“We can’t just leave him in the woods.” Caspar presses his steepled fingers to his lips. “He’s a person. He’s a child, even.”

  “We have a missing fuckin’ archbishop in the van, Cas,” Jordan says. “Staying low is already gonna be a son of a bitch. We can’t bring a baby deer into the capital. That’s not where deers live.”

  “What’s a capital?” the fawn asks.

  “You can’t keep asking this about every concept, man,” Jordan says. “You know what a motherfucker is. You don’t know what a capital is?”

  “Deers have mothers and we fuck,” the fawn says. “All I got to fuckin’ work with is deer stuff, lady. I’m two days old.”

  “Who taught you language, then?”

  “What’s language?”

  Caspar glances back at the van. Adaire is peering out the rear window, a look of perplexity on her face. “Do you have a name?” he asks.

  “Should I?”

  “If we took you with us, you’d need one.”

  “Which we haven’t determined yet,” Jordan says.

  “So if I come up with a name, you have to take me.” The fawn nods. “I get it.”

  Jordan wipes her hand down her face. “That ain’t what I’m saying.”

  “I wanna be called Peat Moss,” the fawn says. “That’s my favorite thing. Tasty as hell.”

  “Can we just go Pete?” Caspar asks.

  “I am not Pete. I am Peat Moss,” says Peat Moss. “Why don’t they let deers in the capital?”

  “Cause they’re wild animals,” Jordan says. “And they don’t normally talk.”

  “Well, I talk,” Peat Moss says. “And I wanna come with you. You saved my life. I wanna help.”

  “That’s, uh, very neighborly of you, Peat Moss.” Caspar crouches. “But Pastornos—that’s the capital—we need to keep a low profile there or we’re in hot water. Best way you can help us is by staying here and being a deer for a while. Maybe after we do our business, we can find you.”

  A mournful noise rises from the fawn’s cream-colored throat. “You can’t just make me then abandon me. I found other deer and said hi and they ran off.”

  “We didn’t make shit,” Jordan says. “You can blame Saoirse for this.”

  “We could… pretend he’s just a dog, maybe.” Caspar turns to Jordan, scratching his scruff. “Like a greyhound. Put one of them rich people sweaters on it.”

  “The thing doesn’t look like a—” Jordan’s sentence trails into a pinching aaaah. The deer’s head has become a skinny greyhound’s.

  “A greyhound’s one of these, right?” Peat Moss says.

  “How the fuck,” Jordan says, “are you doing that.”

  “What, you can’t?”

  “Fuck me. He’s evoking.” Caspar crouches to examine Peat Moss. “You’re casting a spell. Aren’t you.”

  “Yeah, man. Course I am.” Peat Moss sniffs through his newly canine snout. “Faces don’t just do this on their own. I know that one.”

  “He’s a warlock.” Caspar stands up. “Jordan, we have a warlock deer. Are you Saoirse’s warlock, Peat Moss?”

  “Dunno.” Peat Moss licks his nose. “Guess so.”

  “Fucking hell.” Jordan takes Peat Moss’s little head in her hand and tilts it. He blinks patiently up at her.

  “Stay right here, Peat Moss.” Caspar jerks his head deeper into the woods. “Jordy, c’mon. Huddle.”

  “Bye,” Peat Moss calls after them.

  Jordan joins Caspar in a copse of trees just in view of the van. “This is a massive risk, Cas. You remember how I feel about massive risks.”

  “You’re right,” Caspar says. “But here’s why I think we should do it anyway.”

  Jordan sighs.

  “One: If he’s Saoirse’s warlock, that means we’ve got representation from every Sister in the alliance. So her skin’s in the game and her power’s accessible. And you saw what it could do on that yacht.”

  “Saoirse didn’t seem like she knew about him,” Jordan says. “At the meeting.”

  “Sure, but he’s casting. So she clearly knows now. And she’s letting him use her magic. Two: he’s right that we oughta take responsibility for him. That’s a person over there. He don’t look like one, but he is. And he’s lost and confused and there’s nowhere for him.”

  “Ethics shit don’t work on me, Cas. I’m an inspector.”

  “But he’s so cute, Jordy. Look at him. Little guy.”

  “I want you to know,” Jordan says, “that I am agreeing to this entirely based on One, and I am a mean evil asshole who doesn’t care about two.”

  Caspar slaps her on the back. “Heard, Madame Inspector.”

  They load back into the van. Caspar slides the rear door open. “Peat Moss. You’re in.”

  “Sweet.” The fawn bounds into the back.

  Paul Tilliam’s scowl is born from memories of sharing the armory with this throughly undomesticated beast. “I thought we were getting rid of it.”

  “Shut up.” Jordan turns the key in the ignition. “It’s not an it. He’s Peat Moss.”

  “You named it?” Tilliam shakes his head. “I saw that thing come out of a man’s rib cage and you named it.”

  “Silence, prisoner,” Peat Moss says.

  Tilliam yelps and scrambles to the other end of the van. He hides behind Adaire, who shoots Caspar and Jordan a perplexed look and mouths what the fuck?

