Paladin's Strength

by T. Kingfisher

  We can’t. We can’t. We need to help my sisters. And that means I need to get Istvhan’s mind off necromancers.

  The obvious thing to do would be to screw his brains out, which would have been enjoyable, but had its own perils. Clara knew she was on the brink of falling in love. Oh be honest, you’ve slid over the brink and are trying to catch yourself before hitting the bottom. And if he’s in your bed, in your arms…no, you’ll hit so hard you leave a crater.

  She braced herself for the inevitable panicky tightness in her chest at the thought. It didn’t come. Instead she found herself vaguely annoyed with herself. Still angsting about this? Really? It’s inevitable. You know it is. She gazed at him across the room. He was turned away from her, holding the large, rather annoyed looking toad, while Ethan expounded on its magnificence. She already knew what his expression would be, the good-natured bemusement of a man reflecting on the choices that had brought him here. Such a glorious inevitability, too. He was not wearing armor and the long, sinewy line of his arms would have set a far more chaste woman than Clara salivating. She traced the curve of shoulder down into bicep with her eyes and wished she could trace it with her fingers, or possibly her tongue.

  But if she did succumb, what if he regretted it? What if he woke in the morning thinking that he’d just engaged in some kind of bestiality? And even if she dodged that pitfall, what about the far more prosaic possibility that Istvhan simply wanted to bed her and then move on? My ability to let anyone closer than arm’s length. Men—even paladins—were not always known for their constancy. Hell, the paladins of the Dreaming God were notoriously randy. She’d never heard that about the Saint of Steel, but that probably didn’t signify, since Istvhan was the first one she’d ever met.

  And let’s not kid ourselves. You may give as good as you get in bed, but do you really think that you’re enough to distract a paladin from taking down an abomination? Particularly for days on end?

  No. Making a paladin—or a priest, or a nun, or even a lay sister—choose between a human and their god was almost always a losing proposition. Fortunately, she had another idea.

  “Istvhan?”

  He turned toward her, still brandishing the toad. The toad glared between his fingers. “Domina?”

  “Since we’ve got a few days to wait…” She rose to her feet. He smiled at her, eyebrows lifting. “What say you we investigate this Leeward Beast of yours?”

  “Domina,” he said, his eyes dark with pleasure and something else, something almost feral, a hunter hard on the scent of prey, “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Thirty-One

  “So how do you plan to do this?” asked Clara the next morning, as they left Morstone behind, on the far side of the river this time. “It seems like grabbing strangers at random and demanding that they tell you about monsters would be a tad conspicuous.”

  “Pshaw!” He actually said ‘Pshaw,’ too, which Clara had never actually heard pronounced by anyone who was not at least eighty years old, usually with muttonchop whiskers. She gazed at him in mild astonishment. “Far too conspicuous, Domina. We shall be as subtle as serpents.”

  “Oh, we shall? How exactly?”

  “I,” said Istvhan, “am going to buy people drinks.”

  Three bars later, Clara had to admit that Istvhan’s technique had a great deal to recommend it. He would enter an inn and buy a beer. Then he would tell the bartender that he was traveling through, but he’d heard about the so-called Beast of the Leeward. Since Istvhan had a loud, carrying voice, he could generally expect someone to come up to the bar and claim to have seen the Beast, whereupon Istvhan would buy them a drink. Someone else would show up to say the first person was lying or drunk, because they had seen the Beast themselves.

  Clara, who came in a few minutes after Istvhan, would find someone, preferably female, sitting quietly in the corner. As the conversation at the bar got louder, she would roll her eyes, look over to the quiet woman, and say, “There was a terrible murder in my hometown about a decade ago. There were no witnesses at the time, but it’s amazing how many people apparently saw what happened. I’m surprised the murderer had room to swing the axe for the crowd that must have been there.”

  Her chosen mark would usually snort acknowledgement, glance at the bar, roll her eyes as well, and then tell Clara how the only person she believed was her cousin (or brother or aunt or friend) who had said something totally different. When they were done talking, Clara would exit the bar, and a few minutes to an hour later, Istvhan would disentangle himself and report what he’d learned.

