CHAPTER 5 #2
He was standing in parade rest again. The ridiculous demon-killing sword was slung over his back. He looked exceedingly martial and faintly ridiculous standing in the middle of a moderately priced inn room.
“So do it,” said Slate. “I know I’m supposed to be in charge, but we haven’t gone anywhere yet. Go do whatever you want. Get drunk, get laid…go to the temple…err…whatever it is paladins do for fun.”
He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then said, very patiently, “I cannot go to the temple of the Dreaming God.”
“Oh?” And then, as realization dawned, “Oh! Right. They know you there, don’t they?”
He nodded.
“You, uh…” Slate started to make a hand gesture, realized that there was absolutely no way to express, You kinda murdered a bunch of people there, didn’t you? that would not come out as horrible, and let her hand drop. “Right.”
“I know that you are skilled in…ah…clandestine work. I was hoping that you might be able to assist me. A disguise of some sort, perhaps.”
A disguise. Right. Slate looked up at him. Six feet tall and some change, face the sort they stamped on coins, could probably model for a statue of the god of justice or courage or hitting things with swords. A disguise. Yeah.
“I could dress you up as a really big leper,” she said. “Or put you in a packing crate and arrange for delivery during a service. That’s about as much as I’ve got in the way of disguises.”
“I thought…perhaps a large hat…”
Dear god, he’s serious.
“It’s gonna take more than a hat,” said Slate. “Look, I’ll see what I can arrange.”
He bowed his head. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, well. Don’t thank me yet.”
She came back two hours later, tossed him an oilcloth cloak, and said “Get ready for the evening service.”
He looked up at her, astonished. “Truly? So quickly?”
“I’m talented.”
“I have never doubted.”
Slate fought back a sigh. She knew he had a sense of humor, sometimes even a particularly sardonic one, but it seemed to manifest very erratically. She was pretty sure that right at this moment, he was entirely serious.
They stepped outside the inn together and into a downpour.
“Here’s your disguise,” said Slate, pulling her own hood up over her head.
“…I see.” Caliban glanced at the sky. He looked as if he was rethinking his assessment of her talent. “Convenient. Do we simply not remove our cloaks at the temple?”
“We can do better than that.”
He fell immediately into guard position behind her. She felt like she had a very large dog at heel. People were probably giving them odd looks, but everyone caught out in the downpour were wearing cloaks and heavy hoods or broad brimmed hats of their own, so she couldn’t tell.
She hailed a carriage, tried to climb in, had Caliban attempt to hand her in, gave him a look that practically steamed the rainwater off him, and settled herself inside without further incident.
“Sorry,” he said, sitting opposite. “Were you a nun, courtesy would dictate…never mind.”
“I am not a nun,” said Slate. “Incidentally, that’s the first time I’ve ever had to tell anyone that.”
Caliban smiled briefly. “I was largely raised by them,” he said. “Please believe me that it is no insult.”
“Mmm.”
The carriage rattled to the temple square. Four temples stood opposite each other, one in each cardinal direction. The Dreaming God’s temple stood on the eastern side, pillars sheathed in marble, glinting even in the evening rain.
Slate paid the driver. Caliban stood next to the door, looking slightly lost.
“Fine,” muttered Slate, giving him her hand. “Don’t tell Brenner.”
He gravely assisted her down onto the wet cobblestones. Slate wondered if treating her like a nun boded well for their working relationship.
He did murder several of them, of course.
Yes, well. People are complicated.
She strode out across the square toward the temple, only pausing when she realized that her guard dog was apparently no longer at heel. Slate turned her head.
He stood staring at the temple. It was too dark to see through the shadow of the hood, but he had an edge of his cloak in his hands and was wringing it with such force that she almost feared for the oilcloth.
“Come on,” she said, walking back to him. “If you stand here, people are going to notice.”
“I was a fool to think I could come here,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t go in there.”
“Well, I already paid the bribe and I hate to waste money.”
He blinked at her. She wondered if anything else she said would have gotten through to him. “Bribe? You bribed someone?”
“Seat in the choir loft. I told him we’re wealthy donors looking to check out the acoustics, but he’s pretty sure we’re actually going to be screwing. Come on, you can have a breakdown once we’re out of the rain.”
That got him moving. “One of the temple servants took money? But we could be possessed! Or—or—this is a threat to the security of the temple!”
“Good thing it’s us, huh?”
He stalked beside her all the way to the temple steps. The doors were open, revealing a glimpse of vaulted ceilings. Slate started up the steps, didn’t hear footsteps, turned and looked again.
