“This is all so…” The owl-kin’s feathered ears twitched as Tinidan searched for the word he was looking for. “Unexpected!”

  I sighed. I had sent a message ahead of us that included all the relevant details when we got to the first beast-kin village. A single beast-kin warrior couldn’t travel much faster than a small party, but the equation changed when that party contained a few fragile Level Ones.

  The fastest way would have been to simply carry the helpless ex-gods and travel at full speed, but the gods, and our escorting elves, felt that would be beneath their dignity. So we carried them in a metaphorical sense, keeping them alive as we trudged through the forest at speeds a normal human could maintain.

  Fyskel, Naldyna and Duit were all Level Two now, through no real effort of their own. The real effort had been put in by me, convincing the escorts to allow the group to “participate” in the encounters on the way back. That meant allowing them to come close enough to the fight to count as in danger, while not allowing them to come into any real peril. I’d hoped to get them to Level Three, but our high levels sucked all the experience out of any encounter we were in.

  So Tinidan had been warned, he simply hadn’t believed me. Now the Temple—if that was the right word for a group so profoundly disorganised—was all aflutter at the prospect of hosting their favourite god.

  The other gods had made much less of an impact and had received a much cooler welcome. Duit had affected a standoffish attitude that the beast-kin were happy to reciprocate. Fyskel was more friendly, apparently undiscouraged by the lacklustre response. Eventually, some more friendly beast-kin showed up. They didn’t wear robes, but I suspected that I was looking at the local members of his priesthood.

  They were heavily outnumbered by Naldyna’s worshippers, though, who seemed ecstatic at the chance to shake hands, hug or kiss the physical form of their goddess. They turned our walk through the city into a parade, eager to usher her into taking a seat under their most holy tree.

  Since that was also the political centre of the city, that was where we were going as well. Tinidan had come to meet me—and his apprentice, Lira. Now he was walking by my side, along with Duit and Felicia. The four of us were kept in a bubble, kept safe by Cloridan, Kyle and our elf guards.

  “I’m surprised that Naldyna hasn’t tried to turn them all against us, as the ones that refused to give you back your powers,” I said to Duit.

  She glared at me but kept her answer polite. I wasn’t sure if that was because she was always polite, or if she recognised the difference in our levels.

  “Naldyna is very… accepting,” she said sourly. “She does not believe in control of any kind. I am surprised that she hasn’t spent this trip screaming at you, but I suppose that she is under the same constraints as I.”

  “You mean, she won’t come after me directly right now, because that would be suicide, and she doesn’t want to motivate her followers to do… anything?”

  “Correct,” Duit said. “It might be different if there was a remote possibility of getting the decision reversed, but Naldyna does not seek revenge on those who have wronged her.”

  Duit’s body language was telling me clearly that the same did not hold true for her. She was trying to hide it, no doubt for fear that I would eliminate a future problem by eliminating her. Now that she was Level Two we didn’t have to worry so much about killing her accidentally, but deliberate attacks were still going to succeed no matter what she tried to do about them.

  The Church of Life was a considerable force in Latora. I got the feeling that once Duit reconnected they would be coming after me in force. Concerning as that was, I had more immediate concerns.

  “I am going to be able to meet with the Council when we get to the tree, right?” I asked Tinidan. “It’s not going to be taken over by all… this?”

  I gestured at the procession in front of me. They had found a litter from somewhere and placed Naldyna on it. This greatly sped up their progress, as the bearers could walk much faster than the goddess could. It also meant that she couldn’t stop every step to greet every fervent believer who crossed her path. She was reduced to waving at them as they went by, a much more efficient procedure.

  Part of me marvelled at the fact that the beast-kin had managed to come up with a method that wasn’t the least efficient option possible.

  “Oh, yes, don’t worry,” Tinidan said. “I admit that we might not have believed everything in your letter, but the fact of your return couldn’t be doubted.”

  “The council isn’t going to get distracted by this… celebration?”

  I wasn’t sure if celebration was the word. Naldyna was happy to be among her people but she wasn’t happy about losing her powers. Even if she did disdain controlling her followers, they were sure to pick up on that eventually.

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  Tinidan seemed to understand my concern. “I think celebration is correct,” he told me. “If only Naldyna had been affected in this way there would be much more concern, but the playing field remains even. And removing Ashmor from this world is… a considerable achievement.”

  He looked over at Cloridan, with something approaching awe.

  “Don’t say that where Fyskel can hear you,” I said.

  “Their relationship stretches—stretched— further than the existence of this world, Kandis Hammond,” Duit said sternly. “It was deeper and more complex than anything you are capable of understanding.”

  “Yeah, us mortals don’t go much deeper than ‘I don’t want to die’,” I said.

  “A phrase I appreciate in a new light,” Duit said bitterly. “My own feelings about Ashmor are… conflicted.”

  “Yeah, he did say that you all made deals with him, even though he was outside the Game. How many of those deals did you regret?”

