His body knelt. His voice prayed. It was his context that changed. A cold rush climbed his spine, spread through his limbs, and he stood astride the city. But when he looked down on Alt Coulumb’s teeming streets and sidewalks and the wharfs that pulsed with broad-backed men and women strong as sprung steel, he saw them as if he was them, as if he moved through and within them, as if his thoughts were pieces of theirs—

fuck they want to buy at that price for I don’t even

gotta hold the knife like this so you won’t cut

even know where was he last night and he comes

home all

consider the alternatives

I don’t mind if you just want to screw

fillet of whitefish six thaums a pound

God-damn Blacksuits make it so

a man can’t live

Gods, or at least the few with which Abelard was on speaking terms, could use human speech, as a person who lacked sign language could point to a flower or a passing cloud. The bigger the god, the harder that became. Rather than reducing themselves to human syntax, larger deities preferred to elevate humans to theirs. That approach had drawbacks, though. Human beings were good at comprehending things that looked, thought, and spoke at roughly human size, speed, and complexity. A modern god in a modern city, networked through faith and bond to pantheons and Deathless Kings around the planet, was larger, faster, and more complex than monkey-derived man. Divine communions sometimes made as little sense as Cathbart’s sermons might to an ape. Some saints went mad from the experience.

Not that Abelard could have expressed such thoughts in that moment, borne on the tide of God, burning in the flame at the heart of His city. Kos Everburning, Lord of Flame, gave His servant knowledge of Himself. Tears streamed down Abelard’s face.

Through the awe and wonder, though, he thought: you won’t get off the hook that easily.

The city web wriggled and drew back, cold, nonchalant. God had no idea what he could possibly mean.

I’m here to talk about Seril. You know what’s happening. Everything Tara’s said in council. There’s no use playing dumb.

(Lord Kos was great and benevolent and wise. Why feign politeness, as if such an Interlocutor could only hear your surface thoughts?)

The city moved. Far below, in a body that was but one axon of the Mind with which he now conversed, he spoke the second stanza of the Litany for the Coming Burn. Ocean rolled against pier and distant sand, with a sound like the shuffling of enormous feet.

I know you love Seril. I know what you went through to bring Her back.