I tell him about Sanjuste.
Cobalt nods darkly. “If she likes Magnus, then she’s got a reason to learn. That man is a magnet for trouble. And he never knows when to keep his mouth shut. In Byzantus, I told the others it was a façade that he was practicing to infiltrate Fortrus and to ignore him.”
“The others?”
“You think we did it by ourselves, Tiptoes? We had help.”
We listen to the clashing and clacking of metal and wooded blades for a few minutes, enjoying a sudden gust of warm air. Nights are always cold, and days unseasonably warm.
“Did you really try to join the ’Shades?” I ask quietly.
“Who’s to say I ‘tried?’ ”
More silence.
“Are the charges real?”
Cobalt snorts and stares at me with hard eyes, not defending himself. “I’m not a saint, Tiptoes.”
“I’m not either,” I say, meeting his gaze, “so if you double-cross Magnus, it won’t be the Brothers of Light you need to worry about.”
Cobalt grins at the threat. “Did I get your nick name wrong, Tiptoes? Should I call you Poke, or Sir-Stabs-A-Lot?” He relaxes back, turning to watch the fighting. “Yeah. The charges are legit. Except the part about ‘innocent.’ Nobody in Byzantus is innocent.”
He won’t answer when I press him for details, says only, “Magnus had his dart-hero to find, and I was supposed to kill a rogue informant, under Jeremiah’s orders.”
“Not bring him back for trial?”
Cobalt shrugs. “Magnus would have. Which is why I didn’t tell him. He’s not very practical. Do you know what it would be like dragging an informant across Teuron for trial?”
“Difficult, I can imagine.”
More listening, gulping, breathing, watching, and thinking happens in the yard.
“What sort of informant?”
“A sketch artist.”
Something about that tickles my consciousness. “And now they’re charging you for killing him, this rogue informant?” I venture.
“No. I never found him. Best I could tell he moved to Ector about a year ago, which is why I told Magnus to meet me there.” Cobalt sighs. “But by the time I made it to Ector, I had bigger things to worry about. I should have gone straight to Ector with Magnus,” he muses. “Would have been more fun than slinking about Byzantus for another week.” He glances at me. “And I could’ve used a little half-Nightshade like you shadowing me and dropping from the rafters on my enemies.”
So he’s heard my story.
Good. Maybe he’ll think twice about causing trouble for Magnus.
A tall, nervous man comes to the barrel. I change topics quickly, asking Cobalt about his unconventional approach to abbey life, so that people won’t get the wrong ideas about me.
The tall man nods to me as he pretends to get his water, but I can tell he really wants to get at Cobalt.
Cobalt grunts. “I came to the abbey at a very young age. The style never really agreed with me.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“Lack of suitable options. My parents lived in Byzantus. They were murdered a few months after they brought me here. My only skills were causing trouble and fighting, and I wasn’t big enough yet to join a mercenary company.”
More silence.
“Cadet Cobalt,” says the tall man, dredging up the nerve to speak.
“Cadet . . .” Cobalt says in response, dragging it out to hint that a name would be a nice addition.
“Logan,” the tall man replies.
Cobalt’s eyes knit together, suspicious. I’ve seen the other young Paladins mocking Logan, and I wonder if this is just another ploy.
Logan’s voice cracks and he sounds a little breathless, as if nervous. “Can you teach me what you’re teaching Sister Lucinda?” He glances around, as if feeling foolish. Cobalt notices this, tracking his gaze to another group of Magnus-sized recruits, all blond. These look away, pretending to be engaged in discussion, but they’re grinning and glancing back to watch how the drama will unfold.
“No, I can’t.”
Logan’s face falls even farther. “Can’t even lap up scraps from the black sheep,” he whispers to himself, turning away.
This hits Cobalt between the eyes. He glances at me, and then bounces to his feet. “But maybe you can teach me a thing or two with those giant wings you call arms.”
Logan doesn’t get it. “Giant what?”
“I’m going to help you, Wingspan,” Cobalt snarls.
“Oh. Right.”
