Clarity's Edge: Technopaladin, #1

by Elizabeth Corrigan

  Clarity stood up straight. “Guilty, sir.”

  A collective noise of shock rose from the Council table. “Perhaps you don’t understand,” Dependability said. “We’re offering you the chance to defend yourself.”

  “I understand.” Clarity took a deep breath. “My defense is this: I found out there were children dying in the Azure District, and their only access to medicine was through a man who exploited their suffering. I could not allow that to happen, and I knew the consequences when I acted. If you’re asking me if I had anything to do with the attack on the Citadel, I did not. I knew nothing of it and would have warned you of it if I had. But you asked if I had gone into the Azure District and provided succor to its citizens. That, I did.”

  “You willingly admit you have violated paladin law?” Steadfastness sounded outraged, but Clarity could have sworn she heard a little glee beneath his voice. “And by all accounts involved my son and my wife---”

  “---and my daughter---” interjected a man who had to be Brilliance Saito.

  “---in your illicit activities?”

  “I cannot speak to the actions of anyone else,” Clarity said. “But I stand by what I did, and I accept whatever punishment you consider my due.

  The Grand Conductor stared at her for a long moment. “Were it up to me, you would be booted out of the order so quickly, you wouldn’t even have time to pack. However, given some evidence that has come to light, the majority of the Council has chosen to show leniency.”

  Clarity’s heart beat faster. “Evidence, sir?”

  Dependability answered, “According to the Azurites we have questioned, the attack Garrett planned was much larger than the one that occurred. However, many of the men who intended to participate declined to come. The free distribution of Dovexin throughout the Azure District convinced them that not all paladins were the monsters they had come to believe. The raid was a bloodbath from which we will need some time to recover, but had Garrett had his full complement of men, we would likely have been utterly destroyed.”

  “Besides which, the Visionary has interceded on your behalf,” Brilliance said. “She has specifically requested your presence on her journey through the outlying villages.”

  Clarity felt her eyebrows knit. “The Visionary requested my presence?”

  “The, ah, new Visionary,” Dependability said. “The old Visionary was killed in the attack.”

  Hope, Clarity realized. “What is to be my punishment, then?”

  Steadfastness gave her a smug smile. “Upon your graduation, you were granted a position at the Citadel that many felt you had not earned. That position is no longer yours. You will travel with the Visionary when she begins her journey in a week, and upon her return, you will have a new assignment.”

  Probably an unpleasant one. Still, she could not complain. She was still a paladin, and she had worked her way up from the bottom before. She could do it again. “Thank you, sir. I understand.”

  Cass had gotten next to no work done since the attack. He suspected that didn’t make him different from most of the rest of the paladins, though he suspected his reasons were different from everyone else’s. They were mourning their dead and questioning their safety. He was only worried about Clarity.

  In his anger, he had confronted his father about the security exploits he had tracked down, the ones that had allowed the Azurites to invade. Cass expected his father to dismiss him, but the tired Grand Conductor had admitted he should not have disregarded his son’s words and had promised to listen more closely in the future. Cass doubted his father’s respect would last forever, but he felt a bit of a glow at being in Steadfastness’s good graces for once.

  He’d also spent a lot of time talking to Chrissy. In light of the attack, the order had decided to resume diplomatic talks with what remained of the Azure District leadership, and Chrissy was angling for a position on that team. From the looks of things, she wouldn’t be returning to Bellamie any time soon.

  Still, most of the time, Cass thought about Clarity. She wouldn’t answer his calls, and his father wouldn’t tell him anything about when she might be released. His mother told him to have patience, and he was trying, but as the days stretched on without her even acknowledging him, his mind developed countless explanations, each more outrageous than the last. At noon on the third day, he was imagining that Clarity had been stuck in the prison cells after all, and the guards outside her door were merely decoys. He pictured all kinds of torments Garrett and his minions might inflict on her in such a case.

  “Don’t be so morose,” Meg said, stretching before climbing out from under his desk. “Clarity’s fine.”

  “You don’t know that.” Cass stood up and headed out the door to the tech support desk. “You might if you’d crawled up to her window and checked on her, like I asked you to.”

  “Sorry, wrong robot,” Meg said. “You’ll have to build something with motivation if you want that to happen.”

  Cass had just sat down at the front desk when the door whooshed open. He didn’t bother to look up to see which tech was headed to lunch, but when a solid set of footsteps approached him, he groaned internally. He didn’t want to have to deal with someone else’s problems so early in the shift.

  “With that expression, you’d think you weren’t happy to see me,” Clarity said.

  Cass jerked his head up. She was there, standing in front of him, looking absolutely perfect back in her paladin armor. “Clarity! You’re here! You’re fine! Did they shut off your communication lines? You didn’t answer any of my calls!”

  “Sorry about that. I didn’t think there was anything to say, but it turns out you’re not getting rid of me so easily. Though it does appear I’m getting reassigned, so this is probably my last week of tech support. You’ll have to deal with some other warrior hounding you to go to training.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I’ll need to be hounded anymore,” Cass said. “I’ve learned that physical skills definitely have their utility.”

  Clarity smiled. “Then I’ve served my purpose.”

  Cass grinned back at her. She’d done so much more for him than get him to go to training, but he didn’t think tech support was the time or place to discuss his feelings. “So, where do you think you’ll be going?”

  “Well, I have to go on the Visionary’s journey for the next couple of months,” Clarity said. “And I doubt I’ll get any say in the matter of my assignment after that. But if I did, I was thinking maybe Bellamie? It might be nice to see the world, and I’m sure the Grand Conductor wouldn’t mind having me out of the country.”

  Cass’s smile stretched so wide he thought his mouth might break. If she went to Bellamie, he might have to consider Ambassador Bankole’s offer after all, and if not… Well, he’d worry about that when it happened. For the time being, he had two more weeks with Clarity, and he was going to make the most of them.