On Sundays, Quill slept in. Not a lot, as there was Church to attend and he was a deeply religious man, but the three sandglasses he devoted to reading the paper was given over to sleep, as Sunday was a day off for everything. Everyone, he thought to himself, but priests themselves. There really ought to be some way of honoring the sabbath without making the representatives of the Lord give it up. Then again, as Quill recalled sleepily, relaxing under his covers, perhaps it fell in the category of survival, or labors of love. Didn’t the Savior heal people on the sabbath? Out of love. He was certain he had been told by someone that if you do what you love on the sabbath, not only is it not a violation of the One God’s Law, it is honoring the One God Himself. It would explain why parents were allowed to parent on Sundays, rather than releasing their feral spawn… Quill laughed. He adored children, and hoped to have one himself some day, but his impression of them was very much informed by his own experience of being a child. He had been adventurous, to put it mildly, and prone to not feeling the cold until he needed to plead entry to the nearest heated building. The worry he put his poor moms through. He sobered. He supposed he still put his moms through a fair amount of worry. But maybe that would change some day. He had heard encouraging news from Fief… what had he heard from Fief? The thought wouldn’t congeal. With a sigh, he supposed it was time to rise and pursue spiritual edification.
The Church resembled a church to perhaps a lesser extent than most, sparing every expense when it came to operation. It was a block-sized pyramid of granite, relying upon the insulation of a very great quantity of stone quarried incidentally to other Earth Guild projects. It did, at least, have the eight-point Star of God, and Quill splayed the fingers of his right hand over his heart in emulation of the God Star as he passed beneath it. Inside, there was a short tunnel, no other word sufficiently captured the claustrophobia of the space, leading to a reasonably spacious narthex.
He was immediately flagged down by Glue and Parchment, standing together just a little closer than friendship warranted. Somewhere inside of himself, Quill was jealous, between his failed romance and the delay of any overtures towards Denouement. Though what the romance of his friends had to do with his own romantic failures, he wasn’t sure. Quill suddenly remembered her kiss. Quill supposed a lesser man might make a joke about needing to make sure to stay on Denouement’s good side, but it would be a much lesser man, intolerably so by the standards of civilized society. Quill felt only a warm regard for another dimension of competence in a woman he supposed he should admit he was developing strong feelings for. No, he didn’t suppose, he knew for a fact. He was neither lesser nor the kind to play games of social dominance. He was secure in himself to a large extent, and the remainder he resolutely kept his own problem.
A tug at his arm pulled him out of his reverie, and he realized Denouement had attached herself to his arm. “Aren’t you going to escort me inside the chapel? Surely you’re not so distracted as to miss the bell and the laws of decorum?” Quill laughed, even as part of himself admonished him for allowing her the token intimacy. But surely, if Parchment and Glue could… but they weren’t engaged in business. Except hadn’t Glue involved themself in Denouement’s affairs, and hadn’t Parchment paid for something? They weren’t part of the library staff. But Denouement was entirely correct, the bell was ringing and it was too late by far to extricate himself from the duty, and privilege, of escorting Denouement along to his customary spot near the back of the cathedral.
He raised his voice, a common but not unpleasant baritone, and was pleased to hear Denouement’s soprano was clear and crisp as well as the congregation went through a welcome hymn. She did refer to the hymnal, but her presence alone was a joy regardless of whether she shared his devotion. His own inclination towards study and scholarship had led him to memorize vast swathes of the surviving liturgy and new works since the Age of Loss.
The priest made the sign of the God Star before the altar, and then led the congregation in prayer for their sins. Then followed another hymn full of joyful noise, one which even Denouement knew. “Even,” Quill chided himself, was an uncharitable extrapolation from only two data points. As a scholar, he should be better; as a man in love, he must do better.
Then the priest began the opening prayer. “Remember, beloved, that the existence of Reynaud, Power of Trickery, does not sanctify trickery. Rather, the Powers exist to protect humanity from the forces of evil, as Gotorjod the first dragon shielded humanity from the One God’s wrath when they first sinned.”
