Vanora wandered around the ground floor of the Hammer & Tongs. The floor had been varnished several times in the last three years and never walked on, so her feet stuck to the floor a little when she walked, making little sucking noises when she lifted them.

Heden didn’t make eye contact with her. He closed the door, went back to the table, picked up the glasses from Gwiddon’s visit, and walked behind the bar. The heavy sound of his boots seemed very loud to him.

One wall of the T-shaped common room was covered by bookshelves Heden had installed himself, holding several hundred books collecting dust. Vanora stared at them, sometimes reaching out to touch one.

Heden went into the kitchen and a few moments later emerged with a large plate, a hunk of mutton, some vegetables and some fruit. He put the plate on the bar and began slicing the mutton.

“You read all these books?” Vanora asked.

Heden did not reply. He continued preparing his lunch. Vanora gave no indication that she expected a reply.

“Where’d you learn to read?” Vanora asked, her voice light, curious.

Heden took a deep breath. “My father was friends with the abbot the next town over. When I was thirteen, he sent me to an abbey as my apprenticeship.”

Heden threw some of the fruit and vegetables on a plate with the mutton, poured himself a beer, and carried the whole thing to a table and sat down. He waited a moment to see if Vanora would probe.

“Did it…” she began, and then tried a different strategy. “Did you mind leaving home?”

Heden thought about it. “I don’t think so. Both my brothers had gone away at the same age, my sisters were both married off at 14. I knew the abbot and liked him. No, I didn’t mind. I missed my parents but I got over that.”

Heden waited to see if she was going to ask anything else, and then continued.

“The abbot was very learned; he’d studied at the university here. He taught me everything he knew. Well,” Heden corrected himself as he grabbed an apple and prepared to bite. “Not everything.” He took a large bite of the apple and finished chewing before he spoke again. “Not most things, now that I think about it. But he taught me to read and write, spoke the teachings of Cavall to me. Set me on the path to being a priest.” At the time, it seemed like everything he knew.

Vanora gave every appearance of not listening. She didn’t look at Heden. With some effort, she pulled one of the larger books out and opened it. She had to cradle it in both of her arms. She frowned at the text.

“That’s a good book,” Heden said, and Vanora glanced at him. She couldn’t tell he’d been watching her. “It’s about a girl who finds out she’s the daughter of a god. It’s got a lot of pictures. Inlaid with real gold on the page.” At this, Vanora appeared to express interest, trying to hold the book and leaf through the pages at the same time. Her brown hair fell over her face. She seemed thin to Heden and he got the impression as he often did with women from the Rose that she needed to eat more.

“I’ll teach you to read it,” Heden said, matter-of-factly. Not an offer, a decision.

Vanora stopped struggling with the book, and just stared at the letters, absorbing what Heden had said. She shrugged and put the book back on the shelf.

Seeming very much at home in this strange inn, she crossed the floor, pulled a chair out, and sat across from Heden. She watched him eat. She raised an eyebrow at what he was eating and the way he ate, but he didn’t seem to notice.

He seemed entirely unselfconscious. As if having a barefoot teenaged whore walking around his inn was normal for him. Something about that bothered her.

“We get priests at the Rose,” she said, crossing her arms. It was cold in the large common room. “They’re just like everyone else. Good priests, bad priests. They can be a lot of fun. Some of them act bothered….” she stopped. She wouldn’t look at Heden. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she didn’t want to talk about the jail.

“So what do you want with me?”

Heden shrugged while he ate. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Up to you,” he said. “I helped you back at the jail; maybe I’m just trying to see it through. Make sure you end up where you want to be.”

She grunted, skeptical.

“You’re not bothered by what I do?” she asked, studying him for any reaction or belief or attitude. “You didn’t come to the jail because…” she left the question hanging.

Heden sighed and stabbed a slice of mutton with his fork. He didn’t like talking and he was about to do a lot of it.

“A year ago,” he said, not looking at her, “the church asked me to go to the jail because there was a boy there who’d been sentenced to be drowned. The church said the boy was possessed by a demon too powerful to cast out. No one at the church could cure him. No prayer worked. Drowning is the traditional fate for the possessed.”

Heden ate some mutton and talked while he ate, his voice casual like he was describing the act of buying new clothes.

“He was like you,” he said, giving her the merest glance. She was dwarfed by the high backed chair. “He had fits and couldn’t control his body. He’d spit and soil himself and his whole mouth would be torn up, bloody. He’d bitten half his tongue off when he was younger. He’d be fine for days and then have a fit. Lasted hours.”

Without looking at the young girl, Heden was aware he had her full attention.

“Everyone around him,” he took another bite and chewed, “thought he was possessed and so when the Church agreed and sentenced him to death, everyone was…relieved. Even his parents, you understand.” He chewed and swallowed and looked at her to gauge her reaction.

