“There’s a whole group of priests specifically to make sure they’re identical, every representation of him to scale,” Lief explained. “It’s very important, apparently, to preserve the divine likeness.” He didn’t elaborate that he knew this because of a fake holy icon scam that had gone very badly wrong. “Well, welcome to the Heathen’s Quarter. There’s an inn, and I mean just the one inn. We’d better go and twiddle our disgustingly pagan thumbs there until someone comes to fetch us.”

“The Heathen’s Quarter. Everyone says it like that,” Penthos muttered. “As if there’s only one heathen allowed in the place at once.”

Lief blinked at him, thought back, then nodded enthusiastically. “You’re right. Or, it’s more like there’s just one entity that’s ‘the Heathen,’ and we’re all just bits of it. Heathen’s Quarter,” he let the words roll off his tongue. “Yeah, never thought of that before.”

“People are staring at me,” Enth observed calmly.

Lief glanced about, seeing that it was true. “Oh this isn’t going to go well. Seriously it’s not. Let’s get under cover at least. Enough sight-seeing.”

There was no sign for the quarter’s single inn, because the Armesians had no other dive to distinguish it from. There was a taproom, and it was the most dispirited that Lief had ever seen. Travelers there were drinking something from small mugs in humble silence, as though if they started to enjoy themselves then Armes himself would turn up and slap them.

“Sod this,” he muttered to himself, but no other alternatives occurred to him. “Three of your best,” he instructed the dour, judgemental-looking man who appeared to be the proprietor. The expression he received in response rather suggested that the man wouldn’t waste his best on the likes of Lief, but a boy was sent away to the cellar, and came back with little mugs of what Lief hoped was at least his mediocre.

There were tables and chairs there. Someone had gone to some lengths to make the latter uncomfortable and the former too low, so that Penthos was constantly banging his knees. They were nailed to the floor, which said a lot about the locals’ beliefs concerning the virtue of outsiders.

“Well, cheers,” Lief said. He sipped. Mediocre was probably over-egging it.

Enth was not touching his, and Lief nudged him. “It’s beer. You like beer now, remember.”

The creature shook his head. “Can’t,” he said, staring at the mug as though it contained a… well, not a venomous spider, Lief considered. Whatever it was that spiders didn’t like. One of those parasitic wasps or something.

“This is the heart of the Light,” Penthos said quietly. “Such power does not respect the boundaries of the Heathen’s Quarter. It bleeds through, even into the beer.”

Lief blinked. “Seriously?”