CHAPTER 16 #2
“The second team they sent. The journal. The rune caught them.” Learned Edmund stared at her in non-comprehension. “Oh—look—here!”
She dug into her packs and came up holding the map case.
“This is a military case,” said Learned Edmund doubtfully.
She snapped it open and pulled out Brother Amadai’s journal.
“Mistress Slate! Is that…?”
He snatched the book from her so quickly that he didn’t even seem to care that their fingers touched. His bowels were clearly not nearly so important as the journal.
A few minutes later, they were all gathered around. Slate leaned over Learned Edmund’s shoulder, which he hardly noticed, and Caliban had sheathed his sword and come to investigate.
Brenner, virtually illiterate and not particularly bothered by that fact, was consulting the map that the second group had left behind.
“This is it,” said Learned Edmund. “This is the journal. This is his.”
“What are the odds?” asked Slate.
Caliban frowned down at her. “Not dreadful,” he rasped. “Not as bad as they could be. I suspect the rune demon was drawing in any travelers she suspected of having something to do with the Clockwork Boys.”
“Crazy rune,” muttered Grimehug.
“That would account for both us and this group, and even Grimehug as well.” He nodded to the gnole.
“She was speaking about demons in her territory. If you accept that she thought the Clockwork Boys are demons and that columns of them had gone through the Vagrant Hills before us…” He spread his hands.
“It makes sense,” said Slate slowly. “A kind of sense. But how would she know we had anything to do with the Clockwork Boys?”
“She could read minds,” said Caliban.
Slate stared up at him. “Really.”
“Yes. She…ah…plucked a memory from me, when we were speaking.” It was hard to tell with his voice so wrecked, but she thought he sounded embarrassed.
“And tried to convince me to work with her. I doubt she could have such a great influence on minds at a distance, but if we entered her territory with thoughts of the Clockwork Boys uppermost in our minds…” He trailed off, coughing. Slate tossed him a waterskin.
“But what did she want?” said Slate, frustrated.
Unexpectedly, it was Brenner who spoke up.
“Isn’t it obvious, darlin’? The same thing the Captain wanted, and all the rest of us.
She wanted to get the Clockwork Boys out of her territory, and she didn’t know a damn thing about them.
She’s probably been pullin’ people in ever since they started stomping through the Vagrant Hills, tryin’ to find somebody who knew what they were and where they came from. ”
It made sense. It made a lot of sense. Slate exhaled slowly.
Learned Edmund finally looked up.
“There is no doubt,” he said. “This is the journal. And it is in Brother Amadai’s hand, and with his codes.”
Slate raised an eyebrow. “Can you read it?”
“Not here,” said Learned Edmund, gesturing to the wonder engine and the valley and the woods. “I need to work out a key and for that I need paper and ink—more than I have with me—and time and a surface that isn’t a mule or a flat rock!”
“Fair,” said Slate. She thought about trying to forge a document while sitting in the middle of the wonder-engine’s valley and shook her head. “Yes, that’s completely fair. Well. I suppose we’ll need to leave the Vagrant Hills for that.”
“Believe me, darlin’,” said Brenner, with great feeling, “it can’t be soon enough.”
Slate had two private encounters before they left the valley, both of which were either damned odd or inevitable, she wasn’t sure which.
The first was Caliban, who caught up with her when she was off changing the bandages, which, out of a sense of mercy, she was doing out of sight of Edmund.
She was sitting at the rear of the wonder-engine on what looked like a giant ivory hip bone. She’d spread rags and a water-skin over the hip bone and was trying to re-bandage her raw shoulder wound one-handed. It wasn’t going well.
Who knew it was so hard to patch your own arm? Possibly if I hold this end in my teeth…
Sword-callused hands reached in and held the square of cloth flat. She got it wrapped and he tied off the end, then sat down on the hip bone next to her.
“Thanks,” she said, wondering what he wanted. You better not be thinking of lecturing me about last night’s rescue, buddy… “How’s your leg?”
“Fine,” he said, in that creaking whisper. “It only grazed me. My throat’s in worse shape, but Learned Edmund thinks I’ll get my voice back in a day or two.”
“That’s good.”
“Mmm.”
They sat together in silence for a moment. Swallows skimmed low over the green hillside, picking up insects from the grass.
“I haven’t thanked you,” he whispered finally. “You saved my life.”
Slate choked back a laugh. It had surprisingly sharp edges. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“I’m not sure what else I can do,” he said.
