The Armored Saint

by Myke Cole

  “Like Hammersdown,” Heloise said, her voice a dry croak. “Like Alna and Jaran. Like Austre. And all the rest we killed.” Her throat felt as if she’d swallowed sand. She had promised Basina she would protect her, and she had failed. Basina whom she loved. Basina who had saved her. She had to make that right.

  She opened her eyes, and this time light came in, revealing the thick, dark beams of the gathering hall ceiling. She began to sit up, reaching behind her to push off what turned out to be one of the hall’s long benches. Her hand somehow missed the wood, and she slumped against the table’s edge.

  “Easy, now,” Deuteria said from behind her. Heloise could feel the herber reaching for her.

  Samson got there first, lifting her up. “Heloise, you need to rest.”

  Heloise looked down. Deuteria had covered her in soft linen smeared with something that stained the fabric dirty yellow. Even with the medicine, her body burned as if a fire were lit within it, and at the same time, a shivering cold. Her head throbbed.

  But all thought of fever and pain disappeared as her eyes fell on her right hand. It no longer pained her, in fact she could still feel her wiggling fingers. But they were phantoms. Linen was wrapped tightly around the stump of her wrist, stained a deep brown.

  Her hand was gone.

  “We could not save it,” Deuteria said. “I am sorry.”

  “I will make you another,” Barnard said in his mad voice. “A tinker-engine worthy of a Palantine.”

  Heloise looked into Barnard’s eyes, and the grief there nearly overwhelmed her. Whatever Basina’s loss was to her, it was at least the same to him. Gunnar and Guntar were weeping, but she caught their sidelong glances at her, saw the awe in their eyes. But she couldn’t let them make her something she was not.

  “I am no Palantine,” she said.

  “You are,” Barnard croaked. “You have to be.” He needs me to be, otherwise, why did Basina die?

  She stared at the stump of her wrist. She could feel her hand, had to force herself to believe it wasn’t there. She shook her head. It was nothing. Basina was dead, but Barnard and his family were alive. If there was any reason why Heloise was still here, that had to be it.

  “You heard the Maior,” Heloise said, “there is no time to rest.”

  “There is for you,” her father said. “You will need your strength for what’s ahead.”

  “That’s not true,” Heloise said. “You know I won’t heal enough to do anything before the Order comes.”

  She heard Deuteria suck in her breath, saw her father’s face darken.

  “No.” Sigir sounded exhausted. “She’s right, Samson. She’s no longer a child. Hasn’t been for some time now.”

  “Child or no,” Samson said. “She cannot fight.”

  “You will live, Heloise,” Deuteria added, “and you may recover, in time. But there is nothing for it now but what healing sleep will bring. We must hope the wounds don’t sour, and the best chance you have of preventing this is to be away from anything that might soil you. We will bring you food and drink. You must stay still, on this bench. You must not do anything that will anger the wounds. You must sleep.”

  “No,” Heloise said. “You just said you would arm every man, woman, and child. You said we wouldn’t get a second chance.”

  “You are too wounded!” Samson said.

  “So, you want me to die on my back? In this hall?” Heloise asked.

  “The Palantine wants to fight,” Barnard said, “she must fight. The Emperor will be with us if she does.”

  Samson swallowed, slowed his breathing, but his voice still shook. “Barnard, I know you are grieving. We all mourn Basina’s loss. But Heloise is lucky to be alive and I will not see her sicken and die because—”

  “She will not sicken and she will not die.” Barnard’s voice was as certain as steel. “She is a Palantine.”

  Samson’s face purpled. “Will you stop putting notions into her head? Weren’t you listening to the herber?”

  “I was, and it doesn’t matter,” Barnard said. “The Emperor has put his hand on her. Nothing can harm her, and nothing can harm those who stand with her. If we are to live, she must fight.”

  “She is not going to fight. I am her father and I forbid it.”

  “Enough.” Heloise’s voice sounded strange, even to her. Deeper, older. Basina was dead. Clodio was dead. Heloise couldn’t lie here on a table and try to get well, no matter what her father said. “I will fight.”

