Chapter 31
The Dervish left Gervase at the entrance to the Temple of the White Rat. He remembered again that he didn’t have any money and babbled an apology, but Gervase only laughed. “Helped myself to some of the stuff in the pantry of that fancy house. Doubt that scholar person will miss it.”
“Believe me,” said the Dervish, “by the time I’m done, she won’t miss anything ever again.”
“Kinda figured.” The young man nodded. “Rather not know anything about it, but the constables won’t hear anything from me.” He tapped his forehead, picked up his cart, and jogged away into the city.
The Dervish found Zale’s office and flung the door open without even knocking. The lawyer jumped up, startled, then said, “Oh, there you are! I was wondering where you two had…”
They paused. They studied the distinct absence of Edmund. They noted the look on the Dervish’s face.
“Oh shit,” Zale said. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”
The Dervish got about thirty seconds into the explanation and Zale waved him into silence. “This is above my pay grade. We need to talk to Bishop Beartongue.”
“I need to get Edmund back.”
“Yes. And we will.” Zale reached out and put their hand on the Dervish’s shoulder and gripped it with surprising strength for a person who mostly lifted papers. “I promise you, I will go with you, and we will do whatever it takes. But that starts with talking to Beartongue.”
The Dervish didn’t know what he expected from a bishop. Mercenaries, for whatever reason, rarely came in contact with them. Zale was certainly not what he’d expected from a lawyer. Would their superior be like them?
Bishop Beartongue was a muscular woman with gray hair and a desk the size of a small continent. When Zale came in, she looked up and smiled inquiringly. Then her eyes took in the Dervish and dropped to the sword in Zale’s hands.
“Oh god,” she said. “Not another one.”
“I don’t mean to keep stumbling over people trapped in swords,” Zale said. “It just keeps happening.”
“The last time it happened, you wandered in the Vagrant Hills…”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“… were present at a murder…”
“It was really more of a maiming-with-intent?”
“… and accidentally set the Dreaming God’s people against the Hanged Mother’s people. There was an incident.”
“The Hanged Mother’s inquisitor started it!”
“I know, I know.” The bishop rubbed her eyes.
“I wouldn’t care except that one of the Hanged flunkies kept showing up here demanding that you be investigated for misconduct.
Took me ages to get rid of him.” The look she leveled at the Dervish was not unfriendly but distinctly wary.
“I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’re not in the middle of some kind of crisis? ”
The Dervish said, “My wielder’s been kidnapped.”
“… Of course they have.” She waved to two chairs in front of her desk. “Sit down and tell me all about it.”
The Dervish had to give her credit, the bishop listened.
Really listened, with great intensity, making notes.
As skeptical as he was of all priests, he had to admit that she wasn’t brushing them off.
Occasionally she would fire off a question.
He didn’t understand some of the ones she asked Zale, but the ones she asked him were pertinent.
About halfway through, someone hurt Edmund.
The Dervish was on his feet, knocking over the chair and hitting the east wall of the bishop’s office before he knew what was happening.
He cursed and fought the magic back. I’m nowhere near.
I can’t get there. I want to. He was moving toward the door, which was not in the direction that the magic thought he should be going, when the hurting stopped. His breath went out in a whoosh.
“Sorry,” he muttered. The bishop’s eyebrows had gone up. Zale looked resigned.
“I see the problem,” Beartongue said. She frowned. “What would happen if you were standing by a river? Or a cliff?”
“Nothing I want to experience.”
“Right.” Beartongue pushed her notes aside and steepled her fingers. “Okay. There are two ways to do this: the proper way, and the correct way.”
The Dervish put up an eyebrow. Zale’s resignation expanded until it seemed to extend several feet from their actual body.
“The proper way is that we treat this as a kidnapping. Since they’ve left the city, the guard has minimal authority, but I’m certain the Forge God’s people would be very interested in finding out that someone is impersonating one of their own.
Failing that, we might be able to scrape up a few paladins.
Say we do and you go after these people and attempt to get your friend back.
If he’s already being hurt now, I suspect that it will end in violence. ”
“It damn well better.”
