"Eat." Temperance hummed as she drew rich smelling broth from a scavenged pot.

  While I was struggling with the consequences of power and all that metaphysical bullshit, she had been tending to more than my wounds.

  "Where'd you even find fresh meat out here?"

  Not to mention... potatoes?

  Oh god yes. And butter too.

  She smiled. It was a sad and beautiful thing.

  "There's so much bounty around us," she said, "if only one knows where to look..."

  "Okay," I said between greedy bites of potato, and something, soup, "so what's the plan holy woman. You said you need some help? That I owe you a sum for all this?"

  She shook her head, "No need for all of that just yet. The details will be made apparent in time. After we get to town."

  I stifled a groan. Sweet, helpful, a damn good cook, and cryptic. I hated cryptic. Just say what you mean woman...

  "The town?"

  "The colony we were brought to serve. It is a-" she breathed in, her dark eyes dreamy, her bloody lips pursed tight, "an evil place. Chains, collars, and blood. The weak serve, the wicked rule. All of it built on the bones of greater things…"

  Okay. That made a little more sense.

  We had all been dragged from our homes because some Lord of the Empire decided to expand the frontier. Needed hands to do it. It would follow that any such place, basically a penal colony, would be filled with scum and the kind of opportunists who thrived upon abuse. Fuckups and sadists who were too much for the mainland and its rules.

  Daddy always said that man will do as much, and as little evil as he can, so long as he can live a happy life. Problems come about because some people need a whole lot to be happy, and some don't.

  Some will always take, until the rest of us have nothing to give.

  "So you want me to go up there and start shootin' every jackboot, cuttin' all the collars and chains?" I said with a doubtful grin.

  Idealists.

  The world was full of them. Men and women who wanted to save us. Very few ever did.

  Temperance had though.

  Did see that. Maybe check that cynicism ‘fore you trip over it, Roche.

  "No. Not yet," her voice went soft and her eyes went dark, "you are small. Weak. Your Path is new. And there are greater powers in this place. We must be careful, Lorcan. We will first find a place within our Enemy's Den. We will be of use to him. He will seek to use us in turn. Eventually, we will be strong, irreplaceable, vital to his works. Then, then we will strike him. This has been my way for a very, very long time." I felt a chill on my skin. Saw that golden light grow dim, then dark.

  Damn.

  Never mind. Mother Temperance was no idealist at all. That's plain scheming.

  And it sounded just fine to my ears.

  Made sense to get established. Find a place other than this lonely beach to shelter our heads. Get the lay of the land, get coin in my purse. Then, when I was good and ready, get to doing good.

  Or whatever passed for it in a Desperado's hands...

  "Alright," I said, "but how? Need details before we go marchin' in."

  "No," she shook her head, her eyes unfocused on the horizon, "the spirits will provide. We must only follow the Path. It will lead us to the tools we need."

  A sigh escaped this time.

  Talking to Temperance was a bit like running in a dream, you never quite got anywhere, but you sure did sweat a lot for it.

  Her and my little sister would get on well.

  Alice loved a riddle, loved a good mystery, loved a story. I could see them now, sitting in the kitchen of our farmhouse, eating mama's bread and giggling over some secret thing. That would be a good thing, if the world was good and right.

  It wasn't. But, well, it's a nice picture.

  "Right, the spirits might say something, but if you'll listen, I have a few suggestions," I chewed my lip, formin’ my thoughts for a breath, "first, we need to look the part of people with use. Can't be dressed in salvaged scraps and lookin' half starved. I should shave, you should wash that salt out of your hair. I need a hat. You need a robe. Something that makes us look the part of folks who can be trusted to work and won't cause trouble."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  She nodded and smiled, slow, knowing. A thin finger extended toward a heavy bag I had noticed, but just plain overlooked.

  Odd.

  I wasn't the type to miss a fat sack of anything that might be silver or gold. Wonder if Mother Temperance had done a little something to make it less noticeable? A Saint of Secrets, so it seemed.

  Opened it and found most of what we needed.

  Trousers, shirt, and old coat for me. A cassock of the Chant for her and a pair of good boots each.

  Besides that there were a few vittles, some of them buttery potatoes she'd cooked, a skin of water, and a small pouch of coin.

  Not much, but enough.

  I frowned.

  "I still need a damn hat. You got any miracles laying around, saint?" I asked.

  She looked at me, eyes bright, lips curled.

  "No. Fresh out, outlaw."

  How do you say something like that and sound so damn innocent?

  "Okay. We also need new names. There will be a Lorcan Roche and a Mother Temperance on some prisoner manifest, and I doubt the local law will have anything nice in store for us," I said.

  A quiet smile. Gulls screeched overhead.

  Way ahead of you, her stormy eyes said.

  "Temperance ain't even your name, is it?"

  Wide and toothy now.

