Page 109 of Grave Situation

“Yes. It was an h-honor.” His voice falters slightly. “He spoke with my priest for some time and then interviewed me. Afterward, he said there was a new training program the temples were beginning, and he thought I’d be a good candidate for it.”

I make a mental note to come back to that and ask, “What did you speak of when he interviewed you?”

Arimen shrugs restlessly. “My life. He wanted to know about my family and what life was like in the Isles, if I felt isolated by the lack of visitors and outsiders. He asked if I liked to ride or box or shoot. Things like that.”

The picture that’s forming in my mind is one Ireallydon’t like. “Did he ask about your connection to Wasianth and your religious studies?”

He shakes his head. “No, but… I suppose my priest would have told him all that already.”

Probably, but still, given he was supposed to be interviewing Arimen for a career in the priesthood, it seems like the kind of thing they should have discussed. For the first time ever, I wish I understood more about the recruitment process for the temples.

“Then what happened? After he mentioned the new training program.”

“My priest was surprised. He’d never heard of a program that took candidates so young. It’s not unusual for someone like me to begin training early, but only within our own temple, so we can continue to live with our families until we’re of age.” He looks down at his saddle. “He thought it might be wiser for me to wait and join the program when I was older.”

It sounds to me as though his priest is genuinely looking out for his parishioners.

“But the bishop was insistent. He said he’d personally ensure I was placed at a temple where there was another acolyte my age,so I’d have a friend. I think my parents would still have refused, but when he pointed out that if I was doing an apprenticeship, I’d be leaving home at fourteen anyway…” He shrugged. “They gave their permission.”

“Did you?”

He jerks, his head snapping in my direction. “What?”

“You said your parents gave permission. Did you?”

His mouth opens and closes, and he looks lost. “I-It’s not… I was a child. I didn’t have permission to give.”

I hold in a sigh. I hate that I feel sympathy for him right now. “Did you want to leave your home right then? Did you agree to do so?”

There’s a small silence as he stares at me with his mouth agape. Finally, he whispers, “No.” Then a wave of color suffuses his face. “I mean—I wanted to serve Wasianth! I do. B-But?—”

“I know what you meant. You weren’t ready to leave the village and your family. Because, as you said, you were a child.” He still is, both technically and in so many other ways. “The bishop said he’d place you at a temple. How did you end up at the sanctuary?”

Arimen turns his attention back to the miserable, muddy fields ahead of us. “After we’d left the village, on the ship, he told me that he’d concealed the truth of the program. That there was more to it, but it was classified to certain ranks within the temple and the acolytes involved. He apologized for the need for secrecy.”

I resist the urge to turn Sweetie around and ride back to where the bishop is likely cowering in his beloved Sanctuary. If I’d known all this during our encounter, it would have gone very differently.

“It wouldn’t take me long to fly out to the coast and set the place alight,”Leicht muses.“It’s more satisfying in the rain… things burn slower and more painfully.”

The temptation is real.

“Not until we know more.”But definitely, one day, I’ll be sure that happens.

“What happened once you got to the Sanctuary?” I ask, moving away from the subject of him being pressured to leave home while he was still too young to advocate for himself… and trying not to make any mental comparisons to the way I just forced him to leave his home. This is different. I never would have brought him if the stone hadn’t said it was compulsory.

In response, the stone gives a comforting kind of pulse, reassuring me that I’ve done the right thing.

I’m not sure I believe it.

“Well… I was assigned to my mentor, and I started classes. There are other acolytes my age there, just like the bishop said,” he assures me. I’m sure he intended to set my mind at ease, but it does the opposite. I’ll have alotto report to Master later. “Our class has its own dorm—there are twelve of us.”

“What kind of classes?” I press. My understanding of the usual process of joining the temples was that there issomestudying, sure, but mostly shadowing the senior priest or priests and running errands. Doing things that would teach acolytes how to interact with worshipers on a daily basis and provide them guidance and aid. Those are the tenets of our gods—the reason I still have faith in the gods. Watching the temples stray farther and farther from that path, becoming more power-hungry and self-involved, is the reason I no longer have faith in the temples.

But this… this goes beyond that. How can acolytes be taught to tend to the people if they’re locked away, far from those very people?

“The histories of the gods,” he replies, “analysis and study of their deeds and time here. Study of religious texts writtenlater, and how they correlate and conflict with what the gods represented while they were incarnate.”

Okay, that sounds reasonable, like the kind of thing a priest should probably know. Though for him to have done it for three years if he’s not planning to be a lifelong scholar seems a bit excess?—

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