Chapter 8 #2
Well, now you’ve gone and done it, my girl. It’s one thing to be a madwoman with a mad dog. It’s another thing to admit you can read a dead language. There are maybe twenty scholars who can read that language. Most of them would need a reference to help with it.
The language couldn’t be dead if he’d been studying it. It had looked like he’d been reading parts of it. He must have an idea of what it said. He’d just think I’d studied the same things.
Twenty. Scholars. Do you really think this paladin is one of them? Girl, I could barely tell the language was Indul. And I might not have mentioned it, but I was scholar-trained in my youth before I heard the Rejected God’s call.
Branson was scholar-trained? He had certainly not mentioned it. He had … not acted like it, either. I hadn’t thought he’d cared about that kind of thing.
Well … they’re just so stuffy. Couldn’t live like that. But here’s the thing. The Poisoned Saints are amongst the most learned of all the Aspects of the God. No, scratch that. They are some of the most learned people under the sovereignty of the God.
Oops.
Yes, oops indeed. And now he will be wondering how you are performing this cute little trick. And what if he asks you to repeat it when the demon is not there?
I felt my cheeks heating, but Sir Adalbrand’s eyes were still on me, clearly weighing me, even as he extracted a roll of bandage and a pot of salve from his bag.
Fine, Brindle said. There’s no getting out of it now. Might as well do this right. Tell him it’s in Ancient Indul.
I repeated his words.
“I worked that much out myself,” the paladin said, watching me warily. “But my Ancient Indul is not up to standard. Not like yours, learned scholar.”
His smile was teasing, but he sobered as he laid out the needles, thread, and salve across a cloth on a rock and began to shimmy out of his boots and trousers.
I looked away, face hot. I’d seen things in this service.
The kinds of things I didn’t like to talk about.
Beggars frozen into snowbanks, the only difference between them and me a single blanket and the favor of the God.
Women used terribly by men and barely saved by a whisper to us as we passed through a town.
Children … my brain stuttered over the children. It could not go there. Would not.
Through all that, what I hadn’t seen much of was attractive men.
Look, I spent most of my time riding around with Sir Branson, righting small wrongs as often as possible, saying solemn prayers when he remembered them, and once in a while, going toe to toe against true evil. Good-looking men around my age were in short supply.
I’d met one or two — always married. I’d counted that a blessing. Our order was not a celibate order, but we did not engage in unmarried relationships. Those were forbidden. And who would marry a beggar other than another beggar?
I’d met a few other Vagabond Paladins, of course.
Old bachelors, the lot of them. They’d liked me very much.
Especially when I made them tea, toasted cheese on bread, and offered liniment for their aching feet.
I didn’t mind doing that. The God blesses generosity, and there’s something satisfying about caring for someone everyone else overlooks.
But I wouldn’t have considered myself tempted in any way by the paladins of my order.
Were there beautiful Vagabond Paladins drifting town to town in tattered cloaks with noble visages and flowing hair?
Mayhap there were, and our paths had simply never crossed. Privately, I doubted it.
Or the old man knew better than to let you anywhere near them because when you’re an old knight, having a girl around who has a nice smile and a handy way with a cup of tea isn’t something to shrug at.
I’ve seen it before. There are many kinds of selfishness, toothsome delight.
Let me show you one that fits you. Let me introduce you to all the ways you can indulge before disaster catches up with you.
I bet this knight would help tempt you to try a little selfishness.
I snapped my fingers at Brindle and he sat, whining slightly.
Oooh. Yes, you’ve shown me my place. He purred happily as if losing his agency was something he liked. Now, shall I tell you what the pillar said?
He’d better. Sir Adalbrand was cleaning his wounds and now was a good time to fix my eyes on the rock and pretend I was reading it.
“It says,” I began, waiting for the voice in my head to tell me.
There was a long pause, a snicker, and then finally an other-earthly voice spoke.
Tell your little toy soldier that the pillar says, “The Aching Monastery. Woe to you, supplicant. Five woes. For the attainment of Sainthood: Bring your dust, your blood, your inner pain. Draw them out each one and heights attain. Abandon now the bitter husk. Impale your weakness on its tusk.”
I spoke the words, staring at the pillar as if I were reading them, but the sound of Adalbrand’s silence drew my eyes back to his.
“Does it really say that?” he asked me. He was midway through stitching one of the gashes on his leg. The flesh around it was purple and pulpy from the force of Brindle’s bite.
“I think so,” I said carefully.
“It’s … the other paladins think this monastery might have been used for the creation of Saints.”
“How does one create Saints?” I asked carefully. That sounded like something for the God to determine, not for man to orchestrate.
Precisely.
He lifted a single brow in an ironic look. “How, indeed?”
I thought about what the demon had read. “Perhaps they say it in this way to keep the fainthearted away?”
In my head, the voice laughed and kept on laughing, echoing through my thoughts. Madness would have been bad enough. I had someone else going mad inside my mind, and that was so much worse.
“Perhaps.” Adalbrand was quiet for a long moment, his hands busy with the pull of thread through ruined flesh.
