the unworldly, scholarly monk's reaction to Sica, the first town he entered after leaving his monastery.

Having been confined within its walls for over half his lifetime, one can perhaps assume that the rigour, energy and sheer chaos of a market town as large as Sica must have made him yearn for the safer confines of his quiet and humble cell.

— Excerpt from The Chronicles of the Church Of Cosia

"We'll stay here," Sipio announced, drawing to a halt outside a lop-sided, shabby inn on the outskirts of town.

Lius stared at it dubiously. The throngs of people leaving the town's market square forked around him. Somehow, they all managed to avoid touching Simeon while simultaneously bumping into him.

The stench of slaughtered cattle from the shambles near the market square forced him to breathe only through his mouth, and it was so noisy he felt like covering his ears. Cattle braying, people shouting and laughing, carts rolling over cobbles—he'd never imagined so much noise could occur in the same place. Buildings smudged with grime crowded over the streets, blocking out the sun but keeping the smells of faeces, sweat and rotten food within. Not to mention the blood of the butchered animals in the market.

"Could we not stay at the town's church, Brother?" he asked as Sipio started to push open the inn's door. "We could pray there, and receive food, drink and a bed for free."

"We can pray anywhere," Sipio said. He pushed a hand into a fold in his robe and pulled out a bulging leather purse. "Do you really think the Holy Church gave us all this money just for it to weigh us down on our journey?"

"No, Brother, but perhaps we could distribute it among the poor," Lius said.

"We will, Novice. And they will return the favour by giving us beds, drinks and food. Staying at this fine inn merely cuts out the middle part. It doesn't do to give people too much charity, you know. They grow lazy and expectant."

Lius nodded at the scholar's words but stayed silent. Glancing around, he saw two dirty-looking men in coarse robes and thin-soled sandals staring transfixed at Sipio's purse.

Satisfied by the wisdom of his own words, Sipio nodded. "Take Simeon to the stable, Lius. It'll be round the back of the inn somewhere." He pulled the purse's drawstring and shook a gold coin onto the palm of his hand. "Give this to whoever's in the stable and make sure you get at least two silver crowns for change." He flicked the coin through the air at Lius, who belatedly reached out a hand to catch it.

And missed.

The coin bounced off a passer by's shoulder and landed on the dusty road. Lius stooped down to pick it up but one of the dirty-looking men stepped forward and bent in one smooth, liquid motion. Lius straightened up and looked at Sipio for help, but the scholar had vanished through the inn's door.

"Here you are," the man said, holding his hand out.

"Thank you," Lius said, taking the coin.

"Forget it. A small bit of help to one of the God's Chosen can only put me one step higher on the ladder to sit by His side. Is that not so, Brother?"

"Novice," Lius said. "I'm just a novice."

"Really? The other monk, is he a novice also?"

Lius smiled at the thought of the scholar monk as a novice. "Brother Sipio? No."

"Ah. And that purse of his…are all the coins in it gold?"

Lius nodded. "Yes. The Church has trusted him with a great and sacred duty, and ensured he won't fail through want of funds."

The man pursed his lips and glanced at his friend. "Excellent. And you will be here for how long?"

"Just tonight," Lius said. "We'll be leaving an hour after dawn."

"Funnily enough, that's when we'll be leaving," the man said. "Through which of the city gates will you be travelling?"

"I don't know, but we're travelling south-east."

"Well, Brother Novice, with the God's will, we might meet up with you. My name is Hano, by the way. The stable is through the lane there, in the courtyard. And you'll want three silver crowns back."

"Thank you," Lius said.

Hano and his friend nodded farewell and walked past him, following the last stragglers of the market crowd out of town. Lius blinked as he watched them go. If they were leaving town now, why would they also be leaving town tomorrow?

Pushing the question aside, he led Simeon through the lane to a square courtyard. Mismatched, over-sized cobbles of ugly blacks and browns had been laid in uneven circles, directing the eye to the centre where a dispirited fountain dribbled water out of a one-eared frog's mouth.

