~ KAEL ~
Kael learned about Aldric Voss the same way he learned about most things in this city: by being in the wrong place and paying attention.
He'd been at the scriptorium for two days, reading aloud from a dry mercantile history while Bertha transcribed, when the man walked past the window. That alone wouldn't have registered — people walked past windows constantly, it was one of their primary activities — except that the man was wearing robes embroidered with spiraling loops that Kael recognized, and carrying a lacquered box that smelled, even through the glass, of expensive incense.
He'd paused mid-sentence.
"Do you know him?" he asked Bertha.
Bertha had looked up, squinted through the window, and made a sound of mild disapproval. "Aldric Voss. Merchant's son. Took up with the Nyxaran cult three years ago — proper one, up on the hill. Black altar, ceremonial everything, pays a tithe every new moon." She'd returned to her transcription. "Very devout. Very loud about it."
Kael had watched Aldric Voss walk up the hill with his lacquered box and his embroidered robes and felt something he chose to classify as mild professional curiosity.
He met him properly that afternoon, which was either coincidence or wasn't.
Aldric was tall, clean-jawed, and handsome in a way that suggested he was aware of it. He was also, within four minutes of introduction, the most exhausting person Kael had encountered in either of his lives.
"You're the one with the alley blessing," Aldric said, looking Kael over with the expression of someone appraising livestock. "I've heard about you."
"Good things, I hope."
"Curious things." He tilted his head. "The Void Mother answered a street prayer. No altar, no tithe, no ritual preparation. Just…" he waved a hand, "whatever it is you did."
"I complained in rhyme," Kael said.
Aldric stared at him.
"She accepted it," Kael added.
The stare deepened into something that was either offense or bafflement or both. "I have studied Nyxaran liturgy for three years. I observe every rite. My last offering was a hand-illuminated manuscript that took me four months."
"That sounds really impressive," Kael said, with complete sincerity.
"She sent me a dream," Aldric said tightly. "A single dream. In four months."
There was a silence. Kael decided this was a moment that did not require him to say anything, and for once, he honoured that instinct.
"I want to know what you're doing differently," Aldric said.
"I genuinely don't think you do."
"I am prepared to pay for the information."
Kael thought about forty-seven silver and a two-week deadline. He thought about the damp pages of his journal and his borrowed pen.
"How much?" he said.
— ✶ —
~ NYXARA ~
She had sent Aldric Voss a dream.
It had been a perfectly adequate dream — suitably vast, appropriately unsettling, theologically correct in every particular. He had woken from it with genuine spiritual terror, which was the traditional outcome and generally considered a success. His four-month manuscript had been beautiful. His devotion was sincere. He was, by every conventional measure, an exemplary supplicant.
She had also, in the same period, answered Kael eleven times, guided him away from three dangerous employers, arranged favourable weather on the morning he'd had to walk across the city, and spent an embarrassing amount of eternity re-reading three lines of mediocre poetry.
She was aware of the disparity.
The difference, she had decided, was theological. Kael's offerings were sincere in a particular way — unpolished, unperformed, given without expectation of return. That had genuine ritual value. It wasn't favouritism. It was a nuanced doctrinal position.
She was aware of how that sounded.
Below, Aldric was offering Kael eight silver for his 'method.' Kael was visibly doing arithmetic.
"Don't," she said.
Kael's expression shifted almost imperceptibly. "Is that a theological position or a personal one?" he murmured, too quiet for Aldric to hear.
She didn't answer. Which was, she recognized immediately, itself an answer.
— ✶ —
~ KAEL ~
Kael told Aldric that the method wasn't transferable, accepted two silver as a consultation fee anyway — because forty-seven silver didn't care about anyone's feelings — and walked back toward the tavern as the sun went down.
He waited until he was alone on a quieter street before he said anything.
"So."
"So."
"You didn't want me to tell him."
"What you offer me is yours. It's not a method. It can't be taught."
"That's the theological version." He paused. "What's the other version?"
A long silence. Longer than usual. The kind that had weight in it.
"What you give me… is for me. Not for anyone else. I don't want it replicated."
The street was very quiet. Somewhere above the rooftops, the first stars were coming out — small and cold and very far away.
Kael thought about a voice that had said 'you came back' before it could stop itself. He thought about warmth in a cold alley. He thought about the way she'd said 'goodnight' last night, which had been three letters longer than it needed to be.
He didn't push. Some things were the shape they were because they'd been held that way for a long time, and you didn't straighten them out in a single evening.
"Okay," he said simply.
He walked home. And Nyxara, vast and ancient and currently failing completely at being professional about any of this, watched him go and said nothing, because there was nothing to say, and because some silences were not empty at all.