August does not consider himself a blasphemer.

Ask the man and he will tell you: he believes in Caligo and the rest of her pantheon, he has kept his tenets to their goddess of starlight and shadow. He shares his earnings with the poor and the needful and his pride in his court goes beyond the city and the mountains and all the souls they claim; it’s in the ground itself and the goddess who walked it.

But maybe he has had enough. Maybe he is sick of the tests they are being set, and the price of death not only for failing them but for those innocents who refused to play. There are still scars Denocte bears from the tsunami that swept through two summers ago. There are still children who cry and quake when an eagle swoops low overhead or a hawk cries shrill in the mountains just before a storm, thinking it is the thunderbirds returning. There is the island -

And there are no answers.

The stranger doesn’t respond, cloaked in shadow so only the barest shape of him is visible. August is not perturbed; instead a grin crosses his mouth, thin as the slash of a rapier, and he begins to walk further into the temple, examining what little he can see in the dim. He is patient, as any good warrior must be, or any good gambler. When the man does answer, the palomino is intentionally slow to turn his gaze back.

And so the first thing he sees is the moon-sigil glowing on the stallion’s forehead, like it was carved out by a piece of star. Surprise catches him by the throat and he steps back, chin tilting, a soft noise escaping him that sounds like ah.

He isn’t sure he’d truly believed in the Order. But that doesn’t mean he hadn’t listened to the tales.

Not that you would know. August might have responded to that, before; he can feel his tongue heavy with answer, like gold in his mouth. Yet he says nothing, nothing in reply to the deep toll of the monk’s voice, for now he is curious, considering.

At last the man rises. August does not look away (what is there to see? Nothing, except the stars faint out the doorway; all other light has been swallowed) at the crescent moons on his skin and the full moons of his eyes, and as the man talks in his low voice he smiles a grin that mirrors the other.

“She is not the only one who knows how to listen in shadows. I rather think her children are quite skilled with that gift. Nor does she seem to do much with what she hears.” Nearer and nearer the man drifts, the shadows moving with him, but August doesn’t step back again. Even when their breath mingles in their nearness he does not turn aside. He wonders if any of the scents he can smell on the man is what a shadow smells like.

There is little else he can make out about the stallion, but he knows the Night Order is said to be made up of mighty warriors.

“No,” he agrees. But when he licks his lips, a grin emerges that offers more dare than joy. “Though I’m sure we could find a way to repair that, if you’d rather I was.”