“You were right!” he yelled through the door. “There was another blade.”
“Are you hurt?” Piper yelled back.
“No!”
“Good!”
He wandered over to the open doorway on the far side of the room, though he wasn’t willing to go through it just yet. The door might not close behind him, but he didn’t quite understand the rules and he wasn’t going to risk it. He settled for leaning out and looking both ways.
There was only one door on the opposite wall. It was identical to all the others. Well, he hadn’t really expected anything else.
He busied himself searching the body as well as he could, given its advanced state of unpleasantness. Male, young enough not to have any gray hair. Piper could undoubtedly tell a great deal more. Leather shoes. The only thing in his pockets was a stub of pencil. No money, nothing identifying.
He relayed all this to the others when the door finally opened. “Pick a spot and lie down,” he said. “It’s easy enough, just unsettling.”
They picked spots. Galen watched Piper, as rigid as a corpse, and wondered if it was safe to reach out and take the other man’s hand. Safe from blades, maybe. Safe from more than that…?
He did it anyway. Piper gave him a startled but gratified look, then jumped as the first blades closed. “There’s another one coming,” said Galen. “Don’t sit up.”
“That won’t be a problem,” said Piper. “I appear to be completely paralyzed.” Galen squeezed his fingers reassuringly.
“Still more clearance than some gnole-burrows,” said Earstripe. The second blade snapped. Piper jumped again, his gloved fingers closing convulsively on Galen’s. “Slightly less than gnole-burrow now,” Earstripe observed.
“Now would be a terrible time to discover that I’m claustrophobic,” said Piper.
“Are you?”
“Definitely not. I work underground in a stone box full of dead bodies. Claustrophobia would be very bad for my career.”
“I can see that.”
“It’s not the tight spaces I mind, it’s the giant killing blades making the spaces so tight.”
“That seems very logical.” Galen stroked his thumb over Piper’s knuckles. The kidskin was very fine and he could feel the bones of the other man’s hand.
The blades retracted and Galen released the doctor’s grip reluctantly. (Did he imagine it, or was Piper a little slow as well?) Gnole and paladin clustered around the headless body, while Piper inspected the head in the corner.
“Male. Twenties, I’d say. Good diet, probably from a reasonably well-off family.”
“How can you tell that?”
“He’s still got all his teeth,” said Piper. “None of the usual markers of malnutrition. He’d be on the tall side, too.”
“If a human’s head were still attached, anyway,” muttered Earstripe.
“I’ll put my professional reputation on the line and say that was a recent development.”
The gnole snorted. “Leather shoes, like the others,” said Galen, pointing. “And all he had in his pockets was a pencil.”
Earstripe held up one of the dead man’s hands. It moved stiffly, but even with the dark stain of settled blood, Galen could see the ink stains on the man’s fingers. “A gnole thinks a clerk, maybe.”
“Down here taking notes?” guessed Piper. “Thomas talked about hiring a clerk. Suppose he hired this one, then shut him in, just like us?” Earstripe nodded to him.
“Other humans might have been the same,” the gnole said. “Couldn’t tell about fingers, though.”
“No, the water damage was too much,” murmured Piper. “It would make sense. He lures people in using their intellectual curiosity.” His lips twisted self-deprecatingly.
“It wasn’t just you,” said Galen. “We’re both down here with you, remember?”
He could tell that he hadn’t convinced the doctor, but Piper nodded jerkily and went to the far door. All three of them stepped out into the hall, tensed for the rules of the place to change, but nothing happened except for the greenish lights flicking to life on the wall.
“Do we try the next door then?” asked Piper.
“No,” said Earstripe. “We rest.” He sat down, leaning against the wall. “A gnole and humans did much today, much running, much alarm. Need sleep, or start making mistakes, yeah?”
“Sleep?” said Piper, sounding astonished.
“He’s right,” said Galen.
“I’m sure he is, but it seems so strange to sleep after all of this.”
