Now that is very satisfying, a voice said in my mind, and I did not know which it was, but it might have been both at once. He lost his head. Literally.
I was panting, every muscle aching after that grueling fight against multiple opponents, my only ally in the brawl a possessed dog.
You’re welcome.
My eyes flicked from enemy to enemy. The golems were frozen in place. One had his arm drawn back as if to throw a punch. The other was still on his knees, one bone arm missing. Sir Owalan was panting off to one side, bloody and bitten, looking back and forth between me and Adalbrand.
Run, run, run, little minced meat. You’re like a rat in a trap who is chewing off his own leg. It’s adorable. Perhaps you’ll be my next pet.
I needed this demon out of my head. I was starting to almost find his observations accurate. The idea of a wild-eyed Sir Owalan sitting when told and staying in place seemed fitting somehow.
A quick — and worried — glance at Brindle saw him shaking himself, blood and sweat flinging out from his coat to spray a trembling Sir Owalan. He seemed unharmed. Joyful even.
Nothing like a good scrabble to get the blood flowing. For dog and demon alike.
“You lost your construct, Poisoned Fool!” Owalan taunted. “I shall not be so easily deterred.”
He wiped a pink smear of dog spittle and blood from his cheek. Emitting a guttural sound from the back of his throat, he spun, and rushed to the empty harness Adalbrand had abandoned as if he thought one of us would try to beat him to the chance to summon a malevolent spirit.
Well, he had his priorities, I supposed, and clinging to his hope of Sainthood was one of them. It must be terrible to be the kind of person willing to grasp at a thing with no thought of the cost.
Terrible indeed. Remember how when you confessed to doubt and entered this place, it twisted you into a doubter. Forget not how when you all entered a second time, you confessed murder.
I shot a guilty glance to where Sir Coriand lay — headless.
I’d worry about how I was a murderer later.
I had learned a long time ago that the passion of battle fogs the head. I had trained myself to check for wounds the moment it was safe. Fail to do that and you could bleed out without realizing it. I gave my body a hasty check. A few knife slashes. They stung. Only one was serious and it was in the forearm of my off-hand. Adalbrand wouldn’t be able to heal it, but he would be able to help me bandage it.
My eyes were drawn to him almost without conscious thought. I found it very satisfying that he was doing the same as I had, a quick check over of his body, a shake of his head as if to clear it, and then a hand running over his face, smearing dust through the sweat there before smoothing across his shorn head. He let out a gusting breath, met my eyes, and offered a wry smile.
“Still alive?”
I nodded wearily. “You?”
His dark laugh heartened me. “For now, it seems.” His smile turned bashful. It made my heart melt a little to see such a look of boyish guilt on a face weathered by pain and shadowed by a three-day beard. “I changed the plan.”
“No longer interested in building a demon to turn against them?” I asked with a lifted eyebrow.
He shook his head, his mouth twisting into a more serious, regretful expression. When his eyes met mine again they were hollowed by sadness.
“I thought you said we would create evil to stop evil.”
He stepped over Sir Coriand’s corpse to join me. “I did say that, yes.”
His hand reached halfway toward me and then clenched into a fist, as if he were afraid to touch me, or uncertain if he’d be received. I decided for him, crossing the last space between us to press my forehead to his.
“And now?”
His voice was rough when he reached up and brushed a strand of hair from where it clung to blood on my cheek. “And now I will not bend. We will fight evil with good or not at all.”
I nodded, my forehead sliding against his with the motion. “And to think you thought your stains could not be washed away. The God reached down himself to burn away your demon.”
“To think,” he said, and there was wonder in his tone.
“To think you thought errors of youth were enough to ruin your future.”
“To think.” His laugh now was disbelieving, a man discovering suddenly he was rich only to also discover he must give all that wealth to ransom a friend.
I pulled back enough to meet his eyes so he could see my smile as it warmed my face.
His answering smile brought more comfort than hot tea on a cold shore.
“Bind my arm?” I asked him, and he nodded gently, tiny smile lines forming around his eyes in the dust there. His hands were gentle as he worked.
“If you’re done breaking all your vows down there, I have a small suggestion for you,” Sir Sorken called down. “Maybe ask your dog not to defile Sir Coriand’s body.”