“Right. That will mean a legal inquiry with whichever temple is involved. Now, the Rat is a god of lawyers, among other things, and unless you do something incredibly ill-advised, I see no difficulty in getting through such an inquiry. Except…”
“Except?”
“The information about the swords will almost certainly come out in court. From there it will be a matter of record. Even if it’s done under seal, a lot more people will know about it than do now.
An obscure monograph that a couple of scholars have read is one thing, but I suspect this would hit the broadsheets.
It’s too juicy a topic. After that, between the followers of this ‘Sainted Smith’ actively searching for swords like yours, and opportunists who see the chance to have an immortal bodyguard at their beck and call…
” She spread her hands. “It could make your life a great deal more difficult in the long term.”
“If it gets Edmund back, I don’t care about the long term.”
“He might, though,” Zale said.
The Dervish’s voice locked in his throat. Yes. Edmund would care very much. His life was here, in these lands. He’d spoken about working for an artificer in a city that was apparently close by. This would paint a target on his back for anyone who wanted possession of the sword.
He’s not like you. You just get up and ride away whenever things get difficult. If you had to keep moving, it would feel normal. But Edmund’s a scholar. He wants to use his brain and publish those monograph things. What life will he have if you have to keep moving?
Even if he left Edmund behind and rode off over the horizon as far away as he could, someone might still come after the scholar to learn what he knew about the swords. And if he was going to leave, he’d need a new wielder anyway—
No!
His whole chest felt as if it would collapse inward at the thought. The visceral strength of his reaction shocked him.
I need to think about this. Later. When I don’t have two priests staring at me.
“If that’s the proper way,” the Dervish said carefully, “what’s the correct way?”
“Very similar, really.” The bishop picked up her notes and calmly tore them in half. “Except I’ve never met you, I certainly have no idea what you might be doing, and Zale is on some kind of paid leave. I heard they left the city, but beyond that, I couldn’t say.”
“Did I take the fastest coach in the yard?” asked Zale.
“You did not. You did, however, take a couple of chits letting you exchange post-horses along the road.”
“How odd. I thought I hated riding horses.”
“Yes, it was something of a departure, wasn’t it?”
The Dervish gazed at her with admiration. “And here I thought you’d be on the side of law and order…”
“No, young man,” said Beartongue, despite being several centuries his junior.
“I am on the side of justice. If we’re lucky, the two run in parallel.
If they don’t, we bend the law to attain justice, not the other way around.
” She made a shooing gesture. “Now go on, get going before I’m forced to remember this meeting happened. And good luck to you both.”
“I liked her,” the Dervish said five minutes later, as Zale threw together a packful of clothes.
The solicitor-sacrosanct’s private rooms were a maze of piled papers and teetering stacks of books, not unlike their office.
The Dervish carefully moved a three-volume set on inheritance law to one side and sat down gingerly on the chair underneath.
“Lots of people like her,” Zale said, shoving socks into their pack. “The others tend to hate her with the burning passion of a thousand suns. Will you hand me that bag—no, the other one, there, yes.”
The Dervish assessed his troops for the upcoming operation, which at the moment seemed to consist of a slender middle-aged lawyer who specialized in property law.
“So,” he said. “Can you fight?”
“Me?” Zale looked appalled. “I can use a crossbow, provided the target is standing fairly still and doesn’t try to take it away from me.”
The Dervish rubbed his forehead. Andraste had clearly had at least two hirelings, and that assumed that they hadn’t run off to find more members of their freaky little cult.
It wasn’t going to do Edmund any good if the Dervish got killed fighting for him, and ancestors only knew how far they might take him in the weeks it took the Dervish to recover.
“Okay. We might need a little more muscle.”
“We should probably avoid paladins, unless we can somehow convince the Dreaming God’s people there are demons involved.
” Zale sighed, shoving another shirt into the bag.
“And the bishop won’t balk at me taking out travel expenses, but hiring mercenaries is another matter.
Using funds from the temple to do that would come under scrutiny. ”
“Right.” The Dervish leaned his head against the back of the chair.
Paladins were always a mixed bag. Incredible fighters, but people who fought for principles instead of money were dangerous.
You never quite knew when you’d turn out to be on the wrong side of a principle.
