Paladin

by Sally Slater

  The High Commander leaned back in his chair, folding his hands in his lap. “I want you to find them. The Uriel, they call themselves.”

  “And do what, once I’ve found these Uriel?”

  “Nothing,” the High Commander said. “We learn who they are and what they want and why.”

  “What about the Sub Rosa? Why me and not them?”

  “Because I trust you, Tristan, and I can’t trust them. I will not rest the fate of the Paladins in the hands of vow-less men.” The High Commander’s gaze roved over him. “And because when you first meet with the enemy, you always put forward your best man.”

  He should have been flattered. He was honored, truly . . . but . . . what the High Commander asked of him was unlike anything he’d ever done before. Faith in blood, all he wanted to do was kill demons! He had no interest in becoming entangled in men’s affairs, nor any practice at it.

  Tristan closed his eyes. “When do I leave?”

  The High Commander smiled. “Soon, my boy. Not yet, but soon.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Sam tried to not let her anxiety show. Lord Astley was watching her like a hawk, making her all the more nervous. What secrets was the High Commander telling Tristan behind those enormous double doors? Had he somehow found out who she really was? Was he saying now to Tristan that his trainee was in reality a girl? And not just any ordinary girl—the daughter of His Grace, the seventeenth Duke of Haywood.

  She still couldn’t believe Tristan hadn’t recognized her. Her riotous curls were gone and her slight curves were hidden, but she didn’t think she looked that different. Maybe he didn’t remember her. How funny it would be if the pivotal moment of her life hadn’t warranted the faintest of his memories. Then again, Tristan probably had saved hundreds of lives—why should he remember hers?

  What would he do if he did discover her true identity? Would he remember her then?

  One side of the double doors swung open, and Tristan stepped out. Sam sucked in a harsh breath. Tristan’s jaw was tightly clenched and his entire expression tense. He stood with rigid posture, staring at her but not seeing her. The vivid blue of his eyes had clouded over.

  Her anxiety spiraled into full-blown panic. He knows. He has to know. “Tristan,” she whispered. “I can explain.”

  His eyes cleared. “Explain what?” he asked, brow furrowing.

  Praise the Gods above, he didn’t know. As usual, she’d jumped to conclusions. Idiot, she scolded herself.

  Fortunately, Sam didn’t have to come up with a response because Lord Astley began clearing his throat.

  “What is it, Astley?” Tristan asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “Did the High Commander explain to you about your trainee?”

  Oh no. Sam squeezed her eyes shut. So they had found her out after all. How? She’d been so careful. She hadn’t told a soul in Haywood where she was going or what she had planned.

  Tristan regarded Lord Astley, then her, with suspicion. “He said nothing of note.”

  “Typical,” the secretary said, lifting his nose and sniffing loudly. “You’ve been assigned another trainee.”

  “What!” Sam and Tristan exclaimed in unison.

  “Do you mean to say there’s been a mistake?” Tristan added, a touch too eagerly. Sam shot him a mutinous glare.

  “You’ve misinterpreted me, Paladin Lyons. You’ve been assigned another trainee in addition to young Haywood, here.”

  Sam let out her breath in a whoosh of air. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  “But that’s just not done,” Tristan said. “It’s always been one paladin and one trainee.”

  “Not anymore,” Lord Astley said, unswayed. “Congratulations on starting a new tradition, Paladin.”

  “But why?”

  The secretary thrust out his chest and squared his narrow shoulders. “High Commander’s orders.” He wilted under Tristan’s unrelenting stare, dabbing at his forehead with his sleeve. “If you must know, one of the Paladins refused to accept his assigned trainee.”

  Tristan’s mouth fell open. “We can do that?” Tristan asked. Sam scowled at him. She suspected he would toss her over if given half the chance, but he didn’t have to be so obvious about it.

  “No, you cannot,” Lord Astley said with displeasure. “As was explained to Paladin Moreau in detail. He has since been discharged and his title has been revoked.”

  “Faith in blood,” Tristan swore. “Who is this boy, Moreau’s sworn enemy?”