  “You can’t!” Samson shouted.

  “She killed a devil,” Barnard said. “She can do anything.”

  “She had your machine! And it is destroyed now!”

  Heloise looked at her father, saw the pleading in his eyes. She knew how terrified he must be, desperate to help someone he loved, unable to. She knew exactly how he felt.

  Which was why she had to do this.

  “Master Tinker,” she said, “the second war-machine, can you finish it? Can you make it fit me?” She had killed a devil in a bent and crippled machine. Her heart thrilled at the thought of what she could do in one that was whole.

  “I can, your eminence,” Barnard said, bowing his head. “I can and I will. I will work without eating, without sleeping, until it is done. It will be ready before the Order arrives, I swear it in the shadow of the Throne.”

  “Please don’t call me that,” she said. “That’s what they call Sojourners.”

  Barnard inclined his head, which frightened her even more than his use of the title. Barnard Tinker, the mountain of a man who had been all but a second father to her, following her orders as if she were a lord.

  “Heloise,” Samson pleaded. “Please. Please, don’t do this.”

  “I’m sorry, Father. I must.”

  “Maior,” Samson rasped, desperate. “I am her father. Forbid this. Call the Tipstaffs, help me tie her down.”

  Barnard’s voice went dark. “I will kill the man who tries.”

  His sons stood at his shoulders, each nearly as big as him. Guntar crossed his arms across his chest. “She is a Palantine, as Father says. She wants to fight. She fights.”

  Heloise saw the tension crackling between her father and the Tinkers. Sigir looked back and forth between them, lips moving, saying nothing. She had to stop this. It would be hard enough to fight the Order without fighting among themselves.

  “She said she is no—” Samson began.

  “If killing a devil doesn’t make me a Palantine,” Heloise said, “it at least makes me a woman grown. A woman grown with no husband makes her own decisions, and this is mine.”

  “Heloise.” Samson cradled his head in his hand.

  “I killed a devil,” Heloise said. Palantine or no, that much was true. Until she was married, a father had the right to refuse a girl anything. She had to be something more.

  Barnard grunted and turned to the hall doors. “Let them in,” he said to his sons. The Tinker boys threw the doors wide.

  A knot of villagers stood outside, staring at the table, awe in their eyes.

  Heloise’s mouth went dry. She hadn’t thought that the village might be listening. It seemed a smaller thing to claim a Palantine’s accolade in front of those she knew best, but now she had lied to the whole village.

  “Did you hear?” Barnard called to them. “Did you hear her words?”

  The villagers dipped their heads and bowed deeply, averting their eyes. “Heloise Devil-Slayer,” Danad murmured. “Palantine, Hand of the Emperor, bless us.”

  Heloise gaped, struggling for something to say. She had slain a devil, but it didn’t make her the hand of anything, and she couldn’t bless anyone. She’d said what she did to stop her father and Barnard from fighting, to ensure she’d have a chance to fight. A few of the children looked at her from under their hair, but the rest kept their eyes firmly on the ground, as if they were addressing a lord, or a member of the Order. “Hand of the Emperor,” some of them said. Others said, “Palantine.”

  �
�She drove a war-machine to slay the devil,” Barnard said. “She will drive another when we stand against the Order.”

  Sald Grower and Poch Drover alone did not bow. Sald’s cheeks were red, but he met Barnard’s fanatic gaze evenly. “Master Tinker, we all love Heloise, and thank the Emperor she lives. But that doesn’t mean she’s the one to put in a war-engine. That’s for a man grown to drive.”

  “Are you blind?” Gunnar shouted at him. “She killed a devil. Go back up to our workshop and you will see it.”

  “We’ve seen it,” Poch spoke to Sigir. “It was the machine that killed the devil. That don’t make her a Palantine.”

  And then everyone was shouting at once, until Heloise couldn’t tell one voice from the other, and Sigir was shouting for everyone to be quiet.

