Of Deeds Most Valiant: A Poisoned Saints Novel

Only a man … correction: only a man who was also a paladin … would decide that the way he was going to fix everything was by dying dramatically.

I just wished I could think of a better way to kill a nest of demons and keep them from spreading into the world.

Think! Think hard! This is madness.

But I didn’t know if that was the paladin or the demon speaking. It was becoming harder and harder to tell. I could no longer afford to guess wrong.

The dear, chivalrous, noble, holy, fool of a man. He’d let me sleep while he concocted this insane plan, and then I’d woken up to find that there were none left but us and two madmen and he had the only plan to fix any of it. And it was a terrible plan.

And he’d told it to me with those earnest brown eyes, so wide and innocent, like it would be the simplest thing in the world for me to hold his head under holy water and drown him.

For those who don’t know, holy water is meant more as a way to fortify your walls. The practice of casting out the demonic — the primary bent of my aspect — is much more art than science. It’s about as reliable and consistent as the rest of our lives — which is to say it’s not at all. Every single attempt at it is different, and while paladins claim that they wait for the God to lead them and respond to his will, I think most of the time they’re using a combination of instinct, hope, blind faith, and any little tricks they’ve picked up along the way. I’ve watched it done maybe a dozen times since I joined Sir Branson’s service, and the demons we encountered were weak and had generally already spent the energies of the one possessed in violence to the point that the victim was on the brink of collapse already. But in theory, you could release demons two ways.

One was the slow way, which Sir Branson had been trying with the beggar on the bridge. That way involved a lot of prayer and a connection to the God to essentially make yourself a bridge for his holiness to rush down and burn the demon away through your mortal vessel. It was the way I’d witnessed with every human we’d encountered up until that fateful day on the riverbank. Generally speaking, we had been able to lay hold of and restrain the victim so that we could do the slow work of prayer. It took time because your heart needed to be pure and your desires all attuned to the one result. Or at least, that’s what Sir Branson had always said. I don’t know about you, but I have trouble flipping my desires off and on like that.

The other way is the fast way. I’ve referred to this way before when mentioning Brindle. We’d used it on animals who were possessed. While they left their own trail of victims, they were considerably easier to dispatch, even if we’d left one man in such despair over the death of his donkey that his tears still came to mind from time to time. With that method, you killed the victim of the demon, and you prayed while you did it, hoping that the combination would make you an unfit vessel for the demon to hop to, and so with no living home, it evacuates the mortal plane entirely. It’s quick and dirty, but it gets the job done a lot of the time.

But sometimes — so rarely that I’ve never seen it and really only heard about it in the stories Vagabond Paladins tell round the fire when we meet one another — sometimes, the situation is very severe and we fear that even death cannot free the victim or seal the demon to retreat. In those cases, we will use holy water and we will drown the poor desperate person in that water. The water makes it much harder for the demon to leap. The soul it has bound with will force it from the body as the body is killed and bear it to another plane. Sometimes, with a skilled paladin who has done it before, the person can be brought back after death by drowning, and thus the victim is saved even though he has had to die for his salvation. I do not have that knowledge or skill.

But before you speak of cruelty, you should remember that you have not seen the horrors that demons inflict upon their victims, and the horrors they force them to inflict on others. Until you’ve looked into the eyes of a man so possessed that he has slowly flayed himself with a sharp knife and a mirror, and his soul is weeping within as his body turns the knife next toward those pleading eyes, until you’ve seen a whole family of tiny corpses and the person they trusted laughing over their broken bodies, until you’ve tried to patch up living victims so broken and ruined that they are like my tattered cloak inside — there isn’t even enough left to mend — until then, do not speak to me of what is cruel. Death — even death by drowning — is a sweet mercy compared to letting them remain in such a state, letting them suffer by their own acts, allowing the demon to twist their every flicker of desire into evil.

I knew why Adalbrand had demanded I drown him in holy water.

I knew what he would be when he let those demons into his body.

I knew, but I was not certain I could do my part. It was not that I wasn’t physically strong enough. He wouldn’t try to resist me, and I was a strong woman. It was the thought of him thrashing in my arms instead of relaxing into them. The thought of tamping down his bright heart and laughter under cold, clinging water as his soul bled away, instead of nurturing those smiles in him. It was the knowledge that it would be I who killed that bright holy man. I was not a murderer. And the one man I had killed already was the other man I’d loved — albeit as a father. Was I destined then to kill anyone my heart grew close to? It was too much. Maybe even for this cause. Maybe even to save hundreds or thousands of people.

