SWORDS (The Paladin's Thief Book 3) Read online

  “The rainy season is just beginning in Solange.”

  “You call this rainy, Magnus?” Timmy says back. “You need to see a thunderstorm on the marches.”

  I smile and duck out of the coach and onto the roof for a bit of fresh air, hoping to get a whiff of the legendary sea breeze everyone keeps talking about.

  Inside the coach I hear Timmy’s voice and then laughter. He must be telling jokes. I make myself comfortable with a pillow, dangling my legs off the back and watch the countryside roll by. I could almost get used to this.

  THREE

  The first glimpses of Fortrus do not disappoint. I’m back in the coach playing finger chops with Timnus when it first comes into view. Even from this distance, the city is breathtaking. It is double walled, probably four times the size of Ector with white stone, plaster buildings, and colorful cloth covering all the vendor stalls along the road to the outer gate. It’s supposed to be early winter but the air feels as balmy as a spring breeze.

  “Don’t let it fool you,” Magnus warns us. “The weather can turn in an instant. Don’t be caught in the market without a sweater.”

  Some of the buildings are capped with thatch, some with red tile, and some with stone painted brilliant blue. There isn’t a roof of slate or wooden shingle in sight. My feet are going to have to get used to that.

  Lucinda can see my roving eyes. “I bet those rooftops get really hot in the summer.”

  “At night?” I retort.

  The Abbey itself is the most impressive, looking more like a castle with towering walls of white and crenelated battlements and lofty prayer towers. It’s set on a hill overlooking the glistening, blue bay and the rest of the “Shining City,” as Magnus calls it.

  “It is beautiful,” Lucinda whispers as we pull through the carriage gate.

  I think it’s beautiful for another reason. It means my buttocks will finally get a rest—a good, long rest—from the bucking seat of the coach. Twelve days of this is enough to drive a man to evil.

  Magnus is excited too. His normally cheerful demeanor overflows as he talks non-stop about the landmarks, pointing out roads designated for inbound carts and wagons and those designated for outbound processions.

  “Wait till you see Abbey!” he says. “Assembly Hall, Prayer Yard, armory, reliquary, and the best food anywhere on the continent.”

  His narrative breaks suddenly with the tolling of bells and the eerie whine of an instrument I don’t recognize. A year’s worth of excitement bleeds out of his face in an instant. His apparent age seems to double from youth to man.

  Magnus reaches forward and pulls open the slender talk-panel by the glass porthole. “Stop the coach. Please.”

  “It’s a funeral procession, nothing to get . . .”

  “It’s a funeral for one of my brothers.”

  “I’m not supposed to stop here,” the driver insists.

  “Then meet us three blocks down, at the livery.” Magnus’s voice is gentle but forceful, and he’s out the door before the coach has stopped moving. Lucinda pulls me out of the coach as well, though I didn’t have any intention of attending funerals in Fortrus. Quite the opposite.

  “Magnus might need us. This could be a trap.”

  “We just got here!” But I follow her all the same. “Stay in the coach!” I tell the kids.

  Down the central highway, three blocks away, a processional is passing in state. There are warriors in white armor riding horseback, white helmets in one hand. Following them are women and girls in white dresses, and then what appears to be a priest, but carrying a long, white-metal tipped staff and a shield on his back.

  In front of the bier are a pair of horses, jennets, smaller in size than those of the escorting knights’ hardy-looking mounts.

  “Oh no, oh no, oh no,” is all Magnus can say, repeating it endlessly like a prayer.

  The cross street we’ve taken slopes down to the main highway out of Fortrus, and our elevation allows me to see straight onto the bier. There are two bodies there, both clad in white armor: a young man and young woman. They aren’t much older than my twins, and they’re obviously twins, too. The resemblance is clear in the shape of their rounded faces. The dead both wear peaceful expressions, but the young woman’s face bears a fishnet of green veins—lyrata gills, as Tom calls it. Her brother shows no signs of the same poison, but he wears a collar designed by morticians for obscuring a slit throat or a severed head.

  Suddenly Magnus is running.

  Lucinda shoves me towards a drainpipe. “Up,” she says. “You can walk across the alley bracings and laundry lines and help me keep an eye on him.”