  Back out of the trees and onto the long ribbon of road. Typical of a Pastornos diocese highway, there are a preposterous amount of lanes here. About twice as many as the traffic needs, in the off-season stretch between the pilgrimage holidays. On top of that it’s a war year, this year—the young gallants of Pastornos who’d be weaving their speedsters across the wide dividers are overseas somewhere, in Nothosia or Tabarka. Spreading the good word like spilled blood.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  There are no rest stops in the Pastornos diocese; none this close to the city. The number of cozy villages and exurbs render them useless. Time and again they crest a valley’s idyl and descend past a middle distant skyline full of grand old buildings and ornate steeples. It’s almost cloying, the old-world beauty crowding every exit.

  Caspar and Jordan pick one at random, more or less, and find parking in a converted stable outside a taphouse.

  “First warlock assignment for you, Peat Moss.” Jordan kills the engine.

  “An assignment?” Peat’s ears perk up.

  “Yessir.” Jordan points at Tilliam and Adaire. “Either of them make a run for it, kill ‘em.”

  Peat nods earnestly. “Okay. Yes. How?”

  “You’re a warlock.” Caspar gives him a scritch on his velvety head. “Just ask Saoirse in your head and she’ll help.”

  “Right. Ask in my head.” Peat sniffs the stodgy garage air. “Is she my mother, would you say? Saoirse?”

  Jordan and Caspar share a glance. “Sure,” the inspector decides. “C’mon, Cas. Need a smoke.”

  They split a slice of bee-sting cake under the awning of a saccharine bakery, its garden full of hand-carved icons and prayer scrolls.

  “Me and Adaire are the only ones with identities that work,” Caspar says. “So we’re the license-getters.”

  “Yessir.” Jordan fishes a cigarette out of her cargo pants and lights it. “Just some pilgrimage papers oughta do. Make like you’re looking to get hitched in Pastornos proper, maybe.”

  “What’ll the rest of you do? When we’re getting into the city?”

  “Suppose the archbishop and I will hide,” Jordan says.

  “Where?”

  “Same place we’re hiding all the armory autoguns and grenades.”

  “And where’s that gonna be?”

  Jordan rubs her temples. “I’m working on it, brother. Okay? You just worry about getting us those pilgrimage licenses.”

  They return to the van, bellies full and minds racing.

  Caspar opens the back door and points at Adaire. “You. Come with me.”

  “What?” Her teary eyes flutter. “Why?”

  “No questions. Up.” He takes her roughly by the forearm and pulls her from the van.

  “Be brave, Corinne,” Tilliam calls. “Do what they say and be brave.”

  Caspar removes his grip as soon as they’re out of view of the van. “You holding up all right with the prisoner?”

  “Sure.” Adaire shakes her shoulders out. “I was expecting a great deal of sniveling, but he’s being rather gallant. Wouldn’t you say?”

  “You play a good damsel-in-distress.” Caspar pulls a rumpled dress from his knapsack and tosses it to her. “We need a pilgrimage license. It’s how we’ll get into and around Pastornos.”

  Adaire unfolds the dress. “Really, Caspar. Are we traveling beggars or something?”

  “We’re using what we got, all right? It’s silk.”

  Adaire tilts her head as she examines the dress. “Rayon. But it’ll do. Do you need that belt to keep your pants up, or may I have it?”

  He pulls it from his waist and hands it to her. She removes herself and her accoutrements behind a concrete pylon at the garage’s edge, and emerges the other side transformed. The billow of the cheap dress, cinched around her waist, drapes her like it’s designer. Something about the straightness of her neck, the prow of her chin, makes her look younger, brighter.

  A bubbly giggle from her. She clears her throat and tries another—it’s even bubblier. She tosses her head. “Let’s get us that license, darling.”

  As they pass the concrete divider into the parking lot, Adaire wraps her arm around Caspar’s waist and leans close to him. His face heats. “Do you have to?”

  “We’re engaged, Mr. Cartwright.” Adaire’s fingers tighten on his hip. “The small things make a difference.”

  They pass the charming red brick and painted wooden slats of the tchotchke shops and beer garden, toward the unadorned back road where the altarkeep dormitory and the licensing station wait.

  “So.” Adaire steps onto the pebbled footpath. “You’re sleeping with your patron, eh?”

  Caspar’s immediate impulse is to retreat from the question, to clam up or change the subject. Then he remembers the meeting at the stone table, and my hand so defiantly on his. And how I told him I was proud of him. He’s a consort to a goddess. A beautiful, immortal leviathan, her tentacles wrapped tight around his eternity. How foolish not to be proud, too. “Yes,” he says. “We’re, uh—”

  We’re what? We’re dating? His soul is mine and his initials are engraved on my thigh. His every sleeping moment is spent with me, warming my bed and feasting at my table. His every waking moment is devoted to granting me the power to conquer Heaven, that I might make him my eternal plaything in the paradise I’ve sworn to grant him. Does that count as dating?

