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The flagellant was not a quiet man. Metaphorically, his demeanor bore the same subtlety as a battering ram, but his heavy tread, clanking flail, and dripping humors were no more silent. He stumbled as brazenly through the tavern door as he did through the crumbling tunnels of the estate. At least here his carelessness wouldn’t bring death down on their heads, Tardif thought, not bothering to look up from the deck of cards he examined.
Scrape, clank, drip continued steadily on. He expected it to pass him by, but it was cut short somewhere behind his little table. Instead was the sound of open-mouth breathing and a prickling presence on his back. The tavern was dead-empty this morning; no possibility that he could be stopping for anyone else.
Fuckin’ great.
He didn’t bother turning around. “What do you want,” he said, dragging his thumbnail across the top of the deck.
The fractured, yellowed grin was audible. “Not a greeting, fortunately,” Damian called, voice loud and indelicate as the rest of him. “I require your expertise.”
Tardif’s thumb paused halfway through the deck.
“Last mission scramble your skull? Thought the Light decided who lives and dies, not you.”
“Ahhh, not as a murderer. As a baker.”
Tardif flattened his cards and turned around.
“What.”
The tavern chairs were tall enough that he sat at eye-level with Damian—where the eyes presumably were under that cowl of his. As expected, the grin still split his face, stiff as the dried blood caked on his clothes. His head tilted towards the bar.
“Lying would be futile. I do visit this wretched place on occasion, and the tales that fly when liquor passes lips… even ones from the depth.”
Tardif ground his molars. He knew exactly where that ‘tale’ came from; something he’d roared in the warrens after kicking over a cart they’d been picking through for uncontaminated scraps. The problem with a stable gig was that any slips couldn’t be left in the dirt. They lingered, circulated, and apparently reached the ears of sanctimonious bastards.
“Hell is it worth to you?” he grunted. “Town has a baker.”
“Yes, but she’s loath to let me take her barm.” Damian splayed his hands, with their dirt-caked nails and torn-up beds. “And I require a fresh loaf. You have the skill and, I presume, the means.”
Rich time for the man to develop a sense of humor. Tardif looked him up and down, then turned back to his cards.
“Make hardtack then. Not difficult.”
He fanned the cards out on the table, fingers probing the edges for nocks or marks. Two coins skittering across the table interrupted his investigation. Tardif watched one spin, sputter, and fall, before he snatched it and held it up to the light. Damian leaned over the table across from him.
“You actually get paid?” he asked, eventually.
Damian spread his hands again. “What our employer forces upon me. I do not keep it. But it seems to be the only thing that lights a fire beneath you.”
“Hmh.” Tardif let the coin fall. “You’re serious.”
“Have I ever been otherwise?”
That was the question. The flagellant was irritatingly hard for Tardif to read. Not that he gave him much chance to practice—typically, the moment their expedition returned, he went off on his own, whether to beat himself or beat others with his dogma. He didn’t linger, didn’t chat, and he sure as shit never asked for anything. Doubtless some ulterior motive bounced around his cracked skull.
Then his answer relied on what he could get out of it. Few coins weren’t worth his time in a place like this, so the incentive wasn’t financial. But there wasn’t much else to do. The tavern was dead this early, the training grounds already taken over by the last expedition’s survivors. He disliked idle hands, and an idle mind even more. The back of his brain already itched from lack of distraction. The only option he had was to rope who he could into some poque, and this deck…
Tardif picked up the ace of spades and held it up to the window. The light struggled through the cloudy glass, but still shone clearly through the tiny pinprick hidden in the center symbol.
Son of a bitch.
He tore the card in half before sweeping up the rest, along with the coins. “That better not be all of it,” he grunted.
The grin widened. “Some now, the rest later. Isn’t that how your sort works?”
Tardif stood and pulled his gloves on, flexing his hands against any stiffness, then turned to the door. “Hmh. Barracks. Keep up.” He elbowed his way out of the tavern and onto the street.
The uneven splap of bare feet in street muck followed behind him. One of Damian’s knees was wrecked; whether from an attack or his own hand, Tardif didn’t know, but it left the leg stiff and one foot permanently turned inwards. It made him easy to listen out for, even without the rest of his clanking. Mercifully, he didn’t try to spark up any sort of conversation until they were through the barracks and into the small kitchen attached.
