Of Deeds Most Valiant: A Poisoned Saints Novel

By the five bones. By the Saint’s cowl. By the —

I felt the demon rip the voice from Sir Branson and take it himself.

Ignore it, snackling. It’s not your concern. Keep going.

But it was a demon. Most certainly. I had no doubt. And neither did my companions, based on their reactions. I should cast it out. I should not flee.

I adore your arrogance that you think you could cast out a demon someone else trapped thousands of years ago. Ages have passed. The world has turned. This place was buried and revealed and in all that time this trap has held … and you will open it? You adorable child. You sweet summer lamb. You will disassemble the cage? You will remove the bait?

Bait?

What would you name it? This is not a prison made to hold demons. There’s a special name for that place, if you’ll recall. The denizen you just saw is the minnow slid onto the hook. It waits for a much bigger fish.

But what would a living demon be bait for?

More demons? Perhaps these monks were set on the destruction of evil forces?

Whoever was counseling me now seemed very uncertain about his suggestion.

And I was just as wary. I bit my lip until I almost tasted blood. Fear coursed ragged and sharp through my veins. It was my payment for entering this place, I knew it. For I had not been this terrified when my own, dear Sir Branson tried to kill me, nor when I was forced to slay him, nor when his face was torn off by his dog.

Fear is a useful weapon when one must be careful not to slip into a roaring river, but it is a terrible thing when there is no clear danger and one must watch every shadow for what might be the threat.

I peered upward again. I didn’t like the look of these massive statues. I didn’t like that they looked like us. How could they have been made in our image when they were created thousands of years ago?

There are great forces at work here. Don’t you feel them? Or are you too thick? Too human?

Quiet, fiend.

Quiet yourself, sweetmeat. You need me down here. Need me more than you ever needed the old paladin. He’s nothing now but an echo of a conscience that isn’t serving you. Lean now on me. You’ll need it if you’re going to lead this pasty cohort to victory.

I swallowed and followed Adalbrand down the stairs. He was acting strangely, seeming to want to be near me and distant from me both at once, and he still limped from where Brindle had bitten a chunk out of his leg.

Worth it.

I was worried he might be an unstable ally.

I stole a glance at him. His shoulders were slumped and face was pale from healing the others. Interesting that none of them stayed behind to make sure he was capable of continuing. Was it possible that Poisoned Saints were as overlooked as Vagabond Paladins?

It’s not quite the same. The things that blind the average person to our worth are not quite the same as what makes them squirrelly around the Poisoned Saints. With us, they are blind — they see only surface things and since our surface is grimy, they do not see the gold beneath it, just as they cannot see the rot beneath a lacquered surface. In the case of the poor Poisoned Saints, no one likes the reminder that they bear for us what we cannot bear ourselves. It makes the soul squirm a little. Guilt is handled easiest when banished deep underground.

Amen to that, the demon agreed. I never have dealings with guilt. He cheats you every time.

The demon spoke as if guilt were a person.

Of course he is. He wears a strange hat and has too many eyes for his face.

I shivered. This place was not the right setting for stories that made the spine crawl.

Perhaps Adalbrand’s strangeness, then, was only his reaction to this beautiful but haunting place. Or perhaps he was likewise possessed by a slightly indulgent demon who would rip his throat out if it could.

I swallowed the hysterical laugh that tried to crawl up my throat and rested a hand on Brindle’s head.

He smelled incredibly doggy for an animal that was really only one-third dog. I leaned into the scent, trying to remember what was real and physical in a world stained through with spirits. I did not want this monastery to get under my skin any more than it was and already it was creeping under it like an army of ants on a quest to raid my heart. What kind of monks would have been in a place like this?

Can’t you feel the power here? Even a thousand years later it pulses through me like life blood.

The power made me itch worse than pepperleaf.

What if it can make you a Saint? What if it made the other Saints you know and adore?

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Was it possible that some of the statues in the churches I had visited were of mortals who came to this very place and sat underneath that glossy black demon, and somehow were refined into something brighter and more holy? And if they were, who was I to say that this was wrong or threatening? A good paladin would want it, wouldn’t she? No matter the discomfort. No matter the price.

