“I feel a presentiment of death,” the commissar said again, after they had passed. Thanakar would remember the words, because at that moment death followed close behind them, and in a little while, when the way broadened out and the cliffs started to spread away, death called out to them, and they turned to wait for him to gather form out of the mist. He was dressed, as he so often was in those days, in the red robes of a priest.

“Wait!” he called in his shrill voice, and they turned back. It was the bishop’s liaison, a thin handsome man with laughing eyes. “Wait up,” he said, leaning on a rock to catch his breath.

They waited, and he stood before them, a handsome man with thick black hair, his hands on his hips, taller than either of them. “I looked for you,” he said. “Where were you? How was your night among the heathen?”

“Happy,” said the commissar.

“Then it was better than my morning. One of them touched me. Pah!” He spit onto the road. “I washed, but nothing takes away the smell.”

“What were you doing there so early?” asked Thanakar. “Making converts?”

The priest frowned. Thanakar had an uneasy reputation among Starbridges, but the priest could understand it, given his obligations and his leg. Any differences between them were nothing compared with what they shared, the same blood, the same duty, the same family, bonds that mere hatred could never dissolve. “Preaching,” he answered. “Of a kind. More effective than any I’ve ever done before, I think. Yes. They’ve been a scourge to this whole countryside, and flouted God’s most cherished laws, but now I think we’ve seen the last of them.”

“What do you mean?” asked the commissar.

The priest marched past them a few steps. “You’ll find out,” he said. “No, I’ll tell you. I am triumphant. I never expected it to be easy, or even possible. Yet it was so easy.” He laughed, a shrill raw sound.

“Tell me,” said the commissar.

For an answer, the priest pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and smoothed it out for them to see. In spidery Starbridge pictographs, it read:

Find me a way to hang these cannibals and spare me the expense of rope.

Chrism Demiurge, episcopal secretary.

Kindness and Repair

Spring 8, Oct. 19, 00016

“God save us,” said the commissar quietly.

“Aspe came back late last night,” continued the priest. “The problem was always how to separate the atheists from the rest of the army, but he took care of that. He woke us up for a council of war. Then he roused his regiment, and they were up and away long before dawn. I left as soon as he was gone.”

“To do what?”

“I confess, at first I didn’t know. I thought it was an opportunity not to be missed. I thought of bringing them false orders, but Aspe can’t write, and they can’t read. I didn’t know what I was going to say. But the problem resolved itself. God found a way. Aspe was swaggering and boasting last night. I think he was drunk. And something he said . . . I stole his scarf. The fool didn’t even notice.”