SWORDS (The Paladin's Thief Book 3)

by Benjamin Hewett

  Sephram reaches into a drawer, hesitating before pulling out a glass case that fits around the ring like a jacket. He closes his eyes for a moment, murmurs something inaudible, and clenches the encased ring in his fist. Then he presses it to his lips, soft as a prayer. There’s a feeling of contentment emanating from him. When he opens his hand the casing seam has disappeared.

  “You don’t destroy them?” I ask, in spite of what Magnus has already told me. The pouch of rings feels heavy in my vest.

  “We don’t know how. Thankfully, we haven’t seen any new rings since we burned the Dreadlord Sodorrof’s forge-house to the ground and laid his ghost to rest. With any luck, they’ve forgotten how to make them.”

  With that, he gestures to the door. “Let’s go. Sephram will show us out.”

  I’m not about to wait until morning to divest myself of this curse. “What about these?” I say. In one swift motion I empty the bag onto the table, all eleven from Tom, plus one from the Nightshade’s failed raid on Redemption Alley, and one from the attempt on us in The Golden Sisal.

  “Thirteen’s my lucky number,” I say, scooping up my blackened queenpence and the thimble I lifted from Carmen when we left Ector, which were in the pouch as well. I put those back in my pocket.

  It’s hard to describe what happens next. The Mitre Loris half rises, breath catching as if I’ve just shoved a dagger in his gut, a look of pale horror on his face. “. . . and enough to clear a Dreadlord!” he whispers.

  The startled expression is mirrored on his assistants’ faces.

  “. . . shout the thirteen rings,” whispers Jonas.

  “At the Abbey’s wall.”

  “Where the high Paladin lies.”

  “Gasping.”

  “Bleeding.”

  “Preaching his last sermon.”

  The Mitre Loris is the first to recover, his eyes suddenly full of fire and power. It isn’t the sort of thing that strikes fear in my heart. “Jonas, run to Valoris. Stay with him for the night. Tell him everything that you’ve heard here, and don’t share it with anyone else. Break down his door if you have to, but give him our secret word first.”

  Jonas doesn’t hesitate. He’s gone in an instant, and Sephram is triple-locking the studded door again just as fast.

  “Where did you get these?” the Mitre Loris demands.

  “My friend Tom willed them to me,” I say. “Well, eleven of them at any rate. We got the other two on our own. I think he wanted me to bring them here.”

  “He was a Paladin?”

  I snort. “About as far from it as you can be.”

  They all—including Magnus—listen intently while I tell him about Pale Tom, about Magnus’s first night in Ector (except the part about the black pomegranate), about the traps and safeguards at Pale Tom’s house, and finally the Nightshades attacking my house. Magnus adds a few details, but mostly listens.

  With the Mitre stopping to ask questions, the telling takes longer than expected. When I’m done he continues to stare at me, through me, his eyes reading the unwritten story of my life. His eyebrows lift and his lips curl into a half-smile as he stares. Nobody else moves, though I feel like crawling into a dark corner somewhere. I itch the back of my calf instead, maintaining the eye contact.

  I know what I am.

  The silence becomes unbearable.

  “Um,” I begin nervously. “Shouldn’t we be doing something?”

  The Mitre cuts in, saving me more embarrassment. “Well, that is a bit unconventional,” he says, finished sizing me up.

  “Very unconventional,” Magnus says, missing the nuance. He thinks the Mitre is uncomfortable about the way we collected so many rings and not about what I really am.

  “But if it works,” the Mitre coughs, “It’s a welcome change! Pan knows we won’t last much longer if Father Jeremiah keeps sending off our best recruits on these bloody traditional crusades.”

  Magnus’s brow furrows and it’s obvious that he’s troubled. “If it weren’t for Father Jeremiah, we wouldn’t have these.” He points at my rings.

  The Mitre Loris glares at Magnus, leaving no doubt in my mind that Fortrus isn’t the peaceful place that Magnus has lead me to believe. “That may be. But I’d give them all, and the Altus Mitre, to have Ealeanor back.”

  “That’s treason,” Magnus whispers.

  The Mitre doesn’t flinch. “Feel free to report me, then, Cadet.”