They turn their backs on me and make their way to a sparring circle. Logan is gangly and moves like a puppet with uneven strings. Cobalt stalks. His step combines the power of a dray horse with the grace of a housecat.
Before long they’re moving through a set of forms together, not the same ones shown to Lucinda. These forms are obviously meant for a taller person than Cobalt, but he knows them well.
Logan stumbles through them. It takes a full hour to run one repetition, not like Lucinda.
Cobalt comes back.
“Where’d you learn those?” I say.
Cobalt shrugs, tossing a practice knife between hands. “With Magnus. But I never grew into them.”
“Why do you call him Magnus when he’s not around?”
“Because I like him.”
Now I can’t tell if Cobalt is having fun with me.
On Deepwinter’s Eve, the brothers, cadets, and clerks flock to the Abbey from outlying holdings and hermitages. They come to serve, to learn, and to celebrate the coming year. Morning prayers are packed elbow-to-elbow with men. Their faces shine as they hoist the timber frame and central beam for the Mitre Servitas’s new “People’s Hall,” a place where locals can exchange labor for basic training in a trade, or find food and shelter. There’s a constant flow of foot traffic through the kitchens and banquet hall, and the best is yet to come, Magnus promises. He calls it “afternoon training.”
It’s really more of an exhibition. When I arrive, there are bodies pressing in at every angle, except where the sparring circles have been set. I climb above the crowd using my new climbing shivs and some careful foot placement.
Father Valoris is sitting lazily above us all, perched in a curious rope hammock-chair suspended from the battlements with metal hooks. Aside from the tower sentries, he and I have the best view of the yard, though his seems infinitely more comfortable than the cold, hard stone I’m sitting on. With that little contraption, I could go almost anywhere in the city and perform a stakeout, high above the action.
Father Valoris waves when he notices me coveting his seat, but otherwise makes no move to engage.
There are wrestling matches, general sparring, advanced sword form demonstrations, mixed weapon and quarterstaff demonstrations, and even several knife form demonstrations. Even Father Jeremiah is there, challenging any two brothers at a time. He lays them all flat with an iron-tipped quarterstaff, a more functional version of his Rod of Office. As Magnus has attested, I never see him smile, but this gets him close. He relishes the battle and struggles to check his kill-swing. When his staff eventually splinters, the Altus Mitre steps from the sparring circle, once again gruff and grumpy.
The other Mitres—except for Father Valoris—take their turns as well in the center circle against the brothers and cadets, with young Father Edward duplicating the Altus Mitre’s two-against-one challenge but with swords.
Then I notice Magnus and Lucinda at the back of the crowd, in an abandoned sparring circle. He’s showing her how to trap an opponent’s sword arm and disarm him, something that Cobalt has never bothered to teach her. That’s Magnus again, thinking about mercy.
Magnus also thinks she’s paying attention. She is, but not quite in the way he imagines. I’ve seen that look before, and to her this is an intimate dance. When their bodies touch, her long-sword coming away in his grasp, she closes her eyes for a moment and leans into him. I turn away. Magnus doesn’t seem to get it, but I do,
and it makes me think about Carmen.
I pull out the letter I received from her. The post has said the passes are all closed, so this is probably the only note I’ll receive from her for a while. Unless she decides to pay for a pigeoner, and she won’t.
The letter is full of the things I’d expected, except for one: Carmen has finished her dresses. Already the orders are coming in, because Lady Selwin couldn’t help showing a few friends, who told their daughters, who . . . etc.
Sometime tonight—halfway across the continent—Carmen will get her patronage, because Lady Selwin’s already promised as much.
I fold the letter and put it away, suddenly hungry for the quick passage of time.
By dusk, the clouds are promising another snowfall. By dinner, there’s a white blanket of snow on blue rooftops. Magnus says this one won’t stick, with the ground being too warm from the day’s sunlight. Somewhere to the south, I can feel Carmen pulling on her boots and calling a coach to take her to Lady Selwin’s.
