“Step one is hide them bullet holes, I’d say.” Jordan puts her hands on her hips as they survey the van. “Bet a tapestry would do it. Couple saintly garlands.”

  Caspar sticks a finger through the largest bullet hole, dented and sunken above the tail light. “I like it. Cruise into West Grishani, get us some knick-knacks. And some ice cream for Peat Moss.”

  “We ain’t getting ice cream for Peat Moss.” Jordan folds her arms.

  Caspar sees the fawn’s ears droop in the back seat. “Jordy—”

  “We’re getting him gelato.” She taps her temple. “They call it gelato here. You hear that, deer? You did good. Earned it.”

  “Thank you, Miss Jordan,” Peat Moss sing-songs.

  Caspar gives her a light punch on the arm as they climb back into the van. “Gelato is a distinct thing, I think.”

  Jordan shakes her head. “Gelato is just fancy-named ice cream. They can’t fool me.”

  “It has no eggs in it,” Adaire supplies from the back seat.

  “No talking, prisoner.” Jordan turns the ignition. She fishes a cigarette out from her pocket. “Got a light, Cas?”

  “You really been going through these lately.” Caspar flicks his lighter open and lends his comrade a flame.

  “I know. Sorry, brother.” Jordan leans over and takes a couple kindling puffs. “Funny thing. I’ve got stress in me, for some odd reason.”

  “I don’t mind it. Just observing. Is it new?”

  “Nah, it’s old. Smoked all the time back in the Chutes. I quit ‘em once I got my inspector job.” Jordan takes a drag.

  “You missed them?”

  “I did.” She taps her ash out the window. “Only stopped cause I didn’t want to die young. These days? Fuck it. I’m over Diamante. One foot in the afterlife.” She turns onto the highway. “Plus, Bina says once I’m over there permanently, I get to redesign the casa. Gonna rip out all the moss, get some zebra print and mirror balls in there.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.” Caspar shifts in his seat. “About what happens after we’re done, and we’ve got, what. Fifty-odd years of life left, and no idea what to do with it.”

  “I knew you were an optimist, but seriously?” Jordan smirks as they pick up speed. “You think we’re surviving this?”

  Caspar watches the highway guardrail. At their velocity, its posts are invisible blurs, and its W-beam seems to levitate above the ground, a stripe of steel defiant of gravity.

  “No,” he says. “I guess not.”

  “There’s still time to turn from this road to ruin,” Tilliam says. “The Father’s mercy is all around you, like the air. You just have to breathe it in.”

  “No thank you, padre.” Jordan takes another long drag of her cigarette. “Ruin tastes too nice.”

  They park on the outskirts of West Grishani, by a flock of sheep that gaze with placid ungulate eyes from behind a spraypainted wooden fence. A sheepdog paces nearby, a mane of nails sprouting off his wolf collar like a barbed halo. Jordan watches the hostages; Caspar and Peat Moss dismount and walk the half-mile into town.

  “Gelato. Gelato. A lot o’ Gelato.” Peat Moss sings tunelessly to the rhythm of his hooves as he tugs Caspar along.

  Caspar chuckles. “You’re awful excited for someone who’s never had this before.”

  “I’m taking you on faith that it’s tasty,” Peat Moss says. “On account of I got shot to earn it.”

  “You earned ice cream for life, kiddo. Gotta put you on an installment plan.”

  “So it’s good, what I did?” Peat focuses hard, and his clicking hooves become padded paws. “Cause at the time it felt right, but after it felt kind of… weird. Bad-weird.”

  “That is a tricky question and a lengthy discussion, Peat Moss. How about we cover it once we’re through here, so I don’t look like a crazy man talkin’ ethics with his dog.”

  “Okay.”

  “Short version is that if you’re doing it to protect your friends or, uh… serve your mistress, it’s all right.” Caspar remembers his drill sergeants and padres when he says this. It’s too familiar, teaching this lesson to a child.

  “Okay. Good.” Peat Moss peers across the street. “Which way’s ice cream?”

  “Errands first,” Caspar says. “Getting some camouflage for the van.”

  “Nuts.” Peat Moss bends his thin neck and rubs his snout at his collar. “Do I have to wear the leash?”

  “Sorry, Peaty. The less attention goes to you, the better. It’s a good disguise, but it’s not perfect.”

  “What’s the matter with it?”

  “You’re a little… blobby for a dog.”

  “Maybe I’m just a blobby dog. Whose owners keep feeding him pasties.”

  “Pastries.” Caspar eyes a pinafored couple giggling and toting parcels down the sidewalk ahead. “No talking now, kiddo.”

  They duck into a votary store and fill a duffel with saint-of-the-road tapestries, garlands, and prayer charms. Enough to conceal those bullet holes in the van, or at least distract with sheer garish volume.

