thirty-seven
“Sorry, I haven’t been feeling well lately. Haven’t got much sleep. Don’t know if you saw the news last night, either. Your father’s at it again.”
That was the message from Ramaron that Mira listened to on her communicator after service, in which a scant fifteen people showed up to hear her talk about chaos and hope.
Few mercenaries ever came, since they weren’t even given time off from chores to attend—Sulim did, occasionally, but she was often busy on sermon day and had a “reputation” to maintain, whatever that meant.
No, the dedicated parishioners were mostly townsfolk who made their trades in bartering, be it with items or their bodies.
A small group always came from one of the brothels, including the madam, who was a devout follower of Mira’s mother.
The next biggest contingent was the family of the main innkeeper in town, whose wife was, you guessed it, a former courtesan who decided she’d rather start a family.
Four kids dangled off the front row pews as they desperately tried not to let boredom get the best of them.
Both parents ruled with cast-iron fists, and kids loved to push boundaries right in front of Mira.
Almost nobody here is a Federation citizen.
Those who settled on Cerilyn but weren’t mercenaries often did so out of desperation.
Maybe they were wanted for crimes. Maybe they were kicked out of their homes and didn’t know where else to go.
Most, however, were stateless or even born and raised on Cerilyn itself.
They made the most with what they had, and many considered it a life well lived if they could avoid not only being a mercenary, but working in the fortress.
They’ll take all that money, though. Shield Town existed to service the mercenary class and to provide hospitality to clients who needed to stay a few days.
The Temple basically existed as an excuse to say, “Look, we’re kinda trying. But also not really.”
The only reason the Temple was as nice as it was, what with a statue, one stained glass window, and a separate apartment for the priest in residence, was because of a fundraising venture put in by her father when he was still High Priest.
And I’m the inaugural priest. To think, this place was basically brand-new…
Few parishioners stayed after to speak with her.
The innkeeper’s wife and their four kids hurried out before the baby started crying.
The brothel madam stepped up to pay her quiet respects to the High Priestess before her girls left their offerings in the tray.
A young man who worked for the only courier service in town lingered to stare at Mira before donning his sunhat and rushing out to do his job.
When she was alone, she checked her messages again. Nothing. Ramaron was not forthcoming with any information she sought.
After taking a quick break to rehydrate and change into simpler clothes, Mira began cleaning up the altar and her pulpit, which always got smudged with her fingerprints after a sermon.
While vigorously rubbing a wet cloth across the pulpit, because her cleaning sorcery couldn’t do it as well yet, she caught sight of two women standing by the main entrance, which was unlocked.
Even without focusing her vision, Mira immediately recognized not only the classic julah physique, but someone who looked like one of her distant cousins from House Lerenan—there was never any mistaking their deep skin tone and thick but soft black hair.
“Lady Mira.” No, Mira didn’t recognize her—at first. And she didn’t quite recognize the pale-skinned woman following her, adorned in Temple whites. “Forgive us. Do you know me?”
It took Mira a moment, for she certainly knew this young woman in a beige, floor-length dress that flowed with her feminine steps. Her feet only wore sandals on their soles, but the toes were bedecked in golden zatbah-stone rings that definitely pegged her as House Lerenan.
“Well, you certainly know me.” Naturally. Most julah recognized Mira, never mind members of her mother’s family. “We must be related.”
“Yes, through your holy mother.” The young woman bowed her head.
The pale priestess behind her stepped forward and knelt before the altar, hands outstretched to the High Priestess before repeating a popular mantra in Joiya’s name.
“Lady Lerenan does not know we are here, despite us both being her distant relations. I am Kema Lerenan. That is—”
“Hannu.” Realization struck Mira’s brain like a bell, and the sweat beading her brow was not because of the humidity she had grown accustomed to over the years. “Hannu Adelah. Yes, I know you both.”
Hannu rose from her prayer position and offered Mira the same mantra.
“Her Holiness sent us to you,” the priestess insisted.
“We happened to meet outside before your service. When we realized why we were both here, we took a moment at the cafeteria to catch each other up. Lady Mira, something strange is happening.”
“My mother sent you?”
Kema caught Mira’s attention with a light touch to her arm. “In our dreams. Well, that’s how she spoke to me. When I awoke this morning, I had this intense urgency to find you here on Cerilyn, of all places. I didn’t even know you were assigned here, Lady Mira.”
