Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Vagabond Paladin
The door into this terrible place had scrambled us like eggs before they were cooked.
Fear and doubt laced through every inkling I had, twisting up my good judgment, and making me suspicious and fretful in a way I usually wasn’t.
That quick attack from Adalbrand had left me so rattled that it took me a complete turn around the room “searching for the cup” before I was calm enough to deal with him head-on.
I hoped he hadn’t noticed. I hoped I’d looked as if I was in possession of myself and not quivering with nerves like an un-blooded girl who’d never faced a demon.
He’d sworn to me at the end of it — or with me, I suppose. What a mad, warrantless thing to decide to do. Had Brindle been on this side of the door, I think he might have bit me.
You really did ruin her, didn’t you, you moldering old armor suit. Here she could have been the one wheeling through this world pinning pretty knights to walls and cutting throats but no, you filled her with catechisms and prayers and empty hands.
He had. Thank the Merciful God.
I think this Adalbrand is sincere. He means to keep his word to you. This kind usually does. They don’t thrash out at others. They eat themselves from within.
Except for when they were thrashing out at me, apparently.
I rather think that’s unusual for him. It’s completely unlike you to be anything but bold, for instance, and I feel your bowels trembling like jelly.
Rude.
Though, if I were frank with myself, I could admit that a second set of eyes would be useful in helping me navigate back toward a more objective view of things — even if those eyes were equally off-kilter.
You already have two more sets of eyes, little morsel. What need have you of a third? I see past the veil of skin to where each heart festers.
Somehow, the perspective of a demented spirit wasn’t quite the same as another living, breathing human. Call me any name you like, but I’d stand by that.
You just like that he’s living and breathing. Are you sure you’re not the one twisted by the sin of craving another? Doubt is so passé. Give me something thick and meaty like lust to work with.
Was Sir Branson hearing this?
Well, the knight did admit to lust, my girl. And that’s a real concern. The problem with lust is that it is treating people like objects. When he admits he has that problem, he’s admitting that he’s willing to treat you like you aren’t even a person.
Just treat him the same way — like a snack. Good for one sweet taste and then gone.
I swallowed hard.
“What have you found?” Adalbrand asked, slipping to my side so smoothly that he could be the haunting spirit and startling me out of my internal conversation.
“Look at the sphere,” I said aloud, tracing the edge of one of the etchings. “See this ragged edge? Doesn’t that look like the coastline of the Grayling Sea? There’s the distinctive rabbit-foot shape.”
Adalbrand grunted, leaning in closer. I tried very hard not to be overly aware of how he filled the space, how his masculine scent was stronger since our brief encounter.
If he hadn’t taken me by surprise, he’d never have gotten the better of me. He was quick but I could be quicker.
Taking you by surprise is getting the better of you. I’m going to enjoy watching you wreck your ship on this rock. He’s going to leave you hollow and gasping and broken.
“It does look like the Grayling Sea but surely it’s a coincidence.”
“Follow the edge of it. Here’s where it would disappear under the receding ice wall, if this were a map.”
“But who would put a map on a sphere?” He traced the edge with his finger, still bare from when we shook hands and made that oath.
If you don’t find the Cup of Tears, the pair of you will now be bound together, charging this way and that like knights errant. Best to find it. And fast.
Have I mentioned that it’s hard to have a conversation when the people in your head won’t be silent?
I forced myself to do it anyway. “Did you note the strange map mosaic on the floor as we descended the stairs?”
“Mmm,” he agreed. “It was difficult to see details, though, unless you stood high enough and looked down. Up close, it looked only like the rock shards that comprised it. I don’t see the connection.”
“Don’t you?” I asked, enjoying myself enough to raise an eyebrow. I liked teasing him. I hadn’t teased anyone in a long time. I remember my father loved to tease — to pull my little braids and pretend to steal my treats. “A paladin of a scholarly aspect like you?”
The poisoned look he shot me fit his title perfectly. It brought my smirk to the surface.
“Capture it in your mind’s eye, Sir Paladin. Wasn’t it a strange shape?”
He nodded, eyes distant and staring at a tapestry on the wall as he agreed. “Like the peel of a fruit flattened on a table.”
“Yes,” I said, “as if someone was trying to make a sphere flat.”
