Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1)

by Matthew Colville

  Heden tried some more of the uske beet, but couldn’t down more than a sip. He wiped his mouth. “Drinking,” he said, “sloppy. Probably someone back in Celkirk I could tell about this and you’d be out of a job.”

  Heden realized he was putting his life in danger. The knights left him in a foul mood and he wanted to see how far the thief could be pushed.

  The polder sat up and leaned forward, angry, scowling.

  “You shouldn’t feel constrained by these people, all these innocent people,” the polder said, pointing around him but never taking his eyes off Heden. “Thinking they might get hurt if we went at it. Because I’m here to tell you that if you push me far enough you’ll be dead and I’ll be out of here and the only thing these people will know is that someone got stiffed on the bill.”

  Heden was impressed. But he’d noticed something about the polder, and so pushed. He leaned back in his chair and put his right arm over the top of the high back, relaxing. Insulting the polder with his attitude. “You like talking,” he said, smiling, “If you were any good, you’d keep your mouth shut and then maybe I’d be afraid.”

  The polder frowned at the insult with quiet confusion and outrage. He situated himself in his chair.

  “Do you…” he stopped, looked at Heden anew, and started again. “Listen, I know what happens if one of us kills a priest, especially a Cavalite, but don’t think that’s going to…” he was flustered. Heden was right about him. “I know you’re not a priest, so whatever these ignorant pickfuckers usually give you because they’re too stupid to see that you’re…it’s not working on me. Forget it. You get nothing.”

  Heden nodded. He had guessed the polder knew he wasn’t a priest.

  “I’m not a priest,” Heden said.

  “No,” the polder said. “You were a priest.”

  “I was a priest,” Heden said.

  “That’s what I just said,” the polder replied, looking around as though to see if perhaps no one could hear him.

  “What am I now?” Heden asked, as though taking the trick in Tanip.

  “What…” the polder started, and then sat back in his chair and gave Heden a respectful appraisal. “I don’t know what you are anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve never heard of anyone being annulled. Well, and being alive afterward.”

  “I could tell you didn’t know,” Heden said, and it wasn’t an accusation. It was like talking to a friend.

  The polder’s face lost none of its outrage and hostility. He sat forward again and stabbed a finger on the table.

  “Well that’s the only reason you’re still alive right now.”

  Heden relaxed and smiled a little. “I know.”

  “You know,” the polder said.

  “Yes. You wouldn’t try anything until you knew.”

  “I wouldn’t,” the polder repeated.

  “No,” Heden said. “Because you don’t know how to get into the forest,” Heden played his trump card. “That’s why you’re here waiting for me. You knew the forest wouldn’t let anyone in, but you heard about a prelate who maybe did it. You knew they meant me, even though I’m not a prelate anymore. So you wait for me, find out what I am and what I know. Maybe you don’t have to go in and find the order, maybe I’ll tell you something makes your whole trip moot.

  “You never for an instant considered making a move on me because if I don’t tell you what I know, then you go home empty handed, which upsets your guildmaster. Let’s say you kill me. You’d still have nothing, Your guildmaster is upset and you’ve got the church and all my friends are coming after you too.” Heden opted not to emphasize that his friends would be by far the most dangerous group to upset. “Better just to go home empty handed and report to your betters.”

  The polder opened his mouth to object, let it hang open for a moment, then shut it and pursed his lips, nodding in approval at Heden’s reasoning. He looked around the inn. Then looked back and Heden and nodded.

  “You’re good,” he said.

  Heden shrugged. “Threatening people probably works most of the time,” he said trying to make the polder feel better.

  “It really does,” the little man said smoothly.

  “I’m pretty hard to threaten,” Heden said. “Probably about as hard as you,” he smiled. “Plus, I had an advantage.”

  “What advantage?” The polder asked suspiciously.

  “You’ve got half a bottle of cask strength uske beet in you,” Heden said nodding to the empty glasses.

  The polder didn’t say anything.

  “You think that means I can’t take you?” he asked, his voice quiet.

  Heden held out his right hand, steady as a rock.

  The polder just looked at it, Heden saw him clench his fist reflexively, trying to stop the small tremors he thought no one noticed.

  After a moment staring at Heden’s hand, the polder said; “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  Heden was done embarrassing him. He’d made his point. He pulled his hand back. “I’m an Arrogate,” he said.

  The polder took a few deep breaths, not liking how Heden just confronted him.

  “Okay,” he nodded, filing the term away. He composed himself. Happy to move on. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “You could find out,” it wasn’t information to trade for, no reason to be secret. He explained the basic principle.

  The thief accepted his description without question, just a nod.

  “How’d you get into the forest?”

  “Flying carpet,” Heden said. He chose not to reveal the real method, in case the polder could duplicate it.

  The polder whistled, impressed.

  “You said you were a Prelate.”

  “I was before I was annulled.”

  The polder was impressed. “That’s high up,” he said.

  “Pretty high,” Heden nodded slowly.

  “So how would you, ah…how would you deal with someone like me? Here?” The little man tested him.

