For a moment, there was silence between them. On the ferryman’s face, surprise intermingled and then changed to guilt, changed to horror. While she herself raced through the options she had, and the implications they had. Should she admit it to him? Or should she pretend she wasn’t who he thought she was? But with Mei with her, it would be hard to appear as anyone else than the person she was.

“I- I’m sorry, watcher”, he said. “I confused you with … someone else.” The pain in his voice almost made her shiver.

She hadn’t seen Lian in seven years. A visit to her family was always a risk she could not take lightly, but on that last occasion, she had had a falling out with her sister that had forbidden her to come back anytime soon. And now, seven years later, she did not feel the need to do so. The only thing she regretted was, that Lian and his older sister had been caught in the middle. Just as they always had. And it was for him, that she made her decision. For him. And for Ju.

“I’m not a watcher”, she said. Her voice was just neutral enough to make clear, that this confession still required him to follow protocol. “I am the Sinner, dear ferryman.”

Lian’s face, again, went through emotions. He was like a book, so readable for everybody. He had always been. Just like his father.

“Sinner”, he said at last and bowed lightly.

The Sinner returned the bow, relieved that he had caught the hint. Not, that he had doubted him much. When everything was said and done, Lian had always been a clever boy.

“What can I do for you?”, he asked.

“You can give me passage to Kantan”, she said, nodding to his vessel. It was a small boat, large enough for him, herself, and Mei. Made from teak wood and painted in the green of fresh bamboo.

He put his tongue to his teeth and wiggled his head. “To Kantan? That’s … far.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “It’s hardly a day.”

He slowly shook his head. “Yeah, but I usually only take passengers across the canal.” He indicated Hiteku on the other side. “I can get you there.”

“No thank you”, she said without even thinking about it. If there was one thing she didn’t want it was crossing yet another island before finally reaching the palace.

She would like to spend some time with Lian but not at the expense of coming home and atoning for her sins. She wasn’t even sure if she could muster the strength for another ride on Mei.

“Is anyone here who could take me directly to Kantan? Someone you trust, preferably?” The last question she whispered. It was a bonus.

He hesitated, then shrugged. “She”, he said, pointing to the other end of the pier. The Sinner followed his arm with her eyes and saw a tall, blond woman with a bulky frame. Her boat was bigger and less traditional, it had a set of oars and even a sail. She was clad in simple, cheap armor and a sword hung at her waist. She looked more like a sellsword than a ferrywoman.

The Sinner frowned. “A foreigner? That’s … unusual.”

“She’s been here for two years now”, he said. “Good at her job. She transports to almost everywhere as long as she doesn’t need to leave the islands.”

“Oh?”

He shrugged again. “Don’t ask me, I have no idea.”

“Hmm. What’s her name?”

“Edalgild.”

The Sinner pondered the idea for a moment. Between the looks and the name, there wasn’t really much she could gather on that woman. She was most likely from the city-states, possibly a sellsword, even more likely a convict. People like her had a history of showing up here, hiding until they eventually attracted trouble again.

Traveling with someone she didn’t know, and a foreigner to boot, wasn’t really the ideal way. But she would do it if it meant getting to Kantan in a day instead of crossing Hiteku.

Lian tapped his chin, then shook his head. “You can lend me strength, right?”, he asked.

“Pardon me?”

He crossed his arms, unsure whether what he wanted to say was actually a good idea. “It’s not that I don’t know the way”, he said. “I’m not sure if I’m strong enough. So, if I fail, you can lend me strength?”

She pursed her lips. “I can”, she said.

“Alright. Well. What good is family for if they don’t help each other out, hm?”, he asked.

Family. The notion struck her as odd. Of course, Lian was her family as much as any watcher was. Perhaps more so, but also less.

“I think your mother would have it if you threw me in the canal and let me drown”, she said half-jokingly.

Lian’s eyes flashed. “Probably. But living customers pay better.”

She chuckled. “Well, good to know you’re a businessman.”

He snorted. Then, his expression got serious again. “I’ll need some more supplies. Water and such. Do you have anything else that needs to get on board?”

“Mei.”

“Your mule?”

“Yes. That won’t be a problem, will it?”

“No. Not if you can lend me strength.”

“Don’t worry, Lian”, she said.

He gave her a small smile. “Can we meet here again in twenty minutes?”

She nodded.

It took her longer than twenty minutes to get Mei to the shore. The stubborn mule was alert and aware, that shores meant water, water meant boats, and she hated boats. The closer she came to the pier, the more impossible it got to make Mei move in the right direction until at the end, the Sinner got down and lead her by the headcollar, constantly avoiding Mei’s head and teeth. As if that alone wouldn’t be enough, she started to neigh and screech as if the Sinner was leading her to slaughter. She attracted attention and lots of it. The Sinner regretted her decision to not drug her beforehand. How much easier it would be if Mei was quiet and complacent right now.

