Blood will still be spilt. It’s why their aspect is ever fracturing and fracturing again into creeds and confessions and distinctions none of us can keep track of. I think Joran Rue is a High Saint of the Castlerock Creed modified by the Year of the Skink Convocation. But I might have miscounted the knots in his belt and if I did, then he’s something else entirely.
I shook my head. Madness. I’d rarely thought much further than being sure my hands and heart were pure to keep demons from catching a hook into me. I’d had no time for confessions or creeds and their nuances.
Sir Owalan elaborated. “The High Saint knows Anicani’s Catechism and the Confession of the Faith of the Year of Our Lady’s Mercy and all five of Prirene’s Discourses by heart.”
“He does?” I didn’t even know what those were.
They don’t feed you when you’re hungry, I can assure you of that.
“Certainly. He’s the son of his aspect’s High Elder. They’re very devoted to doctrine and the teaching of the fathers. The High Saint has forsworn both riches and marriage for his place in the aspect.” Owalan laughed suddenly. “It’s like he’s both of you at once.”
He glanced back and forth at both Adalbrand and me, squinting in the darkness between the glowing clock and whatever glowed up ahead. It was as if he thought we’d laugh, too.
We did not laugh.
Brindle did not laugh.
Give me some credit, the demon complained. I still have an intact sense of humor.
Owalan looked around nervously.
“If anyone is to be made a Saint, it will be the High Saint.” His voice trailed through the words like he was hoping for the opposite even as he spoke them. “Look at all the others who have failed. You know the reputations of the Seer Ecember — she who moved the populations of cities before the typhoon in the Year of Saint Aspertine and saved thousands of lives — and Sir Kodelai, whose fame preceded him. Did you also know that Roivolard Masamera — the Majester General — was a key negotiator at the end of the Siege of Curan? Or that Sir Hexalan was renowned among the Inquisitors for his kindness and capability in sorting out refugees after the cataclysm struck in High Sartre? He earned a reputation there that could have carried him to the head of his aspect someday.”
I frowned, somewhat horrified by his callousness. “If you know the accomplishments of all the others, why do you care so little about their deaths?”
He looked appalled. “I have the greatest sense of sorrow at their deaths. It is you who trivializes them.”
“Me?”
We were almost to the other door. Sir Sorken stood hunched over the grate, fiddling with it, while beside him his golem held up a handful of oil and a burning wick to light his way. It made a strange light that seemed to dance to its own tune. Sir Sorken’s shadow towered behind him.
And Sir Owalan’s.
And Adalbrand’s.
I frowned. But not the golem’s. The golem’s shadow was long, but it looked correct to my eyes. It was the other shadows that seemed not just long, but overly deep and black, and as I watched, Sir Sorken’s shadow bubbled up like a pot of starch left too long on the flame. It rose, building, and then a tendril of it reached out and coiled around the crown of his head like a diadem.
I gasped.
“Yes, you,” Sir Owalan was still chiding as if he hadn’t noticed that the shadows were behaving as if they were alive. “If you honored their deaths, then you would fight for Sainthood. Is that not why they died? In pursuit of the divine? If you keep refusing to take the trials and make the necessary sacrifices then you spit on their deaths. Thank the God for Sir Adalbrand, who awoke and spoke sense to you.”
“Yes, thank the God he awoke,” I said dryly. “After you dragged his unconscious form into a trial and left him there to fend for himself.”
“I did no such thing. That was Sir Coriand.”
“You stood by and watched. Watching an act and doing nothing is giving your approval.”
I rounded on him in time to see his stony features flicker with anger, and as they flickered, his shadow flickered, and it built and built up over him, towering and guttering like an uncertain fire when it is only just kindled and not yet set into the bones of the logs that fuel it. Behind those features, his shadow curled up like an animal threatened, trying to appear larger than an enemy. It swayed back and forth as if to charm me into stillness.
Sir Owalan spoke again, this time like a pronouncement. “I do not like you, Beggar. You are neither accomplished nor intelligent. You do not see what we are trying to achieve here. And how could you? Is it not written, ‘do not throw thy rubies to the dogs’?”
“I certainly wouldn’t throw them to her dog,” Adalbrand said darkly, dragging us behind him by dint of the pace he was setting. Why did these people have to build this arcanery to such a grand scale?
I shot Adalbrand a look. He’d been silent through this whole discussion. I couldn’t tell if his shadow had grown and was lurking low and undetectable, or if it was the same as it always had been.
The look Adalbrand sent back in reply was a wry half smile, as if he found Sir Owalan amusing, or — perhaps — as if he found me just distracting enough that he hadn’t quite been paying attention to the Penitent.
He cleared his throat. “No one has to like anyone. We simply must survive this mess without bloodshed and murder. And if that seems like an easy achievement, Penitent,” he said as Sir Owalan opened his mouth, “then I bid you look upon those who have already been trampled in our race to the divine.”
