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In the Tavern (for you), the light was lower than the waning sun outside. There were around a dozen candles - two along the bar, one on each table, and two before the bottles of spirits behind the bar. The first thing Raguel noticed as his eyes adjusted to the light were the deep blue velvet and silk curtains around the room. Some were even draped in the middle of the room, from hangars in the ceiling, like the fabric was leaking down.

The fading dark then showed that the room was empty. Or, so it seemed. The candles and curtains were placed such that they cast shadows that could have been anyone, anything.

"Hello," Raguel said, hopefully.

"Hoy, Raguel," someone replied - behind the bar. He, too, seemed to fade into being as Raguel got used to the darkness. He was a man with a red velvet hood obscuring his face, and some sort of jet and scarlet armour below that. He was short, and slim, and flipping back and forth through a book with his long, glistening scarlet fingers. It was difficult to tell if he was some monster, or if the shine on him was paint on strange armour. Raguel walked to the bar, and sat. "He said you'd be here about now. You know who I am, then?"

"Yes. But he didn't tell me your name," Raguel said, grinning. He could now see the enormous, gold-lined book the innkeeper was reading had fanciful drawings of - some beasts he had never seen. A Catoblepas, the title said. Those wicked claws of the Innkeeper's also grasped a quill pen, and busily scribbled something onto parchment in the same general pattern as the text in the book. Upside-down, and in the low light, Raguel couldn't tell what language the Latin book was being translated into.

"I'm Bochi. Pardon me - I was translating a bestiary for the Mayor." Bochi said 'Bochi' just a touch too daintily for it to rhyme with 'rocky'. "What's your poison, Raguel?"

"Any wine."

"Good wine, then. On the house." The claws unfurled from the pages - they were almost like enormous spiders themselves - and one two-elbowed arm stretched down to fetch a bottle from under the bar. Raguel stared at Bochi’s odd body, the armour, the arms. The scarlet and shining 'plates' on Bochi's body seemed thinner the longer he looked at it. The mail was so thin, in fact, that it seemed to shift and rise and fall with his breath, flexible as cloth. "We can be awkward and happy at the same time."

Bochi tugged his mantle off his head, revealing a handsome, umber face, with short, curled hair, a plate-like mask of the same metal-looking material... and big, pink eyes, that moved in sockets inside the mask. The nature of Bochi's body became clear to Raguel now, as he realised he wasn't armoured, but naked, and the 'plates' were another sort of skin.

"I don't feel awkward, Bochi."

Raguel, despite how impolite it was of him to do so, looked over Bochi some more, and reassessed the layout and intricacies of his 'spider' skin - from below his chest, and from below his shoulders, his skin was like a waxy insect's, in plates and segments. Besides that, and his 'mask', he was man-like, and something about him being 'bare'-chested was interesting, too, in fact...

Brother Raguel, the diplomat, coughed and looked away.

Bochi, who was presumably used to this sort of treatment, used one thin spike of a claw to uncork the wine. It was red. Of course it was red.

"I could have a portrait done," he said. "It would last you longer. I'm beautiful, aren't I?"

"Yes," Raguel said, without hesitation, and before he realised the bitterness and sarcasm in Bochi's tone. "I don't mean to --"

"Oh," Bochi interrupted. There was surprise in his face, though the pupil-less, iris-less magenta eyes were difficult to read. “You didn’t…”

"-- you are fascinating."

"Ah."

"I was just -- interested. I, eh..." Raguel undid his ponytail, trying to think of a way to save himself from the pit he was digging. "I apologise. Should I --"

Bochi snatched the book away from the counter and put it under the bar, pouring each of them a large goblet-full of the wine.

"This will make this better," he said. They both knew it wouldn't. "How... is... your quest, Raguel?"

"I may already have completed it," Raguel said, nodding as he raised his glass in an intended toast. Bochi seemed not to notice. "However, I may not return to the Order, at the end, depending upon how the rest of this journey goes."

"The near-saints they budded off are wearing on you, are they?" Bochi hopped up onto the bar, and sat cross-legged. The sun was completely down now, and they were only lit by the candles.

"How do you know about that?" Raguel frowned at his wine.

"I know one of your founders, of course," Bochi said, gesturing to his (wonderful) body. His claws seemed shorter than they were before - and on closer inspection, they were the tips of his fingers, not some sort of nail. "We don't carry out our business in complete silence, you know. It's relatively common knowledge here, too."

"Why did the Order never hear of it?"

"You mean, why did you never hear of it? How would I know? I'm just an innkeeper. Let's talk about your wavering, Raguel, I'm interested now." His gestures with those long fingers were less and less sinister-looking. "Your journey is about the disease, isn't it? You aren't here to bring Christendom to us, or you'd have done in Paean’s lot by now. I don't have much on worm problems in my library, I'm afraid, but I can have a look for you..."

"Did you want me to answer that question?"

"Yes?"

"The question you asked, about the reason I do this."