  “That’s not as easy as it looks, and that drainpipe isn’t safe.”

  “Please, Teacup. I’ll follow him on foot.”

  I humor her.

  She glances at Magnus and makes a stirrup, launching me up so that I can reach the eaves. And then she’s off, trailing him.

  From my vantage on the roof I can see both our coach—stalled due to congestion in the side roads—and the full procession. It is impressive: lances, pennants, and pall bearers clad in white tabards and white armor in a line running nearly a half-mile long before and after the two bodies.

  I’m halfway across a taut laundry rope when a pole reaches out of an alley and trips Magnus before he can disappear into the crowd. Nobody notices it except Lucinda and me. Big hands and thick arms drag him into the shadows almost as fast as Lucinda’s knife comes out.

  I make no attempt to hurry. I’ll run once I get across the slack line. Thankfully, the next alley has a timber frame across it with a center post. I scamper across, hoping I’m not too late.

  When I peek over the edge, though, there isn’t a gang of thieves beating him to a bloody pulp. It’s just one man, with a bloody rag tied about his head, and he isn’t even as tall as Lucinda, though he is much thicker. And he’s dusting Magnus off, roughly. “Sorry, Maggotus. Couldn’t have you blabbing all our secrets to Old Fart Jeremiah,” he says, “certainly not in the middle of the processional.”

  “Jens and Yarla.” Magnus’s face is white and he’s looking at his assailant expectantly.

  The man stares for a moment into the parade, his voice callous and uncaring, more irritated than anything. “I told them to come to me first, but the idiots went to the clinic instead and got buggered by a pair of Nighty-Nights. I didn’t get there fast enough.”

  “Inside the Abbey?” Magnus’s voice is full of shock. “You knew and didn’t protect them, Cobalt?”

  “I tried, Stupid. Aren’t you listening? I failed.” He glances up at me and then to Lucinda, who is inching closer with her knife. “These your friends?”

  “Yes.” Magnus doesn’t protest being called “Stupid.” Evidently this isn’t a new thing.

  “Ha!” he says. “Looks like you’re finally wising up. You hired a thief and a cutpurse.”

  Magnus take umbrage at this. “I did no such thing!”

  “Whatever.” He presses something into Magnus’s palm. It’s black and round and I know what it is. This one is big enough to fit Cobalt’s massive hand perfectly. “Take this to Loring. Nobody else. Tell him it’s from me, and that I hope to have another by nightfall.”

  “Father Jeremiah said—”

  Cobalt grabs Magnus by the shirt and actually shakes him. “I don’t care what he said. Take them to the Mitre Loris first. You of all people should know how to follow procedure.” He says the word with a bit of disgust. “And you can thank Pan’s Beard for arriving in this ruckus. Nobody will be there to stop you.” He coughs, and spits red. “You did get one, didn’t you? I heard about some mess in Ector.”

  “Eleven.”

  “Damn show-boater. If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were lying.”

  “I had some help.”

  Cobalt seems to see me with new eyes. “From a thief? That’s cheating, Magnus. You have to kill the Nightshade. No wonder they’ve chased you halfway across Teuron.”

 
; “They’re quite dead.” Lucida speaks for the first time, with the surly tone she gets right before she drags an unruly patron out of The Black Cat, usually without Barkus’s help. “And Teacup’s not a thief. He’s an acquisitioner.”

  “He isn’t,” Magnus adds, cutting Lucinda off before she builds up speed. He’s heard that tone a few times on the trip north and knows what it means, too. “Looks can be deceiving.”

  Cobalt snorts. “Deceiving can be deceiving.” But Cobalt is dismissive of my obvious thiefdom, something I wouldn’t have thought possible for a Paladin-in-training. Obviously he’s a bit more nuanced than Magnus.

  In fact, something doesn’t seem quite right about him. Maybe it’s the deprecating tone he takes around Magnus. Or his sneaky approach. Or the chain around his neck. From here above, leaning over the eaves of the building, I can follow its trail into his blood-stained tabard and see a huge, black ring hanging from it, one as big and shady as the ring he just gave to Magnus. And it’s touching his skin. I suppose a ring that big doesn’t have to be on your finger to do its job. And why is he trying to stop Magnus from talking to any of his friends in the procession? But I don’t say anything here, because I don’t want him starting up with that “Teacup-is-a-thief” line again. I haven’t stolen anything in a few days, anyway. (That dress pattern in Avrigne doesn’t count, I swear.)

