Glen Cook

“Know what I think? I got started on the wrong foot at the beginning. I’ve been trying to get it to make sense.”

Maya looked at me weird. “What the hell are you yapping about?”

“I’m trying to make sense of something that isn’t rational. I knew from the beginning that religion was involved. Several religions, maybe. You can try from now until the end of the world and you’re not going to make sense out of that.”

“I’ve always suffered from a weakness for female flesh.”

“Don’t we all.”

He scowled. “That wasn’t a problem when I was younger. If I visited a prostitute and she found me out, she’d laugh. Priests are their best customers. But if I were found out now I could be destroyed.”

I had a thought. That happens. So do lunar eclipses.

I took nothing at face. Everywhere I turned religion popped up, and that’s a game of masks and deceit and illusions if ever there was one.

Even when you have your mind made up, you can’t stay blind to reality forever.

“Kayean and I used to walk up here at night to, uh…”

“In a graveyard?”

“Nothing like tombstones to remind you how little time you have for the finer things in life.”

I started to express my incredulity, but it struck me that I might learn a little more a lot faster with my mouth shut. I admit I don’t often have these epiphanies.

“Yeah?” I snapped when I yanked the door open. It didn’t matter that the woman was wearing a thousand marks’ worth of custom cloth or that the street was filled with guys in flashy livery. I’ve seen too much of the rich to be impressed.

“The Sair is accustomed to dealing with unbelievers, but even from them he expects the honor and deference due his rank.”

“I’ll be sure not to slap him on the back and ask if he wants a beer,” I said.

“I know what I’m doing.”

You usually think you do. Occasionally you are correct.

Every revelation slashes Belief with a brutal razor. Already some who never questioned have begun to wonder if all religion isn’t just a shell game perpetrated by societies of con men who milk the gullible.

“Don’t even think about it, horse. I have friends in the glue business. Get up.”

They got. Unlike women, you can show horses who is boss.