She tried to ignore all the onlookers as long as possible but finally, all the eyes burning on her skin were just too much. She looked up to find a crowd. Almost everyone who was at the small port now stood in front of her and stared. At her, and at the suffering animal, she was leading by the head.

The crowd, faced with the sudden attention, was silent. But then a word was whispered: “Sinner?”

The Sinner stiffened, she tried to grab Mei’s reigns and drag her on, but too late.

“Is it really you, Sinner?” The woman who had spoken wasn’t much older than she herself. Her lip was split left to her nose, giving her face an oddly obvious asymmetry. Her eyes were dark, her long hair was bound in a ponytail that hung over her right shoulder.

The Sinner shuddered. This question should not have been asked. Ideally, Mei had behaved like a good pet, and she would have been on the boat by now. Instead, she faced this predicament. Her first official appearance should have been in the palace, at the Saint’s side, not in a village a day’s voyage away from him. But she couldn’t lie to her people. Not like this.

She took a deep breath and did, what she had to do. She bowed at the crowd, fingertips of both hands pressed at each other in front of her chest forming a triangle without a bottom because the thumbs did not touch each other.

When she raised her head again, she smiled at the village and watched them returning the gesture. “My people”, she said, pride in her voice she didn’t feel. “Forgive me for not announcing my presence here beforehand, but I am not here to impose on you, neither am I really here.” To that, the crowd reacted with disappointment.

Her eyes searched for someone with authority and fell upon the red ribbon of the village elder. She knew him. He had served as a watcher until his partner had asked to retire, and so had he.

She looked him stern in the eyes and tapped her little finger against her ring finger of the other hand. He responded with the same gesture, fast enough that nobody else would catch up on it. “In that case, Sinner”, he said in a great voice, “we don’t wish to impose on you at all. Perhaps, if you travel swiftly enough, you can visit us another time, in a proper fashion, yes?” He bowed to her, his palms pressed flatly against each other, one handheld horizontally, the other one vertically, so that his hands did not touch each other.

The crowd murmured pleased, and some even picked up on his bow.

She nodded gracefully. “Thank you, elder”, she said. “I’ll remember this invitation.”

He knew she couldn’t give him more than that. It was, in truth, rather unlikely that she would ever have the time to just visit this place, regardless of the invitation. But things like this tended to appease simpler minds.

He nodded and began to send people away.

With Lian’s help, who had of course witnessed the crowd, she managed to get Mei on deck. The mule was still miserable but now she seemed scared stiff. Even secured as she was, she did not really move but shivered on spot.

“Will she be okay?”, Lian asked.

“Yes”, the Sinner said. She had already begun to poke around in her satchel until she found what she was looking for. A small, very small, vial made from black stone. It was cold to the touch and very smooth. The plug was made from white metal. “What is that?”, Lian asked.

“A soporific.”

“A what?”

“It lets her sleep.”

“Oh, I see.”

She opened the vial and carefully poured out a bit of the liquid on her hand. It was shimmered green and smelled of valley roses and henbane — a disgusting mixture. The roses were necessary to make sure that whoever drank the soporific did not throw up from it, but together with the henbane that smelled of rod and decaying cadavers, it made the mixture smell even more repellent.

Regardless of the smell, she held her hand in front of Mei’s head, and the mule licked it clean. Her tongue was rough and hot, and scratched over the Sinner’s palm a few times, even after all the elixir was gone. It might smell disgusting — and taste as bad — but Mei knew that it helped her.

The Sinner petted her lightly, and stroke her mane, when Mei laid down and put her head on her lap. She didn’t stop caressing her, not even when she drooled all over her clothing.

While she was busy comforting her mount, she watched Lian poling the vessel down the canal. The sun was at its highest point now, and he was sweating. But she saw the muscles on his arms, that were honed from this exact work. Right now, he looked as if he were enjoying himself. The wind played in his long hair. He had become quite handsome in the years she had been away. Not, that she was surprised.

In his face, however, she could see that he was working up the courage to say something. She gave him the time he needed; she had a few ideas as to what he could mean to say but in the end, she couldn’t read his mind. And when he found the words he had been looking for, he said: “You know, some people said you ran away.”

“Oh? And why should I have done that?”

“They say, you wanted to live a normal life. Or got pregnant, something like that.”

“Hm, interesting. Did the Saint not tell you where I went?”

He shook his head. “Not at first. One day then, when the rumors had been gotten real loud, he told us that you were gone for two years already. Some secret mission he did not want to jeopardize.”

She nodded. “We did not anticipate how long I would be gone when I left”, she said.