  “You’re right!” Barnard’s voice cut through the throng. “She is no Palatine. They are legends, revered for their place in the grave. She is real. She is breathing. All the Palantines died. She lives. She is something more. Something greater.”

  The crowd began to shout again, but Barnard shouted over them. “When the Order came to kill us, it wasn’t you who turned them back. It was an old man, and a ranger besides. And when a devil came among us, it wasn’t you who fought it, it was two little girls. My Basina fell. How else could Heloise live? Against such a monster? How else but the Emperor’s divine Hand?”

  “It was your machine,” Poch said.

  “The machine alone could not be driven by a girl of sixteen winters. The Emperor crushed it to fit her.”

  “Maybe it was the Emperor’s Hand,” Sald said, “and maybe it was dumb luck. We got one chance against the Order, do you want to risk putting a child in charge of the one thing that could save us? This isn’t a game!”

  “That machine is mine,” Barnard growled, “and I will permit no one to drive it but Heloise Factor.”

  “Barnard,” Sald began.

  “Do you think I don’t suspect?” Barnard’s voice was little more than an animal growl. “You and Poch both spoke against Samson when Sigir decided we would hide him. And the Pilgrims came, twice. Once, right to my workshop and my vault, and the second time, just after Heloise had fled from our protection. How convenient. I wonder why . . .”

  “Barnard!” Sigir shouted. “Enough. You have no proof.”

  Sald’s cheeks reddened and his eyes narrowed. “Bald lies to throw us off the matter at hand. That machine is not for—”

  “If you want it,” Guntar cut him off, “come and take it.” Guntar was not yet full grown, but he was a big boy regardless.

  Gunnar stepped up beside his brother, red faced. “Best me, Master Grower. Open hands. Blow for blow. You can have the first strike. If I fall, you may put who you like in that machine. If you lose, I swear in the shadow of the Throne that I will kill you.”

  No one moved.

  “Well?” Guntar shouted. “Are you going to step up, or are you going to stand there?”

  Silence. Sald looked at his feet, his jaw working silently.

  “Only Heloise,” Barnard said. “Devil-Slayer. Palantine. Our own.”

  The reverence in his voice made her more frightened, more alone in that moment than she’d ever felt in her life. Her need for her father was sudden and desperate. She wanted nothing more than to run to his arms, to feel him stroke her hair and tell her he loved her. She had lost so much so quickly, peace, safety, Clodio, Basina, her hand.

  But she knew that once her father put his arms around her, she would never be free of them. She hadn’t been able to save Basina, or Clodio, and if she was ever going to make that right, she couldn’t let that happen.

  “Look at her,” Poch shouted. “She’s half-dead!”

  “She is the Emperor’s Own, and beyond death,” Barnard answered. “In the machine, her body will match her heart. She will be strong enough to stand against a Pilgrim and throw him down.”

  More than a Pilgrim, Heloise knew. More than two or three of them, at least.

  But the thought didn’t make her feel brave or strong. Instead, she thought of Basina, of how she looked before the light had faded from her eyes. The villagers muttered, turned away. Sald and Poch looked as if they would say more, but they thought better of it.

  “I’m frightened,” Heloise whispered, more to herself than anyone else.

  But Barnard turned to her, and for a moment, the madness left his voice. “We all are. Fear’s a deadly thing, Heloise. It can drain a person of all their strength, make them weak before their enemies. That’s how we were until you showed us different. But we see now, and we are not afraid anymore, so long as you are with us. You are Heloise the Devil-Slayer. Never forget that.”

  She looked back at her father, eyes red-rimmed, wringing his hands. Your father’s no great harbor from a wicked world, he had said. How badly she wished that wasn’t true. Once she climbed inside the new machine, he would be lost to her every bit as much as Clodio and Basina.

  She turned back to Barnard. He was mad with grief, believed her to be something she wasn’t. But he was all she had now. “You’ll be with me?”

  “While breath remains in me,” the huge man said, “I will never leave your side.”