Wasn’t it?

Well, wasn’t it?

We burst into the main room and I was immediately deafened. The clock began to gong the second our feet hit the mosaic of the main room. Bong. Bong. Bong.

It pealed out its crashing warning and when I looked at it — across from us — the face was lit by a narrow beam of light and the hands were spinning wildly around the face of the clock. I traced the light beam from the clock to where the window in the wall was wide open but nearly lost as it moved across the wall. The door to the sea was not yet open, but it was halfway there. Not long now and the demon would drop out of the ceiling and the way would be clear for us to flee.

“The cups,” Adalbrand gasped. “Get them.”

I scrambled to the loud clock. There was the High Saint’s cup, shattered to nothing. The crack in mine had run through and what little had been inside had run out. Adalbrand’s was burned so that charcoal coated the inside and not a drop was left. Sir Coriand’s was there, still and sludgy like mud. The only cups with steam still wafting from them, bubbling and growing, were Owalan’s and Sorken’s. I grabbed one in my off-hand and Adalbrand grabbed the other.

And as if that were the signal, the floor twisted, speeding up, and the bonging of the clock went wild. I heard shouts from the trial room and a crash as the door out began to twist past the point where anyone could flee.

I looked up and up, a tickly feeling racing down my spine. My eyes found the dark, gleaming shape immediately, despite the shadows above us. It was easing out from its filigree cage, out the opening made by the turning room, and the very second I spotted it, it dropped. I had a sensation in the back of my mind like a dish shattering, like something sliding down my back, wet and cold, something that was a sibling of dread.

I shuddered.

I did not wait to see how much faster it was than us. I had no illusions that it would be slow … or kind.

“It’s time, Lady Paladin.”

I didn’t know why he was offering his hand, but there was something in the gesture, as if even now, when he ran as hard as he could toward what he had planned to make his tomb, even now, he would shelter me if he could. Even now, he would offer what comfort he had, were it only a hand.

I took it and hurried with him around the base of the stairs, skidding across the smooth floor as we ran over the orange peel map of the people who had thought the world was both a globe and an ideal place to multiply demons.

I heard footsteps echoing behind me.

Beside me, Brindle’s breathy panting was reassuring. I felt him just there, a presence beside me.

But when I glanced at him, I saw flickers of shapes that were not doggy at all.

Flicker, a glimpse of Sir Branson if he were the soft blue of a peaceful summer sky and transparent as a window.

Flicker, an open-mouthed, laughing face that looked half human, half monster, and was just as transparent as my old master had been. It glowed the color of a fire tainted by too much sap.

It’s a good plan, the voice in my mind said as I ran, as good as any.

But what if that were the demon speaking? What if he were rejoicing already in our failure? Ready to leap once more into a paladin and lure him to his death. Only this time it would be Sir Adalbrand.

There was no ominous laughter in my head. I almost found that more worrying than if there had been.

And then we were steps from the fountain, huffing together as we tried to catch our breaths.

Brindle darted ahead, leapt up the rim of the fountain, and perched there, teeth bared and growling, his eyes fixed on something behind us. There was something odd about his eyes but I didn’t have time to note it. I drew my sword the moment we stopped running — though what that would do against an enormous demon, I could not say.

Sir Adalbrand set the cup down on the rim of the fountain and stood with one hand raised, fingers curled except the two he raised in blessing as he spat out the rote words.

“From water we are born, to water we return, may the word of the God bless this water and make it holy, purifying us by it in both body and spirit.”

I set the other cup beside his.

I started to turn to see what Brindle was growling at, but I was arrested by the sight of him, because there, overlaid over the body of the dog, were two figures, transparent as cloudy glass and fighting with one another in a tangle of limbs and gritted teeth. I could not truly make out the edges of their bodies, only sense that they fought — two souls in one dog, desperate for dominance.

Hold fast, my girl. Do not surrender. Do not bend!

I completed my spin, lifted my sword arm, and saw the dark, gleaming blackness of the monastery demon bearing down on us.

How did one fight a demon with a sword?

