Of Deeds Most Valiant: A Poisoned Saints Novel

In all my wanderings over the windswept land, I had not thought to have such a gift as this — of soft kisses and warm eyes wanting to work with me, being one with me in purpose, choosing to take up a burden with me. I stole sidelong glances from time to time as if he might disappear if my eyes left him for too long. This harmony was an uncommonly precious thing.

For his part, Adalbrand met my glances with a small crinkling around his eyes and a very slight half-smile.

“We must try to pretend we are willing to go along with the rest,” he murmured to me. “I fear you are not well versed in pretense.”

“Poverty rarely requires it,” I said in a low voice.

“Chastity requires it almost constantly. I have pretended not to see your charms since the moment I met you.”

“I am sure it has been an easy face to wear,” I said grimly.

I was unused to pretty words and not sure what to do with them. Besides, I had to put aside softness for what was about to come.

Already, I felt the chafe of my conscience. I had sinned. Deliberately. I had added to the creation of a demon. There would be no way to purge myself of such evil without death — either mine or the creature’s that I was creating. It made me feel like I had serrated knives under my skin and every movement made a deeper cut. This was not a time for love.

“Trust me, it has not been easy.” He sounded a little hoarse.

I turned abruptly to face him.

“I love your teasing,” I said a little breathlessly. “I love your kisses and kindness, but I need something more from you now, Sir Knight. I need resolve and purpose, I need all that honor that pours out of you every time you’re bumped or bruised. I need you to stand with me — valiant — against what comes next.”

He was suddenly serious, teasing put aside. He made a half-bow. “You shall have it from me and so shall the God.”

I nodded soberly, tension filling every seam of my being. I didn’t know what else to say. I felt dreadfully inadequate to hold his affections. I was the ragged knight riding through the edge of town, not the lady laughing in the center of the dancing. I was the one begging for scraps, not the one fed from the table of a lord. The best I could manage was to draw courage close, screw my face up with resolve, and walk forward.

He seemed to understand, growing quiet and grave, matching my stride so that we emerged into the main room together.

There was a strangled cry when we stepped out of the corridor and Sir Owalan leapt up from a perch on the edge of the clock like a raven lifting off a corpse.

Worryingly, the cups there were brighter with that dark glow and I thought I saw smoke swirling up from them. Owalan practically ran toward us, relief painting his whole face, arms flung wide. His tabard swirled around him, more akin to a monk’s cassock than a knight’s apparel.

“You did it. You passed the test. I wanted to stay and watch but I couldn’t bear to see you fail.”

It seemed Sir Adalbrand was correct. I was not adept at hiding my emotions.

“I see your doubt,” Sir Owalan said, “but I was of a certainty most worried. The clock ticks down. The time is close. Look. Less than a day remains in the hours it counts down. Already, dawn is lighting the stained glass.”

That made more sense than any worry for our safety. He wanted the cup like a dying man wants reprieve.

“Where is my dog?” I asked him carefully.

I’m here. That Sir Sorken is a lovely fellow. Suggested twice that a dog might be nice roasted. I must say it’s a relief to hear your voice again.

And the demon?

Oh, I’m here, sweetling. Contemplating my revenge. I think it will involve making someone drown himself in that fountain. Do you think golems drown?

I did not.

What a pity.

Owalan waved an uncaring hand. “The golems are tending your dog. I’m sure you have nothing to fear. Come.” His hands clawed toward my arm as if to take it but I shook them off, revulsion filling me at the glimpse of the dagger under his sleeve. He hardly seemed to notice the slight. “You must look at the puzzle. It is stumping us all. It must be attended immediately.”

He was trying to draw us to the left, toward where the new puzzle was likely waiting behind the grate and where the bodies we’d managed to recover would be laid out as if in a crypt. I shuddered at the thought of walking past them and then again at the thought of the Majester rotting somewhere below.

“Where are the others?” Adalbrand asked Owalan, peering toward the right. If they were still camping at the base of the stairs, they should be in that direction. I thought I could just make them out with the faintest colored light of dawn through stained glass washing over them.

“Sleeping while they can,” Owalan said, motioning to us to hustle after him.

His shadow seemed to be twice the height as usual — looming over him like a monster under the bed finally come to claim its victim. That could only be my imagination, attributing malice where natural phenomena were at play, but imagination or not, it made every hair on the back of my arms stand on end. I kept half an eye on that shadow, watching to see if it were truly anchored to Owalan or if it could slip the bounds and reach out to try to hook me. Fanciful? Perhaps, but this place was making me warier than a rich man guarding his money.

