handsome, and he still smelt terribly, terribly good.
Godfrey was desperately relieved when they finally reached their destination.
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