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

  I glance at Lucinda, expecting her to be jealous. “You should take Lucinda. She’s the one interested in joining your cause. And she’s kept us alive this whole time. Bringing Sanjuste down. Covering our backs in Flow-By-Downs.”

  Lucinda smirks. “I’m just here for Magnus,” she says, but she’s looking at me fondly, too. “And don’t be ridiculous. I’d only make Magnus blush. You want him to bobble his interview with the most holy of Mitres?”

  Trapped.

  “I’ll be your witness, Magnus” I say, “on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You get your buddies to spell my name correctly. And possibly bring me a sandwich.”

  “That’s two conditions,” Magnus replies.

  Magnus seems extraordinarily subdued as we follow the messenger through the abbey complex. He’s as mute as a stone, and I try to imagine what it would be like for him, coming back home after almost a full year on the road. I listen to a rhythmic beating of wood on wood and the occasional thunder of voices in harmony, one rich and deep chord of music between the beats. For a moment my heart catches some inexpressible emotion, like joy, except that it hurts ever so slightly.

  “Magnus?”

  He turns to me as if coming out of a trance.

  “What’s that sound?”

  “Morning prayers.”

  Yay.

  I catalogue the wooden beats and let my attention sweep across the soaring, white arches above, pinched at the top so they can support more weight. The walls seem fragile and powerful all at once, and the white stone gleams in the morning sunlight. My bare feet brush the paving stone, which feels almost warm in spite of the chilly air. The tiny cracks between their squared edges are overflowing with moss.

  The prayers get closer as we walk. A bird flits between the columns and we open on a cloister, one nearly a hundred yards across and easily fifty yards wide. There must be a hundred men swinging practice swords and sweating in the mild winter sun.

  “These are prayers?”

  “Battle is a prayer.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “It can be. It can be a man’s prayer of protection for his family. Or for his liberty. Or for his country.”

  “Seems like a violent sort of prayer,” I say, watching one man crumple as a practice sword clips his ear.

  “There’s nothing so peaceful as protecting one’s liberty.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  Magnus shrugs.

  “Why do they sing while they fight?” I ask.

  “The will of Pan isn’t found in the rage of battle, but in the breath of a song,” he says in a by-rote sort of voice.

  You can’t think when you’re angry, Tom’s voice explains in my head. Singing calms the soul. Or, as the Nightshades say, ‘Make an enemy angry, and he’ll kill himself.’

  Get out of my head, Tom.

  We enter a long corridor still cloaked in morning shadow and pass into a large hall, with tall, narrow, glass windows from floor to ceiling. I’ve seen these before in some of the wealthier mansions and churches of Ector. They’re usually made of colored glass, but these windows aren’t stained. They’re cut from crystal-like glass and they each depict the ongoing struggle between light and dark, with the glass in the shape of a man like Magnus and the darker leading carefully crafted in sinuous lines to suggest the shadowy figure of Tenebrous. We march—I slink—through row after row of benches, past a dais, and through a small door at the back to a staircase spiraling down, and down, and down into the very bowels of the abbey.

  “Magnus,” I say, stopping abruptly on the interminable staircase.

  “Yes?” Magnus stops too.

  Father Loring’s admonition weighs heavily on me and I feel the need to be cautious. “Are you going to tell Father Jeremiah about my rings?”

  “Your rings?”

  “Mine. The ones I got from Tom’s house, by myself, without any help.”

  Magnus looks hurt for a moment, but then relaxes. “You’re right. It’s not my place. You deserve the honor. You should be the one to tell him.”

  “What if I decide I don’t want to tell him?”

  “That’s crazy! You—”

  “Promise me you’ll let me do it. Let me get the credit, when I’m ready for it.”

  Magnus starts walking down the stairs again. “If that’s how you want to do it,” he says dubiously.

  “Promise me!”

  “Okay. I promise.”

  At the bottom of the staircase we follow a short hallway to the right, and then we’re there, stepping through a heavy, wooden door into a small waiting room brightly lit with candles and lined with padded benches on either side of the central carpet. Two men stand guard by a second door. Both are tall, but the one on the left has a gaunt face and a narrow nose. In side profile the angle of it accelerates sharply at the midpoint, giving him slightly beakish appearance. Perhaps it got smashed and was never properly reset. Based on the “prayers” being said in the courtyard, it isn’t hard to imagine how.