A small, fragile lean-to with a dirty, straw-covered roof and floor slouched at the other end of the courtyard. It was nothing like the stable in the monastery, where ten horses could stay in separate alcoves, where the straw was always fresh and shining and the troughs contained clean water. A grubby boy about five years younger than Lius was sitting with his back against the wall staring at a patch of filthy straw.

Simeon brayed as Lius walked him round the courtyard to the stable. Lius imagined in the cry a note of disgust, as though the donkey wasn't at all happy about the prospect of staying here tonight.

He bent down and handed the stable boy Simeon's reins and the gold coin. "I need change. Three silver crowns."

The boy sneered as he looked from the coin to Lius. "Where am I going to get them from?"

"You don't have any?"

"Do I look like a merchant?"

"No," Lius said. He shrugged. "Never mind. I'll get change from inside."

The boy folded his fingers round the coin. "It's alright. Stay here and I'll get change." He leapt to his bare feet and ran across the courtyard to the road. Not to the inn, Lius noticed.

After twenty minutes, the boy still hadn't returned, so Lius removed pulled the saddlebags from Simeon's flanks, tied the donkey's rein to a wooden post and walked into the inn.

Sipio was the only customer inside. The scholar was sitting at a long table nursing a large wooden beaker with white foam spewing over the sides. A blushing woman was walking away from him. Averting his eyes from her round, red cheeks lest she corrupt his soul, Lius hurried to Sipio's side.

"Brother, I think the stable boy has run off with the gold coin."

Sipio lifted his drink and sucked some of the froth from the top. He swiped his hand across his mouth and looked at Lius though slightly drooping eyes. "We've been cheated have we?"

Lius nodded.

Sipio sighed and looked over at the woman. "Ranara!"

The red-cheeked lady scurried over to them. "I thought I told you to keep your voice down!"

Sipio nodded. "You did. However, your stable boy has made off with a gold coin that belongs to the Holy Church. Can you send someone to fetch him?"

"We don't have a stable boy," Ranara said.

Sipio lifted his cup and gulped down what sounded like half its contents. He set it down again and said, "Lius, my friend, I charge you with finding this errant thief and recovering our coin. The Holy Church will not be made a mockery of like this. Go quickly, Novice, and be sure to be back by nightfall, whether your quest is successful or not."

The scholar picked his mug up again and looked at Ranara. "As for you, weren't you going to show me to my room when I've finished this?"

Ranara's cheeks flushed even brighter. "Only when you've paid."

Lius was almost certain she meant for the drinks.

A short while later, Lius surveyed the courtyard outside the inn through confused and frightened eyes. The boy had run across the courtyard, skirted round the fountain and scurried down a short alley that opened onto the road. From there, he'd turned right, towards the centre of town. To find the coin, Lius would have to follow the boy.

Into the centre of town. With all its people and noises and smells.

Lius patted Simeon's flank and led him to the fountain. The donkey dipped his head and slurped water from the stream emerging from the frog's mouth.

"Do you think it's safe out there?" Lius whispered in Simeon's ear.

Simeon didn't answer. Lius gave him a moment longer to respond. When it became apparent the donkey was going to continue to not answer, he guided him back to the lean-to.

"If I keep my faith, I have nothing to fear," he told Simeon. "The God will protect me, and see that my cause wins through."

It was an old, remembered and oft-recited line of text, and Simeon looked every bit as unimpressed by it as Lius felt.

Feeling sick, he walked across the courtyard, down the alley and onto the road. Although there were still a couple of hours until sunset, some people had already climbed onto the flat roofs of their white, cubic houses to prepare for the spectacle. One of the monks in the monastery had once told Lius that many families held early evening meals on the roofs of their houses. It had sounded ridiculous to Lius at the time, surrounded as he was by the wide-open spaces of the monastery's lands. Now, seeing how crowded everything was in town, he understood.

