The scholastic facet of the Poisoned Saints had been among the things I liked best about my youth. Pouring over tomes and scrolls both recent and far-flung in the ancient past, dissecting one language from another, translating them both into yet a third, cross-referencing and following ecumenical arguments through the theology of souls that dated back to ten thousand years before my birth and through to the scrappy polemics of our diversified modern time — well, I had happily poured my hours and days into that pursuit, dragged from it only to train my body in the arts of weaponry and battle.
Even now, a Poisoned Saint, galloping from one disaster to the next with barely a hot meal and a breath in between, I can easily be lured away from duty by the call of a promising tome upon a shelf, or a sage whispering about the latest wisdom they are discussing in the halls of the philosophers.
Though I am made to be a seeker of truth and a lover of the novel, and though this terrible wonder we are experiencing is certainly the most fascinatingly awful thing that anyone will be whispering about for decades — if anyone lives to tell the tale of it — I would prefer to employ my gifts of scholarship another way.
I am crafting a demon. Not quite from scratch. It’s already been fed guilt and murder. My guilt. My murders. My shameful lusts, and my own blood and spit. Now, it billows beneath me, forming, strengthening, churning to the strokes of my pen upon the book. I do not know if I should make it strong and capable to defeat the others already snatching at mine, or if I should make it with a terrible flaw I can twist to destroy it.
I suspect I must do both and I am not pleased with the difficulty of the project. It would be a fun thought experiment in a high tower beside a crackling fire with a cup of mead and a friend to discuss it. It is not so delightful when I know I am dabbling in the dark arts, in a deadly sin that may very well have been the origin of all evil on this earth.
I write down an obscure quote from Nasarithin over five hundred years ago in which he expounded on the idea that evil feeds upon the fear of those around it and thus fear ought to be banished or evil will grow, and as the last words settle on the page, the shadow beneath me expands with a motion like a beating heart.
Too effective. I grimace.
“Have we crafted all the demons that ever were?” the Vagabond had asked. And I do not know the answer to that. Perhaps we have. Perhaps from the very beginning, man has penned his own demise. Perhaps he even used the ideas of the theologians to make it easier for him.
Complicating my complicity further is this: I am bound in this harness as I ply my pen, bound and trapped as Victoriana grills Sir Coriand. I cannot aid her. And I feel shame that I was led so easily into this trap. I should be below, helping to unmask the crimes that have been done here.
In my defense, it hadn’t felt like a trap when I climbed into the harness. It had felt like maneuvering — like setting them up to confess and putting me up high where I could watch everyone at once.
Sir Coriand makes no excuse for his actions. All the guilt I’ve been carrying around for years has bent me and yet on his shoulders, it weighs no more than a single flake of snow. He smiles and speaks and he is clearly enchanted by the sound of his own voice.
I have heard the great orators in the capital, but I have not heard anyone quite like Sir Coriand, who twists murders into sorrowful necessities and makes the Vagabond look crass for asking him to answer for them.
I do not know if I am more horrified by him and his ice-cold heart, or by Hefertus, who took one look at this unspeakable choice before us and simply chose it away. Such an escape is not open to me. And even if it were, I do not think I could leave the Vagabond on her own. I am annoyed at my friend. I hope to live to tell him so.
I add to my treatise the argument of Saint Flamire, who wrote that every evil was vulnerable to the grace of kindness, that a kind word said could still anger and stop up bitterness. I see my shadow shiver and glance up again, divided between the battle below and the task of crafting a monster with a fatal flaw.
The Vagabond stares Sir Coriand down like a brave man stares down a charging bull, even though he’s flanked by both golems. I both adore her in that moment and think she bears a tragic likeness to real Saints of the past — the ones torn apart by crowds, sawn in half, and beheaded. She has their fire in her eyes, their staunch refusal to quit, their intolerable enemies.
It almost hurts to look at her.
I won’t be able to save her if it comes to that.
But I write. As fast and as furiously as I can. And I try to make a monster that can break and yet be broken. I diagram out rules and sketch out plans, and if my handwriting is illegible and my sketches much revised, the arcane power of this place does not seem to care.
My shadow is growing.
I write of how sin amplifies itself by curling the spirit in on itself round and round, like a tree stunted by growing within a dwelling. I write that, and the demon billows wide. I write of how anger, when fed, feeds on the one who is angry, and I feel the crack form in the center that I can leverage later.
I glance up and see Owalan move from the corner of my eye. I shout my warning and clench my jaw as his sword splits the air an inch from Victoriana’s face. My heart is in my throat as she twists to the side. I thrash against the straps holding me in unconscious reaction, but I can no more leap to her aid than I can fly.
Her demon dog leaps from the shadows. He grabs Owalan by the shoulder, bearing him down to the earth.
