Chapter 28 #2
“Yes, you,” Sir Owalan was still chiding as if he hadn’t noticed that the shadows were behaving as if they were alive.
“If you honored their deaths, then you would fight for Sainthood. Is that not why they died? In pursuit of the divine? If you keep refusing to take the trials and make the necessary sacrifices then you spit on their deaths. Thank the God for Sir Adalbrand, who awoke and spoke sense to you.”
“Yes, thank the God he awoke,” I said dryly. “After you dragged his unconscious form into a trial and left him there to fend for himself.”
“I did no such thing. That was Sir Coriand.”
“You stood by and watched. Watching an act and doing nothing is giving your approval.”
I rounded on him in time to see his stony features flicker with anger, and as they flickered, his shadow flickered, and it built and built up over him, towering and guttering like an uncertain fire when it is only just kindled and not yet set into the bones of the logs that fuel it.
Behind those features, his shadow curled up like an animal threatened, trying to appear larger than an enemy.
It swayed back and forth as if to charm me into stillness.
Sir Owalan spoke again, this time like a pronouncement. “I do not like you, Beggar. You are neither accomplished nor intelligent. You do not see what we are trying to achieve here. And how could you? Is it not written, ‘do not throw thy rubies to the dogs’?”
“I certainly wouldn’t throw them to her dog,” Adalbrand said darkly, dragging us behind him by dint of the pace he was setting. Why did these people have to build this arcanery to such a grand scale?
I shot Adalbrand a look. He’d been silent through this whole discussion. I couldn’t tell if his shadow had grown and was lurking low and undetectable, or if it was the same as it always had been.
The look Adalbrand sent back in reply was a wry half smile, as if he found Sir Owalan amusing, or — perhaps — as if he found me just distracting enough that he hadn’t quite been paying attention to the Penitent.
He cleared his throat. “No one has to like anyone. We simply must survive this mess without bloodshed and murder. And if that seems like an easy achievement, Penitent,” he said as Sir Owalan opened his mouth, “then I bid you look upon those who have already been trampled in our race to the divine.”
He gestured curtly to the bodies we were passing.
They had not been arranged beyond being laid in a line.
Someone had made an effort to kick Sir Kodelai’s ashes in a kind of a heap.
I wasn’t sure if I hoped or feared it was one of the golems. It embarrassed me that they were seeing all of this — silent witnesses to the horrors men and women would inflict on each other when pressed, even those men and women who thought themselves holy.
If the golems thought, then what did they think of this?
Did they judge? Surely they must. Surely, the God must. We were all stained through to the marrow.
“Decided to join us, did you, Beggar?” Sir Sorken asked, looking over his shoulder at us as we finally approached. “Got over your scruples?”
“How does this door show the puzzle through the grate but then when the room twists, you can walk through the door to the next trial?” Sir Owalan asked crankily, shifting his stance so he wouldn’t have to look at me.
“They’re offset,” Sir Sorken said. “Just by enough that you don’t really notice. The puzzles are behind rock when you aren’t working on them.”
He turned to face us and the light of the makeshift lantern in the golem’s hand flickered wildly.
“I am not over the Majester’s death, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said in a low tone.
“I had no idea that the two of you were so close,” Sir Sorken said in a tone of false innocence, mocking me.
“Must you be close to someone to mourn their passing?”
His voice was purposefully innocent when he said, “You do if it’s Roivolard Masamera. The man had no understanding of a good tea. Here, look at the puzzle, what do you see?”
Behind the grate was a series of colored glass slats arranged both horizontally and vertically in a small frame. Sir Sorken reached his fat fingers through the holes of the grate and slid a few with a clack, clack.
“It’s a common slide puzzle,” Adalbrand said from behind me. I liked the way his breath tickled the back of my neck, the way he wasn’t nervous about standing close to me, like it was normal now for us to share breath and warmth.
“A slide puzzle with no solution,” Sir Sorken said sharply, annoyed.
“We tried the colors of the stained glass window, before you ask. We tried them in various orders. We tried the colors of the liturgical calendar in various orders. We tried the colors of the major kingdoms at the time this a — monastery was common, also.”
And there’s where he slipped, wasn’t it? Because I heard the “ah” before the word “monastery.” And I knew that somehow, he knew this was called an arcanery. Had Sir Coriand told him that?
“What’s that just above the puzzle?” Sir Adalbrand asked, pointing out a tiny etched marking. “Is that a pitchfork?”
