Chapter 22 #2
Adalbrand’s shoulders slumped, head fell forward, and then he collapsed beside the other man, face-first into the dust.
My heart froze and I felt ill as I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the piercing pain in my arm. But before I could move, there was a loud curse and then Hefertus was there, lifting Adalbrand.
“You always overdo it. I tried to tell you that it’s too much. You don’t need to take everyone’s pain. He could have died and we would have lost nothing. The Engineers even warned you.”
The Engineers were warning no one now. Their heads were bent together over their cup.
“What have I done?” a rough voice asked.
And then, as my eyes widened, the Majester sat up, brushed himself off as if he hadn’t just been dying, and said, “I killed him. I killed him. But I was only doing what was required of me, wasn’t I, Engineers?
” He shot a panicked look at Adalbrand. “And then you killed me.”
“A life for a life.” Hefertus’s voice was bored as he took a flask from his side and lifted it to Adalbrand’s lips. The Poisoned Saint sputtered, coughed, and then pushed away from his friend looking dazed but conscious again.
The Majester spoke like one sentenced to death. “There were rules. We all had to follow them.”
“Some followed more cleverly than others,” Sir Sorken remarked, looking up only long enough to be sure we’d heard him before he returned to the cup.
“We beat the trial and it meant nothing,” Sir Owalan said despairingly, limping over to us and running a hand over his face.
It was the first he’d spoken and he looked gutted.
Clearly, his priorities rested in one place alone.
“One of us fell from grace. One of us is dead. And none of these is the Cup of Tears. Must we do all that over and over until we find it?” His gaze swept the room.
“And what if it is one of the broken vessels?”
Nearly all the remaining vessels were battered or broken.
They were in shards or crumpled messes in shoals across the ground, forming long furrows where the statues had scraped their way back to the walls.
If I thought our salvation lay among them, I’d give up now.
We could not fight this battle a hundred more times and live — time alone would make that impossible and we’d die of thirst on the first day if not at the hands of marble statues.
I snorted.
The “Saints,” or whatever they were, looked down on us innocently, as if they’d be the first to question whether anything had happened at all.
“Who? Us?” they seemed to say.
“Fallen from grace?” The Majester’s voice was hollow. He patted his chest, fingers streaking through the blood smear there as if he couldn’t believe a sword had plunged through him and been removed. “I’ve broken the commandment. I’ve drawn steel on the innocent and taken blood without cause.”
My Brindle remained silent. I was so unused to having my thoughts clear of the influence of others that I hardly knew what to do with myself.
I expected a snide comment or a victorious laugh.
Instead, there was only my own voice asking me, Can he really be so good an actor?
Does anyone believe he did not mean murder?
“It’s not one of the broken vessels,” Sir Sorken said. Not like a comforter, but like a man breaking news to a king. He straightened. “And it’s also not the vessels we chose — but those are not useless.”
“No, indeed, and you’d best hold on to yours,” Sir Coriand agreed, removing their cup from its holder. It continued to glow faintly in a way that made my eyes cross, as if they couldn’t quite agree it was happening at all.
Sir Coriand had a look in his eyes I couldn’t parse.
It looked a bit like hunger, but that couldn’t be right.
After all, the Engineers were the only ones who had been entirely out of the fight.
Except for Sir Hefertus, I supposed. But he was meant to be bereft of common sense.
It was what his aspect forswore. They had clearly done it deliberately.
“The cups are one part of the solution, but an important part. Or at least they should be.”
“Solution?” Sir Owalan complained, but I wasn’t looking at him. “Speak plainly.”
My eyes trailed to Adalbrand. He squared his shoulders, rolled his neck, and then, with obvious pain writ large across his features, he made his way to the Inquisitor.
I lifted Brindle’s head onto my lap. No voices. Not one.
Worry bit around my edges, tugging and terrorizing me. I hadn’t stopped to think of what would happen if the dog died by something other than my hand. It seemed a terrible thing to have neglected now that I was there.
Perhaps I should have quizzed Sir Branson on the things he had failed to teach me. Perhaps I should have worked harder to oust the demon.
I ground my teeth together, annoyed with myself for these failings.
The Majester muttered from where he stood, “There’s murder in my heart. Black doings. Terrors unknown.”
Look, he kind of sounded demon-possessed, if I was honest. It was unnerving. And yet, I sensed no demon there.
