She told me that there was no way out. She told me the way forward was through blood. I just hadn’t realized her vision was so immediate — that it meant here, today.
“Saints and Angels.”
I look up in time to catch the sardonic look on the young Vagabond’s face.
“Are you sure?” I gasp, forcing my gaze back to an unsteady Sir Owalan.
He nods roughly, holding the doorjamb in a trembling fist.
“Where?” I grit out.
The Majester has retrieved his map, but the Vagabond has not put her sword away. Good. We must have been attacked. Or a trap was sprung. Or something.
“The lock,” Owalan says.
His face is turning green again. I could try to ease his suffering but perhaps the Seer has a chance. I’ve been there before when someone was pronounced dead too soon and, together with my brothers, I brought them back.
I don’t know which of us moves first, me or the dog. I’m running past the Penitent Paladin before I even catch the benediction he murmurs as he makes the holy sign from forehead to sword arm.
My hands are sweating and my brow furrowed as I pick up speed down the corridor and out into the main room. The statues loom high over me and the sunlight streaming through the windows has turned from the gold of dawn and sped right through to the swell of afternoon. The granite blossoms around their feet mock me.
I’m but a gnat in this towering vault of a room, small as a mote of dust tumbling through the light beams. My legs take forever to cross all that white marble and each footfall echoes loudly through the hall.
My lips are already murmuring the prayers that come before healing.
God grant me strength to take pain from another. God grant me your power to heal. God preserve us. God have mercy. God have mercy.
I haven’t even reached the third “God have mercy” and then I see them — clustered around a heap on the ground.
Hefertus is pale, his face set like flint. I have seen him at the scene of a tragedy before. This is his way.
Beside him, the High Saint is in a crouch over the Seer. He clutches at his hair, his mouth wide and drawn in a look of horror. His eyes find us first and he flinches backward, falls to his bottom, crab-walking. His hand finds his sword hilt.
I’m already frowning before the Inquisitor sets a hand on the shoulder of the Hand of Justice — also crouched over the body. The Hand looks over his shoulder and his eyes narrow when he sees me. He stands in one fluid motion and draws his sword.
It’s only then that I realize they think I’m a threat.
Beside me, the dog barks.
I throw up my hands, trying to turn my headlong run into a skidding halt.
“I want to heal her,” I gasp out, but Kodelai Lei Shan Tora is already closing the distance between us, his sword held in high attack posture.
Unfurling beside him like a sleek white flag, the Holy Inquisitor spools out, his sword liquid and flowing as it leaves the sheathe and falls into low attack posture in his off-hand.
They aren’t waiting for an explanation. They’re ready to kill me. Fury is etched into their features.
In response, fear claws up my throat like a sleeping wolf woken before it is ready. It makes my mouth dry and my hand unsteady.
I force control back over myself, letting the growl rip from my throat as I finally skid to a halt, and gather enough focus to draw my sword.
I’m still in the act when a blur of tatters and dread-black hair slips past me like an ill wind and leaps in front of me.
Sparks fly and the air splits with the sound of steel on steel. I feel the vibration through my feet as the Vagabond Paladin bashes Sir Kodelai’s blade to the side and forces him backward with a daring backhand. It leaves her open for an attack, but both of the others are too stunned to seize the opportunity.
Sir Kodelai takes a defensive step backward, surprise etching his mature face. Already my dervish savior is spinning to her left, her sword held in a crosswise defensive stance, hands high, blade sweeping down and back to protect her spin.
Her dog intimidates the Inquisitor, rushing in low and harsh-throated for a feint at his pale boots.
I don’t think Sir Kodelai planned on killing a woman today. I don’t think he knows what to do now that he’s faced with the possibility.
The Inquisitor is faster than his compatriot — even missing his usual sword hand — and unlike the Hand of Justice, he was expecting his opponent. He ignores the snapping dog, likely trusting the protection of his high boots, and takes a step-and-twist to escape her reach, spinning neatly into a perfect full defensive posture. Perhaps he is ambidextrous.
I realize — too late, what is wrong with me? — that I’m just standing there. I am stunned by the beauty of the black viper of a woman flowing before me. With defiant boldness, she holds back a pair of blades that had been bent on my blood just a breath before.
My surprise is no excuse.
