CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Bern followed Bell from the card game. Along the way, he asked several questions, but Bell didn’t have it in him to answer. He was resigned, but not resigned. He knew what he had to do to save his friends – all his friends, including Trin – knew it was likely his only option, and was willing to do it, but first he would try everything else.
His first knock on the Grand’s door was too soft. His heart wasn’t in it, because he didn’t want to be here. The soft knock brought a frown from Bern, and maybe if the man hadn’t been there, Bell would have turned away. Bell knocked again, this time louder. This time too loud. The door quivered in its frame, bracing against the latch and hinges. He expected the Grand to call out an invitation as she had done each time before. She didn’t. Instead, the deadbolt clicked and the door eased open just wide enough to reveal Marl’s head in the thin strip between the door and its frame.
“Yes?” she asked. Her voice wavered slightly, her tone more reserved than usual, nearing cautious.
On his first attempt at speech, Bell’s tongue fumbled over the words. To do this would take more courage than he had, but he had to do it. His ideals mattered not. He had to.
His second attempt was a success, but still his voice strained in a throat shaken by nerves. “I’d like to speak to the Grand.”
Marl eyed him suspiciously, the door no wider, her gaze wandering over Bern and the sword at his waist. Bern was calm and collected. Bell was not. Clearly, she could sense that something was off. Her words were more severe than he expected.
“You are no longer welcome in her presence,” Marl said.
He should have been shocked, instead, his heart leapt with joy – at least for a moment. It was an easy excuse to avoid doing what he had decided he must, but he couldn’t take this easy out. It was this or his life, this or his friends’ lives. He had to confront the Grand eventually. No. He had to confront her now. Now that he knew that Fate was real, he had to get back to Trin. He knew now that Trin was right. He could help her, in a way he hadn’t before. Now that he knew it was all true, he could help Trin find a real solution. Gods, anything but the ‘solution’ on that page. He had to keep Trin from believing that monstrous thing. Gods, this was the weight she’d been under all this time. He hadn’t felt it because he hadn’t believed that any of it could be true.
Bell held out Planner’s scroll for Marl to see. “It’s a request from the queen,” he explained.
Marl pursed her lips and held out a hand. “Give it here. I’ll take it to her.”
“I was told to deliver it into her hands alone.” Bell hated using the queen’s efforts for his own advantage, but what other choice did he have?
“That is not going-” Marl began.
“Oh, just let him in,” the Grand’s voice was rushed and angry, her vowels unusually terse. “We all know why he’s come, so let’s just have it over with.”
Marl hesitated then took a step back. As the door opened, her hand slid to the hilt of her sword. Bern made to enter, but Bell grabbed his wrist.
“What’s the matter?” Bern whispered.
Bell shook his head, then nodded to Marl’s hand. Bern’s eyes widened as his gaze flashed to Bell. There was something amiss here. The Grand had not trusted Bell since they entered Dekahn, but this was different, this was open hostility.
“Is something wrong?” Bell asked.
Marl’s feet planted on the tiles.
“Marl. Get away from the door.” The Grand’s voice came from somewhere on the right. Even with the door perpendicular to its frame, Bell could not see her in the council hall. She was not at her map table as she had been each time before, indeed, the table was empty. It held no papers, no wine pitcher, no cups. All of the Grand’s personal items were gone, as if she were prepared to leave at any moment, and still, Marl stood her ground, both hands on the hilt of her blade, as if ready to draw the moment Bell stepped through. It made little sense.
“What’s wrong?” Bell repeated. “Where is the Grand?”
Marl simply looked at him. Her gaze wandered to the door. No. She looked at something behind it.
“Maybe we should leave the scroll with Marl,” Bern whispered.
Bell nodded, then repeated the suggestion for Marl to hear. He heard a light scuffing sound on his right, like a boot scraping the tile. He was certain this time. The Grand was behind the door, seemingly waiting in ambush.
“In fact,” Bell said, leaning over slowly with his hands as far from his weapons as possible. “Why don’t I just leave it here on the floor?”