  The man at the gelato stand is balding and hirsute, with a perpetual scowl. That’s somehow a comfort to Caspar as he trades his ducats in—every other establishment they’ve been to in this diocese has been toothache-sweet, like a postcard come to life. The frown he receives, when he asks for some salted caramel and a chocolate scoop for the dog, is necessary roughage. A thing belonging to a world of blood and gunpowder and broken glass.

  Caspar parks himself on a greenwood bench and slides the bowl to Peat Moss, who wiggles his shoulders briefly and then tucks in. Caspar grins as the fawn licks the ice cream from his snout.

  In this moment, he realizes the name of the thing he keeps feeling: paternal.

  Peat Moss is not his son. Peat Moss is a mutant deer monster that crawled out of an exploding rib cage. My warlock is undead and his lover is a different species, and it’s never bothered him, the idea of never having a child with me. His is no longer a fate that includes a normal family. He doesn’t resent it. I am enough for him.

  But a ludicrous image pops into his head, unbeckoned. His arm around my waist, my head on his shoulder, standing at the gate of a cozy little home, watching Peat Moss the talking deer trot off to his first day of school.

  Caspar decides to keep this thought to himself. Then he remembers no, he can’t do that. Can we not talk about this, Miss Irene? he pleads. Pretend like you didn’t hear anything.

  Okay, Caspar. I’ll stay mum. But I know you know I’m giggling madly about it.

  Man and fawn return to the van with their tchotchkes. Jordan steps from the car and unpacks with them. Tilliam and Adaire are left in back to whisper and conspire—their captors give them regular “accidental” alone-time at Adaire’s suggestion.

  “Never thought I’d doll up another ride like this.” Jordan drapes a fluffy string of fake flowers across the van’s remaining side mirror. “Oughta be putting spikes and flames and such on it.”

  Peat Moss circles the wagon. “It’s so frilly.”

  “That’s Pastornism,” Jordan says. “All frills.”

  “You know something?” Caspar says. “I think our Peaty here’s maybe the first born-into-it Sister worshipper.”

  Jordan pulls a face. “Sister worshipper just don’t work. It’s a big responsibility, naming a new religion. What about, like…” She reaches through the driver-side window and plants a saintly bobblehead on the dash. “The Church of the Void.”

  Caspar sticks a sizable holy-balance decal on the hood. “We evil knights or something?”

  “I mean.” Jordan scratches her nose. “Yeah, brother. We are.”

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  “Sistornism,” offers Peat Moss.

  Jordan lets out an amused sniff. “We’ll workshop it.”

  Peat Moss taps his front hooves onto the hood and props himself up. “I wish I had hands so I could help.”

  “Take this.” Jordan pops a wreath around his neck. “Put it up on the roof.”

  With two graceful bounds, Peat Moss lights onto the hood and then the top of the van. He nudges the wreath into place around its antenna.

  Jordan whistles. “Little dude gets vertical.”

  Caspar nudges her. “Would you allow me an I told you so about him?”

  “Potty train him.” She swings the van door open. “Then you can told me so.”

  ???????????

  It’s Dawson Packard’s twelfth pilgrimage. Twelve long, frigid bus rides.

  His first pilgrimage, he’ll never forget. Mr. Nusom calling him into the office, his heart in his throat and his argument for keeping his job ready, only for the sausage-fingered foreman to tell him Dawson, you’re going to Pastornos. Long-haul trucker to pilgrim people-mover. And a 50% raise. The big Silverdart bus, the chattering joy of his passengers, and Pastornos. Beautiful Pastornos.

  By the fifth, the chants and songs and breathless tourism were starting to grate. By the eighth, it was just another damn task.

  That’s the thing about a dream job. You do it long enough and it’s a job.

  But there’s something about this time. Something different about this flock. It’s the offseason—Dawson always drives the offseason—which means half the attractions are shut down and none of the pilgrims have the scratch to afford an in-season ride to Relic City. The Railyard Society is as dirt-poor as any of Dawson’s clients. They raised the money to get across the Montane with extra shifts, phone-a-thons, and a packed calendar of bake sales.

  Dawson privately believes that most of his clients are wasting their damn times and their damn cash. By the time you’ve taken the airship and worked out the lodging and the transportation and arrived at the diocese and realized how lonely the road is for an offseason pilgrim, you’re often dispirited enough you just want to check the box, collect your brownie points with the Father, and get back home to Chamchek or Northward or wherever you came from.

  The Society has put a smile back on his face and belief back in his heart. When they got on his bus, they all insisted, one after the other, on shaking his hand. When they sing the songs, they sing rough and out-of-tune, but they sing with their whole souls. And when they come across the stranded van, with its hapless couple sitting on the roof and waving for aid, aid is what they give.