“Sir Sorken is taking a turn at the puzzle,” Owalan said, trying to hustle us along. “We’ve all tried, of course, but no one could manage it. Perhaps you’ll see something we missed.”

He led us toward the wall where the locked door with the grate covered the puzzle that would turn us one more time counterclockwise.

“Did the High Saint try it?” Adalbrand asked.

“Yes, and you know he’s considered a scholar among his people.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said. The High Saint? He was so militant. I did not think one could be scholarly and bloodthirsty at the same time.

The scholars in the capital are even more aggressive. They will fight to the death over the subtle sub-meaning of a word in a passage of text as opposed to its use in a different text with a slightly more nuanced subtext, and friendships will dissolve and kingdoms fracture and then people will die.

All that over a word?

One of the good ones, yes.

And the not so good ones?

Blood will still be spilt. It’s why their aspect is ever fracturing and fracturing again into creeds and confessions and distinctions none of us can keep track of. I think Joran Rue is a High Saint of the Castlerock Creed modified by the Year of the Skink Convocation. But I might have miscounted the knots in his belt and if I did, then he’s something else entirely.

I shook my head. Madness. I’d rarely thought much further than being sure my hands and heart were pure to keep demons from catching a hook into me. I’d had no time for confessions or creeds and their nuances.

Sir Owalan elaborated. “The High Saint knows Anicani’s Catechism and the Confession of the Faith of the Year of Our Lady’s Mercy and all five of Prirene’s Discourses by heart.”

“He does?” I didn’t even know what those were.

They don’t feed you when you’re hungry, I can assure you of that.

“Certainly. He’s the son of his aspect’s High Elder. They’re very devoted to doctrine and the teaching of the fathers. The High Saint has forsworn both riches and marriage for his place in the aspect.” Owalan laughed suddenly. “It’s like he’s both of you at once.”

He glanced back and forth at both Adalbrand and me, squinting in the darkness between the glowing clock and whatever glowed up ahead. It was as if he thought we’d laugh, too.

We did not laugh.

Brindle did not laugh.

Give me some credit, the demon complained. I still have an intact sense of humor.

Owalan looked around nervously.

“If anyone is to be made a Saint, it will be the High Saint.” His voice trailed through the words like he was hoping for the opposite even as he spoke them. “Look at all the others who have failed. You know the reputations of the Seer Ecember — she who moved the populations of cities before the typhoon in the Year of Saint Aspertine and saved thousands of lives — and Sir Kodelai, whose fame preceded him. Did you also know that Roivolard Masamera — the Majester General — was a key negotiator at the end of the Siege of Curan? Or that Sir Hexalan was renowned among the Inquisitors for his kindness and capability in sorting out refugees after the cataclysm struck in High Sartre? He earned a reputation there that could have carried him to the head of his aspect someday.”

I frowned, somewhat horrified by his callousness. “If you know the accomplishments of all the others, why do you care so little about their deaths?”

He looked appalled. “I have the greatest sense of sorrow at their deaths. It is you who trivializes them.”

“Me?”

We were almost to the other door. Sir Sorken stood hunched over the grate, fiddling with it, while beside him his golem held up a handful of oil and a burning wick to light his way. It made a strange light that seemed to dance to its own tune. Sir Sorken’s shadow towered behind him.

And Sir Owalan’s.

And Adalbrand’s.

I frowned. But not the golem’s. The golem’s shadow was long, but it looked correct to my eyes. It was the other shadows that seemed not just long, but overly deep and black, and as I watched, Sir Sorken’s shadow bubbled up like a pot of starch left too long on the flame. It rose, building, and then a tendril of it reached out and coiled around the crown of his head like a diadem.

I gasped.

“Yes, you,” Sir Owalan was still chiding as if he hadn’t noticed that the shadows were behaving as if they were alive. “If you honored their deaths, then you would fight for Sainthood. Is that not why they died? In pursuit of the divine? If you keep refusing to take the trials and make the necessary sacrifices then you spit on their deaths. Thank the God for Sir Adalbrand, who awoke and spoke sense to you.”

“Yes, thank the God he awoke,” I said dryly. “After you dragged his unconscious form into a trial and left him there to fend for himself.”

“I did no such thing. That was Sir Coriand.”

“You stood by and watched. Watching an act and doing nothing is giving your approval.”

