Paradise [Draft 1]

Chapter 2: Exodus (4842)

Chapter 2: Exodus (4842)

Bishop Thomas Thorman was called down to the burning rooms. This usually only happened when there was trouble, so that was what he was expecting when he got there.

The smell of burning meat was everywhere in the temple at Merric College, but strongest on the floor of the building where the burnt offerings were burnt and offered. He walked from the butchery tables where the meat came in, past the altar drenched in ceremonial blood, to the waste bins where the charred remains were left for later removal and finally where cuts of excess meat were left for the priests. Over the last year, the rituals had been streamlined, out of the necessity for speed, more acolytes had been assigned to the task, more braziers and extractor fans installed. What once had been a place where parking permits and bus passes had been issued, was now halfway between an abattoir and a steakhouse. Bishop Thorman preferred the smell of it to the sight of it, it reminded him of summer barbecues from back before the reditus.

His wife always complained that the smell of him made her hungry when he came home. There was nothing that could be done about it though, all clergymen smelled of grilled meat now.

Thorman entered the cordoned-off area where the industrial-sized refrigerators stored the priest-portions, the thick leather curtains pulled aside for him by laymen and stalked to the far end where there was an altercation in progress.

Shadwell, the sin-eater, his hand resting on the handle of one of the fridges, was arguing with an acolyte.

When they saw him approach, they bowed their heads and mumbled, 'Your Grace'.

'What's going on?' he asked. Bishop Thorman was a tall man and towered over both of them.

'He's at it again, Your Grace,' said the acolyte, a middle-aged man called Acton, who had been a councilman before the reditus. In the time before, Acton had been no more religious than anyone else, going to church, no doubt, for funerals and weddings only, but was now one of the altar servers, ordained acolytes that assisted the priests in the running of the temple, specifically in Acton's case the burning of the offering, one of the most prestigious assignments available to those of his station.

This was a council building, or had been before Evermarch had splintered. A tall gothic edifice built in the 1830s, now consecrated as holy ground and the largest structure of its kind in the city, the old cathedral having been almost laughably small. Acton, and many other of the functionaries that inhabited the place had come with the building.

'I'm just here to take what I need, Your Grace,' retorted Shadwell, the stocky Welshman.

'Nothing for you down in the morgue?' enquired the bishop.

'Not a morsel, not a nibble of anything, Your Grace!' moaned Shadwell. 'They're behind in their deliveries is what I say. I can't does the vegetarians and the vegans, as you know Your Grace, if there has been no fruit delivered, in keepings with the families wishes as you understand. But a bit of bacon, or a little bit of steak? Where's the harm? It's just going in the bin anyways.'

Thorman held up his hands to stop the scatter-gun rambling of the sin-eater.

'Now, Shadwell...' he began but was interrupted by Acton.

'He wants to eat it himself!' cried the acolyte. 'He's lying. He just wants it for himself!'

'Oh, oh, oh!' said Shadwell, almost howling. 'Of course, I'm going to eat it myself! I'm a sin-eater aren't I? I've ten down there I could get sent on their way to their graves right now if I could only gets me hands on some bacon, or a bit of rib eye, or some chops. They are stacked up down there, Your Grace, stacked up! It's a mortal shame, Your Grace, a sin, to leave them like that, for want of a bit of bacon.'