Vanora was wide-eyed, fixated on Heden. She was holding her breath. She was mesmerized.

“They sent me there…” Heden paused remembering the meeting with the Bishop. “They sent me there because the Church, having declared him possessed, was obligated to make sure the boy was killed. But drowning is a terrible way to die.” Heden shook his head, remembering something. “There are good ways to die, believe me. Drowning isn’t one of them.”

Heden stopped eating, drank some beer, and then sat back and looked behind Vanora at the books in his library.

“The Bishop called for me and explained the situation. He didn’t ask me to do anything, he just…explained the situation. He’d seen men drowned before, for this same reason, and he talked about how awful it was. He didn’t need to tell me.

“So that’s how it works. I don’t think I said anything. I knew what the Bishop wanted. From the Church’s point of view the boy had to die, but the Bishop didn’t want him to suffer.”

“Where’s the boy now?” Vanora asked, her voice quiet, timid.

Heden looked at her, hard, unflinching, with no expression and said. “Vanora, he’s dead. I killed him.”

The breath exploded out of her and she put her hands to her mouth. She could not bring herself to look away from Heden’s impassive face. Heden looked away for her and continued. He looked out the window, mimicking Gwiddon.

“He was terrified when I got there. Babbling. He wasn’t having a fit, he was just…pissing himself out of desperate fear that he was about to die and there wasn’t anything he could do about it and no one would listen to him and everyone and everything he knew, his parents and the church, all approved. It was a kind of waking nightmare for him.” The words tumbled out. Heden had never told this story to anyone.

“I was with him for an hour. I talked to him, I calmed him down. I told him everything was going to be ok. I told him that his parents loved him; that they wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him. He sobbed, relieved. That was all he wanted to hear, I think.

“I let him think everything was going to be fine and he collapsed, asleep, exhausted. Then I said a certain prayer and that was it. He was gone. Even if…I told myself that even if the Church hadn’t been…” he waved a hand vaguely, “the Church, even if they’d let him live, his life would have been short and full of pain and I was doing him a mercy. Maybe the Bishop thought the same thing.”

Neither of them said anything. Vanora face’s was a conflict of fear of Heden and compassion for him. After a few moments had passed, Heden took a deep breath and continued.

“Two months later,” Heden said, rubbing his hand over the stubble of beard on his face, “I was falling asleep and thinking about what happened. I was thinking about the boy, about his fits. I knew he wasn’t possessed. I think the Bishop did too. That’s not how possession works.” He looked at Vanora and said, without expression, “that’s not how demons work. I relived the whole thing in my mind, over and over. What the Bishop had said, what I had done. I felt very sad for the boy, but…what was there to do?

“Then I remembered something a friend of mine said. He was smart, smarter than me. He and I and some others were looking over the body of a friend of ours who’d killed himself. He said something then that I didn’t understand. But I never forgot it. He said, ‘I wonder what kind of catastrophic failure the mind is experiencing, to view self-destruction as the only solution.’

“I didn’t understand him. I thought it was in poor taste, but that moment came to me as I was falling asleep. His point of view. Which I thought I’d never get. I got up and came down here and went to the bookcase,” he said nodding at the books Vanora had been examining earlier, “and I pulled out a book he gave me.”

“He was a physician. A kind of godless priest,” Heden smiled at this phrase, and the memory of his friend. “His people are the best physicians in the world. I read through the book, took me weeks. But I found a description of what was happening to the boy. All the same things. Like they’d been there when that boy had a fit and just wrote everything he did down.” For a moment, Heden was lost again, remembering his own wonder at how the words from a people 1,500 miles away could so accurately describe a boy they’d never met. He knew the gods had guided him to that moment. “Anyway, there was a cure right there in the book. Some plants, herbs. Instructions on how to prepare them. There’s a little magic involved, not much.

“The next day, I went about collecting the plants. I don’t know why. I’d never encountered anyone like that boy before, no reason to think I would again. Some of the herbs were hard to come by. Anyway I cooked it up, followed the instructions, and then put it away. Packed it in honey to preserve it. Until…yesterday.”

“Yesterday,” Vanora said, it wasn’t a question.

“Yesterday,” Heden repeated. “When I was sent to do to you what I did to him, and for the same reason.” Vanora stared at him. She’d realized what his story meant, her role in it. But him saying it so plainly made it real. Horrible, but at the same time…took some power it had over her away.

“You didn’t,” she said. “You didn’t know what I…”

Heden picked up his drink. “I wasn’t going to kill another boy. Or girl,” he added. “Bishop be damned.” He took a drink.

“Anyway that’s it. Long story. It worked, by the way,” he said, putting the drink down. He smiled at her. Vanora smiled a little for the first time. A quirky smile, older and younger than fifteen. “Praise the Hazarite,” he said. She smiled some more, even though she didn’t know what Heden meant.

