She points at me with yet another piece of bread. “First of all, even if I was a mean person and didn’t want to help my neighbors, as a null there is a practical utility in my neighbors being kindly disposed toward me since I’m inevitably going to fuck up their lives by existing near them.”
“You shouldn’t have to pay an extra tithe simply to live in a society,” I snap.
“Well, I do,” Tasa snaps back, “and that’s why I live alone on a mountain now. And while you’re getting in a snit about me, tell me, when haveyouever asked for anything for yourself?”
I pause.
She crosses her arms and glares.
“That’s different,” I say.
Tasa scoffs.
“The temple has provided for all my needs my entire life—”
“Debatable, but what about your wants?”
“I’m a divine vessel,” I grit out.
And then remember how Zan reacted to that argument.
Tasa’s not any more impressed with it. “You’re also a person!”
“A sage has a unique way to be useful to society as a whole, that iswhyyour taxes cover our care—”
“Your care or your upkeep?”
I start to answer.
Then remember my frustration that Tasa doesn’t choose her form of payment.
On the edge of an epiphany.
“Being born a null doesn’t define my profession,” Tasa bulls onward. “And even though I know about plumbing I’m notrequiredto be a plumber, right? Like, maybe I should be. People definitely told me to, and I tried, I did. Fixing things is fun, but fixing the same thing every day is depressing as shit to me. Do you even like doing sage work? Have you ever tried anything else?”
Another question I have simply never asked. That no one else has dared ask me, either, because what was the point?
But Tasa, a person with no divine mandate or training, is asking.
The kind of disruptive question that a sage should ask.
“I do like doing sage work,” I say slowly.
But as I feel my way through that answer, I realize I am less sure that I like being a sage.
I can’t quite wrap my head around that, let alone speak the words aloud, as if they’ll make the notion more real.
So instead I continue, “But no, I have not tried anything else. However, as you aptly pointed out, I do not know anything about plumbing, or anything else practical in a place without magic.”
My voice comes out a little more bitterly than I expected.
“It’s notnomagic though, right?” Tasa points out. “Because it’s magic that keeps you from doing magic.”
“A place with magic so strong that it prevents the strongest remaining sage from doing magic,” I say dryly. “That’s much better.”
She throws her bread crust at me.
Stunned, I let it hit me.