A hand burst into view, gripping the far end of the door as it threw the door back, slamming it into the wall as Cyleste stepped out from behind it. “You damned fool,” she grumbled. With her back to him, her feet pacing toward Marl, and her head pointed toward the map table, he couldn’t tell if the curse was for himself or Marl. “Come in, Bell. I can’t take it anymore.”
She stopped at the map table and leaned over it, placing both palms down on the tabletop before she finally looked at him over a shoulder. “You’re just so damned hard to read,” she said. “One day you’re out in the dust picking up rubble and so I think I must have been wrong about you, and the next, Acklin goes missing in the night, blood on his bedroll and scratches on the floor like he’s been dragged from the room by half a dozen men. I just can’t stand it. No more suspense, if you’re here to kill me, come and try. Let’s have this done with like real soldiers. No ambushes. No tricks. No knives in the dark or in the back. Just you and me.”
Bell ignored her threat. It wasn’t that it didn’t bother him, but something else she’d said had bothered him more. Acklin was missing. But why? Who would want to kill the man? Unless… Kenneth.
“Bern,” Bell said. “Go find Kenneth and bring him here. Find out where he was last night, but don’t give him reason to suspect your questions.”
Bern paled, realizing that Bell was suggesting Kenneth had killed Acklin. He practically ran on his way out. The Grand watched him leave, then studied Bell’s face.
“Kenneth?” she asked. “The friend of the old veteran who tried to kill me?”
Bell nodded. “I have no reason to hurt Acklin, but Kenneth does.” He could have told her all of his suspicions, but they were only that. She had as much as promised Bell’s death for little more than an assumption, and Bell refused to condemn Kenneth without sufficient evidence of his treason.
“Is this your plan, Bell Cobbren? To draw each of your cohorts into the room, one by one, until you outnumber us? I thought we were done with tricks? I’ll admit, you play the role well. The false morality. The endless doubt. The indecision. A few more days out in the rubble, with Acklin safe and alive, and maybe you would have convinced me.”
Bell released a frustrated sigh. “I am not an assassin, Cyleste.”
The Grand’s head cocked to one side. “Cyleste? Have we surpassed formality while I wasn’t looking? I suppose we have. If one of us is to kill the other, then I suppose we might as well use first names.” The Grand Legionnaire stepped away from the table and unlatched the blade from its holster on her back. The massive sword looked to be of little hindrance to her, she carried it with ease, two hands on the long hilt, her body turned sideways to narrow her exposure.
Bell made no move to combat her. He wasn’t here to kill her. There was only one way she would ever trust him, or so she had said, but the way she behaved he wasn’t certain even that would ease her paranoia.
“Is something the matter, Bell Cobbren?” Cyleste glanced at her daughter. “If you are worried about the odds, I will ask Marl to stand aside. I have seen you fight. I think I shall be fine without her. Not that I would ask her help if I believed you would win.”
He shook his head. This was madness. She was actually ready to kill him. “I have no intention to fight you,” Bell said. “I’ve never had any intention to do you any harm at all. I just… I just…” He paused. He didn’t want to do this. He really didn’t
want to do this. “I need to get back to Trin. Please, I’ve come to ask you to reassign me to the other regiment.”
“Back to Taehrn, you mean? What, you think I’ll reassign you so you traitors can regroup and continue plotting?”
“I am not a traitor. None of us are traitors. I just…” He couldn’t reveal why he needed to get back to Trin. If Just knew, it might put her in further danger. Gods, he couldn’t believe it. Trin had been right all along, and he’d dismissed her as insane. “I need to get back to her. Please, I am willing to do anything. I’m no traitor.”
“No? Clearly that’s a lie, but if you’re willing to talk, I will bite. Why? Why do you need to get back to Trin Cavahl?”
“Because, she’s in danger.”
“From Taehrn?”
Bell paused. From your god, he wanted to say, but the real danger here was Fate, and sharing any of that wouldn’t help him. “I…” Bell started. “No, she’s in danger for another reason.” He wasn’t willing to lie, and he could think of no other excuse.