Say your catechism, my dear. I always find that helps.

I didn’t think it was going to help this time.

The demon started to laugh.

It’s a good suggestion, even if it was made by a fiend, Sir Branson said wryly. Is that how you begin, demon? Do you take the unsuspecting slowly, first with good advice and then gradually with a souring of it?

I shivered. I would not be taken by a demon. Not now. Not ever. I glanced up at the ceiling again, horribly conscious that now there were two demons in the room, and I — a hunter of demons — seemed unequal to the task of destroying either of them.

I want to be very clear, Sir Branson told me. The demon in your head is not a toy. He is not tame. You must not grow used to him.

Oooh, what’s this now? Treachery?

We were nearly to the bottom of the stairs and the other paladins were all staring at words etched below the triptych window. Someone had thought they were important enough to carve them as tall as my hand into the stone and then inlay them with bronze. As one, the others turned to look up at me.

Good thing I’d brought the dog. Apparently, I’d be working translation duty for the duration of this foray. I reached down and laid a hand on Brindle’s head. He looked up at me with those liquid puppy eyes.

“Who’s a good doggy, then?” I whispered to him.

Isn’t he warming to the heart? You know as well as I do that you could never kill him, snackling.

The demon laughed in my mind.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Sir Adalbrand looking up at the broken window with a wen between his brows. Did he see something there that I did not?

Read the words, demon. And let’s see what it takes to be made a Saint.

The laughter grew louder but the demon complied.

“Our hearts spoke out our hopes

And our souls bore the cost

The man and the spirit

and all that was lost.

Bold together we race

where no others have trod.

For we are more than men,

We have become … Saints.”

So, these people really did think they could become Saints. Those privileged few chosen by the God to do great works upon the earth or sit in his council after death. What devoted worshipper wouldn’t crave that? Surely, no paladin would back down from such a challenge.

I glanced around at the eight paladins with me — each representing a different way of viewing the same god. Were these people Saint material?

“What does it say, Beggar?” The Majester General asked me. Charming. He should double as a jailkeeper with a face like that.

I kept my own face blank and even as I repeated the demon’s translation, trying to judge the reactions of those listening. And if it was strange that a demon was rattling off the recipe to be made a Saint, no one noticed. And if it was odd that every eye seemed to light and every back grow straighter, well, no one mentioned that either. But I was keeping mental notes.

“So, this really is a place where Sainthood can be found,” Sir Kodelai said with a reverent sigh. No one could fault him for his holy ambition. “It’s been four generations since a Saint was named. Is it possible that we needed a place like this to finally achieve holy perfection before the face of the God?”

“If we find the Cup, perhaps,” the High Saint said in a quelling tone. By the glimmer in his eye, I thought he found it a personal affront that someone else would consider themselves to be worthy of Sainthood when he was standing right there — practically an inch from their noses — being the most austerely holy of them all. “Let us pause and pray.”

I wasn’t interested in listening to more of their chatter and I didn’t want to spend a moment more lingering here than I had to — not even in prayer. There was an itch between my shoulder blades that wouldn’t go away, and the manner in which the paladins all paused to kneel together around the broken triptych made my skin crawl.

The sea breeze drifted in through the panes of the triptych in sharp, cold gusts. The original window had depicted two characters, one pale in whites and blues, the other formed of dusky dark crimsons and flaring golds. Flowers in varying states of bloom were scattered across the bottoms of their individual panes. Someone had taken considerable efforts to depict each in their own window and then the pair of them tangled together in the larger middle windowpane. Just enough of the windows had been lost that both individual windows were missing the creatures’ faces and whatever had been in their hands.

The dark creature seemed to stand in a sea of water and the light creature in a sea of fire. These seas were depicted in the colors of the other. But in the center, there was no sea, just two beings — man, beast, devil, or angel, who could say — tangled together in what could have been an embrace, a mutual death, or a terrifying battle. Whichever it was, one thing was very strange. One of the two characters — and it was impossible to tell which one — was holding a trident, and each of the three tips was streaked in red.

