“I love your teasing,” I said a little breathlessly. “I love your kisses and kindness, but I need something more from you now, Sir Knight. I need resolve and purpose, I need all that honor that pours out of you every time you’re bumped or bruised. I need you to stand with me — valiant — against what comes next.”
He was suddenly serious, teasing put aside. He made a half-bow. “You shall have it from me and so shall the God.”
I nodded soberly, tension filling every seam of my being. I didn’t know what else to say. I felt dreadfully inadequate to hold his affections. I was the ragged knight riding through the edge of town, not the lady laughing in the center of the dancing. I was the one begging for scraps, not the one fed from the table of a lord. The best I could manage was to draw courage close, screw my face up with resolve, and walk forward.
He seemed to understand, growing quiet and grave, matching my stride so that we emerged into the main room together.
There was a strangled cry when we stepped out of the corridor and Sir Owalan leapt up from a perch on the edge of the clock like a raven lifting off a corpse.
Worryingly, the cups there were brighter with that dark glow and I thought I saw smoke swirling up from them. Owalan practically ran toward us, relief painting his whole face, arms flung wide. His tabard swirled around him, more akin to a monk’s cassock than a knight’s apparel.
“You did it. You passed the test. I wanted to stay and watch but I couldn’t bear to see you fail.”
It seemed Sir Adalbrand was correct. I was not adept at hiding my emotions.
“I see your doubt,” Sir Owalan said, “but I was of a certainty most worried. The clock ticks down. The time is close. Look. Less than a day remains in the hours it counts down. Already, dawn is lighting the stained glass.”
That made more sense than any worry for our safety. He wanted the cup like a dying man wants reprieve.
“Where is my dog?” I asked him carefully.
I’m here. That Sir Sorken is a lovely fellow. Suggested twice that a dog might be nice roasted. I must say it’s a relief to hear your voice again.
And the demon?
Oh, I’m here, sweetling. Contemplating my revenge. I think it will involve making someone drown himself in that fountain. Do you think golems drown?
I did not.
What a pity.
Owalan waved an uncaring hand. “The golems are tending your dog. I’m sure you have nothing to fear. Come.” His hands clawed toward my arm as if to take it but I shook them off, revulsion filling me at the glimpse of the dagger under his sleeve. He hardly seemed to notice the slight. “You must look at the puzzle. It is stumping us all. It must be attended immediately.”
He was trying to draw us to the left, toward where the new puzzle was likely waiting behind the grate and where the bodies we’d managed to recover would be laid out as if in a crypt. I shuddered at the thought of walking past them and then again at the thought of the Majester rotting somewhere below.
“Where are the others?” Adalbrand asked Owalan, peering toward the right. If they were still camping at the base of the stairs, they should be in that direction. I thought I could just make them out with the faintest colored light of dawn through stained glass washing over them.
“Sleeping while they can,” Owalan said, motioning to us to hustle after him.
His shadow seemed to be twice the height as usual — looming over him like a monster under the bed finally come to claim its victim. That could only be my imagination, attributing malice where natural phenomena were at play, but imagination or not, it made every hair on the back of my arms stand on end. I kept half an eye on that shadow, watching to see if it were truly anchored to Owalan or if it could slip the bounds and reach out to try to hook me. Fanciful? Perhaps, but this place was making me warier than a rich man guarding his money.
“Sir Sorken is taking a turn at the puzzle,” Owalan said, trying to hustle us along. “We’ve all tried, of course, but no one could manage it. Perhaps you’ll see something we missed.”
He led us toward the wall where the locked door with the grate covered the puzzle that would turn us one more time counterclockwise.
“Did the High Saint try it?” Adalbrand asked.
“Yes, and you know he’s considered a scholar among his people.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. The High Saint? He was so militant. I did not think one could be scholarly and bloodthirsty at the same time.
The scholars in the capital are even more aggressive. They will fight to the death over the subtle sub-meaning of a word in a passage of text as opposed to its use in a different text with a slightly more nuanced subtext, and friendships will dissolve and kingdoms fracture and then people will die.
All that over a word?
One of the good ones, yes.
And the not so good ones?
