The Armored Saint

by Myke Cole

  Heloise heard a branch breaking out in the woods and looked over her shoulder. “But the Order—”

  “Is camped on the other side of the village, and down the road besides,” Clodio said. “They’ll not trouble us tonight. Come and eat.”

  He started walking toward a darker patch in the gray surface of the ruined tower that Heloise assumed was a long-neglected door.

  The talk of wizardry had rattled her. She was so happy to have Twitch back in her pocket, to feel his soft fur against her thumb, but she couldn’t explain how Clodio had come by him. The woods were vast and dark, and Twitch was so very small. “I’m not hungry.”

  Clodio stopped, but didn’t look back. “Well, sit by the fire then. The night woods is no place for an unarmed girl to go a-walking, and as you say, the Order’s about.”

  “You’re certain they’re not coming?”

  “I’m certain. We rangers have ways of not being found when we don’t want to be, even with little girls in tow.”

  “The Tinkers will be worried.”

  “They will. Even now they’re readying to search for you, I’m sure. Daybreak is close at hand. Catch your breath and I’ll take you back.”

  Heloise knew he was right, knew she had to return, but the thought of facing Basina after what had just happened made her stomach churn and her shoulders shake. “Please, let me stay here.”

  “Heloise,” Clodio said, “the Tinkers will go mad with worry. How would you like them to turn an ankle hunting for you out in the dark?”

  “That’s not what I want,” Heloise said, but the terror of facing Basina again consumed her, and she felt herself close to tears again. “I’m just . . . I’m not ready.”

  Clodio paused, sighed. “All right. You can stay until you’ve caught your breath, and then we have to take you back.”

  He started toward the roundhouse again and suddenly the darkness seemed very close around her, alive with crunching twigs and the wind breathing between the trees. She found herself hurrying after him. “I can’t go back. Not ever.”

  “Really now,” he said. “You killed someone, I take it?”

  “No, of course not,” she said.

  “Ah, so you stole then. The Maior’s gold candlesticks? His favorite horse?”

  “What’s wrong with you? You know I wouldn’t steal.”

  “I do,” he said as they reached the tower entrance, “but you’re saying that you can’t go back, even though the Order is out here, and you were crying about being sorry, so I keep thinking that whatever it is that has you running through the woods at night must be a terrible thing indeed.”

  But Heloise could hear his smile, and part of her thought he knew exactly what she’d done already. That he didn’t seem angry, or disappointed, helped her master her grief.

  “It is terrible,” she said softly as they passed through the ivy-covered, rotten timbers that held up the tower stone and framed what had once been a grand door.

  A filthy leather bedroll was laid out in one corner of the ruin, at the base of a stone staircase that wound upward for two flights before ending in midair, a jumble of blocks below showing where it had collapsed who knew how many years ago. The tower stretched above it, until it ended in a jagged and roofless circle open to the sky.

  A small fire was built in the ruins of the staircase, burning merrily under a little iron pot. The ruin was empty, overgrown and dirty, and felt as safe as a fortress. Heloise looked up at Clodio to find him gazing down at her, dark eyes reflecting the dancing flames, the ever-present smile lifting the corner of his mouth.

  “It is terrible,” she said again.

  He nodded. “I believe you. It’s just that I’m having a hard time picturing what it is that the Heloise I know could have done that was so bad. You’ve killed no one, stolen nothing. Ah!” He snapped his fingers. “You desecrated the shrine of the Emperor! You pulled the statue down and pissed on it.”

  She gasped in horror at the blasphemy, though her heart delighted in the plain talk. “No! That’s disgusting!”

  “But you said you’d done something terrible. No murder, no theft, no blasphemy. You’re too young for a ravishing . . . So . . .”

  He went to her side as the tears doubled her over again, walked her to a block of broken stone smoothed with time, and sat her there. “Heloise, you ravished no one. I know this.”

  “I . . . I . . .” she managed between hiccupping sobs, struggling to speak. Her fists were balled in her lap, and she could feel Twitch as he nosed out of her pocket and licked at her knuckle.

