Jayne stood at the little shack's door, hands flexing on the assault rifle he carried. "Gettin tired a messin around like this. I say we rush em."

"Seems a bit impractical," the Shepherd observed, almost invisible in the dark, just a faint gleam of reflected light off eyes and hair and teeth and the rifle as he hefted it. "It being we're the ones on the inside, and there are men shooting at us all around."

"Oh, ye a little faith." Jayne grinned and moved to the knocked-out little window alongside the door, being careful to stay well back so as not to be visible to those outside. It was long past sundown, but the scene was well-lit by the burning buildings all about the big farmstead. He spotted movement and fired at a man sprinting for the cover of an overturned wagon. His target sprawled ten feet short of his goal and lay still in the dust. Jayne moved to the window on the adjacent wall, looking for more. "Two sneakin around to your side."

"I see them. So, you have read the Book." The Shepherd watched his assigned windows carefully, but didn't fire. The preacher was doing less shooting than Jayne, and the shouting outside and return fire from that half of the building was equally sparse. There was, however, a chorus of groaning and lamentation going on out there. Jayne had sneaked a quick look and had seen a fair bit of blood wetting the dirt, but no bodies. The caterwauling was coming from men behind cover.

Jayne saw a head pop up from behind a rubble pile and lifted his weapon, but it ducked back down before he could take a shot. "Holed up in a lotta hotel rooms in my time, sometimes for days. Didn't always have a whore for company. But seems like every rented room in the 'Verse has a Bible in a drawer somewheres."

Book's rifle snapped up for one quick shot. A man outside yowled and cursed, and another yelled in alarm. "I can hope you got at least as much education from the latter as the former."

"You can learn plenty from a willin woman, Shepherd. Not changing the subject, but ya know if ya just shoot em in the leg, they can still shoot back, right?"

"But they seldom do. A smashed kneecap takes your mind off everything else, believe me."

"Yeah, well, mosta the men on your side ain't even shot. How come they ain't firin?"

"Well, once they realized every injured man on this side of the shack took a bullet in the right knee, it created a sort of understanding between us."

They understand, Jayne thought, that the hwundan shooting at them could be hurting them lots worse if he wanted. So they keep to cover and try not to rile him. He would have liked to scoff at such a tactic, but there was no arguing with the preacher's results. "How you set for ammo?"

"For this rifle, ten rounds plus another magazine of thirty. Then I'll just pick up another." Book glanced at a corner of the room where three bound and gagged men sat glaring up at him. "We've got weapons and ammunition aplenty, thanks to these unfortunate souls."

"Wouldn't call gettin roughed up and hogtied a misfortune, compared to gettin shot." A bullet spanged off the nearest windowsill, throwing a spray of stone chips into the room. Jayne flinched and swung his rifle towards the opening, and noticed a flickering illumination on the ground behind a fieldstone fence forty yards distant. He sent a couple of rounds into the fence's top, delivering a spray of his own and giving the men behind it something to think about besides jumping the fence and rushing the shed with their torches. The little outbuilding he and Book were holed up in was stone-walled, but the roof was thatch, and Jayne aimed to keep men bearing fire out of throwing range. It was a damn good thing none of the hwundans out there was prosperous enough to afford a laser weapon, he thought. "Misfortune is gettin sent to pick up a coupla crates a fresh food and runnin into a bunch a bad-tempered vigilantes instead." More than a bunch, he thought. There'd been so many wagons parked around the place, he'd thought he and the Shepherd might have arrived at the start of a barnraising. At least, until the shooting had started. "How you figure we stepped in it this time?"

"Oh, one of the usual ways, I expect." Almost casually, the preacher lifted his weapon, fired once, then moved to another window and fired again. A screech accompanied the second shot, followed by calls for help. No one answered. "Our captain provoking someone with a sense of entitlement, or a breakdown in negotiations of some sort. Or a violation of local customs." Book gave Jayne a sharp glance. "I trust you've been treating their women with respect."

