Literature / Painted Devils

Published in 2023, Painted Devils is the sequel to Little Thieves.

Vanja Schmidt overthrew a corrupt Margrave and prevented him from taking over an Empire. She proved her innocence and his guilt in front of the Godly Court. She won the love of Junior Prefect Emeric Conrad. Despite all of that, she still couldn't let go of how her mother abandoned her to the goddesses Fortune and Death for being the thirteenth child of a thirteenth child. So, she sets out on a journey to discover herself and become someone worthy of Conrad's love. That was her intention.

Instead, she wound up founding a cult.

After Vanja drunkenly loses the fortune of rubies she'd earned for defeating the Margrave in a river, she spins a lie about having a vision of a Low God known as the Scarlet Maiden to trick the villagers into helping her get them back. After all, she couldn't trust those strangers not to steal them, so she needed to convince them that they'd earn the wrath of a deity if they did. But then strange happy coincidences start bringing the villagers more and more good fortune. They become convinced that the Scarlet Maiden has granted them her blessing, and that Vanja is her prophet. She goes along with the lie, waiting for an opportune time to scurry away, but then a certain Junior Prefect comes to investigate on behalf of the Godly Court.

And then the Scarlet Maiden appears, for real, and claims Conrad as a virgin sacrifice needed to stave off the wrath of a fearsome Hellhound.

Now Vanja and Conrad must journey across the land in hopes of finding an alternative to the sacrifice, all the while watched over by Conrad's boss, who seemed hellbent on jailing Vanja for fraud.

This work contains examples of:

• Action Girl: Bruna the huntress. She's very buff, wields a bow and arrows made of moonlight.
• Author Filibuster: Early in the book, Helga the midwife and fledgling hedgewitch, gives Vanja a lesson on birth control and safe sex practices. It's also used as an opportunity to show how Hedge Witches in the setting use magic to provide birth control methods.
• Big Brother Instinct: Udo, who quickly takes a shine to Vanja. He'd figured out early on that Vanja was lying about the Scarlet Maiden but understood her motivations for spinning the lie. He's not fond of Kirkling's insistence on Vanja's guilt, but this is after he's learned about her past so it's implied to be sympathy over that. That's only part of it. He and Helga realize that Vanja is their missing sister.
• Blood Magic: There's a way to get around the Virgin Sacrifice the Scarlet Maiden needs to fend off the Hellhound: Get the blood of seven brothers. Thankfully, a nonlethal amount will work.
• Bullying a Dragon: Madame Treasury's first big mistake was scamming her contractors out of months of wages. Her second mistake was insulting Vanja right in front of her and a certain Junior Prefect.
• Calling the Old Man Out: When it becomes clear that Kirkling just has it in for Vanja Conrad snaps at her and stops cooperating with her at all.
  • In the final pages of the book, Vanja accuses Kirkling of blaming Conrad for his mentor and her lover's death. She comes to the conclusion that Kirkling was so hellbent on convicting Vanja because she wanted Conrad to lose something as precious, either his career or his love. It's implied that Kiirkling disagrees and she tries to respond, but Vanja leaves before she can give a retort or defense.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Death is extremely kind to children who died untimely deaths. During Vanja's time growing up in her home, the young girl would play with these children to help them calm down before they finally moved on.
• Exact Words: This is something the characters always have to be careful of when dealing with supernatural entities. Vanja makes sure to be warry of this even when dealing with benevolent and amicable Low Gods.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Vikram's Prefect work focuses on this. He can make specialized locks and devices that are very useful.
• God Needs Prayer Badly: This book offers more insight into the nature of the Low Gods. The narration compares the relationship between mankind and Low Gods to that of rivers and valleys; they shape each other. Low Gods sustain themselves through mankind's prayers to them, but they are also influenced by them and their worshippers perceptions of them. There are also religions that believe that all of the Low Gods are aspects of a single High God. It is technically possible to create a Low God by tricking a large enough number of people into believing, but this is a serious crime known as Profane Fraud. This method can also help a demon ascend to godhood.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Helga's mother was like this in life. She couldn't stand anyone else being the center of attention. After she froze to death in the woods, she was furious that her family prayed for Vanja instead of her. Thanks to her connection to the lantern and her blood connection to her children, she sees Vanja making a fortune in rubies and finding love, and she is furious.
• Hotter and Sexier: While no sex acts are described in detail, sex is heavily discussed and Vanja and Conrad become a lot more physically intimate. Sex work isn't frowned upon in the Blessed Empire. Brothels are sancionted by the government and undergo regular health checks to make sure there aren't any breakouts of sexually transmitted infections or things like bed lice.
• Insane Troll Logic: Marta, Helga's mother, had a weird tendency to blame all of her woes on her youngest child. Vanja was blamed for a near-fire when a stray spark from the fireplace landed in a basket she was holding. Marta insisted that she had deliberately sat next to the fire so it would happen. As a ghost, she insists that Vanja always thought that she was better than her and that she is to blame for her death. Again, Vanja was four years old when she was abandoned in the woods.
• Jerk Ass Has A Point: Emeric's new boss, Kirkling, is shown to be a stickler for the rules who's dragging her feet in approving his becoming a full fledged prefect. However, it's hard to blame her for not being fond of Vanja given that Vanja didn't know that the Scarlet Maiden was an actual Low God. From her perspective, she was committing a fraud. It's only because the story Vanja got the idea from was in fact the story of a real, albeit forgotten, Low God and the fact that she didn't enrich herself even as her story spiraled out of control that Emeric has any hope of finding her to be innocent.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Vanja has forgotten all about her godmothers and lost her ability to see their influence in this book.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Madame Treasury enjoys hiring illiterate workers and scamming them out of months of wages. Vanja and her friends fake a bed lice outbreak and make it look like she knowingly allowed a city inspector to enjoy her brothel's services with an outbreak going on in order to get her business shut down. It also turns out that the Madame was committing tax fraud, so Vanja takes advantage of that and a legal loophole to buy out her whole brothel for a penny.
  • It turns out that Vanja's biological mother froze to death that fateful night in the woods.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Helga and her family are Vanja's relatives. It turns out their mother was selfish and abusive and gave up Vanja without telling anyone.
  • The Scarlet Maiden is Marta, Vanja's mother, and did everything not only so she could become a god but also so she could ruin Vanja's life. She still blames Vanja for her death and wants revenge.
• Narcissist: Helga's mother showed many of the trademark signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. She always needed to be the center of attention, going as far as to announce one of her multiple pregnancies at someone else's wedding. She would often twist her kids' achievements so in a way she could take credit for it, saying that Deiter only became a good bard because she had him listen to music a lot. She also had a habit of blaming her youngest child for all their problems. Many experts have noted that narcissistic parents tend to scapegoat one of their kids. This was why she gave Vanja over to Fortune and Death.
• Never My Fault: Vanja's mother insists that her death was Vanja's fault even though she was the one who chose to abandon the four-year-old Vanja to two goddesses in the middle of a forest. During a snow storm.
• Revenge by Proxy: Vanja believes this is why Kirkling is making things so difficult for Conrad. She believes that Kirkling blames Conrad for the death of his mentor—the man she loved. So she tried to sabotage his finding and get her arrested so that he'd be forced to lose something precious like she did.
• Riches to Rags: The fraudster Madame Treasury loses everything thanks to Vanja and her friends.
  • Erhmgard is out of prison by the end of the book, but given that she's wandering around by herself instead of delegating her tasks to others it seems that she lost her fortune and possibly even her title because of the role she played in the Margrave's treasonous plot.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: It turns out the story that Vanja used as inspiration to trick the villagers into helping her collect her rubies was based on an actual forgotten Low God. When the cult's activities and popularity grows, she winds up restoring the power of an actual deity. It later turns out that the song was based off of a real Low God, but the spirit she empowered was her mother's ghost pretending to be said Low God.
• Scars Are Forever: We find out in this book that Erhmgard didn't just frame Vanja to get her whipped. When she noticed that the wounds were healing too cleanly, she pulls off some of the scabs and threatens to frame Vanja for hitting her if she fights back. She mixed ash and oil into an expensive salve Joniza gave her. This made the scars worse.
• Shipper on Deck: Helga really wants Vanja and Conrad to fully get together and consummate their relationship. Partly because she and one of her brothers bet good money on if they would by a certain date.
• Spanner in the Works: Vanja is this to the Hellhound. Had she not spun her lie when she did, the Scarlet Maiden would have run out of strength and the Hellhound would have been unleashed. It later turns out that the Hellhound thing was fabricated, but the journey Vanja goes on still helps her ruin the plans of a corrupt thieving prince and a scam artist brothel owner.
• Villains Never Lie: Averted. Nearly everything the Scarlet Maiden says—from saying that she had nothing to do with more violent cultists going after Vanja, to her tale about needing a sacrifice to stop the Hellhound, to her insistence that a virgin do the deed, even to her identity as the Scarlet Maiden—were all made up. It was all a ruse by the ghost of Vanja's mother to get revenge on Vanja, whom she blames for her death, and to become a god.
• Virgin Sacrifice: The Scarlet Maiden doesn't want a male virgin to be the sacrifice because she views them as pure, but because she thinks it would be cruel to take someone who "has already been claimed." Essentially, she's against the idea of breaking up a loving couple. She also sees to only count sex acts that can impregnate someone as a way to lose one's virginity. The part about the Maiden refusing to allow men in relationships take on the Hellhound was true, because she became a Low God after her lover died doing the same thing and she doesn't want other couples to be broken up. However, it's ultimately subverted because the Scarlet Maiden is an impostor taking the place of the Red Maid of the River. She's Marta, Vanja's mother, and insists on taking Conrad even after he and Vanja have consummated their relationship because her real goals are to hurt Vanja and become a god.