IBTRFL Chapter 11

Merka Remisa was, by most measures, a promising talent.

She had learned to read a full year ahead of her peers. She had distinguished herself in the monastery's coursework. Like nearly every parent in the world, Merka's mother and father adored their brilliant youngest daughter, and they had the means to act on it—a considerable fortune built hauling goods across battlefields, spent without hesitation on a daughter who was clearly going to amount to something.

By fourteen, Merka had enrolled at the university.

Merchant blood ran in her veins. The hunger to pursue knowledge was real enough, but it could not quite overwrite the deeper hunger for gold. So Merka settled on a solution that would let her have both: she would become a priest.

Study more faithfully than the others. Steal less than most. A perfectly achievable ambition.

With the wholehearted support of everyone around her, Merka had walked her gold-plated road without detour. Novice, deacon, priest—she had been ordained at a young age to become a true member of the clergy. She could practically see the vast storeroom filling with jewels and shimmering gold coins just ahead of her, nearly within reach.

Probably, if not for one man, that dream would have come true.

Merka knocked on the firmly shut door with a tired face.

"It's Merka Remisa."

She didn't wait for an answer. She pushed the door open.

The room's occupant was sprawled across a massive oak desk—custom-made, commissioned from a craftsman at considerable expense. The desk, which on any other day seemed to fill the room, looked small today. Fragile, even.

Merka crossed to the window, pulled back the curtain, and threw it open. A sharp cold wind tore through the room. The stale air that had been sitting there all night couldn't hold against the cheerful assault, and fled out into the morning.

"Bishop Valor. You need to get up."

"……hm?"

The firmly shut eyelids opened, slowly. Valor blinked several times, then hauled himself upright at roughly the pace of a man who hadn't agreed to be awake yet.

A long yawn, heavy with exhaustion, rolled through the study. Merka, with a face that had long since stopped registering any of this, continued with only what she had come to say.

"The results came in," she said, picking up where she'd left off, "on the Solbo bishop and priests you investigated without warning. Abuse of authority. Sacrilege. Murder. Several additional charges. The ruling is permanent excommunication—they'll be transferred to the Tower of Atonement this evening, where the excommunication mark will be burned into their faces."

Valor's eyelids had drifted partially shut again. The dull brown of his irises was visible only in a narrow strip, and exhaustion clung to his gaze like barnacles, thick and stubborn.

He yawned again, hugely, and then pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose—once, pressed again.

"……Mm. Seems a bit light for what I put into it. There's more, isn't there."

"Yes," Merka said, in the same dry tone. "They've also been sentenced to pilgrimage in chains. Until the chains at their ankles break."

The cruelest punishment that could be handed down to anyone who had once been clergy.

An iron chain with a heavy iron ball bound to the ankle. You wander the world until your last breath, working off your sins. The sanctity woven into the iron heals you—keeps you alive—and in exchange, you must make for the holy sites before that power runs out. Fail, and the chain tightens around your ankle, exacting a brutal toll for your sloth.

There was still salvation of a sort. If the chain at your ankle finally broke, you were freed—reinstated, a member of the clergy once more.

A somewhat formal, somewhat cynical salvation. But then, giving a sinner any hope at all was an act of genuine grace. That was what they said, anyway.

Valor finally smiled, satisfied.

"Not bad at all."

"You flagged that case so visibly, Bishop. That's why the ruling came down as it did. Any other case and they'd have gotten a few months' suspension and a confession. Done."

"Right. Because the Church is rotten."

Merka looked at her superior with a start. Valor shrugged, as though commenting on the weather.

"Isn't it true? Seven out of ten—no, more like seven out of ten—no qualifications, nothing but appetite. The number of people who are born to the divine gift is shrinking every year. If I were the goddess, I'd want to throw the whole lot out."

"……I can't argue with that."

"Exactly. That crazy, foul-mouthed old woman had her reasons for grinding me into this seat, I'll tell you that."

Merka adjusted her glasses and glanced sharply at the closed door beyond him. She was acutely aware of the possibility of someone on the other side.

