Chapter 18 #2
“Indeed,” Sir Kodelai said, still looking at me.
“Which is why — I suspect — so many have died in the attempt. I was once a king. I sent men to their deaths. And then I became a judge of all the world, and I send more men to their deaths than ever before. I rend and tear. I strip and expose. But their blood is not on my hands. Their blood is on their own hands. I am only the vehicle that makes them clean and offers them up to the God.”
I shivered. He sounded wrong. Insane. Dangerous. The Aspect of the God I knew was violent against evil but he comforted the victims of it. I did not know this murderous God of Sir Kodelai.
“Shall we make you a Saint, Beggar?”
“No,” I whispered, shuddering.
“And what about your valiant benefactor?” he asked, looking over at Sir Adalbrand. “Shall we make him a Saint?”
“No,” I pled.
“Are you going to stop playing with your food, Kodelai Lei Shan Tora?” Adalbrand asked coolly.
He’d adopted a casual stance and again, I was impressed by his nerve.
His eyes were sharp and his jaw tight, as if he were even now calculating and calculating again and coming up with options for how to fix this situation.
I wished I could appear so in control of my own actions and destiny.
I felt as out of control as a ship on a stormy sea.
“I am gracing the murderess with a lesson. It is a sign of my mercy. I have forsworn all power.” The smile barely flickering around the edges of his mouth suggested a lie there. “But not in this one matter, in the taking of the God’s vengeance. For, in that, I am his Hand.”
“Why are there only two cups?” I asked as the bonds around me tightened.
And at that, Kodelai’s smile deepened and the look in his eye sent spikes of fear through me.
“One is for me — the mortal judge. The other is for the challenger. We will both drink a draught of holy water. Nothing else. There is no poison in the cup or the water. There is no magic here. No curses set ahead of time or blessings asked. We drink down the attention of the God and turn his eye to our case. We beg his eye upon us. When we are finished, the God himself will judge. He who is right will be spared, and if it is Sir Adalbrand, then you, too, shall live, Beggar. And if it is me, then you shall die.”
There was a satisfied exhale from the circle. I ground my teeth at the sound of it. So, they found it fitting, did they? They thought I was getting what I deserved? I would not forget this.
“You don’t need to do this, Aspect of the Vengeful God. None of us will like this outcome.” I was not given to threats, and this was not a threat. Just a statement of the facts. I didn’t kill the Seer.
“Until this is decided, you will not speak.”
He flicked a hand and the ghostly bonds surrounding me sprouted another woolen thread. It spun up around my throat and then threaded through my lips, cinching tightly like a gag.
I dug in hard on my training to clamp down on the panic clawing up my throat. The worst enemy was the one you could not see or feel. It snatched the last control I had, ripping it away.
You’ve put yourself entirely into their hands! You should have fought!
And what? Renounced my paladincy and my life?
And not died!
“Shall we drink then, honored paladin?” Sir Adalbrand asked, his voice cutting through that of my accuser.
“Choose your cup.” Sir Kodelai’s words rang like a funeral bell.
Adalbrand reached for the closest one and then Kodelai reached for the remaining vessel.
They lifted them and Adalbrand examined his, tilting it around so he could look at every side and edge, peering into it, and then looking at the bottom.
I felt a bead of sweat forming on my brow. One could hardly blame me for it. They were about to drink to my health — or lack of it.
I’ll admit to some curiosity. I’ve never been present for a judgment like this and certainly never one preemptively challenged. I’ve heard so many rumors but I could hardly credit most of them. It will be fascinating to finally see …
Oh yes, wildly exciting to offer my life for a scrap of knowledge.
But you know you are not guilty.
But did the God know that? Was it even he who judged or was there really poison in that cup?
Maybe they’ll poison your saint after all.
Look, it’s not easy to be blasé in the face of possible death.
Especially not when one is trussed up like a feast-day goat.
And particularly not when the God failed to show up the first time you asked.
Just like he had failed to come in his glory to call me to the paladincy. I was not his favored worshipper.
Adalbrand finished examining the cup and cleared his throat. Sir Kodelai laughed.
“It’s not a trick. It’s not a ruse. This is how the God will judge.”
There was a shuffling sound. The others were — unconsciously — leaning in closer.
The High Saint, so terrified yesterday by the corpse of the Seer, leaned so far forward now that he had stepped in the edge of her puddle of blood.
I swallowed down my gorge at the sight of it.
He hardly seemed to notice. Was this the penalty then, for confessing murder to the door?
Were we inured to horror, fascinated by death, coldhearted in the face of pain?
You don’t seem to be.
Adalbrand took in a long breath.
“Do you wish to take back your challenge?” Sir Kodelai asked gently.
“There is still time. Two need not die today.” He gestured toward me, though his eyes did not meet mine.
He already saw me as disposable. “She’s clearly guilty.
That crow of a woman. That mongrel of a paladin.
” His voice was so kind I almost missed how deeply he was insulting me.
“Their whole aspect is as valuable as leaves in the autumn. They tumble in the wind, they drift from place to place. They bring nothing but portents with them and leave nothing behind them. They beg and borrow and never repay. What have they ever built? Where are they when they’re needed?
They cannot stick in one place. They’re a blemish on the name of holy paladin.
If they cast out a demon, perhaps that is of some utility, but who is to say they’ve even done that?
It’s only their own lips that confirm it.
And this one is younger than she should be.
I do not believe she is a paladin at all.
See how her sword is too large for her, though she wields it well?
See how she does not offer prayers unless compelled, how she scowls when we sing, how she drew on me — me — when I challenged you?
These are the things revealed to me last night as I knelt in prayer.
