Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1)

by Matthew Colville

  “So what do you want with me?”

  Heden shrugged while he ate. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Up to you,” he said. “I helped you back at the jail; maybe I’m just trying to see it through. Make sure you end up where you want to be.”

  She grunted, skeptical.

  “You’re not bothered by what I do?” she asked, studying him for any reaction or belief or attitude. “You didn’t come to the jail because…” she left the question hanging.

  Heden sighed and stabbed a slice of mutton with his fork. He didn’t like talking and he was about to do a lot of it.

  “A year ago,” he said, not looking at her, “the bishop asked me to go to the jail because there was a boy there who’d been sentenced to be drowned. The church said the boy was possessed by a demon too powerful to cast out. No one there could cure him. No prayer worked. Drowning is the traditional fate for the possessed.”

  Heden ate some mutton and talked while he ate, his voice casual like he was describing the act of buying new clothes.

  “He was like you,” he said, giving her the merest glance. She was dwarfed by the high backed chair. “He had fits and couldn’t control his body. He’d spit and soil himself and his whole mouth would be torn up, bloody. He’d bitten half his tongue off when he was younger. He’d be fine for days and then have a fit. Lasted hours.”

  Without looking at the young girl, Heden was aware he had her full attention.

  “Everyone around him,” he took another bite and chewed, “thought he was possessed and so when the church agreed and sentenced him to death, everyone was…relieved. Even his parents, you understand.” He chewed and swallowed and looked at her to gauge her reaction.

  Vanora was wide-eyed, fixated on Heden. She was holding her breath. She was mesmerized.

  “They sent me there…” Heden paused remembering the meeting with the bishop. “They sent me there because the church, having declared him possessed, was obligated to make sure the boy was killed. But drowning is a terrible way to die.” Heden shook his head, remembering something. “There are good ways to die, believe me. Drowning isn’t one of them.”

  Heden stopped eating, drank some beer, and then sat back and looked behind Vanora at the books in his library.

  “The bishop called for me and explained the situation. He didn’t ask me to do anything, he just…explained the situation. He’d seen men drowned before, for this same reason, and he talked about how awful it was. He didn’t need to tell me.

  “So that’s how it works. I don’t think I said anything. I knew what the bishop wanted. From the church’s point of view the boy had to die, but the bishop didn’t want him to suffer.”

  “Where’s the boy now?” Vanora asked, her voice quiet, timid.

  Heden looked at her, hard, unflinching, with no expression and said. “Vanora, he’s dead. I killed him.”

  The breath exploded out of her and she put her hands to her mouth. She could not bring herself to look away from Heden’s impassive face. Heden looked away for her and continued. He looked out the window, mimicking Gwiddon.

  “He was terrified when I got there. Babbling. He wasn’t having a fit, he was just…pissing himself out of desperate fear that he was about to die and there wasn’t anything he could do about it and no one would listen to him and everyone and everything he knew, his parents and the church, all approved. It was a kind of waking nightmare for him.” The words tumbled out. Heden had never told this story to anyone.

  “I was with him for an hour. I talked to him, I calmed him down. I told him everything was going to be okay. I told him that his parents loved him; that they wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him. He sobbed, relieved. That was all he wanted to hear, I think.

  “I let him think everything was going to be fine and he collapsed, asleep, exhausted. Then I said a certain prayer and that was it. He was gone. Even if…I told myself that even if the church hadn’t been…” he waved a hand vaguely, “the church, even if they’d let him live, his life would have been short and full of pain and I was doing him a mercy. Maybe the bishop thought the same thing.”

  Neither of them said anything. Vanora face’s was a conflict of fear of Heden and compassion for him. After a few moments had passed, Heden took a deep breath and continued.