A spike of fear shoots through me. Too many buckles hold me in place. And I will not be able to help as long as I am tied into this harness. My fingers fumble with the buckle on my forearm, blunt against the smooth leather.
“If you want to help her, you’d best write,” Sir Sorken calls out. “You won’t be getting down until you’re done. That’s how this works, my lad.”
His shadow demon shambles over to mine and strikes it with a powerful overhand blow to the shoulder.
I bite my lip, put pen to paper, and scratch until my hand cramps, forcing speed and power into the lines of the shadow I craft. I write of compression and the art of water pumps in the aqueduct systems, and as I write, my shadow tightens and strengthens. It grabs a strand of Sorken’s demon, dragging it a little over the line where our shadows meet before that scrap of shadow shreds away and the demons burst into fragments.
I curse as my shadow falls to shreds and then slowly starts to build beneath me again. Sorken’s is in the same state. I should be throwing all my efforts into my fight against him, but I’m distracted by the sight of Owalan and Victoriana spinning through the space where our two demons were only moments before.
Their blades clash, steel on steel, as they whirl. Victoriana lands a double-handed strike on Owalan’s shoulder, but the other paladin still has his armor — I never did ask what happened to the Vagabond’s, and curse me for that. I was so fascinated by how I could feel her warmth through the cloth of her clothing that I forgot entirely that there ought to be steel cladding over it.
With a flick of a pen, I add heat to my demon, writing of how the sear of a guilty conscience is like to a fire that can never be fully quenched, beginning to build him again from scratch.
Beneath me, dancing around my black, filthy shadow, Victoriana ducks under a blow from Cleft, her groan audible as she spins out of the defensive duck and brings her sword up just in time to turn Owalan’s blow.
My guts tighten.
She’s forgotten Suture.
I cry out a warning as he lunges in from behind her, grasping with bone fingers. At the last moment, the dog leaps, catching Suture’s forearm between its canine teeth. The golem tries to shake the dog off, bones rattling, bits of cloth tearing off. Brindle’s sleek body shakes with him, teeth rattling but refusing to quit, just like his mistress.
It’s with the dry-stick snap of a breaking bone that he finally flies through the air, half the golem’s forearm and hand still locked in his jaw, to land hard on the edge of the sand rim.
I can’t afford to watch to see if he can recover. I write about the tenacity of evil, how a single root left behind can grow again as if it were never razed in the first place. My shadow pops back to strength as if it were never ripped apart — and only just in time. Sir Sorken’s demon leaps toward Victoriana, snatching at her foot.
She goes down in a heap, a pained gasp breaking her silence.
I drive my demon forward, using its bulk to push Sorken’s back. It thrusts with the power I’ve scribed into it. And if I did not feel guilty before, it is coming back now. I am creating a monster. I am good at it.
Sir Owalan sails back into the fight, swinging his blade at Victoriana. She rolls and pops up to her feet, where her dog stands, still shaking the broken golem arm in his jaws, spittle flying everywhere.
“Don’t think I’m done questioning you, Sir Coriand,” she says, pointing the tip of her blade at him for a heartbeat before turning back to Owalan just in time to slide his strike away. Her eyes flash and her cheeks are flushed with the fight. I force my gaze away and back to what I pen.
“You’re a terribly dogged thing, Beggar,” Sir Coriand says, annoyed. “I heartily wish Sir Kodelai had succeeded with your demise.”
“And why should I not be? We who are poor have only honor and truth left.”
“Then enjoy this truth,” Sir Coriand says. “Up there in that harness is your friend Adalbrand, who spared your life from false accusation only yesterday. And he works studiously to craft a demon. Are you and yours really so different from us? You will do what you must to survive, too.”
“Too?” she grits out before leaping so high that she kicks up, pivots on Suture’s chest, and spins over Owalan’s blade to land at his back. He barely makes the turn in time to deflect her sliding blow, and the awkward defense makes him stumble at the same time that her dog plows into him and bowls him over.
“Too,” Coriand barks. “Do you think you can put this back now? The ability to craft demons to order is out in the world, child of foolishness. You cannot re-cork the bottle. You cannot un-drink the wine. It will be used now by us or our enemies. Better it be us. Better we find ways to use it. To survive. Because someone will.”
“No one has to,” the Vagabond says.
She’s dancing to the side, fighting both golems as Sir Coriand tries desperately to keep her dog from his throat. Its savage growling reminds me it’s more than just a dog.
I want to help her, but the High Saint’s demon is ready for action now, and it leaps at mine, rending and tearing and spinning like a corkscrew made of smoke, and I must write and write as I battle foes on two sides.