  The secretary coughed into his hand. “The boy is . . . unusual. But I assure you he is safe.”

  Tristan’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “Safe?”

  “I’ll bring him to you,” Lord Astley said. “Unless, that is, you object?”

  Tristan held up his hands. “I’m not Moreau.”

  “Glad you see it that way,” Lord Astley said. He then turned and called out down the corridor, “Braeden, come here, lad.”

  There was a moment’s pause, and then a tall, lithe figure stepped out of the shadows. Long black robes swirled in circles around his feet as he moved towards them. He kept his head bowed, hiding his face. Shocks of straight silver hair escaped from the confines of a topknot.

  Sam’s eyes widened in recognition. Only one trainee had hair that shade.

  “Raise your head, boy,” Tristan said. The boy hesitated, then slowly did as he was bade.

  Sam’s breath hitched. The boy’s face was ordinary—handsome, even—the healthy ochre of his skin stretching over high cheekbones and a square jaw. But his eyes . . . Slit pupils slashed through luminous crimson irises that swallowed most of the whites of his almond-shaped eyes. In the infinitesimal seconds that he blinked, he could pass for human. When his eyes were open, however, his gaze would draw a thousand questions.

  Tristan started with the simplest one: “What are you?”

  The boy met Tristan’s stare. “My mother was a human, Paladin.” The right side of his mouth quirked up. “Clearly my father was not.”

  Curiosity gave Sam the courage to speak. “What—what was he?”

  An unholy smile split his face, more snarl than grin. “Daddy dearest was a demon.”

  She gasped. So Fenric had been right—or half right, anyway. Since when did demons procreate with humans? A half man, half demon was the stuff of legend.

  Tristan, too, seemed startled by this revelation. “How is that even possible?”

  He raised a single silver brow. “The usual way, I’d imagine.” Sam snorted at the indelicate reply, and then her cheeks went red.

  Tristan glared at the both of them. “You know what I mean, boy.”

  Braeden shrugged. “My mother’s dead, or I’d have asked her myself.”

  Tristan seemed to struggle with himself; when he spoke again, his voice was strangled. “Are you sure you’ve got demon blood?”

  The trainee laughed darkly. “I’m sure. I can prove it to you if my eyes aren’t evidence enough.”

  “That’s plenty, Braeden,” Lord Astley said, his voice filled with warning.

  Tristan frowned at the secretary. “I can take it from here, Astley. Leave us.”

  The secretary opened his mouth as though he were going to say something else, then changed his mind. He adjusted his spectacles so that they perched low on his nose and gave all three of them a stern look before scurrying away.

  Tristan didn’t speak again till Lord Astley was out of sight. “Braeden, is it?”

  “Aye.”

  Tristan gave him a long once-over. “Do you want to be a paladin, Braeden?”

  The half-demon’s upper lip curled into a faint sneer. “Why else would I be here?”

  “You tell me.”

  Braeden pushed his shoulders back, straightening to his full height. He was taller than Tristan by nearly half a head, though not as solid. “I bear no love for my demon father. I want to see every demon dead.”

  Sam shivered at the cold intensity in his words. He simmered with repress
ed violence, just beneath the surface; she could sense it. She took a few steps back, increasing the distance between them.

  “Now let’s get a few things straight,” Tristan said, unaffected. “As long as the two of you are my trainees, you will treat me with the utmost respect. You are to obey my orders as if they came straight from the High Commander himself. Do we understand each other?”

  Sam caught herself trading glances with the half-demon. Together, they nodded.

  “Good.”

  That evening, after Sam and Braeden had been given a tour of the Paladins’ extensive grounds and equipped with weaponry and armor, Tristan brought them to the central keep of the fortress, where they were to dine and sleep. They passed through the antechamber and into the great hall, a room large enough to fit a thousand men comfortably. Curved braces and beams of oak supported a high ceiling, and lush plum-colored carpeting covered much of the tiled floor. Archaic weaponry hung on the stone walls next to stained-glass windows, and mounted beside them were demon heads. Sam couldn’t tell if they were real or statues. Either way, the effect was intimidating.

