Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Vagabond Paladin
Now things will grow interesting, tiny trapped treat.
The demon had been crowing since we discovered we were all trapped.
The idea that we were sealed inside what seemed to him to be a huge stew pot delighted him and made him even more unbearable than he already was.
I felt far more conflicted. Was it deeply troubling to be trapped in what might be my grave?
Look, I was too young not to feel distress.
Whatever made the aging Engineers so casual about it wasn’t in my blood.
But I was also too distracted to take it as seriously as I ought.
Adalbrand stood up for me back there. He chose to take my penalty with me.
I had known I wasn’t guilty. But even so … what if the God had judged me? What if he’d taken that moment to judge me for Sir Branson’s death or the demon’s continued life?
Am I making you fall from grace just by existing? Now that’s a sizzling thought!
What if Adalbrand had died with me because of my secret? Because of my crimes?
I shot a glance at him. Again. My eyes kept finding him like lodestones to iron.
Mine, too. By the ages, he’s a pretty one. It’s the eyes, I think. I adore a salty sorrow.
He’d taken my side. He’d stood with me. I’d only had one friend who’d ever done that and he had been slain by my own hand.
All is well and all will be well, and even my death will be well. Stop fretting so much on it. I’m perfectly content here in Brindle. He was always a good doggy.
I had thought that I was driven only by freedom and the wind and the hope that perhaps faith would find me.
It turned out I was driven by something else.
A deep, roiling need to belong to someone.
To be their ally or friend or kin. It bit down deep and branched out wide, a tree growing a hundred years in a single gasp.
My gaze snapped back to him a second time. When his gaze met mine, it crinkled warmly around the eyes. Warmth. Friendship.
One day when I was about thirteen, I wandered too far and slipped into a stream in spring. Soaked and lost, it had been hours before I found Sir Branson again. I was cold right through and the fire that day had been like the face of the God.
This warmth is just like that.
I stumble my way through a brittle thanks. It’s not enough. Can anything be enough for someone willing to stand by me? I drag my attention immediately to the Engineers, afraid he will see all I’m hiding. That I want his nearness like I want the fire.
That’s how romance always goes. Either you find a kindred spirit or you find someone who needs saving.
And am I his kindred spirit, then? I hate my traitor heart and how it leaps with hope.
You’re the one who needs saving.
I force myself from the thought and force myself to talk to the Engineers about the journals instead.
A desire like mine for Adalbrand feels like selfishness. I’d rather go back to familiar territory. I’ve been rejected by these other paladins just like my Aspect always must be. Not surprising and certainly not threatening.
They tried to kill you. They tried to eat your bones and sup on your pain. And you call them holy? You call them brothers? Why are you not gibbering in a corner or bathed in their blood?
Revenge was the God’s own possession and it was not mine to execute.
I must be wary. I must be wise. But fear could make your bones age before their time.
It could cloud the mind and pause the hands and still the breath, and I dared not allow any of that.
Besides, you could not ask people to be other than what they were. There was no point to that.
I was on a ship once. A ship of exploration sent out to find the rim of the ice along the sea or possibly a new continent. The ship was mired in doldrums and there was no way out and the fun I had with the men on the sea keeps me warmer at night than the fires of hell.
Really? I was trapped under the ground with a bunch of so-called “holy paladins” who had just tried to holy their way into killing me, and he figured the best way to deal with that was to tell me stories of misery and death? Wonderful.
I already told you I’d just as happily possess one of them.
I gritted my jaw.
I kept hold of the last man and with all our strength we rowed for shore, and when — after a very long time — we made it off the ever-rolling sea, he’d found he had such a taste for the dead that I —
Enough. Enough. Perhaps I couldn’t cast him out, but I could make his existence miserable if he did not cease.
How would you do that?
I’d recite the catechism in my mind from dawn to dusk, as I’m sure the High Saint did already.
I felt the demon shiver. Good.
Look, I’m not saying our situation trapped in a breathtakingly gorgeous dungeon wasn’t terrifying, but I was already in a terrifying situation and I had been since the beggar attacked Sir Branson.