“Where have you been?”, he asked.

“I cannot tell you that.”

“What, don’t you trust me? We are family.”

She shook her head firmly. “I trust you”, she said. “But I am the veil between you and the darkness, Lian. Only harm can come from repeating sins that were not yet atoned for.”

He shivered. “You know, when you say it like that, it sounds crazy.”

“Crazy?”

“Yes. I mean… I know what you mean but saying it with that … absoluteness… it’s scary. And … unbelievable? Mother goes on and on about it lately but I find the more I hear about it, the less I believe in the principle.”

She chuckled. “It’s the way of the youth to challenge what the elder generations know to be best.”

He looked at her inquisitively. “So it doesn’t bother you?”

“No. I am more bothered by what you say about your mother. Does she regret her decision?”

He shook his head. “No, it’s…” He stopped, another thought crossing his mind. “Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you regret it?”

“No”, she said without hesitation. “I don’t regret that you exist, Lian. Or your sister, for that matter.”

He smiled, almost sadly. “But you regret becoming the Sinner, don’t you?”

“At the time, it was the right decision”, she said. “I wouldn’t want it for the two of you and I would never encourage you to follow my path. But for me, it was the right choice. I had nothing to lose in life when I stepped in for your mother.” Saying that so nonchalantly made her shiver.

Because the truth was, that she hadn’t known just how much she had that she could lose when she had bound herself to the Saint. With most things, one only learned to value them when they were stripped away. In training, she had learned that. She had learned that there was only so much physical pain one could endure before the pain was replaced by numbness. She had learned to embrace that numbness. She had been made from a person into a concept, had replaced her identity with nothing but the idea of service. And found a sense of peace in the act that nothing else would ever give her.

Out of all things she had been since she had entered the academy, being the Sinner was the most stable one.

When she had been a novice, she had been sore. Wounds from weapons, both physical and mental, had made her forget what “healing” was. Being a watcher was unstable, too, in the most horrible way. Once past the limits of the own body, past pain, once she had learned to cling to the numbness more than she clung to the air, she had learned what it really meant to be a concept: Wearing other people’s faces and bodies did that to a person. It was more than just being alienated from the own identity. It was denying identity altogether. A horror beyond anything she had ever imagined. And she had conquered it, and made it her own.

The Sinner remembered the time she had been a watcher. She had stood in for three different Sinners. She had been male, she had been in between. She had been female. Every day, a prisoner in a body she could in no way claim as her own.

Being the Sinner had been the first step to salvation. The first step on the last part of the path she had committed herself to.

“So, you regret it”, Lian said, tearing her away from the memories before they swallowed her.

A part of her wanted to nod. Visiting these dark corners of her mind always made her more vulnerable to this particular kind of weakness. But she didn’t lose the hold over herself. “I would like to be something else before I die. Something more. But in the end, if I had to choose again, today, with all the things I know now, I wouldn’t change my decision.” It was the truth. It had always been the truth.

She had stepped in for her little sister because she had become pregnant. She had been the one close to the Saint, she was supposed to be his Sinner. It was an arrangement both families had decided on — and they had agreed on — when they came in their teens. Growing up that close, the Saint had made her smile, and she had trusted him with her life.

He pursed his lips. “Well, I think I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Why are you asking?”, she said.

His face became serious, dark almost. “Because … Sometimes I feel guilty”, he said. “And I know that Ju feels the same way.”

She crossed her arms. “Why?”

“Because you had no real choice? Mother was pregnant and you … everybody expected you to step in.”

She shook her head. “No”, she said. “Your mother was pregnant, that’s true. And I stepped in, that is true, too. But nobody expected it, Lian. You cannot force people to do that. It …. Such an act would be the worst crime you can commit. If anyone did that…” She shivered. If anyone did that, the Sinner in charge would have failed. And the Saint, too. If anyone did that, their people’s hearts were tainted black already. She took a deep breath. “When the stairwell rises out of the water, every pair is bound to each other. By a blood oath. I swore to die if my partner needed to be purified, while he swore to be pure. It is an oath that only works with loyalty between them, you know? When a Saint is rejected, the Sinner dies. Nobody kills them, they just die because the magic takes them. Blood oaths like that … they are sworn not only with your blood but with your very soul. You cannot force a person’s soul.”

“Then … why did you do it?”

She bit her lip. “Because I love my people. And I believed — I still believe — in the Saint. And I figured that, if I trusted him with my little sister’s life, I might as well trust him with my own.”

“Some people might see that as an extreme view of the world”, he said.

“When I was your age, people used to describe me as an intense … or extreme personality.”

“Why is it, that I don’t doubt that?”, he said, now half-grinning.

She flashed a smile.