Abruptly, I force out words. “Halt! You spend heartbeats where she might still live.”
“Still live?” The High Saint’s laugh is high-pitched and barely clinging to sanity. “Can people still live without their heads?”
“And hands?” Hefertus asks dryly. He’s very still, watching all of us, but not moving for his sword or anything else.
It’s only then that I snatch a glimpse of the poor Seer.
I’ve witnessed many deaths — most by illness, disaster, accident, or war. These are the times that healers are sent for. I will not now enumerate the many deaths I have witnessed. Suffice it to say this is the most grisly of all — including the poor man I tended who had been mauled by a bear.
The Seer is sprawled on her back, centered in a mural of blood. Her clothes — loose and many-layered — look like crushed flower petals. The layers overpower her in death in a way they never did in life. One of her hands clutches a knife. The other hand is clenched in a fist. It is ten feet to her left, just under the lock of a door. An arc of spattered red links it to the rest like the string of a marionette.
Her head has been placed on her belly. I don’t mean that she is curved forward. Oh, no. She is flat on her back and someone has placed her head on her belly like a ham on a platter for a Christmas feast. A trail of blood paints a whorl from where her head was wrenched off, up and around her slumped shoulders, and then across her limp garments to where it has been placed, as if someone had broken her by accident but was so tidy that they thought the head ought to be kept with the body.
If that was the case, then why not the hand, too?
The others are right.
I can do nothing for her now.
And the knowledge that I failed her last night is a bitter pill to swallow. Had I realized what she meant … had I realized what she was warning of … I would never have come down into this place.
“H … Hold,” I stutter, hand still held up while the other makes the benediction and then runs across the toothy prayer beads strung at my belt.
God have mercy. God have mercy. Lord have mercy. God have mercy.
The prayer is more a panic response than anything else.
There is one more clash of sword on sword as the Vagabond’s defense encounters the attack of the Inquisitor, circles it, and then with the force of her greater muscle, breaks hard, cracking the hilt from his hand and sending the sword skittering across the marble.
Her dog is barking wildly, the kind of ripping full-throated barks that make sane men keep a wide berth.
Hardly a moment has passed. The High Saint is still scrambling to his feet. Hefertus reaches down to casually help him.
The Majester and Sir Owalan’s footsteps are slow behind me.
The dog leaps forward and, with reflexes like lightning, the Vagabond Paladin intercepts his leap. He was leaping for Sir Kodelai’s throat, of course. Why would he leap anywhere else?
Her off-hand snakes out, grabs the scruff of his neck, and with a lunge-and-spin she slams him to the ground and then stills, still twisted and half-bent, wheezing in a long breath as her gaze flicks from paladin to paladin.
Her dog is utterly unaffected by such a violent reproof. He crouches low, growls still rolling through him in gentle waves.
We are all still as we watch one another.
Still with that kind of quiet that comes right before death.
“Nine of us came down,” Sir Kodelai says grimly.
He has not sheathed his sword. It remains ready, just outside the reach of the Vagabond Paladin. She has certainly saved my life. The others — on edge already — thought my desperate charge to save the Seer was an attack. I would have been skewered on that very sword had she not stepped quickly to the forefront.
Sir Kodelai is not amused. He studies her with a curled lip.
“Eight of us remain.”
He pauses and looks at us one by one.
“One of us is a killer.”
“Nine,” Hefertus corrects him. “Nine of us remain. There’s a dog.” My friend flicks his long, golden hair behind his shoulder, points lazily to the dog, and then gets to work tying his hair into a knot on top of his head. I’ve served with Hefertus before. This is his version of rattling his sword in the scabbard. He wants everyone to know he’s ready for a fight.
“Fine,” Kodelai says, his sneer deepening. “Eight and one animal. A beast which nearly skewered himself on my blade seconds ago.”
“Or ripped your throat out,” Hefertus adds.
The Hand of Justice shoots him a look so full of poison it could taint an entire city’s water supply. He refuses to note the correction.
“I will discover who did this and bring them to justice. Tonight.”
“We should search her body,” the Majester General suggests from behind me. He is out of breath. I think he’s had people to run for him for so long that doing it for himself is a novel development. “Perhaps she found the cup. Or the key.”