  The one on the right smiles, stepping aside so the messenger can knock among the beautifully-carved geometric patterns in the door he’s guarding. “Magnus!”

  “Roland!”

  They pull each other into a tight embrace, Roland’s white armor and sword getting in the way.

  Magnus turns to the other man and offers his hand. “Magnus Palaidus, Orphan of the Abbey.” Roland winces when he hears Magnus introducing himself.

  The knight with the beakish nose glances at Magnus’s hand just long enough for it to feel insulting before taking it.

  “Brother Hawkwood, former Mitre Clinicus of Southreach Abbey.” His haughty stance makes it obvious that he resents standing guard in this way, doing duties he sees as beneath him.

  Magnus doesn’t notice the light sneer in his voice. “Former?”

  “Southreach Abbey has fallen. The Nightshades burned it to the ground last week. Whatever brothers have survived are making their way here.”

  “Nine Mitres!” Magnus gasps.

  “How did you get here so quick?” I ask.

  “I was here in conference with the Altus Mitre when it happened.”

  “The Mitres are considering a march on Byzantus,” Roland whispers. “A war!”

  Pan’s beard.

  This isn’t exactly what I’d hoped for.

  Our chattering stops when the door opens, because it opens to the most powerful man I’ve ever met in my life. He’s the same height as Magnus, but his meaty fists make Magnus’s giant hands look almost delicate. His jaw is solid. The light scarring on his face and forearms makes it clear that he’s no stranger to armed conflict. He moves with a deliberate motion, as if carefully ordering the world around him, tiredly arranging his limbs to meet its demands. But still there is strength, I see, waiting to be unleashed. And power.

  “Young Magnus. You’ve returned.”

  “Father Jeremiah.” Magnus bows.

  The Altus Mitre, Father Jeremiah, doesn’t smile, but turns to allow us to pass, and then sees me, standing behind Magnus. “And you’re the new recruit?”

  “Teamus Steeps,” I say, offering my hand, careful to not get it crushed. Now’s not the time to tell him I’m just visiting until my Nightshade problem goes away.

  “Welcome to Fortrus Abbey, Teamus.” His eyes don’t bore through me as the Mitre Loris’s did, but rather the seeing goes the other way, as if I can see straight into his soul. There’s sadness there, and . . .

  The Altus Mitre breaks eye contact and puts his heavy arm over Magnus’s shoulders. “Come! Tell me everything,” he invites, guiding Magnus into the room and toward a white couch large enough for the two of them to sit side by side. “It’s a dark time, Brother Magnus, but tell me of your travels. Did you find the master villain you were looking for?”

  Magnus shakes his head. “I found people who needed my help, and many people doing horrible things. But I didn’t meet anyone as purely evil a
s you described last winter.”

  Father Jeremiah’s displeasure is immediately apparent. “Oh, Magnus. You must learn to recognize darkness for what it is. Whatever trinkets you may have brought to the Mitre Loris cannot compensate for this. You heard the funeral bells? This is what comes of trusting. Your entry into the order is delayed until you can recognize this.”

  Magnus is crestfallen, but with a glance at me he finds the strength to carry on. “So be it. But I accomplished your task. I met with the man who sent the note.”

  “And you left him alive? How does this help? I warned you that he was a dangerous man, a Nightshade of the worst sort, trying to lure me away from my duties for an ambush.”

  What in Hell’s Gate? He sent Magnus into an ambush?

  “You knew Pale Tom?” I interrupt.

  The massive Mitre turns his balding head slightly toward me. “We were friends once.”

  “He was evil, but not pure evil,” Magnus insists. “He saved my life.”

  “And then probably tried to kill you. That is how a Nightshade operates. They gain power with every betrayal of trust and store it away in their rings. If it truly is this Tom I once knew, his acts precede him. He has forsaken all that is good.” Father Jeremiah’s temper is beginning to show, out of sorts with the peaceful aura emanating from the strange white staff in the corner, the same from the parade.