“The solution we are searching for is the riddle of this monastery,” Sir Coriand said. “We’re in a trap. Or perhaps I should say a giant puzzle box. It’s terribly clever, really. I wish I had the funds to build one myself, but it would take a king’s ransom and access to the arcane, I would think.”
“And a lifetime to build,” Sir Sorken added.
“And a lifetime to build.”
“And slave labor. Or prisoners. Or supplicants, I suppose, were they dedicated enough.”
“Or monks,” Sir Coriand suggested gently.
“The ones who are bent just a little. You know. Twisted. Off. Not right.” Sir Sorken was nodding.
“And about a hundred or a hundred and fifty years, obviously,” Sir Coriand said absently. “Which we don’t really have, unless you’ve solved the puzzle of age, my friend.”
“I’m working on it. No progress as of yet.”
Sir Coriand paused, realized we were all listening, and cleared his throat.
“But building a replica is neither here nor there. For now, suffice it to say, we won’t be getting out of this one until it’s solved.
And it’s wickedly clever. Puzzles within puzzles and all that.
If there weren’t so many tragic … incidentals … it would be quite a lark, really.”
“He means deaths,” Sorken clarified.
“Yes, that. The solution for this room required every living person in the room to participate. Interesting that it didn’t need the dog, don’t you think? But I suppose the dog didn’t sign up for this. Maybe consent is required.”
“I consented to nothing,” the High Saint said with a barb in his tone. I shot him an angry scowl. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d taken. And I hadn’t consented to that.
“Well, the door did try to keep us out. I think that perhaps entry is consent. Except where the dog is concerned, at least. He came with the girl. It wasn’t his choice.
And we had to work together as a group. It couldn’t be solved separately one at a time.
It stands to reason that the rest of the riddles will be like that, too. ”
“Surely there cannot be more.” Sir Owalan sounded aghast. “This would test the patience of a true Saint.” He paused. “Or is that how it creates Saints? Through tests that stretch us to the edges?”
“Which is your goal?” Sir Coriand asked with a faint smile. “To be a Saint or to find the cup? I think — perhaps — that the puzzle box offers both to you.”
“Please, Brindle,” I whispered. “Please be well.”
I needed him back, if only to have an intelligent conversation.
I cleared my throat. “I’m not certain anymore that this place makes Saints. I think it’s trying to kill us.”
“Well, it’s certainly being creative about it,” Sir Coriand said tolerantly. “Well? Cup or Saint?”
“I want the cup,” the Penitent said at the same time that the High Saint spoke. “I want to be a Saint.”
Sir Coriand laughed. “Well, at least you won’t kill each other if you want different things.”
And just like that, every eye turned to Adalbrand.
He sighed, his head bent over the Inquisitor. When he looked up, his face was lined and tired.
“I can do nothing for him. His soul has fled.”
“Oh, Merciful God, have mercy, have mercy,” the Majester moaned.
The wicked part of me wondered if the God had as little mercy to spare as I did. Perhaps he’d flick the Majester’s request away as one flicks away a gnat.
It would serve him right.
The look in Adalbrand’s eyes was murderous, and I thought that perhaps the Majester owed Hefertus a great debt, because the looming paladin had followed his friend and right now it was only his meaty palm that held the Poisoned Saint back from lunging at the Majester.
Adalbrand may have healed him, but it seemed he still struggled to forgive.
A part of me felt very satisfied with that.
“I can’t remember why I did it,” the Majester said uneasily.
“There was some voice telling me it was right.” I felt a chill at that.
“Blood was required. And with him broken beneath the masonry, it was a mercy. No one wants to live with their legs and pelvis crushed to powder. That’s what the voice said. ”
“I could have healed that,” Adalbrand gritted out between clenched teeth.
“No one can heal what the God has wrought,” the High Saint said, making the holy sign. “Come with me, Majester, and I will hear your confession and grant you reprieve as I may. We shall take this matter to the God where it belongs.”
“I … I … yes.” The Majester looked shaken.
He was already turning his back on Adalbrand, led by the High Saint, who seemed unconcerned by the other man’s flushed face or white knuckles.
Annoyance bubbled up in me. First, the High Saint had taken my blood and tears by trickery. Now, he ignored the Poisoned Saint and condoned the murder of the Inquisitor. I hated him for his arrogance. I hated him worse for the insult he dealt to my friend.