I didn’t want to be near that window, though I could not have said why. That it was placed directly over the rhyme I’d recited for the others only made my stomach flip more. It was possible these monks merely had a theology that involved unfamiliar symbols and that my reaction was mere prejudice.

Unlikely. You’ve never been very prejudiced, my girl, except against the rich.

On the whole, I was inclined to agree with Sir Branson. Something was wrong here. If this place truly created Saints, then perhaps it weeded out unworthy candidates by showing them that window and then tossing anyone who didn’t see how problematic it was.

I would be the first to confess I hadn’t seen the great places of the earth’s kingdoms, despite my wide and varied travels, but among those I had seen, there’d always been a clear theme. Good was depicted as slaying evil. Had this been a knight with his foot on a devil’s neck and that trident stuck in its back, I would have been happy to kneel in prayer before it. It deeply troubled me that the others didn’t see the wrongness of a stalemate.

One of them added a happy verse to the song.

Yes, that was my first clue that the High Saint was not as high as he claimed to be.

The voice in my head snickered.

I adore your judgmental heart, little snackling. Don’t ever change it. It brings you closer and closer to me. Let’s go see what other paladins we can break, shall we?

Do you ever trip on your own certainty, Hxyaltrytchus?

No, but the tail can be problematic.

And now my cheeks were heating at being complimented by a demon for what was surely a sin. Tonight, I’d need to mortify my flesh to make penance. Perhaps I’d spend another night without the tent.

Or you could pass on the tea the Engineers make. That would be a fitting punishment for a judging heart.

The God forfend. That punishment was a bit steep.

For the first time since this began, I thought the laughter in my head might be Sir Branson’s.

I broke off from the others, hoping that in their reverence they wouldn’t notice me shuddering as I slipped away, and headed down the bank of windows at speed toward the towering feet of the statue that looked too much like our Prince Paladin. Brindle loped beside me. Even given his possessed state, it felt better to have him with me.

It is better. You’d miss us if we left. Who would teach you to look past the surface?

I already did that well enough.

Yes, but not like I do. I can show you the infected heart of a man and tell you how he will rot.

What a delight.

And then I can offer recipes for rotted heart.

The light spilling from the stone-encased windows was unnerving — it seemed too bright and the sun still too low for all that had happened so far. But perhaps, if I searched steadily and carefully, I could complete the search in one day and I wouldn’t have to pass through that eerie door again. I hadn’t liked confessing my core sin. Saying it aloud felt too much like cementing it into reality. And what if I had to add another sin to the list tomorrow? What if I was struck dead for greed, as I was fairly certain Hefertus nearly had been?

You have all your things. You could camp in here. Wasn’t that your original intention? The horse will be fine. He’s beside a stream, and I’m sure the Engineers won’t be so heartless as to not check on the animals.

That had been my original plan. I glanced up above me at the gleaming black form barely visible from the marble floor. I wasn’t sure, anymore, that I could sleep in here. In fact, I was hardly certain that I could sleep above, knowing there was a demon trapped just below me.

And yet you sleep every night with one cuddled next to you. Ironic.

Brindle, oblivious to our conversation, trotted ahead, sniffing everything, from the mosaic map on the floor for a world that didn’t exist, to the feet of the statues. I hoped he didn’t feel the need to scent mark them.

It must be nice to be as oblivious as the other aspects were about demons but unfortunately, that made them poor backup if I were to try to cast the one above out.

You can’t. Not unless you open the trap. And if you do, then he’ll be loose first. You can’t remove him on your own. You need backup.

Once, when Sir Branson lived, we were rustled from where we were sleeping in a barn loft as a man with a red nose and redder eyes pled with us to join others of our aspect in his village.

“They say they can’t do it alone,” he’d told us, nearly tearing the edge of his jerkin as he wrung it back and forth between nervous hands. “Please come.”

We’d gone, grim and miserable, to help. It had taken two paladins, a squire, and a night of prayer, though fortunately we’d managed to dislodge the demon the easy way — without violence. Had we not been near to help, Sir Fransisci might have had to try a more brutal method — or failed entirely. I hadn’t thought of that night in decades. It had been … troubling.

