“We made stew,” Sir Sorken said, enunciating the word “stew” like he was making a grand announcement. “I hope you like mushrooms. The ruin is full of them and Cleft has a surprisingly deft touch.”
We ate mushroom stew and drank tea in a strange attitude — a kind of mix of gentle grief over the Seer combined with an almost jubilant relief — the kind you feel when the end of a difficult job is finally over and you can rest.
The High Saint whispered a quiet word to Adalbrand, and when he went to get his bowl of stew, his limp was gone and Adalbrand’s was worse. I couldn’t have explained why that rubbed me the wrong way. Perhaps it was unreasonable to expect the paladin sworn to me to keep his healing from the one who hurt me so.
Particularly unreasonable since you intend to abandon him in the morning.
Ouch.
The Majester explained what had happened down below to the Engineers with the air of one giving a military report.
“Bad circumstance,” Sir Coriand said. “Very sad. We should sort through the Seer’s things. Send anything personal on to her family.”
“Did she have a family?” the Majester asked.
Everyone shrugged.
I felt my throat carefully and tried not to look at the others. No weakness. No give. If they saw me so much as flinch, another of them might take a swipe at me.
“Everyone has a family,” Sir Coriand said. “Originally.”
I tried hard not to think of mine.
“What’s it like down there?” Sir Coriand asked. “A proper monastery?”
The Majester produced his map and we all pored over it.
“Strange architecture,” Sir Sorken had said. “More like a house of learning than a house of faith.”
“More like a house of sin,” the High Saint said acerbically.
“Do you really think so?” Sir Coriand asked. There was a note to his voice that made it hard to tell if he were serious or teasing. “I was in a house of sin once. It didn’t quite have this architecture.”
The High Saint sighed as if unwilling to concede that he could be wrong.
“And the cup?” Sir Sorken asked. “Any sign of it?”
The Majester produced his sack and dumped it out beside the fire. With a grunt, Hefertus began to line the cups up from tallest to shortest.
“Interesting,” Sir Sorken said, studying them grimly, though what he saw, I couldn’t have guessed. To me, they just looked like cups. None of them more or less likely to be a prized Cup of Tears. None of them had the cabochon blue gems. But did the cup really have that, or was it mere fancy? How accurate were records a thousand years old?
I didn’t really care anymore anyway. After we buried the Seer, I would be gone. Another leaf drifting on the winds.
Oh dear. This is one of the things I neglected to tell you.
“Will you go down again tomorrow?” Sir Coriand asked gently.
He was treating us like … survivors, I realized. The same kind tones, the same interest in trivial things to keep us occupied. The same nonjudgmental way of asking without prying. I’d done this myself. Young as I was, it still made people trust me, listen to me, tell me things. It felt unnerving to have someone using it on me. Sir Branson had never done that. He’d always left me to make my own judgments and find my own comfort.
“We all must,” the High Saint said grimly. I saw him flicking through the beads of his rosary as if on instinct. “For the Seer.”
Yes, that’s the part I forgot to mention. Once Sir Kodelai began his ceremonial prayers and beseechings, well … you can’t leave before he passes judgment. It’s a law of a sort.
If I broke it, would they take away the paladincy?
Yes.
It may still be worth it.