  The long, whining instrument starts up again, and Cobalt’s head whips from side to side. He thumps Magnus on the chest. “Look smart, Maggotus!” Then he’s gone, stumbling out of the alley and into the crowd, bloody head-rag flapping like a pennant. He’s got no sword and no weapons, and he looks exactly like someone let him out of the hospital ward a bit too soon.

  Magnus steps to follow, but Lucinda stops him. “If he wanted your help, he would have asked for it, same as in Byzantus.”

  “Did Teacup tell you that?”

  “Of course. He tells me everything.” This is strictly true, but I don’t call her out either.

  We rendezvous with the kids at the livery, and Magnus pays the final bill to the coach service. I’m not particularly relieved. We’ve arrived in Fortrus to find that the troubles from the south are already here, with this city as stirred up and nervous as Ector was. I can feel it in the hurried step of those around us and the way the children hug to their mothers’ skirts or fathers’ aprons.

  To make matters worse, when we reach the Abbey, Magnus doesn’t take us to the Mitre Lodgis and the clerks that harbor Abbey visitors. Rather, we drop Lucinda at the kitchens, stopping briefly at Magnus’s small apartment on the way.

  The place is two stories, with one room on each floor, and he’s in and out in a flash. He points to the apartments on each side and names two of his compatriots on our way to the kitchens. There are a few loaves of bread and cold meats laid out for stragglers, and we share these out quickly.

  Then he follows Cobalt’s advice and takes us straight to the Reliquary and the Mitre Loris, historian and keeper of relics. After long weeks of travel, this is the last thing I want to do. I volunteer to stay with the kids on the doorstep, but Lucinda counters my offer, saying that I’m the one who feels weird things when I wear the rings and that I might be needed. “We’re going to explore a bit,” she adds, grabbing Timmy by the hand to pull him along. He blushes and follows, torn between being treated like a child and holding a real woman’s hand. Val goes along peaceably.

  “Do you have your rings?” Magnus asks.

  I pat my vest pocket. “Yes, your holiness.”

  “Don’t call me that, Teacup. It’s not very dignified.”

  “Perhaps you prefer Maggotus?” I mutter, but he misses the jibe.

  “Remember to call the Mitre ‘Father Loring.’ That’s his name. ‘Mitre Loris’ is just his title.”

  “What does it mean?” I ask as he pulls a small bell chain.

  “Master of Lore,” He whispers.

  The door opens suddenly, just a crack spilling light into the dusk. Three heavy chains between frame and steel door keep it from opening any more.

  “Who is it?” a frail voice whispers. “The Reliquary is closing for the night.” I can hear a heavy metal door sliding shut deep inside the room.

  “Please, Mitre Loris. It’s Cadet Palaidus. I have a collection of dangerous relics. They’re a burden to me and my traveling companion, and they have cost us a heavy toll in the blood of friends. I desire to be rid of them.”

  The door slams open, chains rattling, taut. “Cobalt? Magnus! You’re alive!” When he sees me his face falls, until Magnus assures him that Cobalt is in Fortrus, tidying up some loose ends.

  I clear my throat. “Perhaps we could have this conversation inside?”

  “Quite so. Quite so.” The aging Mitre fumbles with the chains for a minute, and I catch glimpses of curly, white wings and a large bald spot in the middle of his head. I’m struck simultaneously with both veneration for this man, and astonishment at his height.

  Suddenly there is consternation in his voice. “Sephram! Jonas! Come open this door for Brother Magnus and his friend.”

  “He’s not a brother yet,” says one of the voices, with some condescension, but there’s excitement in the voice, as well. The door closes, the chains slide, and then the door opens and a large man grabs Magnus by the shirt and pulls him inside. I follow and, quick as a flash, the door is chained and bolted behind us.

