ORDAINED

A crowd bustled in the town of Vish outside the hall of the Keshdanji Charity Order-House. An emblem of a yellow daffodil, twined with spiralling green ribbons, was printed on the window. The inside of the hall was large, but even its vastness was choked by baskets upon baskets of various fruits, grains, and vegetables, assembled on tables: apricots, dates, grapes, pomegranates, egpplants, figs, persimmons, chickpeas, rice, flatbread, carrots, garlic, onions, zucchini, and spinach.

Insulated from the outside noise was a small team of workers, one checking figures on a clipboard, another whizzing between the inside and outside with baskets, another out greeting the crowd, one being my overseer—Herrat, the Vicar of Vish, and myself, Mephi tel-Sharvara, the lynchpin of this little operation.

“We’re out of figs!” called one of the volunteers, swinging their upper body in through the doorway.

The Vicar’s dubious eye rolled to me. “Go ahead.”

“Right,” I mumbled, and spread my hands over the basket of figs. A name—Kara—arose from the screaming din of souls trapped inside me, monster and witch that I am, and my hands glowed blue with magic. The aura spread across the basket of figs, as if it had lit with blue flames. The fire rose to twice the height of the basket, then vigorously burst into nothing. In the aftermath of the blast, however, there materialised a second full basket of figs, perched upon, and identical to the first.

This was my job: duplicating the produce. The volunteer who called fetched the basket. “We’ll need maybe six more, I think, Bishop tel-Sharvara,” he advised with a cheerful smile, then flit away outside with the fresh basket under his arm.

“Go ahead,” repeated Vicar Herrat beside me. His was an obdurate presence, austere and humourless, in the smooth long lines of his black habit and the stony flatness of his expression. He was middle-aged, with the wrinkles and salt-and-pepper hair of a man a decade older. It would have made him look quite refined, if not for the light strain of stress tugging at his features.

“Yeah,” I said, and breathed out. Without ceremony, I repeated the duplication magic upon the basket of figs six more times—leaving us with seven baskets of figs, which were quickly spirited outside.

“Alright... wonder what’s next,” I absently mumbled, drifting toward the window under the Vicar’s displeased gaze, like it were a leash affording only slight leniency. Our volunteer dumped the figs basket-by-basket into a larger basin outside, from which citizens plucked the figs and shuffled them into their own bags and baskets.

This was what I did every Turisday. Regimented, and supervised, as part of my penitence.

I hadn’t got away with the whole Attaran thing—which was over half a year ago, now. Though off the hook when it came to banishment, the Archbishops had decided they needed to control me at least a little, and stationed me here in Vish under a variety of restrictions. Really, quite generous ones.

I fiddled with the blue diamond earring hanging from my left ear, pinching it and twisting it.

“Stop that,” ordered the Vicar.

“Okay, sorry,” I said. The earring was an enchanted relic from the Church that stopped me from shapeshifting. It paralysed me if I tried. Accordingly, I looked entirely human, and had refamiliarised myself with wearing real clothes that I hadn’t conjured—presently, a formal black Bishop’s habit—an outfit provided, of course, by the Church.

If I destroyed or took off the earring, an alert would sound in Amsherrat’s Church and they would know I was defying their restrictions. From there... well, Czjeir had warned me to play nice with the Church. Banishment might come back on the table.

So my fiddling with the earring was a totally innocent habit, but it still bothered Vicar Herrat, paranoid that I might be trying to break it. I’d been well behaved for eight months. How long was long enough to start trusting me?

Because I really was trying. To be what the Church wanted me to be: a real Bishop.

It would be decades, if ever, before I could call myself a real Bishop the way Madjea was a real Bishop. Madjea could save the soul. But I could help with hunger, with sickness, with ghouls, with building, with finding lost people, with repairing broken items... I wasn’t useless.

And I wasn’t hungry.

God above, I wasn’t hungry.

I craned my head back as if luxuriating in a warn beam of sunlight. The Church had truly been good to me. They had pulled out some of their most dramatic miracles to ensure my service went well—binding my Hunger into a physical form, a massive hole in the middle of the desert. It still needed to be fed, and grew larger the longer it went without food, and with many more miracles the Church had arranged a specialised team to ensure it was regularly slaked with a diet of sinners. But the responsibility to feed wasn’t mine, and by some artifact of the separation, the Hunger had numbed dramatically. There was always an ache past the first couple days, but it took weeks before it properly hurt, and I had my mind the whole time. It was incredible.