  Most of it squared with what Doc Mason had told them. There had been something. It had scared people senseless. It had left mutilated corpses in its wake, both of people and animals. Some of the bodies were headless, yes, but a lot more seemed to have been ripped up by some kind of animal, particularly around the head and torso.

  “I don’t know if it’s the smooth men,” said Istvhan. “Sure, a decapitation could have grown in the telling to this, but it could also have simply been an animal.”

  Clara nodded. “Maybe it’s all a wild goose chase,” she said.

  “Maybe. Still, someone has to check.” Istvhan groaned as they approached the fourth inn. They had been working their way west along the river, which was fairly well settled, though the little towns bled into each other after a while. “Oh gods, I don’t know if I can handle another beer.”

  “You’re hardly touching them,” said Clara, amused. “I’ve been watching, and you never take more than a sip or two.”

  “A sip or two too many. It’s all rice beer. And they flavor it with beach plum. I never could stand fruit beers.”

  “Order something else?”

  “Something else is wine. Beach plum wine. Or brandy. Three guesses what it’s made out of.”

  “Clearly you are on the horns of a dilemma.”

  “I hate horny dilemmas, Domina.”

  Clara was still trying to think of a response when Istvhan swept through the door to suffer another round of beach plum.

  In the end, it took six inns before they got a lead of any interest. Clara ended up talking to a barmaid who said that her brother had nearly been taken by two men, not a monster, and if you asked her, it was a couple of killers working together. “All that stuff about a beast is just a bag of moonshine. People don’t want to think regular people are capable of that kind of thing.”

  “I imagine, working here, you’ve seen a lot of what people are capable of,” said Clara.

  “Have I ever.” Her voice was heavy with disillusionment. Clara put her age at about twenty and felt positively antediluvian.

  “Two men could be the smooth men,” said Istvhan afterward. “Or just a regular pair of killers, naturally.”

  “Naturally.”

  Istvhan rubbed his forehead. “Let’s get dinner at this next one,” he suggested. “It’s getting late enough that people are coming in for the evening and that’s a lot of beach plum to suffer through on an empty stomach.”

  The seventh inn served rice, crayfish, and pickled beach plums. Clara smothered a laugh. The crayfish, at least, was excellent. “Shall we call it a night?” she asked, stealing the beach plums off Istvhan’s plate. “Or one more?”

  “One more,” said Istvhan.

  Clara suspected that left to his own devices, Istvhan would keep saying “one more,” until dawn or beach plum poisoning, whichever came first. Oh well, if he keeps going too long, I’ll tell him I’m tired and need a break. And better plums than necromancers…

  “One more,” said Istvhan, two hours later.

  “This is the third ‘one more’ we’ve done,” said Clara. She sounded amused more than annoyed. “Do I have to hit you over the head to make you call it a night?”

  “Possibly.” Istvhan didn’t want to add that if they stopped at an inn, they’d have to get either a room or two rooms, and he didn’t know which it was going to be and was a little afraid to find out. If it’s two rooms, the
n I have to worry that she’ll decide I decided I wasn’t interested after all, and if it’s one room, then…well…either it would go very very well or very very awkwardly.

  He had never particularly minded making a fool of himself, but Clara…well, Clara mattered.

  He glanced over at her as she walked beside him. Twilight was already spreading in the shadows of the buildings and starting to creep into the street. Her skin seemed luminous in the dim light and the cloak added bulk to her shoulders, making her the same size as Istvhan. In a world that was often too small for him, where chairs and beds were never quite large enough, Clara seemed like an expatriate from a shared homeland, from some country he could not remember but very much wanted to visit.

  She turned her face toward him, a questioning smile on her lips. Probably she was about to ask where the next inn was. Probably he should kiss her and keep on kissing her until there was never any question of his interest.