“Make yourself useful.” Tardif jerked a hand towards the stove as he removed his gloves again. “Get the fire going.”
Damian’s head followed him, then slid around to search the room. Tardif couldn’t help a snort.
“You ever use this place?”
The head snapped back, followed by more splayed hands. “I’m sustained by my faith and the scraps of the Light’s faithful.”
“Right. You’re a leech. Forgot. Wood’s in the crate by the door.”
A gratifying tension curled around Damian’s jaw. “My keep is earned in flesh and blood.”
Nonetheless, he went to gather the logs. Tardif, meanwhile, kicked a chair over to the work area and climbed atop it. He craned his arm around the top of the cabinet, fingers fumbling blindly until they gripped a jar at the very back. The tan, frothy mass inside splashed against the lid as he stepped back down. He was lucky he fed the damn thing recently.
Damian loaded the stove with wood and amadou, then took up the striker and slashed it across the flint. Sparks fanned out in a sweeping arc and caught all across the tinder. He turned his face upwards, unmistakably smug, before his gaze landed on the jar.
“So you do keep your own barm,” he remarked. “I’m surprised you’re able to keep something alive.”
A grunt was the only response that deserved. Tardif opened the jar on the counter. The smell of yeast plumed outwards, settling his shoulders with its familiarity.
He wasn’t incompetent. He could keep a little jar bubbling. It appealed to his self-sufficiency—if things well and truly went to shit, he could grab his kit and the jar and disappear into the woods. Hunt for meat, grind bark for flour, keep fed until he made it out the other side and back to civilization. One of a few exit strategies cooking in his head at any given time. But, there was an undeniable satisfaction in having something completely reliant on you. His hands nurtured the jar. He was the one that created it, fed it with flour, kept it in the warm dark away from clumsy hands. Maybe it wasn’t too different from how William felt about his hound. Except the jar didn’t cry and fear and bleed. And if it died, well, he could just make another one. Attachments, without the consequences.
Damian prodded some of the burning amadou, not flinching as the flames licked his fingers. Tardif grunted and knocked a boot against his shin.
“Stop fucking with it. Oven cools off if the door’s open.”
The hand snaked back, smacking the door closed. Tardif could see the pink burns already shining on the skin. Damian stood and watched him heave a sack of mixed flour onto the worktable. “You’re very particular about the process, for a task you try to hide.”
“Paid for it. Not going to half-ass a job, much as you get in the way.”
Damian hovered irritatingly close behind Tardif’s shoulder as he dumped the flour and some salt into a wooden bowl. His rank breath and iron-bloody adornments clashed hard with the yeasty smell.
“That’s almost honorable, I suppose.”
“Hmh.” Tardif scooped the leaven from the jar with his fingers and shook it off into the bowl. “Never told me why you want this.”
“It’s for a matter of faith,” he returned quickly. “Important, and rather time sensitive.”
Tardif glanced aside as he poured some water from a pitcher. “The abbey not have bakers?”
“You’re well aware that my reflection of the Light differs from their own.”
Sure, Damian would be a heretic anywhere else. But the clergy here were desperate for any sort of allyship or power, they weren’t too discerning about who came through their doors. They even had their own penance halls, which the man made frequent use of. Tardif doubted they’d refuse something as petty as a single loaf of bread.
“So you dredged up an apostate instead,” he said.
“Was I wrong to? You seem up to the task.”
“Hmh.” Tardif pushed up his sleeves. “Don’t get angry if the bread’s full of sin, then.”
A pause. Then a low sound that rapidly crescendoed into something high and rolling that made Tardif jump.
Damian was laughing.
“Light’s eye, it’s not that funny.” He plunged his hands into the bowl, still tense. That laugh typically heralded bad things in the depths—his forearm still bore scars where one joyous flourish of the flail sliced through his glove. But no blows came, just that too-loud cackle slowly petering out into amused hums.
“Ah, you know so little of what you speak,” he chuckled eventually, voice still fluttery. “It’s almost refreshing. Out of the mouths of babes…”
“I’ll give you a discount if you shut up.”
“...although the query returns to you. You needn’t have accepted the task. Even if your poque plans were foiled by marked cards.”
Tardif cupped his hand and drew it around the sides of the bowl, pulling in any flour stuck there. “How d’you know they were marked?”
“I saw Dismas holding the same set once.”
