Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Poisoned Saint
I come awake with a start.
It is night. Darkness surrounds me except for a lit candle in a pool of wax about halfway between myself and a pair of beautiful, treacherous, demon-loving eyes.
I leap to my feet in a heartbeat and have to catch myself against … against an altar made of woven bones? I cringe back from them. I could almost swear some are human.
“What is this place?” I manage to rasp. It’s not exhaustion or fear that roughens my voice. It’s unmitigated wrath.
Fury and hatred twist up in a pair, writhing through my belly and up to my heart. I’d fallen for her. It was safe enough to admit that now. Now that she is become my sworn enemy. Now that the sight of her twists me right through with hatred and disgust.
I am a devil, for I have fallen in love with one.
An aching sadness joins the rest of my collection of sorrows.
“A grimivoir, apparently.” There is an ironic twist to her mouth, amplified by the sharp, flickering shadows of the candle. She sounds resigned, as if she has already read the book of my heart and knows how the story ends.
She stands, with me, as if she can’t let me get the upper hand by being taller.
Her armor is gone. She is wearing what she slept in last night: leather trousers and a light linen tunic.
She’s lost her braid entirely and her loose black hair tumbles across her shoulders and down her back.
If she wasn’t still carrying the sword, I’d wonder if she is the same woman. She looks haunted. Brittle.
Why is she carrying a sword? Unsheathed. Naked in her hand.
I draw my own blade with slow care. I want to let her know I will not fall to her sword easily while also trying not to provoke her to immediate attack.
I have told her I cannot forgive. I have seen her soul stained through with the keeping of a demon. She will know what must be done next.
“What is a grimivoir?” I ask, stalling for time, getting my bearings. I will not fail in this. I just do not wish to succeed at once. Could I delay it a year, I would.
I look carefully around us, trying to assess without losing track of her. I do not dare let her strike first. I’ve seen her fight. I’d be lucky to bring her down along with me if she landed the first blow.
I roll my shoulders as I think about trying to match my strength to her speed, my experience to her ferocity. We will likely both die. Am I ready to meet the God and give an account?
We’re neatly trapped on a platform two long strides wide in every direction from the center.
The odd stone bench, the books, the candles, and the spine-like carvings that serve as a rail around the edge provide no escape.
There is not enough light to see farther than that, though a faint glow above suggests possible starlight and the echo of my words tell me this is a large place.
I might be able to climb the bookshelves on one side of us, but to what end?
There is not much room to move here and there is no sign of the others.
“Have we been banished here?” My words echo slightly, as if the room finds them humorous.
She snorts. She is laughing at me. I feel the muscles of my face tighten in annoyance. Her mockery will be her last emotion. Is that what she wants?
“In a way,” she says, shifting her weight onto her back foot.
Good. She knows she is threatened. She will not be a helpless innocent when my blade crashes through her. This is right. This is fitting. This is how justice is served. Something tickles the back of my mind. A little voice asking me if perhaps Sir Kodelai had these very thoughts only yesterday.
She is grave as she goes on, “This is the second trial. The room that was behind the door after the walls shifted. You can’t see it now, but it’s a library — or rather a grimivoir.
Books line a cylindrical room that stretches high to the ground above our heads and reaches farther down than I could guess. ”
“You didn’t throw anything into it to check?” I ask, lifting a mocking eyebrow. Bitterness twists my every word. “A loose stone? Your innocence?”
“I didn’t,” she says, and she shifts again, this time uncomfortably.
I’m aware of her every twitch and shift.
Only because I soon must attack her and slay her, not because she draws me in like the smell of sweet fruit in summer.
Not because her every movement lulls me like music well composed.
Not because she is enchantingly feminine and lovely in this terrible place.
“The Majester tested it by flinging his own body into the depths — or so Sir Coriand would have us believe. I am not so certain.”
I flinch back from that.
“The Majester is dead?” My words sound hollow. I still feel his map burning in my pocket.