"All the respect they want, Shepherd." On Jayne's side, two men sprang from cover and rushed the house, one firing a pistol at the window, the other carrying a flaming brand. Jayne dealt with the torch-wielder first as the greater threat: shooting on the run with a pistol, the other shagua wasn't even hitting the building more than one time out of three. Neither got within twenty yards before ending up facedown in the dirt. "But a couple of em was hungry for some serious disrespect."

"And you couldn't bear to see them starve. Very charitable."

"I'm allus happy to be doin good works." Outside, a besieger behind the stone wall raised up just a mite too high as he tried to walk its length bent in a crouch, and got a bullet crease across his back for his carelessness.

"So tell me, Jayne. Is this the new life you pictured when you left the farm?"

Jayne scoffed, scanning the landscape outside. The scene was still bright enough for marksmanship; their little shed looked like the only building on the farmstead that hadn't been fired, and the barn was sending flames a hundred feet into the sky. But straw and dry lumber wouldn't burn long. When darkness closed in, their attackers' chances would improve, if the shaguas hadn't got themselves all shot before then. "Just makin conversation, Shepherd? Or you thinkin I might wanna offer up a confession?"

"Just conversation. I don't have much practice saving souls, but I'm fair certain a worthy confession requires repentance."

Jayne grinned. "Ayuh. About the only sins I ever regretted is the ones I passed up. If there's a hell, it's a world fulla missed chances. As for my plans… Hell, no, Shepherd. This is better'n I ever figured things'd turn out. But it wasn't easy reachin this level a success."

The Shepherd didn't laugh at that like many men would. Jayne had decided long ago that Book was a man of understanding, not some fang pi who liked to judge folks, and he knew things a man who'd spent his life chanting at his belly button never could. It did seem strange, though, for a man of the cloth to admit not knowing how to save a soul. Instead, Book said, "What called you to it? Why did you leave home and family?"

Jayne stared out into the dusty yard, seeing another landscape in his mind's eye: different, but not much. Too many Rim rocks looked just like this one. "If you was ever a farm boy you wouldn't ask. Not if you spent every spring for years starin at the south end of a horse from sunup to sundown, eatin the clods it kicked up while you wrestled with the gorram plow. And addin to the walls around your fields with the rocks you turned up. Never served jail time that hard. Sixteen was the soonest I could get away, and it wasn't a minute too soon."

Things had got quiet outside; maybe the foe was up to something, or maybe, Jayne thought, they'd finally figured out time was on their side and decided to wait. "Headed for the nearest town big enough for indoor plumbing, lookin to make my fortune. Course I fell in with bad company right away, and lost what little I brung with me. That's when I got a good look at the prospects for a big farm kid with no schoolin." He grinned out the window. "For a while, I was workin harder than I had on the farm, just for food and a place to sleep. I dug and lifted and carried for some old Chinaman with a store, and that hwundan sent me to bed tired and hungry every night, but it was the best I could find. That is, till a couple yokels come in the store, thinking they were gonna get old Han to buy 'insurance' from em by bustin the place up. I tossed em into the street when I was done with em. They laid there half the day, folks just steppin around em like they were niu fan, till they came to and crawled away.

"Next day I got approached by a friend of a friend –'quaintance, really. He had a job offer that paid real coin if I was willin to take a little risk. I jumped on it. They didn't mention the 'risks' included a bullet or jail, but the pay was just what they promised, and it made me mighty forgivin. I sent some home, enough to hire a hand to make up for me bein gone. And I still had plenty for food and drink and a fancy room with the softest bed I ever slept in – and somebody to share it all with." Jayne ran a tongue over his lips, remembering. "That was my first time. And second, and third. Ai ya, she broke me in right. And offered me my money back, besides. Wish I could remember her name."

The preacher cleared his throat. "Where did you ride out the War? I know you didn't take a side."

Jayne grinned at the change of subject. Shepherd was a practical man most ways, but Jayne supposed it was only natural a monk would be uncomfortable with sex talk. "There were plenty places didn't even know there was a war on, Shepherd. I reckon you were in one too, hey? But I bet mine was more fun."

"I don't doubt it."