  The first floor of the keep was near to full of people, paladins in their formal red jackets and gawping trainees in plain clothes. As they made their way toward the wide stone staircase at the back of the great hall, Sam felt the weight of stares coming from every direction. But she wasn’t so paranoid to think she was their target. Nobody would wonder about the small too-pretty boy when there was a half-demon in their midst. And for that, she was obliged to him.

  Tristan led Sam and Braeden up the stairs and through a maze of twisting hallways. “You two will be sharing this room,” he said, pushing open a door at the end of the corridor. Sam glanced uneasily at Braeden. She had been hoping for her own private sleeping chambers; sharing a room would certainly complicate matters. It was going to be damned hard to maintain her charade day and night.

  To Sam’s relief, the room was outfitted with a separate bathroom and one of those newfangled flush privies. Using a chamber pot while a boy was in the room would jeopardize her identity, for obvious reasons. There were two beds—not featherbeds, but nicer than she’d slept in since she’d left Haywood—with enough distance between them to give a semblance of privacy.

  “I’ll be sleeping in the adjoining room,” Tristan said, letting himself out through a door in the left wall. “I’ll see you at training after breakfast. Don’t be late.”

  Sam and Braeden sat on the edge of their respective beds, an awkward silence stretching between them. Braeden just looked at her with those eerie, inhuman eyes. She fought back a shudder.

  “My eyes bother you, do they?”

  “N-no,” Sam stuttered, startled by the question. “Was I staring?”

  “You were.”

  Sam winced at his bluntness. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  He turned his face away from hers. “It’s okay. I’m used to it.”

  Sam wasn’t sure what to say next, but decided on a version of the truth. “I haven’t spent much time around boys my own age. You’ll have to forgive any—” She paused, trying to find the right words. “—social inadequacies.”

  He laughed outright at that. “Said the human to the demon.”

  She recoiled, and he saw it. “Half,” he said with a wry twist of his mouth. “I’m only half a monster.”

  She would not feel guilty. “My mother was killed by a demon,” she burst out.

  “So was mine.”

  She hadn’t expected that, nor the pang of empathy that followed. “How . . . how did she die?”

  His features knit into a dark expression. “She died giving birth to me.”

  Sam marveled at the self-loathing in his strange eyes. No one could possibly hate him as much as he hated himself. “I’m sorry,” she said, for lack of ought else to say.

  “Aye,” said Braeden. “So am I, though not much good it does me.” And with that, he abruptly stood up from his bed and headed into the privy.

  Sam slid back onto her mattress, trying to sort through her chaotic thoughts. When her mother died, Sam had sworn she’d hunt down every demon, and Braeden had made no bones about what he was. But she was beginning to think she would be wrong to fixate on his demon half.

  Shouldn’t it matter that half of him was human?

  Sam was awoken by the grumble of her stomach. “Is it breakfast yet?” she mumbled, but Braeden was already gone. She didn’t mind that he had left without her; this way she could redo her binding and throw on fresh clothes without hiding in the privy.

  Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Sam dragged herself down to the great hall on the first floor of the fortress. Long tables with benches ran the length of the room. Before she could decide where to sit, she bumped into a familiar face. Fenric’s hair hung in those same, too-perfect curls, his nose turned up as though he smelled something offensive.

  “I saved you a seat,” he said, and she had no choice but to join his table.

  “I never properly introduced myself,” Fenric said haughtily once they both were seated. “Lord Fenric Vane of Icetower. My father is Paladin Andrel Vane.”

  Sam digested this new piece of information. Andrel Vane was one of the most famous paladins of his generation. Fenric was Paladin royalty. “Sam of Haywood,” she offered in return.

  “You’re rooming with it, aren’t you?”

  It took her a moment to process what, or rather, who he meant. “His name is Braeden,” she found herself saying.

  Fenric sneered at her. “Let’s call him what he is. A demon.”

