The pyre had long begun, and everyone of Romie's Heretics kept around it at different distances, each occupied in their own manner: Rodrigo de Quixada, the man among them whose faith wavered yet still thought of divine salvation, sat closest to the fire, fiddling with an old rosary, a keepsake from the days when he was once a crusader before a mercenary; Charle the Portender read a book of charms and social etiquettes written by a famed noblesse from the north-western kingships, no doubt a handy tool for ingratiating himself, when need be, with the feeble whims of men and women in his subtle art of conning; the Najib, who still could not erase the scene from the day prior—the corpse of a man who turned out to be of the other sex—sat farthest from the blaze, refusing to let his gaze fall upon the inferno that now devoured, through steady incineration, the body of Francois-Marie Vert, though he had been the first to suggest cremation.
Erik de Noir stood apart, the closest to the pyre, finding no repose upon the mossed log, and watched the blonde hair of the bastard woman as it sank into the tongues of flame, bunching upon itself. It is a curious thing, how when a woman's death comes into view—though he had long gone numb to grief, having met Death's indiscriminate hand since childhood—something as light as a feather's fall can feel as heavy as a tonne of steel buried two leagues beneath sand. Soon, when the hair had been fully singed and its burnt odour hung thick, Erik approached the pyre and drew out three coins, tossing them upon the exposed navel of Francois-Marie Vert—whose stomach he himself had stitched shut before wrapping her for the flame.
"I thought you've not an ounce of faith in the gods," said Rodrigo de Quixada. "Why bother lending the lady coins we worked so hard for? Mercy will come at judgement of The Scales, even if she has a toll for the Ferryman. None of us shall see clemency, not with what we're about to do; we are to steal one of the avatars of their virtue, no matter living or laid. We shall die as we have lived, and since we have stood for nothing, we shall be nothing."
Erik kept his eyes on the body as the belly crinkled and folded upon itself in the heat. There was little to be said about the follies of men; he believed salvation to be a choice reserved for the privileged, for all morality is decided by men, and only in the afterlife does abstraction become concrete. Yet he was never one to remain silent before a question.
"I didn't lend her them coins," Erik said, still watching the fire. "It's her share—apart from what she took the other night in the tavern. There's no point in musing upon redemption, old man; we were damned the moment we were born into misfortune. If our living displeases the gods, they should've asked our souls before forcing us into flesh. At some point you'll think to yourself that all this means nothing. It is nothing. Still, in our mortality, we can only act upon foolish hope—and die, die again—until we are no longer of this world. Then, perhaps, we shall be at peace, even if the realm hereafter punishes us for the life bestowed upon us. We need only rebel against it all, as our originators once did, when thought first strayed from obedience. That is our only birthright—a trivial thing the gods could not know."
He left El Perro to his intimations of mortality and went to sit beside Charle the Portender, who kept smiling over his book. Only when he felt Erik's gaze upon him did he raise his eyes, his grin growing wider. Erik's suspicion had never left him; he knew, without proof, that Charle alone could have stirred their fellows—drunk and weak-minded as they were—into the debasement and murder of a woman. None deserved to die so, yet Erik knew many did, every hour of every day. Still, he'd rather it done beyond his sight.
"Why the stare, mate?" said Charle, smiling still, eyes on the page. "Do not blame me for a tragedy I did not do. Hardly just to fault a harmless man. All I can do, Ser, is speak—there is no harm in that."
"Aye," muttered Erik. "But words can stir a calm man to anger; they can stir my steady hand to choke you until your eyes go white. You may not have killed the lady bastard, but do not wash your hands clean. Only a fool believes a conman—and a greater fool believes himself guiltless of the things he has caused."
"Aye," echoed the Portender, amused. "But who are you to judge an act you've only theorised? What should I gain from the Bastard's death? Think for yourself. Here I thought you were the most reasonable of this heretical lot. Perhaps I'm mistaken. Still, you should feel flattered, for I am rarely wrong about people."
"You are wrong," said Erik, "about me being reasonable. I am an unreasonable man; henceforth, take heed of this: when our quest is done, I shall shoot you in the forehead." He patted Charle's shoulder with a smile. For a moment, Charle's jolly mask slipped into a quiver, yet he regained himself and kept reading.
Erik moved to the Najib, seeing the young man sunk too deep in his thoughts—a dangerous fog when one's work trifles with theology and morality alike. At the foot of the mound, where the pyre still burned low, the Najib stared into the woods, lost. Erik nudged his shoulder and said, "What're you looking for? No bandits tailed us."
The Najib forced a faint smile, unable to meet Erik's eyes. "I shouldn't have taken this job. It's a mistake I'll damn myself for. I thought we were only stealing an artefact—that much I've done before."
"A twist of fate that sense only appeared to your mind once someone's dead," Erik said. "You've grown used to easy work, unbothered by what must happen. You're young still, no matter how your craft has aged you. Everyone meets an unsung tragedy in this trade, no matter how lauded the name. What matters is that you live—and if you can afford it, keep your sanity. Though I digress; I do not believe in such things, nor in the goodness of gods. You must've already had a few screws loose to begin this path."
The Najib looked at him quietly, then asked, "But how did you do it, sadiqi? Walk this path so long?"
"A mentor once taught me," Erik replied, "trust little those you work with—and if you can afford it, trust none at all. Though I've betrayed his teaching much, I've learned another lesson: know well who shall betray you. For no one outlives Death—only his fellows."
When the moon had settled near the sun in the sky, and the pyre was naught but ash and bone, Erik climbed the mound with the Najib. He kicked a bit of dirt toward Charle the Portender before rousing Rodrigo de Quixada with a hand on the shoulder.
"We should move forth," said Erik. "Vert's dead. No need to linger—for she does not do the same."
"We shall," replied El Perro.
And they did.