He felt a pang of longing for the monastery, where he knew everyone, and didn't have to pay for food and lodgings, and couldn't get lost, and all that mattered was the God. At the moment, for the first time in his life, the God seemed terribly distant.

Aghast at himself, resolving to pray for the God's forgiveness at his blasphemously presumptuous thought, Lius hurried down the dusty, narrow road. The smell of slaughtered sheep, pigs, cows and fowl grew thicker until Lius could almost taste hot blood in the air.

When he arrived at the shambles, he realised why. Blood covered the ground. It had flowed between the cobbles, down red-crusted gullies and into gloopy puddles that looked like dark sludge. Hooves, entrails, and intestines had been thrown in careless piles into the middle of the road. Flies swarmed around them, crawling and batting inky wings to move from one section of flesh to another. On either side of the cobbled lane, butchers shouted and laughed and hacked at their slaughtered beasts with wide, flashing blades that glinted like evil eyes. Tendrils of greasy smoke curled around and between the bloodstained men.

Lius tried to control his breathing, but wisps of the acrid smoke stung his nostrils and burnt the back of his throat. The butchers used it as fly repellent, he realised, coughing. He swallowed a rising surge of mucus and walked through the mess with his eyes fixed on the slippery red cobbles beneath his sandaled feet. He couldn't understand how the butchers could laugh and tell each other jokes while they did this.

He glanced at one particularly jolly fellow, splattered with blood and black gore across his apron, arms and face, his mouth gaping wide open in laughter as he raised his cleaver above his shoulder. The back half of a cow, still with its hide on, and the hair on its tail, hung from a meat hook beside him.

The butcher's arm stopped in mid-swing and he stared at Lius. "You interested? Prime cut. Cheaper than anything this lot'll offer you." He jerked the cleaver down to indicate the rest of the butchers.

Lius shook his head. About to hurry past, on impulse he stayed still and said, "I'm looking for a boy."

The butcher's mouth set in a thin line. He waved his cleaver at Lius. "You monks are disgusting. Get lost."

Lius's jaw dropped. When the butcher took a threatening step towards him, he gathered his robe up in one fist and scurried away.

The shambles opened up onto a large market square. Most of the produce was being packed away into wooden boxes or small hand-pulled carts. A few disinterested looking customers wandered among the stalls, carts, and trestle-tables, occasionally peering at fruits or vegetables in such a way to indicate that although they really didn't need what they were looking at, they might be prepared to take it off the trader's hands. The apples, oranges and olives—even the green vegetables—smelt like perfume after the choking stench of the shambles.

Lius walked up to a tall, thickset man with crooked, overlapping teeth. "I'm looking for someone," he said. He'd learnt a lesson from the butcher, although he wasn't exactly sure what it was yet. "He stole a gold coin from me."

"Oh, yes?" the market trader said without much interest.

Lius nodded. "Yes. He's about ten, and very dirty, with torn clothes and no shoes."

The man grunted. "That narrows it down, then."

Lius smiled in relief and waited for the trader to continue.

Seeing Lius's earnest, sarcasm-proof expression, the man shook his head. "Try the Talalek quarter. That's where most of the people like the one you described live. Though from the sound of it, he needs your coin a lot more than you do."

"You mean there's more like him?" Lius hadn't really thought about it, but he'd assumed the stable boy was the town's only dirty, bare-footed thief.

"Oh, yes! Your God looks after his own, not us commoners. The Talalek quarter's that way." The trader pointed at a lane branching off from the square. "It sprawls all over the hill, about a mile from here. Be careful—you'll get robbed again. You should find your thief, though. If anyone's running around with money up there, the whole quarter'll know about it."

"Thank you," Lius said. "May the God shine down on you always."

He waited for the trader to offer the traditional response, but all he received was, "That'd be nice."

Lius backed away and headed toward the lane the man had pointed out. The market trader's faith evidently needed some bolstering, he concluded. Then he thought about the butcher, who had apparently hated Lius just for being a monk.

Why, though?

