If Sir Branson was here, he’d say it was chivalry. I swallowed a lump in my throat at the thought. Had I lost my old mentor? Lost him forever now? The thought left me strangely bereft.
Adalbrand’s shoulders slumped, head fell forward, and then he collapsed beside the other man, face-first into the dust.
My heart froze and I felt ill as I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the piercing pain in my arm. But before I could move, there was a loud curse and then Hefertus was there, lifting Adalbrand.
“You always overdo it. I tried to tell you that it’s too much. You don’t need to take everyone’s pain. He could have died and we would have lost nothing. The Engineers even warned you.”
The Engineers were warning no one now. Their heads were bent together over their cup.
“What have I done?” a rough voice asked. And then, as my eyes widened, the Majester sat up, brushed himself off as if he hadn’t just been dying, and said, “I killed him. I killed him. But I was only doing what was required of me, wasn’t I, Engineers?” He shot a panicked look at Adalbrand. “And then you killed me.”
“A life for a life.” Hefertus’s voice was bored as he took a flask from his side and lifted it to Adalbrand’s lips. The Poisoned Saint sputtered, coughed, and then pushed away from his friend looking dazed but conscious again.
The Majester spoke like one sentenced to death. “There were rules. We all had to follow them.”
“Some followed more cleverly than others,” Sir Sorken remarked, looking up only long enough to be sure we’d heard him before he returned to the cup.
“We beat the trial and it meant nothing,” Sir Owalan said despairingly, limping over to us and running a hand over his face. It was the first he’d spoken and he looked gutted. Clearly, his priorities rested in one place alone. “One of us fell from grace. One of us is dead. And none of these is the Cup of Tears. Must we do all that over and over until we find it?” His gaze swept the room. “And what if it is one of the broken vessels?”
Nearly all the remaining vessels were battered or broken. They were in shards or crumpled messes in shoals across the ground, forming long furrows where the statues had scraped their way back to the walls. If I thought our salvation lay among them, I’d give up now. We could not fight this battle a hundred more times and live — time alone would make that impossible and we’d die of thirst on the first day if not at the hands of marble statues.
I snorted.
The “Saints,” or whatever they were, looked down on us innocently, as if they’d be the first to question whether anything had happened at all.
“Who? Us?” they seemed to say.
“Fallen from grace?” The Majester’s voice was hollow. He patted his chest, fingers streaking through the blood smear there as if he couldn’t believe a sword had plunged through him and been removed. “I’ve broken the commandment. I’ve drawn steel on the innocent and taken blood without cause.”
My Brindle remained silent. I was so unused to having my thoughts clear of the influence of others that I hardly knew what to do with myself. I expected a snide comment or a victorious laugh. Instead, there was only my own voice asking me, Can he really be so good an actor? Does anyone believe he did not mean murder?
“It’s not one of the broken vessels,” Sir Sorken said. Not like a comforter, but like a man breaking news to a king. He straightened. “And it’s also not the vessels we chose — but those are not useless.”
“No, indeed, and you’d best hold on to yours,” Sir Coriand agreed, removing their cup from its holder. It continued to glow faintly in a way that made my eyes cross, as if they couldn’t quite agree it was happening at all.
Sir Coriand had a look in his eyes I couldn’t parse. It looked a bit like hunger, but that couldn’t be right. After all, the Engineers were the only ones who had been entirely out of the fight. Except for Sir Hefertus, I supposed. But he was meant to be bereft of common sense. It was what his aspect forswore. They had clearly done it deliberately.
“The cups are one part of the solution, but an important part. Or at least they should be.”
“Solution?” Sir Owalan complained, but I wasn’t looking at him. “Speak plainly.”
My eyes trailed to Adalbrand. He squared his shoulders, rolled his neck, and then, with obvious pain writ large across his features, he made his way to the Inquisitor.
I lifted Brindle’s head onto my lap. No voices. Not one.
Worry bit around my edges, tugging and terrorizing me. I hadn’t stopped to think of what would happen if the dog died by something other than my hand. It seemed a terrible thing to have neglected now that I was there.
Perhaps I should have quizzed Sir Branson on the things he had failed to teach me. Perhaps I should have worked harder to oust the demon.
I ground my teeth together, annoyed with myself for these failings.
The Majester muttered from where he stood, “There’s murder in my heart. Black doings. Terrors unknown.”
Look, he kind of sounded demon-possessed, if I was honest. It was unnerving. And yet, I sensed no demon there.
“The solution we are searching for is the riddle of this monastery,” Sir Coriand said. “We’re in a trap. Or perhaps I should say a giant puzzle box. It’s terribly clever, really. I wish I had the funds to build one myself, but it would take a king’s ransom and access to the arcane, I would think.”
“And a lifetime to build,” Sir Sorken added.