You don’t. You’re eaten, snackling. And all your adorable ideas about drowning your beloved like some fairytale princess crumble away. Did you really think you could save the world with murder, or was that just a cute excuse for something dark within you?

I wasn’t sure how to fight, but I braced myself anyway, kept the sword high, eyes on the target …

To my horror, Adalbrand shot past me into the darkness.

I gasped, the breath snatched from my lungs, took a step forward, as if I could stop him, and then stumbled back again when I felt a pop and the darkness was no more. Adalbrand spun, his eyes wild and too bright in the faint light of the clock, and then he dragged the cup in his hand up to his lips, his eyes locked on mine as he quaffed the entire draught, only a little spilling down his chin into his two-day beard.

I could see how it changed him. How his eyes went harder, the lines of his face sharper, the beauty of his eyes more wild. This was how it was meant to be in this terrible place. He’d drunk down someone’s demon, the evil they designed themselves, and now he was possessed by it.

He gagged, choked, clearly made sick by it, and then with a grimace and a slight convulsion, he drank the rest.

“Sorken’s, I think. Meant for Cleft,” he gasped, eyes swimming with emotion.

My gaze was locked on him, unable to look aside even though Brindle was barking furiously.

Adalbrand flung the empty cup aside and, looking grimly miserable, paused, as if it took all his willpower to still control his own body movements. He heaved twice, broad shoulders bucking, but managed to keep it down, and then leaned over the fountain, gasping.

By chance, he’d landed right beside Brindle.

The dog placed a paw gently on his shoulder, big eyes huge and understanding even as the two specters layered over him tussled and tumbled for dominance.

Adalbrand locked his eyes on mine, his chiseled face wild with the struggle within. He reached for the second cup, but before he could grasp it, a second hand slipped in between us — a hand with a dagger jutting through the wrist between the veins.

Sir Owalan scooped the cup up and drank it down, without so much as a bob of his throat, as Adalbrand’s strangled “No!” was still slicing through the air.

Everything felt like it was moving too slowly. I turned slowly, my feet feeling like they were encased in earth though my eyes were registering everything at once.

The room was brighter. The wall must have spun enough that the entranceway was finally facing the ocean. It poured bright white light across the room, throwing the statues looming over us into stark relief. The one that caught my eye looked like Sir Coriand, and in this light, it looked as though he were holding his own head in place with one hand while he laughed at us.

Here, in the shadow of the stairs, it was still dark, but not too dark to grasp what had happened.

Sir Owalan slowly lowered the cup, a dribble of something faintly dark running from the corner of his mouth. His eyes had taken on an inhuman orange glow. My gaze crossed Adalbrand’s just long enough to register his horror — and the red glow behind his eyes — and then they moved farther, to behind Owalan, where Sir Sorken had a hand raised. His face was outraged, eyes locked on the cup Adalbrand had drunk and discarded. Suture was picking that cup up from where it fell. Cleft’s mighty stone hand was raised like a hammer.

When the next three things happened, I was still moving too slowly to do anything but watch.

Sir Owalan turned to the side and spewed out what he’d just drunk in a streaming arc. Suture, faster than any human could move, caught it in the cup, and then Brindle streaked past me, faster still, and tore out Sir Owalan’s throat.

They hit the ground in a wet slap as time caught up, the dog still wrenching and ripping, Owalan’s life gone before he hit the ground.

No more demons, Brindle said in my mind, and I thought that maybe I should scream, but the scream didn’t come, as if horror had stolen the ability from me.

And then, like water flooding back into a puddle after a rock has been thrown into it, sound returned.

“The cup, Cleft!” Sorken yelled. “Drink the cup!”

Suture handed the cup to Cleft. The other golem froze, confused, possibly, or … if golems had any will of their own … reluctant.

I did not have time to watch their tableau because Adalbrand’s hand found my jaw and turned me to look at him.

“Victoriana.” Adalbrand’s voice was heavy, his eyelashes thick on his closed lids. “It is time. Please.”

He lurched back toward the fountain, hands braced on the edge of it and face just an inch over the water.

“Put your hand between my shoulders.”

I sheathed my sword and placed a hand between his shoulder blades as he leaned out over the fountain.

“I … I … I …” My words were stuttering, the image of Sir Owalan with his throat ripped out still too clear in my mind.

