He gestured curtly to the bodies we were passing. They had not been arranged beyond being laid in a line. Someone had made an effort to kick Sir Kodelai’s ashes in a kind of a heap. I wasn’t sure if I hoped or feared it was one of the golems. It embarrassed me that they were seeing all of this — silent witnesses to the horrors men and women would inflict on each other when pressed, even those men and women who thought themselves holy. If the golems thought, then what did they think of this? Did they judge? Surely they must. Surely, the God must. We were all stained through to the marrow.
“Decided to join us, did you, Beggar?” Sir Sorken asked, looking over his shoulder at us as we finally approached. “Got over your scruples?”
“How does this door show the puzzle through the grate but then when the room twists, you can walk through the door to the next trial?” Sir Owalan asked crankily, shifting his stance so he wouldn’t have to look at me.
“They’re offset,” Sir Sorken said. “Just by enough that you don’t really notice. The puzzles are behind rock when you aren’t working on them.”
He turned to face us and the light of the makeshift lantern in the golem’s hand flickered wildly.
“I am not over the Majester’s death, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said in a low tone.
“I had no idea that the two of you were so close,” Sir Sorken said in a tone of false innocence, mocking me.
“Must you be close to someone to mourn their passing?”
His voice was purposefully innocent when he said, “You do if it’s Roivolard Masamera. The man had no understanding of a good tea. Here, look at the puzzle, what do you see?”
Behind the grate was a series of colored glass slats arranged both horizontally and vertically in a small frame. Sir Sorken reached his fat fingers through the holes of the grate and slid a few with a clack, clack.
“It’s a common slide puzzle,” Adalbrand said from behind me. I liked the way his breath tickled the back of my neck, the way he wasn’t nervous about standing close to me, like it was normal now for us to share breath and warmth.
“A slide puzzle with no solution,” Sir Sorken said sharply, annoyed. “We tried the colors of the stained glass window, before you ask. We tried them in various orders. We tried the colors of the liturgical calendar in various orders. We tried the colors of the major kingdoms at the time this a — monastery was common, also.”
And there’s where he slipped, wasn’t it? Because I heard the “ah” before the word “monastery.” And I knew that somehow, he knew this was called an arcanery. Had Sir Coriand told him that?
“What’s that just above the puzzle?” Sir Adalbrand asked, pointing out a tiny etched marking. “Is that a pitchfork?”
Cleft held his thick, rocky hand a little closer to the puzzle and I saw what Adalbrand was pointing to. A small pitchfork etched into the rock above the puzzle. It was missing a tine, broken off a quarter of the way up. And my mind scrambled to remind me that I’d seen that before. I’d thought it was a trident, hadn’t I?
“It could be, I suppose. Have you ever seen another pitchfork in these parts?”
Adalbrand shook his head. I didn’t think anyone had noticed that window but me.
“Let me try,” I said grimly.
“Have at it, Vagabond. And while you take your turn, I think I’ll go and brew up some more tea. Stay with the girl, would you, Cleft? You’re the only lamp we have, there’s a fine fellow. Are you coming, Sir Owalan?”
“I think I’ll wait here,” the Penitent Paladin said grimly. “Having once abandoned duty, I do not trust the Vagabond not to run off looking for her dog when it is her turn to work the puzzle.”
“Where is my dog?” I asked mildly.
That’s right. Don’t forget the nice doggy.
“Occupied,” Sir Sorken said briskly. “And so he will remain so until you’ve taken a turn at cracking the code. Time runs thin.”
Adalbrand coughed as I frowned and turned my attention to the slide puzzle.
I could still remember the colors of the original broken triptych. I’d thought it was odd how they’d put the orange and red and blue and green in places I hadn’t expected. I thought that — perhaps — I could replicate that pattern if I concentrated.
Behind me, I heard Adalbrand murmuring. “I’d fetch the lady paladin’s dog, were I you.”
“And why is that?” Sir Sorken asked.
“With the death of the Inquisitor,” Adalbrand said, keeping his voice so low that it was hard to hear over the click of the glass tiles as I moved them round and round to slide into place. “I would hazard that Victoriana Greenmantle is the most skilled with the sword among those of us who remain. She is shaken by the death of the Majester — a death she has told me was murder.”
“The man who jumped?” Sir Sorken asked darkly. “I’m sure you’ve seen suicides before. You’re no child.”
“Even so, I think it would be best not to provoke her.”
