“You do make far too many biscuits,” Zale agreed.
“And the bandits stole them!”
The three Motherhood men were looking back and forth between Zale to Halla with indescribable expressions.
“Can you believe it?” Halla demanded. “If they’d just asked for biscuits, I would have given them some! It’s not like they stay fluffy past the second day! You have to eat them up, or they get hard as rocks. Well, you know.”
Judging by the look on the Motherhood captain’s face, he did not know.
“I don’t—” he started to say, but Halla had the bit between her teeth now.
“And it was my grandmother’s recipe! My grandmother’s! They stole my grandmother’s biscuits, can you imagine? What kind of depraved mind steals a woman’s extra biscuits?”
“Truly shocking,” murmured Zale, casting a long-suffering look at the Motherhood priests.
“No, no,” said Halla, waving her hand. “No, I know. You’ve got bigger things to worry about than bandits stealing a respectable widow’s baked goods. It’s all terrible, the way the rule of law has gone, that’s all. I hope you find your missing men. If you do, bring them by, and I’ll make you all biscuits.”
There was a long, teetering moment when Halla thought it might work. She’d stonewalled better men than the Motherhood captain. Such men hated to look foolish, and if you could appear so absurd that bothering you made them look equally absurd…
“I don’t have time for this,” snapped the captain. “Bind their hands and bring them.”
And then, like a miracle, like…well, like divine intervention…Halla heard a voice say, “Excuse me, but is there some problem here?”
Chapter 54
The three paladins were almost a head taller than the Motherhood captain, and all of them had broader shoulders. Each carried an enormous demonslaying sword across their back. There was something about the way that they stood that made you really notice the swords.
To give the Motherhood captain what credit he deserved, he tried. “There’s no problem,” he snapped. “This doesn’t concern the Dreaming God.”
“Oh, good,” said Jorge, the man she’d patched up the night before. “The Dreaming God owes this woman a debt, you see. But if it doesn’t concern us, we can all be on our way. Are you nearly ready, Priest Zale?”
“It will take us a few minutes to sort out the wagon,” said Zale pleasantly, as if they had always planned to make an early start and weren’t currently standing wrapped in a blanket on a frozen road with men pointing swords at them. “Is Brindle with—ah, yes, of course.”
“A gnole thought big men would like to know that a priest was ready to leave,” said Brindle, from behind the paladins.
The Motherhood captain ground his teeth. “We won’t detain you,” he said. “We only have business with the priest and the witch.”
“Witch?” said Jorge. “What witch?”
“That woman!”
The other male paladin burst out laughing. “Mistress Halla, are you a witch?”
“I don’t think so,” said Halla. “I’m not actually sure what a witch does, but I assume you don’t just fall into it sideways. I’m mostly a housekeeper.”
“And she can patch up injured goats,” said the female paladin, sounding very amused. “And occasionally injured paladins.”
The other Motherhood men quietly sheathed their swords and inched away, looking as if they’d rather be somewhere else.
“We are told she consorts with demons!” said the captain.
This was a tactical error, as even Halla could have told him. If there was one word guaranteed to suddenly focus the attention of a paladin of the Dreaming God, it was demon. The entire order was dedicated to demonslaying. It was all they did, all they wanted to do, and they were very, very good at it.
“Are you claiming that Mistress Halla is possessed?” asked Jorge. His voice was almost silky.
The Motherhood captain thought about it. Halla could see him thinking about it.
“Such a claim would place this entire area under the Dreaming God’s jurisdiction,” said Zale, examining their nails. “Anyone present could be conscripted to assist in their inquiries. Both the Temple of the Rat and the Hanged Motherhood have agreed to this, as you undoubtedly are aware.”
“Demons,” said the other male paladin, “are everyone’s problem.”
The captain inhaled sharply through his nose. His eyes flicked from Jorge to Zale and back again.