  “We’re dating,” he concludes.

  “Now that, that’s novel.” Adaire has a small, strange smile. “The import the two of you place on it. I’ve certainly dallied with Salome’s manifestations now and again.”

  “You have?”

  “Of course. If I’m going to be her servant in exchange for power and a cushy seat in her demesne, I intend to reap the benefits. Indulgent feasts, fancy suits. Drinking champagne out of beautiful navels, et cetera. I’ve never thought of them as her. Not in the way Irene has induced in you. It’s interesting—Salome described a very different treatment for your mistress’s warlocks.”

  “What did Salome say?”

  “That Irene disdained them. Kept her distance. I’d understood that she never appeared to them as anything but a disembodied voice and powers granted. It made me rather grateful that Salome’s the one who chose me.”

  “She told me something like that,” Caspar says. “She also told me I was different. First one she let in.”

  The words, once they leave his mouth, become a floating soap bubble, delicate and juvenile. He braces for Adaire to puncture it, to brand him na?ve or foolish. Instead, she shrugs. “Well, then. Good for the two of you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You know we’re servants, yes? They own us. Body and soul. You’re her captive, Caspar. She can kill you with a thought. She will always be above you. Inherently. You can never be equal to a goddess, even if you both wished it.”

  Caspar remembers a time she’d have knocked him into a proper spiral with these words. “I suppose it’s a good thing that I don’t wish it, then.”

  “You’ve settled for servility?”

  Not just settled, he thinks. Longed for. Faith rewarded. Belief confirmed. Falling backward into the dark and knowing that colossal, divine hands will catch him. All he ever wanted, wanted with feverish, sleepless desperation, was a god worthy of his obedience. He told himself over and over that he had one in the Father, turned his eyes from the injustices and brutalities of Pastornism, battled his unending, squirming doubt, convinced himself that it was simply the challenge of faith, that it was inescapable. Now he has me, and he’s escaped it. A life spent before a bare, flickering candle, ushered into the blinding sun.

  “Yep,” he says.

  “Fascinating,” Adaire says. “I need a field notebook for you, Caspar. Quite a specimen.”

  “How about you?” Caspar’s eager to get out from under the magnifying glass. “What made you quit Pastornism and go warlock?”

  “You can’t quit what you never were,” Adaire says. “I’m not Pastornist. I’m Tabarkan. I was born on the other side of the world.”

  Caspar swallows his shock. Adaire doesn’t have the barest hint of the Tabarkan lilt about her voice. But of course she wouldn’t, would she, unless she wanted it there.

  “Served a tour in Tabarka,” he says. “It was beautiful.”

  “Yes,” Adaire says. “It was.”

  She pauses at the edge of the parking lot. Considering her words, he thinks.

  “I was born in a town that doesn’t exist anymore. On your maps, the ground upon which it stood is called Camp Tarry now, if it has a name at all. I became a warlock to dismantle your civilization and pull your Temples down. To make you hurt the way I hurt.” Her eyes are unmoored from the village street. What she sees, Caspar can’t guess. “Hurt. So interesting that in your language there’s no hurted. Hurt is past and present. Perpetrator and victim. If I say I hurt, do I hurt now? Was I hurt then? Do I do the hurting? Where, when, who. Perhaps it doesn’t matter here.”

  Caspar doesn’t reply. He doesn’t have one to give. Just looks at her.

  “Does it discomfit you to know I’m a wicked person, Mr. Cartwright?”

  “I could call you wicked,” he says. “If you’d prefer it.”

  “We’re only the help, Caspar. It’s not about what we prefer. You know that.” They stop before the dreary box of the licensing station and Adaire checks her wig in the reflective glass. “Although for the good of the mission, it may behoove you to call me honey.”

  ???????????

  As soon as the deer talked, Bina and I were scrambling to get a Saoirse manifestation in my demesne. Now she arrives in a cloud of scintillating flies, laughing her moldering head off.

  “Saoirse. What the hell, girl.” I thrust a finger at my viewing pool, where Caspar is currently attempting to keep a curious Peat Moss from scrambling into the passenger seat. “What is this deer situation?”

  “It’s funny!” Saoirse wipes a coagulated tear from her eye socket. “Isn’t it funny? I think it’s so funny.”

  “Your first warlock in how long and it’s a baby deer? When we’re about to take on the Iron Butcher?”

  “He was running around in such a panic in the woods. Poor thing. Quite non-native on this continent. I thought I’d give him a chance.”

  “Do you intend for him to fight alongside Caspar and Jordan?” I ask.

  “If it would be easier, I’d let them eat him,” Saoirse says. “Little venison pick-me-up.”

  “Oh, they can’t,” gasps Bina. “He’s just a little gentleman.”

  “All right.” Saoirse shifts her mycorrhizal skirts. “Then he’s my warlock.”

  I sigh. “Can he spit acid, at least?”

  “Really, Irene, dear.” Saoirse chuckles. “Why would I make a baby deer that couldn’t spit acid?”

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