Word had evidently not spread as far as West Helland of their criminality. There was some trouble at the dock over their being hearts visiting a colony nation, but no mere three of diamonds was going to tell a seven what she could and couldn’t do. She was stamped, issued three papers, and informed that a requested verification of her travel visa would go out with the next ship. Sent with the request was a spirit magic copy of her caste papers. She said that was fine, and didn’t say that she eagerly awaited their attempts to arrest her. She just hoped Irons and Ruler could get away with disappearing into the city.

  Within hours, they had secured port quarters for themselves. The quarters they had acquired included a full bedroom for Daisy, but only token servant quarters for Ruler and Irons. When Daisy attempted to insist that Ruler take the larger bed, her sense of justice offended, he demurred. When pressed, Irons explained that, should someone intrude and find Ruler in her bed, that she had taken him—ahem—as a lover, and that would do a great deal to counteract her assigned status. Well, they were going to counteract a whole lot more status; he nonetheless insisted on taking the servants’ quarters.

  They made a print order—more expensive in West Helland—and distributed tablets. While they might be heretics, they weren’t going to be ashamed heretics, and that might make persecuting them harder, assuming it wasn’t another kangaroo court. They were acutely aware that news of their heresy could arrive any day by boat, and that at longest they had until Honeystone officials got the official request for validation of her papers.

  “The Savior died for all sin, not just the sins of the elect! It is a lie spread by those in power to legitimize their control of your planet! Yes, planet! You live on Marz, fourth planet from the orb of Heaven, not even the most distant! I myself come from Jupitre, and I can tell you it is a cold and beautiful place!” She’d just leave out that it was the closest mortal approximation of Hell there was, being the Kingdom of Air. The odds any of these people would ever see Jupitre seemed slim, and she would encourage any curious individuals to return to Orth. “The Supreme Creator does not hate what He created! How could He, being a God of love?!” Once again, Daisy offered up a silent prayer of apology to that priestess she first confronted, for proclamations were something sermonizing lent itself to. At least when you were trying to get attention. At least she didn’t—to be fair couldn’t—accompany each proclamation with a psychic slap. The words of the gutfish, still curious in their greasy gentility, came into her mind that she could always seek a draconic patron long enough to get trepanned, if she wanted to be able to.

  Ruler wandered on the periphery, the short range of his own psi no longer relevant, and spoke Lider to the people, telling them of the oppression of the dragons. Daisy noticed that even though he took a noon nap, his gutfish had no such compunctions. But it was his distance that led Daisy to initially be ignorant of the fact he was being confronted. When his gutfish finally signaled distress, it took her time to wade through a crowd curious to know where she was going. The crackle of psi was palpable, and suddenly the words of those around her were not accompanied by the gutfish’s translation. Irons was shouting, although Daisy wasn’t sure what.

  She hurried.

  Irons blended into the crowd, but they were watching carefully. Hand to his temple, clearly trying to resist a superior force, Ruler stood opposite three individuals each with their hair kept short, clearly showing off their trepanation scars. Daisy didn’t hesitate to rap one of them in the head with her staff and then demand to know what they thought they were doing to her prophet. They turned to face her, looking confused, while Ruler laughed weakly and sagged against a wall. “Th-they can’t understand you, Daisy. M-my gutfish was busy helping shield me.”

  “Then now that they’re distracted, translate!” Daisy waited for the presence of the gutfish in her mind, though it was a little unsettling to see the words to say appear before she’d finished her thought. “What do you think you are doing with my prophet?!”

  One of them—a four of spades, what were spades again? Military? Colonial police? Something like that—turned to her with a sneer. “Your prophet? Who might you be?”

  “I am Bachelor Daisy and I am the wrath that makes prophecy heard! Now answer my question before I concuss the rest of you!”

  They took a step back at that, and Daisy wasted no time in closing the distance. They seemed not to have remembered their psi, or perhaps were spooked by Ruler appearing to hold the three of them off on his own. “He’s spreading heresy. The real kind, not whatever you’re printing on these tablets. A war between dragons and humans will never happen, there are rules in place to keep it from happening.”

  “If it won’t happen, then why do you care?!” Daisy was still incensed, and the gutfish was snickering in her mind at the possessive pronoun.