I looked up to where Sir Sorken was carefully penning in his book and then to where Brindle was sniffing along the trail between Sir Coriand’s body and his head.
“Brindle,” I snapped. “Here.”
He looked up at me, hung a doggy tongue from his mouth as if he were laughing at me, and then turned back to what he was doing.
Something smells wrong here. Very wrong.
“I see your dog is well trained, Beggar. Well done,” Sir Sorken said. “Whatever you do, don’t let him urinate on the golems. They may have frozen at Sir Coriand’s death, but they do hold a grudge, and if they awaken, they might take it personally.”
“Can’t you wake them?” I asked, looking from golem to golem.
“Can I?” Sorken asked. “Do you think that is in my power?”
“I notice you aren’t answering direct questions,” I said grimly. “Has your plan blown up now that your accomplice is deceased?”
“Sir Coriand was my friend,” Sir Sorken announced, loudly but surprisingly dispassionately. “A truth you did not factor in when you beheaded him so dramatically. But we were not conspirators. I came to this place just like you, on the orders of my aspect. I came to seek the Cup of Tears, which I continue to do. If he had other plans, well, that’s news to me. A man is welcome to his secrets. I certainly have mine. But you can hardly prosecute me for what you consider him guilty of committing, hmm? Or have you more in common with Sir Kodelai than we imagined?”
I felt my cheeks heat at his words. He was right. I’d prejudged him without knowing.
“Guilt is a cruel mistress,” Sir Adalbrand said under his breath as he finished tying the bandage around my arm. He’d had one in his belt pouch, of course. That was just like him. “I would not bend my conscience under the words of Sir Sorken. Lying is not impossible for him, even if he’s forsworn against it.”
He had removed his gauntlets to bandage the arm and now he reached out and pinched my chin between his finger and thumb. I felt a little shiver run through me as he looked into my eyes as if they were quenching a thirst within him and said, “Forsworn is not the same as impossible. I know it. Mayhap the Engineer knows it, too.”
I shivered and his ghost of a smile only made it worse.
“See?” He swallowed and looked away sharply.
“Whatever you’re whispering about over there, please keep it down,” Sir Sorken said from on high. “The three of us have work to do. Work that may very well take all night. Perhaps it’s good you’ve opted out, Sir Adalbrand. There won’t be a place up here for you anyway. Ten hours is very little time to write a thesis that must stand the test of millennia. Don’t you think, Penitent?”
“I do think so,” Sir Owalan said distractedly. His pen scratched along his paper and his tongue stuck out one corner of his mouth like that of a schoolboy figuring problems. “I will not fail at this task. Do not try to hinder me again, Beggar. I spared your dog once. I am rather fond of animals, after all. I will not spare him twice.”
Without another word, Sir Adalbrand took my hand and led me to the wall where the water was running down over the marble. He washed his hands and face quickly in the fecund-smelling water and I joined him, just hoping our horses hadn’t relieved themselves into the stream recently. It seemed fine enough, but water could fool you. Just like paladins. That which seems clear and pure could turn out to be poison.
“Will you craft a demon in the harnesses?” Adalbrand asked me quietly as we washed. He had a way of moving his strong hands that seemed too delicate for such large fingers. It charmed me more than I could admit even to myself.
Tell him no.
Again, I could not determine the speaker. And I was worried. Were the two melding together, or had Sir Branson lost his reins on the demon?
“I will not,” I said, firmly.
His smile was tired. “If only this were holy water and not runoff from the melting Rim.”
I smiled ruefully at that.
“I don’t know if these golems may wake again, but you have not slept in a night and a day and I have not slept properly in that same time,” Adalbrand murmured. “Let us sit back-to-back and try to sleep, and if one is attacked the other can defend them.”
“It’s a good idea,” I agreed.
We found a place beside one of the benches, neither of us looking up at the mutterings from overhead.
Adalbrand removed his breastplate and backplate and with calm care, we pressed our spines and the blades of our shoulders together, set the swords across our knees, and each faced one of the still golems. In between them, Brindle chewed happily at Suture’s arm. And behind him, three twisting shapes grew more and more clear as they were formed from darkness and desire and selfish ambition.