Then: “Perhaps my informant was mistaken,” he ground out. “You are, of course, the authority on demonkind. If you do not believe that this woman is a threat…”
The three of them looked at Halla, then back at the captain.
“I believe,” said the female paladin gently, “that the three of us together can probably take her in a fight.”
The Motherhood captain let out a brief, bitter curse, flung himself into the saddle and rode away. His men scrambled to follow, one or two casting apologetic looks over their shoulders.
“Well, that was unpleasant,” said Jorge, watching the Motherhood men ride away. “How’d you get on their bad side?”
“They’re Motherhood,” said Zale. “They don’t have a good side. Their goddess hanged herself with her own hair so that she could punish a murderer who had been declared innocent, and frankly, I’m starting to think that poor soul was innocent and their whole religion is founded on persecuting unlucky bystanders.” They spat in the roadway, which was, for Zale, as savage a display of temper as Sarkis casually slaughtering a few bandits.
“Well, you’re not wrong.” The female paladin tapped her mailed hand on the pommel of her saddle. “Your gnole friend came and got us. Good thing, too.”
“A gnole knows when a priest is in trouble,” said Brindle.
“Some of their other priests were pestering us earlier,” said Zale. “And apparently they went missing, so now these fellows are convinced we’re hurling magic and demons and probably artifacts of the ancients in the bargain.”
This was, Halla thought, a remarkably edited view of the last week or two. On the other hand, as pleasant as they seemed, it probably wasn’t wise to inform a trio of paladins, protectors of the faith and servants of good, etcetera, etcetera, that they’d accidentally murdered two men and dumped the bodies.
The paladins rode alongside the wagon as they set out.
Well…they tried.
In actual fact, the ox moved slower than a walking horse and only marginally faster than a completely stationary horse, so they went back and forth for about two hours and then the woman—Halla had gathered that her name was Mare and she was nominally in charge—said, “Did you say you had to get somewhere in a hurry?”
“We’re trying to reach Amalcross,” said Zale. “We are merely…um…hampered by our ox. No offense to the ox.”
“An ox has other qualities,” said Brindle. “An ox went through the Vagrant Hills and didn’t panic once.”
“Ah.” Mare turned back to her comrades and held a brief conference with them out of earshot. “Amalcross, you say?”
“That’s the plan.”
“At the current rate, it’ll take you…ah…”
“At least four days,” said Zale. “We know.”
“Believe me, we know,” said Halla.
“Well.” Mare dismounted and walked alongside the wagon. “We, too, have to be somewhere. But I don’t much like leaving you to the Motherhood’s tender mercies. If that captain runs across you and we’re not here, I don’t think he’s going to be in a very good mood.”
Halla and Zale nodded glumly.
“So,” said Mare. “Would you like to get there much faster?”
Halla’s heart leapt at the prospect, though she wasn’t exactly sure what the paladin meant. “We’d love to,” she said. “But what did you have in mind?”
Mare grinned. “Have you ever ridden a horse?”
Sarkis would have sworn that he remembered his f
ew hours spent with the Sainted Smith—he grimaced even thinking the name, but knew no better one—far better than he liked.
After a few hours of answering Nolan’s questions, he realized just how much he had deliberately forgotten.
“Give me a little time,” he said finally, his voice clipped. “I have answered many questions. This is not a memory I cherish.”
“Oh,” said Nolan. The scholar tried to hide his disappointment. “Yes, of course. I’m sure it was physically quite painful.”
Sarkis wanted to laugh or scream or grab the little man by the throat and shake, but he did none of these things. He had to get word to Halla, and cooperation was his only chance for now.
He closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead with his knuckles. The wagon rattled along under him.
Behind his eyes, he saw firelight and the shadow of the Smith. She was perched on the edge of the table, a lanky woman with heavily muscled arms. Her eyes were lit with flame from without and with a frantic glitter from within.
“It will be glorious,” she promised him. “I know this is a punishment, but if it works, you will live for all time! You will see kingdoms rise and fall, you will see history!”