“I thought you’d agreed that two were better than one,” a deep voice said, ripping me from the memory as the Poisoned Saint caught up with me.

Three is better than one. But four is entertaining. Dance for us, pretty knight. Bare your vices so we can laugh.

When I glanced at him, his eyes were scanning the room around us, catching on details and then discarding them as if he were looking for danger. It was not easy to rule anything out quickly in this place. Everything was carved or sculpted or decorated, so ornate, and breathtakingly intricate, and all of it carved in white stone. I couldn’t help but wonder what the rooms aboveground might have been like. Could they have matched this grandeur? You could host a ball in this main room at the bottom of the stairs and the beauty of the hall would outshine any guests.

Sir Adalbrand’s hand rode on his sword pommel, ready to draw at a moment’s notice. When his eyes finally caught mine, they glittered with suspicion, matching the shining cup embroidered on his tabard. It was the only bright thing on his person. His cloak and tabard were black and his chainmail was rubbed with something to blacken it, too. He looked out of place in this spotless white realm.

“Not one of the faithful?” I asked him, looking over my shoulder a second time, this time not at a demon but at those who were far more devout than I could be with my tenuous hold on faith, the God have mercy on me. Whatever power they felt seeping through the air and into their souls when they prayed eluded me, left me empty and dry.

“You’re a puzzle, Lady Paladin,” Sir Adalbrand said with a small smile as he matched his pace to mine. He kept a wide berth from Brindle. That bite must still pain him.

A puzzle he wants to solve. Snicker.

Did the demon just say “snicker”?

The demon’s teasing might have made my tone sterner than usual. “I don’t see how I can puzzle you. I say what I mean and mean what I say.”

He might be pretty to look at and gentle with those hands, but right now Adalbrand was an unwelcome distraction. I had a quest to complete, a demon waiting to drop on me from above, another ready to tear my throat out in the night the moment my paladin superior slipped, and a bad case of terror still lingering from passing through the door. It made every shadow seem exaggerated and every item feel threatening. Even the strange map on the floor made my skin crawl.

My heightened fear kept telling me that this was no monastery but an elaborate gate to hell, and that could not be true.

I did not need distractions on top of everything else.

“And you don’t stay for prayers,” he said softly, but his soft tone had a blade buried in it, ready to slide out and strike if he did not care for my answer.

Interesting.

I met his eyes then. The last orange in the morning light made their brown depths cinnamon. I could almost taste the spice on my tongue.

So can I, the demon purred.

“You didn’t stay for prayers either,” I said equally softly.

He licked his lips, considering. He was weighing something. Measuring his words with care.

“Didn’t your parents teach you to pray? Or were you born untamable?”

If I did not know better, I’d think he was beguiling me. His expression was subtle, barely playing in the fine lines around his mouth.

I hesitated. But what would the truth hurt? Especially now, when the secrets I had to keep were so much more dire than the ones about my past.

“My parents were good and devout, but they died at the hands of fever, one after another over the course of two nights.”

He looked stricken, and paused, laying a hand on my arm.

“You have my sympathy. Did you come to the Rejected God after that?”

I pressed my lips firmly together. I was not telling him this for sympathy and I didn’t need his condolences. Or his touch. What I needed was to satisfy his curiosity enough that he would leave me to my work.

“My parents were peddlers and laypeople for the Aspect of the Rejected God. Already on the road. Already devout. It did not seem too great a leap to seek out Sir Branson and beg him to make me squire after they passed. I had met him two weeks prior when our paths crossed and I knew him to be a paladin respected by my parents.”

“How old were you?” His habit of tilting his head when he listened to me was in full force. This was no idle conversation. He was interrogating me. Though why he did that now remained to be seen.

“Eleven years.”

“And he took you as squire?” He sounded surprised.

“Why would he not?” I couldn’t quite keep the prickle from my voice. Why would he doubt me on this?

The dog seemed to cough. It was circling a massive broken clock nestled against the staircase.

Or rather, a clock that seemed broken, because the hands did not move and the time looked like nothing familiar to me. It had four hands and all four pointed up, and on the face of the clock there was a cup engraved. Which could mean anything. It didn’t have to be the Cup of Tears. It could be a clock that timed tea breaks. Who would know?