“What was your friend’s name?” she asked.

“Khalil,” he said. She nodded.

“I should go,” Vanora said, and seemed apprehensive. “Miss Elowen will be upset.”

Heden shrugged.

Vanora looked at him, waiting for him to say something.

“I don’t think she expected to ever see you again. I doubt she knows you’re alive.”

Vanora looked away and even though Heden wasn’t looking at her, he knew she was trying to avoid crying. Heden was a little proud of himself that being honest with her had worked. He made a mental note to tell the abbot about this.

“You can stay here if you want. You can go. It’s up to you.”

Still not facing him, she snorted once, and nodded. “What would I do here?” she asked. Direct. Heden liked that.

“I don’t know,” Heden admitted. “I’ll think about it. You’ll have some say in the matter in any case and if you don’t like it, there’s always Miss Elowen.”

“Will I…” Vanora began.

“I don’t think so,” Heden said. “I think you’re cured. I think it’s permanent. But if it’s not, I can show you how to brew the stuff yourself. Miss Elowen would be happy to take you back knowing you’re well again.”

“You said there was some magic,” Vanora said, ignoring his comment about her Madam. “You said: ‘there’s a little magic involved, not much.’” She quoted him exactly.

Heden finished his drink, put the glass down, and got up. “That’s true. Priestly magic. A prayer. Whatever else you decide to do, I don’t think the clergy is in your future. You may have to depend on me for it.”

She couldn’t tell if he thought that was a good thing or a bad thing. Heden cleared the table off, disappeared behind a door Vanora presumed went into the kitchen, and returned a few moments later. He didn’t say goodbye, he just walked toward the door, adjusting the fit of his clothes, opened the door and then stood there and looked back.

“I have to go talk to…my boss,” he said, for some reason wanting to avoid mentioning the Bishop after his story. “Try to keep out of the cat’s way. Balli earns her keep and at the moment you do not.”

Vanora couldn’t tell if he was joking. She just looked at him as he left her alone in the empty tavern.

On to Chapter Eight!

Read the Gloss for this chapter.

Chapter 7

This is one of the most important chapters in the book, and of those chapters that “hook” readers it is the most popular. That’s why I chose to end the first update with it.

Here, we learn what Heden does for a living. What service he performs for the church of Cavall. Though only one instance of it. It’s not all being sent to jails to kill people.

This is one of those chapters I had to run through my bullshit detector, otherwise known as She Who Must Be Obeyed. Because Vanora is a whore, and a teenager, which is something my significant other sees in her job on a semi-regular basis, I had to be careful that she seemed realistic. Not a caricature, and SWMBO replied that she seemed very like the real people she deals with.

I feel, in my defense, that it’s important to state up front that Vanora is not the hooker with a heart of gold. Her role here, and her developing relationship with Heden, goes in a completely different direction. Heden is not going to redeem her, none of the cultural mores implicit in the tart with a heart; the concept of sex as somehow bad, or of wanting sex as somehow sinful, are present here.

A lot of plot, most of it in the next book, gets spun off of Vanora’s career but the fact that she’s a  prostitute is simply how I found her. I do not recall any decision on my part. If there was any conscious thought there, it was probably along the lines of showing the kinds of people Heden is used to dealing with. Being a campaigner, a ratcatcher, means he knows a wide cross-section of people in the city, people who would usually never come into contact with one another, but all know Heden.

Having discovered that Vanora was a Lady of Negotiable Affection, I knew I was walking a thin line. Because something can be entirely authentic, and not at all dramatic. By which I mean, if the audience rejects it, for whatever reason, there is no defense. Not even “but they’re really like this!” If the audience fails to suspend disbelief, then I have failed, no matter how clever I may think I’ve been.

It may not be clear, but it doesn’t really need to be, that Vanora is an epileptic. This is a concept that Heden’s culture (though not, you will not, all cultures in this world) doesn’t have. To anyone in Heden’s world, seeing someone having an epileptic seizure is seeing a man possessed. Only Heden, and possibly the Bishop, know the truth.

Heden’s friend Khalil’s comment about suicide, asking the question; what catastrophic failure is the brain experiencing, that it considers self-destruction as the only option, was a point of view I found in a Discover Magazine article on the neurochemistry of suicide. I found that perspective, from the point of view of the brain as a complex system rather than the psychology of the individual, fascinating. And so, the Hazar being the most medically advanced people in Orden, I dared give that perspective to one of Heden’s former adventurers.

Originally, Heden did kill Vanora in the jail, and that was done to show the reader what Heden does for a living, but at some point I realized she lived, and that was one of the keys to the entire book, as you will see.

You’ll spend some more time with Vanora over the course of the book, but she’s absent for most of it. She’s a catalyst for everything that happens, not the focus of the story.

Chapter 7