  Her eyes met his and she must have read something there, because something flickered in her gaze. Her smile grew more puzzled and a line deepened between her eyes.

  “Hey, young man! Wait!”

  An old man came hobbling after them. He had a seamed face and walked with a cane.

  “Can I help you?” asked Istvhan politely, sensing that the moment had passed.

  The man shrugged. “Not a question of help,” he said, gesturing back towards the inn they had come from. “Heard some of the stories that those fools were feeding you about the Beast. Wasn’t that way at all.”

  “You saw the Beast yourself?” asked Clara.

  He looked over at her. “Aye, but no one listens to me. Saw it the night before that first girl was taken. Didn’t know what it was. Everybody tells stories after it got famous, but me, I saw it long before then. And got laughed at for my pains.” He spat on the ground.

  “No laughing here,” said Istvhan. “I’d rather hear from someone who saw it before they had an idea in their head what they were supposed to be seeing.”

  The old man pointed his cane at Istvhan. “Yes. Exactly! And it was a Beast. Anyone who says they saw a man didn’t see what I saw. Nor was it a wolf, either. That was just foolishness.”

  “A bear?” said Clara, in a voice so neutral that Istvhan could feel his ears turning beige.

  “Pff. A bear’d do no such thing. Maybe if it had the hydrophobia, but it wouldn’t last more than a week. No, the thing I saw…” His voice dropped and he looked around. “I lived in the next town over then. My daughter’s man, he hauled pottery for a living back then. Was coming back with him one night late and I saw a thing I’ve never seen afore or since.”

  Clara and Istvhan both leaned forward. The old man’s eyes sparkled appreciatively. Istvhan wondered how long it had been since he’d had such a rapt audience.

  “It went on all fours but it didn’t move right. Had a limp, not like mine here, but like all its legs were wrong. Like a spider that got half-swatted, still crawling around. Thin legs, and a thick body, like that. Maybe the size of a sheep, nothing like a bear. And there was something coming out of its back, and you’ll say I was drunk but I wasn’t. I was helping my daughter’s man, and you don’t drink when you got fragile cargo.” He studied their faces, and must have decided that they weren’t going to claim he was drunk. “Sounds mad, but I swear by the River Giant, it had some kind of face on its back. That was its head, the thing on its back, not where you’d expect an animal to have a head.”

  “A face?” Istvhan and Clara glanced at each other. “Can you tell us more?”

  “Aye. It was the next town over, though on the far side of it. Picking up a delivery at the old porcelain works, we were. The road wound around, away from the river, because there’s a mucky spot there, an oxbow lake filled in with trees. Can’t take a wagon through it. My daughter’s man, Sing, stopped to repack some dishes, said they were clinking too much and were near to breaking. I stepped into the trees to tend to some personal business, begging your pardon, young lady—”

  Clara grinned. “I’ve occasionally had to attend to such business myself, sir.”

  “—well, you know, then. It was in a patch of trees that I saw it. Moving like a crushed spider, one leg at a time and dragging some of the others sideways. I saw it and it saw me and it came rushing at me as fast as it could, and then it was a race, because I had a bum leg then too.” He slapped the side of his thigh. “I got to the wagon yelling at Sing to forget the damn dishes and he looked up and saw it coming. Then he let out a yell too and jumped in the wagon, and a damn good thing, because the donkey wasn’t having any of it. Took off faster than I’d ever seen that animal move, and I’d known her from a foal.” He shuddered. “I looked back and saw it standing there in the road, one side of it kind of slumped over, and that face on its back staring at me. Donkey didn’t slow down until we were nearly at the river. Only lost one set of dishes, though.”

  Istvhan exhaled, mind whirling. The old man looked back and forth between them. “It’s true,” he said. “I know how it sounds. My son-in-law saw it too, although he’s three years in the grave and can’t tell you himself.”

  “No, no,” said Clara hurriedly, “we believe you. We…uh…”

  “Saw something like that once ourselves,” said Istvhan, coming to the rescue. “Not here. A long way away, on the other side of the mountains.”

