Empress of Forever

by Max Gladstone

“What he means,” Zanj explained, still paging through her porn, “is that they’ll stick you in a box and pray to you, like, twenty times a day. They might let you out from time to time for good behavior, or to lay on hands, but they’ll never in a billion years help you fight their goddess. Trust me. I’ve seen what they do to people they think are holy—drugged to bliss and brainwashed after. An ice pick to the eye would be faster.” Hong sputtered. “We don’t do that anymore.”

Viv had heard this kind of story before, though without so many unfamiliar names. You took your audience through the whole thing cause by cause and effect by logical effect, because if you just spat out what you did and why, your mistake would be too plain.

“IT COULD BE worse” was, in Viv’s experience, a phrase people tended to use when they didn’t see exactly how. So

The larger the group, the more dense its silence.