The iron in the old man's tone surprised Jayne and warned him off that subject, and made him think maybe the Shepherd hadn't spent those five years behind abbey walls. "Still, gorram war wasn't over soon enough. Got a letter from home said my older brother'd gone and volunteered. There was a capture of the shagua boarding a ship and wavin goodbye, lookin all serious and he-roic in his fine brown coat. Last any of us saw of him." Jayne inspected his magazine and counted the rounds in it through the inspection slot: nineteen. Then he counted them again. "Fang pi promised me a hunnert times he'd teach me to play guitar, but he never did."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well, if that's the worst life's got lined up for me, I'm a lucky man. And I am. I bounced around the 'Verse a good bit. Even with the War on, there was lotsa traffic. It'd make Mal and Zoë grind teeth ta hear it, but there was plenty a people out here who were rootin for the Alliance, and plenty more on both sides of the border didn't care if the War never ended, cause war is a great way ta get rich if you got an angle."

"I'm well aware." Again in that creepifying tone.

"Anyway, I found, whatchacall, job situations, some bad, some not so bad. Worked on both sides of the lines, and didn't hardly notice when the War ended. Along the way, I learned shootin and fightin and dirty tricks from some of the best and the meanest." He paused, remembering. "Did some things I ain't proud of now, but I was still learnin, and sometimes there's sitcheeations you just sorta get pulled into. I got comfortable livin with men who'd share a bottle with me then shoot me in the back if the payoff was worth the risk. I just made sure the risk allus looked too big. One of them jobs led me to this one, and here I am. And if I ever start cursin my luck, I think about what it woulda been like ta spend the last twenty years or so behind that horse." He wished mightily for a drink, but there was nothing in the little shed, not even water. "Anyways, I'm not really scared a dyin. If it turns out you fellas was right all along, well, I laid my money down and rolled the dice. Part of the fun of gamblin's the not knowin. Not that I 'spect you to see it that way, but I'd bet you ain't scared to meet your Maker either."

"You'd lose that bet, Jayne Cobb. Sometimes I'm so afraid of death, I don't want to admit it exists."

Something in the old man's tone drew Jayne's eye; Book was staring out the window, but not looking for gunmen. "That right? You don't seem like a man who lost his faith, Shepherd."

"I'm not. That's why I'm afraid. Not to die, but to meet Him unready. I've got so much to do yet, and I've squandered so much time."

Jayne decided he'd been handed the opening he'd been looking for almost since the old man had come aboard. "Well, I just about told ya my life story. How bout you, Shepherd? Got any tales ta tell, sides monk jokes?"

Book gave no answer. The light was beginning to fade, making it harder to spot movement outside. Jayne thought he saw half a head ease around the side of the overturned wagon, down low to the ground, and ease back out of sight. "Come on, Shepherd. You ever gonna cut loose and tell us who you really are? Least you can tell me how a preacher knows so much about crime." Or where you learned to cuss, he thought, remembering the time Zoë had brought back Mal's ear in a hanky. Never thought I'd hear 'filthy goat-fucker' come out of a preacher's mouth, even in Chinee. "You see the light late in life or somethin?"

"See the light?" Book scoffed. "Not the way you mean it. I entered seminary school at fourteen. I've been clergy ever since. What I know of crime and criminals, I learned mostly from confessions."

"Well, where ya from, then? Sometimes I think I hear a little Core in your talk."

"Londinium, a district called Whitechapel. Perhaps you've heard of it."

Jayne had spent some time on Londinium, and had known a few rough customers from Whitechapel – very rough, actually. Never exactly a garden spot, the place had fallen all the way to the status of a blackout zone just before the War. Jayne thought it a fine poke in the nose to a world that styled itself one of the two centers of culture and right governance in the 'Verse, that it should have such places within sight of the towers of the capital. That explained a few things, though. Even at fourteen, a boy would have had to be plenty tough to survive in Whitechapel. "Heard somethin. Leave any family there?"

"A mother and three older sisters. My mother's husband was in prison since before I was born. He died there, I hear. I never thought of him as family."

"Wha'd he do?"

"Killed a man," the Shepherd said shortly.