For all my restrictions, and the constant supervision, I felt free.

I opened my eyes and sighed, observing the crowds of people collecting their produce outside.

“Hum, aren’t as many people as usual this week...” I noted absently.

The Vicar was in earshot, but only frowned with a face of stone.

“Hey, you know,” I chanced on a whim, “It’s still okay if you talk to me, sometimes. You can still write in your report that I was—cheeky, or whatever.”

“Your life hinges on those reports, I hope you appreciate,” he answered, coming up beside me at the window.

“Yeah. Well, I haven’t been kicked back to Amsherrat yet. I guess I’m doing okay. I hope?”

“You haven’t, no. But I am only a fair judge, Mephi. The Church has been very clear as to what constitutes actionable rebellion, and were my personal grievances relevant, you would not have so much leniency. Frankly, they would’ve thrown you into that pit and been done with it.”

“Yeah, well, I kind of got the subtext on where you stood on me...” I nested my chin on my palm, leaning on my elbow on the windowframe. “Am I valuable or is the Church just that charitable?”

“The Church is just gracious. Don’t introduce mercenary pragmatism into penitence,” he said, scraping his thumb across his jaw. “The fates awaiting you if you step out of line are horrible, and we have compassion enough to avoid them, turn after turn, even if a child’s sense could say you are a dangerous, objectionable thing. You see, Mephi, you do not afford other impenitents the same prospects of redemption showered upon you. That is the true abomination of you.”

“Eternal damnation’s too much? I agree. But, you know, Czjeir Himself intervened for me.”

“You have been graced with more chances. Very luckily.”

“He likes me a lot.”

The Vicar closed his eyes and snorted a breath out his nose. Soberly, he then opened his eyes and gazed out the window.

“Let us go outside,” he said.

“Alright...”

I followed Vicar Herrat outdoors to a small strip of space outside the doorway. Before us, one of our volunteers chirped to the crowd, “Hello Miss Viya! Hello Mister Ajirasham! The Order of Keshdan welcomes you on this wonderful Turisday. Take of our bounty, as always! Ah, hello Mrs Jurreem! How has your week been?”. She had the incredible talent to remember hundreds of people’s names, just by sight, and juggle five conversations at once.

I watched awkwardly from outside the door. It had bothered me for ages, the question of whether I should smile and be more sociable with the citizenry, if I was supposed to be their Bishop. Bishops were venerable, but they were also approachable. Several looks landed my way filled with appreciation and reverence, but none with the familiarity that would’ve legitimised me as being ‘more like Madjea.’

For how uncomfortable I was, the thought of forcing myself to grin all sunnily made my guts churn acid. But maybe I didn’t need to go that far. A weak smile traced across my lips in return to the people’s glances, and my hand jerked up halfway to a wave. It must have looked so fucking pathetic.

I winced. Heat inched up my neck.

Oh well. Something to work on... sometime...

“Excuse me! Excuse me!” a woman’s voice called from out of the crowd, and pushed forward to our volunteer. I glanced up from the floor. “Excuse me, can I talk to the Bishop, please? I-I have a supplication... it’s urgent.”

I looked to Vicar Herrat. He craned his head quizzically, then nodded to our volunteer, who ushered the woman up to us.

She was quite young, in her early twenties, with light brown hair in a fashionable short haircut. She braced her hands on her knees, panting, with sweat dribbling down her forehead.

The Vicar spoke before me. “Greetings, daughter. What’s brought you to us in such haste? Ah, would you like a glass of water?”

“N-no, I’m fine, Father... thank you,” she panted, looking up. “I’m so sorry... for taking time out of your day... with this, ah... but—but, I work for Sweetvine Veterinary Clinic and...” she blushed, wiping her hand over her forehead. “If—if it’s okay to the Bishop, we’ve just gotten a patient that isn’t doing well, and we are really, hoping for a miracle, to save him... hoo...”

I had no objections to helping a sick animal, even supposing my objections held weight. The Veterinary clinic was one of the practices I frequented in my ministry—they were just addressing me out of schedule with this request. I looked to the Vicar.

He rubbed his chin, then nodded. “This must be time-sensitive. Very well. The Bishop can return to his work here once we’re done at the clinic.”

“Oh, praise Czjeir! Thank you!” The woman cheered, exhaling a big breath.

