Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Poisoned Saint
I wake for the first time ever to a pair of eyes looking right into mine. They are large and brown as good earth and deep as my forever guilt, and for the first time in years, I forget to say my prayers upon waking.
I look and look and it almost hurts that she doesn’t look away, that she doesn’t so much as blink, just stares into my eyes with the same intensity that she does everything — like someone has lit her on fire and she’s trying to live an entire life before she’s consumed.
I don’t want to go down beneath the earth again. I don’t want to seek the cup. I don’t even want to see the Seer buried — as much as it shames me to admit those thoughts.
That door ruined me yesterday and it will ruin me again. How can I protect the innocent, defend righteousness, and take the pain of the suffering, when my heart and mind are not right? I cannot. It steals my honor. It unmans me.
I do not want to go.
But I also do not want her to go without me.
I can imagine her crouching in the darkness, looking up at that terrible statue that matches her.
I can imagine it coming to life and picking her up and putting her into its gaping mouth, and something inside me rejects that like it rejects the yawning, grasping darkness of a life without faith. I cannot. I will not.
I blink and it’s gone and she’s biting her lip as she looks at me. She whispers and I shiver lightly at the intimacy of it.
“We’re bound to go down there, aren’t we? There’s no way out.”
I nod, but my mouth is dry and I don’t know how to reply to her. I hear her words, but I also hear the words of another girl.
“The baby’s dead, isn’t she? And I am dying with her,” Marigold had said to me all those years ago.
And my heart twists because I couldn’t save the other girl and I have a terrible feeling that I can’t save this one. I say those terrible, damning words that I’ve said once before.
“I’ll be here with you,” I say with my stupid thick tongue and poisoned lips. “You won’t have to do it alone.”
She huffs a laugh. “I’m always alone. I always have to do everything for myself. Alone.”
A smile plays on the edge of my lips. I feel something of a fool lying here in my bedroll next to a stranger and whispering with her rather than strapping on my armor and steeling myself for the day like a proper knight ought to.
“Is this why you’re so fierce? Because you must always be alone?”
“You think me fierce?” She seems taken with the idea. She has a freckle on the end of her nose. What a strange thing to note.
“It’s your best quality,” I admit.
She shakes herself and sits up in her roll of blankets. Her tangled hair is everywhere, dark as the waves of the angry sea. She tames it so deftly that it’s already transforming into a woven snake while I am still sitting up and finding my boots.
Hefertus is gone, his bedroll left in disarray as it always is.
He’s scattered some kind of jewelry over the top of it as if it took him time to decide on what decorations to wear.
I wonder what the Vagabond thinks of that — she who is forsworn against wealth.
It’s nearly as wildly inappropriate to have that wealth of gold and gemstones in her tent as it is to have her wealth of femininity in mine.
I steal an unwarranted glance at the curve of her hip. A wealth of femininity indeed.
I am reminded of why my order calls no women.
The most dove-plain among them hide a secret — that their words are life and their caresses more valuable than all of Hefertus’s gold.
Just waking to the deep eyes of one of their kind has snared my heart and strung it up like that demon suspended in the ceiling. I may never slip free of this trap.
“I’ll give you your privacy,” I tell her with a half smile. It’s rueful, for I know I am a fool, but as kind as I can make it for all my failings are no fault of hers.
“Maybe I don’t want privacy,” she says, shrugging her surcoat over her jerkin in a way that makes my mouth a little drier. She’s dressed in more layers than a southern nun and yet the addition of just one more tantalizes me. “Maybe if I’m going on an adventure, I want a companion.”
“Didn’t you always have a companion? Weren’t you with Sir Branson?”
The lines in her face grow deeper. I’m taken by surprise and a little guilty. Fool. She only just buried her friend and you must rub salt in the wound?
“That was different. The pair of us were a unit,” she says, looking at her dog rather than at me.
I make a mistake then.
“We could be a unit,” I tell her, like I’m not damaged and ruined. Like I’m not so pickled in guilt I could be served alongside ham. Like I won’t ruin her with me.
She hums as if considering my offer. “Are you going to turn insane on me again inside the monastery?”
Now it is my turn to look away and swallow.