“Hah.” He gave the bowl a particularly violent stir. “Bastard.”
“But I don’t see why that upsets you so. Surely you could use his alterations to your own advantage?”
“Not a cheat.”
Damian circled around to his left, popping into his peripheral vision. His head was tilted as far to the side as his collar allowed.
“Truly, is that where you draw the line? Blood spilled for coin, but you won’t count cards?”
The dough began to come together. Tardif scraped the thick paste from his fingers, turning his thoughts over before speaking. “Cards—most gambling—isn’t about the money. It’s an exercise.”
An expectant silence. This was what got him to shut up. Against his better judgment, he kept talking.
“Poque’s mostly bluffing, reading faces, those things. Go at it a while, you start to see patterns, fit people into categories. They bet this way. Bluster that way. Makes it easier to pick up on things outside the table. Tells work in combat just as well. Money’s just a stake to force you to learn faster.”
He shaped the dough into a rough ball, then spread some flour onto the worktable and slapped it down atop it. Damian twirled a hand.
“And marked cards impede this lesson… how?”
Tardif snorted. “Fucks with the rules of it. People behave different when they know they’re gonna win. Raw chance is a better measure of a fight.”
“I see.” Damian leaned over the table as Tardif began to knead. “Have you considered, however, that the outcome is decided before the first bet is laid?”
The heel of Tardif’s palms pressed deep into the dough, pushing it outwards before bringing it back.
“Then I hang the culprit by their ears.”
“No, not simply in rigged games—all of them.” Damian lifted and spread his hands, lip splitting as his grin widened. “The Light has shone on all that was, is, and will be. All outcomes have already been decided, whether you know their result or not.”
Tardif shoved the dough deeper into the table. “Don’t see why you’d bother to play if that’s true.”
“It’s not a game, but a duty. One that everyone takes up over the course of their life, until the inevitable end.” His expression was as bright and rigid as the stained glass in the alley. Just as cracked, too. Tardif snorted.
“You have fun with that. Prefer to keep on my feet. Live longer that way.”
Damian spread his hands. “Your sort is accounted for in the scripture as well. Those who believe themselves resistant, but who are merely filling their role as the aggressor. What room is there for your ‘luck’ to slip into this perfect plan?”
Tardif inhaled, then released the breath with a fold of the dough. Damian had the perfect balance of apparent obliviousness and smug overconfidence to keep people talking—even him. He let the question hang as he focused on the motions of kneading, working with his whole upper body in rises and falls. He waited for some badgering in the silence, but none came.
“How long do you expect to take?” Damian asked, some time later.
Tardif rolled his shoulders by way of a shrug. “Needs to rise. Then bake. Few hours, least.”
“Good, good.” Damian’s presence withdrew from his shoulder. “A few preparations are needed. There’s a house, further down the road to the coast than the rest. The door will be open. Bring the bread there when it’s finished.”
“Not your damn delivery boy,” Tardif grumbled, but Damian had already stepped away and made his loud, uneven way to the door. He at least had the courtesy to close it behind him.
Mercurial bastard.
He folded the dough over, feeling the tacky surface smooth out as he pulled and flattened. The silence felt emptier without the flagellant’s energy invading it. He focused in on the process instead. Roll, press, lift, squish. The yeast smell was mild now, settled warmly into the mix of grains in the flour. It had honestly been a long time since he had the chance to do this. First a string of missions, then folks hanging around the barracks at all hours. If one good thing came from the dull numbness that had settled over the hamlet yesterday, it was folks clearing out to clear their heads. Left him to deal with his own.
— — —
His dough rose achingly slowly. Tardif usually had the patience for it, but that was when the bread itself was the goal, not some nebulous ‘matter of faith’. Much as it annoyed him, he was curious. He could only scrape through so many rounds of smoke and solitaire before he gave in and tossed the lump into the oven as-is. If Damian didn’t bother to stick around for the whole process, he didn’t have a say in the quality. It baked in the slack heat as the cloudy sky darkened with the evening, until he pulled out a decent (if brown and crusty) loaf. He wrapped it, still warm, in waxed cloth, then set out to find the flagellant.
The house he’d indicated wasn’t hard to spot; homes grew few and far between the further you got from the hamlet. Those that remained were empty, their inhabitants either driven out by the encroaching filth or slaughtered by it. This one, a sad single-story affair, was slowly being eaten by the damp, sucking earth where soil became sand. The autumn chill had halted the process, but the salt-blackened remains of wooden structures jutting out from the ground promised more come spring. Yet curtains hung in the broken windows, and flickers of light peeked through holes in the walls.