  Abraham Baker has a beautiful young fiancee and a real trash can of a van. The thing’s an eyesore with a loading bay full of Pastornos souvenir tapestries and religious finery, so thickly stacked that there’s barely room for the dog.

  “All we need’s a tow into Relic City,” he tells the Society, “and some good company along the way.”

  His wife is an absolute darling, sprightly and funny. After the first mile, she’s already got half the bus hypnotized. It’d be easy to get jealous of Abe, but he seems a decent guy. Big, not so bright. While she swaps stories of their life cobbling in Chamchek, Abe sits up front with Dawson, watching the miles go by.

  Dawson tells him of his struggle, of late. Of how hard it’s been to believe, even at the foot of belief’s throne.

  “I don’t know if it’s my place to give advice, sir,” Abraham says. “But what helped me was finding someone to believe in, over something.”

  “Father’s someone.”

  “Sure. But someone you can reach out and touch.”

  “Reckon I see what you mean.” Dawson downshifts. “Bit heretical the way you say it, though.” He chuckles. Abe joins him.

  Someone’s dug out an old dreadnaught acoustic and is hammering out the cowboy chords to Caravanner’s Communion. Dawson’s heard this road song what, fifty damn times. But there’s a thread of feeling to it today that’s rare. When Abe joins in with a honey-gold baritone, it’s hard to keep from believing in the people he’s carrying.

  A throng of rusted relict murder-angels were drawn to me by my flight from Eight. Small fry—I’ve destroyed a few thousand of these guys over the decades. But they provide good practice for our Ganea confrontation. Bina and I spend an amusing afternoon drawing them through a hedgerow of domed skyscrapers. We take turns being the bait and the ambush.

  Bina always eats them, which I don’t understand; there’s no soul within to consume, and this far out from the war for creation, the flesh tastes like sawdust.

  I catch one in my binding tentacles and pluck its razorwire feathers one by one. Within my prime form, I’m sitting on a paint-peeled swing set with Bina, watching my warlock sing.

  I sigh happily. “His voice is so lovely, isn’t it?”

  “Uh huh.” Bina’s swing squeaks as she rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet.

  My sister’s manifestation has undergone several subtle shifts that have added up to an unsubtle sum. She remains unmistakably monstrous, of course, her head still a collision between a bug and a wolf. But her compound eyes have grown more expressive, her lids lined and dusky. Her snout is cuter and more compact, more vulpine than lupine. The curves of her body have changed in their proportions. You need a certain amount of redistribution for bipedalism, I can tell you from experience, but her hips probably don’t need to be quite as shapely as they’ve become. Her pseudopods, which used to sprout from her willy-nilly, are concentrated now on her rear, and drape from her like a frilly, fanned tail.

  Bina has, to put it plainly, gotten sexy. To the point that now the average human might think so, if fur and paws don’t put them off. It’s happened slowly; I didn’t notice it until she started wearing clothing, interestingly enough. She walks around these days in baggy salwar pants and a silky green halter. Like she has something underneath to hide.

  She looks like one of those ancient animal-headed goddesses. Or, if you want to be lower-brow, one of those less-ancient cartoon characters that give youngsters unorthodox adulthood proclivities.

  “Bina,” I say. “What’s Jordan doing right now?”

  “Hmm?” She looks up. “Hiding in the van under all the stuff with a gun on Tilliam to keep his mouth shut.”

  “What’s she thinking about?”

  “She’s actually, well…” Bina smiles. “She’s telling me a story.”

  “Is she? What about?”

  “Just about growing up. The Chutes and this jerk they all called Cheeseface. Cheeseface!” She giggles. “What a nickname. Makes me glad I’m just Bean.”

  I lean my chin on my hand, trying to hide the satisfied suspicion purring in me.

  Bina sees something of it in my face. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve been watching her since she was a kid like you and Caspar, okay? She dropped into my lap. I have to catch up.”

  “Sure.” I push gently off from the ground and teeter back and forth. “It’s just that she calls you Bean too, sometimes. And I’ve noticed how little it bothers you.”

  Bina’s ear jolts like a fly landed on it.

  “How serious are these feelings you’re having for Jordan Darius?”

  “I don’t know. I mean—I’m not—I mean—UGH, Irene.” Bina flops backward, her head almost dragging against the ground. “This would be so much easier to say in Old One.”

  “I know, Bean. But you have to get used to talking about it like this. Jordan’s gonna want to.” I pause my swinging. “Do you think you’d enjoy sleeping with your warlock?”

  “I, uh…” Bina wrings one of her pseudopod tails in her fists. “I think yes.”

  I lean over and squeeze her shoulder. “Well, I think it’s a good idea.”

  She looks at me like I’m a distant shore after days adrift. “Do you?”