The clock’s round face was supported by carved hands. There must have been a hundred of them, each the size of a real hand and intricately carved from white marble and then polished until they gleamed. They wove in and out and around one another so that no two were posed the same way.

The ticks around the clock were not labeled with numerals or letters and I didn’t bother counting them beyond checking that the clock base didn’t open.

Sir Adalbrand continued to press his conversation. “You were too old for great book learning and too young to be of physical help. A burden from the moment he took you on.”

The dog coughed again and Adalbrand frowned at it.

Rude to call you a burden. Rude.

I felt my face flush. I had never thought of things like that. I’d always thought that Sir Branson was moderate in every way, neither too generous nor too stingy, not too holy nor too profane, not too indulgent nor too disciplined. Just a man.

I accept this eulogy with gratitude. Blessings on you.

And yet Adalbrand made a good case for him being more than that.

“He must have been a good paladin. Worthy. Honorable,” Sir Adalbrand said gently. The hand on my arm drifted to cup my elbow, as if he were trying to lend an old woman support.

I turned to him, eyes narrowing, and shook his hand off. If he wanted to touch me, he should get my permission.

I agree. Too much flattery is never wise. Why so many flowery words for a man he never met? Why all this touching? From a Poisoned Saint, no less.

I was already agitated and this conversation was making it worse.

“And I killed him?” I hissed, turning my body so that if he drew on me I’d be ready in my defense. “Is that what you’ve come to bring to mind? Will you make a demand now before you agree to keep my secret?”

Cough.

I glanced over my shoulder again, but the others were all still praying, some kneeling, some at parade rest, others with hands lifted upward. I didn’t need to fear what the paladins might hear or see.

“No,” Adalbrand whispered back in a tone fit for the halls of a library. Something I could not read flickered across his expression. “That’s not what …”

“Thank you for your interest,” I said coldly, turning sharply to the first door we’d come to and striding through. I didn’t care where it went so long as it was not where Adalbrand could blackmail me.

It led to a hall with a smooth marble floor and white paneling on the walls that was carved to look as if it were woven. Someone had fitted the wall panels with candle recesses and in each one was a cup or a goblet or a tumbler. Each was individual in material, shape, and size. Inconvenient. How would we find one cup among many?

Wait for me! The blasted knight is in the way.

I should stay to study the cups — though surely the Cup of Tears would not just be one among many, would it? But the terror that had gripped me when I stepped through the door descended twice as strongly now that I was away from Brindle and Adalbrand. It took hold of my heart and squeezed. It bid me flee whatever was chasing me, and all my years of tight self-control unwound at once.

I hurried up the hall to where it branched, took the branch to the right, and opened the first door I saw. I had no more reason to choose it than any other. Unreasoned panic alone drove my steps.

I stopped in my tracks the moment I entered the first room. I had expected a room of study or hall of prayer. I’d expected books, perhaps, or lines of pews. This, however, was someone’s personal room. And that someone was wealthy, indulgent, and appeared to have left in a hurry. So preserved was the room, it looked as if the owner had just leapt up for a moment, planning to return to the unmade bed, and it gave me the terrible feeling that he was watching me over my shoulder.

Something grabbed me by the pauldrons, shaking a gasp from me, spun me hard and to the left, and pinned me, face-first, against the wood paneling.

My heart hammered in my chest, breath coming in sharp gasps. It couldn’t … there couldn’t be someone living here, could there be? After all this time? Of course not, it was unbelievable, but I couldn’t shake the feeling.

The wall smelled of mildew and dust and rotting books. But it was nothing compared to the panic I felt at having my chest pressed hard to the wood by a force between my shoulder blades. My right cheek was flattened against the wall and I could not turn.

A door slammed. My dog barked. My heart choked me with fear.

My attacker had been smart enough to pin my sword hand. I fought against the vise-grip on my gauntlet, unable to shake him loose or even see who it was who had pinned me. Behind the door, Brindle’s growls were deep and demanding.

What’s he doing to you? Are you dead?

He! Which he?

