Brunch was early, for once, and Miss Thicket Wimple was unprepared for it. Her solution: oat mash, and lots of it. With bacon.

  Dalliance picked at his disconsolately while Earnest flicked through a deck of small, square cards. "I've been doing some thinking,” he said, eventually.

  "I hear that if you haven't done that before, you need adult supervision," Charity said promptly.

  "The attempt was brave, but the delivery lacked a certain something," he said idly. "You'll appreciate this, though."

  Earnest glanced up at Charity, who, though skeptical, gave him her undivided attention, sitting up prim and straight-backed, her hands folded in her lap. If Earnest was uncomfortable under her gaze, he didn't show it.

  "See," he said, "that scared me, last time."

  "Last time?" she asked. "With the prayer?" Her expression shifted, suddenly much more interested.

  "Yeah. It was like . . . " Earnest paused, searching for the right phrasing. "It was like someone was watching from behind me. I could feel her body heat. Like standing in the full sun.”

  He shuffled idly. "My mother . . . when my father went bankrupt, she took me to the temple. She said all the normal prayers, but nothing ever happened. Da was indentured for two years. He worked his way out, but . . . we spent all day there, sometimes, while she prayed, and nothing happened. I've been to the temple a hundred times. I've never had a reaction that scared me before."

  He set the pile aside, and shuffled the other one. “So I was thinking about it, on the way home, and after. So: when my Ma prays, she says 'Give grace where we fail.' but when you pray, you say—”

  “—’smother vainglory’.” finished Charity. “The Crone doesn’t forgive failure, that’s not her domain. She ascertains whether something is a failure. Judgement is different than Justice.”

  He nodded. “So, my whole life, I’ve seen nothing happen when the priests pray the homilies, and everybody says the gods are dead, or at least mostly, and I guess I just . . . wanted you to know you seem to have changed my mind.”

  Charity pinked, at that.

  “So I thought about what that meant, the Crone being alive. And when I asked around for who else might be alive. Pa told me that none of the 'good' gods' altars consume offerings anymore, except for Firth.”

  No one reacted: that was known. Circe drew a circle in her oats with a long finger.

  “And Gnosis's altar accepts offerings, but he's evil, so he doesn't count.”

  That wasn't news either.

  “But Dowser . . . the reason his temple is still open and he still has priests is that divination still works. That was his special gift to humanity."

  He produced the deck with a flourish. "So I went and got a deck of Major and Minor Arcana."

  Dalliance hadn't been imagining it. Charity was now eyeing the deck with a great deal of interest.

  "And I tried it," Earnest continued. "And . . . I think it works."

  "What do you mean, you think it works?"

  "You've never seen a deck of Arcana?" Earnest said dismissively.

  "You hadn't either until you bought that," Dalliance shot back.

  Earnest shrugged as if this was an inconsequential observation. He palmed the deck expertly and shuffled out three cards into his hand. "These," he said, "are the Major Arcana. The big ones. Concepts. Three of them, for where you've been, where you are, and where you're going."

  He flipped one of them into Dalliance's hand. It was cheap cardboard with a kind of nice, patterned border, and the image of a girl peering between two wooden boards. It was labeled THE EYE, and underneath, "Discovery, Revelation."

  "So, you get these three," Earnest said, "and we're going to order them the way I drew them, for who I drew them for, because it's their future."

  "Not yours?" Dalliance asked.

  "Bright boy," Earnest said with a wink, and snatched the card back. "Ladies first."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Charity beamed, performatively.

  "So, this one," he said, placing down the card Charity had just handed him back. It was the MAKER'S MARK. “I drew it second.”

  "Lasting change," Dalliance read. "Permanent change . . . .”

  “Or maybe influence? If you wanna think of it as we all have a permanent role in changing each other's lives . . . something like that."

  Charity’s interjection was met with musing expressions and nods. The image was of a dagger, with a maker’s mark engraved into it.

  Dalliance had half-expected to see a sword. Looking at Dalliance's expression, Earnest grinned. "Yeah, I had that same reaction. Weird, huh?"

  "Very," Dalliance breathed.

  "So that's the middle. That's her Present. She's under someone's influence . . . ." Earnest trailed off, his gaze flicking to Dalliance.

  Charity's face, which had held an almost odd expression, cleared to the much more familiar, "about to smack someone" look.

