Chapter 1
Merle
A deer! Gods wept, that’d do it.
Merle knelt, slinging her duffel bag behind her and raking her frizzy curls out of the way so she could survey the damage. And there was a fair bit of it: blood coated its antlers and front-right leg, fractured; organs spilled from its opened belly, steaming and stinking in the cold summer air.
Fresh. Brutal. Merle stood again, scanning the brown fields on either side of the dirt road. No sign of a totalled motorcar; no people standing outside the distant, derelict houses, drawn out to investigate a crash. Damn. She’d only be so lucky to find a human corpse.
The deer stared back up at her, doleful, somewhat judgmental. Boo-hoo. “If it’s any consolation,” Merle muttered, nudging the toe of her boot under its chin, “you’ll be put to good use.”
Further inspection revealed claw marks; tufts of black dog hair, still warm with Jinse’s magical signature, clung to the deer’s antlers.
A scuffle, leaving the beast dead now, already disintegrated and returned to the earth.
Merle sat back on her heels, pleased. She hadn’t thought her familiars were capable of taking down anything larger than a housecat.
As the last Priestess of Jinse, God of Clay, Merle couldn’t afford to be squeamish, but that didn’t make handling sacrifices pleasant.
A chilled wind swept past her as she prodded the organs with a forefinger; the earthy, slightly-sour reek of burning peat rolling in from nearby Heulfan was a welcome distraction from the stench of blood, but it also meant Heulfan’s villagers would wake soon.
Would see her, stare, whisper, as though she wasn’t the only one among them busting her ass to help their god.
To hell with them. Once Merle finally restored Jinse to his former glory, everyone would be falling over themselves to thank her. And Merle would decide then how gracious she felt.
First, there was no avoiding what she’d begun to think of as meal prep.
Her hands twitched over the spilled entrails, too precious to go to waste; she shoved them into the sticky warmth, gathering and patting the organs back into the deer’s ribcage.
She’d brought rope, just in case something required dragging: she’d wrap it around the creature, hold the entrails in.
Merle nodded to herself, calculating the animal’s eventual dismemberment.
The broken leg was a good start, one less limb to saw.
She finished the job, snapped the bone in two, folded it neatly.
Trapped air sprayed out from somewhere before she could hold her breath.
A hot droplet of miscellaneous liquid landed on her lower lip, and without thinking she pursed her mouth, drawing the drop inward.
She tasted bitter iron and saw red, considered, as she frequently did, just torching Heulfan, the bare fields, the dying forest. Everything.
She closed her eyes, wiped her mouth on the back of her wrist, and focused. This is for Jinse. This is the least you can do.
Rumbling, the sputtering of exhaust, the scent of magic turned fuel. Someone was coming.
Merle scrambled to her feet, anxiety prickling the back of her neck when she glimpsed the rickety motorcar tottering up the dirt road towards her.
She held up a hand in greeting before remembering they were both stained in blood; wincing, she hid them both in the pockets of her second-hand wool coat before the motorcar whined to a halt beside her.
“Whatcha got there?” It was only Tawny, one of the oldest residents of their backwoods town. She flashed Merle a smile and pressed a few buttons, cringing at a particularly broken-sounding cough coming from inside the engine. “Gods!” she laughed, “The future, my tit. That is not a healthy noise.”
Merle wrinkled her nose at the motorcar. As though that was worse than the murder scene lying beside her. “New magicore engine not working out?”
Tawny folded back the roof and leaned an arm over the open window. “Works enough. Just the witches up in Galdor didn’t say it’d make this thing sound like it’d been stabbed in the lung.”
“Witches do be lying,” Merle said, increasingly distracted by the sticky blood on her hands, the gods-awful feeling of it congealing beneath her nails.
“Don’t tell Mrs Robinson about the magicore; last thing I need is her fretting herself blue in the face over the corruption of witches.
Remember when she saw that airship way out thataway – ” She pointed.
“ – and she nearly broke her ankle trying to chase it away from her garden?” She waved a hand, weary.
“Magicore’s cheaper than petrol, but try telling her that. ”
Merle half-shrugged. She was at no more risk of chatting with Mrs Robinson than she was with anyone else in Heulfan.
Tawny was the only one who pitied her enough to offer the odd handout.
“Only gonna be more airships if it’s easier flying veg in than growing it up here,” was all she said.
“Soon Mrs Robinson won’t be allowed outside if the sight’ll give her a conniption. ”
Tawny snorted, and Merle felt dimly pleased. Normal conversation. Normal person.