Jayne decided he'd touched another subject the Shepherd wasn't ready to talk about, but his mouth hadn't quite caught up with his brain. "He have a reason?"

"He thought so. The man he killed was the one who put me into his wife."

Jayne thought that statement worth a bit of silence. Now that he wasn't constantly sighting through the window, his night vision was sharpening, and he could see Book's face better, even though the fires were dying down some. The old man looked tired, an uncommon occurrence. "Ya know, Shepherd, I ain't a churchy fella. But no criminal in his right mind is gonna give up all the dope on what he does to somebody ain't part of it, preacher or no. Seems like a fine way to get caught."

The preacher bowed his head, as if praying. Jayne hoped he was still keeping an eye on the windows. Jayne had just about given up on an answer when the old man lifted his head, stared out the window, and said, "Well. They didn't really want to confess, at first. And they were already caught."

The view out the windows was forgotten. Jayne's mind cast back to his time on the worlds of the Core, and the occasional mention of some very special Feds, said mentioning usually done in hushed voices with an eye over one shoulder. Nobody he'd talked to had actually encountered them – the crooks Jayne ran with weren't big enough fish to merit their attention – but the stories all sort of matched up.

Inside the Federal Police, or maybe alongside it, was a crack unit, a big one that worked independent of the regular chain of command. It was said that its members were all priests of the Church of Man, the Christian church that most everybody who wasn't a Buddhist belonged to in the Core and lots of places beyond the border as well. Whether these fellows were priests trained as cops or cops gone into the priesthood, nobody knew, but they conducted their business like fanatics – or crusaders. The name given to them by Jayne's sort was 'Templars'; nobody knew what they called themselves. The Alliance gave them only the toughest and most politically touchy cases because they were reckoned impossible to bribe or coerce, and it gave them a free hand and turned a blind eye to their methods. Those methods included use of force not allowed regular Feds, from commando raids that looked like the start of another war to just picking a man off the street without an explanation and marching him off for interrogation. Their interrogation methods were only hinted at in whispers. But they always got confessions, and they always cracked their cases, and if the guilty party was so rich or powerful he'd likely never come to his proper reward through the justice system, he had an accident, or just disappeared. The Templars were policemen who scared the people they were sworn to protect, and made ordinary criminals lose their water.

"Powers. You're one a them?"

The older man huffed, eyes still fixed out the window. "Doubt it. I'm fair certain the Office of the Confessor General isn't much like the 'Them' you've heard about."

"But you said you're clergy. That means you're a real preacher. Right?"

"Yes and no." The man's voice was bleak. "I was ordained, which meant I'd studied the teachings of the Church and sworn oaths, offered my life to God before witnesses and put on the uniform. I know the dogma and the gestures and ceremonies. But I was never a preacher, and I never wanted to be; all that was just something I had to do to join the Order. I thought of myself as a missionary of sorts, but I preferred teaching transgressors the error of their ways and making them repent with a boot heel on their necks and a rifle muzzle in their ear. A soldier in God's army, not a tender of flocks."

"What are ya doin way out here, Shepherd? You fellas branchin out?" What business have you got on Serenity, and who are you after?

"I'm on sabbatical, not an assignment. Walking the world at the pleasure of my bishop, the leader of our order." The Shepherd's tone lightened up a little. "He called me to his office with no warning one day. We'd been gathering intel on a credit-laundering ring, very high up, sixteen worlds involved. We'd been waiting forever for a go-ahead, and the surveillance teams-" He caught himself. "Let's just say I thought it'd be a new case. Instead, he said he'd heard a whisper from God at his morning prayers. He told me to pack for an extended absence from duty, a pilgrimage." He huffed. "You could have dropped me with a stale bao. He said it had been revealed to him in prayer that he'd been neglecting his duties towards his flock - his flock being the robed roughnecks, killers, and con men who were his subordinates in the Order. Over the years we'd all been trying to ease the suffering of our people and lead our temporal leaders to righteousness-" The words came out of the old man's mouth like some motto he'd quoted all his life "-we'd come to place too much importance on worldly concerns. Our spirits had shriveled, and we'd grown distant from God. He was going to do what he could to rectify that, starting with me, since I was clearly the worst case in his house."

