Of Deeds Most Valiant: A Poisoned Saints Novel

Suture stumbles dramatically away from my blow, breaking apart as he hits the ground, bounces, hits again, rolls, and then unspools into nothing but bone and rag. The magic is gone. Whatever life he had — if he had one — has vanished.

I spin to go after Cleft next and nearly slip on what is left of Sir Owalan.

Poor fool. I have never liked Penitents. But I liked him more than most. And now no one will see him rolled into a white cocoon in his strange hanging tent. No one will see his wide, dramatic eyes, so earnest and needy. He wanted only to be a Saint. It made him a monster.

I force the thoughts away and step over his corpse, ducking easily under a testing blow from Cleft. There will be time for mourning later. This is the part that comes before that.

Cleft isn’t trying to kill me. Not yet. I can sense it. He’s trying to herd me away from the fountain as Sir Sorken slowly makes his way over to it. They still have the greater numbers while the Vagabond is occupied.

Two can work that game.

I feint a blow toward Cleft and then spin away and into Sir Sorken’s path, dodge his startled jab, and come up inside his guard. He’s a big man. Built like a barrel. But he’s three times my age. I grab him by the sword arm and twist, snaking it around his back. He does not drop his sword despite the grinding of my grip. It’s both speed and the strength of youth that gives me the advantage. But he has the big stone golem.

“You could still leave,” he says calmly, as if it is common to have me here, breathing down his neck, twisting his sword arm. “Walk away.”

I am forcing him before me, keeping him between Cleft and me, keeping myself between Cleft and Victoriana. I can purchase her more time, if I am careful. I hope she is using it. I hope she is not too tenderhearted to do what needs to be done.

“And let you fill the earth with demons? Each one a new soul fit into your created bodies? Is that not the most flagrant of blasphemies?”

“Is it?” Sir Sorken asks. “Is it blasphemy to act as the God? If he created everything, can I not create? If he ruled it, may I not rule?”

“You aren’t the God,” I say grimly. “What he did well, you mock. What he did with care, you do with no regard for the result.”

“I regard the result.” There’s grit in his words. “I plan it with care.”

“You planned that?” I point at Cleft with the tip of my blade. “You planned to make a body of stone — one unfinished and unpolished?”

“It can be refined later. What does he care? He’s a block of rock.”

The block of rock makes a lunge for me and I turn Sorken as a shield so he cannot hit me. I’m forcing him toward the bottom of the stairs, forcing the golem with us.

“He follows your orders. He made bowls.”

“Bowls?” Sorken snorts. “What has that to do with anything?”

“It’s a creative pursuit! It’s making something new. Only people and the God do that. You’ve made him a person!” I can’t believe I’m letting my fury over that leak into this moment, but the river can’t be turned back now. It’s pouring out of me. “A person that you’re planning to possess with a demon!”

Sorken scoffs. “The golem is a useful machine but no more a person than your sword is. No more a victim than the dagger buried in Sir Owalan’s wrist.”

I’m moving him slowly to the foot of the stairs. I meet Cleft’s glowing eyes. If he feels anything from Sir Sorken’s declaration, he gives no indication.

“If I fill every one of them with demons, what is it to you? It will only make them bolder and stronger and more able to serve. But they will serve me. They have no choice. That rock creature has no more control over his actions than an actual rock. He dances only to my tune. You worry about bowls? He made them to my order. That means I made them. And with a demon soul trapped within, he’d be able to do that more effectively — do everything more effectively. And he is only the first.”

We’re at the foot of the stairs. Cleft makes a lunge for me again and again I pivot, keeping my hostage between us. Is that attack half-hearted? Would I be able to tell?

“I’ve heard rumors of your holier-than-thou ways, Sir Adalbrand.” Sir Sorken is still speaking. I see now how he got where he is. With talk and persuasion. He hopes to persuade me now. To make me as much his creature as Cleft is. “You want an end to slavery? Here it is. You want an end to peasants barely able to scratch out a living? Here it is. Who will benefit when five of these plow every field in town and the men who used to break their backs doing it can finally rest? Who will benefit when wars are fought through hands of stone and clay rather than flesh? Who will benefit when it is stone shoulders that carry the heavy burdens, stone arms that swing the blacksmith hammer, stone feet that cross the endless miles? It will be the peasants you trouble yourself with so.

“Not those peasants. When people no longer serve their masters, their masters take the very last thing from them — their lives. The peasants will be starved and forced out and left to die when the kings of this world discover they can have all that labor at no cost. And who will stop those kings when they are defended by arms and backs of stone?

“It won’t be you, Adalbrand. You’re not of the peasant class. And who knows? Mayhap you’ll find a way to save all those eating mouths you care so much for.”

“What about the slaves you make with your own hands?” I ask quietly as we mount the stairs, slowly climbing them backward. Cleft has taken the bait. He is climbing them with us. “The ones you carve of stone and bone? The ones you haunt with demons from their infancy?”

Sorken scoffs. “They aren’t people, Adalbrand. It annoys me that you refuse to think clearly on this point. What we hope to achieve with this is called progress. It’s called advancement. You can’t stand in the way of it, my boy. You can only adopt it, or be left behind as the rest of us enable a new golden age. It would have happened by our hand or another. If not here, then somewhere else. We were just the ones keen enough to know about this place and to seize the opportunity while we could. Do you know how hard it is to get a good demon in hand these days with the way the Vagabonds are out there casting them all out? If I’d known they were keeping them as pets, that might have changed things.”

We’ve gone ten, maybe twenty stairs up. Cleft is ten steps behind us. Not really far enough, if you ask me. It would take him one hop to be back to the mosaic map on the floor with those long legs. And if he took that leap, he’d just be strides away from interfering with Victoriana. I need to draw him farther.

Sorken seems not to agree. “Ah. Here we are. Time for you to make a decision, my boy.”

He twists in my arms and I suddenly realize that the arm I thought was pinned has slipped from its gauntlet, and I’m left holding an empty shell as his sword clatters down the stairs. One minute he’s inside my guard. The next minute he has a knife drawn, and I barely manage to twist enough to make it skim across my ribs instead of digging up and under them. Pain flares sharp and insistent. I force it from my mind.

“Saints,” he mutters. Just that one word. Small. Almost factual, as if he’s stating a number. It’s a frank admission of defeat. And he’s not wrong. I look him in the eye. See the wry humor behind his bluff exterior. Set that aside.

Without so much as a flicker of conscience, I grab him by the thighs, lift hard and fast, and fling him over the railing.