Lius had been brought up in the monastery to believe that he only existed to worship and love the God. Why should anyone resent that?

He needed to seek guidance on the matter when he returned to the inn, through prayer—and the advice of Brother Sipio. If I ever do return to the inn, he thought, remembering the market trader's warning about being robbed.

Protect me, my God, he prayed, entering the lane that wound towards the hill where the Talalek quarter waited.

Lius had been taught about the first Cosian invasion of Talalek in the monastery. It had taken place over a hundred years ago, and had been utterly successful. The Talalek people had been routed and conquered with an ease that belied the southern country's enormous size. Settling it, the Cosians had tried to impose their own customs and religion on the Talaleks. The southerners were a race of fanatics, though, and not easily converted. Those that did convert often moved to Cosia, because their neighbours made life unbearable for them. In Cosia, the Talalek converts settled in droves in small towns and cities, although never in Cosi itself. They weren't permitted to enter the cradle of the faith.

Talalek had finally rebelled against Cosian rule some years earlier. The Cosian army had in turn been routed, and its remnants had retreated back across the border to Cosia. Despite all this, and despite even the recent re-conquest of Talalek, Lius had assumed that the local Cosians lived in harmony with the immigrant Talaleks sharing their towns.

But they didn't. They couldn't, if the Talaleks had a separate quarter, away from the rest of the townsfolk.

Lius started trudging up the hill. Low, wooden shanty houses, brightly painted with reds, oranges, yellows and blues, leaned against one another on either side of him. They looked pretty, but poorly constructed, as though their builders hadn't had permanence in mind when they'd worked on them. People stared at him through windows with green shutters flung wide apart. Their elbows rested on the window ledges and their heads poked out as they watched his passing with dull curiosity.

Lius didn't feel threatened by anyone, but he didn't feel welcome either. He had the impression that the apparently passive window-watchers were spreading the word about him as soon as he walked past.

Entranced by his colourful, yet somehow hopeless surroundings, Lius kept walking until he reached the first of the winding lanes. Cobbled steps wove up the hill's steep incline between houses and around corners. At one point, the lane he was following narrowed so much that all he could see was the walls of houses pushing against one another, brushing the sleeves of his robe, and more steps ahead. Above, the sky had been condensed to a thin blue strip.

About half way up the hill, he rounded a corner and broke from the stepped lane onto a wide-open plateau. Children were playing on it, chasing each other, running and laughing in games Lius had never played, because he's been brought up like a monk with hour long prayers five times a day and chorus, lessons and contemplation the rest of the time. He was still only a novice, but he knew all the ways of a monk, because it was all he'd ever been. Not a child, but a monk-in-waiting.

Lius blinked his moment of self-pity away and studied the children as he walked towards the middle of the plateau. The boy he was looking for wasn't among them, but they all looked a bit like him, with torn, dirty clothes, grubby faces and bare feet. A few of them stopped playing and stared at him as he approached.

One of them, a girl with long, tangled brown hair who looked about twelve, walked towards him.

"Are you the monk?" Her voice was clear and curious, and her blue eyes shone through the dirt on her face.

Liys started to shake his head, but then said, "Yes." It seemed easier than explaining the truth, and he would pray for forgiveness later.

"We heard you were coming."

"I gathered," Lius said.

The girl touched the hem of his thick, grey habit. "Do all monks wear these, then?"

Grey was a novice's colour, but Lius took a chance she wouldn't know that. "Yes." Once you started lying, he realised with a shock, you had to keep doing it to cover that first one. It was how people fell from the God's light, with one small corruption that snowballed into something much larger.

"It doesn't look very comfortable. Does it itch?"

Lius shrugged. "Sometimes. You get used to it."

The girl's brow furrowed in puzzlement. She looked into his eyes. "Why would you want to?"

It was a good question, and one that touched upon a theological debate that Lius had never really understood. He opened his mouth to attempt a reply, but the girl said, "Are you looking for Hamy?"

"Who?"

