One for Brindle. One for the dead Inquisitor. And then finally one for me. For some reason, my legs didn’t want to hold me properly and I needed to lean on someone to walk.
“Shock,” Adalbrand said calmly. “It happens to everyone. There’s no shame in it.”
But it felt shameful when he’d taken a chest wound from the Majester and was still on his feet. He wasn’t the one who was struggling to keep his head clear enough to stand.
“We’ll sleep — both of us — and in the morning I’ll heal you, too,” he said, and I thought the offer was as much to comfort himself as to comfort me.
I nodded grimly but I didn’t say much. I was starting to realize the inevitable truth that if Brindle didn’t pull through on his own, Adalbrand would certainly heal him. And when he did, he would know our secret. And what then? Would he think I planned this trap? Would he — like the High Saint — blame me for the loose demon in the ceiling and whisper in the ears of others until they came to slay me for my sins?
Chapter Twenty-Three
Vagabond Paladin
By the time we reached the main room, I was so spun up with nerves that I hardly noticed that the others were gathered around the great clock until Sir Owalan slotted the last cup — mine, as things would have it — into place. How they could act as if nothing had happened, as if what had just occurred hadn’t revealed traitors and murderers, as if this were just another puzzle, mystified me. How could they not see the imposing threat of this clock made of hands? How could they seem so serene when Adalbrand and Hefertus had carried the dead Inquisitor right past them to lay beside the others?
The Majester had his head close to Sir Sorken’s, worried lines in his forehead as he whispered violently to the other man. He was rumpled and bloodstained and losing all the majesty he’d carried before. I no longer saw anything but a shabby excuse for a knight. As always, Sir Sorken looked slightly bored. His wiry curls and generally disheveled appearance were unaffected. I doubted the end of the world would shake him.
With a click, Sir Owalan twisted his cup in place, his eyes brimming with ambition. Fool. Could he not see that his precious cup was not worth all of our lives or the stains we were rubbing into our souls?
The room lit up with a warm glow and the tick of a clock.
“But what do the hands mean?” Sir Coriand asked in awe. “Are they hours, or days, or years?”
A second tick rang through the room and Hefertus growled, “It had better not be years.”
It was sunset on the other side of the bas-relief carving, shining through to the left of the stairs. As we settled on the floor around the stairway, which was now facing darkened windows, black against the wall that had been a corridor into the living quarters, the evening breeze caught at the cutouts whistling a dull note a little too close to the sound of the pipe organ for my liking. I shivered, flinched, and then shivered again.
“I think they plan to solve that sun and moon puzzle tonight,” Adalbrand said as he lowered himself to the floor. He was trying to sound confident and at ease, but he’d flopped a little too much as he landed, and when I sank to the ground with him, he turned to face me. “I need sleep. Now. Can’t hold on much longer. Hefertus knows.”
“Do I ever,” Hefertus said lazily. He’d guided us to the spot where he’d lain Brindle and now he produced my fur cloak. He was taking his role as the nursemaid of our newfound alliance very seriously. “We’ll take turns resting. You two first. I’ll wake one of you for the next shift. Sleep back-to-back. We don’t want more surprises.”
That was how I found myself huddled under the fur cloak, my arm on fire and my back pleasantly warm as Adalbrand breathed heavily at my back. He was lost to sleep the moment he lay down.
“Hefertus?” I whispered as my own eyelids fluttered.
“I’m here,” he growled. “I’ve got your backs.”
“Can you watch my dog?”
“Don’t plan to take my eyes off the cursed thing.”
That was the best I could ask for. I let my eyelids flutter closed and fell into the rhythm of Adalbrand’s breath. The pain was jagged and sharp in my arm, my fevered forehead cold and clammy, and yet, I slept.
Pain made sleep fitful, and when I woke, I heard murmured voices in the darkness, only to fall back to sleep, awake, asleep, awake again. By the third time it happened, I could not tell if I was still sleeping and dreaming fevered dreams or actually listening to two men murmur together.
“The heart wants what the heart wants,” Hefertus was murmuring.
“The heart can be told to go to hell.” Adalbrand, I thought. His voice was still thick with exhaustion and my back was cold.
“A cruel fate, that. I would not wish it on your heart.”
“Sometimes I would.”
The next time I woke it was still dark. I woke to breath in my face. There was something about how it hitched that told me he was awake.
“Adalbrand?” I whispered, hardly louder than a breath.
“I’m here.” His voice was just as faint. I heard how labored his breath was. He was paying the price of pain he took from the Majester. “Hold on.”