I rounded on him in time to see his stony features flicker with anger, and as they flickered, his shadow flickered, and it built and built up over him, towering and guttering like an uncertain fire when it is only just kindled and not yet set into the bones of the logs that fuel it. Behind those features, his shadow curled up like an animal threatened, trying to appear larger than an enemy. It swayed back and forth as if to charm me into stillness.

Sir Owalan spoke again, this time like a pronouncement. “I do not like you, Beggar. You are neither accomplished nor intelligent. You do not see what we are trying to achieve here. And how could you? Is it not written, ‘do not throw thy rubies to the dogs’?”

“I certainly wouldn’t throw them to her dog,” Adalbrand said darkly, dragging us behind him by dint of the pace he was setting. Why did these people have to build this arcanery to such a grand scale?

I shot Adalbrand a look. He’d been silent through this whole discussion. I couldn’t tell if his shadow had grown and was lurking low and undetectable, or if it was the same as it always had been.

The look Adalbrand sent back in reply was a wry half smile, as if he found Sir Owalan amusing, or — perhaps — as if he found me just distracting enough that he hadn’t quite been paying attention to the Penitent.

He cleared his throat. “No one has to like anyone. We simply must survive this mess without bloodshed and murder. And if that seems like an easy achievement, Penitent,” he said as Sir Owalan opened his mouth, “then I bid you look upon those who have already been trampled in our race to the divine.”

He gestured curtly to the bodies we were passing. They had not been arranged beyond being laid in a line. Someone had made an effort to kick Sir Kodelai’s ashes in a kind of a heap. I wasn’t sure if I hoped or feared it was one of the golems. It embarrassed me that they were seeing all of this — silent witnesses to the horrors men and women would inflict on each other when pressed, even those men and women who thought themselves holy. If the golems thought, then what did they think of this? Did they judge? Surely they must. Surely, the God must. We were all stained through to the marrow.

“Decided to join us, did you, Beggar?” Sir Sorken asked, looking over his shoulder at us as we finally approached. “Got over your scruples?”

“How does this door show the puzzle through the grate but then when the room twists, you can walk through the door to the next trial?” Sir Owalan asked crankily, shifting his stance so he wouldn’t have to look at me.

“They’re offset,” Sir Sorken said. “Just by enough that you don’t really notice. The puzzles are behind rock when you aren’t working on them.”

He turned to face us and the light of the makeshift lantern in the golem’s hand flickered wildly.

“I am not over the Majester’s death, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said in a low tone.

“I had no idea that the two of you were so close,” Sir Sorken said in a tone of false innocence, mocking me.

“Must you be close to someone to mourn their passing?”

His voice was purposefully innocent when he said, “You do if it’s Roivolard Masamera. The man had no understanding of a good tea. Here, look at the puzzle, what do you see?”

Behind the grate was a series of colored glass slats arranged both horizontally and vertically in a small frame. Sir Sorken reached his fat fingers through the holes of the grate and slid a few with a clack, clack.

“It’s a common slide puzzle,” Adalbrand said from behind me. I liked the way his breath tickled the back of my neck, the way he wasn’t nervous about standing close to me, like it was normal now for us to share breath and warmth.

“A slide puzzle with no solution,” Sir Sorken said sharply, annoyed. “We tried the colors of the stained glass window, before you ask. We tried them in various orders. We tried the colors of the liturgical calendar in various orders. We tried the colors of the major kingdoms at the time this a — monastery was common, also.”

And there’s where he slipped, wasn’t it? Because I heard the “ah” before the word “monastery.” And I knew that somehow, he knew this was called an arcanery. Had Sir Coriand told him that?

“What’s that just above the puzzle?” Sir Adalbrand asked, pointing out a tiny etched marking. “Is that a pitchfork?”

Cleft held his thick, rocky hand a little closer to the puzzle and I saw what Adalbrand was pointing to. A small pitchfork etched into the rock above the puzzle. It was missing a tine, broken off a quarter of the way up. And my mind scrambled to remind me that I’d seen that before. I’d thought it was a trident, hadn’t I?

“It could be, I suppose. Have you ever seen another pitchfork in these parts?”

Adalbrand shook his head. I didn’t think anyone had noticed that window but me.

“Let me try,” I said grimly.

“Have at it, Vagabond. And while you take your turn, I think I’ll go and brew up some more tea. Stay with the girl, would you, Cleft? You’re the only lamp we have, there’s a fine fellow. Are you coming, Sir Owalan?”

“I think I’ll wait here,” the Penitent Paladin said grimly. “Having once abandoned duty, I do not trust the Vagabond not to run off looking for her dog when it is her turn to work the puzzle.”