“You get used to it.” Galen sat down as well, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Sometimes we’d have hours before launching an attack, and the smartest thing to do was to take a catnap. It was hard to learn at first, though.”
“I can imagine.”
“I don’t think I could sleep just yet, though.”
“No, me neither.” Piper sat down next to him and sighed. “My brain will start hammering me with guilt or second-guessing all the ways I could have stopped this.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“Bah.” Piper shrugged. “That wasn’t a call to try and convince me. It’s the usual foolishness, nothing more.”
“Why do you do that?” asked Galen.
“Do what?”
“Dismiss your own feelings like that. As if they’re an annoyance.”
“Mostly because they are.” Piper waved his hand at the ivory doorway. “And really, we’re stuck in a bizarre death maze where I’m feeling our way along trying to figure out what makes the dead bodies dead before it makes us dead. This isn’t really the optimal time to be delving into my feelings, is it?”
Galen laughed softly. “Well, you’ve got me there. But also we’re not going anywhere in a hurry, so we’ve got plenty of time.”
“I can think of a great many things I’d rather do with my last hours on earth.”
Galen wondered if the doctor had meant that flirtatiously. Had that been a meaningful look? Was it worth spending his last hours on earth feeling horribly awkward if it hadn’t been?
Sure, I can charge the enemy bare-handed and screaming without a qualm, but can I ask a handsome man if I can kiss him without breaking into a cold sweat? Apparently not.
“Humans could try going to sleep.”
“Sorry, Earstripe…” The gnole grumbled something in their general direction and rolled over.
“Anyway,” said Piper, more quietly, “it’s not like there’s some deep dark well of misery and torment that I’m sitting on. I’m just so tired of it all. Having to be responsible for someone else’s emotions is fine and good for friends and lovers, but as a job? Day in and day out, scared people who are either so cowed you have to tease out their symptoms or so full of bluster that you’re waiting for a kick to the head? It’s exhausting. Some people can do it. Me, I just got worn down.”
The word lovers had licked down Galen’s spine and he had to shake himself free. “So you decided to work with the dead.”
“Between that and my little trick, it seemed the best fit. The only emotions I have to deal with are mine and the occasional family of the deceased, and by the time they get to me, they’ve usually gone through the initial shock and we take refuge in courtesies.” He sighed. “Every now and again they want to yell at me because I’m telling them a story different than the one they told themselves, but somebody from the Rat is usually there to handle it. The Rat’s full of good people.”
“And yours?”
“My what?”
“Your feelings?”
“Oh, those.” Piper waved his hand, as if dismissing a mosquito. “I have them, obviously. I’m not a clockwork creature out of Anuket City. But ideally, I keep my life arranged so that it doesn’t get out of hand.”
“Even happiness? Joy?”
Piper tilted his head toward Galen, his dark eyes lighting with amusement. “How many men really suffer from a surfeit of unbridled joy in their lives?”
“I really hope somebody somewhere is,” said Galen. “Make up for the rest of us who are just muddling along, you know?”
Piper laughed. Damnation, he was attractive when he laughed. Regardless of his feelings about…well…feelings…he had no problem laughing, and Galen found himself watching the movement of the doctor’s tongue against his lower teeth and feeling quite a few things himself.
“I’m more curious about what this place was meant to be,” said Piper, obviously ready to change the subject. He waved his hand, taking in the ivory walls. “Why build this? What was it meant to be?”
“Crazy humans building a crazy thing,” muttered Earstripe. Galen knew from experience that gnoles had about fifty words that all translated as crazy, none of which actually involved mental illness, which they called head-sick. He wondered which version of crazy the gnoles considered the ancients, and how it varied from all the others.
“Possibly, but all the wonder engines seem to have a purpose, even if we don’t always know why.” Piper leaned his head back against the wall, chin tilted up. Galen’s eyes traced the long column of his throat, the dark stubble coming in around the edge of the clipped beard. He could imagine how the skin would feel against his lips, the roughness turning to smoothness lower down his neck. “Some kind of torture chamber?”