After a short goodbye to the volunteer, the Vicar and I followed the veterinarian woman out through the crowd onto the streets of Vish. Vish was an artistic town, with colourful mosaics and reliefs—of priests, doves, stars, and flowers, all symbolic of Czjeir and the Scriptures—covering every wall that wasn’t a shopfront. The tiled streets were small and tight, made for foot traffic rather than carriages, with the occasional myrtle tree decorating wider squares.

We ran, as fast as we could in our rather restrictive habits. My fitness had been perfect ever since Czjeir had first marked me, but that was because I used my shapeshifting to continuously refresh my body to an unexerted state. Now that I couldn’t do that, I soon felt the fingers of fatigue.

We reached the Veterinary Clinic all red-faced and panting. My heartbeat thundered in my chest. I slid the front door aside and stumbled into reception, where were seated several pet owners with cats in carriers. The receptionist sprung up upon seeing me.

“Ah, Bishop Mephi, Vicar Herrat! You godsends, you really came. Please come right through.”

“Al-alright, let’s see the... let’s see the patient,” I huffed, bumbling through reception to the consultation room. Inside was a doctor in a white robe, a distraught older woman, and a golden dog with long glossy fur laid on an examination table. A rubber tube was pumping bottled oxygen into the dog’s mouth through a mask.

“Bishop. Thank God,” the doctor whispered. “The Bishop will take care of everything now. We kept him stable long enough. Marble will be fine,” she assured the distraught woman—presumably Marble’s owner.

“Thank God! Thank God!” she wept.

“Pulmonary edema. I leave it to you,” the nurse quickly advised me.

Counting some unhatched chickens, but all the same. With a heavy breath I approached the poor dog—its chest expanded as if heaving, and those breaths came raspy and rattling.

I focused on a name, one of my most useful—Pierchival—and held a hand glowing blue over the animal’s chest. Invisible energy swirled through the creature’s body, purging disease and restoring damaged flesh. After a handful of seconds, Marble coughed, his breathing cleared, and he sat up on the table.

The doctor removed the face mask and turned off the oxygen. Marble barked, his eyes bright, and he jumped onto his owner’s chest to lick her face.

“Oh Marble! Marble! Good boy, you’re okay now, it’s okay, you’re such a strong boy...” she spoke into the dog’s fur, hugging him.

Another job done, another happy ending, I suppose. I had more respect for the doctors and nurses who actually had to do the hard work of diagnosis, treatment, stabilisation, and surgery, than myself, who swept in to reap the accolades of miraculously ‘curing’. But the people who were healed, and their loved ones, would surely pick me over a conventional doctor.

After the doctor sent Marble’s owner happily home, I stuck around for a couple more minutes to heal the cats in reception as well. They would skip getting a diagnosis, but the owners didn’t care about that as long as their pets were healthy.

“Thank you so much for coming today, Bishop Mephi, Vicar Herrat. It’s outside of schedule, we know, and it’s gracious of you to lend your limited time to us... but that poor woman was devastated, the poor dog was critical, and we couldn’t let it be if there was a hope.” The doctor smiled at me. (I knew her from helping at the Clinic regularly—she was Doctor Yani.)

“I, uh, don’t mind coming any... basically anytime. Even for something less urgent. Just... as long as the Vicar’s okay with it.”

“Turisday is a more gentle day for us. We can afford to divide our time somewhat,” said Vicar Herrat. “But we ought to return before the team runs out of stock. It was lovely seeing you, Yani, I only wish it were in better circumstances.” Herrat turned to leave.

Doctor Yani swept her hair over her shoulder. “If you mean it, Herrat, I wouldn’t mind having you and the Bishop here out to lunch sometime. But—”

“Bishop tel-Sharvara has a highly restricted schedule,” Herrat interrupted.

“I know, I know. The Tax Collector can’t go off his leash,” Yani waved her hands.

“You’d be there too, you know. I wouldn’t be going on a renegade lunch date, or anything. Not like... I’d know what to do if I did have social life privileges, ahah...” I said.

“And the man holding his leash has to keep it clenched tight. Not to intrude, but this strictness must be affecting your life as well, Vicar Herrat.”

“It’s important work,” Herrat harrumphed. “I have no complaints with the responsibility I’ve been given.”

“I suppose not. You two have a blessed day, the rest of it, then. And bring good word of us here at the Clinic to Czjeir!” She waved as we departed, at a much calmer pace.