“Please. Victoriana. Most faithful of paladins. Please.” Adalbrand’s words sounded more like a prayer to a Saint than a plea for death.

So, here we were. At the end of the world, or at least the end of our world. The end of my world.

He turned enough to open his eyes to me, to let me look into the agony and roiling evil behind them. His knuckles were white on the edge of the fountain, his face a rictus. He had taken evil into himself, swallowed it down, and now he truly was poisoned. The most poisoned of Poisoned Saints.

His eyes pled for me to end it as he’d asked, to plunge him beneath the water and to free us all from the consequences.

I blocked out the sound of Sir Sorken similarly pleading with his golem and focused only on Adalbrand.

“You must do this,” he said through gritted teeth.

“You’re missing one,” I said stupidly. “We can’t do it with one missing.”

He shook his head. “Owalan drank. It can’t be drunk twice. His demon leapt to me. And now you must do your duty.”

My stupid eyes were watering, making my vision fuzzy.

“Must I?” Not the words I was planning.

His arm reached around, snaking up to grab my other wrist and place it roughly on the crown of his head as if I were blessing him, or baptizing him … or about to drown him.

His lips shook as he uttered the familiar prayer.

“Bless me, Merciful God, as I cross the waters toward you. Drag me up from the depths to your glories. Consider not my sins for they are many. Take instead this heart which I offer to you now. Bless me, Merciful God.”

It was a formal last prayer and I was supposed to say, “Amen,” but my tongue would not move. My breath sawed in my lungs as if it were fighting this, too.

Somewhere, far away, the clock had stopped bonging. Somewhere, in another world, I heard a shout of dismay and a scuffle.

I was supposed to press his face beneath the water. I was supposed to let him die beneath my weight. But I could not do it. Not even for this. Not even to save the whole world could I wound him, could I kill him. Instead, I kept my hands where they were but I turned my body so I might take his open lips violently in mine and slide a desperate last kiss over them.

They tasted terrible. Like evil and illness and misery.

But they were his.

His shuddering gasp was all the encouragement I needed, and his answering kiss was pained and hungry, but when he drew back, his mind had not changed. His eyes held in them a depth I could not reach.

“Please.”

And the word was so plain, so vulnerable, so open to me.

“Adalbrand.” His name seared my lips. His cinnamon eyes bored into mine. “Please don’t make me do this.”

“I’ve heard those words before.” His voice made it sound like I was ripping out his throat. “And I could no more save her than I can save you. Please, Victoriana.”

“But I love you,” I whispered, feeling the hot tears spill suddenly down my cheeks.

“Then love me enough to be faithful.”

I plunged his head beneath the holy water with a cry of despair and my eyes clenched shut. He tensed beneath my hands. I bit my own lip until I tasted blood.

And this wasn’t right. It wasn’t right. It —

He was torn from my grip without warning, dragged into the water so that his whole body tumbled into the fountain.

My eyes shot open. My empty hands flexed.

There was a sound half shout, half cry, half gurgle, and the waters swirled pink around the brindled muzzle buried in Adalbrand’s neck.

I heard shouts and feet pounding across the marble, but I didn’t look back. I threw myself into the fountain.

“Please. No. Please.” My words jumbled together as I grabbed for Brindle. All I could see in my mind’s eye was the empty gaze of Sir Owalan after his throat was torn out. And I should have been praying as he died. I knew it, but I couldn’t stop myself from thrashing through the water toward him.

And then suddenly Adalbrand was free, sputtering, coughing, heaving, finding his feet, dripping wet. Water streamed down his close-cropped hair and stubbled jaw, and his clothing clung to him. I was reminded suddenly that this man I had been about to murder had been the peak of life and health. His body almost sang with the joy of life returned to him.

His hand was clapped to his neck and my stomach rolled at the sight. When it came away, there was blood and three gashes I didn’t much like the look of, but compared to the ragged mess I was expecting, it was a relief.

He gasped, bright eyes meeting mine. Something had changed. They no longer glowed red.

He opened his mouth as if he would speak, and then there was a roar from behind us and Adalbrand leapt past me, drawing his sword while he was still in the air.

My head turned, confusion drawing my eyebrows down, but a voice in my head arrested me.

Eyes on me, my girl. Our time is short.