“Anyhow.” Tawny swept back her white hair and adjusted her spectacles, which made her brown eyes look huge. “Fixing to make sausages?” she asked of the deer.
Merle made a face. Jinse didn’t mind maggots, but she did. “Uh – no. It…” She caught the dead deer’s gaze and shrunk a little. “I found it. Thought it might’ve been a crash.”
Tawny sucked her teeth, still staring at the broken corpse.
Waiting. Merle stiffened, a bead of sweat traveling down her spine as she watched the old woman think.
Not that it should matter – what Merle did for the God of Clay was Merle’s business, only – but Tawny had helped her out in the past, and Merle found herself wanting to put her at ease.
“It’ll make a good offering,” Merle managed, smiling. “For the temple.”
Tawny raised her magnified gaze up to the forest behind Merle, its trees and shadows a wash of grey and brown.
“It’s a lovely thought, dovie,” she said, in a way that implied it was a stupid thought.
“But I don’t think Jinse’s been accepting offerings for some time.
” She uttered a witchy little cackle. “It’s the middle of summer, and this aul’ one can’t even keep her vegetable garden alive for the morning frost. Tell that to Jinse when you leave him the deer, why don’t you! ”
Merle nodded, toeing the deer’s ribcage. “I’ll add your garden to my prayers.”
“Then I ought to help carry the thing.” Tawny pointed a thumb at the open wagon bed behind her. “Haul ’er up, I can get you at least around to the path.”
Her throat tightened. She wasn’t doing anything wrong – obviously not – but the thought of Tawny witnessing the ins and outs of preparing sacrifices churned Merle’s stomach. “No, no – I’m fine. I got it.”
“I’m not busy, dove. ’Bout to head up to Galdor for groceries, but that can wait.” She narrowed her eyes in the general direction of the city. “’Less someone buys up all my canned strawberries. At this rate I’ll be getting scurvy again – but, for you, dovie – ”
“I got it.” Merle shook her head and swallowed. “Really, let me handle it.” She straightened, a mockery of confidence. “I’m Jinse’s Priestess, after all.”
“I know, dove.” Thankfully, Tawny left her to it and heaved the roof of the motorcar back over her head, though her magnified gaze remained glued to the dense trees behind Merle.
“Just… concerned, is all.” She cast a weak smile back down at Merle.
“You could at least come home? Rather than live up there all by yourself?”
Merle bit her lips shut to seal in a laugh.
She knew what Tawny meant – even Tawny wouldn’t be so na?ve as to suggest Merle go back to live with her father – but what else, then?
Live in one of the guest rooms at The Kite’s Kettle?
Household chores, relaxing by the fire at night, forgetting all her real duties while Jinse suffered?
“I like the work. The solitude. It’s…” Her eyes fell back down to the carcass, at all the guts and congealed blood. “…honourable.”
Tawny nodded, her mouth a disapproving line, but Merle lifted her chin.
Proud. Ever since Jinse’s other Priestesses had gone, there was only Merle.
Everyone else, Tawny included, were content to blame Jinse for the world going to hell, but Merle vowed to help him however she could.
Even if that meant handling a little blood.
With a low, guttural rumbling, Tawny’s old motorcar sputtered off, leaving Merle to her honourable work. Merle let out a breath, watching the vehicle disappear over the crest of the hill.
Unfortunately, Tawny was right: there was no heaving this thing back to the temple without help. Merle reached up the sleeve of her coat and pulled out the long string of white begging beads. Another gift from Jinse for his poor, talentless Priestess.
Among Priestesses, Merle was an outlier in many ways.
She hadn’t wanted to be one, for starters; just as annoyingly, she had not deigned to show any magical ability until there was no one left at the temple to teach her how to use it.
Begging beads were a gift (read: crutch) bestowed upon her by her god, something to help focus and magnify her abilities. Emphasis on magnify.
She closed her fingers around three beads in the palm of her hand and mouthed the words Jinse taught her.
The beads grew hot. Cracked open, sharp.
She tossed the shards into the air and watched them burst into three bulky, jet-black hounds, each landing on heavy paws onto the frosted earth and tilting their faces at her.
Ready to be of service, they said with wagging tails, expectant grins.
Like all of Jinse’s familiars, they sported oddities: horns, a tentacle, an extra head.
But as long as they obeyed her, Merle was happy.
Merle was not often happy.