As promised, the door hung open.
Hell of a place for a holy man. But he’d come this far already. He ducked beneath the sagging timbers into a tiny entrance room, steps creaking on the bare floor. A sudden noise followed to his side.
“Ah, I thought you’d gotten lost. Come now, it’s time for your role.”
Tardif grunted and checked the space over before going through the only other doorway. The room must’ve once been multi purpose, but was hastily abandoned, furniture and sundries left behind in the rush. Almost all of it was shoved to the very edges of the room and covered with as many candles as they could hold. The ‘curtains’ were just bedsheets, hastily tacked onto the frames from the inside and blowing dangerously close to the open flames.
Damian sat at the center, and on the table besides him, a corpse.
“Light’s bloody bones,” Tardif breathed.
It wasn’t the fact that it was a corpse. He’d seen plenty and made more, far more decayed than this one. It was the way it was… arranged. Its—his?—hair was combed and spread in a soft black halo around the face, which bore an uncanny serenity. The mouth had to be stitched closed. His arms were bent and hands delicately interlaced over his stomach. He wore only a clean white shroud, laid out behind him to leave his torso bare, then folding around in front to swaddle his hips and legs. A bowl of dark liquid rested atop his chest. Damian grinned over it all, seated on a stool to the table’s left.
“Are you and death not companions?” he called, gesturing over the corpse. “Place the bread beside the beer. I’ll deliver the rest of your coin on the morrow.”
Tardif’s eyes narrowed, but he took a few more steps forward. The movement made the candle flames flicker and stretch, throwing twitching light across the planes of the body. His eyes caught on a particular shadow in the clasped hands; depressed and asymmetrical, emphasizing the hollow where a finger was missing.
His temperature spiked. He grabbed the nearest curtain and tore it from the wall before lunging for the table. Damian snatched the bowl as he threw the fabric over the corpse’s face, winding it ‘round the head tightly enough to strangle a living man. He secured it with a twist, then leaned on his palms, chest heaving. The features hovered in his mind’s eye, feeling more profane to witness than any fetid ritual or holy rite. His head snapped up to meet that of the bemused culprit.
“Fuck is eating your brain?!” he spat. “If he wanted us to see his face he’dve shown us when he was alive!”
Damian wasn’t smiling now. His fingers curled tighter around the wooden bowl.
“You’re overreacting. I cleaned and anointed him. Not everyone gets that privilege.”
“Privilege, ha! He wasn’t one of your bloody faithful. How’d you get your hands on him? Stolen right off the slab? Have to fight the butcher bird for it?”
Yellowed teeth scraped across Damian’s lower lip, pulling up a ribbon of skin. “Don’t compare this to her desecrations. This is vital for the wellbeing of his soul. I thought you might understand, your type of—”
“Right, ‘cause when I die I hope some unwashed pedant eats his lunch off my tits.”
“I thought you were fond of him!” Damian’s voice dropped into a deeper register than his usual divinely-inspired-joy tone. “Faithless or not, you risk the chance of his damnation? Toss aside my mercy out of pride? Is this the gamble you wish to take?!”
Fond was a bit extreme. Respect wasn’t. Beneath the show and song, Sarmenti had been as ruthlessly efficient as him. He took no guff, held his own, and kept his head above the clouds of sentimentality that swept into their ranks with familiarity. His death was the first one he’d truly felt in this hell. But he’d done his mourning. Poured a bottle of the good stuff into the sea and told him off for dropping his guard. He was finished. Now the man’s body was dredged up and adorned like some pretty, toothless doll, with the flagellant treating it like fine china rather than the husk of a venom-spitting snake. It was cruel. Selfish.
“Whatever the fuck this is,” Tardif growled, “you aren’t doing it for him.”
Chains crashed into one another as Damian whipped his flail from his belt, bowl still balanced in one hand. “Then leave me to it! You have my word he will be unharmed, and interred before the night is out. But get in my way and I will not hesitate to cut my way to his salvation.”
Tardif instinctively pulled back with a hand to his axe. He read Damian up and down—white knuckles, squared shoulders, feet in a ready stance. And his teeth were back to worrying at his lip.