Torture chamber cut Galen’s imagination off at the ankles. He looked away. “It doesn’t feel right for one of those,” he said.
“It doesn’t?”
Galen sighed. “Have either of you ever seen one?”
“A torture chamber?” Piper shook his head. “I’ve had some bodies come in that were pretty badly treated,” he said. “But I don’t go out in the field like that.” There was a hollowness to his tone that Galen knew too well.
Earstripe sat up, abandoning the pretense of sleep. “A gnole saw a den where a human lived,” he said. “A human called himself a doctor. A human who didn’t want anyone to get better.” He paused, then said, obviously reluctantly, “Not-doctor’s den looked like bone-doctor’s den.”
Piper winced. “Was he stopped?”
“Yes. A human got away, found gnoles. Gnoles hid a human, got guard-gnole, guard-gnole brought others. Not-doctor went out window, fell.” Earstripe stared at his claws.
Galen wondered if the man had really fallen. Gnoles were much more practical in some regards than humans.
“Was the person who escaped all right?” asked Piper softly.
Earstripe shrugged. “Don’t know any human would be all right after. A human healed up. A human stayed in gnole burrow for a long time. Couldn’t look at other humans. A gnole took a human to another burrow, out of the city, no humans, only gnoles. Don’t know after that.”
Galen sighed. He could understand that. “I’ve seen one,” he said. “We’d been called in to clear out a…a mess, frankly. A bandit group that turned into a cult, or a cult that took to raiding, take your pick. The leader kept an actual torture chamber. It felt different than this.” He lifted his head, scanning the plain ivory walls with their faint etched lines. “It felt like it was waiting.” Even now, he could remember the iron machines, the spikes, the screws, the stained leather straps. Things that he understood the use of immediately, and other things that he had never learned and didn’t want to know. All the devices had oozed malevolence, but worse, they had a kind of terrible inanimate patience, as if they knew their time would come again.
The paladins had burned and smashed everything in the place, but even that hadn’t felt like enough. The Saints of Steel weren’t big into blessings, but there was a priest of the Forge God with them, who had prayed over the site for a day straight. Galen had never seen the woman look so haggard. Even the battle hadn’t affected her as much.
“It’s the forging,” she had said, when Istvhan had asked. Istvhan always asked. “Someone wrought those machines, brought them into being. Devices that exist only to draw pain from flesh. Once a thing is made, it exists in the mind of the world. The next one is easier to make, and the next one after that.”
“Some of those machines have existed for a long time,” said Judith, who didn’t talk about her past. Galen had served beside the other paladin for nearly a decade at that point, and still didn’t know where she came from.
The Forge God’s priest had sighed. “I know,” she had said. They were all sitting around the fire that night, and the orange light could not seem to illuminate the deep hollows of her eyes. “The first takes a twisted genius. The hundredth can be done by any blacksmith. It is why our first lesson is always to be careful of what you make.”
He shook away the memory and tried to explain what the Forge God’s priest had said, but didn’t know how much he managed to convey to Piper and Earstripe. “This doesn’t feel like that,” he said. “This place feels like it will kill you and then you’ll be dead. Just dead. It isn’t trying to carve you up in little increments. You don’t have time to panic or see what’s happening to you. It isn’t evil. It’s just here.”
“You’re right,” said Piper. “You’ve put your finger on it. This doesn’t feel cruel, exactly. It feels like a test.”
“Bad human said it was religious.”
“I can’t swear it isn’t,” said Piper. “It’d be a pretty odd one, though, wouldn’t it? Usually you just have to put on a mask and crawl through some caves on your knees.”
“A little self-flagellation, a lot of candles,” agreed Galen.
“Human religion is crazy,” said Earstripe with finality. “A gnole wants to sleep. Humans sleep too. A gnole doesn’t want humans dying because they stayed awake chattering.”
“Yes, Mother,” said Galen.
“Hmmph! Wipe paws, too.”