The roof of the nearby barn collapsed in a volcano of sparks. The light flared. Both men studied the view outside the windows, but there was nothing showing. The besiegers, apparently, had gotten tired of taking losses and decided to wait.

Jayne, still looking out the window, said, "No offense, Shepherd, but that bishop a yours don't sound right in the head."

"He's the sanest and smartest man I've ever known. But, just for that moment, I might have agreed with you." Jayne could just make out the Shepherd's silver hair move as he shook his head. "Known that man since I was a boy, and that was the first time I ever argued with him. It was a waste of breath. I spoke of our important work, and the people in peril who needed our full efforts. I told him I had no time. He said I'd just proved his case, standing in front of him in my priest's garb and talking about having no time for God. He reminded me that the Church's first business is saving souls for the next life, not providing them with comfort in this one. Then he quoted the Son of Man's warnings that good works aren't proof of godliness or a guarantee of grace. 'How does a man profit, who gains the world at the cost of his soul? He wasn't just talking about grubbing money, Brother Derrial.' He said that if I truly wanted to do God's work, it was time to tend to the imminent peril of my own soul, and repeated his order. Then he gave me his own Bible to take with me.

"That's what froze all my good reasons in my throat, more than any of Bishop Sato's arguments. That Bible was a shabby thing, with cracked leather covers and dog-eared pages and a million hours of study and devotion in it… and I never felt so far from God when I was knocking down doors and interrogating suspects as I did when I stood there with it in my hands. My own sat on a polished wooden stand, flanked by beautifully carved candles - a shrine almost, the centerpiece of my quarters. But when you opened it, the cover and spine were stiff as steel, and you could still smell fresh paper and ink as you riffled the pages, even after years of ownership. It was an epiphany. 'Build a ministry,' he said to me. 'It needn't be large; in fact, small would be best. Find your way back to God by guiding others, if you can. Then, if you're still of a mind, return, and we'll talk.' Eventually he convinced me, enough to end my protests anyway. I packed all I owned, harvested my garden, and took to the road. A day later, I was in space aboard Serenity."

Jayne huffed. "Ya didn't get much of a flock there, Shepherd."

The old man chuckled. "Oh, I had doubts aplenty my first few days aboard. This crew's lifestyle makes it too easy to slip back into old habits – and old attitudes. I told Inara that I thought I was on the wrong ship. I'd forgotten what readers Companions are. She told me, 'Or maybe, you're exactly where you need to be.' Bless that child. Leave it to someone schooled in the ways of the flesh to know that you have to feel temptation to learn virtue. And learning to understand folk who were decent but ungodly, that was the same path I needed to tread to find myself, if the Bishop was right. She understood that too."

Jayne said carefully, "You miss her. Anybody with eyes can see that." And maybe now I got a better reason for it than my dirty mind can supply. The 'Ambassador' had finally left ship at Sihnon seven weeks before, and it had been a tossup which man had been moodier since – Mal or the Shepherd.

"She was a good friend. She healed my bruised spirit and gave me strength. I loved her for that." The preacher's idle gaze out the window sharpened. Jayne watched him reach for his last spare magazine and change it out without looking at it, a move that spoke of practice. It also spoke of trouble, since Jayne was sure the old man had just discarded a clip with six or eight rounds still in it, as if he thought he might need the extra bullets in a hurry. Jayne stared out his windows. Behind the wall, he could make out heads bobbing, and a flicker of firelight: torches. Showtime.

"Jayne…"

"I see it." He tightened his grip on the rifle. "You don't think we're getting outta this. Do ya?"

"We're still outnumbered ten to one, there's no rescue in sight, and the light is failing. I believe in God's miracles, but I doubt He has one reserved for me."

"Well, maybe He's got one for me. Prodigal son and all."

"Again, I think there's some repentance involved."

"Well…" A head popped up over the wall and back down again, for the second time in ten seconds. Jayne put his crosshairs on the spot, and when it popped up a third time, he put a bullet in it. "What I said before, that was a buncha fei lao. There's things I wish I'd done different or not at all. On Higgins' Moon, I shoulda dumped the money first instead of Stitch. I wouldna turned River and Simon in to the Feds on Ariel. And… I killed a woman who loved me. And another died just for likin me. I'd change all that if I could."

