He should stick to his pearls and fine silks. I wanted none of them. I wanted only a cold, untouched place by Sir Adalbrand’s side and a right to call him friend. That was worth fighting for. If he could see through to giving it to me.
When I woke again, my arm no longer hurt, though my heart felt slightly tender.
I crawled out from the cloak into the faint lavender of near dawn. Hefertus sat inches from me, his naked blade across his knees, his eyes staring off into the distance.
“Have you been here all night?” I whispered to him. I could see the others only as lumps across the floor, barely recognizable in the pre-dawn. The golems made larger lumps, their eyes glowing in that terrible way that they always did.
“Why not?” he whispered back. “Adalbrand exhausted himself for a man not worth a minute of his time and then, the moment he could, he healed your arm. Don’t think I didn’t hear you two under that cloak.”
“I didn’t think it,” I said frostily.
I tested my arm out. It did, in fact, bend and move painlessly. I unwrapped the makeshift bandage. My flesh felt smooth and strong.
I swallowed down a lump. He’d healed me again. Given of himself again. I was forever in his debt.
“You’re very voyeuristic for a hedonist aspect,” I said sourly.
Hefertus grunted but I could tell it was meant to disguise a laugh. “Ready to take a turn at watch?”
“Yes,” I agreed, taking his place and spreading my own sword across my knees as he had.
He snorted at that and then crawled under the cloak to lie back-to-back with Adalbrand. He must have been more exhausted than I thought. He slipped into sleep before it even occurred to me to check Brindle.
My dog had survived the night. But he was still unconscious, his breath weak and thready.
A spike of fear shot through me. How long could I hold Adalbrand off from healing him? How long could I keep the secret? Were I a more calculating person, I’d smother the dog right here. Instead, I rested a rueful hand on his sweet head and stood my watch, shaking out my arm and inspecting it again every few minutes. The God did as he willed. He gave and he took. I felt like he’d given me a lot more than he’d taken recently. I worried about how that tipped the balance. I had asked the God for so much.
I paused.
The night that I killed my mentor, I had asked the God to help me bury Sir Branson. What had I said? Had I asked that he be laid to rest or that I bury him?
I pressed my lips together, suddenly worried.
The God answered the prayers of the Beggar Paladins — always — but not always in the way you thought. Could the demon have been trapped in the dog because I prayed that? Because Sir Branson’s soul yet persisted and I had not found a way to bury him with honor? Was the demon … was he stuck in the dog because Sir Branson was stuck in it?
Something icy gripped my heart. I thought, perhaps, with trepidation and a great deal of doubt, that I might have found one answer tonight.
“If you exist, Merciful God,” I prayed quietly into the darkness. “If you are there and you hear me, please help me to cast this demon out and remove him from the world completely, and with him all others in this place.”
It was a good prayer. A righteous prayer. After all, it wasn’t for me, and those kinds of prayers were the best kind.
Someone cleared his throat and I nearly leapt in my flesh.
“Did they tell you about the clock?”
It was Sir Owalan, staring at me in the half-light. On one cheek, the first rays of dawn painted his features pink. On the other side, his face glowed a very dull orange. A faint light that I realized was coming from down the hall.
“What about it?” I asked. What was he doing creeping around in the darkness? His sword was out, too, and he smelled metallic, as if he were bleeding.
He lifted one hand to point and his robe fell back, revealing a knife stuck through his wrist.
I hissed a gasp.
Erg.
No. Just, no.
I flinched back without meaning to do so.