  “Well,” Heden said, playing along. “That depends on what I thought about you. Let’s say I hadn’t seen you down that drink like water.”

  The little man gave him a look, which he ignored.

  “You’d be fast,” Heden said. “Faster than me. And you’d be close to their best, if they sent you out here alone. So you have some talent,” he said, referring to the normal man’s ability to tap into magic with proper training. “Probably a mistake for me to get this close to you,” Heden admitted. This seemed to surprise the polder.

  “So I’d call on a Dominion.”

  “You can do that?” the polder said, impressed and a little alarmed.

  “Yep,” Heden said.

  “Quick enough?”

  “I speak its name, that’s it. It’s not like speaking a prayer. The Dominion is the spoken prayer of Cavall.”

  “How can you do that if you’re not a priest?” the polder asked.

  “The church dismissed me,” Heden said. “Cavall did not.”

  The polder nodded. This was something he had not considered.

  “I saw a Dominion once,” the polder said. “In Celkirk.”

  “Two years ago?” Heden asked.

  The polder nodded.

  “That was Radallach,” Heden said.

  “You’re on first name terms with a Dominion of Cavall?” The polder was a little overwhelmed.

  “No, Sir Radallach is the Medial Templar of the White Hart.”

  “The Hart?” the polder said. “The Hart can summon Dominions?”

  Heden nodded. “They’re sponsored by the king and the church. They’re a holy order as well as martial.”

  “And you know this Radallach?”

  Heden nodded. “And his master.”

  “You have some powerful friends,” he observed.

  “Radallach is a piece of shit and someone should have put him down years ago.”

  “Okay,” the polder said. “You have some powerful enemies.”

  “I just don�
��t like knights.”

  “Well, me neither,” the polder said. “So there’s that.”

  Heden smiled. The polder smiled for the first time. He looked idly at Heden’s drink.

  “What about you?” Heden asked.

  “What about me?”

  “Let’s imagine you knew I’d been a Prelate and what I could do. How would it go?”

  “Oh,” the polder said, and was now relaxed. He seemed to enjoy talking to Heden now, and Heden imagined he didn’t get to do it often. He rubbed his hands together briefly.

  “You see, you think you have to be fast because I’m so close to you here.” Heden nodded agreement. “But really, distance is nothing. If I concentrate,” he snapped his small fingers, “I’m across the table, across the room, no problem. There’s not even a flash, just ‘blink’ and I’m there.”

  “That had to be hard to learn,” Heden said.

  “You have no idea,” the little man said slowly. “For years I thought it was a myth. Even when I saw my instructor do it, I thought it was a trick of the eye.” Heden nodded, and indicated for the polder to continue.

  “Well, at the same time,” he said, and leaned back. He picked up the empty glass from his first drink and just held it. “I’d have my dagger out, same principle, and then through your breastbone and into your heart and that’s it.”

  “Heart through bone’s not easy,” Heden said. “Have to go under the ribs. Probably miss.”

  “Nah,” the polder said. He put the glass down and suddenly there was a knife in his hand. Or something. Something Heden hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t a dagger, it had no blade. It was as long as a dagger, but it was just a thin shaft of metal with a scalloped point at the end.

  “What’s that?” Heden asked, openly curious.

  “A dirk,” the Polder said, handing it over. Heden examined it. It was about nine inches long, longer than any normal polder dagger would be. The hilt was wrapped in black leather.

  “Had it custom made,” the polder said. It was simple, silver and black, but looked very expensive. There was no guard, only a small metal loop where the metal met leather. Heden fitted his finger into the loop and held the dirk.

  “You use this?”

  “Not if I can avoid it. Poison and I’m miles away before anyone cares.”

  “Impossible,” Heden said. It was difficult to hold, the ring made it hard to grip. He took his finger out of the ring and handed the weapon back to the little man. “You’d break your wrist if you tried to go through bone with that thing.”

  The polder smiled the smile of secret knowledge. “No,” he said, “you’d break your wrist if you tried it. Here,” he said, putting his small forearm on the table. He invited Heden to do the same.

  Heden leaned forward and placed his forearm next to the Polder’s on the table. Heden noticed his enemy’s hand wasn’t shaking now.

  “Look,” he said, “my arm’s smaller, but my wrist is thicker. Stronger.” He picked up the dirk and secreted it about his person. “Bone is no problem,” he said, sitting back.

  “Nice,” Heden said.

  “So the question is: can you call on the Dominion before I get my dirk in your heart?”

  “It’s a short name,” Heden said.

  The polder just snapped his fingers again, meaningfully.

  Heden nodded.

  “So we call it a draw,” the polder finished.

  Heden opened his hands, displaying his palms. Yielding. He liked this little man and thought he sensed something behind the drink and violence.

  “Okay, let’s trade,” Heden offered.

  “Trade,” the polder said flatly.

  “Sure,” Heden said. “You can’t get into the forest, I can. You know why you’re here, I don’t.”

  The polder shook his head slowly as he thought it through.

  “Not sure how my masters would feel about that.”

  “How do you feel about it?” Heden asked.