“I’ve seen enough kingdoms fall,” he’d replied, hearing his chains rattle as he moved. “I’ve helped a few of them along. It’s all a lot of blood and screaming.”
She didn’t listen to him. Sarkis got the impression that the Smith did not listen to many people. The forge light blazed off to his right, where her apprentices were hammering the steel. Three swords, three smiths, the rhythm just slightly off between them, like a faltering heartbeat. “It will be glorious,” she said. “If it works.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” asked the Dervish, in his light, amused voice. There was a mask of dried blood over his handsome face, but his voice was still the same.
“Oh, you’ll die,” said the Smith. “At least, I hope you’ll die. The alternatives are worse. I’ll try to get you out of the sword, of course, if you’re trapped in there and can’t come out.” She chewed on her lower lip.
“That happens?” asked the Dervish.
“Oh yes.” She nodded vigorously. “It’s happened to two people so far, I’m afraid. But I’m sure I’ll be able to get them out. Eventually.”
“Eventually?” The Dervish’s voice was no longer quite so amused.
“I’ve been busy,” said the Smith petulantly. “There’s so much to do. And once they’ve gone mad in the blade, it’s not as if they’re going to go any madder, are they?”
One of the apprentices called to the Smith. “Time.”
“Right!” The Smith slid off the table. “You first,” she said to Angharad Shieldborn. “You first…”
Sarkis straightened. The scene was too vivid. He could even smell the stink of burning flesh as the dull red sword sank into his captain’s breast. Angharad had grunted, but she had not screamed. The metal had hissed like a serpent and he knew it should not work, it was too uneven a tempering, there were too many bones, the blade should warp or break, but the Smith pulled it free and it was straight and fine and charred black with Angharad’s blood.
He’d shouted until his throat was raw, thrown himself against the chains, but Angharad was dead, body falling to one side, as dead as the rest of his men, all those brave, cranky, valiant souls who had looked to him to save them, he had failed them all and they hung from the walls of this cursed keep and now Angharad’s lifeblood was burnt onto a piece of metal and the Smith was looking at him with her zeth eyes…
Stop. Think of something else. Stop.
He tried to drown the memory in something else. Anything else. The way the Weeping Lands looked in high summer, when the grass had turned golden and wind rushed over it in glinting waves, and the smell of grass came to him on the wind…the ocean, moving like the grass had, while he stood on the deck and smelled salt and heard the roar of the waves and also the Dervish being violently seasick over the side of the rail. That was before Angharad had joined them, a few months before, and he still hadn’t been sure about the Dervish, but he went over and pulled his hair back anyway and said, “It gets better,” and the Dervish said, “Yes, it’ll be better when I’m dead.”
The Dervish, who had died at the hands of the Smith, screaming as the sword slid into him…
Stop.
He thought of Halla. Not of bedding her—that felt too much like betrayal still—but the way she had slept in his arms afterward. They had fit together so well. It had been so comfortable, the way his arm slid into the hollow of her waist so that he could tuck his hand up between her breasts, the tops of his thighs against the backs of hers. He hadn’t even minded that she tried to burrow under him in her sleep.
Bedding was easy, compared to being able to sleep comfortably against someone. Hell, among his men, nobody’d bed down next to Fisher except Boll. Boll could sleep through the end of the world, and Fisher flailed and fidgeted like he could see the end coming. Fisher was always on the end, if they were jammed into tents together, and Boll was always between him and the rest of the troops. He’d even taken to sending them on scouting missions together as if they were a couple, even though there was nothing between them. It was just easier that way.
Fisher had retired before the end. He hadn’t thought of that in years. All the rest of his gallant troops, Boll and Kithrup and Ceri and everyone, had fallen with him at the end. Angharad and the Dervish had fallen even farther than the rest. But Fisher had said he was old and he was done and he’d gone back to his little fishing village to live with his daughter.
