After reaching the village chief's house, John climbed the short flight of wooden steps leading up to Bezos's front door. The house sat heavier than most in the village, solid timber and stone, wide enough to hold a man's ego and then some. Though it was not as spacious as Sara's place, not even close in size or quiet wealth, but it still managed to look like it belonged to someone who expected others to look twice when they passed his house.
Reaching the main door, John knocked once. Hard.
But instead of Bezos's regular house servants, only silence answered him.
John waited, listening for footsteps, for the creak of floorboards, for any sign that someone still lived inside. But he heard nothing.
He raised his fist again, slower this time, and wondered if the chief had already left for the walls or if he had simply drunk himself into a place where horns no longer mattered to that guy.
But before he could knock again, the latch finally turned.
The door opened on a woman wearing what could only loosely be called a dress. The clothing hung open across her chest, the soft weight of her small breasts half-exposed, nipples still faintly visible in the low light spilling from the hallway behind her.
She blinked up at him with an unfocused look.
Seeing the way she was dressed, John's eyes flicked away at once. Though he had never pretended to be a saint, but he still kept a few lines he refused to cross. Most men in this world treated every woman like an open invitation. But he did not. At least not like others. He had his own way of doing such things.
"Where is he?" he asked, voice flat.
The woman did not answer with words. She simply pulled the door wider and pointed down the short hallway toward the main sitting room.
Crossing through the narrow pass between the woman and the doorframe, John stepped past her.
The scene waiting for him was exactly the sort of mess he had expected from Bezos for years. The big man lay sprawled across a wide sofa, one thick arm draped along the back, the other resting on the thigh of a woman half-curled against his side. Two more women occupied the remaining space, one sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa, another leaning against the armrest with a wine cup still in her hand. The air inside the living room smelled of spilled drink, warm skin, and the heavy sweetness of whatever perfume these women had used.
But none of that surprised him.
What shocked him most was a specific woman present in this mess, who now sat on the opposite end of the sofa.
The woman lay on the sofa half-drunk, half-asleep, blouse open at the collar, blonde curls messy around a face flushed with drink. Her eyes found him first. A slow, crooked smile pulled at her mouth.
"Oh… look who it is. Our holy priest." Her voice carried the soft slur of a drunkard. "Have you come to scold us again, Priest? Or did you finally decide to join the fun?"
John did not look at her. He kept his eyes on the man in the middle of the sofa.
"Bezos. Come outside. Now."
He turned without waiting for an answer and walked back through the front door, leaving it open behind him. The night air felt cleaner the moment it hit his face, when he stepped outside. He stopped in the middle of the front yard and waited, arms folded, staring at the dark shape of the house.
----
A short while later, the doorway filled with Bezos's bulk. The chief still held a glass of red wine. His tunic hung open at the collar, pants loose, hair mussed. He looked like a man who had been interrupted mid-enjoyment and was already annoyed about it.
"What do you want, John?" Bezos asked, voice rough. "You can see I'm busy, don't you? So, whatever it is, it can wait until morning, can't it?"
John kept his tone even, but the edge under it was sharp.
"I know how you spend your nights, Bezos; that part never shocked me. But Clara? She has a husband, Bezos. Hell, she even has a daughter almost as big as you. What the hell has gotten into you?"
Bezos's face darkened almost at once. The casual irritation burned off into something hotter.
"So what if I'm with Clara?" he shot back. "I take what I want. That's how it's always been. Just because you decided to live like a monk doesn't give you the right to stand in my yard and preach about who I put my hands on. You don't want a woman of your own? Fine. Keep that to yourself. Don't shove it down my throat."
He stepped closer, the wine glass tilting in his hand. The next words came lower, meaner.
"Ahh, and don't think I forgot about the council meeting. You stand with them now, John. With the guild people. With that outsider boy and his pretty little family. You have no right to judge me now, John. I thought you were on my side; instead you let them walk all over tradition like it meant nothing. Soft, John. You've gone soft."
John did not step back. He simply looked at the man in front of him, flushed, half-drunk, still trying to sound like the village's iron fist while the real iron was already ringing at the walls.
"You're drunk," he said.
Bezos's mouth twisted. "That maybe I am."
"Good. At least you still know that much." John let out a slow breath. "I'll explain later why I sided with the guild on the evacuation matters. You'll get the whole story when you're sober enough to hear it. But right now I need the Bezos who used to put the village first. The one who would already be halfway to the gate by now, to protect his village from this crisis. So, get dressed. I'll bless the wine out of your blood so you can think straight."
Bezos frowned, the anger cooling just enough for confusion to show.
"Huh, what are ya talking about? Why the gate? It's the middle of the night."
John stared at him for a long second.
"Have you not heard the horn?"
Bezos blinked. "What horn?"
John's patience finally cracked. He reached out, pressed two fingers hard against the center of Bezos's forehead, and pushed the man's head back a fraction.
"Of course you haven't, you drunkyard. You've been too busy being in between another man's wife's crotch to notice the whole village is under attack."
Bezos froze.
For a heartbeat, the only sound was the distant, thinning echo of the horn still riding the night wind in his ear, which he slowly started recalling having heard at some point earlier.
Realising everything, the big man turned without another word and disappeared back into the house.
John waited in the yard, jaw tight, listening to the hurried footsteps and the low scramble of voices inside.
When Bezos finally reappeared, he had thrown on a proper shirt and belt, boots half-laced, the wine glass gone. His eyes were clearer already; the drunken haze burned off by something sharper.
John lifted a hand, ready to call the divine blessing, but Bezos shook his head once.
"Keep it to yourself. Save your strength. I'll walk it off."
He stepped past John toward the street without looking back. The priest watched him go for a moment, then followed. Both went in the direction of the village's main gate.