  "Fine," I sucked my teeth, "I'm just Roche then. There’s a million Roches in the Empire, a fair fewer Lorcans though. A, uh, a bounty hunter come by way of leviathan hunting ship. I heard the call of the Trinity and rescued a fine Trinity Mother from the clutches of desperate men." I said, fittin’ the lie together from as much truth as I could muster.

  Had at least been on a leviathan hunting vessel, once. Lot of men in the Broken Coast signed on to such endeavors. But years at sea chasing down beasts as big as war frigates, and twice as deadly, just wasn't for me. Not to mention all that cuttin' through gore and pressing the fat for oil.

  A warm wind stirred the guttering remains of our fire. The smell of the sea thick enough I could almost imagine the stink of one such dead titan, the stinging touch of mana rich blood on sun-bleached skin.

  Ugly work, to hell with the pay.

  Temperance nodded, "That all sounds very clever. I will be Mother Temperance. I am on pilgrimage, come to teach in this savage land. I hired you, my dear boy, to be my guardian and hand. Good job with the details."

  Had to wonder how many she had told that lie in her, likely very long life, to speak with such certainty.

  Also, I couldn’t quite shake the impression that… That maybe she was ahead of me on all this. Oh, well wouldn’t be the first time a woman had led me by the nose.

  "Then I suppose we should get to walking," I said willing my arms into something like a human shape. The tendrils resisted, refusing to be any more than the crooked hands I'd grown, and a mass of wriggling flesh.

  This was going to be a bit of a problem.

  A pair of long gloves came at me from the side, and a look from her said it was the best we would be able to manage.

  Aw man. Gloves were for dandies and women. I was a proper man...

  Shut up you big baby, they'll hide the ugly and keep folk from poking holes in your gut.

  I pulled the soft leather up over my elbows and Temperance tied them in place for me with the laces that cinched tight around the upper arm. They seemed to help. The confinement settled my monstrous arms. Forced them into something like order.

  I gave her a little nod, "Thank you, Saint."

  "My pleasure Outlaw. Help me with my hair now. You are a bit taller than me..."

  That was true enough.

  Wasn't sure how I felt about helping a lady I barely knew clean and fix her hair. It was something I did for Alice, and for mama as she got older. But there was an, uh, intimacy to it. Just wasn't the sort of thing you did for a stranger.

  But... After I'd seen in her memory, what my Eye had revealed?

  Couldn't quite call us strangers anymore.

  So, I did.

  We found a spot where the fresh water ran off to the sea. She dipped her head and sat on a rock, and I did my best to work on knots with a bone comb we found in the bottom of the sack.

  Was gettin' a little suspicious of that sack by now.

  "So why you care about some nowhere colony and its people," I asked as the wind blew in and salt and sand with it. My back was to the little stream so as to preserve the Mother's modesty. She had stripped down to wash so quick I nearly choked on my tongue.

  "Why did you not run? Why break chains when the water flooded in?" she asked, "You have no reason to do as you did, no reason to help us, them. None but that spark of goodness in all men's hearts. You saw a wrong, and you acted to right it."

  I thought on that for a moment, working at a knot and finding more.

  "Sure, but what I did was impulse. Most of what I do is, just my nature," I almost turned my head to say, daddy always said a man looked you in the eyes, "what you want to do... That'll be a lot of work. You got a plan. You been thinkin' on this, a while."

  "Yes," her voice carried a heavy note. Something like regret, "I know the man who rules this land. I know his sin. I know his heart. It is..." she trailed off. A cool breeze, the sound of water dripping off a naked body, "he is the reason I am here. And what I do?" she smiled, sharp and wild and not at all like a saint, “is also in my nature, Lorcan Roche.”

  There it was.

  The real reason for it all.

  Revenge? Madness? Plain meanness bent toward a better cause? Couldn’t say.

  Lots of yellow-tailed, soft-handed thinkers liked to claim revenge was an empty pursuit. But I was of a different mind. There was a terrible beauty in it. An inevitability of the nature of man. It wasn't ruin, wasn't wrong, it just fuckin' was.

  One day some taxman's kid might come looking for revenge from me. Was that wrong of him? To hunt the man what done his daddy in?

  No. It was natural. Just as it was natural for me to kill to keep my own.

  That's just the way things were.

  "Is that all?" I asked. Best get them secrets out early, Saint. I don't much fancy getting stabbed in the back.

  "No," she said, far too close to my ear. I froze as a wet arm slid around me and plucked the comb from my hand, "there is always more than can be heard or seen. Even with your Eye."

  I really hoped that wasn't true. But I'd quickly learned to respect Mother Temperance. So, I'd take her word on it.

  A flash of movement amongst the distant trees. The scatter of brightly colored birds into an open and blue sky.

  "Speak of winter and she will come..." I snapped the breach on my scattergun shut and turned to face the jungle as a stranger strode forth.

  I hoped I was done killin' for a spell.

  But you know what they say, hope in one hand, dragon shit in the other...