My breath sawed in my lungs. All I could see in my mind was the looming shape of the black demon unfurling from the ceiling and sliding down the wall to rip out my windpipe. A scream rose in my throat.

“I wouldn’t scream.” The voice was right in my ear, quiet, growling, but laced with something dangerous. I thought I felt the warmth of lips against the shell of my ear.

Adalbrand, of course.

I let my exhale out slowly.

“What are you doing?”

Look, I’ve wanted to be pinned to a wall by an attractive man in armor for about as long as I’ve fantasized about men, but I thought that — ideally — we’d be married and he’d be interested in having fun, not growling threats in my ear.

I couldn’t fault the actual person who pinned me. He lived up to the standard of my dreams just fine. The Poisoned Saint was attractive enough to be distracting, but it was pretty clear from how he slammed my hand against the wall when I tried a twist escape that he wasn’t doing this for fun. Well, not that kind of fun. He might be one of those who enjoyed cruelty to others, and if he was, he could march right off.

“I heard you when you went through the door, even if no one else did,” he whispered. “I heard you confess to doubt. That isn’t the confession of a paladin.”

“Isn’t it?” I asked through gritted teeth while trying to aim a kick backward. “What is the confession of a paladin? Murder? In a moment, Brindle will come through the door and then you’ll have two of us to face at once.”

“Just like Sir Branson did before you stole his cloak and sword?” His whisper became a growl and the brush of his lip stung as the bristle of unshaven face scraped against my ear. “I don’t know what you are, but you are no Vagabond Paladin.”

I held on to my dignity. I wouldn’t plead or demand.

“Who are you to judge? The book says, ‘For each judgment wrought, to each a dole given.’ If you’re judging me, then you’ll be judged the same way.”

“I welcome it.” His breath was hot. I tried again to shake his grip and flinched when he slammed me back against the wall with twice the force he had used before. Pain made my breath spasm and my vision darken. “May the God judge me indeed, for you are no Vagabond Paladin. The Vagabond forswears wealth so that the generous God might provide. The Vagabond asks for a blessing in faith and receives it in a way that no other paladin is given — straight from the heart of the God, in acknowledgment of her physical deprivations. The Vagabond lives a life soaked through with faith, and by your account, so did your lay parents, and so did your mentor.”

“If you have a point to make, make it.”

I kicked out at “make it” and tried to land a blow to his vulnerable knee, but he must have dodged. It was only meant as a distraction as my off-hand went for the dagger in my belt. He was faster than me and just as cunning. He pinned my off-hand with a knee, not once lessening the pressure on my back and other hand. I had to clench my jaw to keep from crying out as his steel greave dug into the small bones of my hand.

“When you confessed to doubt, you confirmed my fears.” He was no longer whispering but his voice was breathy. “That you are no paladin, but a pretender. That you should not be here at all.”

Again, that stab of fear sliced through me from gullet to brain. He knew the edge of my secret. That I was unworthy. That I should not be here.

You should. You must.

“Tell me you deserve to be here,” he breathed into my ear and I shivered.

“I do not,” I confessed.

Saints and Angels, girl. You deserve it if any of them do. Who cares who is “worthy”? In the end, it’s always the one willing to get dirty and do the job.

“Tell me you are the best your Aspect had to offer,” he pressed.

“I cannot.”

How do you know? You met so few of us!

“Tell me, then, if you can, whose authority rests on your shoulders.” The steel in his voice he’d been masking with gentleness slid out now. He was readying himself to fight me and kill me. I could feel it. “Tell me what gives you the right to stand with the rest.”

“The authority of the God,” I breathed and a prayer slipped from my lips unbidden. “Bless me, Rejected God, for I am rejected even as you so often are.”

My prayer might have been feeble. It might have been a dashed-together thing compelled more by desperation than true faith, but I supposed it was also enough, because the Poisoned Saint leapt suddenly backward, and by the time I turned to face him, his jaw had dropped and he was watching me with trembling hands and eyes wide as an owl’s.

“Well. Well, now.” He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes wild and vulnerable, breath huffing out between statements. “That was unexpected.”

