Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Poisoned Saint
My breath catches at my first glimpse of our last compatriot. She rides in through the arch on the back of a dark bay, a brindled dog swirling around the bay’s hooves, but I care not for either animal. All I see is the paladin.
She looks exactly like Marigold.
Well, she looks exactly like Marigold would look, if she were eight years older than when last I saw her, streaked in clay, and suffering from multiple injuries, some of which are infected. And if she wore rags, dented armor, and the worst excuse for a bear cloak I’ve ever seen.
I’m so stunned that I miss the greeting the Engineers give her, miss the furious silence of the High Saint who has been interrupted in his prayer, miss whatever they are saying about amulets.
It is as if my past has returned and placed a brand upon my heart. I am betrayed by surprise. It leaves a sore patch under my breastbone and a smarting in my eyes.
Lord of Sorrows, please take mine, I pray, as I have prayed a thousand times before, and unlike the rote prayers the others are so fond of, this one is only for me. It has been mine since I laid her body in the cold earth. Mine for so long that it is now a part of me.
I feel the prayer catching in my throat. Barbed in my unshed tears. I fight to release it — and with it, the breath I dare not hold much longer, lest I draw attention to myself. Some hurts are better kept to one’s own soul.
The Vagabond Paladin — for that is what she undoubtedly is, in that cobbled-together armor — studies us with the kind of hardness that is all for show.
Hefertus shifts uncomfortably. I believe he thinks she is mad. I glance at the naked disgust and horror in the faces of the others. They feel the same way.
I don’t share their reactions. I see through her daring ruse.
She has smeared mud across her chin and through her hair for this exact purpose.
In the dried clay, I see the calculation of a razor-sharp mind.
In the bold way she sits her horse, I see unrelenting courage.
I see the eyes of Marigold when she pled with me to make it stop.
I see my own empty hands, hands with no relief to offer.
With effort, I shake off the memories. They will claw at me again later. No need to indulge them now.
“Are you ill, Lady Paladin?” I ask her. I will heal her if she lets me.
But she lies to me, her voice as cold as the body of my former love. “I am well.”
Am I the only one who hears the lie in her voice? Who sees the posturing beneath the front? Or am I the only one who cares?
I send a brief look to my brother and sister paladins. Perhaps the Seer knows. If she does, then she is not saying. The rest seem perplexed by this brash young paladin.
“Do you have the amulet?” Sir Sorken asks her as the dog trots over to Hefertus and snuffles his hand.
Hefertus mindlessly scratches him behind the ears, but when I make to do the same, the dog whines and shies away from me.
I feel the frown tightening my face. I can’t help it.
Animals usually like me. They relax into my hands as I tease out their pains and aches.
This one cannot seem to get away from me fast enough.
His claws rattle against the bare stone.
I’m troubled by that. Not as troubled as I am by the Aspect of the Rejected God’s paladin, but still troubled.
Why would the Rejected God send such a very young paladin? This one barely seems to be past squirehood. And this quest will require careful negotiation if the Cup is found. We will need to find a truce between ten different aspects — and one without bloodshed.
Perhaps the Rejected God does not see any chance that their aspect will succeed at this and could not spare a more experienced knight. Or perhaps he plays another game and the way she throws us onto the back foot is intentional.
Rejected Paladins are devilishly difficult to sort at the best of times, but they always surprise us. Sometimes it seems their renunciation of wealth is a renunciation of society as a whole. Sometimes they almost seem insolent in their rejection.
Each aspect that calls paladins works in a similar fashion. We embrace one aspect of the God and when we lean into that, he blesses us with power. But to access that power, we must forswear something, and if we slip, if we fall into what we abhor, then the blessing is gone, and with it, the power.
For instance, if this young paladin were to accept one of Hefertus’s strings of pearls, having forsworn wealth as a Vagabond Paladin, she would lose her unique power — the ability to call on the God for help with open hands, just as she faces life with open hands ready to accept gifts, or accept their loss.
Hers is a strange type of power. A power that renounces control.
That she comes to us wounded, swaying on her feet and streaked in blood, barely garners a second look from the rest of them.
