Loosely Lawful | 14

Sera and Head Cleric Angelo looked at each other like a student and teacher running into each other at the seediest bar in town. His eyebrows had vanished somewhere, probably under his bangs, but Sera liked to imagine they were just sort of gone. Maybe if she prayed hard enough, his eyebrows really would go away forever, and she could laugh at him inside every time she had to speak to him.

"Repeat that again?" he said, voice straining like he was about to choke.

Sera shifted side-to-side. "I need help filing a stay? On a gig?"

"From the"-

"From the North Wilds Company." Sera tried for a smile. Admittedly, she'd never been known for her winning charm or pearly whites.

The Head Cleric squeezed his eyes shut, dropping his head into his hands and curling in on himself over the top of his perfectly symmetrical, bleached beechwood desk. Tiny silver inlays of balanced scales decorated the edges.

"Why is it always you?" he groaned. "First it was that damn Kavarn scholarship, and now you're picking a fight with the Wildes?"

Sera didn't want to pick a fight with the Wildes. She hadn't wanted to pick a fight with the Kavarns, either. Actually, her case manager when she'd first come to the temple hadn't even told here there would be a fight.

"If it helps," she mumbled, "we sort of have one of their family members with us." It came out rather more like "wisorfonothifimilmswis," which was not a good look, but really, how did one explain Benvolius?

"Excuse me?"

"We ran into Benvolius Wilde!" she admitted. "Or, ex-Wilde, I guess? He's sort of in a similar situation to the one I was"-

"Stop, please," Head Cleric Angelo said, holding up a palm, his head still clutched in his other hand. He dragged his thumb and fingers over his eyelids, disturbing his bangs so much that Sera could see not only his eyebrows but the deep stress lines in his forehead, and sent a pleading look skyward. "So you need a stay. I assume you're going to file some kind of actual suit after this, right?"

Sera didn't really want to think that far ahead. She bit her lip and looked away, to the stained glass window, and weighed her words in her head. "Probably, yes. I suspect that might be the only option.”

Angelo sighed. "Alright. You have our support. If Librata wants your involvement in this, it must run rather deep. Do you have any idea yet what might make this so important that she had to step in?"

There were many things. Sera tried her best to explain it all; how Kali thought they'd stumbled across a new Pre-Consumption language; how the Wilde family seemed to know that language and might have knowingly offered a misleading gig; how the monster had originated from the spell in her vision. The whole time, Sera kept her eyes on the feet of the Head Cleric's desk. They were solid, square, and squat, with little silver triangles dancing across the bottom edges.

At the end of the tale, Angelo sat and stewed. He sighed several times. He tossed his head back and twiddled his thumbs and scootched a stack of paper around on his desk. And then, finally, he looked Sera dead in the eye and clasped his hands together. "I'll be honest. You're going to need to find something really good to make a case against the Wildes. Hard, physical proof that they knew, explicitly, that the monster they want exterminated was abnormal."

"I figured." At least all they were doing right now was a stay. Sera had a hunch that if they went ahead with a case without damning evidence, the Wildes would swing right back with defamation. And they’d swing hard. Barring irrefutable evidence in their hands, Sera’s team at least needed to know exactly what documents they could ask for during discovery.

"Did you have someone in mind?" Angelo asked. "Obviously we'll have you lead this effort on the whole, but as you've put your degree on hold and haven't taken the bar, you'll need someone with accredations to handle the arguments in court and sign the paperwork."

"Oh, uh..." Sera trailed off.

"There's Cleric Hauli, of course," the head cleric suggested. "She has significant experience with contract law, which seems to be most of what you're dealing with here. That said, given the possible age of some of the documents involved, you may want Cleric Wilbert instead. He's very reliable when it comes to matters of decades-old wills, documents written before the formation of the Consumed Continental Council, things of that nature."

Sera tried to remember what either of those two people looked like. Maybe she'd seen Wilbert at the training grounds before?

"When are you planning to resume your studies, by the way?" Angelo asked. "You've been a dedicated acolyte, of course, and not all of our clerics pursue the actual practice of law, but it seemed like the path you were on before."

The moment he mentioned her studies, Sera blanked. All the white of the room–the walls, the desk, the clear window glass–was too bright. Her vision blurred. Her mouth moved of its own accord. "Oh, you know, maybe later. I uh, just don't feel ready yet."

She'd said those same words before, the last time she checked in with her mentor at the temple. She'd said them the time before that, and the time before that, and the time before that.

"I wonder," Angelo said, putting a contemplative finger to his temple. He wrinkled his mouth and got back on track. "Nevermind. I'll put Hauli on this for now, but if you need Wilbert for additional support, feel free to reach out to him. Will your team need to travel to Jadeport for the translation work?"

Kali would want that, now that Sera thought of it. There might be a department for arcane studies at the university branch in Gaville, but the one in Jadeport would be bigger.

"Uh, yes. Please. Should I"-

"Coordinate with your arcanist, yes," Angelo said. "We'll set up a travel expense account for your team this afternoon, and you'll be able to set out on the overnight." He picked up a pen, which had been perfectly upright in a very minimalist penholder with pen-sized circular perforations, and resumed working on the documents on his desk.