  Magnus doesn’t move. “Father Loring,” he says, and then stops, confused.

  “You know I’m a good man, Magnus.”

  “Yes,” Magnus agrees.

  “And your friend?” the Mitre continues.

  “Teacup saved my life. I’d give my life for him.”

  “And he would for you, I sense,” says the Mitre.

  Maybe. But I don’t say that out loud.

  Father Loring, the Mitre Loris, has Magnus gripped in his iron-hard gaze. “And yet there are things about him you can’t explain. Inconsistencies.”

  Magnus nods.

  The Mitre closes his logical trap. “Given a choice, I’d put my money on your friend here. The Altus Mitre sent you out to die. Your friend brought you back alive. The Mitre himself only brought in one ring—and that was many, many years ago. You and your friend brought back thirteen, fourteen if you count Cobalt’s. I hardly think Father Jeremiah expected you to find and kill a Dreadlord. And if he had, he should have sent an entire squad with you, and perhaps gone himself.” The Mitre pauses for a moment, breathing heavily. “And I’d put your money on me. I told you not to go in the first place, just as I tried to stop the same nonsense that got Jens and Yarla killed.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Magnus says quietly.

  “What is a ‘Dreadlord,’ really?” I interrupt. I’ve heard stories, of course, but I want to know the truth.

  The Mitre Loris, or Father Loring, or whatever he’s called, stares at Magnus a little longer before answering.

  “A Dreadlord is the highest-ranking Nightshade in a particular kingdom, though there isn’t strictly just one. They’re responsible for bringing in promising recruits, corrupting them, and sending them to Byzantus. A Dreadlord can summon fire, feel the driving force of the world, and direct it.”

  “Like a Magii?” I ask.

  “No. A Magii is a naturally-occurring pair. One feels. One directs. The closer in spirit they are, the more powerful their magic, and the less they care about the world around them. The most powerful Magii in the world cannot be corrupted because they care for nothing but their partners. A Dreadlord is a Magii who has murdered his better half and stolen her power. A Dreadlord is a Nightshade through and through, has no lover, no soul to feed but his own. A Dreadlord works alone. They have no friends, no home, no one person they can trust.”

  Suddenly I see Pale Tom sitting in his chair at the Black Cat, his secret smile in place as he listens to the gap-toothed farmer brag. I see him throwing darts with Griphurk. Ordering drinks from the bar. Turning his frosty, piercing eye on me as I sit on the crossbeam watching the patrons come and go. Protecting us from the other Nightshades. Protecting his home. His friends.

  “What if he did have friends?” I ask sheepishly.

  Sephram smiles, but it doesn’t suit him. He makes the smile feel sad. “Dreadlords don’t have friends.”

  I don’t press the issue. It’s pretty hard to assert friendship on the terms I’ve come up with. But I know I’m right. “Are there Dreadladies?” I ask, but the Mitre Loris appears to have moved on, and Sephram just shrugs as if he doesn’t know the answer.

  The Mitre Loris inspects each ring independently, putting them on, turning them over, scratching copious notes in his book until he’s filled several pages and Magnus has nodded off.

  The big warrior has kicked his legs up on the table and is leaning back in his chair, head lolled to the side. I don’t bother to wake him. He’ll be called to the morning council tomorrow to make his report, and he’ll need his wits about him.
/>
  And night is my time of day. I can handle this.

  When Sephram goes to the back to search the histories for some tidbit the Mitre can’t remember, Father Loring breaks the silence. “You’d better keep this one,” he says, handing me a ring.

  I try to keep the surprise off my face. It’s my ring. It’s the first ring I stole from Lantern Street. “Why?”

  The Mitre glances around, and leans in furtively. “Most of these rings are very old, and a very fine quality by Nightshade standards. At least three of them have been owned by Dreadlords. But this one is not old. It’s young. So young and fresh that it has never tasted blood.”

  “How can that be possible?” I ask. “Tom was rumored to have killed at least a double-dozen in Ector alone. Several of which I accidentally witnessed. And that’s not counting any of his ‘business travels.’ ”

  The Mitre’s voice dips to a whisper. “Because I think your Dreadlord made it for you, and because I think you’re going to need it.”