It was almost funny. Even his tells were masochistic.
He knew the threat was real. Damian fell into violence as easy as breathing. But this hitch in his plans distressed him, more so than any needling or approaching beast. At least, it distressed him differently. For the first time, Tardif held him at a concrete disadvantage. He breathed a laugh.
“Madman.”
“No. A devotee.”
It tempted him, the idea of grabbing his collar’s prongs and throwing him to the ground like an irascible bull, then fleeing with the corpse back to the hamlet. Even with his game knee, though, Damian was fast, and Tardif would be dealing with dead weight. The ensuing fight would catch Sarmenti in the crossfire. He’d also never be able to trust Damian to watch his back again. If he didn’t end up killing him. His eyes flicked down to the body. With the face covered, it felt less like he was stripped bare. The odds weighed themself in his head.
Tardif inhaled deep, then turned about, hooking a chair with his foot and kicking it over to the table. The collision rattled the table and made Damian’s flail twitch, but he didn’t break his stance. His head followed Tardif as he sat down hard on the chair and pulled the wrapped bread from his bag. This close, he could smell the balsam rubbed into the cold limbs.
“Sit.”
Even from this angle Tardif couldn’t make out his eyes. The only indicator of emotion was his mouth, which hung open slightly.
“What. If you’re gonna throw a fit, I’m gonna make sure you don’t cock things up.” It was the least he could do for the fallen.
Damian remained still as Tardif discarded the waxed cloth on the floor. Then a clink as he put away his flail. He slowly descended, replacing the bowl on Sarmenti’s diaphragm.
“I’m well aware of what I’m doing,” he said, surprisingly quiet.
Tardif grunted, then gently laid the bread in the center of Sarmenti’s chest. His bare knuckles brushed against the skin and sent a shiver up his arm. He jerked it back.
“That so? Gonna explain what that actually is?”
Damian splayed his hands and laid them on the table, but said nothing more. Tardif snorted, leaning back with his arms crossed.
From here, he could see the stitching all around Sarmenti’s collar bone—where it used to be, anyways, before a skeletal crew member's boat hook caught and ripped it free, taking an artery along with it. He knew the story in graphic detail. Boudica had belted it to anyone who would listen, even as the corpse hung limp and bloody in her arms. The only thing that stopped her was their boss’ sobs drowning out her own words. Maybe it was her way of mourning him. They each had their own way of it; maybe, bizarrely, this was Damian’s.
His voice abruptly broke the reverie.
“You need to pass it to me.”
“Hmh?”
“The bread. Hand it to me over him.”
Tardif flicked his wrist. “Your arms work.”
Damian’s teeth tore open a scab near the corner of his mouth. A bead of blood pooled at the spot, held tenuously by its own surface tension.
“It’s how the ritual goes. If performed incorrectly, I cannot guarantee—”
“Right.” Tardif straightened, picked up the loaf, and shoved it towards him. If this was mourning, he wished he would drop the pretense about this being for Sarmenti. Funerals weren’t for the benefit of the dead. “Didn’t think you were so fussy.”
He took the loaf in both hands, fingertips sliding over Tardif’s nails. The burns on his finger had already blistered. “In matters of the soul, I’m very particular. Perhaps you ought to be too.”
Damian inclined his head forwards and mumbled something Tardif couldn’t make out. Then he broke the bread in half. He replaced the right piece on Sarmenti’s chest, before digging out a chunk of the soft brown innards from the left. Then he placed it in his mouth and chewed.
Tardif watched with mild interest; he’d never really seen Damian eat, even on expeditions. He had half an idea that he drank his own blood for sustenance like some abcessed ouroboros. Their ‘magick-inclined’ comrades had done odder things. But he ate with the same indelicacy he did everything else, smearing the blood from his split across his lips and chewing with his mouth partially open.
“Are you aware,” he said suddenly, already picking out more bread, “of the practice of sin-eaters?”
Tardif shrugged. “No.”
Damian squished some bread into a firm pellet between his fingers. “When a person dies, the household brings him in while the body is in state. They leave bread and beer on the body, which take in the transgressions of the dead, then give them to the sin-eater. He consumes the sins, and thus purifies their loved one.”
Huh. So his joke was on the money. He adjusted his position slightly—still leaning away, but a little more upright.
“Loaf of bread do all that?” he asked.