  Clodio knelt before her, his dark eyes finding hers, holding them. She tried to look away, found she could not, her tears drying as she lifted her head.

  “Heloise,” he said, kneeling before her, hands on her knees. “Heloise, listen to me. Will you listen?”

  The words were a question, but they sounded like a command. She nodded.

  Clodio rocked onto his backside, folding his legs in front of him, resting his elbows on his knees. The firelight danced along his face, shadowing his eyes and making him look very tired.

  “Your father will have told you about my payment for the heartfruit rind,” he sighed.

  She nodded, and he sighed again.

  “What did he tell you?” Again, Heloise felt as if he already knew the answer, was asking the question for her rather than him.

  “Mother,” Heloise said. “She said that you loved too much. So much that it hurt you. She said it was as if your heart were too big.”

  He smiled sadly. “She’s right. I did love too hotly, and it has hurt me, and my heart has brought me grief.

  “But this is the thing, Heloise, and you must remember it. If nothing else in our friendship stays with you, I ask that you only remember this one thing, can you do that?”

  Heloise nodded, leaning forward. “What?”

  “That love is worth it. It is worth any hardship, it is worth illness. It is worth injury. It is worth isolation. It is even worth death. For life without love is only a shadow of life.” He gestured at the fire beneath the pot, his hand fading to gray in the wavering shadows. “It is like my hand now. Looking the same, but drained of all color. It is a living death.”

  “What did you love?” She asked.

  “Not what, silly girl. Who. Only other people are worthy of the kind of love I am talking about. Oh, the Order will tell you that you should love the Emperor more than anyone else, but it’s a bunch of claptrap and they know it.”

  “Who was it? What was she like?” she asked.

  He looked up at her now, his face a mask of sadness. For a moment she could see the young man Clodio had been, the hopeful man ready to risk anything. She could imagine his own traitor body, dragging him on.

  He shook his head. “No. It is a person you love. Not a name. Not a she or a he. A person in all their shining glory. There is a thing in us, Heloise. A seed. It makes us who we are. It is our core. That is the thing that we love. It alone exists. It alone is holy. It has no home, no name. It is neither male nor female. It is greater than that. Do you understand?”

  He knows. The thought sent chills through her. And perhaps . . . perhaps it was the same for him.

  “I loved a person, Heloise. I loved this person with all of myself. It was a thing I have never known before and will never know again, and I would have done anything for it.”

  “What happened? She . . . the person didn’t love you back?”

  “The person did”—his voice was suddenly so low she had to strain to hear it—“but love is a great power. As with wizardry, such a power cannot be permitted to flourish outside the Emperor’s grip. There are those who wish to possess love utterly, to own it not just for themselves, but for all. Do you know how they possess it, Heloise?”

  She didn’t even nod this time, staring at him open-mouthed and silent.

  “They own it by defining it,” Clodio said. “They say ‘love is this’ and ‘love is that’ and when others say it is something else,
they imprison them, or flog them. Sometimes they kill them. My love was a thing outside the circle they had drawn. It made them angry. A mob of them gathered, and they chased us. We escaped, only barely, and after that the person I loved grew afraid and sent me away and will not answer me any longer.”

  A tear fell from one eye, sparkling in the firelight before vanishing into his beard.

  “Then it wasn’t love.” The words bubbled up, as the grief had, escaping from her mouth before she could control them.

  Clodio looked up at her, eyes angry, but the words seemed to have a life of their own, refusing to be bitten back. “If a person loves as you say, then they would never send you away, no matter what the world would do to them,” she said.

  “Then what are you doing running through the woods, child?” Clodio asked.

  Heloise bit her lip and looked at her lap. Twitch disappeared back into her pocket.