It is at this moment that the High Saint hits the ground again — so hard that I flinch. He could shatter his kneecaps this way. His forehead hits next and my heart speeds so hard it stutters painfully. Is he dying, too?
But no.
Prayers tumble from his lips, hard and fast, and so thick that word runs into word. Perhaps it is panic. Or guilt. Or reverence. Whatever the motive, he can hardly kill us from there. I put him out of my mind.
“Is anyone else hurt?” I ask, and find my voice is hoarse.
“Enough of this,” Sir Kodelai says grimly. His sword is still bared, tip inches from the Vagabond Saint, who is holding her growling dog back. “I will perform the judgment tonight, by the grace of the God. We will return for the body for a proper burial when all is in readiness.”
Hefertus grimaces at that and he’s not alone. I see dour lines on the Inquisitor’s face and feel them on my own.
“Any who defies this order shows himself guilty,” the Hand of Justice says.
Convenient.
I don’t think he noticed Sir Owalan slip around him. People miss Owalan. He has a constant attitude of trying to disappear into the walls. But he’s kneeling now over the severed hand. He’s picking it up. He’s prying the fingers apart. He’s finding a key.
A strange key.
The head of the key is an exact color and shape match for the stones in the map mosaic that represent land.
If I were a betting man — which I’m not, for the God alone spins fate — I would guess that it marks the exact same spot on the map that the glass bead on the sphere does.
Owalan meets my eyes and then silently slips it in the folds of his tabard.
Interesting.
“None of you is to be alone,” Sir Kodelai says severely. “We will exit this place together. Now. In silence.”
The High Saint is still praying in fervent desperation.
“IN. SILENCE.”
I can hear the snap of the High Saint’s jaws closing.
“You will lead, Vagabond Paladin.”
I clench my jaw. If I know one thing about my new partner, it’s that she takes orders poorly.
The order hangs in the air for a full minute. And then Lady Paladin Victoriana rolls her neck and takes to her feet in all her slender glory. Her hand slips from her dog’s neck and his growl rumbles low and burred in his throat, but when she spins on her heel, he turns with her, and when she starts to stride away, he falls into step just a pace in front of her. She looks over her shoulder, a puzzled expression on her face, as if the corpse is a set of figures she can’t quite balance.
But she does as she’s bid.
“Prince Paladin,” Sir Kodelai says.
With a shrug and a wink for me, Hefertus follows her.
“High Saint.”
Interestingly enough, no one questions him. No one refuses. No one so much as speaks.
Until it is Kodelai left alone with me and the dead Seer. I offer her one more look.
“Walk beside me, Poisoned Saint,” the Hand of Justice says. “We two will watch each other, that all may be above reproach.”
Why did he choose me when it could have been the Majester General? Or the High Saint? Both of those Aspects are known for more rule-abiding ways than we Poisoned Ones.
I shrug and fall into step beside him, walking with a trick I’ve learned that lets my cloak flow behind me like I’m a hero in a story. I can see it catch Sir Kodelai’s eye and the curious wen in his forehead tells me it’s done what it needs to do. It’s caught him off guard.
“Tell me, Poisoned Saint. Tell me, death dealer. Where were you in all of this?”
“I followed the Vagabond Paladin when she split off from the rest,” I said easily. “I was with her.”
“The whole time?”
“We were separated checking two different rooms at one point.”
“How long was that for?”
“Perhaps five minutes,” I say calmly. “Maybe a little longer. There was a tank in the room I searched that had been full of fish. It took me some time to search through their bones.”
He nods in thought. “Then you are not beyond reproach.”
“An interesting way to think of it.”
“And you visited the Seer last night. You slept outside her tent. I beheld it when I woke during second sleep.”
I shrug noncommittally.
“What did she say to you?”
“That she saw a vision. And there was no way out.”
The Hand of Justice looks over his shoulder. “That certainly seems true for her.”
And with that, we make our way to the stairs in silence and we follow the rest up the long march of steps. Behind us, through the arrow-slit windows and the broken triptych, the sun is low and red in the sky, as angry as the Hand of Justice, angry as the God himself must be to see his servant slain so.
And I find that it haunts me that this place is down in the earth instead of reaching for the sky, that it holds a demon instead of an angel, that it draws sin to the front of my character, rather than virtue, and that in just a few hours’ time it has slain the best of us.
And I find that I am afraid.