Denouement, Quill noticed, could wrinkle her nose most impressively when she found something distasteful. He agreed with the sentiment, and in wandering the fog of his thoughts as to why he found the subject of draconic mercy distasteful he missed much of the opening prayer, to no satisfactory result. He reflected that they lived in a blessed age of lore, as much of scripture had been reconstructed from hidden troves, the inspiration of prophets sent by the One God, and oral history.
The priest read from the Gospel, per usual, something Quill had almost committed to memory, and then launched with vigor into the sermon. “The trickery of sinners is an insidious and pernicious influence upon the soul of their fellows, to say nothing of the harm that can be done to the faithful. The evil one loves nothing so much as the despoiling of a sanctified soul.” He cleared his throat at the podium, and bowed his head piously. “I am loathe to do what must be done, but it must be done. Beloved, I move from purely spiritual matters, as befits this Age of Steel, to comment upon secular affairs as a spiritual authority. Published in the Coldpass Chronicle was an article which I found deeply disturbing, and showed a clear influence by the evil one. Indeed, it was anonymous and that in and of itself is a hallmark of malintent. Evil loves the shadows, while good goes about in the light.” Quill knew he would have read the column, but couldn’t call it to mind, and so listened attentively. “It suggested that the books stolen from the estimable Tome should be given a grace period during which they could be copied, as scripture was copied during the Age of Stone, at the end of which the originals could be returned to Tome without penalty. It stated that this was even a moral imperative by Tome’s own statement, that they were spiritual books with little to interest the seeker of wealth. That slipperiness of logic and ideal is the very trickery against which the faithful soul must guard itself. Tome, as he commented to the Chronicle, did not say they were scripture, but spiritual teachings concerning dragonkind. They are close to the very angels, closer than humanity, for they were cast out of the Garden for virtue of mercy rather than death by sin. This is apparent in their lasting on this Orth much more than the hundred and twenty years allotted to humankind. What is meant for them is not necessarily meant for us; this was true even in the Garden from which both they and humanity were cast.”
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The sermon continued in that vein, and Quill found himself numbly attentive, noting the words so that he could discuss them in the narthex but emotionally unengaged. His choice of church was largely dictated by the largest congregation, providing anonymity and easy avoidance of those who would take advantage of his being unarmed out of respect for the holy space. Incidentally, he knew his moms… the thought failed to finish itself. It was with a certain measure of relief that they progressed to further prayers, as for the congregation and those who needed spiritual support. It came as a surprise, though he chided himself for it, that one of the prayers called for conscience to call upon the thief who had stolen from Tome. He deposited the silver he purpose-carried at the offertory.
The service proceeded largely without incident after that, except for the surprise of Denouement declining to go up to take the Body of the Savior. Wholists took it more seriously than the burgeoning Witnessate faithful, but it was a sin to take it while ritually impure among Wholists. Quill indulged the fancy that she had attended services purely for the chance to see him, and wasn’t even Wholist. It might trouble him down the line, but for what was purely a nascent romance it signified less even than his being an Incarnate Wholist would have were she of the Faith.
In the narthex, one of the few truly warm places in Coldpass, Quill gravitated towards Parchment and Glue. Glue, he knew, had already made Denouement’s acquaintance, but Parchment perhaps had not. He made introductions, and Denouement smiled and patted his arm as she said, “If you’re friends of Quill, you’re friends of mine. Please, Quill in particular, call me Noue.” Delight and consternation ran through Quill at this declaration, for he had made clear that they needed to resolve their business before any kind of courtship. Then again, it was simply a familiar title, hardly a scandalous overture. Ultimately, he resolved to put the matter aside for the time being and allow himself the indulgence of calling her Noue.
