Andric: Chapter 3

Since a lot more people than I expected were interested in this, here's another chapter. ~Eric

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Varant eyed the woman suspiciously. Her being here, now, when all of this happened, was a little… No, it was far too convenient to be mere coincidence. Had she somehow instigated that attack an Andric? It wasn’t really her style, but he was basing that assessment on the woman he’d known eight years ago. She might have grown subtler in his time away. At the very least, it wasn’t beyond her capabilities to egg a foolish young man into an even more foolish attack. She rolled her eyes at him.

“Gods above, I can hear all those tiny gears in your head spinning and spinning. This,” she said with an all-encompassing gesture, “wasn’t my fault.”

“Is that so?” asked Varant, kneeling down to check on Andric’s condition. “You just happened to be here?”

“I never just happen to be anywhere,” she said. “I’ve been here dozens of times to spy on you. I can’t believe you never noticed.”

“I wasn’t looking. That was the point of coming here. It was so I wouldn’t need to notice people trying to spy on me, assassinate me, or use me. Why were you spying on me? Shenti’s orders? Did she think I wouldn’t hold up my end?”

“Of course, she didn’t think that. This was all me. I just couldn’t believe that you had it in you to be boring for this long. I was stunned when I saw that you had this unchosen,” she pointed at Andric with her sword. “Is he some manner of pet?”

Varant looked up with a very flat gaze.

“No, Zera. He is most certainly not a pet.”

“Alright. I was just asking. No need for the death eyes. It’d figure that would be the thing you’re still great at. How am I supposed to know what he is to you?”

“I thought you’ve been spying on me.”

“From a distance. It’s not like I’ve been listening in on your, well, it’s not like you have conversations with most people. I haven’t been listening in on you grunting lone syllables at people.”

Varant grunted a meaningless syllable at her as he carefully placed Andric’s injured hand onto the boy’s chest. As gently as he could, he lifted the boy and started walking toward the temple. Zera all but skipped along at his side. The townspeople scattered at their approach. Something that seemed to make Zera even happier. Varant shot her a sidelong look.

“Why are you so happy?” he asked.

“Because you can’t hide here anymore,” she said. “Now, you’ll have to stop playing a common shopkeeper, come home, and be yourself again.”

Varant didn’t say anything to that. It was one possibility. It just wasn’t the only possibility. He had other, more extreme options available to him. He just wasn’t eager to take any of them. It was one thing to live on the outskirts of his home nation. It was something else to abandon it entirely. That option would come with a host of its own problems.

“Why are you making that face?” asked Zera, no longer looking happy.

“I haven’t decided to go back,” he said bluntly.

Zera glared at the side of his head.

“I know I didn’t just hear you say something that stupid.”

“It’s not as simple as you like to think it is, Zera.”

“What’s not simple about it? You come back. You take up your position. Things go back to the way they were.”

“Do you really expect that everyone will be as happy about that as you?”

“Who cares about them?” asked Zera with a dismissive gesture.

“I do,” snapped Varant. “And things won’t just go back to the way they were. You must realize that. I left a lot of enemies behind. I haven’t forgotten about them. I doubt they’ve forgotten about me. If I just show up, it’ll mean rivers of blood.”

“I like rivers of blood. Or has your memory slipped in your old age?” asked Zera. “If your enemies are so determined to die, I say we should be merciful and grant them their fondest wish.”

Varant suppressed a sigh.

“Zera, I left for a reason. I got tired of it. All of it. You know that.”

“You’ve had eight years to catch up on your sleep. Nap time is over.”

“Maybe,” said Varant. “It’s time to go cow the local clergy.”

“Hey, now that’s something I can get behind! Priests are always so full of themselves. Do you want to be the scary one or the really scary one?”

“We’ll see when we get inside.”

Zera swiftly ascended the steps to the temple so she could open the door. Varant carried the unconscious Andric inside, barely sparing a glance for the surroundings. He’d been inside countless temples over the years. This one was austere compared to many he’d seen, but it was still decorated with outrageously expensive statues of the gods and goddesses. Most were carved from ultra-rare Harren marble, and even the ones that were carved from other kinds of stone were decorated with valuable gems. Varant had always considered it a waste, but it was hard to argue that people shouldn’t honor the deities that way. He’d still done it, but the arguments always seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Today, though, he wasn’t worried about how the temples spent their money. He was just worried about getting Andric the help he needed. Varant thought he might well need his hands free for what came next, so he put the young man down on a stone bench. It would probably be terribly uncomfortable for someone who was awake, but he knew from firsthand experience that unconsciousness rendered all of those concerns irrelevant. He straightened up and turned to face the glowering priest who was storming toward them. It was clear that the man was working himself up to throw some kind of fit, so Varant cut him off before he could start.

