Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Vagabond Paladin
In all my wanderings over the windswept land, I had not thought to have such a gift as this — of soft kisses and warm eyes wanting to work with me, being one with me in purpose, choosing to take up a burden with me.
I stole sidelong glances from time to time as if he might disappear if my eyes left him for too long.
This harmony was an uncommonly precious thing.
For his part, Adalbrand met my glances with a small crinkling around his eyes and a very slight half-smile.
“We must try to pretend we are willing to go along with the rest,” he murmured to me. “I fear you are not well versed in pretense.”
“Poverty rarely requires it,” I said in a low voice.
“Chastity requires it almost constantly. I have pretended not to see your charms since the moment I met you.”
“I am sure it has been an easy face to wear,” I said grimly.
I was unused to pretty words and not sure what to do with them. Besides, I had to put aside softness for what was about to come.
Already, I felt the chafe of my conscience.
I had sinned. Deliberately. I had added to the creation of a demon.
There would be no way to purge myself of such evil without death — either mine or the creature’s that I was creating.
It made me feel like I had serrated knives under my skin and every movement made a deeper cut. This was not a time for love.
“Trust me, it has not been easy.” He sounded a little hoarse.
I turned abruptly to face him.
“I love your teasing,” I said a little breathlessly.
“I love your kisses and kindness, but I need something more from you now, Sir Knight. I need resolve and purpose, I need all that honor that pours out of you every time you’re bumped or bruised.
I need you to stand with me — valiant — against what comes next. ”
He was suddenly serious, teasing put aside. He made a half-bow. “You shall have it from me and so shall the God.”
I nodded soberly, tension filling every seam of my being.
I didn’t know what else to say. I felt dreadfully inadequate to hold his affections.
I was the ragged knight riding through the edge of town, not the lady laughing in the center of the dancing.
I was the one begging for scraps, not the one fed from the table of a lord.
The best I could manage was to draw courage close, screw my face up with resolve, and walk forward.
He seemed to understand, growing quiet and grave, matching my stride so that we emerged into the main room together.
There was a strangled cry when we stepped out of the corridor and Sir Owalan leapt up from a perch on the edge of the clock like a raven lifting off a corpse.
Worryingly, the cups there were brighter with that dark glow and I thought I saw smoke swirling up from them. Owalan practically ran toward us, relief painting his whole face, arms flung wide. His tabard swirled around him, more akin to a monk’s cassock than a knight’s apparel.
“You did it. You passed the test. I wanted to stay and watch but I couldn’t bear to see you fail.”
It seemed Sir Adalbrand was correct. I was not adept at hiding my emotions.
“I see your doubt,” Sir Owalan said, “but I was of a certainty most worried. The clock ticks down. The time is close. Look. Less than a day remains in the hours it counts down. Already, dawn is lighting the stained glass.”
That made more sense than any worry for our safety. He wanted the cup like a dying man wants reprieve.
“Where is my dog?” I asked him carefully.
I’m here. That Sir Sorken is a lovely fellow. Suggested twice that a dog might be nice roasted. I must say it’s a relief to hear your voice again.
And the demon?
Oh, I’m here, sweetling. Contemplating my revenge. I think it will involve making someone drown himself in that fountain. Do you think golems drown?
I did not.
What a pity.
Owalan waved an uncaring hand. “The golems are tending your dog. I’m sure you have nothing to fear.
Come.” His hands clawed toward my arm as if to take it but I shook them off, revulsion filling me at the glimpse of the dagger under his sleeve.
He hardly seemed to notice the slight. “You must look at the puzzle. It is stumping us all. It must be attended immediately.”
He was trying to draw us to the left, toward where the new puzzle was likely waiting behind the grate and where the bodies we’d managed to recover would be laid out as if in a crypt.
I shuddered at the thought of walking past them and then again at the thought of the Majester rotting somewhere below.
“Where are the others?” Adalbrand asked Owalan, peering toward the right. If they were still camping at the base of the stairs, they should be in that direction. I thought I could just make them out with the faintest colored light of dawn through stained glass washing over them.
“Sleeping while they can,” Owalan said, motioning to us to hustle after him.