  Magnus looks straight at Father Jeremiah then, standing his ground. “I can assure you, he no longer works for evil, Father.”

  Father Jeremiah’s eyes widen, and for a moment I think he is actually going to grab Magnus by the shirt. “How can you be so sure? Bringing one recruit to the light is a far cry from saving a Dreadlord.”

  Magnus bows his head. “I can be sure … because I killed him. We killed him. He was no villain at the last. He died fighting the evil inside himself, even if he was losing to it. That much I understand.”

  Father Jeremiah relaxes then, doing a fair impression of a fond smile, but it doesn’t touch his eyes. The corners of his mouth barely lift at all.

  “There is more . . .” Magnus begins.

  I put a small hand on his shoulder, and he looks up at me. I shake my head. “Magnus,” I say, pretending to console him. “You did what had to be done.”

  I’ve seen enough shrewd-looking people in my life to know that it is time to tread softly. He’s about to walk straight into a line of questioning that will sabotage his promise to keep quiet about my rings and give the Altus Mitre all the details: the assassins Tom killed, the rings from his house, our discussions with the Mitre Loris. This won’t do.

  “No one can blame you for killing a Dreadlord,” I continue, stalling, trying to detour the conversation. “Repentant Dreadlord or not.”

  “There’s no such thing as a repentant Dreadlord,” Father Jeremiah says, but the tension in his shoulders is easing. “Ah, Magnus,” he adds, “you’ve always been too willing to see the good in people. What’s important is that you’ve learned to do your duty all the same. As your friend says, none can fault that! Perhaps you are wiser than we give you credit. To recognize the good, even in evil.”

  “There was still something there,” Magnus insists.

  “Oh, I don’t doubt there was. One doesn’t rise to his level of influence without devious thinking and devious action.”

  “He wanted me to kill him.”

  “Of course he did, Magnus. Evil wears on a man, makes him heavy and tired.”

  For a moment I can’t help thinking the description fits the Altus Mitre as well.

  “He did seem worn,” Magnus agrees. “Searching for something he had lost.” Magnus briefly describes his duel with Tom and the loss of his sword in the fight. “You mentioned you knew him. What was he like?”

  I smile inwardly. He’s asked a question that’s been burning inside me ever since I’d learned about the note and realized that someone at the Abbey had known young Tom.

  “It’s not something I like to talk about,” Jeremiah responds, sighing. “Tom was too brilliant by half. He thought he could understand evil by embracing it. He planned to learn its ways and unravel it. But evil always corrupts.”

  The Mitre Loris’s words come back to me about keeping Magnus from blabbing, so I skip ahead in the story, a lot, to a topic that will interest everyone. “Speaking of corrupt, we met one of Magnus’s friends yesterday, Altus Mitre. He seemed to be in some sort of trouble.”

  “That sounds like Cobalt.” Father Jeremiah raises an eyebrow, not quite meeting my eyes. “Cadet Cobalt is frequently trouble. Perhaps he has finally crossed the line. There’s some evidence to say that he was involved in the murder of two other cadets.”

  Magnus’s anguish deepens. “Cobalt didn’t do it. I know he isn’t evil.”

  Father Jeremiah’s deep voice is firm. “I do not have your faith in him, Magnus. He was exposed to evil at a young age and it will haunt him forever.”

  Magnus throws himself on this. “But you say I was too sheltered. What’s the balance between exposure and protection, Father?” Magnus presses. “Can he be blamed? Can I not lend him some of my innocence, as you put it?”

  A grand sort of fondness fills the Altus Mitre’s face. “Magnus. Be at peace. Do not worry about your friend. Nothing has been decided yet.” Jeremiah places a hand on his shoulder. “I heard you found a ring. Let me have a look?”

  “Cobalt found the ring,” Magnus specifies, hoping this will buy his friend some exoneration. He watches the Altus Mitre closely. “I turned it in to the Mitre Loris, as is customary.”

  Jeremiah nods. “Good. It is dangerous to do otherwise.” But there’s a slight knitting of his brows. “Out of curiosity, was it just the one? Were there others?”

