Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
Poisoned Saint?
I wake a new man.
Victoriana sleeps just inches from me, her fringe of lashes a fan over her cheeks, her breath soft, dark hair tangled around her face.
She’s so beautiful that it hurts. Grips my heart in a fist.
She’s layers. The wild woman who streaked herself with mud.
The girl too soft to kill her dog even knowing it housed a demon.
The stalwart warrior, chin thrust out, refusing to bend when outnumbered.
The paladin blessed by the God, shot through with the gold veins of his holiness.
She’s all these things at once. I love them all.
I reach a hand as if to caress her cheek and then I stop abruptly.
Beneath the ground, she had turned her heart to me.
When she was backed into a corner. When she had no other allies.
I dare not assume she will choose me here in the open air.
It’s not that I am insecure, thinking a rival will sweep her away.
It’s more that I am cognizant that she is a wild creature at heart.
A wanderer. A freewheeling bird of the sky.
She will not thank me for anchoring her.
Nor will she thank me for pressuring her based on a vow she gave while under duress. I am no blackguard to hold a woman captive by words spoken under fear and pain.
A doggy face appears from over her shoulder, narrowing his eyes at me. No quarter is given me though I’ve healed him. He huffs once at me.
I draw my hand back, frown, and rise. Even without additional spirits occupying him, Brindle is a sticky fellow. He has no love for me.
I step out of the tent and find Hefertus cooking a fragrant-fleshed fish by the fire. He has no fishing gear. I can only assume he asked the God for the fish and it leapt from the sea to his hand to satisfy his hunger.
I’m constantly fascinated by how the God deals with Hefertus. Where I am offered pain, he’s given plenty. Where I am constantly winnowed to clarity, he is left happily oblivious.
“Pretty girl,” he remarks as he turns his fish, not looking up at me. His missing finger doesn’t seem to bother him, though it must serve as a reminder forever of the terrible road we walked. “Turned your head, didn’t she?”
I grunt. For a man swathed in pearls, his beard oiled and hair brushed until it gleams, he’s hardly one to judge another for being too pretty.
“What are you going to tell your aspect about the cup?” he asks, changing tacks.
“Nothing.”
His snickering laughter makes me frown.
“Well, my ill-tempered friend, if you say nothing then they’ll only have my word for what took place. I think it likely your dark horse in there will only write a letter.” He gestures at the tent, where Victoriana sleeps. “Can she write, do you think?”
“Rude. She read Ancient Indul, a thing you could not achieve.” I bristle at his insults but they feel good. Like the bracing wind along the shore that bites at my exposed skin, they remind me I am alive.
I look out over the hole in the ground left by the collapsed ruins across the water from us. There’s nothing there. Not even the arch or the statue that once graced the hilltop. It’s all water now. I shiver. It’s a miracle that is not my tomb.
“Her demon read Ancient Indul,” Hefertus corrects dryly.
I shoot him a look.
He smirks. “What? I keep up. Common sense may not be my greatest strength, but you should be glad for that. A man with any sense would have run the moment he was free of that place.”
I grunt again. “I would say rather that it shows your lack of sense that you stayed.”
He laughs. “Then you should thank the God that he took my excess sense, for it saved your sopping wet soul from death.”
We’re quiet a moment and then he sobers.
“If I’m to give the report on this incident, my surly friend, then I will have to make a decision.
I can report the incident as it happened, and you might find there are people with many questions to ask you.
An uncomfortable thought, no? Some of the Aspects of the Divine God are …
how do I say ‘hellishly awful’ without being rude? ”
“I think you just did,” I say, amused.
“They’ll do all those lovely things they do to the truly innocent,” he continues, his tone dark, mocking, and merciless. “Thumbscrews. Broken bones. Lighting you on fire to be sure your marrow runs out and you aren’t a demon. You know. The usual holy work.”
“A fate I’d like to avoid,” I say with a furtive glance at the tent.
“A fate you’d like your lady love to avoid. Don’t play coy with me. You’d revel in all that misery. It’s your aspect’s way. It’s not my way, though. I like to keep things bearable. Which is why another story occurs to me.”
“And what is that?” I ask, taking the fish he puts on a leaf and passes to me.
