of gods who would not care a bit for it, but he could still appreciate beauty for what it was.
Pews of rare blackwood lined the sanctuary, with the smallest of statues carved at each of the ends. The altar was huge, reaching up to the vaulted ceiling and made of gold and blackwood and silver. The tiers of the Kalyazi gods pictured on either side, the highest tier not depicting figures of the gods themselves, but columns with words in an ancient language Serefin could not make out. The first through third tiers showed the gods in more human forms: regal, beautiful, terrible.
Serefin paused in the doorway, eyeing the ceiling. Paintings of haloed saints and forests stretched over them. Icons were placed along the walls of the sanctuary, depictions of more saints. How could one country have so many raised to purported holiness?
Light filtered through the clear glass—Serefin was surprised it wasn’t stained glass like the abandoned chapels of Tranavia. Ostyia was watching him and he turned to her, rolling his eyes derisively.
“We could make good coin out of all this gold,” he noted.
“Only if you wanted to carry it back to Tranavia yourself,” she said.
We’ll have to find new ways to fund this war eventually, Serefin thought. The army had looted the Kalyazi churches near the border, but anything farther away was too difficult to transport. Serefin wondered if he could have a method looked into for moving the riches into Tranavia. At least then the gold would be put to some actual use instead of collecting dust in tribute to empty air.
Why waste all that money and time in service to gods who did not even know you existed? He would never understand the Kalyazi and their devotion to a thing of the past.
The future was magic, it was power, it was mankind stepping out of the shadows and finding out the world had been kept in the dark by these gods. Not even gods, but rules and rigors kept in place by men of the church. Of course, the war was about more than just religion—there was a stretch of land between Tranavia and Kalyazin that both claimed as their own. And there were other, minor issues that had compounded during the near century the war had stretched.
“The abbot gave you nothing?” Ostyia asked as they approached the door where the young monk was being held.
“An old man content to speak only in riddles. I have a mind to execute him.” Removing their leader would ensure the prisoners remained placid. He had used the tactic before with the Kalyazi. It always worked. He had never used it with church folk, though; he was hesitant to do anything that might turn one of their own into a martyr. The Kalyazi loved their martyrs.
He paused before the chosen door, stopping Ostyia before she opened it. She shot him a look that was altogether too knowing.
“If you’d rather not, I would be more than happy to do this for you,” she said.
Serefin shook his head. It didn’t really matter that he was tired of torturing prisoners, tired of this tour.
“No, I’ll do it.” He shot her a half-hearted smile. “Besides, this could be fun, yeah?”
Ostyia kicked open the door. It led into a room nearly identical to the one Serefin had slept in. The Kalyazi boy sat on a hard wooden chair with his wrists tied behind his back, the position yanking his shoulders over the chair. Someone had patched up the crossbow wounds in his leg and side, Serefin noticed. That was good. He didn’t want the boy bleeding out while he was trying to get answers from him.
“We could bypass all this unpleasantness, you know,” the boy said in fairly smooth Tranavian. He had obviously been taught Graznki, a rougher daughter language to the mother tongue. “I’m sure you don’t want to stain your nice coat.”
Serefin raised an eyebrow. “Zhe ven’ya?” His coat was nice.
The boy appeared surprised to hear his own language out of the Tranavian High Prince’s mouth. His dark hair was cut close to his head; three diagonal lines were shaved into the side. His robes seemed too thin to keep him properly warm, but Serefin supposed a Kalyazi monk would enjoy pain.
“You are going to ask where our missing sisters went. I will tell you I have no idea. You will kill me, end of the story.”
“That wasn’t a particularly good story,” Serefin said as he moved a chair across the room, placing it