The Hero System Glitched And Now It Pays Me to Love My Assassin Wives

"I didn’t come for you," I said and I put the folder on the table. "I came to arm you."

Calista looked at the folder without touching it.

Two days of work from Zelina’s network paid out of my own pocket and delivered at four in the morning by a woman who insisted on charging me double for devotional work.

"What is it?"

"The capital’s bishopric. Nine years of bookkeeping." I opened the first page myself. "Tithes from thirteen poor parishes diverted to the motherhouse. Three sisters retired for reporting it."

I turned to the ninth sheet.

"And right here is the record of your own handover. Fifteen years old. A dowry paid by the bishopric to your village’s temple recorded as a pious donation."

Calista sat down slowly.

"They bought me."

"With a receipt." I turned the page. "And the receipt was signed by the exact same man who is now giving you a three day deadline."

On the other side of the door forty three children were arguing over a ladle.

Calista read every single page. She didn’t skip a single one. It took her forty minutes and she didn’t say a single word during all of them.

When she looked up her eyes were dry and her mouth was pressed into a tight line I had never seen before.

"You still can’t save me."

"I don’t intend to."

"Then what is this?"

"A third way. And you are going to pay for it entirely yourself because if I pay for it it won’t work." I sat across from her. "Don’t wait for them to retire you. You resign first."

"Where?"

"At the basilica. Your day and your hour and your pulpit. You return the title and you return the habit and you explain why with these papers in your hand."

"I will be left without a Church."

"You will be left without an owner."

"I will be left without a roof and without an income and without protection and without a name." She tapped the folder with two fingers. "And the bishopric will say that a spiteful woman invented fake accounts to get revenge."

"They will say that. And thirteen poor parishes will check their own books that very same afternoon." I held her gaze. "I am not offering you a happy ending Calista. I am offering you the chance to strike the blow yourself."

Outside in the courtyard someone dragged a bucket and the noise reached us.

Then Calista closed the folder and hugged it against her chest and laughed with her throat still broken creating an ugly and true sound.

"Twenty three years," she said. "Twenty three years waiting for someone to give me permission."

"I didn’t give you permission. I gave you papers."

"Worse. You gave me options." She stood up. "Nobody had ever done that for me."

The basilica was full all the way to the steps.

Word had spread since dawn because the Saint had requested the pulpit and the whole city knew what she had been summoned for.

I entered through the side door and stood in the nave without a throne and without a visible escort among bakers and stevedores who looked at me and decided they would have time to hate me later.

Calista walked up to the pulpit with her hands bandaged.

She didn’t ask for silence. The basilica quieted down on its own bench by bench from the atrium to the back.

"My name is Calista Bloom," she said. "I was born in Vaerhold. I am twenty three years old and I have been the Saint of this city for eight."

Her voice was raspy. It could be heard all the way to the atrium.

"The bishopric asked me to certify the sainthood of the emperor. I am not going to do it. Nobody has ever given me the authority to sell the word of the gods on a fixed term and especially not with a delivery date."

A murmur ran through the crowd. A canon stood up from his bench.

"In this folder there are nine years of accounts from this bishopric," Calista continued raising it with both bandaged hands. "Thirteen poor parishes that paid tithes they never saw. Three sisters retired for asking questions. And a fifteen year old girl bought from a rural temple with a dowry registered as a donation."

She lowered the folder.

"That girl was me. The receipt bears the seal that is right above that door."

The basilica erupted.

Calista waited completely still at the pulpit until the noise tired itself out.

"I am returning the title," she said. "I am returning the habit. Let no one say the Church expelled me. I am leaving on my own."

She took off the white stole right there in front of everyone and left it folded on the lectern.

I should have left then. The move was made and it was clean and it was hers.

But Calista stepped down from the pulpit and didn’t walk toward the door.

She walked toward the north atrium where the sick from the slums who no healer would treat had been huddled together since dawn waiting.

Zelina’s orphans were among them. Twelve of them with canal fever.

"Calista." I reached her in two strides. "You know what each one costs you."

"I know exactly what each one costs me."

"Then wait. Do it tomorrow or one a week and pace yourself..."

"And what if they don’t let me tomorrow?" She pulled out of my grip gently. "I am no longer a Saint Vaelion. This might be the last time they let me enter an atrium."

She kneeled next to the first child.

The light that came out of her bandaged hands wasn’t spectacular. It was quiet and warm and the child stopped shivering.

Calista’s hair on her right temple lost its pink color in a streak the width of a finger.

By the fourth child the streak was a wide band.

By the eighth her knees buckled and she only stayed kneeling because I held her by the shoulders from behind.

"Two more," she said.

"Calista."

"Two. More." Her voice left no room for bargaining. "Count them with me if you want to be useful."

I counted the last two out loud with my hands on her shoulders while three hundred people from the slums watched the woman who had just renounced everything spend her remaining days on children who could never pay her back.

When the twelfth one finished I held all her weight.

I carried her to the carriage in front of the city and the canons and Decimus’s spies and the entire empire. Let them each write whatever report they wanted.

She weighed less than a woman who had just moved the world should weigh.

"We won," she murmured against my neck.

"You lost the title and the income and eleven days of your life in one afternoon. Explain the winning part to me."

"I chose." She got comfortable without any strength and without any rush. "Eleven days is a price. I set it. I paid it. No man signed it for me."

Once inside the carriage with her head against the seat and the white streak cutting through her pink hair she opened her eyes.

"Say it without the title."

"Say what?"

"My name. Everyone says Saint. It has been eight years since I heard it by itself."

"Calista."

She closed her eyes again and all the tension in her jaw left her at once.

"Again."

"Calista."

"...good." She smiled with her eyes closed. "Now I can actually go to sleep."

[DING]

[Investment Detected: you handed her the weapon and didn’t fire it yourself.]

[Evaluation: SSS. Sincerity verified... 98%.]

[Reward x1000: dispensing...]

[Integrity: 33% ▼ 32%]

The window faded when we arrived at the palace. In the courtyard the head butler was waiting for us with a face that didn’t bring good news and a parchment tied with black ribbons.

The Church had responded in record time.

Anathema. A formal excommunication of Emperor Vaelion Ironveil issued that very afternoon for the corruption of a consecrated woman.

An anathematized emperor cannot rule under imperial law.

Decimus had just received the only document he needed served on a silver platter and stamped with a sacred seal.