"Right then," Sera said. This was as much a dismissal as anything. "Thank you."

She slipped out of the very white room and into a very white hallway. Resting her back against the Head Cleric's door, she took a long, cheek-puffing breath and glanced around to make sure she wasn't about to run into any of the other senior clerics. The hallway was clear. It usually was, this time of day, especially since it wasn't quarterly review time.

Sera darted through the labyrinth of hallways, slowly working her way back to the temple's front entrance. She ran across a few other people on the way, mostly other acolytes. One of them brightened upon spotting her, which only made Sera nervous. Everyone in this damn building knew she'd had a vision from the goddess, and she hadn't really made much progress with that. When one of the other acolytes–a bright-eyed young thing still in his pre-law studies–veered toward her in the hallway, Sera had to duck into a storeroom to avoid him.

When she finally made it to the wide, open collonade at the top of the temple's front steps, Sera decided that she needed a drink. It didn't matter that she'd be tipsy after a few sips of the local lager, and that Kali would probably egg her into doing something stupid. She just needed to forget all the expectations that had suddenly come upon her.

The temple of Librata faced due north, and its entry facade sat exactly in the center of its block. The noon-time sun, just slightly south and mostly overbearing and overhead, cast a short, harsh shadow down only the top few steps, making the trek up a miserable, sweltering, climb.

That was probably why, instead of resting in the shade, Avon, Kali, and Benvolius had chosen to wait at the foot of the staircase. Kyle was already on his way down to meet them, his broad back a massive sail of white under the sun. Sera scurried to catch up, pattering down the steps as fast as she could without toppling over. At moments like this, she wished she was tall enough to go two at a time.

She did catch him, eventually, reaching the bottom of the staircase at the same time he did. Somehow, despite going down instead of up, she was already sweating through the fresh clothes she'd put on when she arrived back at the temple. Panting, she fanned herself with her linen tunic and brushed her clumping, sweaty hair away from her forehead.

"The temple really ought to plant some trees by their sidewalk," Avon said, smirking at her.

Sera scowled. They just loved to see her uncomfortable. "Sure, I'll just order it done as soon as I make Senior Cleric."

Avon scoffed.

Benvolius, innocent as he was, actually clapped his hands in delight. "Wow, I didn't realize you were so respected! I guess I've never really paid attention to the local religious scene"-

"Avon is being a prick," Sera spat. She shoved her hands in her pockets, scuffing her shoes along the cobblestones, and started leading everyone toward their usual bar.

"I don't know," Kali said. She touched a delicate finger to her chin, drawing attention to a black beauty-scale at the corner of her mouth. It was unfair how everything she did was so pretty and perfect. "Successfully navigating the current circumstances could incite a rather expedient sequence of promotions."

Sera coughed, glaring at Kyle as he immediately slapped her back. His stupid face lit up with a wide grin, and his eyes gleamed with pride.

"I'm an acolyte!" she sputtered. "I'm not even a full cleric. It'll be ages before I ever make"-

"Obviously I've not been acquainted with the full story," Kali interrupted, examining the scales on her hands like a model checking up on her manicure, "but you attended law school on scholarship. You have professional experience your cohort members lack, and essentially have a recommendation letter from your goddess. If promotion were something you desired, you could undoubtedly achieve it with alacrity."

Sera was never going to be much more than a garden variety cleric. “That’s ridiculous,” she said.

"So, what'd your head cleric say?" Avon asked. Sera never wanted to be thankful for anything Avon did, but she thanked Librata that they'd instigated a change of subject.

"The temple is setting up a travel account as we speak, so we'll have some funding for as long as we're involved in this," Sera explained. "Plus, we have a real lawyer on board now." She turned the corner, bringing them all on to the main street. A few late-lunching business types walked alongside them, briefcases and fresh coffees in hand. A few had little paper boxes with leftovers, carrying them fastidiously upright to prevent any spills as they raced back to their day jobs.

The business district of Gaville was an older street. Brick buildings, most of them only four or five stories, lined up like soldiers around the blocks, with matching covered walkways and local coffee shops and lunch places hiding away behind the columns. Office workers peeked out of the upper stories from windows with dense grids of mullions and precisely placed headers. Somewhere a few blocks away though, Sera could see the flash of steel going up in one of those newfangled, skinny buildings they'd started making down south.

Their usual breakfast joint–mostly a bar, actually, though it was in the breakfast business due to the unfortunate status of being open at all hours–sat behind a nondescript door at the end of a nondescript hallway plastered over with shitty, self-printed cover band posters. All last month, there had been this awful band full of children who’d all probably come of age in the last four months, and their lead singer had spent hours butchering the year’s top songs. Their posters, clearly printed by mimeograph, featured a drawing of a saxophone that had probably disappointed all their mothers.

Avon kicked the door open, dislodging a patron from last night who’d conked out in front of it, and called over to the sleepy-looking bartender. “Booth for five! And booze for five!”

Sera groaned, but only because it was her duty to be the stick-in-the-mud. “It's barely eleven.”

“It’s five o’ clock somewhere,” Avon replied, leading the way when the bartender gave them all a tired nod.

Kyle shoved Sera forward to follow them. “And it’s mimosa o’ clock now!"