  “If it’s love, then that’s fabulous. If it’s just a quick lay, humans like that, too.” I raise a finger. “But one thing you don’t want to do is mix them up and get her confused.”

  “But I don’t know if it’s love,” Bina says. “I don’t know how it feels to love like a human.”

  “I’m not an expert,” I say. “I just have the one human. But maybe you can describe it to me and we’ll figure it out.”

  “Okay!” She clicks her heels together. “Uh. Let’s see. Every time I do something and Jordan’s not there, I think about how it would be if Jordan was there doing it with me, and every time I remember something I did before, I think oh I should tell Jordan about that. And when I think about the future, sometimes I imagine Jordan not being there, for no reason at all, really, and it upsets me. And I made that statue over there of Jordan. So I can look at her when she’s not looking in a mirror. And sometimes I just stare at it for twenty to thirty minutes.”

  She points into the tomb yard, and I notice for the first time that an impressively lifelike Jordan Darius is gazing at us with marble eyes.

  “And she’s started thinking these little jokes for me because she likes how much I laugh at her jokes, and even when they are really not funny at all, which is sort of often because she’s got a really corny sense of humor, I laugh and laugh at them. And she can’t even hear me. I just laugh. And then Jordan comes back…” Bina pauses.

  “Go on.”

  “She comes back and I have to stop myself from touching her, like poking her with my tendrils or pulling her hair. And I want to do things to her. Like I want to eat her.”

  “You want to eat her?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know. If I could eat her without hurting her or killing her or inconveniencing her in any way. There’s just this… aggression. Like I want to do something drastic. It’s just that she’s inside me, so it’s not like we can get any closer, but it’s not close enough. And that is how I feel, mostly.”

  “Okay.” I drum my fingers on the swing’s chain. “That’s all sounding… familiar, Bean.”

  “Do you want to eat Caspar?”

  “Kiiiind of.” I’m not used to being so abashed when I talk to Bina. “I think you’re running humanoid software on your Old One hardware. I think you might be horny for Jordan.”

  “Horny for Jordan.” Bina echoes me pensively. “Guess I wouldn’t know for sure unless I added some hormones and genitals and such.”

  “Uh huh. Do you want my advice?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Untether for a while. Take this Bina, the cute one with the butt, give her some human-ish brain juices, and untether her. I’ll transmit you the human systems I use. Endocrine, nervous. It’s all easy enough to integrate.”

  She frowns. “I thought you regretted untethering.”

  “I won’t lie. A healthy population of my logistical cortices did, and until we got into bed together I only had a very slim majority of my executive nodes in favor. But wow, have I changed my mind.” I kick my legs and propel myself into the air. “That’s love. It’s this weird achy hurt-y feeling, and it gets achier and achier, and then it gets just fantastic.”

  Bina stays grounded. “What if Jordan doesn’t want it? Won’t that hurt very badly?”

  “Probably, yes. Very badly. But that’s the risk. That’s part of it. Letting them in means opening this piece of you up for them. Vulnerability.”

  She puffs an annoyed sigh. “Well, that’s not fair.”

  “No it’s not.”

  She starts swinging as well. The swing set creaks in time with us. “How rotten.”

  “Yep.”

  “My old species would just indicate sexual readiness by turning our thoraxes yellow,” Bina says. “Much less confusing.”

  “Has it seemed like she wants it?”

  “Umm.” Bina hops off the swing set at the apex of her jump. Her vestigial wings beat in the air and give her a few extra inches. She lands lightly. “She’s looking at my butt when she thinks I don’t notice.”

  “Nice.” I skid to a halt. “Excellent. Good early indication. Caspar did that, y’know.”

  “He did?” She titters. “That big softie?”

  “The very same,” I say.

  “Okay.” She takes a deep breath and stretches her back. “Gimme the human brain juices.”

  "I should mention, Bina. The feelings can get strong enough to worm into the rest of you. I’ve detected Caspar-love throughout my prime form.”

  Bina’s eyes widen. “And you haven’t vented it?”

  I shake my head. “It feels too nice, and it's given me additional clarity and drive. The rational tradeoff—I think it’s worth it. And every time another of my shoals disagrees, it’s only until they get a taste of it, too. I’m harmonious on this, now. It might not be so severe, with you and Jordan.”

  “Well, now it’s a competition,” she says. “I bet I can get corrupted by love way harder than you can.”

  Our electrochemistry mingles for a moment as I speak your entire physiology to her in a few syllables. Don’t feel too put out; they’re very complicated syllables.

  She hums to herself as she interprets them and sets the pathways loose within her shifting body. “I can’t tell if this is a fantastic idea or a total disaster.”

  “I’m wagering both,” I say. “That’s humanity in a nutshell.”

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