"You can't change the past. But you can change yourself if you can learn from it."

"Any regrets?"

"More than we have time for. One or two of mine involve women, too." Book raised his rifle and fired three rapid shots, then three more.

Out Jayne's window, three men leaped over the wall and rushed the shack while another fired from behind the wagon. Jayne managed to plug only one of them before they were out of sight behind new cover, closer than before. He moved quickly to the other window, just in time to put a bullet in a man running for the shack. Jayne was sure that the man was just a tail-end Charlie, and that Powers knew how many more were now pressed up against the outside wall. "G'rammit!"

Bullets peppered all four windows at once: cover fire. Jayne and Book ducked back out of the way as lead and stone chips sprayed into the room. The captives on the floor screeched through their gags. Jayne fired blindly at the window opening, just hoping to suppress the attacker's fire a bit. The Shepherd knelt at a corner of a window, stuck rifle and one eye over the lip, and fired three shots before ducking back as the windowsill erupted. "I'm proud to have known you, Jayne Cobb."

Wisps of smoke began to trickle down from the roof. Jayne put a hand on the door handle, ready to fling it open and charge out. "Likewise, Derrial Book."

The entire roof turned to flame and disappeared, dropping embers to the floor. A roaring noise replaced the sound of gunfire. Jayne looked up, and, instead of night sky, he saw steel, the belly of a ship.

Grit blasted through the windows. Men outside stumbled in the howling wind as the earth billowed up all around them and the view disappeared. Jayne pulled the door open just in time to see Serenity swing into view, just yards above the ground, tilling the earth with its drive exhausts and sending everything not anchored to the ground flying away: brush, lumber, embers, men. Horses screamed. The air filled with dust, dropping visibility to nothing. Jayne covered his nose and mouth with the inside of his elbow.

Book said, "Time to go, I think."

"Go where? Can't see a damned thing."

Then they both heard the breathy whine of an approaching shuttle. They heard and felt it touch down close by on the Shepherd's side of the shack. They sprinted out into the tumult towards their unseen rescuer, ignoring the wind and scouring sand and the frequent whacks from airborne truck, their attention focused on finding their ride. About fifty yards from the shack, visibility lifted a bit as Serenity circled around to the other end of the farmyard, and they saw it. They sprinted to it and crowded into the lock.

Jayne took a single step through the second hatch and stopped. Bright fabrics adorned the walls. They were in Shuttle One, Inara's former quarters that hadn't seen use since she'd left.

"Hurry." Inara's voice came from the curtain separating her 'rooms' from the pilot compartment. "Come in and close up."

"Um." Jayne could hear the Shepherd behind him dogging the inner hatch. He also heard an odd slithery sound. He looked down. Sand was falling out of his pants leg to form a little dune on the fancy carpet. "I'm gettin your things all dirty."

"They'll clean." The engine wound up. "Find a place to sit."

Book cruised past, all one color from grit and trailing faint wisps of dust. He sat on the floor with his back against the couch, raising a cloud. "Have to say, I wasn't expecting you."

"Déjà vu. Settle in, we're going to be flying awhile. We're making for orbital rendezvous, but we'll probably be the first there. Wash is having too much fun to quit yet, and Zoe's in the other shuttle, herding your playmates and making sure they're running in the right direction."

Jayne looked at the Shepherd's tracks across the carpet. He folded his legs and sat without taking another step. "So you're back? When did you get here?"

"An hour ago. I've been chasing you halfway across inhabited space the past two weeks and finally caught up with you here. And immediately find myself plunged into a crisis. It's as if I never left." The deck tilted slightly as she maneuvered; this shuttle's grav had always been a little quirky. It was one reason Mal had chosen this one to rent, or so he'd been told. "I haven't had time for a proper inventory, but I'm quite sure I have some personal items missing. Jayne, do you suppose you could help with that? I know you have a talent for finding lost objects."