Chapter 17 #3
He says “murder” in an overly dramatic way of which I fully approve. After all, none of us should have been asked to do this. This entire act is a violation. The Aspect of the Vengeful God is making enemies here.
They leave the golems at the foot of the stairs and we walk the rest of the way in silence. Though this monastery is pristine and bathed with morning light in a way that makes the carved flowers blush and limns the hummingbirds carved alongside them, we are going to a scene of a terrible tragedy.
The others duck their heads under the importance of this act, or scuttle quickly, eyes forward.
Not my Vagabond though. Her eyes are upward and narrowed, first taking in the demon — still caged, I might add; if he killed the Seer, then he did it from there — and then inspecting each of the faces of the mighty statues that tower above us.
They are graceful and fluid in their frozen agony.
They make something in my chest seize and choke.
I look away to where our shadows shoot out in front of us, since we stride with our backs to the arrow-slit windows.
The shadows seem darker somehow, as if stretching out to reach for the black violence ahead.
My imagination is so over-alert, it almost makes me think I see something twitch within mine.
I’m almost grateful when — eventually — we reach the poor Seer. Time has not lessened the horror of her corpse. Her face is grey, eyes like river stones dried along the banks, hair a matted tangle. The blood in her head has spread across the chest of her clothing, leaving it tarry and ruined.
Sir Kodelai’s voice is rough when he speaks.
“Arrange yourselves in a circle around the Seer.”
We do as he says, but I am uneasy. There’s an edge to the Hand’s voice that wasn’t there before.
“I will investigate the death of your servant, oh Lord,” he intones. “I will investigate in the presence of those here.”
He rounds the body within our circle and I frown. This doesn’t seem right somehow. This feels like some sort of horrible show, and not an investigation.
Sir Kodelai pauses dramatically. “What is this?”
He reaches down and from under the edge of the Seer’s spread garments, he brings out a belt knife, chipped and well-used, about the size of my hand.
“To whom does this belong?” he asks, holding it up between a finger and a thumb. He looks from the wounds on the Seer and then back to the knife and then back to us and there’s a look on his face that makes my stomach flip.
I have seen that look once before.
Oh no.
There was a man in a village I came across.
His mother-in-law begged me to go into his house, for her daughter was there, dying of a fever.
She and her child both. The village blacksmith had already died of the same fever, so deadly it was.
I hurried to the cottage and I found the man of the house there, seated on the steps, taking his ease with a pipe in his hand.
“Your wife,” I’d gasped. “Your child. I’m here to heal them. I’m of the Aspect of the Sorrowful God.”
“I heard the blacksmith died,” he replied, coyly, flipping a knife in his hand as if to bar my path, eyes not meeting mine, mouth twisted in irony.
“Last night,” I told him grimly. “So let me past, that I might save thy family. I can heal all but death.”
“What are the odds?” the man had said, and he said it with that exact look on his face. “What are the odds that he and my wife and child are the only ones with this fever?”
That exact look.
I won’t detail what he’d already done with the knife in his hand.
Nor will I tell you what I did to him once I’d seen how the inside of his cottage was more red than brown and fit for nothing but the flame.
Suffice it to say that when I confessed to the door that I was a murderer, it was not only for Marigold’s sake.
“It belongs to me,” the Vagabond Knight enunciates quietly from beside me. “I noticed it was missing this morning.”
And my blood runs cold as something clicks in my mind and I realize why we are here in this circle. And why the paladin has asked us to carry nothing down with us. It is going to take all of us to carry two corpses up so many steps.
“Wait,” I say, throwing up a hand. I hardly know what I shall say, only that this must be stopped before it fully begins. “Wait. We are here in a place full of wonders and demons. Let us not forget there may be things happening beyond the ordinary.”
Sir Kodelai pauses in front of me. He is, possibly, attempting to appear compassionate, but he can’t quite seem to arrange his features the right way, stumbling into condescension instead of compassion.
“You are a healer, Poisoned One. You take our pain and sorrows, you stain your own heart with them. And don’t you think that twists your judgment? Don’t you think it inclines your ear to those who do not deserve either your mercy or the mercy of the God?”
“I do not,” I say firmly, though there is some truth to his claim. I certainly feel more for those I have healed. That tiny thread never completely snaps.
My mind is racing underneath it all. We are all bound here by tradition and law. We can’t just walk away. And yet this isn’t right. I was with the Vagabond almost the entire time we were beneath the earth, and I would have seen murder in her eyes if she’d killed while we were apart.