“I beg your forgiveness, Lady. I am deeply flawed. Something terrible lurks in the depths of my heart and sometimes I’m not sure if it’s me.”
I keep my eyes averted as I finish dressing in my own kit, yanking and pulling at straps with more force and vigor than necessary.
I expect her to scold me or chastise me. She does neither. When I look up, her eyes are full of a knowing she can’t possibly have at her age.
“I am riddled with flaws also, Sir Knight. As are we all. I would still like a companion on my adventure.”
“And who would you choose?” I keep my tone teasing, trying to stay away from heavy things. I note she offered me no forgiveness for my foolishness before. “Who would you choose to take with you on this grand adventure? A butler, perhaps, all the better to help you find a cup?”
I work at the remaining straps of my armor, this time with less vigor. I dress lightly. I do not need more than the basics. After all, we are going down into a terrible, broken monastery, not out onto a battlefield. More armor is just more work to lug up the stairs when we are through.
The lady paladin seems to agree. She sticks to a breastplate with no backplate, keeps her gauntlets and pauldrons, but tosses aside all else. She checks her sword belt twice.
“I’m missing a knife,” she says, her face lined as she frowns. “I could have sworn I had two on this belt when I went to sleep.”
“Maybe Hefertus borrowed it to shave.”
“How is he so light on his feet? I did not even hear him awaken and look at the mess he made! He could not have done that silently.”
Beside her, her dog pants, a doggy smile on its devil face. I’m not fooled. I know perfectly well it will bite me with no provocation.
I give it a long, dark look. Don’t cross me, dog. I have too much human blood on my hands to worry much about dog blood.
“Hefertus is a mystery,” I allow. “And he’s never one to shy from adventure.”
“Neither am I,” she says resolutely. “And I suppose today will be another adventure. I’ll skip the butler and take you with me, I think.”
I could get drunk on this kind of courage, this kind of carefree boldness that tells me she drags few ghosts behind her. She’s light and free as a bird of the sky. I adore it. I want to be it. Or be close to it. I will take either one.
“Tell me about this adventure,” I say, indulging her as I roll up my blankets and tie my things into my pack. It’s overly cautious to bring it down the stairs with me, but yesterday we left the Engineers up top. Today, we will have no one to come after us if something goes awry. I want to be ready.
“It’s the story of a brave paladin,” she says, shooting me a mischievous look. I think she doesn’t realize how much her eyes twinkle even when she’s trying to be serious, never mind when she is joking. That’s worth more than any relic.
“Does this paladin have a dog?”
Her smile is the dawn. “She does, in fact.”
“And a hapless companion who will make terrible mistakes and require rescuing?”
“Oh, you’ve heard this story? Well, don’t spoil the ending.”
We’re both on our feet now. Equipped. Packed.
And I do something even stupider than all else that has gone before.
I know better. The mad thing that ran through me yesterday and opened all my locked doors is gone now.
I have full possession of myself. My mind is my own.
I, therefore, have no excuse this time. But I still step close enough that I can speak more intimately.
I let myself soak up the warmth of her in the air.
I let myself look once more into those brown eyes and I do not guard my heart as I look into hers.
“I do not know the ending yet, Lady Paladin. And I am not eager to bring this story to the end.”
And she must be as foolish as me, because she swallows, looks at my heart right back, and says, “Maybe we won’t have to.”
Surely she must realize that I would already walk across the flat circle of the earth’s face on just the chance that my story with her would not be over yet.
The idea that we share something — even if it’s only a story — stirs up fancies in me that I’ve long suppressed.
I can imagine myself on the road with her.
I could kindle a fire while she huddled in a blanket and I would catch her first morning smile.
I could check the hooves of her horse while she inspected the tack.
I could throw sticks for that terrible dog.
I swallow roughly, grateful for reprieve when she rips her eyes away and leaves the tent.
I learned long ago to stop dreaming of things I can never have. I am too washed with guilt to be worthy of even the hope of them. But she makes me dream forbidden dreams.
I take a moment to compose myself and whisper Lauds. I follow them with a prayer of my own.
Sorrowful God, make me strong and accurate. Ready me for what comes next.
My usual prayer seems weak before the task ahead. It will have to be enough.
I leave the tent and join the others.