  Then Ruler went rigid and stood upright, light shining down upon him with particular intensity. “The days of dragons are numbered by My hand, they will not oppress My people for much longer. For I have seen the souls sent on to Heaven, those turned from My worship and those lost to violence. The proxy war has gone on long enough. So I have said, and so it shall be, that the people shall rise up and put an end to their oppressors!” Ruler slumped against the wall again.

  The three psions looked at each other uneasily. “Whence did you get your powers, servant? Only a dragon can award psi. You should be warning dragons, not mortals.”

  Ruler replied in a low voice, “My dragon made herself known to me as Sritzan. She is an air dragon on Orth. She believes in coexistence, without the wasting of human life as little more than pawns.”

  The other conscious dragon servant, a five of diamonds, stepped forward eagerly. “Then it’s true?! There are other planets? This isn’t Hel—” She was cut off by the spade’s angry gesture.

  “This isn’t over.” He looked disdainfully at Daisy and her staff. “Keep on like this and you’ll get nothing but trouble.”

  Daisy laughed. “You think I don’t know what happens to prophets? I’ve made peace with my God, go make peace with your own. For what the Lord has said will assuredly come to pass.” She knelt by Ruler, and said, “You really do have the gift of prophecy. Now just to get you some wrath and we’ll spread the word.”

  Ruler shook his head. “You’ve taken that job, I think.”

  Irons rushed over and hugged the both of them, unusually demonstrative but not unwelcome. “I’m so glad you’re okay! That was almost as frightening as being arrested!”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Someone from the crowd, which had shifted to encircle them, shouted, “Way to show those bullies!”

  “They think because they serve a dragon they’re any less damned than we are!”

  Daisy turned and shook her head. “None of you are damned! Aren’t you listening?”

  The person next to the one who had spoken nudged him in the side, saying, “Yeah. We’re not on Hell, we’re just on the fire planet. Dragons. Donjons. Both of them keep us under their thumb. The Savior died for our sins, and assuredly it was a terrible death, but He returned. We’ll all return. We have nothing to fear in this life, because the next is where we’ll spend eternity. And it won’t be here.”

  Daisy grinned, immensely gratified that at least one person had been listening. She continued speaking about love, caring, and fellowship. She spoke of freedom from the chains of sin, and that the Word of God could break any fetter of the Enemy, who could only lie and say you were chained to the ground.

  Toward the end of the day, she took Ruler aside and spoke with him. Well, okay, she spoke, but that wasn’t all she did. “I’m glad you’re okay. I was worried when the gutfish went silent.”

  “I-I-I’m flattered by your concern.” Ruler looked uncertain what to do with his hands. Daisy took them in hers, and she kissed him. It was a gentle kiss, and when their lips parted it was only the merest breath apart, inhaling one another’s exhalations. Daisy wrapped her arms around Ruler and kissed him again, pressing her lips more forcefully against his, sighing gently into his mouth, feeling their noses brush against each other. Her arms wrapped around him, she was very aware that while she was tall, he was nearly as tall, and in the short sleeved shirts favored by the populace she could feel the skin of his neck on the skin of her arms. They remained like that until his gutfish cleared its throat and reminded them they had an audience.

  Day by day, as she sermonized, intensely aware that her time was limited, Daisy made sure to provide a solid foundation in the Gospel. Irons attracted a smaller circle of people, those who didn’t speak Lider, and translated—Daisy amended her thought. In all likelihood Irons knew the Gospel well enough to preach in their own right—to the people who only spoke Marzeilles. Meanwhile, Ruler warned people of the troubled times ahead. He didn’t make as much progress as she did, but then he had the heavier burden. Eventually, Daisy had to summon water in public, their funds running low; as before she offered it for free and had people pay only what they thought was just. One morning, after a late start from a late-night conversation with Ruler and Irons about the finer differences between Unchained and Clockmakers, she found one of the native Hellanders preaching the Gospel to a smaller—but present—crowd. She laughed and took the younger woman aside, encouraging her to spread the Word here, while she moved inland.

  The woman, named Excoriate Error but going by Corrie, flushed and apologized for her overstepping. She would not presume to preach again. Daisy rebuked that sentiment, garnering a confused look. Briefly, Daisy looked to Heaven and prayed for this people. “I am glad you are preaching the Gospel, Corrie. That is a necessary part of making change. I am not moving on punitively, I am moving on because my work here, of sowing seeds, has been done.” Corrie shook her head and gestured Daisy towards her typical spot, but Daisy shook her head in turn.

