Babylon Steel by Gaie Sebold

and anyone who’s heard me sing would tell you I’m a fair storyteller. Mind you, anyone who’s heard me sing would probably tell you I’m a fair carpenter.
    Funnily enough, it wasn’t the young guard who broke, it was Beard who started to sweat, his knuckles gradually whitening as he clutched his spear, and tried to ignore what he was hearing. Eventually he retreated with as much dignity as remains to a man apparently trying to conceal a small sailing boat under his uniform.
    I wasn’t sure if he closed the door with unnecessary force, or if it was just designed to give out that long, rolling boom. Might have been quite impressive under other circumstances. I wondered what it was like on the other side when that thing shut behind you. A lot like gaol, I’d imagine.
    “You all right?” Previous muttered. Something must have shown on my face.
    “Fine. I just want to get done and get home.”
    It wasn’t long before a man appeared around the side of the temple, looked us over and gestured us to a small door off the courtyard.
    It opened on one of those bland little rooms where the daily business of temples is done; a place for things like paying one’s bills and dealing quietly with trouble. A window, two chairs, a plain table. Our host wore grey robes instead of the white of the priests, and no mask. He was a type I thought I recognized: the quiet, unassuming, administrative sort. The sort who, behind the bland exterior, is often rabidly ambitious with an agenda all their own. He was narrow-hipped, slight, no more than a boy’s height and as thin as a politician’s promise.
    He gave a bow perfectly judged to be just polite enough, and gestured us to the two hard-backed chairs. Fine by me, he could stand if he thought height gave him an advantage, but he’d be looking down my front, which might give me an edge.
    But he didn’t seem as susceptible as the guard. Barely a glance.
    “I am Administrator Elect Denarven,” he said, his voice as quiet and well-modulated as his gestures. The harsh-soap stink of the temple (no dangerously sensuous incense for the Vessels) seemed to concentrate around him. His fingernails were extraordinarily clean; his hands were reddish, water-scoured, like a washerwoman’s. Perhaps they scrubbed the temple floors as some kind of penance. I thought about asking him if they’d hire out; trying to scrub the ‘sin’ out of the Lantern would surely be a perfect penance, and the floors’d come up a treat.
    “Why have you entered our precinct?” he said.
    “I told the guard. I run The Red Lantern, in Goldencat Street. Two of your priests have turned up. They are disrupting my trade.”
    He blinked. “Two Vessels are...”
    “Standing around, in the street, making a damn nuisance of themselves. I want them removed.”
    “I am merely an administrator,” he said. “What action the Vessels decide to take in pursuance of the worship of the Purest is at the discretion of the High Priests.”
    “If they were showing discretion, it wouldn’t be a problem. I want them out of there.”
    “It is part of the beliefs of the order that sin is not permitted to hide, that iniquity be dragged into daylight.”
    “We are hardly hiding. We’re right there, and everyone, including your Order, knows exactly what we do. So who are you dragging us into daylight for?”
    He looked at me as though I were stupid. “The Purest,” he said.
    Theological discussion with fanatics is a lost cause, but I couldn’t help wondering how useful their god was, if he couldn’t spot us for himself. We’re rapidly becoming the best known brothel in Scalentine.
    “Selling pleasure’s legal in Scalentine,” I said, “whether the Vessels like it or not.”
    “It is not my place to question the Vessels or to tell them how they should act.”
    “Then why am I talking to you? Why don’t you go get me someone who actually has some authority, and I’ll talk to them.”
    “Our priests do not...”
    “Converse