Damian tore off some crust. “Sometimes they make cakes.”
“Yeah, you try and find a sugarloaf here.”
“Not a comment on your cooking. It’s adequate. Richer pastries don’t change the process.”
Tardif snorted, then paused. “M’not his family. How’s your ritual work there?”
Damian chewed this chunk slower than the rest. His index finger dug at a hangnail in his thumb.
“I reflected on this for some time. There’s no blood relative of his here, if he even has any. However, we’ve spilled blood with him countless times. That’s a form of kinship, is it not? I planned to be both the family and the eater, but your presence simplifies matters.”
Tardif pictured him scurrying from one side of the table to the other, passing things back and forth to himself like a one-man play. It’d be hilarious, if not for the centerpiece.
…Sarmenti probably would’ve found it hilarious.
“Didn’t see you putting in the effort for anyone else,” he replied.
“This one had promise.” The half-chewed bread in his mouth was stained red by his inflamed gums. “His methods, that song of his, brought to mind my own. There’s one who knows the measure of suffering. I approached him several times, but he perished before I could make any headway.” A pause. “His soul shouldn’t be consigned to the abyss because I was not quick enough.”
There it was. Guilt. An almost disappointingly mundane motive for this whole mess. One he understood, though. He wasn’t sure whether it was worse to be on a mission where one died, or one of the number left behind. The latter were left constantly wondering if perhaps, if they were there instead of someone else, they could have stopped it. It sowed anger for their companions and hatred for themself. He tried not to partake in the speculation, but even he was left wondering last evening, alone by the crashing waves.
Still, the thought of Sarmenti, full of vitriol, donning a collar and a hairshirt was far fetched enough that he couldn’t help a snort.
Damian licked off his lips. “Laugh if you will, but it remains true. It’s my duty now to shoulder his burden. Those who hide their faces hide much more beneath the skin.”
“Hah.” Tardif leaned forwards, resting his elbows on the table to put him even with Damian. “Rich words from the man in the hood.”
In one fluid motion Damian pulled the hood back from his face. The top of his head was just as ripped up as the bottom, bedecked with uneven cauliflower ears and one pupil more constricted than the other. But the eyes were clear. Tardif imagined them hazy, whether from pain or some sneaky entheogen, but they stared into him with a sharp precision contradicting his battering ram demeanor. Most disconcerting still was the way the edges crinkled up as his grin returned.
“Mistake not modesty for shame.”
“Feh.” He was surprised, but stayed in place, covering any shift in body language with a flick of the wrist. Damian placed his bread in his lap, then picked up the bowl and took a sip.
“Do you have to eat the whole thing?” Tardif asked, after Damian wiped his mouth on his uncuffed hand.
He replaced the bowl and took up the bread again. “Yes. I’m not going to half-ass a job, as much as you get in the way.”
‘Job’ was pushing it. No one asked him to do this. Least of all, he was realizing, the abbey. He strung the pieces together. Why couldn’t Damian have asked them for the bread? Why couldn’t he do this over the abbey’s marble slab, where corpses were always laid while the grave was dug? Why was he hiding in an abandoned shack with a lightless heathen? None of his other unorthodoxies were tucked away. Tardif didn’t know all the facets of the Light, but this didn’t feel like one of their rituals. It smacked of folk superstition, the things people in backwaters did when the bishop wasn’t looking, remnants of old gods and old beliefs.
The flagellant was acting a pagan. That could be leverage.
Or it was a gaping wound, a hole Tardif had accidentally backed Damian into. Wringing out marks was far different from taking advantage of a co-worker. When you saw a weakness, you turned and raised your weapon to defend it, rather than stick your fingers in deeper.
The two of them had spilled blood together too, after all.
Tardif took a gamble. He grabbed the other half of the bread and turned it over in his hand. Damian stiffened mid-bite.
“What are you doing?”
“Enough sin to go around, right?” He pulled his cowl aside and raised it to his mouth.
Damian’s hand shot across the table and snatched his wrist. Broken nails dug deep into the skin. Tardif met his gaze evenly, focusing in on the eyes. He wasn’t used to reading anything but Damian’s mouth. Now, what remained of his brows were raised and taut, his eyes slightly widened to display more bloodshot whites.
“Thought you wanted more people to take up suffering as a hobby.” Tardif tilted his head, mimicking the way the flagellant always bobbed his own.