We have among us an imposter. We have among us a doppelganger.
She is not who she says she is, and even if she were, it is her knife that I found here, and surely she is most likely to have killed the Seer. ”
I like this one. I’ll possess him next if I get the chance. This is a heart that can be twisted as you so stubbornly refuse to be, little treat. Imagine what I could set loose in the name of the God if I held the reins of this man?
Was he sure the man wasn’t already possessed?
Oh, it doesn’t take the demonic to make a heart glory in evil … but it helps.
“Why would she want to kill our sister paladin?” Adalbrand asked calmly. He didn’t even seem upset; he spun the cup between his fingers as if toying with it. His eyes were no longer on the cup, though. They flicked from paladin to paladin, weighing, assessing.
“She saw how you went into the Seer’s tent that first night. We all did. And then she went into your tent after the Seer was killed. She has designs on you, paladin. You’re a well set-up man. I’m sure you’ve had offers before.”
See? I keep telling you …
The cup stopped moving. Adalbrand’s voice was like chipped ice.
“We’re a celibate order, Hand. Do you accuse me of breaking my vows?”
Sir Kodelai smirked. “Has anyone told her that? Jealousy is a powerful motivator.”
“The Vagabond and I had only just met when the Seer was killed. How quickly do you think she formed this supposed attachment? How quickly do you think I succumbed, first to the elderly Seer and then to this young paladin? These are vile claims.”
“Who else had a motive? None of us. It was only her. Of course she wants you. She’s a beggar. A woman destitute. And you fed her on kindness. You feed her still.”
He’s only half-wrong. Oh, my sweet treat, my delicious morsel, he has the truth half-right, like a man grasps the tail of an adder.
At this exact moment, the gag felt enormously unfair. I would have liked the chance to defend myself.
“So your accusation is that she is a woman, and therefore she is weak where the rest of us are not?” Adalbrand asked, returning his cup to the slow swirl as if he had not a care in the world. “And therefore she must be a murderess? It seems rather arbitrary.”
“We’ve all confessed to murder,” Hefertus muttered from the sidelines. “Maybe you should be accusing all of us.”
He was ignored.
“I had a concubine much the same as this callow girl when I was a king,” Sir Kodelai said with a condescending glance at those watching. His gaze perused them, weighing, and finally landing on me before he said, “In fact, I had several.”
I shuddered. Lord forfend I was ever alone with this man. I did not trust him. I did not believe — now that I had watched him in action — that he had ever been called by the God at all. Perhaps he really did poison those cups to prove he was right. Perhaps he did any number of terrible things.
“Your taste in companionship is truly singular,” Adalbrand said dryly. “That being said, throwing her sex in her face is hardly enough to prove her a murderess. Nor is a stolen knife. Anyone could take her knife in the night and plant it here. We did not guard against each other.”
“It was used to kill the Seer.”
“Can you be so sure? Should you not examine all our blades and knives?”
Sir Kodelai’s lips thinned and he slammed his cup on the top of his wooden box-turned-table.
“Last night I knelt in vigil under the moon and the sky and the gaze of the God and I came away with an answer. It is not for you to tell me how to serve the God. It is not for you to judge. That is my right.”
Adalbrand cleared his throat and Sir Kodelai’s eyes burned with the insolence of it.
“I thought it was the God who judged. The God who demanded vengeance. Are you not merely his Hand?”
Sir Kodelai’s mouth twisted, but he made a quick shake of the head as if trying to control a flapping line of temper, and then he managed to bark, “Yes.” He drew in a long breath through his flared nostrils and tried again.
“I am the Hand of the God and he will judge today. I give to him this contest between us.”
Adalbrand lifted his cup. “It’s still not too late, Sir Kodelai. No one needs to die here today.”
“I think someone does,” Sir Kodelai said grimly.
He snatched up his cup, shot back the water, and smacked it down so hard on the case that the whole thing shuddered.
With a shrug, Adalbrand lifted his cup, too.
“The will of the God,” he said grimly, and then he drank it down and delicately set his cup next to Sir Kodelai’s.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
We remained still in holy silence in this white hall of pale stone and crystalline light, we tiny few in the great echoing vault. For one delicate moment, everything hung in the balance.
Sir Adalbrand moved first, leaning heavily onto the folding table with one hand.
A leg cracked, split, and the whole structure collapsed with a clatter, one of the cups rolling and bouncing to careen off my knee and over to a wall.
The other landed perfectly on its base, spinning round and round with a rattle before it finally wobbled to stillness.
My heart seized in my chest. Oh no.
Adalbrand reeled, caught himself, turned, and was violently ill to one side, and then wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, his breath heaving.
“I’m sorry,” he said while the cups were still spinning, his face green, his eyes wide. “By the God, I am sorry.”
My head spun. My heart hammered. Was this it, then? Was I to die, too? Was he dying on my behalf?
Sir Kodelai hadn’t moved. Not even a hair.
He collapsed so suddenly it was like watching someone step on rotten ice in spring.
One moment he was upright. The next he was a heap of bones and dust with his helmet and armor tumbling wildly in every direction, clanging against each other like garish wind chimes.
So the rumors were true.
The bonds let go of me without warning and I caught myself with one hand, gasping for breath at the same moment that Brindle smacked the mosaic floor with a doggy squeal.
I forced myself to my feet on shaky legs.
“The God forfend,” the High Saint gasped, clawing at his hair. “What has he done? What have we done?”
We all gasped in a breath at once, sharing looks of mutual surprise and horror, but before we could let it out there was a loud click and the ground beneath us shuddered.
“I may have made a mistake just now,” Sir Owalan whispered, and then the floor beneath us began to move.