I could see Sir Coriand’s head from where I sat. And the sight ate at me. I had killed him. He’d deserved it most assuredly, but even with his confession hot on his lips, the men of my aspect would want an accounting for his blood. I would be trialed. I may even be condemned. I had a thought that likely Sir Sorken would demand such, and if not him then the High Saint, and they would be right to require it of me. I’d killed a fellow holy knight. One did not just get up on their horse and ride away after that.
“Bless me, for I have sinned,” I said in a small voice, unable to see Adalbrand’s face, but snaking my off-hand back to find his hand.
He twisted his blunt, calloused fingers in mine readily enough. “I cannot be both your lover and your confessor, Lady Paladin.”
I shivered at the word “love” but he did not sound as if he judged. He sounded … tender.
“Must I choose then?” I asked wistfully. For I wanted him to be both. I wanted both the holy Saint and the tantalizing man. Was that too much to ask for?
“Yes,” he whispered, and his whisper sounded amused. “You must choose, Victoriana.”
And it was how he whispered my name — as if by caressing it with his tongue he could caress me, too — that made me bold enough to lay my heart bare. And why not? What had I left to lose?
Everything?
Why should I not make him both lover and confessor when the hours of my life slipped away like the hours of a winter day — too short, too dark, too pallid?
Do not do this. You leave yourself open to ruin.
Then he could ruin me. I cared not.
I whispered my reply, and if the demon or the dog or the missing knight minded, then they could go chew a golem bone for all I cared.
“I cannot choose one or the other, for my heart has made me yours down to its inmost weaving.” I couldn’t help but turn my head over my shoulder toward him so that I could catch the edge of his suddenly flushed cheek out of the corner of my eye.
“There is no longer a choice,” I went on. “You’re beloved or no one is. You’re treasured or I can no longer treasure.”
His back on mine was warm enough to heat me through — almost warm enough that I wondered if his heart were suddenly beating hard and fast just like mine.
“I was not made for flighty love, for pleasure without allegiance, for enjoyment without cost, for easy affection without eternal loyalty. Draw me close or cast me away, it makes no difference to the direction of my heart.”
I heard the sharp drawing in of his breath, caught the edge of his parted lips from the corner of my eye. It made my cheeks tingle, they’d grown so hot.
“I’ll love you still even if I go back out to my wandering paths and never set my eyes on your form again. I’ll love you in the dark caves and earthen sets of my heart. I’ll love you in the silent hours when the world sleeps. I’ll love you when I stare long into the heart of the fire in the cold of the night, when the wind sweeps across a world of ocean only to tangle through my hair, when the snow melts and the scents of the hopes of dreaming grasses release into the air, and I’ll love you yet when my soul at long last releases from this flesh and wings its way to the God. Even then will I treasure the sweet taste of your name on my lips, of the knowing of you on my heart. You have set me as a seal sets wax. I am changed forever and none but thee can break the seal and open me.”
Perhaps that might have seemed an extreme statement to make about a man I’d only met a few days before. But this close to the forces of life and death, to heaven and hell, with our souls and loyalties laid bare and all our secrets out, it felt perfectly natural to leap into life with the same intensity that it was setting upon us.
We were, without consciously meaning to, angling our faces away from the others, and for a moment we were both looking over our shoulders at one another, our breath mingling hot between us, our fingers tangled like roots of two unlike trees, and a mutual understanding hanging heavy and full in the air between us. After a very long moment, he nodded.
“I have thoughts on that,” he said quietly. “I have many thoughts. But they are not for this place. Or for the robber ears of our enemies. Go to sleep, Lady Paladin. I will watch your back and pray to the God for a solution to this madness.”
I wished he would tell me his thoughts anyway. It felt almost painfully vulnerable to have exposed myself so thoroughly. Perhaps he regretted the things he said earlier. Perhaps he was not so set on me as I was on him.
Perhaps he’s looking at a headless corpse and a frozen golem that wants him dead and a demon-infested dog chewing the arm of a living thing and he’s just not in the mood to be overly chatty.
Perhaps.
I smiled wryly and settled back in place, facing forward again, and when I shut my eyes the exhaustion of my body overwhelmed the tense longing of my heart. I was asleep in three breaths, but not before I heard the faintest of whispers.
“Doubt anything you like, Victoriana, Lady of the Rejected Aspect, but do not doubt me. Though all the world rejects you, I never shall.”