Perhaps his daughter had had a daughter of her own. Perhaps somewhere still, there was a clan who could put a bolt in a man’s eye from a hundred yards and weep and draw the string back and do it again.
The thought gave him a strange peace. He took a deep breath and straightened and turned back to Nolan, ready to sell his memories for bargaining power once more.
Chapter 55
Halla had never ridden a horse. Halla had ridden a donkey, and she had always assumed that it was mostly the same thing.
It was not.
The gait of a horse was smoother, no question. And the donkey could not possibly have carried two riders, particularly not at any speed. But she also had never ridden the donkey for hours and the horse was a great deal larger and also Halla was now fifteen years older than the girl who had climbed on the back of the donkey and her hip joints let her know it.
“We can’t gallop to Amalcross,” said Mare, who was, ironically, riding a gelding. “The horses would drop dead under us. But we can make good speed, particularly compared to…ah…”
“A gnole doesn’t want to hear it.”
Brindle stayed with the wagon, of course, and Jorge stayed with him. He’d grumbled a bit, but Mare pulled rank and told him he wasn’t going to be exorcising anything with his arm in a sling. “Your sword’s a fancy paperweight right now,” she told him. “You can’t swing it. Guard the wagon, and keep those blithering idiots from the Motherhood from impounding it or setting it on fire or whatever they feel like doing.”
“I thought I couldn’t swing a sword,” said Jorge.
“You don’t need to stab the Motherhood. Just glare at them and rattle your armor a bit. They’ll back right off.”
“Fine, fine…”
So they did not gallop to Amalcross, but they trotted frequently and then they walked and the humans walked alongside the horses, and then they trotted again. Halla rode behind Mare on her sturdy gray gelding. Mare was wearing a great deal of armor, more than Sarkis wore, and every time they broke into a trot, Halla’s face bashed into Mare’s mailed back. The paladin was wearing a wool tabard, which was the only reason that her face still had any skin on it.
But they did move a great deal faster. Zale was riding with the other paladin—Halla still hadn’t caught his name and was now at the point where it would be too embarrassing to ask—and they made it halfway to Amalcross in a single day.
Zale spent the Rat’s money recklessly, and rented a room at the inn with a bathtub.
“Only one bed,” said the innkeeper.
Zale and Halla looked at each other.
“I just don’t care any more,” said Halla. “You?”
“Rat’s teeth, no. As long as there’s a mattress, I’d share a bed with the Hanged Mother herself right now.”
“Tactful. Very tactful.”
“Tactful Zale was jostled to death somewhere a few miles back. Now you get tired, cranky Zale.”
“Do you want the room or not?” asked the innkeeper.
“We’ll take it.”
They took turns using the bathtub behind a wooden screen, and Halla’s only consolation was that the priest made just as many noises of wincing agony as she did.
“I’m old,” said Zale, staring up at the ceiling. Their narrow face seemed to have more lines than when the day started. Halla doubted she looked any better.
“…we’re old.”
“I’m older than you.”
“Don’t make this a contest.”
“Sorry. Lawyer, you know.”
“Do you ride horses a lot?”
“Never if I can help it.”
“We have to do it again tomorrow.”
“We do.”
Halla joined them, stretched out on her side of the bed, and made a noise that Sarkis would have likely compared to a yak.
“Couldn’t have put it better myself.”
After a long minute, Halla said, “What are we going to do with the paladins tomorrow?”
“I told them to drop us inside the city gates,” said Zale. “Since I think there’s a good chance we’ll have to kill some people, I’d rather not get them involved. They are…um…not so good at making a virtue of expediency.”
The story they had concocted was straightforward, if not terribly original. Family friend had visited, accompanied by scholar. Family friend had left in a hurry, having taken several valuable artifacts. They weren’t particularly worried about the artifacts, but they were very worried that the scholar had some undue influence over him and wanted to make sure that he was not in any danger. The paladins had nodded and not asked any further questions.
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