“I should hope so.” She sounds bitter, too. Perhaps I am not the only one swimming in misery. Well. That credits her. She can still feel regret. Is that enough to absolve her? Not nearly. “If he lives, then he suffers. He fell a very long time before I heard his body hit.”
I grunt at that. “And the others? Where are they?”
She seems to harden with resolve when she says, “They completed the task and left. They’ll be back. They return every so often to check on my progress.”
I pause. My thoughts must catch up to my circumstances.
It is unlikely that the Vagabond would fail at a task the others have succeeded in. She has purposely refused the task — whatever it is.
There are only two reasons she might do that. She could be taking a moral stand against the evil of this place. I dismiss that immediately. No one who fosters demons in their pets would stand on principle against evil.
That leaves only the other choice. She has stayed for me — whether because she vowed to work with me, or out of misplaced compassion, or to keep my mouth from revealing her depravity.
She is a fool.
“You know I have to kill you, don’t you?
” I ask her, and my deep sorrow flows through my words.
“You will not dismiss the demon. You will not kill the dog. You’ve suffered evil to take a foothold.
” My voice nearly breaks, but I take it in the grip of my determination and force it to be firm. “I have no other choice.”
Her chin stiffens and for a moment I see conflict on her face. And then she laughs — sudden and sharp — and she throws her blade to the floor. It crashes to the ground and I wince. She’s certainly notched the blade.
“I’m going to die one way or another,” she says, still laughing darkly.
In the darkness, I think I make out a bruise on her cheek, but it is hard to be certain.
“Whether at your hands, or slowly on this platform, or when their precious clock runs out. Perhaps your blade is a mercy. Are you offering me a mercy, Poisoned Saint?”
She spreads her hands and arms wide, open and ready. I can see her heart beating wildly under her light linen shirt. The candlelight exaggerates the movement, and I have to swallow hard to dismiss the image of her vulnerability. I cannot afford pity.
Do not suffer the witch to live, is one of our tenets.
And a witch is not a creature from a story — a poor beggared, bedraggled woman just trying to survive.
I’m arrested for a moment at that thought and my eyes flick sharply to her golden-brown ones before my train of thought returns.
A witch is not an elderly woman who knows herbology and the curing of ills with plants and poultices, or the art of tricking chickens into laying again, or of finding still waters, or of birthing children stuck in the passage.
No, those are common misconceptions. A witch is, and always has been, a man or a woman who plays with the arcane, who draws up demons from under the earth and sets them to dance in fire and cruelty across its surface — who permits them life.
Just as Victoriana has.
I must act before I lose my resolve. Those wry marigold eyes are softening me like butter in the sun. I dare not let them melt me entirely.
My dedication is to the God. My vow is to act and live in his name. No earthly thing has the right to subvert that. I will fulfill my duty, even if it guts me. Even if it drives me to madness.
Everything in me twists painfully and the broken arm I took from this lovely sinner throbs with the pain I borrowed from her. I lean into the pain, into the sorrow. I let melancholy build and froth.
I am poisoned with her ills and poisoned with the thought of her death. I swallow it down and it twists me from sternum to tail. Twists and twists and wracks me but I dare not let it wrench me from my course.
In such attitude are the most valiant deeds always done — in sorrow, but in earnest.
I lunge forward, sword held perfectly for a killing blow. She juts her chin farther out but she does not flinch. The air flows around me, dragging as if to stay my hand. Every sharp moment lengthening out to feel like an hour in passing.
I will plunge my blade through her heart.
I will end her now.
I will — she glows suddenly, a subtle tremor of gold.
I gasp, pulling my strike at the last second.
NO.
The word — intangible and with the distinct flavor of holiness — echoes firmly through my mind and I pull my arms back so forcefully that I wrench them. I’ve stayed my blow in time, but the momentum of my torso flings me forward even as I drag my arms backward and release my grip.
My sword clatters to the ground with hers, the sound of metal on metal singing out.
My balance has deserted me and my body crashes into her. Breath sawing raggedly, we stumble backward together.