His frown when his gaze found mine was thoughtful. He spun the sphere on its axis, finger tracing what would be a coastline if it were a map.
“But it’s not a map of our world, is it?”
“Part of it could be.”
I rummaged around on the desk, looking. Bound books were piled with parchment and quills. A bottle of ink had been left open and dried up. I still couldn’t believe all this had been preserved for so long and could still be handled without collapsing into dust.
I opened one of the bound books. It was full of sketches and diagrams and scrawled handwriting in the Indul language. I could recognize it, even if I couldn’t read it without the dog.
“Someone stuck a bit of glass in the sphere just here,” Adalbrand said, and I looked up to note where it was on the sphere. “I wonder if that’s significant.”
“Maybe it was the location of a capital city. Or a cathedral of note.” I bit the end of my finger and glared at the diagrams. They didn’t show a cup, that was for certain. They seemed like engineering schematics. Maybe if I brought this book to the Engineers they’d have an idea of what it was for.
If it’s not for your precious cup then why bother? Keep the book to yourself.
Poor advice. Knowledge was always worth pursuing.
Is it, though? Remember that boy in Minsca? The one who tried his grandmother’s recipe for summoning demons? The one who made it work the way she never did?
I shuddered, remembering the carnage in that little town.
He had knowledge. Worth it, do you think?
Fine. Branson had a point. I was still going to ask, though. I shut the book hard enough that dust puffed up from the pages.
“Do you think, Sir Adalbrand,” I asked carefully, “that they thought the earth was a ball?”
He scoffed and then paused. “But how would they account for the ice walls?”
I pointed to the top and bottom of the sphere. “These islands are raised and flat. Could that be their representation of ice walls?”
He frowned and leaned in closer. “But they had to know it wasn’t true. When the walls shifted and revealed more of the earth, where would they put it on the ball?”
I shrugged. It was only a guess.
“And how would they account for the moon reflecting the surface of our land perfectly?”
I shook my head again. I didn’t know, but the more I looked at the sphere, the more I was sure that was exactly what they were trying to depict. That it was a map so strange and foreign as to seem almost primitive.
“Do they think, then, that they are not under the heavenly rule of the God?” He was so horrified that he flinched back, hand drifting to his scabbard, only to realize it was still empty. He huffed and went to retrieve his sword as I pushed the drawers closed.
When he returned, he leaned in, and then with the air of someone a little embarrassed of himself, he pushed his fingernail precisely on the small glass bead.
The sphere opened with a snick.
Inside was a pewter cup that would have fit in my palm perfectly.
“There are a lot of cups in this place,” I said carefully.
He swallowed, turning it over in his hands. “How will we know which is the right one?”
You’ll know.
I shook my head, huffing a laugh. “Maybe one of the others knows. Or maybe we’ll simply have to take them all back with us.”
Trust me. You will know.
Adalbrand smiled as he tossed the cup up and caught it again. “I don’t think that this is it.”
“Why not?”
He pointed to the body of the cup. “Because it doesn’t look like the pictures.”
He felt in a pocket and produced a piece of parchment and showed it to me.
The Poisoned Saints, it would seem, were more helpful with exact instructions than the Aspect of the Rejected God had been.
His parchment showed a cup with a wide base and embedded with cabochon gems. The walls of the cup were etched with something — but the sketch was unclear on the details. The cup he was holding had no gems.
“This is someone’s dirty secret,” he said grimly. “A family heirloom, perhaps? Hidden in that sphere?”
I nodded. That made sense.
“Any other secret compartments that you care to open?” I asked him, but he shook his head. I was still wary of him despite his vow. A man who took you violently by surprise once might do it again. A little teasing and friendliness might lead to a partnership eventually, but we were not there yet.
“On to the next room then, shall we?”
He kept hold of the cup even though he knew it wasn’t the right one. Interesting.
We tried three more rooms, this time with Brindle dogging our steps. Two we checked separately, the last we checked together.
Each room we searched was more elaborate than the last, decadent in a way I wouldn’t have credited to a monastery.
There were none of the plain, stark outfittings of our houses of prayer.
These were laden with treasures more suitable to the apartments of a king.
Had I the desire, I could fill my pockets to the brim with curiosities and live a life of luxury.
I would do exactly that, were I not sworn to abstain from riches.