Brother Alta walked quietly and meekly behind the Tinker-Bishop as they processed into the Cathedral for daily prayer. Her burgundy robes were immaculately tidy and well-fitted, except for where they were caught on the butt of her weapon, as if by accident. She seemed not to see the priests of other gods staring at it with envy as she marched on in Bishop Tidwell’s train.

The Cathedral was, of course, a square building with the statues of the gods about its perimeter. The Tinker-God and Dreamer-Goddess touched uplifted palms above the doorway, the Wright-God and Farmer-Goddess held the altar on the facing wall, and the other pairs flanked the doors to the treasury and catacombs. From the ceiling, the enigmatic face of the Chronicler stared down. At the feet of each god, an unlit candle waited for its time; save at those of the Tinker-God, where the flame flickered in the draughts from the nearby door. All this was the same in any church; but here, the statues were of marble, their robes painted in the truest shades of their respective colors, the floor was tiled, and the vast fields of pews carved from imported hardwoods. The chamber was full of the smell of incense, the shimmering whisper of small bells, and the shuffle of the feet of the priesthood.

Brother Alta peeled off from the procession to sit in the frontmost pews with the other Tinker-Priests, and watched serenely as Bishop Tidwell took his place on the dais with the other bishops and the observer from the Order of the Chronicler. Most of the men and women in her pew smiled as the seven other Bishops awaited the Tinker-Bishop’s cue to sit. The service passed without event, the various groups of priests calling out what their god provided through the Church, and the other priests joining with them in praise and thanks. As was more and more common in these days, the praise and thanks for the Tinker-God from the other priests was desultory and faint. But no matter.

The service ticked along to its conclusion, the priests going through the motions of worship with accustomed grace. The sound of their voices rebounded from the walls and ceiling, so comfortable and accustomed that it might travel in timeworn grooves through the air. Now, as every day for nigh three years, the Tinker-Bishop stood to say the closing prayer, and held the congregation’s eye. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it and his gray eyes and shook his head.

“How great and majestic is our Church,” he boomed, “how glorious its harmony, that draws together all the enlightened lands under one shining roof of praise.” The priests looked at each other and murmured, discomfited shifting masses of green, mustard, grey, and all the colors of the gods. The Tinker-Bishop had not varied his address by a word for at least one year. “The natural course of history, as marked by the Order of Chroniclers, gives the world at intervals into the hands of our various gods. Our world and the heavens are as a perfect machine, a clockwork miracle that runs on faith.” Several of the young priests scowled at the metaphor, but the elders schooled their faces. “Only the hand of History can shift the world,” he frowned out at the dubious audience, “and cursed be the man who thinks his hand more worthy, his mind more canny, his heart more wise! A curse, I say, on the man who meddles outside his sphere! Or, indeed…on the woman.” He turned his gaze to the Bishops ranged around him, and stared at the Merchant-Bishop, whose face contracted into wrinkles of shock at the implication. The Tinker-Bishop drew forth the blood-stained note to Harris, and the men and women gathered in the Cathedral closed their eyes and braced themselves as if for a blow.