Slate opened her mouth to say something—she wasn’t sure what—and caught a sly gleam in his eye. Was that a joke? Good lord, if he develops a working sense of humor, I’ll start to worry he got possessed again when we weren’t looking.
She had a sarcastic response all thought out, and then she caught a wave of rosemary from him and sneezed violently instead. By the time she stopped sneezing and managed to pry her eyes open again, he already had a handkerchief out and was dangling it in front of her.
“Thangks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“How many of these things do you carry?”
He lifted his chin. “Leave me some small mysteries.”
She snorted.
“Actually, I buy a dozen any time we stop at a town large enough to have a dry goods store.”
“I always lose them.”
“I know. That’s why I keep buying them.”
He helped her gather up the bandages. She started to rise, but he held out his hand.
“Slate…”
“If you apologize again, you’ll probably make a hash of it and then I’ll let Brenner kill you,” she warned him.
He shook his head. “It’s twice now,” he said. “You gave me my death back in that cell. Last night you gave me my life back.”
Slate hunched up one shoulder. He shouldn’t be able to do the voice with his throat like that. Dammit, how is he still doing it?
He stepped back and unsheathed his sword.
Slate looked down the length of the blade and raised her eyebrows.
He drove the point into the earth at her feet and dropped to one knee.
“Oh god, no,” said Slate involuntarily.
It was Caliban at her feet, but the Knight-Champion looking up at her. “The church cast me out. The city locked me away. And I prayed, when I was in the cell,” he said. “I prayed for weeks. And no one came and I knew the Dreaming God had turned his back on me.”
Slate swallowed hard.
“But you saved me,” he said. “And I no longer have a church to serve. So I will swear to you, instead.”
“You can’t. I mean, you really can’t! Dear god! A paladin swearing to a forger?”
“You are my commander,” he said, unruffled, and bowed his head.
Slate sank back down onto the wonder-engine’s hip bone, trapped.
He spoke a few words only, in a form of the language so old that she’d only read it in books. It seemed she had been wrong about half the pronunciations, too.
Am I supposed to say something?
Apparently not, because he sheathed his sword and knelt at her feet and said “I am yours to command.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“What does that even mean?”
He looked up at her again and even if he was using the voice, he had a small, sardonic smile.
He knows perfectly well that I don’t know what the hell to do now. Dear god, I think he thinks this is funny.
“I would give my life for yours. Your enemies are my enemies.”
“They already were your enemies!”
“Well,” he admitted, “that’s true. But I’ll be here if you make any new ones.”
Slate gripped her skull in both hands. “Wait, you’re not going to go around trying to defend my honor, are you?”
“…I am a paladin.”
“Yes, but I haven’t got any honor!”
“I’ll try to keep the duels over your virtue to a bare minimum, then.”
This was even worse than she’d imagined. “Um. Uh. Okay. Go take care of the horses, I guess?”
The former Knight-Champion, now, evidently, her Knight-Champion, rose to his feet.
“Caliban?”
He looked over his shoulder. “My liege?”
She winced. “Don’t you dare call me that in front of Brenner!”
“As you command.”
Slate groaned. “Maybe you could have just apologized.”
The paladin’s smile grew just a little.
“I’d only have made a hash of it,” he said, and went to take care of the horses.
The second encounter was rather different. Slate had wandered out to the tree-line to take care of certain private business, and was wandering back when someone grabbed her from behind a tree.
Slate slapped a hand to her dagger. Shit, shit, it’s the rune, I didn’t hear them coming, shit—
Strong fingers clamped hers to the hilt, keeping her from pulling the blade out, and then Brenner had pulled her tight against him and covered her mouth with his.
The strength of her physical response startled her. Instinct took over for a heartbeat—it had been a very long time, and Brenner, whatever his many faults, was warm and solid and there.
He had been an…interesting lover. Her mother had always said you could tell a lot about a man by the way they conducted intimate business. The ones who thought they were amazing in bed, the ones who were afraid that they weren’t, the ones who expected you to do everything…
Brenner had been none of those. Brenner had made a very careful study of what her body responded to and then he had done it, quite ruthlessly, until Slate could hold nothing back at all. Then he would take his own pleasure, just as ruthlessly.
It had been exhausting and oddly transactional, very much like Brenner. It left her sated and a little bitter afterwards, as if they had used each other.
Her body remembered it differently. Her body felt his palm on the back of her neck and his teeth against her lips and was instantly, shockingly ready.
Right here. Right now. I am alive and I want to feel…something…