“Do we need to keep doing this?”
Caliban shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, pulling the hood lower over his face.
“Good. Let me do the talking.”
They went through the doors. Slate heard Caliban draw in a sharp breath, as if he’d been struck. She put her own hood back and went up to the short, pleasant-faced man standing at the door.
“It’s me,” she said.
“Lady!” he said. “Of course—yes—follow me.” He looked curiously at Caliban but asked no questions. “When you are finished, you may leave by these stairs. Please lock the door behind you. The loft is not open for evening services, but of course, in this case, an exception…”
Caliban rumbled something wordless and angry.
The temple servant looked doubtful for a moment. Slate took his hand, pressed a coin firmly into it, and said “Thank you for your assistance. I predict great things for so helpful an individual as yourself.”
“Yes, of course…” He glanced at the coin in his palm and the doubt smoothed away completely. “Anything that I can do to be of assistance, of course!”
“How much did you give him?” whispered Caliban, after the servant had closed the door behind them.”
“Enough to buy two or three rounds of drinks.”
“He sold out the temple’s security for so little?” For a moment, Slate was afraid that Caliban might charge out the loft and after the hapless young man.
“Yes. Because if I’d given him too much, he’d know something was afoot. Too much money is as dangerous as too little; it means you want it too bad. Now sit down and commune or whatever it is you do. We have to leave before the service ends, if we want to be safe.”
The choir loft ran the width of the temple, well above the level of most seating. There were wooden seats, all empty, and the lamps were unlit. Evening services did not require a full choir, merely a few singers down at ground level, behind the altar.
The statue of the Dreaming God was almost at eye level with them, across the temple. It was smiling remotely, eyes closed. In one hand, it held a book and in the other a familiar-looking sword.
Slate peered over the railing. The seats below were mostly empty and Slate thought the priestess standing beside the altar had a distinctly harried look.
None of this seemed to matter to Caliban. He sank down on his knees at the railing, eyes fixed on the distant figure in white, and seemed to become a statue himself.
They had only a few moments to wait until the service began. A few more seats filled up, but not many. The Dreaming God’s church was wealthy because people were usually very, very grateful to have demons dealt with, but this did not always translate to attendance at their services.
Slate, never much inclined to kneel, sat on a seat and tried not to fidget. Not that it matters. I suspect I could bounce a brick off Caliban’s head and he wouldn’t notice right now.
She wished Brenner were here so that she could say something sarcastic to an appreciative audience.
On the other hand, Brenner would have had so much to say about the situation that it was probably for the best. She didn’t want Caliban to try to strangle the assassin before they even got on the road.
She shifted uncomfortably on the wooden seat and thought I should have brought a book.
Caliban would probably have noticed a brick to the head. In fact, he might have welcomed it.
As the priestess’s voice swelled out around them—Sister Dominique, an uninspired speaker but rock solid on theology—Caliban felt the presence of his god.
The Dreaming God was there. He was in His temple. He was looking down at His faithful. Caliban knew it. He believed it, not as an article of faith, but as he believed in sunrise and sunset and the turn of the seasons.
He could feel the god. Words and incense and holy fire. Strength and certainty and the sword.
He wanted that. He wanted that surety and that strength, that feeling of being in exactly the correct place. He wanted it more than he had ever wanted food or drink or a woman’s body, more than he had wanted freedom in his filthy little cell. He wanted to be whole.
He had never minded the grim, hard, dirty work of demon-slaying. He dealt with the sorrow and the pain and the atrocities that demons worked and the atrocities that paladins wrought trying to stop them. He had been a sword in the hand of his god, and that was all that he had ever asked to be.
And here he was.
And here the god was.
And the hollow place in his soul did not fill up.
The god was all around him and Caliban stood in the center of holiness and was not touched.
His lips moved in time with Sister Dominique’s, saying the litany that he knew by heart, and nothing happened.
One moment, he begged his god. One touch. One word. Please. I will never ask again. Just let me know that You have not forgotten me. I beg of You. Please.
There was no answer. Only the demon, rotting down at the bottom of his soul.
Perhaps there would never be an answer again. The god had made His choice. And Caliban, now, would have to live with it, for as long as he was able.
He rose to his feet.
“All right,” he said to Slate. “I had to know. Thank you.”
She nodded. She asked no questions. He pulled the hood of his cloak up over his face and left the temple of the Dreaming God for the last time.