Bella is pleased to teach. She knows a peasants' prayer for most of the divine family - Old Father Morr, master of death and dreams; Verena, mistress of justice is truth; their world-weary and hardened daughter Myrmidia, and her gentle and balming sister Shallya. Ishea and Karnas, too; but it is clear Bella's favorites are that quartet of classical gods even if she bears a wary respect for the earthier gods of field and forest. Many of Verena's prayers, as you've learned, are long and verbose for the sake of fullness and clarity. In the prayerbook you've read, most prayers are built around the third and second person neglecting the first - (Verena, place your blessing upon his home) - anticipating literate acolytes or laypriests praying over those who cannot read those prayers and haven't the afforded time to memorize them. The Shallyan prayers that Bella has committed to memory, some of which are rendered in framed parchment on the walls in large clear letters, are first-to-second person (Shallya, may your blessing fall upon my home). They are smaller, simpler, and recited three times. And in this case, they have tactile and material component s that Verena's, and Myrmidia's do not.

Bella prays with her wrists crossed in front of her stomach, palms up and fingers together so the blades of her hands form 'wings'' and the crossed thumbs a 'neck' in the likeness of a dove. She also guides you to the cage of doves, for the purchase of an intercessore. This is a prayer combined with an offering, of sorts; Bella purchases one of the pretty, and very tame white doves from a handler for a single silver piece, returns with it sitting pliantly in her palms to the alcove of prayer you occupied before, and offers a short prayer over it before whispering to the dove the name of someone to whom she is seeking to direct the goddess's particular merciful attention.

"Polo de Mirici, Clerk Guildsman of Bella Collina." You think back on Polo, whose gave up his hands to blade and bludgeon in the battles against the pirates and in doing so clawed back to himself a modicum of his honour as a man to be relied upon in combat. He had walked through canonfire like the rest of you, and Andreotto's fire magic had poured courage into him, enough to find his own. You had fought both in that grevious combat, and also exhaustingly in the aftermath to save lives, and limbs; Polo's hands among them. The last time you saw him, the wounds were closed and healing well; but they were not yet safe from late infection completely. So Bella releases the dove, or rather launches it with a generous upward toss; and it takes to wing, circles the interior of the temple, and then flies out one of the high windows into a shaft of sunlight and the sky beyond, presumably to deliver this prayer directly to Shallya's ear.

A cynic would find such a ritual foolish. For one, it is clear that the same doves purchased come flying back in some time later to their handlers, are rewarded with feed, and placed back in the cage. In this way, people wander in and give money to the Shallyans a bird they don't even get to eat, and then give it back for free. It's almost a rental. Furthermore, there does not seem to be an absolute value to these birds. While you are there, you witness both a wealthy looking young man and the paramour on his arm purchase thirty of the doves in display of ostentation; and unless his extended family is struck with plague or he is an uncommonly thoughtful and caring fop, he has not invested in each of these birds an individual task. The duration of the prayer seems much like Bella's, so perhaps this mighty armada of avian angels carry between them a single very important name. Not long after that, a coalition of fourteen ragged and shabby beggars shuffle in together with a comfort that suggests they are used to the routine; and they scrape together from their collective pockets enough copper to sum to a scellini and a single dove among them. They huddle over it together for a long time with one of the initiates holding it for them (they seem almost ashamed of their dirty hands and definitely reluctant to stain the bird in some way, opting instead to make the prayerful dove-hands for the duration). They confer quietly long enough that, when this dove is launched, you half expect it to stumble and strain through the air with the over abundance of prayers heaped onto its feathery flanks.

"If the gods aren't able to tell which supplicants are making meaningful sacrifice and which are giving only a miser's share, then they can't be all that godly, I suppose. And the money they collect must be essential for their charity and medicines, I have come to figure. Oh - I'll get another, while we're here. For Ernesto."

As Bella slips off to buy another dove, you continue to take in the temple - but your eyes are drawn to a group of young men who make their way into the temple helping a shuffling, heavy set older man who leans on the young men with one arm and holds his gut with the other. They make their way to an alcove featuring a plaster sculpture of the goddess; a bust with arms additionally features, with hands crossed in the dove pattern. The young men and their older friend array themselves around the alcove obscuring it from view; and your instincts tell you that something about they way they meaningfully array themselves in an overlapping line so no one can see past them is an action performed with forethought.

In just a couple of minutes, as Bella is returning bird in hand, your suspicion is vindicated. Prayer complete, the young men begin helping their shuffling friend away... With a small change. The image is not the same as it was before they got to it; instead of Shallya's palms open and flat in supplication, they are upright; with pinky and ring fingers tucked down, index and middles crossed. Since no man is capable of altering a plaster rendition after it has been set, you can only imagine the fellows smuggled in this admirable quality of imposter under the 'sick' man's robe, perhaps braced by his arm; and are taking the original out the same way.

It's a strange theft. For one, it's a plaster figure; not a gold or even wooden one. If its value can be measured in gold, it is no more gold pieces than can be counted on the upright fingers of the imposter-image's hands. Secondly, the arrangement of fingers seems meaningful. You've seen that before - on your longest held possession in this world, not counting the crooked knife you pulled from your back as you fled to the surface. The little snarl of plant roots that looked to you like a hand with its five fingers in just this arrangement is still with you; and now, you see it again; brought to bear by six mischievous fellows who are about to get away with an incredibly petty heist indeed.