  "Poor word choice," Earnest admitted quickly. "But I think there's something to it. You get shaped by the people around you, like you said."

  She wiggled her hand in a noncommittal gesture.

  "Anyway. The girl with the boards, that's her Future. Place that down. And her Present is the Maker's Mark."

  "What about the last one?"

  It was unmistakably a map. "Her Past is THE MAP."

  "The Map sounds almost . . . plain," complained Dalliance.

  "Might be. I didn't make the rules.”

  Dalliance nodded. “Okay, so: Past, Present, Future. Yeah? The Map means perspective. So, she has perspective, she gets influenced . . . ."

  " . . . and I like that you didn't say 'by us'," Earnest pointed out to Dalliance. "Nothing suggested that."

  "Okay. Anyway, I'm a little disappointed. I thought it was going to be more complicated."

  "Well, that's the Major ones. The big ones," Earnest explained. "But there's also the little ones. You've got concepts, but you've also got actors, and events, all . . . influences. So the way it works is, there are two paths bridging the Past to the Present, and there are two paths from the Present to the Future. And here's the clever bit: the one you don't take modifies the future."

  They looked at him blankly.

  "Okay, fine. Let's get some Minor Arcana on the deck." He shuffled and dealt four cards directly into Charity's palm. "That way, you know I'm not lying about this. Keep me honest."

  "I would never try to keep you honest," she said.

  "I knew I liked you," Earnest grinned.

  Missus Best walked by the table, looked at the cards, then at the girls, intent on the spread. She smiled, then moved on.

  "So, a sec," Earnest said. "Can you put those on the table in the order that they were drawn? The two at the bottom go on your Past." He held his hands up. "Don't look at me. I won't even touch them."

  The first card that Charity drew was the Four of Drops. It depicted a woman in black with an umbrella, looking down at a gravesite.

  Charity's eyes hardened. She looked up, but Earnest's hands were already open, palms out.

  "I told you," he said, his voice serious. "It's working. I'm not making a joke, and I'm certainly not laughing. I'm not making light of a loss you've suffered. I promise."

  Tears welled up in her eyes, angry and hot, and her face flushed as she cried, and Circe glared daggers at Earnest, who for his part seemed ready to let the moment become whatever it needed to be. Charity wasn't so sanguine.

  "Well?" she snapped, throwing down the second card. It was the One of Beasts. It showed a loyal hound watching a child at play on a rug before the hearth.

  "You had a loving and nurturing home," Earnest predicted softly. "And someone you loved died. And that, with something you already knew, has made you determined to do what you're doing now. That's why you want to be a [Theologian]. For your mom."

  She was crying openly now. He placed the remaining two cards on the table, taking them from her unresisting fingers: the Three of Beasts and the Six of Shadows.

  "I'm going to place the second one first," he said. The Six of Shadows showed the shadow of a gibbet, visible through thunder and rain. Underneath, the words: The Price of Secrets. The other, the Three of Beasts, showed three children carrying schoolbooks, trailing behind a school wagon going down a tree-lined path, overseen by three crows.

  "So, here's where it gets tricky," Earnest said, his voice low. "If you take the path of Cunning," he gestured to the card with the gibbet, "whatever that means, you'll discover something with the help of your friends. If you take the path of Innocence . . . ." He indicated the gibbet.

  Circe looked at him sharply.

  "Do you have a better interpretation?" he challenged. She shook her head after a moment.

  "If you take the path of Innocence," he continued, "you'll learn something . . . and be punished for it." He sighed, frustrated. "This would all be so much clearer," he complained, "if I knew what you were trying to learn."

  Charity didn't clarify things for him. The two girls stood up together.

  "I'm going to have to think about this," she said. Her voice sounded abstracted, but at least she wasn't actively sobbing. "I'm going to have to think about this really hard. Thank you," she said, and walked away.

  Dalliance watched her go, then turned his gaze back to the cards. The Path of Cunning. The Gibbet. The price. His mind felt like wheels spinning.

  "What would her sacrifice be?" Dalliance asked quietly, nudging the edge of the Six of Shadows with his finger. That’s what a path labelled ‘the price of knowledge’ implied, he was sure.

  Earnest didn’t look at the cards."Innocence, I think," he said seriously.

  He then gestured to the other path, the one that ended with the same grim card.

  "The other way around . . . her friends get the gibbet."