  “I thought you said that the craft was lost.”

  “I did. This scares me and delights me. Delights me because there is no taint of death on this ring, no library of killing strokes. It’s a quick ring, made for tactical thinking, acrobatics, defending, balance, climbing, smelling, hearing, and moving quietly. There weren’t many, even in the golden age of ring-making, who could do this. It’s a work of art to rival the rings of the Great Magii.”

  “No taint of death?”

  “No kills.” The Mitre’s face twists a bit and he smacks his lips. “You can count those, a bit like counting circles in a tree stump, once you get the hang of it. The magic remembers whatever the Nightshade is feeling, traps some of that moment. Over time, the sediment begins to accumulate. Each ring acquires its own palette of flavors, but this ring is almost blank. If it has known even one kill, it was a mercy kill, or perhaps an accident, and that doesn’t count in an assassin’s eyes. ”

  He hands me another ring. “This one is unusual, too. It’s also new, but I don’t suggest you keep it. It has plenty of death about it, but its core trait is introspection. It doesn’t help kill at all. Rather, it seems to help one with complex moral reasoning. Why would a Nightshade need that?”

  “How restrictive are the Nightshades’ Oaths?” I ask.

  That gives him pause.

  I change the subject. “Ever since I found the rings I’ve been dreaming about Pale Tom. Is he still alive in there? Can a man’s soul live on inside the ring?”

  The Mitre Loris shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of that before. A ring is supposed to be a catalogue of actions and skills, taken in highly-passionate moments. The longer a person owned the ring, or the more passionate and powerful they were, the better it reflected them, the better those attributes bleed into the wearer. However, you’ve proven to me that there are exceptions.”

  He pulls a third ring out of the pile. “This is one of the oldest rings I’ve ever held. It certainly feels like it has a soul of its own. We’ve theorized that rings like this exist, but they would only pass to them to recruits with exceptionally-high potential, and only after being watched carefully for years by a fading Dreadlord. I need to study it some more.”

  I put the ring on, and I know it to be Pale Tom’s ring at once. It feels exactly like my dreams, a far cry from the ring he let me steal. I can almost hear the bone-saw rasp of Tom’s breath in my ear.

  Hello, Teacup, it says. Get out of my personal space. Or at least that’s how I interpret the feeling.

  I take it off immediately.

  “Be my guest,” I say, handing it back to the Mitre. I wonder if this is why Sanjuste was so hard to kill, why Lucinda had to keep stabbing him as his wounds began to heal. Was the ring keeping him alive? Lucinda’s description of it was chilling.

  In retrospect, I can feel the detritus of age on it, a ring that has been passed down for centuries. It has several strong characteristics and three not muted by the passage of time: a love of clever things, an openness to the occult, and an almost overwhelming discontent . . . perhaps remorse.

  The Mitre is studying me. He’s seen me startled. “Someone you knew?”

  I nod. “This was Pale Tom’s ring, for sure.” No use lying to him.

  He nods as if he’d already made that conclusion. Maybe Tom’s voice told him. “And he owned all of these rings for a period of time?”

  “Eleven of them,” I agree.

  “I wonder.” The Mitre steeples his fingers. “Does the knowledge bleed from ring to owner and into the other rings in his possession? Is there some other affinity at work?”

  “These three are different.” He points to mine, to Tom’s, and to the one built for moral reasoning. “The rest fit right in with what I already know about Nightshades. Dirty. Angry. Lustful. Power hungry. The last three give me hope. Especially this one.” He points to mine. “Please guard it carefully.”

  “Why? Why not lock it up with the others?” I ask.

  Once again the Mitre’s eyes stare through me.

  “Because I feel like you still need it.” The Mitre inhales and holds his breath for so long I breath twice trying to get air for him. Then he exhales, inhales and speaks: “And because it feels connected to these other rings. I don’t know what that means, and until I can come up with some theories, but I don’t want them in the reliquary together. Bring it to me if you ever have to kill someone.”

  Sephram returns to the room. “I couldn’t find what you were looking for,” he says, clearly disappointed.

