serve mortals, to wander as one of them, unknown, commanding only what wealth and respect I can earn. It has been made clear to me that I must do that by wandering alone.”
“Yes,” says Glee, unruffled. “I have no intention of traveling with you. I’ll simply wander alone, too . And if I sleep in the same hostels and work the same jobs and eat in the same restaurants, it will be merely coincidence.”
His eyebrows flicker minutely—and deliberately—and at last her certainty returns. Yes, that is pleasure.
“Very well, Daughter,” he says, and oh, the frisson of that acknowledgment. At the beginning of time, Itempas created family and all the complex rules and hierarchies of power that govern it, and in this instant she feels all the responsibilities and honor of that structure snap into place around her. “I wish you well in your journey.”
Then he rises, placing a coin on the table to pay for the beer he ordered but did not drink, and walks out. Glee takes the beer, and when she has finished it, she leaves as well. When she steps outside, she sees him standing in the doorway of a hostel across the street, gazing idly at the horizon as if that is a thing the god of personified purpose would ever do. He turns, his gaze passing carelessly over her as she stands there, and heads inside.
She takes a deep breath and says to herself, “I suppose I should find somewhere to sleep for tonight.” As if talking to herself without reason is a thing she would ever do. But there are those who watch without eyes and listen without ears in this realm, and this is a new ritual that has been designed for their sake.
And how convenient: a hostel is right there.
This small battle won marks the beginning of a time of change. She travels alone—with Itempas—from there forth. Here is his ritual of atonement: each town or community he visits merits one month of his time. When he arrives in a new place, he first secures employment in order to contribute to the community and earn resources for himself. Sometimes the jobs include shelter and meals, sometimes just wages. The work varies, though it is generally manual and miserable: construction and repair, ship unloading or crewing, inventorying crates full of toxins in a poorly ventilated warehouse. He will not allow her to take these jobs alongside him. If she tries, he tells her not to; if she does it anyway, he quits and moves on to the next town early.
Glee doesn’t understand it, but she stops trying to subvert his plans. Instead she finds her own jobs, generally somewhere close to where he is working, and to the degree that these jobs allow, she observes him. (It is wasteful, disrespectful of his time, to ask questions if she can figure out the answers herself.) Finally the pattern becomes clear to her: the jobs he takes are all dangerous . Time and again she is called to see to Itempas’s remains after he falls off unstable roofs or poorly made gangplanks. His purpled lips and staring eyes chastise neglectful factory owners and slumlords to rethink their business practices. And by using his own semi-mortal flesh to do such work, he keeps true mortals from being injured or killed in his stead. It is effective, if violent; some communities are angered when newcomers die horribly, and this pushes the unscrupulous to change their ways. He saves many lives by the repeated destruction of his own.
It is also, Glee decides, horrifically inefficient. Mortal emotions are too fickle to reliably manipulate in this manner. For every town Itempas successfully reforms, there are ten others that care nothing for the deaths of strangers—especially when those strangers have white hair, or black skin, or cheap clothing, or male genitals, or Itempas’s haughty manner of speaking. Some towns like him for the same random things that other towns hate him for, yet still the outcome of his presence is never certain. There’s no sense to it.
Glee discusses this with her father sometimes
“Yes,” says Glee, unruffled. “I have no intention of traveling with you. I’ll simply wander alone, too . And if I sleep in the same hostels and work the same jobs and eat in the same restaurants, it will be merely coincidence.”
His eyebrows flicker minutely—and deliberately—and at last her certainty returns. Yes, that is pleasure.
“Very well, Daughter,” he says, and oh, the frisson of that acknowledgment. At the beginning of time, Itempas created family and all the complex rules and hierarchies of power that govern it, and in this instant she feels all the responsibilities and honor of that structure snap into place around her. “I wish you well in your journey.”
Then he rises, placing a coin on the table to pay for the beer he ordered but did not drink, and walks out. Glee takes the beer, and when she has finished it, she leaves as well. When she steps outside, she sees him standing in the doorway of a hostel across the street, gazing idly at the horizon as if that is a thing the god of personified purpose would ever do. He turns, his gaze passing carelessly over her as she stands there, and heads inside.
She takes a deep breath and says to herself, “I suppose I should find somewhere to sleep for tonight.” As if talking to herself without reason is a thing she would ever do. But there are those who watch without eyes and listen without ears in this realm, and this is a new ritual that has been designed for their sake.
And how convenient: a hostel is right there.
This small battle won marks the beginning of a time of change. She travels alone—with Itempas—from there forth. Here is his ritual of atonement: each town or community he visits merits one month of his time. When he arrives in a new place, he first secures employment in order to contribute to the community and earn resources for himself. Sometimes the jobs include shelter and meals, sometimes just wages. The work varies, though it is generally manual and miserable: construction and repair, ship unloading or crewing, inventorying crates full of toxins in a poorly ventilated warehouse. He will not allow her to take these jobs alongside him. If she tries, he tells her not to; if she does it anyway, he quits and moves on to the next town early.
Glee doesn’t understand it, but she stops trying to subvert his plans. Instead she finds her own jobs, generally somewhere close to where he is working, and to the degree that these jobs allow, she observes him. (It is wasteful, disrespectful of his time, to ask questions if she can figure out the answers herself.) Finally the pattern becomes clear to her: the jobs he takes are all dangerous . Time and again she is called to see to Itempas’s remains after he falls off unstable roofs or poorly made gangplanks. His purpled lips and staring eyes chastise neglectful factory owners and slumlords to rethink their business practices. And by using his own semi-mortal flesh to do such work, he keeps true mortals from being injured or killed in his stead. It is effective, if violent; some communities are angered when newcomers die horribly, and this pushes the unscrupulous to change their ways. He saves many lives by the repeated destruction of his own.
It is also, Glee decides, horrifically inefficient. Mortal emotions are too fickle to reliably manipulate in this manner. For every town Itempas successfully reforms, there are ten others that care nothing for the deaths of strangers—especially when those strangers have white hair, or black skin, or cheap clothing, or male genitals, or Itempas’s haughty manner of speaking. Some towns like him for the same random things that other towns hate him for, yet still the outcome of his presence is never certain. There’s no sense to it.
Glee discusses this with her father sometimes
Similar Books