  Clodio rocked back to his haunches and gripped her knees again, seeking her eyes. “I’m sorry, that was cruel. Please forgive me. Here is what I meant to say. Never be sorry for loving, Heloise. No matter who it is, no matter how it is done, no matter how the person you love receives it. Love is the greatest thing a person can do. Most go their entire lives knowing only ritual and obligation, mistaking it for love. But you have loved truly, as few can ever hope to do, and so young. This pain you are feeling is a triumph, Heloise. It is a crown as great as the Emperor’s own. It means you can love, and that means you are good. Loving is never wrong, and nothing that comes from loving can ever be wrong. Never forget that.”

  She slid forward into his arms, wrapping her own around his neck, sobbing afresh. “Sh—. . . she looked at me . . . like she wanted to hit me.” Wait, Basina had said, but it had only been because she knew the Order was outside, because she had been sworn to protect her.

  “I know,” Clodio said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “How can you know?”

  Clodio’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Twitch told me everything.”

  “Stop it! What if she never speaks to me again?”

  “Then you will hurt, and you will change, and you will be someone else, but the good in you will live, Heloise. No pain in the world can kill that.”

  And he held her as she wept for what felt like hours. At last, she had shed all the tears she had, and lay exhausted against his shoulder, gazing into the dying firelight, feeling his hand stroking her hair.

  She slid away from him. “Thank you.”

  “You are most welcome. So, now you see. Now you see what it is like to have people condemn you for who you are.”

  She nodded.

  “And what do you think of that, Heloise? How do you feel about people punishing you for having the audacity to love?”

  “It’s . . .” She felt the embers in her, the pain and grief giving over to something else. Anger. Why should she have to hide her love for Basina? So that she could be a good, obedient imperial subject? So she could have the pleasure of someday holding a wooden pole while a village burned?

  The ember was small, but it grew quickly, and it felt so much better than sorrow.

  “The Order, Heloise,” Clodio said. “They are at the root of it all. The Writ tells us how to speak, how to eat, how to work, how to love. It withholds everything from us. Knowledge, freedom, power.”

  He leaned forward with each word, the firelight dancing across his eyes. Heloise felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “You weren’t joking. About how you knew. About Twitch.”

  He shook his head. “I am a wizard, Heloise. Without wizardry, I would have died in these woods half a dozen times at least.”

  She scrambled to her feet, heart hammering in her chest. She reached for Twitch again, but the touch of his fur did nothing to calm her. The shadows were suddenly close around them, pressing in, hungry. “You reach into hell . . .”

  “Hell is a word men use in place of fear,” Clodio said. “No one knows what lies beyond the veil, not even I, who touch it every chance I get.”

  “The portal! You’ll become a . . .”

  He reached for her and Heloise turned to run, but he only set his hands gently on her shoulders, looked into her eyes. “Heloise, listen to yourself. You believe the lies they’ve fed you since you were a baby. What is more evil? Wizardry? Or the laws against it that stands a little girl in a Knitting cordon, making her bear witness to slaughter and pillage?”

  Heloise shook her head. His words made sense, but her insides crawled at the thought of the taint leaking through his fingertips and into her soul. “Heloise, look at my eyes. Tell me what you see.”

  Heloise bit back tears of terror. “No. You’ll . . . you’ll . . .”

  “I’ll what? Do you even know what wizardry does?”

  Heloise tried to think, to remember the stories, the warnings of the Writ, but the truth was she knew only hints. Wizardry would make a man strong, or it would make his teeth long and sharp like a wolf’s, or he could spit fire.

  “Heloise, please,” Clodio said. “I’m your friend.”

  And then she did look, though the panic nearly choked her, gooseflesh standing up on the backs of her arms.

  Clodio’s eyes were deep and dark and smiling.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  Her own reflection stared back at her, her nose looking too big and her eyes too small. “Nothing.”

  “No portal? No devils reaching through?”

  “No,” she said, the fear slowly giving way to a heat in her cheeks. Stupid girl.

  “The Order tells stories to frighten you. Wizardry isn’t evil, Heloise. There is no blight. It is simply a thing that makes men strong, maybe stronger than them, and like love, they seek to have mastery over it. For without that mastery, they might be opposed, and lose their place over us.”

  “What does it do, then?” Heloise asked.

