Chapter 38 ： Faith
In the governor's residence, a servant arrived with a brief whispered report. The majordomo went inside: "My lord. The informant says Evan Wang visited the Silver Hand's office. There were deaths."
"How many?"
"All the principal staff and their guards. He spared several people — clerks, apparently. Non-combatants."
Governor Thompson drummed his fingers on the desk. "He has a soft spot. That'll limit him." He paused. "Have them killed. Everyone left in that office."
"Yes, my lord."
"And tell the commanders I want a meeting this afternoon. Everything has been unsettled lately — the Church sending word about a holy maiden appearing in this area, of all things. A high-class woman and a favorable star reading from a roomful of old lechers. This Evan Wang turns up out of nowhere, passing through apparently. Use him to muddy the waters."
"I'll arrange it."
"Go." The governor's expression settled into something calculating. "Let's see who thinks they can run something in my city."
The innkeeper was visibly unhappy when Evan and Tina returned, but lacked the courage to ask them to leave. He gave them different rooms instead.
Evan asked Tina how she felt about the day.
She had been quiet on the walk back. Now she looked up. "Frightened at first. Then once it started I forgot to be afraid. There was something else — like excitement. Is that wrong? Wanting to fight?"
"You're a born fighter. The title doesn't matter — the quality is there." He said it matter-of-factly. "Killing isn't something to enjoy. It's a last resort. But there's nothing wrong with the capacity for it. The Maker watches over the brave."
"He watches over you too," she said.
"The city's been strange these past two days," he went on. "We've killed people and nothing official has happened. The constable asked a few questions and left. That's not normal."
"We didn't start it. They came for us."
"True." He looked at her. "You've changed since this morning."
"I know what I am now," she said simply.
They heard about the fire later that afternoon. The Silver Hand's office — or rather, the Chiron Trading Company — had apparently caught fire, and the blaze had spread to two neighboring buildings. In daylight, no one died in the street, but the people remaining in the office had not survived. Twelve dead, by the count that was circulating.
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Evan was quiet for some time after hearing this.
Tina noticed. "We didn't start it."
"No. Someone else did. There were still living people in there when we left." He thought about who benefited from the office burning and the witnesses dying, and offered her his analysis: the criminal organizations with any knowledge of the office's real function, the governor who would benefit from controlled chaos, the Harpist Guild with territorial overlap. The likeliest answer was the governor, using the situation for his own purposes.
Tina suggested that maybe someone else had simply wanted revenge against the Silver Hand.
"Possible," Evan said. "Unlikely. Most people the Silver Hand targets are focused on running, not fighting back. We're unusual."
Three days passed. Every morning Evan checked the Harpist Guild's notice board. Nothing. Tina drilled. Her progress had accelerated noticeably since the fight — something about having done it for real had crystallized the movements in ways that repetition hadn't fully managed. By Evan's estimation she had reached squire-knight ability, for whatever that designation was worth in a world where advancement wasn't a menu of formal tiers but simply a matter of what you could do.
On the third morning, there was a posting.
The coded phrasing indicated that cargo from Iden had arrived safely — meaning the contract had been completed. Baron Iden was dead.
Tina read the confirmation from his face before he explained it. "He's dead? Just like that?"
"Why wouldn't he be? He was a Low-rank Knight. The Harpist Guild is considerably more capable than the Silver Hand. He used an assassins' organization against me — I used one against him. Not everything requires personal involvement. Money solves a great deal."
"What doesn't money solve?"
"Lifespan."
"That's the Maker's domain."
"Is it? The Creationist Church has existed for less than two thousand years. The world is far older. The Ika Faith claims the same divine authority for their god Anka. Houtu has her worshippers in the East. Every theology insists its deity created everything." He paused. "It's worth thinking about, at least."
Tina had never had anyone say anything like this to her. She had been raised inside a world where the Maker was as foundational as weather. The question of whether it could have been otherwise had never been available to her.
"Is the Maker not real?" she asked, quietly.
"I don't know what's real about divine power in this world — I've seen things that suggest gods exist in some form. What I doubt is that any one of them created everything, or that any particular institution has the exclusive truth about creation." He let her sit with that for a moment. "What I'm certain of is that the Creationist Church has been around for eighteen centuries and has eliminated its competition systematically. That's a political fact as much as a religious one."
Tina's expression said her internal architecture was shifting in uncomfortable directions.
"Don't repeat any of this," Evan said. "In front of anyone else, you believe everything you were raised to believe. Expressing doubt gets people burned. You've seen it."
She had. She nodded.
They were walking as they talked, and a priest came toward them along the street — robes, cross-star, the particular bearing of someone who organized their life around a single conviction. His aura was weak; he wouldn't detect Evan's nature at this distance. But his eyes went to Tina and stopped there.
"A holy maiden," he said.