My belly is already rumbling as I reach for it and I have to close my eyes to guard the pleasure of hot food from slipping out where Hefertus might see it. I nearly moan when the first scrap touches my tongue.
Hefertus’s voice takes on a charming lilt as he lays out the story.
“We came to this place, all of us, but the door to it stumped us. It would not allow entry and could not be forced. We camped several nights, our tents spread out, and then one night — horror of horrors — the place fell into the ground and was covered by the sea, and everyone camped on top of it was swept away into the chasm, except the three of us, the dog, and the horses, who were camped just far enough away from the actual ruin to be spared. A kindness of the God. A miracle.”
“It’s a good story,” I say after a while as we eat. “But someone might try to bring ropes and go down into the ruin to look.”
“Underwater?”
“With pumps and engineers, water can be moved.”
“As long as it isn’t me, I don’t rightly care,” Hefertus says.
“What could they possibly find down there? The place looks too ruined to generate more demons. And I think that the bodies would be long decomposed before anyone could work their way through the rock. It would take months to organize that kind of endeavor. Years, maybe, at the rate the church works.”
“There’s the golem, Cleft. He froze when he disobeyed Sir Sorken. But he wasn’t dead, I don’t think. And he’s made of rock. It’s possible another of their Engineers could wake him.”
Hefertus snorts. “Then it’s a good thing he has no voice. Stop fretting, Adalbrand. This is a secret best kept hidden. Your Vagabond will understand that.” He pauses. “What will you do with her?”
I shake my head. “I do not know what I will do about her. Not with her. She is not mine to direct.”
Hefertus snickers again. “Sometimes I think it’s you who loses common sense when you call on the God and not me.
Either way, it makes no difference. We’ll travel together back to civilization and then I’ll leave you on the road and ride to Saint Rauche’s Citadel to make my report.
You won’t want to come. I’ll tell them all I speak for you, and deliver any letters the pair of you want to write.
” He pauses. “But I’ll read them first, so don’t let honesty get in your way. ”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I say wryly, and then we eat in companionable silence until the Vagabond wakes.
I watch her come out of the tent, sleep-mussed and so desirable that my whole body aches to hold her no matter my good intentions.
It’s too much.
I leap up from where I sit like I’ve been stabbed and hurry off down the shore on my own, trying to calm my pounding heart and shaking breath with the brisk sea breeze and the difficulty of negotiating a path along the angry sea.
My neck and my side hurt enough to steal my breath, and that’s good. I lean into that.
She stirs me up like a hurricane. I am unsteady, uncertain. I will not let that instability leave marks on her. Not after everything else.
I seek solace in prayer for what feels like hours. My prayers have never felt so intimate. Probably because I’ve never been touched by the God like I was in that terrible place.
Eventually, I feel a touch on my shoulder and I spin, hope flaring in my eyes, only to be disappointed by the mocking gaze of Hefertus.
“I’ve always thought your order had it the worst,” he says. “Just drive a dagger through your flesh like a cursed Penitent, why don’t you. All this celibate angst is killing me.”
The black look I direct at him only makes him laugh more.
“Come on, brother,” he says, throwing an arm jovially over my shoulders. “The Vagabond doesn’t want to stay here, and neither do I. This whole God-forsaken place is haunted. Let’s ride as far as we can and keep on riding until we shake the dust of this place off.”
We make our way back to where the camp had been. It’s already packed, the horses ready. My lady paladin sits astride hers, looking for all the world like a holy knight, though she is bereft of armor. Even her sword is lost back in the fountain.
I lost my armor, too, shedding what was left of it in the sea as I fought for my life. My sword — more precious to me than any other possession — is gone forever.
We’re a pathetic pair, we two.
She watches me intently, as if waiting for something. I do not know what that something is, so I meet her gaze steadily and then mount my horse and am grateful when the road is so narrow that we must ride single file.
I ride at the rear. A terrible choice, as it means my eyes are fixed on her back for the next twelve hours as we ride.
By the time we decide to pitch camp, I’ve memorized her down to the finest hair.
And when I retire, wrapped up in stolen blankets, refusing Hefertus’s offer of the tent, my mind replays the softness of her curves over and over.