"Yes, of course," Bochi said, more softly. While the armour giving way to segmented toes was a little surprising, Bochi's knees were fascinating.

"I was actually ordered to do both, if I could," Raguel said, now looking right into the eyes of his host, as he ought to have been doing before. "Cure the worms and Christianise you all. Or kill you all. We believed that turning the lands Christian would solve the plague - that un-Christian thought must have caused the plague, or else it was sent by the Hierophants. If the worms had spread naturally from you, however, then people here would have it. If you had made it... it would make sense not to see infection out here, but it's not how you have made war before. And..."

"And if your own sins had caused it, why would the lord send it to the most Christian area of the continent instead of we heathens?" It wasn't a question. "I understand. You're changing, you know. The longer you spend on your own, away from the Order, the more your beliefs will change. Your new beliefs needn't reject your religion, though."

"The Order is my religion."

"By some measures. You get to travel, with your work - there's no village to kick you out if you change your mind."

"There is the Order itself, which may disfellowship me at its whim." Raguel frowned at the rough wood of the bar.

"I used to be in an Order," Bochi said. "Down South. Not so far from here, really. We were captured and enlisted into it at a young age, and there was... a lot of religion. A lot of authority. I found out about Aran and his people's power and knowledge, I don't remember how, and came here, and if I went back..." His claws shortened, rather than sheathed - there seemed nowhere for them to go. Raguel had not stopped staring at some part of Bochi since he first saw the man.

"Did you ever want to?"

"Yes, but it would be akin to a cat going back to its mother after he has left her care. Unnatural. Unnecessary. There was no opportunity for education as a soldier or slave, you see, and I always wanted that. Books, learning, writing. I think part of what we believe is what we wish for, and part of it is the wishes of those around us, shaping us so we fit alongside them."

"You make people sound very basic," said Raguel.

"Parts of us can be simple."

"How much will my stay with you cost?"

"We can discuss that in the morning, depending on how happy you are with your food, and your room." There was a strange rumbling outside, but it wasn't important. "Actually, I haven't had supper. Have you?"

"I came here the moment I got to the village," Raguel said, but he was nodding, because he liked where this was going.

"I have pottage. Let's eat in the library."

-

Bochi bolted the tavern doors for the night, and the two blew out the candles in the room, and took one upstairs into his library. The room was pitch, but for the light of the single candle around them, and the windows near the roof, which let some blue-white moonlight into the room, only to meet some curtain or tall bookshelf and cast deeper shadows down.

The stew was good. It had some pheasant, and a lot of garlic, for Raguel's taste. Compared to the simple gruel he was used to in the Order, however, it was excellent. They slowly grew more comfortable around one another as the night went on. Something about Bochi was very warm, despite his nearly unreadable face. He crawled around the shelves as they talked, often but not always moving, and he always managed to be very close to Raguel as he did this, whatever angle he addressed the warrior from.

Raguel eventually broached the topic of nearly nothing about Bochi being spider-like. Bochi explained that he took after something which is not quite a scorpion, with no normal name, but which (Bochi claimed) Aristotle once called a 'land-crab'.

The librarian-innkeeper said he had not known the beast existed before the ritual made him like one. He gestured with one spindly finger to a glass-topped box on the wall, inside of which was a tiny speck.

Raguel walked over to it with the candle, and peered in. The speck was a preserved animal. The little fellow was shaped like a teardrop, and very like a scorpion towards its narrow face, with two long arms with bright red pincers, but towards its back end it just grew round, with no tail.

This almost explained Bochi's skin, and his claws, but it did not explain what Raguel was wondering.

"You are about to ask me why the ritual did not turn me into a real spider, like the others."

"I was not, because I do not wish to offend you," Raguel said, measuredly. "It might not be my business. If you wish to tell me, I would like to know, yes."

"It's not so sore anymore. I think I was... supposed to be like this." He gestured to the room in a sweeping motion - the library, obviously. "The little things are also called 'book scorpions', you see. They like to live in books, and so do I. The abbot here became a spider long, long ago, and gave this building to me on my transformation. Since then, I just learned."

"Why don't you live with them? The other spiders?" Are you lonely?

It occurred to Raguel that in this tall library must have been a thousand heresies - grimoires, false philosophies, journals... He glanced to the shelf nearest him, and could almost make out a title, but the light from the candle flickered too much.

And Bochi was still fascinating.

"This is the life I needed, I believe. I think it is. You should sleep," he said, not missing any time when changing the subject. "It's very dark, now. I'll show you to the room."

"The room? Are we sharing a bed?"

"If you'd like...? There is a guest bedroom, with bunks, and my room."

"And yours is better," Raguel said. He did not quite mean to bear down onto Bochi, but he felt his host’s wish for closeness should be acknowledged, reciprocated. Bochi did not seem to mind, and while he'd only smiled very small smiles that evening, a bigger one broke out, now.

"It will cost more tomorrow, yes."

"I don't want to be alone," Raguel said.

"Yes. We'll use mine."