“So all we need to do is find someone skilled in battle but trustworthy, and willing to work out of the goodness of their heart, but who isn’t a paladin and is also discreet. ”
The sounds of packing paused. The Dervish looked up.
“Um,” said Zale. The priest was looking at the floor with great intensity. “I actually know someone who might be able to help. But I suspect you’re not going to like it.”
“No,” the Dervish said. “Absolutely not. I’d rather die. Twice.”
Five minutes later he said, “It’s a terrible idea.”
A few minutes after that, he said, “There’s no reason he’d help me anyway.”
Zale had finished packing and was herding the Dervish through the White Rat’s compound, acquiring supplies, coin, and a set of chits. Every time the Dervish spoke up, the priest agreed with him in a distracted voice and handed him something else to carry.
“I hate him more than I hate anyone on earth,” the Dervish said, his voice muffled behind a bedroll.
“Yes, yes, I know.” Something lightweight but bulky joined the bedroll.
“There’s an excellent chance that if I see him, I will try to murder him.”
“That’s your prerogative, I suppose. Hold this, please.” Something else went on top of the pile, but the Dervish couldn’t make out the details.
“Is your plan to have me so weighed down with gear that Sarkis will be able to run away?”
Zale snorted eloquently. “Do you know, I’ve never seen him run away from anything?”
The Dervish couldn’t get a hand free to touch his daggers, so he cocked his hip to feel the weight of the scabbard bang against his leg. “There’s always a first time.”
“Sure.” The lawyer turned and put their hands on their hips. “Do you have any better ideas? Other than a daring single-handed raid with me providing cover fire?”
The Dervish did not. Angharad would have dissected his battle plan like a woman gutting a fish, and rightly so. He didn’t even have a battle plan, except to go chasing after Andraste and hope that he could take her out, along with however many guards she had acquired.
He needed someone who could make a battle plan. And, ancestors help him, the most brilliant tactician he’d ever known was apparently within reach.
Did he want Edmund back badly enough to work with Sarkis?
If he’d been a good person, it wouldn’t even have been a question.
But he wasn’t, so he thought about it and thought about the hatred that had sustained him for so long, more familiar now than his own face in the mirror.
He thought about Edmund, not just sleepy and loose-jointed in bed next to him, but naming trees and drawing flowers and explaining so earnestly why even old books about sheep diseases were important.
The Dervish took a deep, deep breath and held it until his chest ached, then let it out. “All right,” he said. “Take me to Sarkis.”
“They’re at the library? They’ve been there all along?” The Dervish felt irrationally betrayed by this knowledge. “But I was at the library!”
“Yes, and I made sure they knew that it would be a bad time to come out.” Zale rolled their eyes.
“Sarkis and his wife come to the library twice a year for a few weeks. The librarians pick his brain about things that happened five hundred years ago. It’s how he earns money.
Not that his wife isn’t wealthy in her own right, but he says it’s the principle. ”
“Sarkis is married?”
“Yes?”
“But he’s a sword!”
“Swords can get married now. We’re very enlightened here.” Zale led the way around the main library building toward an apartment building separated by a narrow road.
“Yes, but…” The Dervish trailed off, not knowing what to say.
Sarkis was immortal. He’d watch his wife age and die, knowing that he never could.
And yet he’d gotten married, chosen to love someone for as many years as they were granted, which meant …
He didn’t know what it meant. Something anyway. Something important.
It means that you and Edmund could be together for more than just a night, the little voice whispered in his head.
Thank you, yes, I got that, no need to spell it out, he told himself irritably.
They went up a flight of stairs to a line of doors. Zale stopped outside of a particular one.
“Right,” the lawyer said. “If you feel that you can control yourself, we can go in.”
“What if I don’t feel I can control myself?”
“Then we will stand on the doorstep for as long as it takes. I brought a lunch.”
The Dervish tried to calm himself and felt the seething anger in his chest burn like acid. Edmund, he thought. This is for Edmund. You don’t have time for this. Sarkis can help you. He’s the only other immortal swordsman around and he owes you.
“I’m fine,” he said, ignoring the roil of his guts. “Let’s go.”
Zale knocked.
The door opened and the Dervish looked into a face out of memory.