Mayhap if I change the geometry of the thing, I could use a double fulcrum to apply force a little more precisely. I sketch a plan out with quick strokes. I feel the sweat forming on my brow and the dull ache in my forehead. My mind is exhausted with how hard I’ve forced it to think, to draw up knowledge of everything from ancient wisdom to modern engineering, but I must succeed. I must.
The Vagabond is speaking. “We could seal this place up. We could burn it to cinders. No one ever has to use it again.”
“Burn it?” Owalan sounds aghast, even though his cry bites off his words as Brindle leaps at him. He bashes the massive dog with his gauntlet. Brindle rolls to the side, only to leap to his feet and launch again in a blur of fur and fury.
“You can’t. Be. Earnest,” Owalan says, punctuating his words with strikes. He must use his off-hand. The dog is too far under his reach for him to use his sword. “There would be no. More Saints. No more. Cup. And haven’t you seen this place? The. Art. Alone. Must. Be. Preserved.”
I can hear the strain in the Vagabond’s voice, but I can’t look at her as she speaks next. My demon is all that’s holding back the other two from ripping her and Brindle apart, and I can’t write fast enough. I can’t.
If I bend the natural order just here and insist that a flux in gravity could pull this way and a spectral power drawn in through a wind draft just here, I could possibly lengthen the reach … my thoughts tangle and jumble as I try to design the corporeal form of the demon.
I’m losing ground. I know why. I’ve shaped and pulled and formed this shadow to fight, but I’ve fed it nothing. And unless I’m willing to channel both power and wickedness into it, then it can’t stand up to real denizens of hell.
My demon is too insubstantial. It remains shadow and aping mockery while the others have crafted true horrors. I do not know what the High Saint has fed his, but it glows with a bloody fanaticism that must look like his soul in the mirror. The Engineer’s demon is as hard and set as his stone golem. There is a ripple of something at the edge of my vision that tells me its foundation is heartlessness. It will eat the unborn if it must, to fuel itself.
My stomach twists. Will I shape such a thing to save the woman below? Will I shape it to destroy the rest? I stare bleakly at it. Honor shakes its head and balks like a war stallion refusing a gate.
Beneath me, the conversation drifts up in snatches as I fight my own battle. A battle of heart and mind.
“You couldn’t have murdered them all. You must have had help. You weren’t down here when the Seer died.”
That’s my blazing Beggar. She refuses to give up, tearing every shred of flesh from this bone. Just like her half-demon dog.
“Who do you think has the power to twist a head from a body and a hand from an arm, child? Not any man I’ve ever known,” Sir Coriand says.
“It was someone here. It was no demon,” she insists.
Sir Coriand’s laughter is thready. I risk a quick glance. He’s standing on the shoulders of his golem as it shambles one-handed toward the Beggar, its one good arm scything out as if it will reap her like ripe grain.
“No, it was someone with greater power than any man.”
“A golem,” she says with certainty. “They could have snuck in later. And they wouldn’t even have to confess a sin. Like my dog, they wouldn’t be considered contestants in this terrible game.”
“Indeed.” Sir Coriand sounds pleased that she’s drawn the right conclusion.
“But why kill her?”
“She was trying to destroy the key. But she — of all people — should have known. You can’t stop fate. What will be, must be. World without end.”
I know I must make a choice very soon, or fail in this task. The other two demons have battered mine to nothing but a gasp of shadow. It’s faint and weak, a tattered curtain before an armed assault. There’s only a breath of it left.
“And Sir Kodelai? An accident? Or planned by you, also?”
“You know, I was hoping someone would ask that.” Sir Coriand sounds smug.
“It bothers me that the God would let him be wrong,” the Vagabond admits through heavy breaths. She is tiring. They’ve beat her backward steadily. She’s nearly to the wall. Her dog has given up on a limping Sir Owalan and he has backed up with her. “Bothers me enormously. Isn’t his same power given to each of us? And yet to me, it flows with goodness, to you, it flows with evil, and to the Hand, it flowed in a way that twisted in his grasp and slaughtered him.”
Sir Coriand laughs. And I do not like how his laugh makes my throat tight and my heart race.
“It’s always the most noble, the most holier-than-thou who are easiest to twist right out of the God’s own hand, my girl. The High Saint doubted you. Didn’t you, Saint?”
If the High Saint finds his words beguiling, it does not slow his attack. He seizes one seam of my fractured shadow demon and pulls.
