Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1

Thirty Six: A Warning

Sometimes it felt as though people pissed him about on purpose.

Arlen drummed his fingers on Callan's desk as he waited. The low drone of a sermon with its total of three attendees was still audible at the end of the corridor. Arlen thought the idea of a regular service for Nict was laughable, though he was a believer; the god couldn't expect their worshippers to be any less fickle than they were. Nict stepped in when they pleased, which wasn't often.

Their worshippers prayed when they pleased, and it went both ways.

He had escaped his rooms, and Usk's questioning, and Silas's whining, just past full dark. It had been a risk, but the prospect of getting caught by anybody was more unbearable than that of running into a Fleshmonger or a pack of thralls down an alleyway. He might even have welcomed being mauled. It would at least have made his day more interesting than this.

He got up and began pacing the office, looking around but not touching anything. At face value, the office only looked like it belonged to a disorganised clergyman, but in places it looked a little too engineered; a stack of books which were positioned lopsided on top of each other, but all tilted at the same angle, or a pot of quills which had just so happened to fall into the pot with the broken nibs on one side and the unbroken ones on the other. He wondered where all the contracts were kept, the lies and the books of debts and the secrets, but he wasn't stupid enough to look for them.

He turned round when he sensed Callan at the door. The priest entered without looking at him, carrying a prayer book which he slotted into a drawer in his desk. He sat and pushed his glasses further up his nose, and Arlen took his seat again.

"I have something." Callan's expression was inscrutable, but Arlen didn't need two eyes to gather from the man's body language that he was choosing what he said carefully. He steeled himself for being lied to, or at least not told the whole truth. The ghost of a smile touched the priest's lips.

"Hit me with it."

"I have heard some rather convincing rumours that Caelum bankrolled the whole affair."

Arlen resisted the urge to spit. "That's a violation of the treaty."

"Bankrolled, not committed," Callan said, pretending not to notice Arlen's discomfort. "And so far I've only been able to dig up allegations. Not solid evidence."

"Great," Arlen muttered. The scar on his face tingled. "And if it's true then we might end up with a second Annexe War on our hands."

Callan cocked his head. "Some would want that."

"Not me." Arlen scowled. "The last one was a pain in the ring."

Callan remained still, as if waiting for Arlen to elaborate. He wasn't going to give the priest the pleasure. This wasn't a confessional, and there were far worse things he could dredge up worth begging penance for, if begging had ever been his style. And who would be there to forgive him? Callan, the priest with the long history of Devil involvement, or a god who never showed up?

Arlen curled his lip. "Is that what you brought me all this way to hear?"

Callan hadn't, in fact, sent for him himself, but Marick had told him the previous evening that the priest had new information and to come and get it the next morning. If that was the extent of the news, it would be confirmation that Marick was just trying to piss him off.

"No," Callan said curtly. "It's also surfaced that an Angel was found and arrested in the temple of Orthan a week ago and is currently awaiting trial in Harkenn's dungeons. It has not been made public knowledge at the behest of the House. The Angel has been named as Jeorge Nerahardt, a prominent political figure after the first Annexe War, and no claims or ransom offers have been made for his return from Caelum."