  “Two months later,” Heden said, rubbing his hand over the stubble of beard on his face, “I was falling asleep and thinking about what happened. I was thinking about the boy, about his fits. I knew he wasn’t possessed. I think the bishop did too. That’s not how possession works.” He looked at Vanora and said, without expression, “that’s not how demons work. I relived the whole thing in my mind, over and over. What the bishop had said, what I had done. I felt very sad for the boy, but…what was there to do?

  “Then I remembered something a friend of mine said. He was smart, smarter than me. He and I and some others were looking over the body of a friend of ours who’d killed himself. He said something then that I didn’t understand. But I never forgot it. He said, ‘I wonder what kind of catastrophic failure the mind is experiencing, to view self-destruction as the only solution.’

  “I didn’t understand him. I thought it was in poor taste, but that moment came to me as I was falling asleep. His point of view. Which I thought I’d never get. I got up and came down here and went to the bookcase,” he said nodding at the books Vanora had been examining earlier, “and I pulled out a book he gave me.”

  “He was a physician. A kind of godless priest,” Heden smiled at this phrase, and the memory of his friend. “His people are the best physicians in the world. I read through the book, took me weeks. But I found a description of what was happening to the boy. All the same things. Like they’d been there when that boy had a fit and just wrote everything he did down.” For a moment, Heden was lost again, remembering his own wonder at how the words from a people fifteen hundred miles away could so accurately describe a boy they’d never met. He knew the gods had guided him to that moment. “Anyway, there was a cure right there in the book. Some plants, herbs. Instructions on how to prepare them. There’s a little magic involved, not much.

  “The next day, I went about collecting the plants. I don’t know why. I’d never encountered anyone like that boy before, no reason to think I would again. Some of the herbs were hard to come by. Anyway I cooked it up, followed the instructions, and then put it away. Packed it in honey to preserve it. Until…yesterday.”

  “Yesterday,” Vanora said, it wasn’t a question.

  “Yesterday,” Heden repeated. “When I was sent to do to you what I did to him, and for the same reason.” Vanora stared at him. She’d realized what his story meant, her role in it. But him saying it so plainly made it real. Horrible, but at the same time…took some power it had over her away.

  “You didn’t,” she said. “You didn’t know what I…”

  Heden picked up his drink. “I wasn’t going to kill another boy. Or girl,” he added. “Bishop be damned.” He took a drink.

  “Anyway that’s it. Long story. It worked, by the way,” he said, putting the drink down. He smiled at her. Vanora smiled a little for the first time. A quirky smile, older and younger than fifteen. “Praise the Hazarite,” he said. She smiled some more, even though she didn’t know what Heden meant.

  “What was your friend’s name?” she asked.

  “Khalil,” he said. She nodded.

  “I should go,” Vanora said, and seemed apprehensive. “Miss Elowen will be upset.”

  Heden shrugged.

  Vanora looked at him, waiting for him to say something.

  “I don’t think she expected to ever see you again. I doubt she knows you’re alive.”

  Vanora looked away and even though Heden wasn’t looking at her, he knew she was trying to avoid crying. Heden was a little proud of himself that being honest with her had worked. He made a mental note to tell the abbot about this.

  “You can stay here if you want. You can go. It’s up to you.”

&nbs
p; Still not facing him, she snorted once, and nodded. “What would I do here?” she asked. Direct. Heden liked that.

  “I don’t know,” Heden admitted. “I’ll think about it. You’ll have some say in the matter in any case and if you don’t like it, there’s always Miss Elowen.”

  “Will I…” Vanora began.

  “I don’t think so,” Heden said. “I think you’re cured. I think it’s permanent. But if it’s not, I can show you how to brew the stuff yourself. Miss Elowen would be happy to take you back knowing you’re well again.”

  “You said there was some magic,” Vanora said, ignoring his comment about her Madam. “You said: ‘there’s a little magic involved, not much.’” She quoted him exactly.

  Heden finished his drink, put the glass down, and got up. “That’s true. Priestly magic. A prayer. Whatever else you decide to do, I don’t think the clergy is in your future. You may have to depend on me for it.”