"You're the only person in the world who refers to the Sacrosanct that way."

"Why not? People curse at God when no one's listening. Is a Pope exempt?"

"……I'd appreciate being left out of it, Bishop. Because of you, Bishop, there's a dream of mine that never got finished—getting rich. I'd very much like to return to that."

Valor let out a full laugh at that. Merka, expression unchanged, brought both hands up and covered her ears.

"Fair enough. Steal appropriately. Just don't get caught by me."

"……Is there any chance of you actually releasing me?"

"No."

Merka's face crumpled.

"You're too competent for me to give up," Valor said. "Stay until I'm dead. That's all I'm asking."

"If you sign over your effects to me, I'll consider it."

"……Surely not."

Valor stared at his subordinate with something very close to alarm. Merka smiled, thin and faintly unpleasant.

"Once you're canonized posthumously…" she said, as though working through a perfectly ordinary calculation, "…you know how it goes with collectors. Your relics alone would fetch a comfortable sum."

"You're not going to ask for my bones too, are you?"

"If you're offering, I'll gladly accept. Three boxes of gold coins, easily."

Talk of money made Merca's face bloom open.

Valor pushed his chair back as far as it would go. He knew her disposition well enough to be certain: this was not a joke. The chill that ran up the back of his neck confirmed it. He could picture it all too clearly—his own bones, gilded and ornamented, arranged before an audience of collectors.

"No," he said, without a trace of humor. "Absolutely not."

"Tch."

Merka clicked her tongue without apology and reached into her coat. She produced a letter.

The winter that had been frozen in Valor's expression thawed, all at once.

"That came from the girl."

"She writes so consistently." Valor looked at the worn yellow envelope with quiet satisfaction. "Surely that means Aer likes me, doesn't it?"

Merka made a sound in her throat, flat and unconvinced, and handed him cold water in the form of the truth.

"That girl—Aer—has never once sent the first letter. Your Excellency is the one who ends every letter begging for a reply."

"No, Aer likes me too."

Valor tucked the letter into his desk drawer. He'd open it later, when he was alone.

Watching him do this, Merka frowned slightly.

"You look exactly like an uncle who's lost his mind over his niece."

"Oh? How would you know what that looks like?"

"My own uncle looks at me that way."

Valor worked his jaw, considering. One hand went to his chin, where the beard he'd been neglecting had grown in rough and unruly. The scrape of it against his fingertips was oddly satisfying.

"Do I really look like that?"

"Yes. And—I did suppress it, but at first there were rumors among certain priests. That the girl might be your daughter. That sort of thing. There's no obvious reason for you to make an unannounced visit to Solbo, overturn the entire church there, and take such an interest in one orphan. I'm asking just in case. Is there something particular between you?"

Valor answered immediately.

"No. I'd genuinely never seen her before in my life."

"Then why do you take such an interest?"

The pointed question landed, and Valor went quiet.

A question he hadn't noticed he was carrying surfaced, blinking in the light. Why, exactly, was he so invested in a small orphan with violet eyes?

There had been a clear enough reason to go to Solbo in the first place. And once the church had been cleaned out and the orphanage's conditions improved, there was nothing left to do, strictly speaking. He could have sent a competent inspector to file periodic reports. That would have been sufficient.

And yet. Was it pity for a small, unlucky life? A sense that this particular child would someday be a light in whatever darkness was coming?

Valor made a low, thoughtful sound.

Unlucky circumstances were not rare in the world as it stood, and the reasoning felt more personal than any investment calculation.

More immediate. Warmer.

That was it.

Yes—he cherished that small, scruffy child, deep in his soul.

Sometimes gladness. Sometimes something tender. Sometimes a feeling that simply stuck to him.

The feeling that a child he had known for only a few months could produce—it was more varied than anything he'd gotten from a relationship of years.

Valor had been sitting with his chin in his hand for some time before he decided to stop.

What was the point of complicating it. The heart moves where it moves.

"Well—if it makes me happy," he said, teeth showing in a wide, playful grin, "that's enough."

Merka let out a long-suffering sigh. She had known it would come to this.