  “Yes,” I say hastily, before Magnus’s promise can be tested. “We killed another Nightshade on our way here.” I immediately launch into a blow-by-blow of our experience in Flow-by-Downs.

  Before I can finish—I take plenty of time for details and add in a few extra paladin jokes to the mix for spice—there’s a knocking at the door, followed by an immediate influx of powerful-looking men. The Altus Mitre stands, the conversation dissipating with the new arrivals.

  “It appears our interview is at an end Magnus, Mister Steeps. The Council of the Nine Mitres has come to worry me with the business of their offices. We’ll be forced to continue this conversation another day.” Father Jeremiah raises his voice a bit. “And I think you’ll be in need of a new sword. A Paladin’s Sword.”

  This last statement has a strong effect on the bickering Mitres as they enter. The arguments cease and they seem to notice Magnus for the first time. Father Loring’s face is full of apprehension as his eyes flit toward me for a moment. Does he know about the rings? his face asks.

  I give my head a little shake, but he doesn’t see me, already focused on the Altus Mitre. “What’s this Jeremiah?” he says. “Have you gone and held the interview without us?”

  “Peace, Loring. I assumed you would fill the others in on the good bits at breakfast anyway. We’ve covered only the basics, just enough to move forward with tomorrow’s business. And we have other more pressing things to discuss today, than Young Magnus’s triumphs, do we not?”

  The Mitre Loris doesn’t seem appeased by this explanation, but doesn’t press his question.

  Jeremiah turns to the open door. “Father Hawkwood. Please join us in our council today.”

  The other Mitres ignore the sour expression on Hawkwood’s face as they slap Magnus on the back or put hands on his shoulders in paternalistic ways. Father Loring begins to smile in spite of himself, and the other Mitres do indeed seem familiar with Magnus’s adventure in Ector. There is, I notice, no mention of Byzantus.

  There is one exception to the back slapping and bone crushing being passed along to Magnus under the guise of manly embrace. The Mitre Tresorus stays out of the scrum. He’s built like me, with a small, fragile frame and a clever, happy smile. He stands just as straight as the others,
but moves quickly aside when the larger Mitres mill about Magnus like friendly bulls in too small a pasture. Father Hugues, the aptly named Mitre Animus, is nearly three times as wide as Magnus, and his giant bear hug lifts Magnus from the ground for a few seconds. The small falcon on his shoulder screeches and flies to the top of a bookshelf, arranging its wings repeatedly and hopping about, as if scolding everyone for ruining his perch. I gather from the general conversation that Father Hugues—as the Mitre Animus—manages the farms and holdings of the Abbey and doesn’t spend as much of his time in Fortrus as the other Mitres.

  “Don’t be a stranger, Magnus! It’s about time we had some good news around here,” Father Hugues’ booming voice follows us into the anteroom as the door closes.

  Roland catches Magnus’s attention and nods grimly to a figure huddled on one of the benches.

  Cobalt. He’s clearly hung over, and the stench of alcohol fills the anteroom when he exhales. This time he ignores us, without even a friendly “Maggotus” to boot. His black pants and black shirt fit tightly, and his lack of motion creates the illusion of a man-shaped window to a starless night. He’s leaning forward, with hands clasped and elbows on knees, head down. There’s a long scab on his temple running back to his ear and into his hair, as if someone has recently tried to slice his head off and narrowly failed. There’s no sign of the ring that was around his neck when we met him in the alley.

  “They’re interviewing him prior to the General Assembly,” Roland says without bothering to lower his voice. “It doesn’t look good, this time.”

  Cobalt’s head twitches at this pronouncement, but nothing else moves. He doesn’t bother to look up, even when Magnus sits next to him and tries to talk with him.

  “Distance yourself,” is all Cobalt says. “My time here is at an end.”

  In spite of this, Magnus sits with him, saying nothing, with a large hand on Cobalt’s back until Loring opens the door a few minutes later.

  “Cadet Cobalt. The council requests your report.” Cobalt lifts himself from the bench and stalks through the door without a word. Father Loring turns to Magnus before closing the door, “Do not wait for him.”