  “Do you know what will come of dragonkind? Do you know that the Savior and Supreme love everyone? Then the Spirit will tell you the rest of what you need to know. One God go with you, Corrie.” Daisy was turning to go when there was a cry from the edge of the crowd. Nephilim, from the looks of their red-scaled skin, were bludgeoning those on the periphery, though they seemed not to have noticed Ruler yet. Briefly, Daisy asked herself if there was no end to the enemies mounted against them.

  Quickly, she asked the gutfish to look around and highlight the nephilim for her. Aware intellectually of their location, she summoned water and splashed it in her face. This would be difficult. She felt the coolness of the water, and tuned into it, meditating on its nature. It flowed, it was slow and strong. She shared that strength. Trying to ignore the cries of those in the crowd, she breathed deeply, feeling the wetness make her want to cough as it went up her nose. Then she opened her eyes, reached towards the nephilim, and worked her sorcery.

  She wasn’t sure, at first, whether what she had done had worked. There was still screaming; a panicked crowd didn’t calm down quickly, and people were already injured. But the tenor of the screaming changed, from one of fear to one of anger. She listened carefully and heard retching and coughing. A smile spread across her face. She’d never experimented with humors before, but phlegm was the humor associated with water, so it should have worked and it did. She had emptied the reserves of the humor into their sinuses and down their throats, making them cough and choke. They could breathe, she hoped, but not comfortably, and exertion—such as beating down helpless diamonds—was right out until they figured out what was going on and cleared their sinuses.

  She projected, calling, “Don’t hurt them! Remember the Gospels! ‘But I tell you, don’t resist him who is evil; but whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also’!” Daisy thought to herself that she had perhaps not been the best model of this, having struck down the dragon disciples the other day, but the Lord knew everyone was imperfect. And maybe He didn’t have some days like it, but Daisy certainly had days where the solution to the problem seemed like a sound crack to the noggin with her dragon staff. She pushed through the crowd towards the nephilim, mentally having the gutfish ask Ruler and Irons to do the same.

  But the crowd was full of fire, and the nephilim fled before Daisy could make her way through the mass of bodies. She had hoped to interrogate them, find out whether they were opposed on three fronts—oy—or just two. Again, oy. When did two massed enemies seem like the less daunting prospect? Well, she supposed it was less daunting, but she was barely even worried if it was two. At least, she thought wryly, it wasn’t an entire planet’s system of governance and religion. Oh wait, yes, it was exactly that. Why wasn’t she shaking in her boots?

  “Because you are a stone cold revolutionary at heart, and you’re buying your own rhetoric. There’s nothing they can do to take away your final reward, and I’m pretty sure I see something in your brain about martyrs getting the good Heaven,” the gutfish supplied. “And before you ask, you got used to me being in your brain about three days ago.”

  Daisy thought back, “Wouldn’t water sorcery be able to do something with the immortal soul? I can reflect the light of mine.”

  “Couldn’t wouldn’t can’t, these schmucks don’t even believe water sorcery exists. Your eternal reward is assured. Me, I’ll take ageless immortality, but for a human you’re as safe as it gets.”

  Daisy regrouped with Irons, Ruler, and Corrie. “It seems I will be staying a while longer. I had no idea that the Powers that Be,” the gutfish, despite not seeming to have lungs, nonetheless managed a creditable mental coughing sound, “were so opposed to what we’ve been up to. Corrie, would you like to join Irons in preaching the Gospel in Marzeilles while Ruler and I make sure things stay safe?”

  Corrie’s eyes got round. “You mean you’d actually let me do that?!”

  “I was about to before the encounter with the nephilim. Until I know if they’re acting in an official capacity, I don’t want to leave you all alone here. And since we’ve got their attention, I think now is the time to do something a little bigger.”

  Ruler huffed. “Bigger how? You’re already pulling people away from their work for days at a time.”

  Irons shuddered. “They won’t like that, once it sinks in. Meeting your quota is the only way to work off the burden you incur by being sinful. Erm, so they say.”

  “Now we take our sedate, quiet crowd, and we get them to march on the city hall bank. Which is, by the way, absolutely blasphemous. ‘You cannot serve both God and Greed.’”

  Irons grinned. “I’ve heard you quote that one before.”

  Corrie looked frightened, but excited. “So how are we doing this?”