  Half a demon, she almost said, but instinctively held back. Fenric didn’t seem the type to see things in halves. Her gaze wandered the hall, and she spotted Braeden, eating alone. She felt a stab of guilt.

  She didn’t have much time to feel guilty before the trainees were called out into the courtyard. Sam shoveled the last of her breakfast into her mouth and hurried after them.

  Paladin Alan Savage—Fenric’s mentor—waited for them outside. He was a fierce-looking man, tall and darkly handsome in spite of the deep scars running across his cheeks. With his long blue-black hair and pointed beard, he reminded Sam of a sea pirate—not that she’d ever met one.

  Once all the trainees had gathered, he turned towards the front of the courtyard, indicating for them to follow him. By the iron gates, ten spherical gray stones were lined up on the grass in increasing size order. The tenth, largest stone was so large it was more boulder than stone.

  Paladin Savage surveyed the trainees with a cool, dispassionate gaze. “Hmph,” he said by way of greeting. “Lucky for you lot, today will be a test of brawn and not brains. The stone carry is one of our most ancient training methods, and one of the best. For those of you who have never tried your strength at the stone carry, it should be easy enough to understand. Nevertheless, I will demonstrate. All you have to do is pick up the stone”—Paladin Savage straddled his feet on either side of the smallest stone and squatted down, hugging his arms around its center and hoisting it high onto his chest—“and carry it to where Paladin Rendon is standing.”

  An older paladin with twinkling blue eyes and a twirling white mustache stood a hundred paces back. He gave them a jaunty wave.

  “Then bring it back and set it down, like so.” Paladin Savage dropped the stone with a thud. “Then you move on to the next stone, and the next stone after that, till it becomes too heavy.” He looked around. “Any questions?”

  Sam had known that joining the Paladins would push her strength to its limits. Thanks to regular weight training, she was exceptionally strong for a woman, and stronger than a lot of men. But in a contest of pure might against a man who trained as hard as she did, she’d lose. And she couldn’t help notice she was the smallest among the trainees; the next shortest boy stood half a head taller. She hoped she didn’t embarrass herself—or worse, give herself away.

  The trainees queued up in a long line that wrapped around the courtyard. Sam waited towards th
e very back. Going near the end would give her an idea of what she needed to strive for. She couldn’t afford to be the worst.

  The first trainee to attempt the stone carry was a mountain of a boy with broad shoulders that belonged on a blacksmith. To no one’s surprise, he lifted the first eight stones with nary a problem. The ninth proved a challenge—he nearly dropped it by Paladin Rendon—and the tenth refused to budge.

  A fair number of boys were unable to lift the eighth and ninth stones, and some of the smaller boys failed on the seventh. A very few boys failed before that, but between Paladin Savage’s harsh ridicule and the rest of the trainees’ mockery, Sam decided right then and there she had to pick up the seventh stone. She didn’t need any more reasons to make herself a target.

  Finally, her turn arrived. She crossed over to the first, lightest stone. Behind her, she could hear snickering. Words like scrawny and half-pint were being bandied about, but girl was the only jab that affected her. She took a calming breath, reminding herself they didn’t actually think she was a girl. They were just insulting her.

  Sam shuffled her feet forward till the first stone rested between her ankles. Squatting till she was nearly parallel, she grasped the rock with straight arms and pulled it to chest height.

  Hmph. It wasn’t that heavy. Walking to Paladin Rendon and back took her no time at all.

  But, as she soon discovered, there were significant jumps in weight between stones. I might fail, she realized as she stumbled the last few paces with the fifth stone.

  She had to use her legs and back to get the sixth stone up, bringing it first into her lap, then driving her hips to kick it up above her abdomen. With slow, agonizing steps, she trudged over to Paladin Rendon and returned. Gods, that had been painful, and she had to do it all over again with a heavier stone.

  Heart still thumping from her last effort, Sam got behind the seventh stone, settled into position and pulled.

  It didn’t move. Not an inch.

  She didn’t let go—to let go would be quitting—and shifted her weight onto her heels. She arched her back and tugged on the stone, to no avail.