  The Mitre places a hand on Magnus shoulder, eyes roving over him as if deciding whether to keep him at a distance or give him a hug. “Still innocent as a newborn . . .” the Mitre’s voice trails off, locking eyes with Magnus for a moment. “Pan’s beard,” he says. “Maybe there is some hope for you.”

  Magnus takes this as a compliment, but I’m not so sure, and now I have a suspicion as to why Magnus might have been nervous coming home. Still, the patronizing tone isn’t unkind.

  The other two men give Magnus full hugs. Jonas is tall, and built like Magnus. Sephram is a little shorter, and solid enough, but age has tempered his exuberance, and his hair is flecked with gray. The Mitre himself is tall and intelligent-looking, but tinged with apparent cynicism and more than a hint of eccentricity. His next question is about Cobalt.

  “He was supposed to keep you out of trouble,” the Mitre says in a reedy voice.

  “Not the other way around? We got separated in Byzantus,” Magnus says.

  Jonas and Sephram exchange dark glances and Sephram shakes his head as if to wonder at some madness, but he’s all ears when Magnus says he’s got a ring for them and that he expected Cobalt to be here by now. “He had a bandage around his head and seems to have lost his weapons. Stopped to talk only long enough to hand me this. It’s the one we got in Byzantus.” Magnus pulls the enormous Nightshade ring from his pocket. It feels authentic.

  The Mitre takes the ring from Magnus, and his eyes widen immediately. “Quite so!”

  He hands it to Sephram, who examines it and passes it to Jonas. “What do you feel?”

  “Cunning.”

  “Bone-crushing strength.”

  “Disappointment.” I give them my assessment almost without thinking.

  The Mitre suddenly takes notice of me. “You can feel them?” he asks in his reedy voice, pulling out his monocle to stare at me.

  “Just a bit,” I say.

  “Well! Magnus, it seems you’ve brought along a useful recruit, as well!”

  “I’m not . . .”

  “A bit small for a Paladin,” Jonas says, his baritone drowning out my protest.

  “That’s not a bad thing,” Magnus counters. “Makes him harder to hit. And nimble. He can cross a common room using only the heads and shoulders of patrons. I’ve seen him do it.”

  Jonas glances at me. “And the patrons probably don’t even notice.”

  “I’m not that small,” I mutter. Why do people always take issue with my size?

  Fortunately the Mitre seems to agree with me. “He’s not any smaller than Father Valoris,” Father Loring says. For a m
oment the cynical expression in his face disappears, but it returns quickly. “I suppose size wouldn’t really be a problem if we could get him properly trained before the Altus Mitre sends him off on one of those worthless crusades.”

  Magnus opens his mouth to say something.

  “No, Magnus,” the Mitre says bitterly. “Had Jens and Yarla been with the Mitre Clinicus, perhaps all three would still be alive.”

  “All three? The Mitre Clinicus is dead?”

  “Slaughtered by bandits between here and Aetnos. Killed them all, as best we can tell, but her horse was hamstrung and she bled out on the road, having taken no escort. Whatever adventure Jens and Yarla may have had before they died, it wasn’t worth the loss of the Mitre and her gift for healing others. These pilgrimages have got to stop.”

  Jonas’s young face is full of righteous indignation, nodding along with the Mitre Loris.

  Sephram says nothing, his gray eyes downcast, face solemn. “You are witnessing the fall of an abbey, cadet.”

  Magnus straightens. “I will not stand idly.”

  The Mitre looks at him, and again for a moment the cynicism fades. Either that, or he’s too old and tired to argue with the likes of Magnus. He smiles fondly. “Ah well, Magnus, I’m sure you will not. And between this recruit and Cobalt’s ring . . .”

  “I’m not a recruit,” I say. “I’m here for protection.”

  “Yes, well . . .” The Mitre shrugs. “Between those rings and this non-recruit, at least one of you can expect ordination tomorrow, provided Cobalt makes it back in time. You two are more trouble than half the Abbey put together, you know? But it’s good to have you back.” The Mitre shakes his head and gestures to his assistants. “Pack that one up, Sephram. Let’s close up for the night. You can put it in the heavy vault with the other late-rendered Sodoroffs.”

  “Class?” Sephram asks.

  “Byzantian taiga guerilla. The rendering is sloppy, but plenty effective to warrant locking up.”