“The boy requires healing. Attend to him,” ordered Varant.

He said it in a tone of voice he hadn’t used in most of a decade. It wasn’t a shout or a bellow. It was actually a fairly soft tone on the surface. It was the kind of voice that made people strain to hear, only to then recoil when they felt the threats hidden inside that velvet. The priest slammed to a halt when those implications finally translated inside his head. He just stared at Varant for a few moments before he gathered himself up, thrust a trembling finger at Andric, and spoke words that proved his stupidity.

“How dare you bring that unchosen thing inside these hallowed walls!” barked the priest.

Varant gave the man an even look for three heartbeats, giving the fool a chance to reconsider the statement he’d just made. When the priest just continued to stand there, imperiously pointing at Andric, Varant accepted that this was going to happen the hard way.

“Zera,” said Varant in a calm voice, “please explain the reality of the situation to him.”

The woman directed a blindingly bright smile in his direction and said, “Oh, you always give me the best presents.”

“The reality?” asked the priest. “The only reality is that you will remove that abomination from my temple.”

The priest thrust a finger at Andric again. There was a whistling sound and priest stared at his hand in disbelief as the finger he’d been pointing with simply fell off. Then, he started bellowing as the pain caught up with him. Zera sauntered over to the man who tried to back away. In a move so fast that even Varant struggled to see it, Zera slapped the man across the face. The blow sent the man flying into a cabinet that held, for the area, very expensive pottery that depicted the gods and goddesses performing grand deeds. The priest had barely gotten up to his hands and knees when Zera was there. She seized a fistful of the priest’s hair and jerked his head back hard enough that, if it had been anyone else, Varant would have worried that she’d snap the man’s neck. But it was Zera. She knew her business. She would have used just enough force to strain every muscle, tendon, and ligament in the man’s neck without making the move lethal. The man tried to scream, but it came out as a choked desperate noise.

“My friend over there isn’t as patient with priests as me,” she said cheerfully as she severed another finger. “He is particularly impatient with priests who express the false dogma of unchosen excommunication. That’s mostly because he knows, as I do, and as you most certainly do, that it’s heresy. You only get away with it out here because you’re so far from civilization.”

Varant watched with grim satisfaction as the priest lost every bit of color in his face. Zera continued in her same jolly tone.

“In fact, we all know that the punishment for that particular bit of heresy is death. That’s a problem for you since I witnessed you spouting it, and he witnessed it, and we’re both citizens in good standing. That means that I can just keep cutting pieces off of you until you die, and no one will ever complain,” she said as she brought her slender sword close to the man’s face. “I can’t decide if I should take your nose next or an eye.”

“Or,” said Varant, “you can do as your oaths demand and summon a healer for the boy.”

Zera gave him a pouting look.

“You’re telling me I should take that eye quick, then. Before he decides to cooperate,” she said.

The priest started shrieking that he’d do whatever they wanted. Zera reluctantly released her grip on the priest’s hair, and the bleeding, terrified man crawled away at speed like an insect that feared a descending boot. The priest shot a look over his shoulder. Two icy stares that promised more of the same brought another cry of terror, and the man stumbled to his feet to run to fetch a healer. Once he had vanished into the depths of the temple, Varant gave Zera a curious look.

“What?” she asked.

Her smug expression said that she knew exactly what, but Varant answered anyway.

“I didn’t think you were listening all those years ago about the false dogma,” he observed.

“Oh, I listened. I just didn’t want you to know I was listening.”

“Why?”

“You clearly don’t remember how impressed you were with yourself back then. I wasn’t going to do anything to feed that.”

“I wasn’t that bad, was I?”

“You were. I suppose that’s one good thing to come out of this self-imposed exile of yours. You do seem to have your pride under better control,” she smiled at him to soften the words. “Still, this was fun! Just like the old days. You and me putting some fear into the hearts of the wicked.”

“I’m pretty sure that we were wicked, too.”

“Of course, we were. You don’t send sheep to hunt wolves. You send bigger, angrier, hungrier—” she hesitated. “Righteouser wolves? That sounds wrong.”

“For more than one reason,” said Varant with a soft chuckle.

“Here comes your healer,” said Zera, ignoring his mild teasing and gesturing with her sword.

“Let’s see if this one has more sense,” muttered Varant.

“I hope not. This is going to get really dull if they do.”

“It’s better for Andric if things get boring.”

“I know,” admitted Zera. “I just wish the fun part wasn’t over.”

“What makes you think it’s over. I’m not even close to done with that priest.”