“What was unexpected?” I asked, shuddering with relief, drawing in a long breath, and rolling my neck from side to side. I was ready. The second he leapt for me again, my sword would be up and I’d run him through.

My knees were bent, stance ready, sword on my hilt.

Don’t draw yet. I saw something strange through that door …

I didn’t draw.

But I wanted to. My breathing was heavy. Fingers itching.

Across from me, Adalbrand licked his lips. “I’ve only heard the voice of the God once before. When he called me.”

Once before what?

He glanced upward, reverently, looking to the heavens, but all I could think of was that there was a huge, bulbous demon between him and the God. Perhaps even now it laughed at him.

I trembled despite myself, and blood was thick on my breath. How dare he confront me like that? How dare he pin me to the wall like an enemy? If he wanted a fair fight, I would give it to him. Right now. Right here.

“You know,” I said, acidly, “it was unexpected for me, too. Maybe it was too much to ask for a warm reception from my fellow paladins, but an actual attack? Accusations? Threats? What a delight.”

Yes! Get him, snackling!

His face paled.

I raised a single eyebrow.

His eyes were locked on me as if I were some kind of miracle that had been revealed to him.

“You took my secret, freely offered to you, and used it against me,” I said, quiet steel in every word.

Behind the door, Brindle growled, but I wasn’t ready to deal with him yet. One animal at a time.

That’s right, snackling. Eat his gizzard. Grind his heart between your knuckles!

I ignored the voice in my head.

“You used violence to demand answers.”

The Poisoned Saint swallowed and made the sign of the penitent. Knuckles to forehead, then nose, then heart. “How shall I beg your forgiveness, Lady Paladin?”

Make him do more than beg. Make him pay for his failing.

They were all fools.

“Are you unable to see that I could use violence on you, too?” I kept my voice low. Threats are delivered best when they are delivered quietly. “I could come up on you from behind. I could slam you against a wall. Perhaps I don’t have your strength, but I have my cunning.”

He watched me like you might watch a raging bull who has paused to size you up. Which seemed terribly unfair, since he was the one who had just attacked me.

“An eye for an eye,” he muttered, so quietly that I barely caught it. His face flushed hard when he spoke again. “I had no right to manhandle you.”

“No. You did not.”

“I had no right to use your secrets against you.”

“No.”

“But I had to know.”

I lifted an eyebrow. Did he, now?

“Are you likewise afflicted with a punishment from the door?” I asked him as fear spiked hot within me. “Something that twists your mind?”

He nodded and looked away with an expression I’d seen many times before. It was the expression of a survivor realizing they had to deal with the hand they’d been dealt and couldn’t go back to how things had been before. He’d made this mess — mind afflicted or not. Now he must deal with his creation.

He squared his shoulders and turned back to me suddenly. I expected another apology or — perhaps — a justification. People tended to do that when they were particularly embarrassed.

“I will give you another secret of mine,” he said instead. And it was my turn to be surprised enough that my hand fell from my hilt.

“And what? That will make us even?” I felt amusement tickling the corners of my mouth.

“Yes,” he agreed, so fervently that the word sounded like a vow. “I will give you my secret and then I will kneel before you and if you wish to take my head, then that is your right. Perhaps death will be better than the shame I feel now.”

“Hold just a moment, there’s no need to run around headless.”

I threw a hand up but already he was kneeling. He drew his sword from a kneeling stance and I stumbled backward defensively, only for him to slide it roughly across the stone. It spun away until it hit an ancient rug and stopped.

“Your sin is doubt? Mine is lust,” he told me, his eyes wide and palms held up as if making an offering. “I told you I killed a girl. I did not lie. I got her with child and watched as her family abandoned her and mine refused to lend aid. She died giving birth to a stillborn daughter. I came too late to do more than watch her die before my eyes in a frozen, filthy hovel. I killed her as surely as if I’d done it myself. Killed her with my appetites. Killed her with my thoughtless taking. I left that day and swore myself to the Aspect. But we both know that makes up for nothing. It remits no guilt. No life I could live could make up for two innocents robbed of theirs. That’s my secret. Do with it what you will. Both my secret and my life are in your hands.”