They expect her hollow poverty as they expect Hefertus’s pearls and flowing locks.
We are a collection of types and we fit them so strongly that you could set us in stained glass and use us to decorate a church and no one would blink.
“Here,” they would say, “is the green-faced Poisoned Saint holding the cup with which he swallows our sorrows; here is the Prince Paladin, two fingers held up with the blessing he will speak over us; and here is the Beggar Knight, ragged and bloody, ready to take our evil and flee into the night with it.”
The others do not give her a second look because she is exactly what they expect, thrust-out jaw and challenging stare included. After a first disgusted look, they hardly even care about the clay smeared in her hair. She was a missing puzzle piece. Now she is found. That is all that matters.
I do not feel the same way.
I sneak another look at her face and hope that no one notices me doing it. I don’t want anyone getting ideas about why my interest tarries here. I’m tangled up with myriad thoughts and feelings slithering like a clump of snakes in the jar of my mind.
Part of me is upset about her obvious injuries.
No mortal should contend with such pain.
When she dismounts, she is favoring one side and one of her arms hangs lower than the other.
The clay she has smeared over herself might distract the casual watcher, but my eyes see to the pain.
Perhaps she has a broken or twisted rib.
There’s definitely infection in those gashes.
Whoever bound them was either hurried or incompetent.
That would be enough to bother me, but the dog makes it worse.
There’s something wrong with the creature.
When I look at it, it is well, and happy, and currently demanding affection from the blind Seer.
She is trying to hide her shy smile at the attention, and that is all well and good, but the dog is a demon in canine form if I’ve ever seen one.
It gives me a baleful glare and I return the sentiment.
What manner of paladin rides with such a dog?
My heart is racing as it always does when I sense something that does not fit. There is something wrong about this Vagabond. Something on which I cannot place my gauntleted finger. Her beauty makes it worse. It stands in a rude contrast to her ragged filth.
My feelings of deep sorrow and tangled guilt at memories of Marigold muddy the waters further. Can I even trust my own observations when such a veil lies over them?
And under it all is something far more dangerous. Something I have not felt in a long time. Were I Hefertus, it would hardly signify. But I am a paladin of the Sorrowful God, called to heal others … and called to celibacy. I should not feel the stirrings that I do.
“We’ll go through the door tomorrow,” the Majester General is saying, and I gather that he’s been talking for a few minutes.
“It’s too late in the day to enter now. We’ll camp for the night, have a friendly bout of swordplay to stretch the limbs and take one another’s measure, and then tomorrow we go in together.
No need to all spread out and get into trouble on our own. ”
“I am not here for games,” the Beggar Knight says, and I think she’d say more but the High Saint interrupts her.
“You’ve ridden in while we were saying Terce. I’d like to finish.”
She nods and bows as if to join him in prayer, but he’s shaking his head. “We can’t say prayers with your horse as part of the assembly.”
“I’ll guide her to the pickets.” The words are out of my mouth before I realize I’m the one speaking. This is close enough to sin that I shuffle my feet and a bead of sweat forms along my hairline, but I am the only Poisoned Saint here, and the others do not notice.
“Very good. We will say the prayer without you, and you will join us in your hearts,” the High Saint orders. Clearly, he is loath to wait even one more second.
It takes a solid effort not to smirk. I’ve always found pomp hilarious and the nerves I’m feeling at my slip are clawing down my tight control. I mask the rising smirk by making the holy sign, bent knuckle to forehead, heart, and sword arm.
“If you’ll come with me, Lady,” I murmur.
“Victoriana,” she corrects me.
“Lady Paladin,” I acknowledge, still refusing her name.
Hefertus’s snort is very quiet, but not quiet enough to be spared by the High Saint, who shoots him a venomous look as he begins the chant of the second prayer. Hefertus joins him loudly in his clear baritone, a look of cherubic innocence on his face.
I lead Victoriana to the pickets. Her name is quite a mouthful and it doesn’t suit the mud-streaked specter following me.
The dog comes with her. I could have done without his company. He springs forward to lope ahead of us. I keep one eye on him because I swear he looks as if he’d tear my throat out if he could. Quite the pair. Beauty and the Beast; Rose and Thorn.