“Leave your flippancy behind,” Damian hissed. “This is serious. Eat that and you’re damned.”
“And you’re not?”
“Bearing these burdens is a calling. A privilege. I’ve known all along what I devote myself to, and I do it willingly. I won’t allow you to make a mockery out of this.” The nails angled inwards, their shift drawing blood.
“Not taking the piss. Sarmenti’s no worse than me. So I’m damned anyway, right? Better to give him a leg up on the way out.”
“Mockery.”
Tardif pressed down on the crust of bread, letting it crackle. “Look. Know you’re being dodgy for a reason. I eat this, can’t spread the word without implicating myself. Think of it as insurance.”
Damian’s eyes flicked rapidly about Tardif’s face. The hand remained gripped tight; whatever was under his nails burned inside the opening gashes.
“It’ll make the work go quick,” Tardif offered. “Not getting any fresher.”
They both held the stare without faltering. Tardif inclined his head a notch further. Well?
“Left side,” Damian said.
“Hah?”
“You need to be on the left side of the body.” He didn’t let go of Tardif’s arm.
Tardif snorted, but stood. Circling around with his wrist held in place was an awkward but achievable affair. The chair came after. He lowered himself down next to Damian and gestured.
The man let go of his arm, watching closely as he raised bread again and finally took a bite. He tested the density and flavor against his tongue.
“Don’t taste the sin,” he commented after a while.
Damian laughed, a subdued thing instead of his rolling earlier. Somehow more eerie. “There’s much for you to learn, if you wish to count yourself alike.”
Tardif grunted and reached for the bowl, before Damian held up a palm to stop him. He lifted it himself, slowly moved it over Sarmenti’s body, then placed it in his waiting hands. The reverence and import he put into such a small action still baffled Tardif, but he jerked his head in recognition, then lifted his cowl and took a swallow. It was the typical queer, insipid ale the hamlet produced, making him gag slightly with its sweetness.
“Kill a man for some bloody hops.”
Damian was tearing pieces of his bread to bits without eating them. “I have figured out a solution for this,” he said, ignoring Tardif’s remark.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“You are going to die before me.”
Tardif’s laugh shot out like a dog off its leash. The absurdity of the whole situation came crashing down on him all at once. Damian quickly took the bowl to keep it from sloshing out while he gripped his knee for support as he barked, only muffling himself when he took another mouthful of bread. “That so?”
“Yes. This was clearly a test—of my faith and my ability to spiritually guide this hamlet. You were sent as an unruly ember for me to fan. When you die, I’ll perform the same ritual over you, cleansing you of both Sarmenti’s and your own sins.” He was grinning again. “It’s all laid clear before me.”
Another bark. Tardif rolled his shoulders. Light’s tears, he could bend any situation backwards in favor of his dogma. Might as well toss a bone—his mind had caught on a way to make this interesting. “Fuck it. I die before you, do what you want. ‘Long as I end up in the dirt after.”
The grin widened over the bowl. “I didn’t need your permission. But your acceptance is pleasing.”
“Hah, right. Now’s your turn. What happens if you die first?”
The expression froze in place. “I don’t understand.”
“This is a bet, mate.” Tardif pointed at Damian with the bread. “Who goes down first. Put up your stakes.”
“That won’t happen.”
“But if it does—”
“—which it won’t. The will of the Light—”
“Come on, leech. Humor me. I humored you.”
There was a pause. Damian pierced a crust with his thumb.
“...when I die,” he said, eventually. “I desire to be cremated. Let the holy flame strip the disease from my bones, then adorn the church walls with what remains.”
‘Course he had it all planned out already. Tardif snorted.
“Wasn’t that hard. Right. Me, you, and a witness.” He gestured to Sarmenti’s body, then offered his hand. “Let’s see who gets lucky.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it.” Still, Damian took the hand and shook it. His grip was just as crushing as before, but now Tardif could match it himself.
“Just don’t drop your guard ‘cause you think you already won.”
The grin took on some extra teeth. “I would not dream of shirking my duties.”
Tardif snatched the bowl from his hand while he was distracted. “Nor would I.” He downed the rest of the wretched syrup in one go, grunting before he held the empty bowl up to the corpse’s bound head.
“Cheers,” he announced to their morbid little triumvirate. “Let’s see who pays you a visit first.”