  “No worries,” the Mitre responds, glancing at me. “I’m sure it will come to me when the time is right.” The Mitre Loris hands Sephram a parchment with the known pedigree of each ring, and Sephram quietly seals each into a clear case and takes them downstairs into the heavy vault.

  Some of the Mitre’s cynicism has faded away during our conversation. “What did you say this man’s full name was?” He points to the ring that I’ve returned to my finger.

  “Tom LeBlanc of Maudark.”

  “Hmm…” There is a long silence as the Mitre steeples his fingers and appears to be remembering, or trying to remember. Eventually he gives up, glancing at Magnus. “Mister Steeps, can you keep a secret?”

  “Perhaps,” I admit. “I’m not in any position to be second guessing the masters of Fortrus.”

  “Maybe you should be,” he warns. “This information,” he says, gesturing to the room around us, “is sensitive and not widely known. I shared it with you because I stood to gain information in return. It would not be helpful to share the details around.

  “People won’t exactly be lining up to talk with me,” I say.

  “You might be surprised.” He fixes me with that bone-chilling stare. “All the same,though, if you’re a friend of Magnus, you’ll hold your tongue. Especially around the Altus Mitre.” I get the distinct impression he wants me to muzzle Magnus too, as much as that’s possible.

  “I’ll try,” I say dubiously. “Magnus isn’t the type to keep secrets.”

  The Mitre sighs, aging in an instant as the glimmer of determination in his face turns to resignation. “This I know.” He puts a gentle hand to Magnus’s shoulder to wake him. “Do what you can, please.”

  It is very late when we leave the Reliquary. The kitchens are locked and barred, but it’s not hard to guess where Lucinda and the kids will be. They were with us when we stopped at Magnus’s place.

  “They’ll probably be waiting for us on the doorstep,” Magnus worries.

  “I doubt it. I’m pretty sure you forgot to lock your door.”

  “I’m pretty sure I locked my door.”

  I shrug. “If you say so.”

  It doesn’t really matter. I had a look at the lock, and it’s not anything that would keep Val out.

  FOUR

  The morning bells come early, with cursing and swearing on my part and bleary-eyed woodenness on Magnus’s. He’s already fetched water by the time I’ve given up sleeping
through that racket.

  “Bad dreams again?” I ask.

  He nods.

  Lucinda is the first one down the stairs and the second one to use the water. Somehow she’s managed to find a suitable dress, blue and white rather than the green and yellow that I’m accustomed to seeing her in. It is quite fetching, and Magnus can’t seem to take his eyes off of her as she deftly braids her hair and washes her face. She clearly enjoys the attention.

  Timmy is the next one down, sniffing hungrily at the smell of breakfast drifting from the nearby kitchens. My own stomach growls at having missed a real dinner the night before. Timmy doesn’t bother to wash his face, and he grins at me when I ask him about the dress. “We knocked on a few doors last night,” he brags. “Lucinda didn’t want to wait for Magnus to show us around.”

  “You found a shoe-maker, didn’t you,” I say, grinning back.

  “Boot-maker!”

  There’s a pounding on the door and Magnus opens it wide.

  The messenger’s eyes jump from Magnus to me, to the kids, and then to Lucinda. “The Altus Mitre requests your presence immediately in his study.”

  “All of us?” Magnus asks.

  “No,” the messenger says dryly. “Just you and one witness.”

  Lucinda’s eyes flit to Magnus at this point, but he doesn’t look at her. “Teacup? Will you witness for me?”

  I freeze, water dripping from my face. “Me?” I’m not the type to put myself in front of a court. I don’t mind crowds, but I don’t fancy meeting another Mitre who can stare into my soul like Father Loring, especially not if it means missing another meal.

  Magnus appears to be nervous. “I mean, if you don’t want to meet the Altus Mitre, Teacup, that’s fine.” It’s clear from his expression that he hopes I won’t turn down this “opportunity.”

  “What exactly will I be witnessing?”

  “They’re going to accept me. Someone trustworthy must attest to my deeds. Normally they’d wait for messengers or correspondents,” He says breathlessly, “but you’re here, and they know it. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t be called up so quickly. That, and the expectation that you’ll join our cause.”