Cleft held his thick, rocky hand a little closer to the puzzle and I saw what Adalbrand was pointing to.
A small pitchfork etched into the rock above the puzzle.
It was missing a tine, broken off a quarter of the way up.
And my mind scrambled to remind me that I’d seen that before. I’d thought it was a trident, hadn’t I?
“It could be, I suppose. Have you ever seen another pitchfork in these parts?”
Adalbrand shook his head. I didn’t think anyone had noticed that window but me.
“Let me try,” I said grimly.
“Have at it, Vagabond. And while you take your turn, I think I’ll go and brew up some more tea. Stay with the girl, would you, Cleft? You’re the only lamp we have, there’s a fine fellow. Are you coming, Sir Owalan?”
“I think I’ll wait here,” the Penitent Paladin said grimly. “Having once abandoned duty, I do not trust the Vagabond not to run off looking for her dog when it is her turn to work the puzzle.”
“Where is my dog?” I asked mildly.
That’s right. Don’t forget the nice doggy.
“Occupied,” Sir Sorken said briskly. “And so he will remain so until you’ve taken a turn at cracking the code. Time runs thin.”
Adalbrand coughed as I frowned and turned my attention to the slide puzzle.
I could still remember the colors of the original broken triptych. I’d thought it was odd how they’d put the orange and red and blue and green in places I hadn’t expected. I thought that — perhaps — I could replicate that pattern if I concentrated.
Behind me, I heard Adalbrand murmuring. “I’d fetch the lady paladin’s dog, were I you.”
“And why is that?” Sir Sorken asked.
“With the death of the Inquisitor,” Adalbrand said, keeping his voice so low that it was hard to hear over the click of the glass tiles as I moved them round and round to slide into place.
“I would hazard that Victoriana Greenmantle is the most skilled with the sword among those of us who remain. She is shaken by the death of the Majester — a death she has told me was murder.”
“The man who jumped?” Sir Sorken asked darkly. “I’m sure you’ve seen suicides before. You’re no child.”
“Even so, I think it would be best not to provoke her.”
“Is that why you’ve been so quiet? I’ll not tiptoe around anyone.” Sir Owalan had a dagger out and he was carving the stations of the Saint into the skin on his arm, tracing old white scars there that he had clearly traced and traced before. “The God alone is my judge.”
“There’s also the matter of how you left me in that challenge to die,” Adalbrand said in an undertone that suggested he was not eager to bring up this next point.
“Surely you didn’t consider the Beggar Paladin to be a threat!” Sir Owalan said plaintively. “She’s such a … crass thing.”
“Crass,” Adalbrand repeated dryly.
“Not one of us,” Owalan tried in a smaller voice.
“Possibly, she is not even a paladin,” Sir Sorken said like one trying to break bad news. I almost turned around to look at him at that. “Sir Coriand says there is a demon in her dog.”
“A demon?” Sir Owalan sounded alarmed. “Why did no one tell me of this? I must chant a prayer for your souls immediately.”
He was ignored by the others.
The cat is out of the bag, dear girl. Or rather the demon is in the dog and everyone knows.
The Engineers have been whispering about it all night.
They have not yet decided whether to kill Brindle and harvest the demon — those were their exact words — or whether to keep it within the dog so they can blackmail and control you.
And here I thought I liked the Engineers. Their behavior was looking more and more suspicious.
Wellll … I mean, you are hardly one to judge. You are carting a demon around the place. We must be reasonable in what we ask from others.
“I did not mean that I felt threatened by her, merely that I was abandoned by you.”
Sir Owalan scoffed. “We all knew you’d awaken and solve the puzzle. You’re no fool.”
Sir Sorken made a vague sound in the back of his throat. “Perhaps you should go fetch the Beggar’s dog, Sir Owalan. I need to have a word with the Poisoned Saint in private.”
There was a pause, as if Sir Owalan might argue the point, but after a moment he made a sound of acquiescence and then his footfalls marched away.
Sir Soken likely thought he was whispering when next he spoke but his whisper carried so easily that I heard every word. I glanced up at Cleft, who patiently held the lamp as I worked, wondering if he heard, too. If he did, he made no sign of it.
“You walk on rotten ice with that one, Poisoned Saint.”
“How do you mean?”
Sorken snorted. “Don’t think I’ve failed to notice what game you play. King’s bastard or no, you must know you’d be in terrible trouble with your aspect if I were to report you to Bishop Galifarnas. He’d have your tabard.”
“Speak clearly, then.”