  It was the old man’s turn to lean in. “Never say so! When?”

  “Five years ago,” said Istvhan, pulling the number out of thin air. “After the Beast left here.”

  The old man exhaled through his nose. “Did it kill anyone there?” he asked bleakly.

  It was that bleakness, as much as the story of a head on a creature’s back, that inclined Istvhan to believe the man’s tale. Most of what he’d been told had been from people vying to describe how huge and horrible the Beast was, and every death added weight to their story. The more deaths, the better the story, as long as the deaths were far away in time or distance.

  Clara looked at him, waiting for him to answer.

  “A few people,” said Istvhan. “A…a man I knew killed it. The body was already dead, you see, but the head was a magic thing riding it. He smashed it.” Which was the truth, or close enough, and no sense saying that it had only been one of the saint-knew-how-many others.

  Their informant let out a long, long breath. “Thank the gods,” he said. “Thank the River Giant. I tell you, young man, I haven’t slept that well since that night, thinking it was still out there.”

  “We’re trying to find out where it came from,” said Clara. “Can you tell us anything more about where you saw it?”

  The old man considered. “The delivery was from the old porcelain works, like I said. They’re out of business now—one fell to the Beast and his husband couldn’t go on after that. Took the heart out of him. A couple little houses, though I don’t know if anybody’s still in them. The only other thing on that road is Stachys’s pottery.” He rubbed the side of his nose. “Odd one, Stachys. Some people know more than they let on, but him…I think he knows less than he actually knows, if you understand me.”

  “Slow?” asked Istvhan, wondering what the local euphemisms were and how to navigate them.

  “Not exactly. Not so you’d call him simple, like. You could tell him you were sick and he’d say he was sorry to hear it, and then you’d have to tell him that meant you weren’t coming to pick up a load because he wouldn’t connect the two. He wasn’t mean, he just couldn’t put two and two together. Knew his way around clay, though.”

  “You think he might have seen the Beast, though?”

  The old man shrugged helplessly. “Maybe. It was in that area. Whether he’s still alive, or if he’d think to connect whatever he saw to the Beast, though, your guess is as good as mine.” He shook his head. “There’s not much left out that way anymore. I hear tell of odd people coming and going sometimes, though, so be careful if you do wander that direction. Could be no more than a drifter or t
wo down on their luck, but it wouldn’t be the first time a band of thieves made use of one of the old potteries as a base of operations. I’d be on your guard.”

  “Always,” said Istvhan, and meant it.

  Thirty-Two

  “What do you think?” asked Clara softly, as they took the road around the oxbow lake. It was just as the old man had described, although in even worse repair. It was well and truly dark now, and although Clara went through life with the understanding that she was easily the most dangerous thing in the woods, there was still something here that made her want to whisper.

  “Matches up with what Doc Mason told us,” said Istvhan. “And the face in the creature’s back, that screams smooth man to me. If one’s body fell apart and the only thing left for it was to put it on an animal, I could see it. But then again, who knows? It’s been nearly a decade. And we know they can work anywhere with a big enough kiln, so they may have left.”

  “And after a decade, there may not be anything left to find.” Clara frowned. “Though nobody would have made the connection to clay and potteries back then, so possibly we could turn something up. The old porcelain works, perhaps? Or this Stachys person?”

  “Porcelain works first, I think.”

  Armed with the old man’s directions, they continued along the curve of the road. Dead leaves rustled in the copse of trees, and Clara heard a twig snap. Even knowing that it wasn’t nearly loud enough for anything human-sized, it made her nerves tingle. Don’t be absurd. What, do you think they’re putting clay heads on squirrels now?

  The mental image should have been funny, but wasn’t. She wished she hadn’t thought of it.

  Istvhan looked over his shoulder at the woods.

  “I could change,” she suggested. “If you’re worried about something there.”

  “Mmm. Realistically, there can’t really be any predator big enough to require that, is there? I’m just twitchy. Too many ambushes in the last month.”