“Where is my dog?” I asked mildly.

That’s right. Don’t forget the nice doggy.

“Occupied,” Sir Sorken said briskly. “And so he will remain so until you’ve taken a turn at cracking the code. Time runs thin.”

Adalbrand coughed as I frowned and turned my attention to the slide puzzle.

I could still remember the colors of the original broken triptych. I’d thought it was odd how they’d put the orange and red and blue and green in places I hadn’t expected. I thought that — perhaps — I could replicate that pattern if I concentrated.

Behind me, I heard Adalbrand murmuring. “I’d fetch the lady paladin’s dog, were I you.”

“And why is that?” Sir Sorken asked.

“With the death of the Inquisitor,” Adalbrand said, keeping his voice so low that it was hard to hear over the click of the glass tiles as I moved them round and round to slide into place. “I would hazard that Victoriana Greenmantle is the most skilled with the sword among those of us who remain. She is shaken by the death of the Majester — a death she has told me was murder.”

“The man who jumped?” Sir Sorken asked darkly. “I’m sure you’ve seen suicides before. You’re no child.”

“Even so, I think it would be best not to provoke her.”

“Is that why you’ve been so quiet? I’ll not tiptoe around anyone.” Sir Owalan had a dagger out and he was carving the stations of the Saint into the skin on his arm, tracing old white scars there that he had clearly traced and traced before. “The God alone is my judge.”

“There’s also the matter of how you left me in that challenge to die,” Adalbrand said in an undertone that suggested he was not eager to bring up this next point.

“Surely you didn’t consider the Beggar Paladin to be a threat!” Sir Owalan said plaintively. “She’s such a … crass thing.”

“Crass,” Adalbrand repeated dryly.

“Not one of us,” Owalan tried in a smaller voice.

“Possibly, she is not even a paladin,” Sir Sorken said like one trying to break bad news. I almost turned around to look at him at that. “Sir Coriand says there is a demon in her dog.”

“A demon?” Sir Owalan sounded alarmed. “Why did no one tell me of this? I must chant a prayer for your souls immediately.”

He was ignored by the others.

The cat is out of the bag, dear girl. Or rather the demon is in the dog and everyone knows. The Engineers have been whispering about it all night. They have not yet decided whether to kill Brindle and harvest the demon — those were their exact words — or whether to keep it within the dog so they can blackmail and control you.

And here I thought I liked the Engineers. Their behavior was looking more and more suspicious.

Wellll … I mean, you are hardly one to judge. You are carting a demon around the place. We must be reasonable in what we ask from others.

“I did not mean that I felt threatened by her, merely that I was abandoned by you.”

Sir Owalan scoffed. “We all knew you’d awaken and solve the puzzle. You’re no fool.”

Sir Sorken made a vague sound in the back of his throat. “Perhaps you should go fetch the Beggar’s dog, Sir Owalan. I need to have a word with the Poisoned Saint in private.”

There was a pause, as if Sir Owalan might argue the point, but after a moment he made a sound of acquiescence and then his footfalls marched away.

Sir Soken likely thought he was whispering when next he spoke but his whisper carried so easily that I heard every word. I glanced up at Cleft, who patiently held the lamp as I worked, wondering if he heard, too. If he did, he made no sign of it.

“You walk on rotten ice with that one, Poisoned Saint.”

“How do you mean?”

Sorken snorted. “Don’t think I’ve failed to notice what game you play. King’s bastard or no, you must know you’d be in terrible trouble with your aspect if I were to report you to Bishop Galifarnas. He’d have your tabard.”

“Speak clearly, then.”

“You’re romancing the Beggar. No, don’t frown at me. I’ve seen the longing looks you two trade back and forth and the way you always seem to fall together. I care not what you do here, but perhaps you should. She throws out accusations and makes wild claims. She harbors demons and accuses us of murder. Her madness is dangerous and destructive and make no mistake, it will splash onto you. See that it doesn’t. End this foolish alliance.” He coughed awkwardly. “She sullies your honor, Sir Knight. And now I must see a golem about a dog.”

And then his footsteps were echoing away from us, too.

I gritted my teeth. He did not paint a very flattering picture of me, and I found myself flushing when Adalbrand joined me by the puzzle, leaning against the wall so he could watch my face as I worked.

He had admitted to being drawn to me. Would that change when he saw how I was regarded by others?

“Did you see their shadows?” I asked as I worked, trying to speak of anything but what truly troubled me.