Cyleste scoffed. “Come now, you expect me to believe all this? Just tell it plain. Tell me the truth, and let this be over. Why it is you have sided with Taehrn? Is it loyalty? Is it at the Cleric’s request? I have often wondered how loyalty works in a madman… Clearly you must be mad to refuse your gods.”
“Actually,” Bell’s breath was thin. “Actually. That is why I am here. I have come to accept your deal. I’ve come to prove my innocence.”
Cyleste arched her brow. “Deal? I do not recall any deal.”
“There was. I am ready,” Bell said, though he most certainly was not. The way his voice wheezed from his throat, he was certain she could tell also. “I am ready to swear to Just. Exactly as you said. If it will save my friends, if it will help me protect Trin, I will do it. I will forsake my promise and I will take a patron.” Bell’s nerves hit him the way they always tended to, with one of those pathetic, nervous laughs that sounded so much like a small bird dying in his chest. “Gods, what does it matter if the alternative is death?”
The more Bell spoke, the wider the Grand’s smile became. Watching her, he felt like prey.
“Is that so, then?” she asked. “You’ve chosen to give the oaths?”
“Yes.” And to prove it, Bell jumped right into them. “I, Bell Cobbren, Priest of Trel, legionnaire, and member of the Cleric’s Owl Guard-”
“No,” Cyleste interrupted.
Bell blinked. “No what?”
“That is not the oath you will be taking.”
“I don’t understand, what other oath is there?”
For answer, the Grand held up a finger, beseeching him to wait as she shifted aside her heraldry to reveal a pouch sewn into the tabard’s inner lining. About the size of her hand, and an inch thick, the pouch was fastened shut by two latched pins. She opened them and pulled out a book the same size as the pouch, with a black leather cover and a green emerald set into the face. Marl gasped when she saw it. Bell simply watched. A thin silk bookmark, sewn to the leather cover, marked the page Cyleste turned to.
Finally, Bell understood. It was a book his grandmother had mentioned several times, usually while criticizing his father for not being listed within the pages. His grandmother’s name was in the book, or at least it had been until she had become Sovereign. It was the book which marked the best and brightest of Just’s Cult, those regarded as special, or chosen. To sign within the book was a promise to serve for eternity, so his grandmother said. It was little wonder this oath would mean more to the Grand than any reply he could give her, but it made little sense to him. This was a special thing, an honorable thing, why would she ask Bell to sign, a man not affiliated with Just’s Cult outside his duties as a legionnaire?
“We each keep one like this,” the Grand explained. “Those of us he trusts most. They are linked. For each name I write on the page, the same name appears in every copy, and in the original itself.”
Bell stepped forward to examine the name book more closely. To be in the same room as it, even if this was only a copy, should have been one of the highest honors of his life, especially for someone not sworn to Just. But Bell did not feel honored, he had a sickening lurch throbbing in his stomach, over and over, pulsing with the beat of his heart. He sensed a trap.
“But this…” he said. “Why would you ask me to sign? This is only for Just’s chosen. For the favored of his cult.”
Bell stared down at the open page. The parchment was plain and drab, a simple brown paper, undyed and untreated. The names were listed in two columns, one after another without any other text; no dates, no professions, no rankings or numbers to depict status, just the names. The farther down the page, the darker the ink, and the closer to the top left corner, the more it was faded. The names were chronological, from the first person to sign to the most recent. In the top left corner of the page, in ink so faded that it had turned silver, was the number one hundred and twenty-three. One hundred and twenty-three pages, with room for at least fifty names on each page… If he were to turn to the very first page, he did not doubt that it would list the very first of Just’s worshippers.
Given the events of the night they entered Dekahn, Bell was not surprised to see that the final name in the book was a Vandu name, Wilt Bakehmin.