  Clodio’s face crinkled into a smile. “Let me show you.”

  He stood, put his fists on his hips, looked around the circle. His brow furrowed in concentration. He looked confused, old. Doubt pricked at the back of her mind. He snapped his fingers, his face lighting. “I’ve just the thing. Let’s give you a more comfortable place to sit.” He stretched a hand over a patch of bare ground beside the fire, grit his teeth.

  Nothing.

  Heloise grieved then. Because if Clodio was crazy, then all his talk of love and goodness had been mad ravings. Like Churic. The sort of talk that got villages condemned. False. Dangerous. The warmth that Heloise had felt, the safety, drained out of her in an instant, the grief and terror rushing back in.

  In her pocket, Twitch grew suddenly still, his little nose pulling back from her fingers.

  Clodio blinked.

  The patch of ground beneath his hand vanished. In its place was a sudden movement, a mass of quivering black, shuddering and swaying and growing tall.

  Grass. In spite of the early autumn frost, it was sprouting madly. In moments it stood as high as her waist, a divan, like noblewomen lay upon, as long as she was tall. It pushed its way up through the packed ground, green strands twining together like serpents, braiding themselves, then lying down neatly, until they had formed a pallet that looked thick and soft. Lamb’s ear sprouted at the head, the broad, fuzzy leaves overlapping one another until they made a deep pillow that fluttered slightly in the warm draft from the fire.

  Heloise couldn’t help herself, she clapped her hands together in front of her chest, feeling a smile stretch her cheeks.

  Clodio laughed, bowed. “Your seat awaits, Imperial Majesty.”

  All her life, Heloise had been taught that wizardry was the greatest of evils, hell’s window into the world. She had imagined even its benefits to be dark and terrible, men grown to the size of giants with fire burning in their eyes.

  She looked back at the divan Clodio had made for her. It was incredible in its way, but in the end, it was a simple and familiar thing.

  Clodio gestured to his eye. “No porta
l, Heloise. I have used wizardry every day of my life for ten winters now. Wizardry is not devils and death. It is not flying or breathing under water. It is beds and food and water to drink. It is warmth in the winter. It is healing. It is life.”

  Heloise wanted to believe him, but couldn’t silence the voice screaming at her to flee.

  “Try it,” Clodio gestured to the divan.

  Heloise knelt, reached out a hand, pulled it back. Clodio rolled his eyes, squatted beside her. “Heloise, it’s me. I’ve known your father since you were a babe-in-arms. Have I ever lied to you? Have I ever turned a false face to your family? Just touch it.”

  And Heloise did reach out then, holding Clodio’s eyes the whole time, looking for a trace of a lie, for a glimmer of a portal’s edge. She saw only the man she’d known all her life, the same laughing wrinkles that had always made her feel so understood.

  The divan felt soft, the grass giving gently at her touch and then springing back. Her body cried out its exhaustion, reminding her of how much the last few hours had taken out of her.

  Clodio saw it. Nodded. “It’s safe, Heloise. Sit.”

  Heloise sat, felt the springy cushion of the divan take her weight. There was no blight, no scent of hell. She only felt the comfort against her legs, the intense desire to lie down. She was so tired.

  But the fatigue struggled against her curiosity. “This is what wizardry does? Makes chairs?”

  Clodio laughed again, and the sound chased her fear away. “Wizardry does many things. Some of it depends on the wizard. The rest depends on where they are and who taught them.”

  “Who taught you?”

  “No one”—he shook his head—“which is why I’m not very good at it. I imagine a real wizard wouldn’t be very impressed with what I just showed you. I have focused on what I know, the world around me. Wizardry has taught me the language of the plants and rocks and the animals that live among them. People, too, though I have to push hard to reach them. Wizardry is, in the end, another way to talk to living things. A more convincing way.”

  “You . . . convince plants to grow?”

  Clodio nodded. “This is why I range, Heloise. The land gives me everything that your village gives to you. What it can’t, I trade for. I keep my own counsel, away from the judgments of the Order and those that do their bidding.”