“I did. I do not know what to make of them, but we are on precarious ground. I have tried to lay seeds that might keep you safe, but the others have turned against you. I see how they look at you. If they can get away with abandoning you, they will.”

He shook his head ruefully and we shared a look.

“Or murdering me?” I lifted a brow.

He nodded tightly, the lines around his eyes growing deeper.

“And you? Are you regretting being close to such a rebel?”

“Hardly.”

I paused. Backtracked two tiles. Tried again. Hesitated, and then just went ahead and asked.

“I didn’t really sully your honor, did I?”

“If you did, then I beg thee sully it again,” he murmured and I smiled, guessing at the pattern. Some pieces of the window had been too broken to be certain what they’d shown. Nothing. I tried a second pattern.

“Have I ruined you so you may not return to your aspect?” I asked quietly.

His gusting laugh made me pause and look up.

“No. We’d have fewer paladins by half were that true. I could turn back now, return, and my slate would be blank, as if I never so much as touched your lips. That’s certainly what the Engineer would like me to do.”

He sounded speculative.

I shook my head at myself. I’d known the man mere days, so why did the thought of him walking away from me make me feel as though my nearest kin had been ripped from my arms? It choked me up. It hurt as an arrowhead hurts when it is lodged in the ribs.

I had that happen once. A mistake when a group of us were tussling with a possessed boar, trying to root it out of a clump of thorns. A local man had loosed too quickly and the arrow had struck my rib and wedged there. This bore with it a similar sensation. Every breath brought a reminder that I was stuck and could not be free, for it was in the bone.

“Sir Sorken certainly had a grudge against me. I had always thought of paladins as holy and upright and other from common men,” I said sadly.

“We are only men.” Adalbrand’s voice was wistful. “Perhaps we once were those things when we were few, just a handful of fanatic knights swirling in tiny eddies in the corners of the reach of the church. One here, a pair there, stark in faith, swollen with prayers, surrendered entirely to a force beyond comprehension, to a God both powerful and terrible. Perhaps then, honor grew like a mighty oak, and righteousness flowed like a river, and the good won every battle.”

“But now?” I prompted as I tried a third combination. To me, his description sounded just like him. It sounded like his heart whittled down to the quick.

“Now we are bloated with men who claim to be called by the God and sent out in his service, but we are among them now and that is not what I see. I see men blinded by selfish ambition, driven to murder, to exclusion, to the mad allowance of evil thriving in their midst.”

“What then shall we do?” I asked grimly, sliding all but the last piece into place. And I meant both about the others here and also about him and I and the tangle of hearts we’d accidentally made.

He leaned so he could look me in the eye when he said, “We shall fight this evil at every turn.”

That was good. We were still one in this fight. What more could I reasonably ask for than that? I shouldn’t have said more. I knew it. I should have just nodded steadily to let him know I was on his side. Instead, my weak tongue tripped on itself.

“And when we have finished? If we survive?”

He shook his head, his expression torn as if he were fighting a second great war within himself.

“I do not know.” He looked up then, his bright brown eyes catching mine in the light of the silent golem’s dancing flame. His eyes narrowed with purpose. “But I know I will not leave you, Victoriana. Survive with me, and we will leave this place together and never look back.”

An excellent promise. A promise a girl could hold to. Even if it felt like it would not be enough.

I slotted the last tile into place as I nodded firmly to him, turned the key in the door, and then the floor shook again. Exclamations rang out from the other end of the great main hall, and the rumbling, squealing misery of the moving floor began, shaking us both as the world turned.

“Whatever comes next,” I told Adalbrand, “whether we live or die, or go wildly mad, I’m not sorry to have met you here. And I am not sorry to have loved you, however insufficiently.”

He laughed, a dark, gallows laugh.

“I like how you think, Vagabond Paladin. And I agree.” He paused as if he would say more but then he shook his head. “Let us prepare to slay demons and take their blackened hides for trophies.”

Excuse you.

“And their shriveled souls for boot leather,” I agreed, my tone still wistful, but my words bolstering me.

I’m not sure I like your claws, little snack. Retract them at once.

I grabbed his hand and held it in tight purpose to make our words a promise, but in his eyes, I found a different kind of vow. One that did not fit this grim, terrible place, but was suited more to a land where hopes and mercies still rang true. And it wrung me with a hope I didn’t dare keep, but I let it sit a moment like a butterfly resting on my palm. Not mine to keep, but mine for as long as I did not try to keep it.

“Agreed,” he murmured, and the rumble of his voice gave me just enough of the taste of that world of hope that my spine stiffened and my heart felt brave.