They left the city not under cover of darkness, but in mid-afternoon, with a crowd streaming out of the gates after the market. There was no mistaking Caliban for anything but a knight, so he rode in front, wearing the emblem of the Forge God, while Learned Edmund rode beside him.
Slate had cut her hair brutally short, bound her breasts, and was trying to look like a squire or a temple novice. She wasn’t sure if she succeeded, but anyway, no one shot at her. She rode behind the other two, on a horse with a mouth like iron and a gait to match.
The guards might have looked twice, but a half-dozen gnoles dragged a body cart through the entryway and the crowd parted like a whiplash. The guards hastened to clear the way, yelling at people to move their oxen and get the hell out of the way…and then they were out on the road, with Anuket City behind them.
Slate hadn’t expected to leave the city alive. She didn’t know how to feel.
Angry. Angry seems good. Yes.
They rode away, the mass of people seeming to push them from behind. Ox-drovers slapped at their charges with goads and messengers on fleet horses passed them, throwing up clouds of dust. They passed a group of pilgrims heading a shrine, and one rode up to Caliban and asked for a blessing. Caliban placed his hand on the woman’s forehead and told her to walk with the gods.
Slate had no problem being angry at him. The sudden stab of jealousy made no sense at all, but hell with it. It could be part of the anger.
I wonder if those people know what paladins do…no, they think he’s with the Forge God. Forge God blesses blacksmiths, He doesn’t mess around drowning people.
She’d stolen the tabard herself. It was too short, but she didn’t have Brenner’s eye for fit.
Neither did Brenner any more.
Tears prickled at her eyes and she fought them back.
She hadn’t even liked Brenner, dammit.
Learned Edmund said something to the Knight-Champion and he nodded gravely. Slate rode behind them, a fuming novice on an unimpressive horse.
She stared at Caliban’s back and remembered a kiss.
It hasn’t been a passionate one. He probably had no memory of it at all. He’d been curled up around, chest against her back, and he had bent his head just a little and kissed her shoulderblade. A very small kiss saying, I’m here.
Not ownership, not passion, just…presence.
God’s stripes, as Grimehug would say! I’m mooning over what a kiss meant that he’s almost certainly forgotten. And Brenner’s still dead and Caliban killed him.
Funny, you knew he’d murdered a pack of novices while possessed, and you were still perfectly happy to hop in his bed. But when it’s someone you knew, now you care?
Shut up.
Even her own mind was against her. How nice.
Well, it hardly mattered now, did it? His god had come back to him. Caliban would be the first to tell her that being a servant of the gods was all he was good for.
Certainly not wandering around after some muddled little forger with a price on her head. It’s over now. He’s a real paladin again. He doesn’t need a liege and I never wanted a knight anyway.
He killed Brenner.
Brenner was possessed. He had to do it. I know he had to do it.
So why am I so goddamn angry?
They rode away from Anuket City and the crowd thinned and still Slate couldn’t find an answer.
Fifty-Three
They spent that night camped off the trade road. There was a traveler’s rest not too far away, with running water and a man selling firewood and hay. Presumably Horsehead had people watching it. Learned Edmund went to purchase some, as he was the only one probably not wanted by the crime lord.
Slate and Caliban said nothing to each other. Slate made a fire. Caliban tended to the horses. Slate boiled water, because she couldn’t think of much else to do, and made tea.
He poured hot water for himself and then retired to his side of the campfire. He did not say anything. He so obviously did not say anything that Slate wanted to scream and throw the hot water on him, but she didn’t because he would forgive her immediately and what the hell was she supposed to do about that?
Learned Edmund came back. He chatted cheerfully with both of them, either oblivious to the tension or pretending to be. It was hard to tell with Learned Edmund.
They ate. They rolled out their bedrolls. They climbed into them and went to sleep.
Well, the two men went to sleep. Slate tossed and turned, thinking that she hated sleeping on the ground, that her back was not as young as it used to be, and finally that it was too damn cold. She’d gotten used to having Grimehug wrapped around her feet.
She rolled over again, trying to find a comfortable place, or at least a warm one.
Caliban was on the other side of the dying fire, curled up neatly on his side. Slate could picture, very clearly, sliding out of her bedroll (hopefully without catching her feet on the blankets and falling over) and sliding into his. He would be very warm against her back, and she would fall asleep with his arm wrapped over her.
And in the morning, Learned Edmund would pretend to be oblivious again.
And Brenner would still be dead.
She stared into the dark. The sky was deep blue and the tree branches made black outlines against it. Insects sang in the woods.
She didn’t get up and eventually she fell asleep, still cold and irritated and wishing she wasn’t alone.
“What will you do now?” asked Learned Edmund, the second night on the road.
Caliban, to whom the question had been directed, was feeding branches to the fire. The orange light lay kindly on his skin, or perhaps Slate was simply mooning after the unobtainable again.
She wrapped herself tighter in her blanket and brooded.