  She couldn’t tell if he thought that was a good thing or a bad thing. Heden cleared the table off, disappeared behind a door Vanora presumed went into the kitchen, and returned a few moments later. He didn’t say goodbye, he just walked toward the door, adjusting the fit of his clothes, opened the door and then stood there and looked back.

  “I have to go talk to…my boss,” he said, for some reason wanting to avoid mentioning the bishop after his story. “Try to keep out of the cat’s way. Balli earns her keep and at the moment you do not.”

  Vanora couldn’t tell if he was joking. She just looked at him as he left her alone in the empty tavern.

  Chapter Eight

  “Knights must die all the time.”

  It was a small room and the bishop’s writing desk took up most of it. The ornate wood paneling on the walls had at some point been covered over with expensive tapestries. They absorbed sound and Heden felt like he was packed in cotton every time he came in here. It was dark, lit with the steady golden light of four candles in sconces on the walls. Heden was dressed in his ill-fitting plain wool, but the bishop was wearing nearly his full regalia. All in blue and silver and black, the ceremonial colors of the largest church of Cavall.

  “Are you sure you…,” the bishop indicated an untouched tray of biscuits.

  Heden raised a hand. “Please, your Grace, no. I’ve been eating or drinking or watching people eat or drink all day.

  The bishop smiled. His thin, angular face was, to Heden’s way of thinking, the iconic bishop’s face. Bishop Conmonoc was tall and gaunt with a hawkish face. His rheumy eyes betrayed his age. Conmonoc had ascended to the hierarch’s position when Heden was a boy and though he remembered his father talking about the previous bishop, and he knew there would be one after, Conmonoc would always be ‘the’ bishop to Heden. The archetype. Heden found it difficult to judge the man as a result.

  “Gwiddon didn’t think you’d come,” the bishop said, his lips curling at one corner.

  “He’s known me a long time,” Heden said. Giving a non-answer to a non-question.

  “But you’re here,” the bishop said. Heden wondered if he was going to congratulate himself on being right. “I’ve asked Gwiddon for your service…perhaps three times in the last year and in each instance you refused.”

  Heden squirmed a little in his chair.

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  The bishop made a discreet flourish with one hand, encouraging Heden to elaborate.

  “I just didn’t think I’d be any use to you.”

  “That may be,” Bishop Conmonoc conceded. “But don’t you think that’s for me to decide?”

  “If you believed that,” Heden said, looking straight at him, “you wouldn’t have let me say no.”

  The bishop seemed to find that answer amusing. “We both know that’s not true. What made you change your mind?”

  Heden shrugged. He hadn’t thought about it. He said the first thing that came into his mind. “I didn’t want to disappoint…” he wasn’t sure how that sentence was going to end and for some reason didn’t want to follow the thought. “Anyone,” he said.

  The bishop studied him for a moment. Heden was obviously not talking about disappointing the bishop, or Cavall.

  He lifted a biscuit from the silver tray and took a bite no larger than a bird’s, careful to cup his other hand under it to catch any crumbs. After he’d eaten three tiny bites, he threw the rest away, picking a damp cloth out of a small brass bowl to clean his fingers. Heden watched this without comment.

  “As you say, knights die all the time,” the bishop flashed a brief, humorless smile, tossing the cloth back into the bowl. “The question is how the knight died, you see. Normally a dead knight is replaced by a squire trained up for the purpose but if the death is unrighteous, well then. The order’s patron reduces the size of the order by one. It’s a form of judgment. The order shrinks for every such death. Until the unrighteous death is atoned for.”

  “The murderer punished,” Heden concluded.

  The bishop raised a single finger of his right hand.

  “It’s unclear that there is a murder. The order is so remote, we have no real idea what goes on up there. The idea that they could operate up there for centuries without anything like this happening means this is an extraordinary circumstance. Or they are extraordinary knights.”