  He turned to his sons. “Bring the machine here, and my tools. Heloise will rest while we work. She will not move until she must.”

  Samson came to her side, glaring daggers at Barnard. But he said nothing, held out a bowl of hot soup. “Please,” he said. “Palantine or no, you have to eat.”

  Heloise realized with a start that she was hungry, her stomach a clenched knot that was only now beginning to loosen. At first, she reached for the spoon with her phantom hand, but quickly corrected herself. When she finally lifted the spoon with her good one, her father had to hold the bowl for her. The simple act nearly brought her to tears. I’m sorry, Papa. Please don’t be angry. I have to do this.

  The village watched her eat, as if they were afraid she would vanish the moment they took their eyes off her. Heloise stared back at them between bites, nodded at the ones who tugged their forelocks and looked away.

  She was terrified, but she knew that if she seemed brave, they would think she was, and that could make them brave too.

  She turned again to Barnard. “Even with the war-machine, it will be a hard fight,” she said.

  “It will,” the giant tinker said.

  “And if we win?” she asked.

  “We will win,” he said. “You are—”

  “No,” Heloise cut him off. “When we win. What then?”

  Barnard stammered, shook his head. After a moment, he sighed. “Then, things will change.”

  Heloise thought of Austre, face down in the mud as her home burned behind her. She thought of the dead woman, dragged in chains down the Hammersdown road, her gray tongue swollen out of her mouth. Heloise knew she was no Palantine, knew that even Barnard’s burning faith and his engine were no guarantees of victory. The village had a few veterans, but without arms and armor, they were little more than a rabble.

  The fight to come would be hard; victory to be won only by the slimmest chance. But slim was more than none.

  * * *

  Outside, the wind picked up, and the first snows of early winter gusted through the hall’s open doors. The white flakes swirled for a moment before settling around her feet and melting into the flagstones. Outside, they dusted the boots of the Tinker boys as they trudged up the path to the ruin of their workshop where the war-machine waited.

  She was no Palantine. A little girl shouldn’t lead an army. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to be.

  Heloise looked back up at Barnard. “Things will change.”

  He nodded. “Aye, your eminence. They already have.”

  And though it seemed a strange thing to do after all that had happened, Heloise smiled.

  Acknowledgments

  I’ve always tried to push the envelope of my writing with each book, but the one you’re holding in your hand represents the
biggest leap I’ve ever made. Prior to Tor.com picking this up, I had only ever written hard-edged military novels, and getting someone to believe in my ability to execute with wider range required luck, faith, and a large measure of persistence.

  It also required people who believed in me to the degree where they were willing to take a chance. First and foremost is Justin Landon, who contacted me after learning I’d trunked the book after working on it unsuccessfully for three years, and first told me he thought the project had legs. Justin convinced me to revive it, and then did all the necessary handholding to bring it to life. It isn’t an understatement to say that, without him, this book would still be gathering dust on my hard drive. I also want to thank Irene Gallo and Lee Harris, both of whom were willing to ante up and put money and business clout down behind Justin’s belief. Also thanks to Sam Morgan and Lisa Rodgers, who likewise saw merit in the project when no one else did. Thanks also to Kat Howard, who generously donated editorial time for which she deserves to be highly paid.

  A very special thanks to Kevin Hearne. I drunkenly confessed to him in a hotel bar that I was getting nowhere with the book. Kevin not only asked me to lay down the plot, but sat there and listened while I (maudlin and slurring) made my way through it. When I was done he said, “I don’t know what you’re so bummed out about. I think it’s awesome. I can’t wait to read it, and more importantly, I can’t wait for my daughter to read it.” I cannot tell you how important those fifteen minutes were for me. Art can be lonely and anxious in equal measure, and you never know when simply clapping someone on the shoulder will make all the difference.

  Last, but not least, thanks are due to you, the reader. I wrote this book to prove to myself that I was a Writer with a capital “W,” but I also wrote it to prove it to you.

  Thanks for giving me my shot.

  Also by Myke Cole

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