“And he whispered in the ear of Sir Kodelai and prepared him as a good wife feeds the yeast in her bowl. And that night, when all of you slept, I came to the High Saint and I confessed all the doubts I had about you, Beggar. Confessed in a heartfelt, wretched manner, and told him too, how you inspired sin within my heart. Not the truth — but he didn’t ask me directly if it were true, so I broke my oath and lied. And it was that lie he brought to Sir Kodelai that morning, feeling duty bound to do so. It was that lie that turned Sir Kodelai’s eye away from the golems he was considering as perpetrators, and toward the ragged, dirty, mud-streaked girl with her filthy mockery of our aspects. That’s the power of words, girl. Pick the right one and you can use it like a long lever to twist the heart of man into a knot unrecognizable. I did. And I did it well. Men are just machines, after all. No different than a golem made of rag and bone.”
“That’s not true.” Her voice is small, her doubt creeping back.
“The God cares no more for you than poor Suture here. But one of you will soon be dead and the other has never lived at all.”
And with those words, he presses his attack. His golem grabs Brindle and throws him so that he smacks a stone Saint statue hard and falls to the earth, limp. His other golem leans in, arms reaching with intent, and in that moment I make my choice.
Better to die in the name of the God than to live as creatures turned and twisted. I’ve always known it, but it is real to me right now.
And for the first time since we’ve reached this place, I really pray.
I pray from deep in my bowels, from the very visceral blood and tissue of my body, from the place at the base of my spine where my soul is knit, from where my heart reaches up like a flowing spring and my brain branches forth like an oak. From that place I reach with all I am to the God and I beg him.
“Deliver me from evil.”
Perhaps I have also said it out loud. Perhaps I have shouted it. I do not know. But I feel the response.
Light and heat crash over me as if someone has flung a bucket of fire over my head.
It is not pleasant, shining glory. It is nothing I might revel in or preen under.
It is like being dredged under by the grip of illness. It is like the fever dreams that wrack you to the bone when they twist and rend and seek to separate a man from his very sinews. It wrenches and wrings me so furiously that I retch down onto the sand. I lose all sense of time and space and the knowledge of my own form, until at last my eyes shoot open and I watch as a great shadow is vomited from my mouth and falls hot and heavy to the ground.
I feel as if a burning coal has been touched to my mouth. My limbs are suddenly free. The book I had written in is aflame, burning with a fire so white I can hardly look. I grab the ash and flame in my bare hands and rip the book apart, flinging it to the sand. I do not even feel the flames. I am already burning.
I stand with superhuman agility in the crisscross of the leather straps, and I leap.
No man should leap so far and live. I have no explanation for why I do not break both tibias and shatter my legs as I hit the ground.
I have heard of the great acts the God allows in times of desperation. My only explanation is that here and now I have been gifted a reprieve from the laws that govern the earth, and that for that space of a heartbeat, my body and bones belong only to the God and not to any of the rules he buckled round the earth when he wove her form.
I land with my feet on the shoulders of Suture and my belly pressing down on Sir Coriand’s back. I feel the bone golem buckle under the sudden force, driven to his bone knees on the marble of the floor. There’s a splintering sound and then Sir Coriand tumbles out from under me, somersaulting. He rolls upward, dagger flicking from its sheath like the tongue of a lizard as he seeks to come up under the Vagabond’s guard.
I’m distracted as I find my feet.
A faint bark arrests me and I spin in time to turn Owalan’s strike.
Another head strike? Is the man doubly a fool? He certainly seems to revel in such nonsense.
I press my own attack, drive him back, and then backhand him hard across the cheek. My strength must be greater than I remember, because he rolls through the air like a barrel down the hill over and around and over again until he smacks the floor hard, his hands unable to get up and protect his face from the blow. I fear his neck may be broken but I have not the time to check.
Already, I am spinning again. I am leaping just in time to use the weight of my own body to turn aside the stone punch of Cleft as he reaches for the Vagabond.
She’s locked into a dagger fight with Sir Coriand, the dagger gripped in her off-hand. She refuses to drop her sword but its bulk is too great for this knife battle and the old paladin is inside her reach.
My breath wooshes out of me and my breastplate crumples painfully into my flesh as I take Cleft’s blow, but some of whatever blessing the God has gifted me clings to my body and I drop my sword, grab his stone fist in both hands, and shove with all my strength. He stumbles backward and then freezes.
His sudden motionlessness leaves me off-balance, and I complete my spin unhindered and crash into him, my backplate into his stone chest. He falls backward, balance lost, stone crashing into stone with a horrendous smashing sound.
I stumble, find my bearings, and look up just in time to see Sir Coriand drop his dagger, an angelic expression on his elderly cherub face as the Vagabond’s sword slashes a perfect arc through the heavenly light and cleaves his head from his body. It follows the arc of her blade like a perfectly thrown ragball, spinning ribbons of red out from it in arcs like a maypole at festival time.
I don’t have time to react. It comes right for me, smacks my ruined breastplate, and lands at my feet, so that all I have to do is bend forward to look straight into the face of evil.
The face of evil looks back at me, blinks once, and then freezes in a smiling rictus.