“That is only half true,” the Grand said. “Most of us earn the pleasure through our service, but others are conscripted, forced to sign because the god cannot allow them to die, or because he needs their talents for some future purpose. For those of us who are loyal, to be in the Book of Justice is the highest honor, for it allows the god to hear our prayers, and in return we can hear him.” The Grand turned her head to Marl with a fond smile. “Marl’s name is not yet in the book, but she is competent and Just speaks well of her. I am confident she will earn the honor one day soon.”
Marl blushed, turning the same crimson color as her Herald’s coat. “Thank you, Mother.”
Cyleste nodded, her grin massive, and for once, it was one of love and pride instead of wry amusement or cocky superiority. As soon as her gaze returned to Bell, the tender moment was over. The warm look turned to a glare, the smile became crooked, and her eyes filled with disgust.
Bell grunted nervously. “So, if I sign… will I be listed as one of the revered… or one of the condemned?”
“That depends on how you are judged,” Cyleste replied. “Signing allows the god a truer insight into your being. He will know you better than you know yourself. If you are a killer, you will serve as one of the condemned. If your motives are pure, then you will be nothing. Just will use you as he sees fit, but if you serve him well and prove your worth to him, then perhaps one day you will be allowed to join his cult in truth, and then you will be honored for your service.”
Bell fiddled with a belt loop near his scabbard. It was exactly the kind of opportunity his family would want for him, they had always told him that he should swear to Just, always told him that he could be Sovereign one day, just like his grandmother, but it was not what Bell wanted. He did not want to swear to a cult – a Cult of Justice, for that matter – where the only means of clearing one’s name was a pledge of eternal loyalty.
“And if the god finds me innocent…” Bell chose his words carefully; he knew of Cyleste’s thoughts on certainty. “Is there ever the chance he might… set me free?”
The Grand frowned. “Pardon?”
“I do this to prove my innocence. And that of my friends… but it isn’t… it is not what I wan-”
“Do not finish that sentence.” There was no compassion in the Grand’s voice, no sympathy on her face, only fury. “Let me be clear, Bell Cobbren. There are many cults in Trel, and the Legion allows its soldiers to worship their own gods, but there is only one god worthy of service. The others are liars, they are murderers and fiends. Not even the Mother holds up to what is said of her in doctrine. Once the gods were good, but it was by her will that the pantheon crumbled, by her will that many died, and others be
came corrupt. She is the reason for all that is bad in the world, from the Atheists who smother newborn gods in their cribs, to the blood cults in Atherahn and Gellin. She is the reason for the Assassin’s Cult in Gellin and the Butcher’s Cult in Atherahn. They exist to serve her ends. She is-”
A loud knock silenced her. And then the knock repeated, three successive pounds, this time quicker, this time more frantic. “Bell!” Bern called, his voice as loud and panicked as his knocking. “Grand!”
Tel’s voice was softer, weaker, but no less agitated. “Just try the door,” she said. The latch clicked futilely; Marl had replaced the deadbolt.
Air whooshed as Cyleste snapped the name book shut and pulled it to her chest. “What trick is this?” she asked.
Bell’s mouth worked silently. Her guess was as good as his. But… but if Kenneth and Perval really had been trying to kill the Grand… How well did Bell really know Bern and Tel? Marl’s footsteps echoed in his head as she approached the door.
“Stop,” Bell shouted.
Marl paused. So too did the door’s trembling.
“Bell?” Bern called. “Bell, I’ve got Kenneth… but… Bell, Halls and Rich are dead. The queen is gone.”
Perhaps it was foolish, but the statement squelched Bell’s suspicions. He had served alongside these people for several months, shared dinners with them, stories with them, fears with them. He could perhaps believe treason of Perval and Kenneth, they were sour-mouthed, bitter old veterans who had complained about Cyleste for months – their hatred for her as old as the Gableman’s Riots. But Bern and Tel? Not those two. Those two were different. When Acklin had killed Perval, Bern had promised honesty at the tallow merchant’s trial. And Tel? She had been the only one willing to seek Bell out during the days he spent laboring in Dekahn’s streets.
Death's Merchant: Common Among Gods - Book One Page 102