"You don't have to tell me if you don't feel like it," Edward said, catching Harper's curious glance.
"There's nothing much to tell. Joan never got into much trouble. The two halves of my life rarely crossed each other."
"I didn't mean directly." Edward paused as he shifted his arm awkwardly from one rung down to the next. "I guess I was wondering more about how you thought of Prodigals. On one hand you're a priest, and they are devils. On the other, your sister was one of them, and I know you loved her."
"I still do," Harper replied.
"Yes, I do too." Edward continued climbing in silence for several minutes. Harper said nothing. It seemed kinder to let Edward have his privacy. It was easier on Harper this way too. So long as Edward said nothing, Harper could not be tempted to comfort him with the truth.
But Harper knew the silence would not last. Edward had never been a private man. He had never had to disguise his desires as abstinence or crush his outrage to silence. Edward lived a life of shameless honesty.
"Isn't it strange," Edward said, "how you can know someone's gone, and yet you can't stop feeling as if they were still with you? Every Tuesday evening I still wander into the bedroom as if I need to remind her that the Pipers are going to be arriving for bridge. I know she's gone, but I don't quite feel it. I keep expecting to see her or hear her in the other room. At night when I'm just drifting off to sleep, I'll keep reaching out to put my arm around her..." Edward stopped for a few moments. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to just keep rambling on."
"It's all right," Harper assured him. "People tend to ramble after they've been through an Inquisition confession. Talk all you want."
"Actually, I was hoping to hear you talk a little, Will. You never did say what you thought of Prodigals."
"You could pick another subject if you'd like," Harper offered.
"No. I want to know. I never could ask you before, but I want to know."
"The answer's not all that interesting." Harper peered down, but he still couldn't see to the end of their descent. The darkness below seemed infinite.
"Just tell me, and I'll decide if it's interesting or not," Edward said.
"Very well." Harper paused for a moment to think of how to put his thoughts into words. "The thing that I find absurd about condemning Prodigals as devils is that devils and angels are the same creatures. Prodigals were angels long before they were ever called devils. Lucifer, Satanel, Sariel, Azeal all of them. Each of the fallen angels was created even before the earth, and they were not made from mud but from the will and body of God himself. Even the most degraded and ruined Prodigal is still closer to divinity than are any of us born of Adam's flesh."
"Is it just my ignorance, or does this opinion of yours smack of heresy?" Edward said after a moment.
"Yes, it does smack a little. But it's not just my opinion; it's stated fact in the scriptures. Lucifer, whom God made Prince of the Air and the Stars, is the same Lucifer who fell to the Abyss. Sariel and Rimmon were archangels of the storms before they became lords in hell. If we accept that Prodigals were once devils, then we must also acknowledge that they were also the third of Heaven's Host who revolted against God. They were angels. You can't have one without the other."
"I hadn't thought about it before, but I suppose you're right." After a moment Edward added, "It's amazing you haven't been excommunicated."
"I think you're the first person I've told." Harper glanced down again. There was a dim glow far below them. The sounds of the steam pistons grew steadily louder.
"Tell me." Edward had to raise his voice a little. "Do you live by the principle that what people don't know can't hurt them?"
"No," Harper replied. "What people don't know can't hurt me."
"Even better," Edward said. "So, do you have any other secret theories?"
"A few," Harper admitted.
"Well, tell me then."
"They're too dull. You'll nod off and fall off the ladder."
"You said the last one was uninteresting, and it shocked me quite a bit."
"Really?" Harper looked up to see if Edward was joking. Then he realized that he had been around Belimai too much lately. Edward was never sarcastic.
"Of course." Edward stopped to rest his arm, and Harper waited for him. "It's not every day that a captain of the Inquisition tells me he believes Prodigals are more divine than the Sons of Adam. Even radical anatomists like Raddly don't say things like that."
"The same Raddly who vomited in the deacon's urn?" Harper asked.
"Yes. He was barred from practice last year. Not because of the urn. As far as I know, no one has ever found out about that. Raddly published a paper revealing no differences between the bodies of baptized and unbaptized children. He drew the very unpopular conclusion that spiritual states might not affect physical bodies."
"Really? Did he use Prodigal children in any of his studies?" Harper asked.
"Yes." Edward began climbing again. "He didn't even try to publish that. He just happened to mention it to me when we were talking about the Prodigal murders that took place this spring. From the description of the remains, Raddly surmised that the killer was extracting the Prodigals' Ignis glands."
"For what little it's worth, he was right. They took the glands and blood to use in potions. They were making a huge profit from it." Harper was glad Edward couldn't see his face in the darkness. It still enraged him to think that his own abbot had been involved, and he still hated his own part in supplying Peter Roffcale for the slaughter.
"Joan was one of the victims, wasn't she?" Edward's voice sounded tight. "I guessed that you couldn't tell me because I wasn't supposed to know she was a Prodigal."
"I'm sorry, Edward." Harper's voice barely carried above the hisses and gasps of the steam pistons. "If I could go back and change things, I would."
"I know. I just wish it could have brought us closer instead of driving you off. I could have used the company, you know."
"I'm sorry." Harper wondered if he could ever stop saying he was sorry. He wondered if there would ever come a time when he had said it enough that it would make any difference.
"Did you catch the men who did it?" Edward asked.
"Yes and no," Harper replied. "The men who were abducting and murdering Prodigals are dead now. They were killed while resisting arrest. The men who assisted them and hid their activities are still free."
"If I ever found out who they were, I think I would murder them with my own hands." Edward's words were soft, but the anger in his voice ran deep.
Harper said nothing.
The chill of the shaft gave way to a moist heat. Light shot up through the grated walkway below him. He jumped down to the walkway. Only a few feet below, the steam pistons and water pumps roared and hissed as gallon after gallon of ore and water rolled through them.
The dirt and acid in the air stung Harper's skin and eyes. The smell of refuse and the sweat of Prodigal bodies hung on Harper's clothes like a mist. Edward coughed and weakly clambered down the last rungs of the ladder. His eyes watered and his light skin was already an irritated red.
"Where are we?" Edward asked.
"Hells Below," Harper replied. "We're a little east of the ore furnaces. We'll need to go west."
"Does the entire place burn like this?" Edward rubbed his eyes.