  “Many,” Duit admitted. “But not all, or even most.”

  Each one of those deals amounted to someone or something that Duit wanted destroyed, I reminded myself. Something that she couldn’t convince the other gods to go along with. Even if you thought that the Game was a good way to limit the damage from the gods’ actions, the corrupting influence of Ashmor was always there.

  I made the right decision, I assured myself. This world is better off without gods.

  “As to whether the Council will get caught up in the festivities…” Tinidan said thoughtfully. “Perhaps a little. But it will only be a small delay.”

  “A small delay?” I asked incredulously. “These guys look like they’re going to be drinking for the next week.”

  Tinidan laughed, but he didn’t deny what I said.

  “The Council is made up of elders, they’re more responsible than that,” he said. “And besides…”

  He looked at me quizzically. “You weren’t expecting to wrap this up in a single day, were you?”

  I groaned. Tribal politics were going to be the death of me.

  “We are forced to admit that you have achieved everything that we could have hoped for… and more.” Kael Ironhide’s smile belied his reluctant admission. The words he spoke were not his, but were the product of a committee, endlessly hashed out between the council elders. There were a few voices there that wanted to cast all my achievements in the worst light, to deny that I’d helped… but they couldn’t argue with the results in front of their eyes. The wording was a concession, to ease them into the consensus.

  Kael was not on one of those factions, however, so his smile was as genuine as a politician’s smile ever got. He was on the Trade Faction, as I called it, so my success was his political advantage.

  “As such, the Council has agreed to support your novel modifications to our laws to allow for registered business corporations.”

  Oh yes. “I suppose that the details have been hashed out already?” I asked.

  “Indeed,” Kael said. The bear-kin handed me a loose stack of papers. I went over it quickly. On my last visit, I’d provided them with an outline of the regulations I was familiar with, and the reasoning behind them. Some changes were expected, if only to assert their sovereignty, but this… I could work with this.

  One of the drawbacks of making changes to a regulatory framework that had been fought over for two hundred years was that the changes tended to make it less confining. I pointed at one particular clause.

  “I did warn you guys about the loopholes this opens up for avoiding taxes.”

  Zara Nightshadow, a wolf-kin who had absorbed my lessons last time more quickly than the others, sighed. “I know,” she said. “But the wider group couldn’t be convinced.”

  “I will hold off on exploiting it until I hear others have started doing it,” I said magnanimously.

  “I’d actually prefer it if you didn’t,” Zara said. Her ears twitched with irritation. “The sooner it gets exploited, the sooner I can convince them to change it.”

  “Yeah, no thanks,” I countered. “That would also make it easier for the isolationists to scapegoat me for tax evasion.” I glanced over at Thorne Emberstripe, leader of the isolationists, and one of the ones who had been hardest to win over. I wondered if ‘scapegoat’ was translating correctly. A direct translation might be offensive to goat-kin. Not that there were any in the room, but…

  “We’ve also prepared a suitable reward in the form of trade goods,” Kael said, getting the conversation back on track. “The result was too much for your party to carry, so we also hired a caravan. He handed me a sheet with the details.

  “Fantastic, thank you very much,” I said, perusing the list. Just a quick glance now would let me go over it in detail using [Memorise].

  “As for your other, revelations,” Kael said delicately. “We weren’t able to come to an agreement as to what a suitable reward should be for killing Ashmor. Or for bringing Naldyna to us. Of course, there are those who say you should be punished for severing her in the first place.”

  “Is that what you’re calling it?” I asked.

  “For now,” he said, shrugging.

  “Well that seems fair,” I allowed. “If you are feeling a little bit indebted to me, there’s a meeting you could help arrange.”

  “You’ve got some nerve,” Naldyna said, “coming to me and asking for favours after what you did.”

  She leaned back into her… throne, for want of a better word. It was a seat that was raised up above me, meeting the basic definition. However, it was woven out of still-living vines, making it more of an upright hammock. It looked more comfortable than the average throne.

  Naldyna herself was looking more fresh and vital than she had when we left the elves. Her hair was still made of plants, a sign that while she might not be a god anymore, she wasn’t entirely human either.

  “You’re going to be a major political force within the tribes, who are my immediate neighbours and trading partners,” I said. “I can’t ignore you. It’s understandable that you disagree with the choice I made, but it’s done. You need to deal with it and move on.”

  “Deal with it?” Naldyna exclaimed, her voice rising. “How can I deal with it? I can’t even comprehend the magnitude of my loss any more! How can I move on, when every part of this stifling mortal existence reminds me of what I lost?”

  I swallowed nervously and readied a quick [Greater Invisibility]. But bankers have no souls and I couldn’t show weakness.

  “I’m sure you’ve gathered enough followers by now to kill me, if that’s what you want,” I said. “But—”

  “Oh, how I wish I could,” Naldyna snarled. “But—part of me thinks you might have been right.”