I was accustomed to horrors, but not accustomed to lingering so long over wounds. I felt my stomach flutter unhappily at the sight of what Brindle’s mouth had done. If I could keep a demon under control, you’d think I could keep my own bile down.
Who says I’m under control.
“Talk to me while I work, Vagabond Paladin. Tell me about how you ascended to your rank.”
I shivered at his commanding tone. I thought that if he ordered me to march with that voice, I would step straight into a blizzard and never look back.
I glanced at his face. It was tight with pain, but his eyes were sharp when they focused on me.
His dark hair was cropped short but sweat had formed around the brow of it, dampening his hair enough for a few small locks to fall over his forehead and across his temple.
It made him seem younger, despite his situation.
“Did you hear the Call?” he pressed, eyes flicking up to mine from his work.
I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself, flinching at the burn in my own stitches. My work was not nearly as careful or proficient as his.
He stiffened slightly as he drew in a breath and let it out slowly. It made all his muscles flex. Even the ones in his neck.
“So. You didn’t hear the call. Or you are uncertain.”
My cheeks grew hot. I kept my eyes anywhere but his. “I knelt in vigil all night. Wounded. With the blood of my only friend in the world on my clothing. Is that not call enough?”
He grunted and then it morphed into a cynical gust of silent laughter.
“Perhaps.” He shook his head and the shake held all the weariness of a man who’d seen as much or more than I had. “You’re right. Is that not what faith is? A reaching into the darkness, conscious of the blood on your hands?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and for my trouble, I received another of those gusting laughs.
“And that solves the puzzle of why all your wounds are infected. They were not tended promptly. I watched a fellow paladin die that way, you know. It was a miserable death. At the end, he thought he saw his own mother gnawing on his bones.”
This time when he glanced at me, his eyes were an open window to vast sadness.
I shivered. “I see what you’re doing here, but if you love healing so much, why don’t you heal yourself?”
He shot me a sidelong glance with a glimmer of a shared jest in his eyes. How was he so playful when he held such sorrow?
“You know I cannot turn my gift on myself, so why do you suggest it? Are you testing me, Lady Paladin?”
Did I not mention that? my former mentor asked me.
It seemed there were a lot of things he’d forgotten to mention.
I did my best to mask my lack of knowledge, flicking my eyes to his exposed leg. “Are you testing me, Sir Knight?”
I shouldn’t have felt satisfied by his sudden flush, the bobbing of his throat, or the way his gaze couldn’t dart away fast enough, but I did. And shame mixed with it when I heard the laughter of the demon in my head.
Plum. Sugared. Plum.
“Whatever you do,” he said carefully, “do not tell the others what you have told me. Let it be our secret, me and you. A secret we take to the grave, hmm?”
“You must think me a fool.” If my words held the sharpness of iron, well, my thoughts were equally sharp and terrified.
He paused, and whatever chagrin he felt was clearly set aside. He held my gaze with calm assurance.
“I think you’re a woman pushed past exhaustion, threaded through with sorrow, and now responsible for a demon posing as a dog.”
I sucked in a breath, afraid to so much as flinch. Had he discovered us?
He jests, snackling. And yet, don’t you think it’s funny that he sees I could be a demon and yet he doesn’t slay me now?
Were he a real man, he’d have lopped off Brindle’s head already.
Maybe I’ll get to have two delectable treats.
One that tastes of plum and cinnamon and another that tastes of …
what do you think your screams will taste of? Tart apple?
That echoing laughter was getting annoying.
And Sir Adalbrand was watching me, watching how my face had formed a still mask.
“You know all my secrets now,” I said, breathlessly, hoping not to be caught in the lie.
“Truly? So few?” He teased, but his teasing had a note of sympathy under it.
“And you offer to heal me. I’d be in your debt and debt again. I don’t like that accounting.”
“Hmm.” He’d finished his stitching and was smearing salve liberally over the wound. “That’s fair, I suppose.”
We were both silent for a long time and then he looked up at me and bit his lip — a shockingly vulnerable gesture for a man hard and lean with rippling muscle and lined from pain around eyes and mouth.
“A secret for a secret? Would that settle our debt?”
I couldn’t have said why it was suddenly so hard to breathe. Maybe it was the infection affecting my mind.
Yes, we’ll call it that.
I nodded wordlessly.
“I was raised the son of King Abrent von Menticure by his third concubine, Amaranda. They had a knighthood in mind for me, but I ran to the Aspect of the Sorrowful God when I was but fifteen and the Aspect took my vows. Sanctuary and service. They gave me one and received the other.”
I nodded along. We both knew this was not the secret.
“I killed a girl. She was just fifteen.”
The laughter echoing in my mind was like flames flickering up from the center of the earth.
Plums and cinnamon and sweet, sweet shame.
“A secret for a secret,” I said, as if a debt had been paid between us.
He nodded, but there was a quaver in his nod, as if he were reliving a memory he wished to forget. When his words came, they were rough.
“Now, let me heal you of your wounds. Secrets fester in the soul. I can do nothing for them. But I can heal the wounds festering in your flesh.”
Accept his gift. Only the arrogant turn their backs on mercy.
With a long sigh, I opened my palm to him.