I turn to look at her and just like always, her wide brown eyes make my heart stutter for a moment. What a gift it would be to be an innocent man and be free to lose myself in those eyes. To try to win their smile. As it is, I am gentle in how I respond, careful to neither demand what is not mine, nor offer what I do not have.
“No thanks are needed, Lady Paladin.”
“You saved my life.” Her voice is full of things she does not say. It is thick and heavy like crystalized honey.
“You were innocent.” I try to strain the longing from my voice. I do not know if I succeed. “Anyone would do the same.”
She snorts a laugh and the tension of the moment evaporates in a shared wry smile.
“I think perhaps you failed to notice, Sir Knight, but no one else did the same. In fact, I was quite certain they would have lapped up my blood like dogs when Sir Kodelai was finished with me.”
“I don’t like blood,” Hefertus says from behind us. “Never had a taste for it.”
When I turn to look at him, he lifts a brow at me, his eyes all judgment. My cheeks heat. He’s right, of course. I have no business talking to the Vagabond. I am only making things worse. By the time I school my face to neutrality, she has turned to the Engineers.
“I kept these books,” she is saying, trying to get Sir Coriand’s attention. “We found them in the rooms but I forgot about them when the Seer died.”
“Are those what you were smuggling under that horrific excuse for a cloak?”
“They’re all variations of the same thing, I think, but your Ancient Indul is much better than mine,” she soldiers on. “There are diagrams.”
“Diagrams?”
That has his attention. He snatches the books as we reach the golems.
“Tea, I think, Cleft,” Sir Sorken says as Sir Coriand spreads the books out and begins to study them side by side. They both crouch over the find like crows over a day-old kill.
“They are the same! Look, these people were all creating something. But what? And the way they arrive there is entirely different. Do you think it’s the same thing that they’re making?” Sir Coriand is entranced.
“The sketches are very similar if they aren’t,” Victoriana says. “See this one compared to that one. And what is this word? Is it not ‘Saints’ as we see on the plaque just there?”
She points to the plaque at the bottom of the stairs. Sir Coriand looks at her quizzically. He’s as taken with her as I am, I think. I can admit my weakness there. As old as he is, and as distracted, still he would be a better fit for her than this broken paladin is.
I watch the golems suspiciously as they carefully draw wooden cups from the bags they are holding and then put leaves in them with huge, clunky fingers.
Cleft — less horrible, as he is made of stone — pours the still-steaming water into the cups to brew tea.
Has so little time passed that the water is still hot? Can that really be? I glance where the windows used to be and I feel, suddenly, as though I am being crushed in a vise, as though I am trapped in rock, locked in a cage. I can’t quite catch a breath.
Hefertus is chuckling over something Sir Sorken said. The Inquisitor is examining the lanterns suspiciously, taking tea absentmindedly from the hulking golem. The eyes of both golems burn and burn as if they, too, are imprisoned within stone. And for a moment the world swims. I catch the Vagabond’s eye and the corner of her lip turns up conspiratorially, and my breath catches. And I am well again for a moment.
Lord have mercy. God have mercy.
I exhale the prayer and draw in a long breath, accepting the tiny wooden cup from the massive rock hand that offers it to me. When I look up into that eye, it flickers. What big hands you have, Cleft. You could crush the life out of me with them. And yet here you are, handing me tea.
“Cunning little cups, aren’t they?” Sir Sorken says, looking up at me as if he sensed my thoughts. “I had Cleft carve them for you yesterday when you were down here.”
I am drinking tea made by what is either a trapped soul or a soulless abomination in a cup that he carved. I feel ill.
“Drink your tea, Sorrowful Saint,” Sir Sorken says to me, a note of mockery in his voice. “Stop fretting about a morality you built all by yourself.”
Just that one jab hits me in the wrong spot. It stirs up my anxiety at being sealed in a tomb, my longing for what is not mine to have, my ethical dilemma at working with one who does not share my convictions, and my concern that the God is not listening when I call. I’m about to snap at him but once again we are arrested by the sound of feet slapping down the corridor.
It’s Sir Owalan. His eyes are wide and he’s sprinting, his filmy robes fluttering around him like the wings of a moth. Carefully, I set my tea down.
“You have to come,” Sir Owalan calls when he’s close enough for his voice to travel. “All of you! Now!”
“We’re drinking tea, my boy,” Sir Sorken says in his naturally booming voice.