  “I feel like they don’t care how I feel about it,” the polder said ruefully.

  “How about this? I’ll tell you what I know; you decide whether to give me anything.”

  “Just like that,” the polder said.

  Heden shrugged. “Just like that.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Goodwill to trade on later.”

  Silence for a moment.

  “You sure you’re not a spy?” the polder asked, mocking suspicion.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” Heden smiled widely, genuinely. It seemed to disconcert his opponent.

  The polder shook his head, his curls vibrating, as though he were trying to shake a thought loose.

  “You understand how unlikely it is I’ll ever be…” the polder began, and stopped. He tapped the table with his middle finger, and looked up at Heden from under bushy eyebrows. “Listen, ‘goodwill’ is not my business. I told you, I’m not a spy. If I were, okay. But I’m not. Goodwill doesn’t get you anything with me.”

  Heden shrugged. “I think it will.”

  “You do,” the polder said flatly.

  “Yes,” Heden said.

  “Why?”

  “I’m a good judge of character.”

  The polder stared at Heden for a moment with his mouth open, looked away, stared out the window, realized his mouth was open, clapped it shut and looked back. He blinked.

  “Ah…” the polder said, completely off balance as a result of Heden’s trust in him.

  “One of the knights of the Green Order was murdered,” Heden opened.

  “We know that,” the polder said, taking a deep breath. Happy to be on familiar territory.

  “How do you know that?” Heden asked. Who could know that? Who could even know there was anything to know?

  The polder shrugged. “Just a simple servant, me.” Heden accepted this; there’d be little reason to give a thief that kind of background.

  “So you’re not here to kill Kalaven?” Heden asked.

  “Was that his name?” the polder asked, raising his eyebrows innocently.

  “I’m guessing you know it was,” Heden said.

  “Good guess,” the polder admitted. “No, I’m not here to kill the commander.”

  “Or me,” Heden said.

  The polder looked at him for a moment, judging some thought. Then made a decision. “No one knows you’re out here but me,” the little man admitted. “I found that out myself.”

  Heden nodded. “Thanks,” he said, gratitude for information the polder didn’t need to give.

  “I’m trying the ‘goodwill’ thing. It doesn’t come naturally, just so you know.”

  “It gets easier as you go,” Heden said, amused. Then his amusement vanished. “You checked into me in Celkirk.”

  The polder nodded. “Yep. You know there’s a trull staying in your inn?”

  Heden looked at him, his skin tightening. “She still there?”

  The polder shrugged. “Was when I left.” He looked at Heden and then frowned trying to figure out why Heden was apparently angry. Then he saw it.

  “Man I didn’t…look I don’t care if you’ve got fifty trulls back there working in shifts, why do I give a shit?”

  Heden nodded.

  “But you left some pissed off people back there,” the polder said smiling. He seemed to enjoy the idea.

  “Pissed off about the girl?”

  “Oh yeah. Everyone’s staying away for the moment, seems like a lot of people are afraid of you. Got a lot of interesting reactions bringing your name up.”

  “I bet,” Heden said, relaxing a little.

  The little man made a gesture, prompting Heden. “So, who killed the commander?”

  “I don’t know,” Heden said.

  “You don’t know.”

  “Nope,” Heden said.

  “Well then what the fuck good are you?” the polder was a little upset.

  Heden shrugged. “I’ve been wondering that for about three years now.�
��

  The polder shook his head. “Shit.”

  Heden watched him.

  “You don’t have a guess?” the polder asked hopefully, aware it was unlikely.

  “All the other knights act like another knight, Sir Taethan, did it.”

  The polder pursed his lips, filing the information away, and nodded. “I can tell you don’t buy that.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Heden said. “They shut me out and then told me to go fuck a pig.”

  “Did they really say that!?” the polder was delighted at the idea.

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s just an expression.”

  “How disappointing.”

  “They’re all committed to some kind of conspiracy of silence. I have no idea what they think is going to happen, but they didn’t want me anywhere near the place. Wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t help me. Won’t let me help them.”

  “Help them do what?” the polder asked.

  “I perform the ritual that absolves the order of Kavalen’s death.”

  “Why you?”

  “I’m…” Heden thought about it. The same question the mysterious knight he met and decapitated asked him. “I’m not sure.”

  “And the knights turned you away.”

  “Yep.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. What did you find out?”

  If the polder was trying to get Heden to reveal something useful about the order, Heden knew he was going to be disappointed.

  “Well,” he said, “he’s certainly dead.”

  The polder waited and when it became apparent there was no more he raised his eyebrows and said “that’s it?”

  Heden shrugged.

  “You don’t know who killed the guy.”

  “Nope.”

  “You don’t know how he died.”

  “Nope.”

  “You don’t know where his body is.”

  “Ah, no.”

  “You have any idea why anyone would want him dead?”

  “None.”

  “No idea why you were sent up here.”

  “Not really.”

  “And no idea why no one will tell you anything.”

  “I know what your assignment is now,” Heden said.

  “You do?” the polder replied, surprised.

  “You were sent here to cheer me up.”