Chapter Twenty-Three
Twenty-three
The path to victory is not always the clearest, easiest, or—and this is the most difficult to accept—smartest.
—WORDS OF WAR, WRITTEN BY BELLATOR PRIME NAEVE, IN THE ERA OF TEMPESTRA-TERTIA
NOLAN IS VERY, VERY still as I raise one of my sickles and rest the point lightly on the ridge of his cheek.
“First off,” I say, “fuck you for trying to kill me.” To his credit, he doesn’t flinch as the blade skims over his skin, then hooks into the gag, cutting it away. “I want to know why.”
He doesn’t respond right away, only flexes his jaw with an expression of irritatingly patient consideration. “You know why,” he says finally, frowning. I flick my wrist, sickle kissing him again. This time, his head jerks away instinctively. The frown shifts into an amused smirk. “You survived.”
“One of my better habits.” I let my weapon drop. “You were planning to get rid of me from the start.”
Nolan shrugs innocently. “We can’t both be Executrix. I was doing what it took to ensure it would be me.”
“What happened to you respecting the Goddess’s wishes?”
“Don’t be cross because you actually believed that.”
“I’m not.” But I am, as much as I try not to show it.
Nolan sized me up right from the start, whipping up a sweetened, pious facade he knew I would think too well trained and obedient to be threatening.
And I ate it up with a spoon. “Stupid not to wait until we actually found the reliquary, though.”
“I saw an opportunity.”
“And look where it got you.” I put away my sickles and rifle through the workroom until I find a roll of bandages, then strip off my blood-soaked jacket.
Despite the chamber now resembling an abattoir, the floor directly in front Nolan is clear.
I sit before him, cross-legged, and begin bandaging my arm.
“Unfortunately, you being an untrustworthy ass isn’t my biggest problem right now.
Or yours, for that matter.” I gesture to the corpses surrounding us. “This is.”
He crooks an eyebrow. “Seems to me like you made short work of the ‘problem.’ ”
“Don’t sound so impressed.” I tip my chin at the dead woman. “You recognized her voice, yeah?”
He nods carefully.
“And I’m sure you’ve figured out by now why a pack of Renderers were teamed up with assassination-happy heretics.”
A furrow appears in his brow. “Because it would have been open season on our brethren if the Goddess had fallen.”
“A bit concerning, right?”
“Yes, but not quite as immediate a concern as figuring out a way to escape before they…” His voice falters. “Completed their work.”
He’s shaken. Good. “Sorry to interrupt what I’m sure would have been a spectacular getaway.
” Finished with the bandage, I put my hands behind me and lean back.
“Well, while you were having fun with your new friends, I ran into one of the other heretics from Novena on the road. Mine was less… antagonistic.”
“Where are they now?”
“Where all heretics should be,” I reply. “Dead.” Truth is a tool I need right now, but that doesn’t mean I have to tell all of it. “I needed a horse, and he had one. But that’s far from the most interesting part.”
“And that is?”
“He was a cleric.” I let the revelation sink in.
“Not in disguise either. So is one of the dead Renderers out in the hall. That one I found in Sethane. Thought he was helping me; instead he tipped his friends off. Which means that whatever this is, whatever plots are being hatched against Tempestra-Innara, it goes beyond a handful of unusually ambitious heretics. I think who we’re after might have their fingers in more pies than we expect. ”
Nolan considers me for a long, cold moment. “You’re saying they’ve infiltrated the Goddess’s devoted?”
“Yup. And not recently. Probably been planning this for years.”
Something flashes in his eyes. “And after killing the false cleric you didn’t follow the heretic? Or send word to Lumeris? You came here instead?” His face flushes with true anger. “I knew you were a fool, Lys, but—”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you wanted to get carved up into pieces!”
“You should have gone after the reliquary!”
I jab a finger at the dead woman. “I did! She knew where it was. Until someone gave her the chance to take that very vital piece of information to the grave!” That chastens him. “They are Renderers. Do you not get that? Have you not figured out how they knew who—what—you were?”
His mouth thins. “One of them…”
“Yeah, met him. Good news is, he didn’t survive.
But that doesn’t exactly offset the bad.
” I get to my feet again, gesture around the room.
“All this? It isn’t some enterprise they threw up overnight.
These aren’t vague, half-baked monsters meant to scare baby Potentiates.
