I smell something strange …
Later. We would deal with strange smells later. Sir Coriand was still confessing.
“And yet you could not restore his mind,” Sir Coriand said gently. “Am I wrong in thinking that ills of the mind are not something that Poisoned Saints can take into themselves? Am I wrong in thinking that you did all that you could by the grace of the God?”
Adalbrand glanced up at him with a scowl.
“I think I am not wrong,” Sir Coriand said gently. “Let Suture help you with that. The book is heavy.”
Adalbrand shrugged off the golem, stalking over to the third contraption with an annoyed set to his shoulders. He arranged his book and ink on the abbreviated table and climbed up the platform.
He was being goaded into that harness. But why?
I glanced upward to where the High Saint and Engineer floated in the air like flies trapped in a web. They had paused in their workings, watching the drama between the Poisoned Saint and Sir Coriand.
It was as if all of them were waiting for Adalbrand, unwilling to keep testing their shadows until he took his place.
Adalbrand paused. “And if you are right, what does it matter, Sir Coriand?”
Sir Coriand’s smile might have meant to be a gentle compassion, but I saw it as mockery when he said, “I know how you Poisoned Saints work. What do you call it? Milk of the Reaper? That drink you slip to those whose pain you cannot drink?”
Adalbrand paled.
“That gift you give those whose minds are beyond saving. I’ve seen it myself, tasted a drop. Not enough to send me to the gates of death, obviously, but you know how curious we are in the Aspect of the Creator God. It smelled strongly of mint and cloves. Do you add them to disguise the bite of death, or are they essential to the making of the toxin?”
The look on Adalbrand’s face was pure hatred. He slung himself into the harness violently, as if he could get the job over with and rid himself of Sir Coriand’s subtle accusations.
“I think you should make your point, Engineer,” I said calmly. I was not sure why he was goading Adalbrand and it worried me. I was concerned that the Engineer was more intelligent than I was and likely to spin me to his plans if I was not careful.
Sir Coriand spread his hands wide in a gesture of peace and took a measured step back, almost bumping into Suture, who loomed over him.
“My only point,” he said slowly as Adalbrand arranged the straps and placed his hands on the pulley ropes. “My only point is that the Poisoned Saint — of any of us — must understand what dealing mercy to a man is like. I dealt the Majester mercy. He was a broken man. He could not live like that.”
Adalbrand’s lip twisted and he hauled up on the rope so hard I worried he’d break it. Clearly, he was angry, and clearly, he was trying not to let his anger out.
And clearly, he’d forgotten one thing.
“Which brings us back to the point,” I said, letting my voice be as dry as the sand under our feet. “Were you the voice he thought was the God? The one that spoke from above and bid him kill the Inquisitor? The one that drove him mad — if he was mad, indeed?”
Sir Coriand’s eyes were fixed on Adalbrand, and only when his harness reached full height did the Engineer finally turn from him and look at me, and his face transformed from innocence to a look so full of knowing that it twisted my stomach.
“Yes,” he said, mildly.
And as he said it, there was a sound like slithering. Adalbrand made a startled sound, and when I looked up, I realized why the Engineer had been stalling. The straps had tightened suddenly around all three of the people suspended above us. They were locked in place. Trapped.
Whatever came next, I would have no help from the Poisoned Saint. His eyes met mine across the distance and I saw him realizing with me what had just happened. We’d been maneuvered.
He grimaced, but he was a practical man. After a tightening of his jaw, he turned to his book, and started to write, a determined line forming on his forehead.
Carefully, I backed up and to the side, placing my back to Hefertus. I was relatively certain he would not stab me in the back.
“And so you orchestrated the murder of the Inquisitor and the Majester,” I said calmly. “Did you know what this place was when you arrived here?”
“You ask me that?” Sir Coriand’s voice was mocking. “You, who deliberately mistranslated what was written more than once.”
“Not deliberately,” I said through gritted teeth, glancing at Brindle.
The game is up then, snackling. Of course I deceived you. Of course I lied. How else would I dance you into a trap? How else would I soften you for the blow? But the sin lies with you, because you chose to believe me, knowing I was a demon. You stand accused by your own tongue, for was it not you who said that knowing and doing nothing makes one culpable? You are as bathed in wickedness as I ever was.