His shadow seemed to be twice the height as usual — looming over him like a monster under the bed finally come to claim its victim.
That could only be my imagination, attributing malice where natural phenomena were at play, but imagination or not, it made every hair on the back of my arms stand on end.
I kept half an eye on that shadow, watching to see if it were truly anchored to Owalan or if it could slip the bounds and reach out to try to hook me.
Fanciful? Perhaps, but this place was making me warier than a rich man guarding his money.
“Sir Sorken is taking a turn at the puzzle,” Owalan said, trying to hustle us along. “We’ve all tried, of course, but no one could manage it. Perhaps you’ll see something we missed.”
He led us toward the wall where the locked door with the grate covered the puzzle that would turn us one more time counterclockwise.
“Did the High Saint try it?” Adalbrand asked.
“Yes, and you know he’s considered a scholar among his people.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. The High Saint? He was so militant. I did not think one could be scholarly and bloodthirsty at the same time.
The scholars in the capital are even more aggressive. They will fight to the death over the subtle sub-meaning of a word in a passage of text as opposed to its use in a different text with a slightly more nuanced subtext, and friendships will dissolve and kingdoms fracture and then people will die.
All that over a word?
One of the good ones, yes.
And the not so good ones?
Blood will still be spilt. It’s why their aspect is ever fracturing and fracturing again into creeds and confessions and distinctions none of us can keep track of.
I think Joran Rue is a High Saint of the Castlerock Creed modified by the Year of the Skink Convocation.
But I might have miscounted the knots in his belt and if I did, then he’s something else entirely.
I shook my head. Madness. I’d rarely thought much further than being sure my hands and heart were pure to keep demons from catching a hook into me. I’d had no time for confessions or creeds and their nuances.
Sir Owalan elaborated. “The High Saint knows Anicani’s Catechism and the Confession of the Faith of the Year of Our Lady’s Mercy and all five of Prirene’s Discourses by heart.”
“He does?” I didn’t even know what those were.
They don’t feed you when you’re hungry, I can assure you of that.
“Certainly. He’s the son of his aspect’s High Elder. They’re very devoted to doctrine and the teaching of the fathers. The High Saint has forsworn both riches and marriage for his place in the aspect.” Owalan laughed suddenly. “It’s like he’s both of you at once.”
He glanced back and forth at both Adalbrand and me, squinting in the darkness between the glowing clock and whatever glowed up ahead. It was as if he thought we’d laugh, too.
We did not laugh.
Brindle did not laugh.
Give me some credit, the demon complained. I still have an intact sense of humor.
Owalan looked around nervously.
“If anyone is to be made a Saint, it will be the High Saint.” His voice trailed through the words like he was hoping for the opposite even as he spoke them.
“Look at all the others who have failed. You know the reputations of the Seer Ecember — she who moved the populations of cities before the typhoon in the Year of Saint Aspertine and saved thousands of lives — and Sir Kodelai, whose fame preceded him. Did you also know that Roivolard Masamera — the Majester General — was a key negotiator at the end of the Siege of Curan? Or that Sir Hexalan was renowned among the Inquisitors for his kindness and capability in sorting out refugees after the cataclysm struck in High Sartre? He earned a reputation there that could have carried him to the head of his aspect someday.”
I frowned, somewhat horrified by his callousness. “If you know the accomplishments of all the others, why do you care so little about their deaths?”
He looked appalled. “I have the greatest sense of sorrow at their deaths. It is you who trivializes them.”
“Me?”
We were almost to the other door. Sir Sorken stood hunched over the grate, fiddling with it, while beside him his golem held up a handful of oil and a burning wick to light his way. It made a strange light that seemed to dance to its own tune. Sir Sorken’s shadow towered behind him.
And Sir Owalan’s.
And Adalbrand’s.
I frowned. But not the golem’s. The golem’s shadow was long, but it looked correct to my eyes.
It was the other shadows that seemed not just long, but overly deep and black, and as I watched, Sir Sorken’s shadow bubbled up like a pot of starch left too long on the flame.
It rose, building, and then a tendril of it reached out and coiled around the crown of his head like a diadem.
I gasped.