Doubt

I met a man of faith in the house of all pleasures.

I've known some pleasure there, although mostly the companionable kind. Holding my knees, my toes tucked under Lucian's thigh as he told me stories of the Great Northern War. Teasing Ravenslock about his eyebrow's wayward apostrophe and his forays into booster sales.

But faith? Faith in the house of the freecaptains?

Ashar's voice; insistent; cruel; quoting Fractionite rhetoric: "'Freedom is a jagged bitch, a barbed-wire dream of agony and yearning, a wide-bore firearm clutched in shaking hands and pointed close at the face of God, a siren scream to pierce the heart and banish ease and complacency forever.' Did Jonny ever tell you that? That's what he was, you know."

And yet I found a man of faith among the Fraction.

Ricardo speaks of his faith. It's solid to him, sure, undoubted; there in hard times and in good. His soul is what makes him him.

He woke a clone, to see what it would be like; to ask questions. Found it was another person, as perfect and ensouled as he, himself. Now his two faces walk the worlds; make their choices.

He is not untroubled, but he is... comforted.

I cannot speak to him of doubt. I can only envy him his certainty and try to warm my hands at it.