Or desperate scavengers on the fringes of the Devoted Lands scrounging up long-lost, dried-out skeletons.
” The book that Cook was consulting sits open on the table.
I flip through the pages, each filled with tiny, cramped writing and illustrations that make my stomach turn.
“They know stuff. Look at this. It’s an actual recipe book on turning you and me into a really fun time.
Purifying and concentrating Chosen blood, the best ways to dry and powder fresh bone versus old, rendering fat and brains into an oil that causes—”
“I don’t need the details of their foul heresy,” Nolan cuts in.
“Are you sure? Kinda think a lesson or two about all this back at the Cloisters might have come in handy.” I spot something behind the book—a small red lacquer box, out of place among the tools and tinctures.
Its contents turn my stomach: a trove of small jars and vials.
I’ve never seen them, but know what they are in an instant.
These are the culmination of the Renderers’ work, vile concoctions that carry with them a temporary taste of divinity.
A drop of blood tincture to bring on euphoria and strength; a balm to enhance the senses or even heal a wound.
But one vial stands out. “Hello, what have we got here?” I pick it up.
It’s filled with a fine, crystalline dust. Nothing that would have been manufactured from human parts.
And as soon as I touch it, it begins to glow. “Look familiar?” I ask Nolan.
“It’s glowing like the reliquary did.”
“Yup.” I tip the vial slowly, letting the fine powder pour from one end to another.
It sparkles with a brilliance that borders on unnatural.
“Maybe Renderers like to mess with their eyesight as much as Arbiters. And maybe there’s more than one use for a reliquary.
That would have been helpful to know before we set out, right? ”
Nolan doesn’t speak again for a long minute. “It wasn’t only his eyes. They had him on a chain. He was… there was something wrong with him.”
“There are two more like him in the cells. This stuff must give them the ability to see or sense what we are in the same way the Arbiters’ Judge’s Sight lets them see within a person.
But just like what happened with Emmaus, there must be side effects eventually.
” I twirl the vial between my fingers. “How many more do you think are out there? Renderers and their hounds, blending in with normal folks, who can take our measure in an instant?”
“Where exactly are you going with this, Lys?”
Here it is. The shitty part.
I place the vial on the table. “Tempestra-Innara wanted us to work together to find the reliquary. I can still do that, on my own, same as you were planning. But if the last couple of days have proved anything, it’s that there are way too many things we don’t know that we don’t know.
We can’t even trust the clergy anymore. ‘Alone’ isn’t the smartest option right now.
” I pause, letting him consider my words.
“Divinely blessed or not, we still need sleep, food, all that human nonsense. We get tired. Sometimes we have to pull our pants down and take a shit. And when it comes to those things, it’s better to have someone watching your back than not. ”
Silence. Then: “Why in the world would you trust me after I tried to kill you? And, more importantly, why should I trust you?”
“Oh, I don’t trust you in the least. But betrayal aside, if either of us had been somehow secretly in league with the heretics, we wouldn’t be surrounded by this lovely mess.” I cross my arms. “So, I propose this: We go back to our original agreement.”
“And,” Nolan says carefully, “after that…”
“After that… well, who knows if we will even get that far.” I take a deep breath.
“Listen, I get it. You want to be the Executrix. The truth? I don’t.
Too much responsibility, too much trouble.
” Nolan’s eyes narrow ever so slightly. He thinks I’m full of shit.
Good. Let him believe I’m lying, instead of egregiously omitting.
“I’m perfectly happy to find the reliquary and use that goodwill currency to request a nice, posh posting somewhere that I can grow old without anyone trying to outdo me, kill me, or turn me into divine drugs.
I’m not like you, I’m not like Caius. I simply want to serve…
simply. But since you don’t believe that, I’ll offer this deal instead: If we get our hands on the reliquary, then we renegotiate. How does that sound?”
It sounds like a challenge. And in a way, it is. I’ve all but said we can fight to the death as soon as we have the reliquary in hand, but the fact is that there will be a lot of dangerous, unpredictable shit between now and then.
Nolan understands that too. “I can’t express enough how much I dislike that I think you’re right. This situation… I’ll admit it’s more than a little embarrassing.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t. And you don’t have to like it. Only agree to it.”
“Fine.” His tone is resigned, if not enthusiastic. “We find the reliquary, together. And after that…”
“After that,” I say by way of agreement.