Chapter 12 #4
“The authority of the God,” I breathed and a prayer slipped from my lips unbidden. “Bless me, Rejected God, for I am rejected even as you so often are.”
My prayer might have been feeble. It might have been a dashed-together thing compelled more by desperation than true faith, but I supposed it was also enough, because the Poisoned Saint leapt suddenly backward, and by the time I turned to face him, his jaw had dropped and he was watching me with trembling hands and eyes wide as an owl’s.
“Well. Well, now.” He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes wild and vulnerable, breath huffing out between statements. “That was unexpected.”
“What was unexpected?” I asked, shuddering with relief, drawing in a long breath, and rolling my neck from side to side. I was ready. The second he leapt for me again, my sword would be up and I’d run him through.
My knees were bent, stance ready, sword on my hilt.
Don’t draw yet. I saw something strange through that door …
I didn’t draw.
But I wanted to. My breathing was heavy. Fingers itching.
Across from me, Adalbrand licked his lips. “I’ve only heard the voice of the God once before. When he called me.”
Once before what?
He glanced upward, reverently, looking to the heavens, but all I could think of was that there was a huge, bulbous demon between him and the God. Perhaps even now it laughed at him.
I trembled despite myself, and blood was thick on my breath. How dare he confront me like that? How dare he pin me to the wall like an enemy? If he wanted a fair fight, I would give it to him. Right now. Right here.
“You know,” I said, acidly, “it was unexpected for me, too. Maybe it was too much to ask for a warm reception from my fellow paladins, but an actual attack? Accusations? Threats? What a delight.”
Yes! Get him, snackling!
His face paled.
I raised a single eyebrow.
His eyes were locked on me as if I were some kind of miracle that had been revealed to him.
“You took my secret, freely offered to you, and used it against me,” I said, quiet steel in every word.
Behind the door, Brindle growled, but I wasn’t ready to deal with him yet. One animal at a time.
That’s right, snackling. Eat his gizzard. Grind his heart between your knuckles!
I ignored the voice in my head.
“You used violence to demand answers.”
The Poisoned Saint swallowed and made the sign of the penitent. Knuckles to forehead, then nose, then heart. “How shall I beg your forgiveness, Lady Paladin?”
Make him do more than beg. Make him pay for his failing.
They were all fools.
“Are you unable to see that I could use violence on you, too?” I kept my voice low. Threats are delivered best when they are delivered quietly. “I could come up on you from behind. I could slam you against a wall. Perhaps I don’t have your strength, but I have my cunning.”
He watched me like you might watch a raging bull who has paused to size you up. Which seemed terribly unfair, since he was the one who had just attacked me.
“An eye for an eye,” he muttered, so quietly that I barely caught it. His face flushed hard when he spoke again. “I had no right to manhandle you.”
“No. You did not.”
“I had no right to use your secrets against you.”
“No.”
“But I had to know.”
I lifted an eyebrow. Did he, now?
“Are you likewise afflicted with a punishment from the door?” I asked him as fear spiked hot within me. “Something that twists your mind?”
He nodded and looked away with an expression I’d seen many times before.
It was the expression of a survivor realizing they had to deal with the hand they’d been dealt and couldn’t go back to how things had been before.
He’d made this mess — mind afflicted or not. Now he must deal with his creation.
He squared his shoulders and turned back to me suddenly. I expected another apology or — perhaps — a justification. People tended to do that when they were particularly embarrassed.
“I will give you another secret of mine,” he said instead. And it was my turn to be surprised enough that my hand fell from my hilt.
“And what? That will make us even?” I felt amusement tickling the corners of my mouth.
“Yes,” he agreed, so fervently that the word sounded like a vow. “I will give you my secret and then I will kneel before you and if you wish to take my head, then that is your right. Perhaps death will be better than the shame I feel now.”
“Hold just a moment, there’s no need to run around headless.”
I threw a hand up but already he was kneeling. He drew his sword from a kneeling stance and I stumbled backward defensively, only for him to slide it roughly across the stone. It spun away until it hit an ancient rug and stopped.
“Your sin is doubt? Mine is lust,” he told me, his eyes wide and palms held up as if making an offering.
“I told you I killed a girl. I did not lie. I got her with child and watched as her family abandoned her and mine refused to lend aid. She died giving birth to a stillborn daughter. I came too late to do more than watch her die before my eyes in a frozen, filthy hovel. I killed her as surely as if I’d done it myself.
Killed her with my appetites. Killed her with my thoughtless taking.
I left that day and swore myself to the Aspect.
But we both know that makes up for nothing.
It remits no guilt. No life I could live could make up for two innocents robbed of theirs.
That’s my secret. Do with it what you will.
Both my secret and my life are in your hands. ”