“There are no dog prints in the blood,” I say, finding a piece of objective evidence at last.
“Dogs can be tied,” Sir Kodelai says, and across the circle, the High Saint is nodding soberly and the Majester is frowning. Sir Kodelai is garnering their support. Successfully.
Sir Owalan shifts uncomfortably. He sends little glances behind him at the unopened door. Maybe he, too, wonders what might have come through the keyhole.
“You haven’t considered this long enough, brother,” I say, shooting a glance at the Vagabond Paladin. She’s said nothing. Why would she say nothing?
She is frowning, looking at the knife in his hand like one might look at a tool that has just broken while you’re using it. She’s too new. She must not realize what’s happening here. It’s that very innocence that pierces my heart.
“I have considered all night,” Sir Kodelai says slowly, with a kind of finality. “I have prayed all night.”
“And did the God speak to you?” I ask, desperately.
“Adalbrand.” Hefertus’s warning is low and urgent.
He’s friend enough to me not to want me to wreck my life upon the rocks.
I glance to where he stands, shifting uncomfortably, scratching his beard with one hand and twisting his triple strings of pearls with the other.
He’s added a string of black pearls to the mix.
He’s not even looking at me. His eyes are fixed on the falcons carved and set in a shape of guarding over the locked door, as if they might come to life and attack him.
“I am the Hand of the God in this matter,” Sir Kodelai says in a low voice. “And all present are under my hammer.”
I look around the circle, but no one is looking at me. They will let this play out. My blood roars loud in my ears. A wise man would let this drop. Who am I to interfere with the judgment of the God? All evidence speaks against me. The girl herself has shown herself capable of murder.
And yet.
I have healed her. I have felt her soul.
This was not her.
There was a Poisoned Saint caught in treason when I was a squire, and a Hand of the God was sent for.
The Hand prayed seven days in the halls of our aspect and then declared that he had word from the God.
We were roused from our beds in the second hour, yawning and confused.
My paladin superior had held my shoulder tightly and whispered in my ear.
“Do nothing, Adalbrand. Say nothing. Close thine eyes if thou must.”
And then the Hand had said, “This is the Vengeance of the God.”
He drank from a small ceremonial cup as his power went out from him. It tangled around the accused paladin’s throat and the man fell to the ground, writhing, and died there on the frosty cobbles before us all.
I look back and forth between Sir Kodelai and the wide-eyed Beggar Paladin. And in my mind’s eye, I see her writhing on the white marble ground, magic tangled around her throat, and I know that this is one thing I will not stand by and witness.
It is not compassion that guides me now.
It is not kindness, though a kindly or compassionate man would feel the same.
It’s not even this sprouting interest — delicate and new though it is — that is already bending my heart in her direction.
It’s honor that bids me speak. Chivalry that refuses to allow injustice.
“Stand before my judgment, Vagabond Saint,” the Hand of the God says, and just like that, power arcs out from him like soft, wafting white smoke. It reaches out in tendrils and wraps around the Vagabond, sweeping her off her feet, drawing her forward, and then forcing her to her knees before him.
My hands clench but I don’t move yet. Think, Adalbrand, think!
Victoriana’s spine straightens. There is no fear in her eyes. But there wouldn’t be. Not from her. And yet her chin trembles vulnerably. Her eyes are wide even if they are bold.
Her dog leaps forward, snapping, and the same gossamer, smoke-like tendrils wrap him up, too, but they do not bring him to his knees.
Instead, they stretch and pull, lifting him to hang over our heads, ineffective, held by a single back paw.
His snarls rip through the air, punctuating the emotions swirling in the faces around me.
We’re all tense and there’s a taste in the air of blood, thicker and brighter than the taste that already lingers from the actual blood spatters around us.
I have a creeping sensation up my spine, a feeling I can’t explain that tells me this beautiful temple adores the bloodlust in this circle.
It feeds on it as ravens feed on the corpses of the fallen.
And like instruments tuned to a single note, some of the paladins ring with that taste.
Anticipation is foremost in their expressions.
They want this. They feel it is right and good.
One of the Engineers taps his chin with a single finger.
This is madness. I must speak even if my argument is not fully formed.
The words tear from my throat as quickly as I can disgorge them.
“I throw down a preemptive challenge, Aspect of the Vengeful God.”
Across the circle from me, Hefertus rolls his eyes.