“My parents were peddlers and laypeople for the Aspect of the Rejected God. Already on the road. Already devout. It did not seem too great a leap to seek out Sir Branson and beg him to make me squire after they passed. I had met him two weeks prior when our paths crossed and I knew him to be a paladin respected by my parents.”
“How old were you?” His habit of tilting his head when he listened to me was in full force. This was no idle conversation. He was interrogating me. Though why he did that now remained to be seen.
“Eleven years.”
“And he took you as squire?” He sounded surprised.
“Why would he not?” I couldn’t quite keep the prickle from my voice. Why would he doubt me on this?
The dog seemed to cough. It was circling a massive broken clock nestled against the staircase.
Or rather, a clock that seemed broken, because the hands did not move and the time looked like nothing familiar to me. It had four hands and all four pointed up, and on the face of the clock there was a cup engraved. Which could mean anything. It didn’t have to be the Cup of Tears. It could be a clock that timed tea breaks. Who would know?
The clock’s round face was supported by carved hands. There must have been a hundred of them, each the size of a real hand and intricately carved from white marble and then polished until they gleamed. They wove in and out and around one another so that no two were posed the same way.
The ticks around the clock were not labeled with numerals or letters and I didn’t bother counting them beyond checking that the clock base didn’t open.
Sir Adalbrand continued to press his conversation. “You were too old for great book learning and too young to be of physical help. A burden from the moment he took you on.”
The dog coughed again and Adalbrand frowned at it.
Rude to call you a burden. Rude.
I felt my face flush. I had never thought of things like that. I’d always thought that Sir Branson was moderate in every way, neither too generous nor too stingy, not too holy nor too profane, not too indulgent nor too disciplined. Just a man.
I accept this eulogy with gratitude. Blessings on you.
And yet Adalbrand made a good case for him being more than that.
“He must have been a good paladin. Worthy. Honorable,” Sir Adalbrand said gently. The hand on my arm drifted to cup my elbow, as if he were trying to lend an old woman support.
I turned to him, eyes narrowing, and shook his hand off. If he wanted to touch me, he should get my permission.
I agree. Too much flattery is never wise. Why so many flowery words for a man he never met? Why all this touching? From a Poisoned Saint, no less.
I was already agitated and this conversation was making it worse.
“And I killed him?” I hissed, turning my body so that if he drew on me I’d be ready in my defense. “Is that what you’ve come to bring to mind? Will you make a demand now before you agree to keep my secret?”
Cough.
I glanced over my shoulder again, but the others were all still praying, some kneeling, some at parade rest, others with hands lifted upward. I didn’t need to fear what the paladins might hear or see.
“No,” Adalbrand whispered back in a tone fit for the halls of a library. Something I could not read flickered across his expression. “That’s not what …”
“Thank you for your interest,” I said coldly, turning sharply to the first door we’d come to and striding through. I didn’t care where it went so long as it was not where Adalbrand could blackmail me.
It led to a hall with a smooth marble floor and white paneling on the walls that was carved to look as if it were woven. Someone had fitted the wall panels with candle recesses and in each one was a cup or a goblet or a tumbler. Each was individual in material, shape, and size. Inconvenient. How would we find one cup among many?
Wait for me! The blasted knight is in the way.
I should stay to study the cups — though surely the Cup of Tears would not just be one among many, would it? But the terror that had gripped me when I stepped through the door descended twice as strongly now that I was away from Brindle and Adalbrand. It took hold of my heart and squeezed. It bid me flee whatever was chasing me, and all my years of tight self-control unwound at once.
I hurried up the hall to where it branched, took the branch to the right, and opened the first door I saw. I had no more reason to choose it than any other. Unreasoned panic alone drove my steps.
I stopped in my tracks the moment I entered the first room. I had expected a room of study or hall of prayer. I’d expected books, perhaps, or lines of pews. This, however, was someone’s personal room. And that someone was wealthy, indulgent, and appeared to have left in a hurry. So preserved was the room, it looked as if the owner had just leapt up for a moment, planning to return to the unmade bed, and it gave me the terrible feeling that he was watching me over my shoulder.
Something grabbed me by the pauldrons, shaking a gasp from me, spun me hard and to the left, and pinned me, face-first, against the wood paneling.