“My god has taken me back,” said Caliban. “But the temple has not, and I do not think they will. I was too dramatic a failure.” His lips twisted. “So I will serve Him as best I can, outside the temple. There are always demons to kill somewhere. Perhaps He has need of a paladin who is not chained to the politics of His order.”
“It seems that we of the Many-Armed God are not immune to demons,” said Learned Edmund. “If you find yourself at loose ends, I am certain that our order would welcome a visit. You could still accompany me, of course, if you wish.”
Caliban met Slate’s eyes over the fire. Slate didn’t look away.
Neither did he.
“My first responsibility is to see Mistress Slate back to her home safely,” he said. “After that is done, perhaps I will.”
She didn’t say, I can get home myself. It would be far more difficult now. She would have to find a group of travelers going her way now, and she had a horse to deal with. Horses were hard.
“You’d be welcome too, Mistress,” said Learned Edmund.
Slate had to laugh. “Learned Edmund…you know as well as I do what would happen if I showed up on your doorstep with my feminine exhalations.”
The dedicate blinked at her. “Oh,” he said. “Oh…right. I had forgotten. I…” She saw his throat work as he swallowed. “I’m sorry. My order is wrong in this. I know that now. I will have to…have to do something…or…or…” He looked at Caliban. “I don’t know if I have your strength, Sir Caliban. To leave my order.”
He looked so young and so guilty that Slate felt ancient by comparison. “You’re curing werkblight,” she said gently, “and writing a book about gnoles. You need your order for that. It’s all right to change them from the inside.”
“I will,” he promised her. “I will.”
* * *
When Learned Edmund left them, a few days later, Slate found that she was both glad and sorry to see him go.
She wanted nothing more than to sink into a deep pit of despair, and he had been cheerful and chatty. It was exhausting. She couldn’t even bring herself to snap at him to just shut up.
It’s not his fault. He’s young. He’s excited. And I know he feels bad about Bre
nner. But he’s nineteen and he’s going to change the world and dear sweet gods I’m old.
But when he waved for the last time and rode off, the mules slouching along in his wake, Slate felt a stab of loss.
May the gods look after you, Learned Edmund. Better than they have for the rest of us.
Caliban turned his horse toward the Dowager’s city. In silence, Slate followed.
They rode through the ruins of a village that the Clockwork Boys had reached. There were people there, digging out buildings. Everywhere, Slate heard saws and shouts and sounds of industry.
“They’re rebuilding,” said Caliban, so quietly that Slate thought he was probably talking to himself.
“What else can they do?” she snapped. “Lie down in the dust and die?”
He looked over at her and she flushed. She hoped he couldn’t see it and suspected that he probably knew the subtle signs by now.
I don’t want to lie down in the dust and die. I want to lie down in the dust and swear a lot, and then drink heavily. It’s different.
That night, she lay in the blankets in the dust and hear Caliban breathing on the other side of the fire and knew that neither one of them were sleeping.
“Your demon’s not yelling at night,” said Slate the next morning, almost accusingly.
They were the first words she’d spoken to him since they broke camp. Without Learned Edmund’s presence, the silence grew between them like a wall.
He answered easily enough, though: “That is good to know. It is a gift from the god, perhaps. Or merely a by-product of the god’s return.” He smiled ruefully. “I find that I would prefer to think that it was a gift, all things considered.”
“Pity your god didn’t come back a lot sooner.”
Caliban shrugged. “Perhaps He had some reason. Perhaps His attention was simply elsewhere. I am only one man, after all. If gods were all-present and all-powerful, they would not need us to do their work for them.”
“That’s it, then?” said Slate in disbelief. “He hangs you out to dry like a prison snitch and comes back just in time to gut Brenner, and you’re just ‘oh well, these things happen’? Seriously?”
“I’m a paladin,” he said mildly. “Does a sword get angry when it is set aside, and then refuse to be drawn again?”
“Swords can’t think!”
“To hear you tell it, neither can paladins. At least, not very well.”
Slate cursed in sheer frustration and kicked her horse forward. The horse, appalled, managed about five steps at a trot, then settled back into a walk.
Caliban did not comment on this, which was good, because otherwise she was going to get off the horse and punch him as high up as she could reach.
After a little while, while she breathed through her mouth and tried not to sneeze at the dust, he said, “I was angry at first.”
“Good!”
“I was angry He didn’t kill me.”
“Are you serious?” She didn’t try to make the horse move, because that was clearly pointless. She thought about getting off and just bashing her head into a tree for awhile.
“If He had struck me down when I was first possessed, I would not have killed those people.” Caliban shook his head. “I was angry about that for…well, a long time.”
Slate looked around for a suitably bashable tree.
“But not killing me meant that I was available when He needed me again.”
“So, what then? The ends justify the means? A pack of nuns and novices for a pack of clocktaurs?”
Caliban shook his head. “I doubt that the God saw so far, or so coldly. I think… well. The gods walk among us, using what tools they must. They see a little farther than we do, but They are not all-knowing. I suspect—I know—that the Dreaming God has many tools. But it seems that I, as broken as I am, was the closest He had to hand.”
“He couldn’t have sent someone else?” said Slate bitterly.
