Adalbrand preemptively challenged. For you. What have you done to this man? Sir Branson sounded panicked, and it infected me, making my heart race. I didn’t even know what that meant. No one does that. Not many men would give their lives for an innocent person — never mind one who might be guilty.
But I wasn’t guilty. This was all a misunderstanding. They had to realize that.
They don’t. They don’t realize and they won’t until you’re dead. His panic was spiraling, making his voice higher and higher.
But I was a paladin. A servant of the God!
Remember when I told you that I hadn’t quite had time to tell you everything? I might have forgotten about this part.
No, he’d told me. I knew about the right to challenge. If someone thought Sir Kodelai had judged wrong, they could challenge him. But only after he’d carried out justice.
I was going to die no matter what and for no reason.
Unless it’s done preemptively. Sir Branson cursed, seemed to shatter apart in my mind, and then gathered himself again. Saints and Angels! Adalbrand must really believe you’re innocent, my girl.
His voice trembled a second time and was blotted out by more cursing before it returned as my two specters fought for control of the dog. When he resurfaced, he was yelling, as if trying to drown out the demon.
To preemptively challenge like that means that he will share your fate. If he is wrong and you killed the Seer, he’ll die with you.
This was all out of control. My heart was in my throat, pulse racing like I was in the heat of battle. The last time I felt like this, a band of highwaymen had set on us in the night while we slept, taking even Brindle unaware. I’d woken to fishy-breathed laughter in my face, the stark white light of the moon, and a sticky blade at my throat. I remembered thinking that they could have at least kept the blade clean.
We’d survived that. With cool heads and decisive action.
I could survive this, too. I took a long, measured breath and refused to join the tenants in my head in their loss of control even though the grey smoke choked and pulled at my throat like a noose and the scent of it — a cloying bergamot — made my stomach twist.
I scanned the faces surrounding me, my heart bobbing a little — like a child’s toy boat pushed under the water and then popping up again. I saw no challenge in anyone else’s expression. Hefertus, Sir Owalan, and the Inquisitor looked worried. The High Saint and the Majester looked eager. The Engineers watched with riveted gazes, as if they were being taught a new technique.
They agreed with Sir Kodelai, then. They thought I was guilty. Or they didn’t care. And they would punish another innocent person along with me. They stood around the broken body of the Seer as though surveying a breakfast table and deciding what they would eat first.
“Any judgment I bear must be borne alone,” I said firmly, loudly enough to carry. Let them chew on that. I could go to my death bravely. I was no craven. “It’s mine alone to prove I am innocent or accept my fate.”
This is madness, sweetmeat. Bravery means nothing when your sweet, hot blood is flowing over the crisp white marble. You’ll not be able to snatch it back again. Once spilled, twice regretted, as we say in the depths.
“The challenge has been offered. It is not for you to speak to it, Beggar,” Sir Kodelai said with a chopping motion of his hand.
He was every inch the king he had once been, tall, straight, noble of brow and jaw, beautiful and finely dressed, and superior to me in every way. He would not be out of place right now in a throne room or before an assembly of bishops. He held himself even now with grave dignity, his face a mask of duty.
I had never liked kings. They were too blind to see they were no greater than beggars, no more secure, no more inured to the whimsy of fate allowed by the sovereignty of the God.
Speaking of which.
Rejected God, I beg your aid. Deliver me from evil and false accusation.
There. A respectful prayer. I may not be truly called by the God, but I could honor him with the proper sort of request — not reaching above myself, not asking for anything it wasn’t in his nature already to grant. If I died with this prayer in my heart, I’d hold no shame walking through the bright gates of heaven.
If the God planned to honor my prayer, he didn’t do it immediately. I had not thought he would. I was not the beautiful golden-haired type who was instantly rescued by princelings and the God to be spared and lauded.
I twisted, trying to see better as Sir Adalbrand stepped forward. The man worried me.
He was as calm as always, a slightly wry smile ghosting around the edges of his mouth. He flicked a single, assessing glance at me but he looked away almost immediately before he could even see my violent denial of his fool sacrifice. Other than the flutter of his pulse in his throat, there was no outward sign of nerves in how he moved or how he held himself. Was he truly that confident in me?
Chivalry. I told you it ruled this man. It’s a beautiful thing to behold.
I didn’t think so. This wasn’t because I was a woman. This was something else.
Fine, then it is attraction. He’s besotted with you.
It was more than that. It was something deeper. I knew the man well enough by now to recognize he was self-controlled.
