The Slavish Adherent

By Clint Westgard

Hector is a faithful man in a faithless world.

A Slavish Adherent of the Twentieth Gradation, he works a dead end job in Reconciliations. Until the day he finds an error he was not meant to and begins an odyssey that will upend his life and everything he believes in.

It is a journey that will take him from the gates of paradise to the pits of hell, all in a desperate attempt to reconcile his beliefs with the absurd world that surrounds him.

A fantastic tale of what remains when all you believe in has been taken away.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lost Quarter Books
• Release date: Feb 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781928035091

Clint Westgard

Clint Westgard is the author of The Shadow Men Trilogy and the science fiction epic The Sojourner Cycle, the first volume of which, The Forgotten, was published in 2015. In addition, he has published a work of historical fantasy set in colonial Peru, The Masks of Honor, and a retelling of the Minotaur legend, The Trials of the Minotaur. Clint Westgard lives in Calgary, Alberta.

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THE SLAVISH ADHERENT

CLINT WESTGARD

The Slavish Adherent

Published by Lost Quarter Books

2015

The Slavish Adherent by Clint Westgard is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

ISBN: 978-1-928035-09-1

Cover Design by James, GoOnWrite.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE SLAVISH ADHERENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. THE TWENTIETH GRADATION

2. THE TWENTY-FIFTH GRADATION

3. THE THIRTIETH GRADATION

4. THE THIRTY-SIXTH GRADATION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY CLINT WESTGARD

1. THE TWENTIETH GRADATION

If it were given to him to do again, Hector forever asked himself, would he still make the same fatal error? According to all the Reconciliations of his Audits of Faith, he would. It was his basic nature, as a Slavish Adherent of the Twentieth Gradation, an inescapable result of who he was and his place in the world. Though Hector would never be so bold as to question the Tenets of the Faith, part of him did wonder whether something so inadvertent, a moment's inattention and no more, could possibly define anyone, let alone someone as loyal and true as he knew himself to be. But it did. The Faith was exacting, after all, allowing no room for doubt or weakness. He had already demonstrated he had an ample supply of both, given his allocation as a Twentieth Gradation, an inauspicious ranking if ever there was one.

The error occurred the first morning of the Reimbursements, when every Slavish Adherent brought their most recent Reconciliation to their Lead Adherent for review and the dispensation of the faith. Hector was in a jubilant mood for, not only had his last Reconciliation been glowing, he had discovered certain discrepancies in his department's Audit—specifically the duplication of some procurements of Faith—which, if rectified, would result in a significant savings. Such matters were always looked upon kindly by Lead Adherents, for the Faith was very clear on the sinfulness of waste.

The Lead Adherent welcomed Hector into his office with his usual bonhomie, clasping his hand firmly and wringing it, and offering him a beaming, unrelenting smile that always left Hector uncomfortable. They rarely spoke outside of the monthly Reimbursements, unless the Lead Adherent had a task for him to complete, so it was always strange to Hector that he should greeted with the warmth due the dearest of colleagues, when they were no more than passing acquaintances.