He felt a vague unease, a chill down his spine, as Noue related in general terms that he had defended her honor the night before; it had hardly been necessary, but it had been ever so sweet. The memories of doing so mostly pertained to her kiss on his cheek, and he felt a hint of outside disgust that the kiss was all the memory the subject evoked. He wondered briefly if it was Burner, but felt an unqualified assurance that Burner was nothing like so subtle a touch as this. Which was its own kind of troubling, but this, too, his mind rejected thinking on, filing it away somewhere he couldn’t reach.
As he so often did, he set the matter aside for contemplation later, though he couldn’t place when or where until he was asking Parchment if they might take a private room at the Manners Lounge the following day. She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully and nodded, indicating that it could be arranged easily enough. Denouement, Noue, spoke up, asking to be included. She screwed up her face slightly as she asked, and Quill wondered if she felt the same shadow. For that matter, he wondered what Parchment and Glue were experiencing, or if he were uniquely the target of a sorcerous probe. Neither option appealed to him, and he made courteous farewells to Glue and Parchment, though he kept Noue on his arm.
He introduced her as a visiting investor interested in the trade through the Barbery Range to the northern oceans. This was entirely true, and yet he was uncertain how it related to his own business with her. Still, as a true statement it did not violate the Savior’s edict of speaking the truth, for He had left off keeping silent on the subject of sins. Indeed, Quill could call to mind several passages about the poisonous nature of an injudicious tongue.
The priest was interested in Noue, not in any untoward fashion, but as an attendee of a Wholist service who neither took communion nor had attended the classes prepared for converts to successfully attain a state of Grace. “Oh, you know, in the Fireplains there is much less of an organized Church,” she said blithely. “Everything is spread out, doctrine becomes fractured by schism or Witnessate influence because there’s simply so much space to wander about in. Barbery is, after all, largely mountain towns, is it not? And the forested segments that survive the burns of the Fireplains are less devout?” The priest uncomfortably acknowledged this was the case, that Mother Church struggled to hold on to its congregations closer to the borders of the Fireplains. “It keeps faith in the Father Supreme alive, though, wouldn’t you say? They still pray to the One God, just with differences of teaching.” The priest pointed out that his sermon that very day had illustrated the dangers of differences of doctrine. “Of course, theft is a sin,” she said blandly, “But what of retrieving stolen goods? Is that not theft in turn? The property has passed from one set of hands to another.” The priest seemed to regard this as the slipperiness of word that he had been warning about, and Noue clarified, “Dragons are hardly great writers of books. It is humans who do not rely upon memory, and so the books passed from hands which had hoarded them, for mites to consume, to the hands of mortal woman or man.” The priest disagreed vehemently, asserting that the role of dragons was to preserve knowledge against future Ages of Loss. Noue cut him off there, “Why would there be another Age of Loss? We don’t even know what caused the first one. Going further, why wouldn’t the course of action you decried as immoral help with the preservation of knowledge? Or to put it another way, isn’t it taking some of the burden of insulating humanity from their ignorance off the admittedly broad shoulders of dragonkind?” The priest had evidently taken as much as he was going to take, and suggested to Noue that there was a Witnessate church just a few blocks down the street where she might find a more receptive audience for her ideas. If it pleased her, he would encourage her to patronize that church rather than pollute the congregation. “I’m terribly sorry, Father, I meant only to engage in the free exchange of ideas.”
Quill came up beside her and murmured something to the effect that the purpose of the Wholist Church was the preservation of existing ideas, not the promulgation of new ones. “Then what is a man of learning doing somewhere so opposed to learning?” The question stung Quill, and he considered the matter seriously, long enough for Noue to clear her throat and ask, “Still in there?” He nodded, and replied that he attended the Wholist Church for the veneer of respectability which his occupation relied. Of course, a librarian could be eccentric fairly safely, but he knew that there was other matters at hand, even if he would be hard pressed to name them. With a sigh, he said they should discuss it the following evening. Noue looked at him thoughtfully, before a familiar vagueness passed over her face and she nodded. He was glad she hadn’t pressed, even her dialogue with the priest made him wonder if she shouldn’t spend more time associating with Glue.