  “So murder or suicide.”

  “You grasp these things so well,” the bishop said with a sigh. He knew Heden didn’t like it when he congratulated him on his insight, but he didn’t udnerstand why.

  “So I figure out how he died and…do something about it.”

  “You understand that if the death was unrighteous, justice may be very hard to attain. The whole order may bear some burden.”

  “Yeah,” Heden said, turning away to look at one of the tapestries. “I understand that.”

  “My apologies,” the bishop said. “I don’t mean to sound patronizing.” He wanted Heden to like him, and he suspected he didn’t. But like so much about this man, he didn’t know why.

  “I know,” Heden said. “You can’t help it.”

  The bishop flashed a smile again, vaguely aware he’d been insulted, but unsure how to respond. An awkward silence settled between them.

  Heden felt bad for his early jibe, and filled the silence.

  “Who’s their patron?”

  “Halcyon,” the bishop said, raising an eyebrow.

  Heden searched his memory and sunk back in the plush red chair. “I’m not familiar with the name, your Grace.”

  “There’s no reason you should be. She’s one of a handful of saints who predate the Age of Saints. In her case, by almost a thousand years.”

  Heden nodded.

  “That’s how she has knights older than the Council.”

  The bishop nodded once.

  “What should I expect,” Heden asked.

  The bishop spread his hands. “We’ve done quite a lot of research, none of it very helpful. They live in the forest, they fight all manner of creature, specializing in the kind of thing you used to do when you were younger,” he smiled in what he must have thought was a sign of camaraderie. “They have a reputation. It’s the environment, you see. Only the strong survive up there.

  “We know precious little else. We’re trying to find someone who’s been up there and can tell us more. They report to the local barons, they have a priory. Apart from that, whatever’s happened must be…unusual. Deeply wrong, morally or perhaps spiritually. Otherwise we’d never have learned of it.”

  “You could send the White Hart,” Heden said.

  “I could,” the bishop agreed. “Especially if I wanted the Green Order hunted down and destroyed. The Hart are not that kind of tool, as well you know.”

  “What are your wishes?” Heden asked.

  “Only that you do what you think is right. You’re going to have to, ah, make a judgment on the spot, as it were.”

  Heden shook his head, frustrated.

  “Cavall has yet to reveal to me
more than a sense that the order protects the people from the forest. From the things in the forest. And that they are critical to our safety.”

  “That covers a lot,” Heden said.

  “You seem skeptical.”

  Heden wouldn’t look at the bishop. “The Wode is…it’s massive. I don’t think people have any real understanding of how big it is. And the things that live there, a lot of them were made by the Celestials, remember them. Carry their power. The place is a nightmare. Yeah, I’m skeptical. What could nine knights do?”

  “One of the reasons Gwiddon recommended you. I don’t think either of us know anyone who’s ever been inside the Wode. Of course, if my instincts are correct, you would have been the only choice in any event.” The bishop looked bemused.

  “Because your instincts tell you….”

  “That this is a thorny problem requiring a nicety of judgment. I believe that when this is done you’ll have had to do …things you may never be able to reveal to me.

  “The order must survive, Heden. They’ve been guarding out people from the forest for three thousand years. But everything ends. The order must end someday. I had never heard of them before a week ago, but I don’t want them to fail their mission, ah…on my watch, as the Castellan would say.”

  Heden thought, and said nothing.

  “You’ll learn more when you get to the keep. The people there, they live with the threat of the Iron Forest. They know the order. They know more about the order than they do the church or the king. You’ll be able to speak on my behalf though obviously, not on my authority.”

  Heden didn’t seem impressed by this.

  “The people up there won’t want to talk to me. They’re suspicious of strangers.”

  “The knights won’t be happy to see you either. I doubt they know who I am, or that their order falls under my influence. Everything we’re read describes them as zealots, devoted to the forest.”

  “They sound like a bunch of druids.”