“Tell me, then, if you can, whose authority rests on your shoulders.” The steel in his voice he’d been masking with gentleness slid out now. He was readying himself to fight me and kill me. I could feel it. “Tell me what gives you the right to stand with the rest.”
“The authority of the God,” I breathed and a prayer slipped from my lips unbidden. “Bless me, Rejected God, for I am rejected even as you so often are.”
My prayer might have been feeble. It might have been a dashed-together thing compelled more by desperation than true faith, but I supposed it was also enough, because the Poisoned Saint leapt suddenly backward, and by the time I turned to face him, his jaw had dropped and he was watching me with trembling hands and eyes wide as an owl’s.
“Well. Well, now.” He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes wild and vulnerable, breath huffing out between statements. “That was unexpected.”
“What was unexpected?” I asked, shuddering with relief, drawing in a long breath, and rolling my neck from side to side. I was ready. The second he leapt for me again, my sword would be up and I’d run him through.
My knees were bent, stance ready, sword on my hilt.
Don’t draw yet. I saw something strange through that door …
I didn’t draw.
But I wanted to. My breathing was heavy. Fingers itching.
Across from me, Adalbrand licked his lips. “I’ve only heard the voice of the God once before. When he called me.”
Once before what?
He glanced upward, reverently, looking to the heavens, but all I could think of was that there was a huge, bulbous demon between him and the God. Perhaps even now it laughed at him.
I trembled despite myself, and blood was thick on my breath. How dare he confront me like that? How dare he pin me to the wall like an enemy? If he wanted a fair fight, I would give it to him. Right now. Right here.
“You know,” I said, acidly, “it was unexpected for me, too. Maybe it was too much to ask for a warm reception from my fellow paladins, but an actual attack? Accusations? Threats? What a delight.”
Yes! Get him, snackling!
His face paled.
I raised a single eyebrow.
His eyes were locked on me as if I were some kind of miracle that had been revealed to him.
“You took my secret, freely offered to you, and used it against me,” I said, quiet steel in every word.
Behind the door, Brindle growled, but I wasn’t ready to deal with him yet. One animal at a time.
That’s right, snackling. Eat his gizzard. Grind his heart between your knuckles!
I ignored the voice in my head.
“You used violence to demand answers.”
The Poisoned Saint swallowed and made the sign of the penitent. Knuckles to forehead, then nose, then heart. “How shall I beg your forgiveness, Lady Paladin?”
Make him do more than beg. Make him pay for his failing.
They were all fools.
“Are you unable to see that I could use violence on you, too?” I kept my voice low. Threats are delivered best when they are delivered quietly. “I could come up on you from behind. I could slam you against a wall. Perhaps I don’t have your strength, but I have my cunning.”
He watched me like you might watch a raging bull who has paused to size you up. Which seemed terribly unfair, since he was the one who had just attacked me.
“An eye for an eye,” he muttered, so quietly that I barely caught it. His face flushed hard when he spoke again. “I had no right to manhandle you.”
“No. You did not.”