"Hamy, the boy who took your coin. He took it to his mother. He's always pulling that scam, pretending to be a stable boy. When he saw you outside the inn with your donkey, he rushed into the stable."

"I see," Lius said. "Do you know where he is?"

The girl nodded. "You know no one wants to speak to you? We don't snitch on our own, but Hamy's done bad by you. If you'd been a farmer or someone, you'd have told the army, and they'd have swept through here like the plague. Last time they came, they killed two people, and locked ten away. Hamy'd be alright, but they'd take his mother and father, and maybe the younger ones, too. Come on, and I'll take you to him."

She smiled and offered Lius her hand. Bewildered by her string of words, and by the sheer goodness emanating from her, he took it in his own.

She squeezed his hand and led him to the outskirts of the plateau. "It's this way. What's your name?"

"Lius. What's yours?"

"Mirna. Why'd you decide to be a monk?"

"I didn't, really," Lius said. To divert her attention away from him, he asked, "Why do you all live here?"

Mirna shrugged. "We just do. Always have done. My father says it's because of the emperor, but he's only six isn't he? I don't see what he's got to do with it."

"Neither do I," Lius said, not offering anything else because he was enjoying listening to her rhythmic voice.

"My father says we're going to start travelling round soon. He says we'll be able to avoid the emperor's tax men that way."

"Where will you travel to?"

"I don't know. Everywhere, I guess."

"How long will you be gone?"

"Forever. Father says if we're going to get treated like—" Mirna glanced sideways at Lius's face and giggled. "—treated badly in towns, we might as well stay out of them for good." She squeezed his hand again and looked at him with a slanted smile that made his stomach lurch. "You never know; maybe we'll bump into each other again sometime. Somewhere else."

"I hope so," Lius said. His hand felt clammy and he wanted to withdraw it from Mirna's, but he didn't want to lose the contact with her.

"That's Hamy's house," Mirna said, pointing further up the hill at a shabby wooden structure with no windows."

"Why isn't it painted like all the others?" Lius asked.

"I don't know. Hamy's father is funny. You want to be gone before he gets back. I'll come in with you."

Lius had never been as close to a girl as this. Before he'd left the monastery—this morning, he thought, only this morning!— he'd only ever seen two women, both travelling guests at the monastery, both cloaked and hooded so they wouldn't corrupt the monks' souls. Although Mirna smelled slightly sweaty, she smelled fresh as well.

She slipped her hand out of Lius's when they reached Hamy's house and pushed the door open without knocking. Lius stared at his damp palm regretfully, then wiped it on the side of his robe. He could hear crying inside, and footsteps thudding. After a moment, he followed Mirna in.

It took him a moment to adjust to the gloomy light. One baby was wailing in a rickety cot, another crawling around the stone floor in the open square of the house's single room. Six beds had been piled on top of each other against the far wall. A wooden plank bridged over two small, flat-bottomed rocks served as a bench against another wall, or perhaps a table. A large, steaming iron pot with indistinguishable chunks of vegetables simmering in a sludgy broth stood in front of the plank.

In a corner of the room, half-hidden by the pot, the boy from the stable was glowering at Lius. "Why'd you bring him here?" he asked Mirna.

"He'd have found you in the end," Mirna said. "Besides, if he hadn't, he'd have told the army. You don't want them here, do you, Hamy?"

"The army won't get me if I don't want them to."

"But the God will," Lius said. "He's watching, Hamy."

Hamy spat on the floor. "He'll only punish me when I'm dead. Who cares then?"

Does anyone have any faith outside the monastery? Lius wondered.

"Hamy, give him the money back," Mirna said.

"I can't. I've spent it."

"What on? A house? Give him it back."

"You can't steal from the Church, Hamy," Lius said.

"I thought I did."

The baby in the cot wouldn't stop crying. Its tiny hands were balled into fists that kept scrubbing at its wet, blotchy face.