“How? There were no demons in Anuket City, so far as anyone knew. What was He to do, appear in a blaze of light? Hope that some other paladin caught a whiff of demon before a clocktaur flattened them, and managed to let the temple know?”
“He’s a god! He should have done better!”
Caliban raised an eyebrow at her. “This is the sort of argument that one has in the second year at temple,” he said. “I was never any good at them. It’s a shame that Learned Edmund is gone. I suspect he could recite chapter and verse about free will and humanity.”
“I could really get to hate the gods,” said Slate.
“That’s all right,” said Caliban. “I’m pretty sure They’re used to it.”
Fifty-Four
“Caliban?”
He was briefly silent, perhaps surprised that she had initiated a conversation at all. “Yes?”
They were five or six days on the road now, she’d lost count. They had passed villages that were being rebuilt and villages that had been abandoned completely. There were definitely looters about, but they looked at Caliban and the sword and they looked for easier prey.
The silence between them was going to drive her mad soon. The hoofbeats of the horses were part of a rhythm that echoed in her head, over and over, like unspoken words. She’d run the words through her head a dozen times, in a dozen variations, before she finally spoke them aloud.
“What happens after an exorcism?”
Caliban glanced over at her, his eyes unreadable. “If the demon’s gone? The victim stays in the temple for a time. Even if you get it out early, even if they haven’t hurt anyone, the demon’s presence clings to you like…filth…”
Slate stopped even pretending they were speaking in the abstract.
Caliban cleared his throat. “The nuns take care of them. The unlucky ones will get a demon that doesn’t know how humans work, and they’ll have done things…eating rocks or mud because they’re hungry, staring at the sun because they don’t understand, walking on all fours and tearing up their hands. They need healers. And even the ones who had demons that don’t damage their bodies need…kindness. Someone to remind them that they are not responsible for what the demon did, or the thoughts it made them have.”
Slate stared at the reins gathered over her fingers and thought dark thoughts.
“Some of them never leave the temple again,” Caliban continued, when it became obvious she had nothing to add. “They become nuns or monks themselves. It is easier to be with other people who understand.”
“They exorcised you,” said Slate.
“They did.”
She had to work the thought around in her mind before she could say it. Caliban rode beside her in silence while she did.
“That means they drowned you.”
“Four times,” said Caliban, with no trace of emotion. “My demon was…tenacious.”
“Four!”
“I was very strong,” he said. Not bragging. “And I knew what was happening. That was perhaps the key. I knew that there was a good chance that I would survive, and thus the demon knew it as well. It refused to leave.” He gave a hoarse little laugh, one of the worst sounds that Slate had ever heard. “Which should not be possible, but I kept not dying.”
Slate stared at him in horror.
He caught her eye, gave a shrug, and looked down at the reins. “The third time, they say I begged for the sword. I don’t remember, but I suspect it’s true. They couldn’t get the draught into me, to make it easier. And they were all priests. They didn’t dare have another paladin present, you understand, in case it found a way to jump. All they knew was that this demon could take a paladin, and they were afraid. The last time, I think they actually did try to kill me. I was dead for…well, for quite a long time, to hear them tell it. And the demon could not jump and would not flee. They cannot live in dead flesh, so it died. And then I woke up.” He arranged the reins very neatly over the saddlebow, watching his own hands, not looking up.
“…shit,” said Slate, with feeling.
On
e corner of his mouth crooked up. “Waking up wasn’t so bad. I was cold, that was all. I’ve never been quite so cold in my life. Then I realized what was happening, and…well.”
“You’re always taking hot baths! I’d think water would…you know…”
He looked embarrassed that she’d noticed. “If you tried to hold me under, I expect I’d panic quickly enough. You’ve never seen me put my face in the water, and you never will.”
For no apparent reason, she remembered Brenner, what seemed like an eternity ago—“I offered to shave him, since he doesn’t have a mirror. Acted like a hot towel was a murder weapon.”
“They use the coldest water they can,” said Caliban. “You’re more likely to survive. Someone figured that out…a long time ago.”
“Good to know!”
“But you wake up cold. Very cold.” He shrugged. “Hot water’s different. It helps the cold. And it helps me think. Or stop thinking. These days, that’s mostly what I prefer.”
Slate found that she was filled with rage again, not at Caliban this time but for him. He gave them his entire life! He went out every damn day slaughtering demons! And a demon finally gets him and they just threw him away! Nobody helped him afterward!
She was going to go to the capitol and tear down the Dreaming God’s temple with her own two hands if she had to.
“But they threw you in a cell afterward! They tried you for murder!”
“Can you blame them?”
“Yes!”
“I don’t. I was their great failure, after all.”
Slate found that she was, in fact, capable of being mad at him and for him simultaneously.
It took her a few moments to work up to the next question. It had been in her head since Brenner died, but it was an ugly thing to drag out into the light.
She couldn’t stop herself.
“If I were possessed, would you kill me?”
“Not if I could exorcise you.”
Slate’s breath hissed through her teeth. “You’d let someone drown me?”
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