Piper snickered. He slid off his outer tunic and balled it up into a pillow. Galen knew there was no point in standing watch, but it was hard to close his eyes nonetheless.
Once he did, though, he fell asleep instantly, pulled down into dark and drowning dreams.
Sixteen
Piper woke because someone shrieked in his ear.
He shot upright, convinced that they were under attack or the building was on fire or possibly there were wolves or all three at once. For a moment he could not remember where he was, but the watery light on ivory walls snapped him back to reality. No wolves, not on fire—is it Thomas? Has he come back to kill us? He looked around wildly. Earstripe was on his feet, teeth bared. And Galen…
Galen lay on his side, eyes tightly closed, his face screwed up in a rictus of fear. One hand scrabbled at the smooth floor, nails struggling for purchase. “No,” he mumbled. “No. Where is…” His voice trailed off into incoherency, and then he gave another heartwrenching cry. His chest heaved and his nails chattered against the floor as his hands spasmed.
“Dear god,” said Piper. Whatever Galen was seeing, it was clearly horrific. He reached toward the paladin. “Galen, you’re having a nightmare—”
“Stop!” Earstripe scrambled toward him. “A human doesn’t touch! Stop!”
“What?”
“Where is he?” whimpered Galen. “Where did he go?”
“A human can’t touch him. Not during a human’s bad dream. Not safe.”
Piper stifled a groan. Plenty of people had some misguided notion that if you woke a sleepwalker or shook someone out of a nightmare, you’d do terrible damage to them. It was all ridiculous and not in any way based in science. As far as he could tell, the prohibition against waking sleepwalkers had arisen because of a superstition that their souls might come untethered and a wandering ghost slip inside in its place. Apparently gnoles have the same thing. Lovely. “It’s fine. It won’t hurt him.”
“Not him I’m worried about, bone-doctor.”
Galen sobbed in his sleep. “I have to do something.” said Piper decisively. “He’s suffering.”
Earstripe tried to grab for him, but he was too late. Piper caught Galen’s hand, saying in soothing tones, “Galen. Galen, it’s all right.”
&n
bsp; Galen’s eyes snapped open. Dark green stared into brown without a trace of recognition.
“Galen, you’re having a nightm—”
He did not finish the word, because the world suddenly rolled upside down as the paladin threw him across the room.
Oh hmm, thought Piper, which was not a terribly useful thought to be having. Then he hit the ground, landed badly, and his shoulder exploded into pain. The world went from rolling to turning gray at the edges.
When it settled again, he sat up and felt for his arm. Not out of the socket. That’s lucky. Right. Don’t touch Galen when he’s having a nightmare. I should definitely have listened to Earstripe.
Earstripe was, in fact, standing over him. The gnole’s back was to Piper and he was hunkered down, his fur in spikes along his back. A low growl rumbled out of his throat.
“It’s fine,” said Piper, in pain but also deeply embarrassed. Galen was going to feel horribly guilty in a moment. People always did when they accidentally smacked someone else during a fit, or wandered somewhere unfortunate while sleepwalking. The important thing was to reassure them that you knew it wasn’t their fault. “Really, I’m fine.”
Earstripe’s growl dropped even lower. His ears were flat back against his head.
The sound of a sword being drawn rang through the ivory room.
Galen had risen to his feet. His eyes were unfocused and his hands were full of naked steel.
“Galen?” said Piper.
The paladin screamed.
Earstripe, far stronger than Piper had ever guessed, wrenched the doctor upright and snarled, “Run!” Piper didn’t need to be told twice. Galen’s scream had not sounded human. It was a long wailing cry, like some animal Piper had never seen and didn’t want to.
They ran.
* * *
Of course, you fool, the Saint of Steel’s paladins were berserkers, that was what they did, you knew that was what they did, why were you so stupid?
He’d been stupid because he knew the paladins. He’d met them. He’d never seen one of their legendary berserker rages and he’d never had to fit the reality in with the gentle, dutiful men he knew.
Paladin’s Hope: Book Three of the Saint of Steel Page 11