The Abbey celebrates Deepwinter with a banquet. It’s held in the Great Hall instead of the galley, and the regular pews are unbolted, stacked, and replaced with long tables from all over the Abbey’s complex. Everybody—even the Mitres—helps with the setup and breakdown. The dais is removed and replaced with a large stage. By nightfall, the entire alumni of the Abbey has gathered. Brothers from the most distant postings and hermitages arrive almost at the same time as the food, their myriad faces and clothing styles a welcome change from the bland white of the Abbey.
When the table is set and the food is served, the pageantry begins. Every cadet, brother, and father is required to present or synopsize some piece of their year’s work: an academic writing, an anecdote or story, a work of art, or a display of skill.
Lucinda demonstrates a journeyman’s sword form with flawless precision. Magnus tells a very attentive crowd about Tom’s sacrifice in Ector and his subsequent “laying to rest.” Not being an official recruit, I refuse to do anything, until Lucinda whispers something to the master of ceremony and a pair of silk banners drop from the highest vaulted arch in the Great Hall. “This is your only chance to climb in the great hall,” she says to me, smiling.
So I scamper up to the top, to the shock and consternation of all the old men, and the applause and envy of the young and slender ones. I pretend to fall several times, just to heighten the excitement, letting the fabric whip past before catching myself at the last second and dropping to the stage floor in a low, one-knee-down bow. The applause is thunderous, with Father Valoris leading out.
There is an almost endless parade of talent in singles, groups, and even a small choir that sings a rousing hymn in a language I can’t understand. It’s one of the greatest shows of camaraderie and friendship I’ve ever seen.
The clerks have a few rows to themselves. That’s where I find Val and Timnus, sitting on either side of a tall, redheaded youth who can be none other than Father Hugue’s oldest son. Val is there on her own merits apparently, and Timnus is there because the clerks like Val and think Timnus is funny when he chooses to speak.
Father Hugues’s son—Frédéric—doesn’t have any of his father’s width. His hair is red and wavy, and he smiles at me and introduces himself politely. As the night progresses, I notice that Val is sitting much closer to him than I would care her to, but I say nothing. She could do much worse. As the eldest son of a Mitre—children are rare in the abbey—Frédéric is a bit of a symbol. The other clerks treat him like a mini-Mitre, and give deference to his opinions. I stop worrying about Val when I see Frédéric go to the aid of a buck-toothed clerk who has fallen and scattered a plate of food to the four winds. I shudder to think of who from Ector’s crowd she might have picked.
Eventually the noise and the press of bodies start to get to me. I leave with the changing watch, as men go out to relieve the watchtowers and sentries so their friends can come in out of the cold and partake in the festivities.
I wander between the inner and outer walls, peering into the apartments, admiring the snow, and appreciating the lamp-lights of the city below. I particularly enjoy the thought that somewhere in Ector, Carmen is basking in the triumph of her new patronage.
To my left I hear the flapping of a cloak. It snaps in the cold wind in such a way as to yank me from my reverie. The wind below the level of the walls is too confused to flap cloth and banner. I glance up, and it takes me a moment to spot him. Cobalt. Standing on the roof of his apartment. I signal to him, but by the time I join him on the rooftops, he is gone, and I quickly lose his trail in the dark.
SEVEN
Morning comes with thunderous dreams, brilliant light, and the jangle of bells. Timmy and Val both groan from their own beds. At first I try to put a pillow over my head to block out the sounds, but the bells continue, discordant, much different than I’d expect for the ringing in of the new year. Each sound seems to clash with the previous as if the ringer is trying to jar the entire complex awake.
They’re alarm bells.
That gets me moving.
“Timnus. Val. Get dressed.”
My hand is on the bar to the door when the bell outside rattles—barely audible above the clanging of the belfry. I jerk it open, and Father Loring, the Mitre Loris himself, shuffles in without invitation, his eyes shifting left and right. He’s carrying something heavy on his hip under a white blanket, and keeping his other hand on his sword, white-knuckled. He takes the heavy thing directly to the small table.
