How a Religious Order Makes a Living
I was killing time in idle chatter with Eagle when Hamil appeared behind us, as if he'd only just come back from somewhere. If he hadn't been a wall of muscle standing a little past six-foot-three, I might not have felt him at all. That was how quietly he'd come.
Not that a body like his was ever going to stay hidden. Muffling a door and the thud of boots across a wooden floor struck me as a lost cause anyway. Quiet enough, then, that I could pretend he'd slipped in solely so he wouldn't interrupt us.
Once the talk had more or less wound down, I put it to him straight.
"I'll do it. Collecting the guns. But how are we supposed to know where they are, or what state they're in? Don't tell me you expect us to wander around waving metal detectors by hand."
"The passages linked to the other world are called Gates. Living things and objects from that side spill through them. Wherever a rift widens enough for that to happen, an unstable current forms. We track the current, then search the ground around it."
"Uh... that's it? Then somebody else might already have picked something up. What if they wipe their mouths and pretend they never saw it?"
"Then we find it. When a Gate opens, something always comes through—a living thing, or an object, as I said. Among them, the creatures we cannot communicate with are called monsters, and beasts warped savage by that unstable current are called mana-beasts. We are not permitted to leave a site until those have been dealt with, or until the objects from the other dimension have been recovered."
"Wow."
I'd pictured myself strolling up to wherever a gun had dropped and picking it up. This was starting to look like harder work than I'd bargained for.
Still, I was an Inquisitor. At the very least, I probably wouldn't be short of money, and honestly that alone felt like enough. People said the real Middle Ages had been filthy and merciless. This was fantasy, though. I was hoping something like Purification magic would at least let me keep myself clean.
The locals' sense of right and wrong didn't seem all that bad, either. There's a saying that people are the same wherever you go, but some cultures treat murder as perfectly ordinary. Even so, the Pope himself fretted over ordinary lives, and said that was why the weapons had to be taken in. That was enough for me to call it a decent world. And if you're going to live off someone else's coin, no job is ever easy.
I did regret not being reborn as some overpowered archmage, or as anything tremendously strong. But if I'd landed a figure like this—one Eagle was willing to call pretty, no less—I could live with the rest.
"In that case, it would be best if you returned to the cathedral first and gathered information. I will go out and trace how the assailant who attacked Sister Selenia obtained his gun. Sister Selenia, please interrogate the sister who tried to sell hers."
The moment I agreed to work, a job dropped into my lap. Wasn't this the sort of thing you eased into with an internship?
Was it really all right to leave me standing there alone, with no one to teach me a thing?
"When you say interrogate... do I have to torture her? How far am I supposed to go?"
I didn't like it. What if they had me torture the nun who'd pointed a gun at me, and then, the moment it went wrong, they cut me loose?
"A sister is on her way from the Holy See to serve as your partner. She will come find you first, so please wait for her at your quarters."
"Ah. Yes."
Right. I needed a senior to learn from. Without someone like that, I wouldn't even know what I was supposed to be watching.
The first job I'd ever taken came back to me. I'd walked into the office and nobody had taught me what to do. When I tried to pick things up over a shoulder, they barked at me for staring. When I sat in the seat they'd given me and stared into space, they tore into me for joining the company just to loaf. This was a far better workplace than that. Of course, I wouldn't really know whether it was a good job until I saw a paycheck.
No matter how easy the work, if they don't pay you, it's a sweatshop. Come to think of it, this was a religious order. They weren't going to skim everything off as tithes and offerings and leave me just enough to wet my mouth, were they? No—if the cathedral handed out clothes and meals, they might not pay me at all.
I swallowed the question I couldn't bring myself to ask and went back to the cathedral with Hamil.
The place was quiet, as if Sister Victoria being stabbed, and a nun trying to shoot me with a pistol, had never happened at all. It was still broad daylight. Were they all shut up in their cells, praying? Or busy studying scripture and doctrine?
"It's quiet. Hardly anyone around."
"This is a busy hour. Everyone is cultivating the medicinal herbs we supply to the royal court and the mage tower."
"You farm, too?"
"Donations alone cannot sustain a cathedral. That is why religious orders grow plants classified as narcotics—calming herb, mana herb, and the like. Addiction, and the damage that follows, are terrible things. Ordinary people fall to the temptation easily, do they not? So each denomination cultivates them under strict supervision."
Put that way, it made sense. If a cathedral tried to live on donations alone, starving would be the obvious end. Or else outright corruption. Even so, this was a world with healers who could close a gunshot wound in no time. I couldn't help thinking they might simply make a living doing that. Then again, the kinder gods probably wouldn't smile on turning the care of the sick into a business. Thought of that way, farming for a living seemed wholesome enough.
The problem, if there was one, was that the crop was narcotics. Even back home, people said drugs made decent medicine if you used them properly—and the ones growing them legally here were religious orders. I wasn't sure faith was the right pair of hands for that. Hadn't an incident I already knew about just blown up?
"But it's not as if no one falls. There was that sister just now, caught coveting a gun."
Being clergy didn't make you automatically clean, or immune to temptation. Corner a person, or give them a weak will, and they'll fall. I'd watched it myself before I crossed over: religious leaders with vast flocks spreading plague, peddling superstition whenever they grew bored, then slipping the law and living high without ever being punished. Unless you were a saint, could you really claim to be free of all that?
"You are correct. That is why we must reflect on ourselves without ceasing, and remain on guard against corruption. That sister is likely repenting her sins in the punishment room."
Hamil didn't even offer an excuse. He admitted it cleanly. I'd been braced for the usual speech—our order is great, do not doubt your brothers and sisters, that nun merely strayed for a moment, she will repent and come back good. He said none of it, and a little of the wind went out of me.
"I see. I understand. Thank you for explaining it so kindly. I'll adapt to this world quickly, and I'll work hard."
The conversation had given me my verdict: Hamil was a dull stickler for principle. I decided to put on a polite face and let it pass. He'd even walked me as far as the convent on the cathedral grounds, and a convent, if I wasn't mistaken, was no place for men. They didn't come and go there.
Stiff as he was, he apparently had enough sense to recognize a farewell. Hamil gave a curt nod and turned away.
"Then I will see you next time. I hope you adapt well."
"Yes. See you then."
I left him to his retreat. Standing at last before my new nest, I drew a long breath.
I tried not to think anything indecent. Even so, this was a space for women alone, and from the standpoint of a man who had never once had a girlfriend in his previous life, a place like that was bound to invite fantasies. Every nun I'd seen so far had a pretty face, and the figures to match—though there were young ones among them, and those weren't my type. The body I had now was reasonably tall, and my chest was so large two hands couldn't cover it. That was what femininity meant to me. That was the taste I had. A girlfriend with a figure like this would have been wonderful. Too bad the girlfriend was me. I couldn't decide whether to call it a win or a loss.
Breathing in deeply brought no particular scent, anyway. Just grass and flowers nearby, and, carried on the wind, the spice that would probably go into dinner.
Hm. But wasn't this where they grew the narcotics? What if I got high just from inhaling?
The worry hit late. I glanced around, feeling as if I'd overreacted, and only relaxed once I was sure no one was nearby. Now I could actually go to my room, look in a mirror, and take a moment to appreciate my own face. Find a diary, too, and see what kind of person I'd been.
I stepped into the convent with those less-than-pure thoughts—and arrived, too late, at a realization.
The convent did not have one room, or two. How was I supposed to know which of them Selenia had used? I couldn't go rummaging through every door, hunting for whatever was mine. I didn't even know which things had belonged to her in the first place. Searching every room wouldn't tell me which one was mine.
In short, I was thoroughly screwed.