"Just give him it," Mirna said. "If you don't, when your parents get back, they'll know about it. You know what your pa's like. He'll never give it back. Then the army'll come and take them away. Maybe kill them. Do you want that?"

Hamy shook his head.

"Give him it, then."

Hamy scowled, then rose, walked across the room and handed Lius the gold coin.

Mirna slapped him affectionately on the top of his head. "You fool. How'd you think you were going to spend it? Everyone would've known you'd stolen it."

Hamy sighed and rubbed his head. "I know. I realised that after I'd taken it. I knew I shouldn't have told you. You think too much, Mirna."

"Better that, than not at all," Mirna said. "Give the baby some water or something." She flashed a brilliant smile at Lius. "Happy now?"

Lius turned the coin between his fingers, thinking of all the things he'd seen because of this tiny piece of metal. "Not really, no. I don't know how to get back. Would you show me the way to the market square?"

Mirna nodded, still smiling. "Come on, then."

They walked hand in hand down the hill a different way from the way Lius had come up by himself. This way wound and twisted between the colourful houses more, but was obviously quicker because they reached the bottom of the hill much sooner than Lius had expected. He felt a pang of regret, knowing that he would never see Mirna again.

She pointed down a lane. "The market's that way."

"Come with me," Lius said.

"It's not far."

"So you can come with me, then," Lius said.

Mirna laughed and let him pull her down the lane.

The market had just about finished for the day, with only a few traders packing their goods away. Lius led Mirna to the nearest of them and gave him the gold coin. "I want four silver crowns for that."

The trader looked down at the coin. Just for a moment, his eyes widened. "Where am I going to find that kind of money? I've only got three."

"Never mind, then," Lius said.

He took the coin back. The trader sighed and dipped a hand into his apron pocket. "Here. Suppose it doesn't hurt to do the Church a favour from time to time."

Lius smiled at him. "May the God shine down on you always."

He pulled Mirna away from the stall and gave her the four silver coins. "Here. Give two to Hamy's family, and keep two for yours."

Mirna stared at the coins. "We don't take charity."

"This isn't charity," Lius said. "It's just the God. Shining down on you."

"Through you," Mirna said. She rose up on her tiptoes and kissed his lips. Lius's breath caught in his throat.

He had to pull away from her, had to, but he couldn't, didn't want to, and then she pulled away from him. Lius ran his tongue over his lips, tasting Mirna's mouth.

"I'll be watching out for you, Lius-Monk," Mirna said. "And I think I'll find you."

She turned and ran back down the alley. Lius was almost certain he saw her hand swipe at her face before she disappeared from him.

Lius sighed and started trudging back to the inn. He'd done well. The sun was just now starting to sink behind the buildings to the west.

Ranara was the only person inside the inn when Lius got back. "Your friend's upstairs," she said. "First room at the top. He seems tired, for some reason."

"We came a long way today."

"I don't think that's the reason," Ranara said.

Lius felt exhausted. He could hardly keep his eyes open and he had no energy to spare to try to decipher Ranara's arch tone. Besides, he wanted to think about his encounter with Mirna.

"Thank you," he said.

He walked across the room and creaked his way up the wooden stairs at the back. He shied away from a cockroach scuttling over the top step then knocked on the nearest door. There was no answer, so he pushed it open.

Sipio lay under the single sheet of his bed. His shoulders were bare. The scholar opened one eye until Lius shut the door, locking the candlelight in the corridor outside.

"You were gone a long time. Did you find our thief?"

"No, Brother," Lius said.

Sipio rubbed his eyes. "I didn't think you would. I thought you might see some interesting things, though. Did you?"

"Yes, Brother."

"Good." Sipio closed his eyes.

Too tired to bother with the laces, Lius sat down on the other bed and pulled his sandals off.

"Novice," Sipio said, still with his eyes shut.

"Yes, Brother?"

Sipio pointed at the corner of the room. "I hope you haven't forgotten. Brother Simeon's journal is in the saddlebag over there. Go downstairs to read it, would you?"