My first thought is that the Mitre Loris has stolen something and wants me to hide it, but that’s the sort of trick I’d put to Cobalt, not a full-fledged Mitre.
“Close the door, for Pan’s sake!” Father Loring croaks. His words come out breathless and worried. “Do you want them to know I’m here?”
I close the door hesitantly.
“Bar it. I swear on Pan’s name you won’t be sorry.”
I stand by the door, uncertain.
For a long time the Mitre does nothing, sitting at the table staring blankly into space, shaking, but not from cold. Val brings a spare blanket and wraps it around his shoulders like a good little clerk, and this invites him gently back to the present.
“Thank you, dear,” he says sadly.
It takes several minutes before the gangly old man relaxes and stops clutching at his sword-hilt. “For Pan’s sake, bar the door, Teacup,” he whispers. “Buy us some time. They’re going to stop picking us off and come in force soon. Mother Ealeannor, Jens, Yarla, and now Sephram. We’re losing.”
For a long while I can’t get any more out of him than this: Sephram has been murdered in one of the most secure locations in all of the abbey, at the Vault of Rings. That hits me. More than two hundred dangerous relics back in the possession of the Nightshades? A shiver runs down my spine as I bar the door.
The Mitre sees my alarm and pats the white towel. “They haven’t gotten the rings, Teacup. Not yet. I hid them last night in my apartment. They’ll think to check there soon enough, and then they’ll come for me. But for now, they’re safe.” Then his despondency returns. “But if they aren’t safe in the vault, where can they be safe?”
I don’t answer. I don’t know the answer. I brought my kids here for protection, not to guard dangerous relics for the Brothers of Light. Until today, there wasn’t a better hiding place in all of Teuron, behind this forest of ideology, muscle, and steel. Where do I run now?
I try to hide from the answer even as I hear Tom’s cackle faintly in the distance. “They just need a little help, Teacup.”
Shut up, Tom.
“Someone to set them on the straight and narrow.”
Bloody hands of Tenebrus.
I point at the small chest Father Loring is cradling. “Hide that, Father.”
“Where are you going?”
“You said Sephram was murdered. There will be details to see. Even Pale Tom left details, and I could always find them.” I don’t explain what I’ll be looking for. I don’t k
now yet. “And keep your sword out.”
“They won’t let you in,” Loring says.
“Who said I’d ask permission?”
I can hear them throw the bar behind me, and I’m thankful these buildings are a bit sturdier than Ector’s. It’ll take some work to batter through that door, if it comes to it.
I climb a gutter pipe and leap from the rooftop to the wall top, running as fast as I can.
When I arrive at the Reliquary, there’s an angry mob outside and blood leading towards the front gates. I’ve never seen crowd of trained warriors so ready to do something rash. Some are gawking at the heavy door, which has been blasted from its thick bolted hinges. Others are pale, shocked by what they’ve glimpsed inside, running to spread word to the rest of the Abbey. I squirm my way to the front, taking an elbow to the temple for my efforts. What I see isn’t encouraging: Sephram’s blood running across the floor.
At least someone is keeping them all out. They all want to come in and investigate—men from far and wide, ready to draw their own conclusions and trample through the evidence. In most villages they’d be the most qualified to do so, educated as they are. But this is different. This is the heart of Fortrus, and whoever managed this was special, a cut above the average assassin.
Unfortunately, the men in white-lacquered armor are keeping me out as well.
I look over my shoulder and make my voice as deep as possible. “The Mitre wants you to follow that trail of blood,” I say. “It’s an order. Take some friends and report back by nightfall!”
“Yes sir!” Someone responds, and before anyone can set him straight he’s peeled off with three others to chase the blood trail. In the brief chaos that follows, and more arguments about how best to comb the city I duck past the guard and slip into the room, making myself small against the wall.
Inside broad-shouldered, red-bearded Father Hugues is crouching in the debris. Father Edward, the Mitre Tactus is crouched next to him, arguing.
“I don’t get it,” he says, “Sephram barely put up a fight.”
SWORDS (The Paladin's Thief Book 3) Page 14