Living hour to hour with a bound demon who might just pick his lock and escape was not for those who couldn’t handle their stomachs twisting and their nerves getting a little frayed around the edges.
Now that I had also been singled out and rejected — albeit passively — by most of my brethren, I was in an even more precarious situation.
The causes of these worries were not going away anytime soon. Did my hands shake? I’d simply have to let them keep me sober and focused. Did my belly roll? Not a problem. There was nothing to eat here anyway.
“Look at this diagram here,” Sir Coriand was saying, but my mind was not on the books.
My eyes dragged back to Sir Adalbrand again. He wouldn’t let this descend into hell.
We shared a tight look and I felt myself leaning toward him, as if the lodestone were growing stronger. Does fear amplify everything? It certainly seemed to be amplifying it in me. I could only hope it didn’t cloud my judgment.
Hope, unfortunately, was not really my strongest attribute.
Hope in the God, dear girl, and calm yourself. Like unraveling a demon, you must take this one step at a time.
Good advice.
Deliver me from evil, I prayed. Deliver us from evil.
I almost — almost — thought I felt an echo of something in my heart, like a song one remembers but can’t quite recall.
And then Sir Owalan was there.
“The Cup is attainable. Hurry!” He squirmed as he waited for us and I hoped he was right.
Mayhap, once we found it — if we could escape this place — there would be no need to linger. We’d all be free of our orders. I could be rid of those who sought my death and they could be rid of me.
Adalbrand’s hands moved over his straps and buckles as if checking and rechecking as we gulped down what remained of our tea and gathered our things with brisk efficiency.
With my eyes drifting constantly to him, I was too aware of the graceful way his fingers moved as he eased his sword in and out of the scabbard, checking the draw.
“Ready, Lady Paladin?” he murmured to me. He seemed tense; the lines in his face were deeper than I’d seen them before.
I left the books where they sat. No need to carry them around, and the golems could watch over them. One of the golems — Suture — was collecting the wooden cups with the air of a stingy innkeeper.
“I think we should be careful not to split our forces,” Adalbrand said in his lovely, rumbly voice.
I glanced at him, and this time when I smiled, his rueful smile joined mine. It softened him and made him warm and I wanted to uncurl before that warmth and let all my secrets flow free.
So all it takes is pretty smiles and dimples to soften you? I could have offered those instead of terror.
I gritted my teeth. If the demon had nothing useful to contribute, he could go stick his opinions somewhere else. If there was terror to be found down here, it would be me. I would unleash it on anything that came after us.
Growing a spine, are we? A little late for that, I think.
“Agreed,” I said firmly to Sir Adalbrand as we joined the others in following the impatient Sir Owalan. “We should stay together.”
“Well, what’s all the fuss about then?” Sir Sorken’s booming voice asked from the front of the group.
“We went into the room and it’s magnificent,” Owalan said as he led us.
He moved like a dog, dancing first forward and then back, impatient that we only moved at a quick walk when he wanted to run.
“Whoever built this place had an eye for beauty, don’t you think?
And for punishment? It makes me more penitent.
More certain that I must bow and receive what lashes are given. ”
These Penitents turned my stomach every time.
I didn’t like their approach to the God.
It was the opposite of mine. People think the Prince Paladins are the opposite of the Beggars, for they have wealth where we have none.
But I think sometimes they are the closest to us in attitude, for both our Aspects look to the God with open hands and both practice a faith that has no actions, only uses us as conduits for the work of the God.
The Penitents, on the other hand, think their self-mutilation will reward them, that pain brings blessing, and that the God only listens to one with mortified flesh.
This deprivation — though it looked like my poverty on the surface — was not at all the same.
It was far more like the High Saints with their attention to every detail of liturgy.
I didn’t trust Sir Owalan. Or his putting keys into locks without talking about it first and possibly trapping us all in here to die.
Or how he clearly had taken that key from the Seer’s hand, more intent on seeing what was behind that door than on keeping me from being executed for a sin I didn’t commit.
“How nice for you,” Sir Sorken said placatingly, and beside me Adalbrand snorted under his breath. He scratched the side of his face though there was only a shadow of hair there, his eyes roaming ahead of us, more impatient than the rest of him.