“How did you teleport here, if you didn’t know it?” Few julah could teleport somewhere millions of light-years away without being familiar with the location first. Kema, a hybrid, most certainly couldn’t.
“Believe it or not, Her Holiness showed me the way. That was the great urgency.”
“The same happened to me,” Hannu insisted.
“During my early morning meditation, her vision appeared before me. Lady Mira, I have never witnessed something so soul-absorbing in my life! I am still processing it. Your mother—Her Holiness—personally came to me to do her bidding! And, oh, it made so much sense. See, the other night,
I had the strangest dream. It was like I had known you forever, Lady Mira. Only my life had gone quite differently. I—”
“You were a priestess on Qahrain, who felt guilt after a mercenary raid, and went on a penance pilgrimage with myself and my mother, who was mortal.”
Hannu’s mouth dropped. “How could you know? Did you have the same dream?”
Kema waited for Mira to speak. When she didn’t, she turned to Hannu. “I don’t think it was a dream, Ms. Adelah. Something tells me we lived another life in the splittest of seconds.”
She turned to Mira for confirmation. So, they also know? How much, exactly? And why were they aware of the other lives they had lived, but not Sulim?
“Something miraculous has happened.” The thing that made Mira swallow in panic was the fact that these two had been sent to her, as if they were necessary for some battle ahead. “Are you sure it was my mother? And not some other… entity?”
The others exchanged glances. “Who else could it have been?” Hannu asked. “It looked just like her. And that holy light from the Void…” She blushed. “I would know her aura anywhere, Lady Mira. That bright, blazing red with a thousand eyes looked right into my soul.”
“You saw her aura?”
“Well, no. Yes? I’m not a soul-seer. But I know what I saw. It was a holy essence around her presence. It blinded me, but in a way that was meant to distract me from looking directly into her mien and seeing something I could not comprehend.”
“I likewise saw something similar,” Kema conferred. “Who else would we have seen?”
Rahara. “No, it’s fine. I believe you both.” She put her hands on their shoulders. “I need to make a call before we dig into this. Please, help yourself into the break room. Hannu, I assume you’re familiar with this Temple layout. You should be able to find it easily.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Give me a moment.” Mira hunted down her communicator, currently charging by the bench beneath the stained glass window. As the other two slowly disappeared into another room, Mira called Ramaron once more, silently begging the man to answer this time.
Instead, she got his messaging system again.
“Ram,” she greeted, exasperated, “please call me back as soon as you can. Something crazy is happening. Just tell me… are you familiar with a town on Arrah? Called Harksplit? If you are, then you know this is an emergency.”
She hung up and took a moment to regather her bearings. A long evening lay before her, and she was still recovering from the sensation that she had lived another life in a single dream.
Apparently, so did a few others.
There wasn’t much on Sulim’s docket that day, but she had a meeting with the chief in the late morning, which meant she couldn’t dally around town or attend Mira’s sermon.
Hell, she couldn’t stay much later than breakfast.
I can’t cook worth shit. She did her best while Mira prepared for her sermon.
While passive sorcery did a bulk of the breakfast frying, Sulim gathered and prepped the basic ingredients.
She had to head back to the fortress right afterward, though.
Where she bumped into her partner, also coming back to the fortress from town.
“Who was it this time?” Sulim walked by his side, the trampled jungle-foliage that made for a popular shortcut crunching beneath their feet. “Vaus? Is she talking to you again?”
He snorted, still rubbing sleep out of his eye. Sulim was lucky that he wasn’t hungover, but this was a man who held alcohol with the best of them. “No. I don’t even go there right now. Not since she kicked me out for flirting with her top girl.”
“Well! Serves you right. You had the biggest madam in town eating out of your ungrateful hand, and you squandered it by being a slut.”
“Come on. She’s like twenty years older than me. Or something.”
“So? Who was it?”
They approached the trap door in the ground, a convenient passageway that was popular with recruits sneaking out past curfew. For Sulim and Sonall, it was merely the most efficient way to get back without going through the rigmarole of security. “What business is it of yours?”
She waited for him to hold the trap door open for her. Sulim began the descent down the ladder. “I’ve got this massive spreadsheet of who has what STD in this town. Actually, you’re the one who inspired me to do it.”