Paladin's Strength

by T. Kingfisher

  The gods have mercy, it had meant something. Not just physical passion. It felt like love and that was terrifying. It would be far too easy to read love into his tenderness in return. She was glad to step back from that brink, even if it involved questionable jokes about milkmaids and watermelons.

  They were ushered into the office of the Rat’s spymaster again, and this time he offered chairs to everyone. He gave his name as Halishi. Istvhan didn’t think anything of it, but Clara tilted her head sideways. “Like in the parable?”

  Halishi’s chuckle was almost silent. “You are well read.”

  “My convent illuminated manuscripts. One of our sisters was fond of the more obscure tales.” She glanced at Istvhan. “St. Abvu escaped martyrdom by telling his enemies that he was in the wilds hunting halishim. They went out to look for the beasts, but they cannot be found, and so while they were trying to find the halishim’s hunting grounds and thus St. Abvu, he fled across the water.”

  “Ah,” said Istvhan. “A wild goose chase.”

  “Something of the sort. Although geese actually exist and the same cannot be said of the halishim.”

  “So far as the world is concerned,” said Halishi, “I do not exist either. And someday I will retire and take another name and my replacement may be Halishi instead.”

  “You’ve been saying you were going to retire for a decade,” said Faizen.

  “And perhaps in another decade I’ll actually do it. But you know how it is…you see a job and you are the one who knows it best, and it is very hard to step away.” He nodded to the last member of the little group, a bony woman with muddy brown hair and a nose like an eagle. “Perhaps I’ll make you take over.”

  “Avert,” she said, holding up three crossed fingers in a clear warding gesture. “You won’t get me in that chair that easily.”

  “And what may we call you?” asked Istvhan.

  “Sparrow.” She smiled. “Also not my real name.”

  “I would hardly expect as much.”

  “Sparrow’s the one who brought us most of the intelligence we have available,” said Faizen. “If anyone can help us figure out how to get your sisters out of the colosseum, it’s her.”

  “Thank you,” said Clara.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” said the woman, her smile fading. “I can’t see a way out yet myself, unless your sisters can fly. But that’s what we’re here to figure out.”

  “Then let us get down to business,” said Istvhan, hitching his seat forward. “Show us the maps.”

  Forty

  It took the better part of an hour to go over the problems. Despite Halishi’s claims that the spy network inside the houses of the Sealords was not particularly good, the maps seemed very clear to Istvhan. So did the difficulties.

  “Getting in is easy,” said Sparrow. “Load up a wagon full of deliveries and you can ride inside to unload it. Getting out again, once there’s been a jailbreak…that’s the hard part. They’ll simply pull the bridge to the main city and leave everyone stuck on the island. After that, they can literally go floor by floor and throw anyone that they don’t recognize into a cell. They did it once before when a group of prisoners who were set to be tiger bait managed to overpower a guard. Only two escaped, if you can call it that, when they threw themselves into the sea.”

  “They didn’t survive?”

  “The current comes from the north, not the south. Another month from now and we’ll be seeing chunks of ice going by. This time of year, they’d survive…oh, maybe twenty minutes in the water, if they were good swimmers. The Sealords didn’t even bother to send out boats. They’d be swept south and the first beaches you’d come to, if you managed to break out of the current, are held by the Sealords as well. All they had to do was station a few guards on the docks there and watch to make sure they didn’t somehow grab hold of a piling.”

  “Could a boat come and pick us up?” asked Istvhan.

  “A boat that holds over a dozen? Not without being noticed and filled full of arrows.” Halishi shook his head. “You have all my sympathy and the bishop’s aid. But I can’t ask one of my people to commit outright suicide.”

  “And I have no idea how to steer a boat,” muttered Istvhan. He thought of cold dark water, a force that could be neither persuaded nor beaten, and shuddered. “Clara?”

  “No. I can manage a barge on a canal for a short period, but that’s a far cry from this.”

  “Sheer cliff on the north side,” said Sparrow, tapping the map. “No luck there. There’s a water stair on the inland side and they bring goods through it, but that will definitely be closed off. Even if you fight your way to the dock there, and tried to ferry all your people out…” She shook her head. “You can’t get a boat back upriver without them seeing it. They’d just raise the chains at the river mouth. Part of the reason Morstone’s never been invaded.”

  Clara put her elbows on the table. “Tell us about the interior first. What are we looking at?”

  “They’ll be held here,” said Sparrow, tapping a layer of the map. “They’re in the beast area, which is probably why we’ve heard about them at all. It was strange enough for there to be a group of middle-aged women in a beast cage that people talked.”

  “Of course,” muttered Clara, “they don’t dare keep them where one might change and break the bars.” Her voice and eyes were flat and Istvhan ached for the emotions that she must be clamping down right now.

  “The best time to free them, if we can manage it, will be after the beasts are fed the night before,” said Halishi. “They treat the animals very well, at least until they have someone cut them to bits.” His smile held no humor in it. “That means darkness, and while there will be guards and general patrols through the area, if you can take down the watchers and the attendants, you’ll just have to get them out without one of the patrols raising an alarm. The second best time will be right before they are due in the pit. No one will be surprised that they are not in their cell, and while someone will come looking for them much sooner, it will perhaps be thought that they are being moved somewhere, not that they have escaped. And you have an excuse for moving them through the hallway, at least for the first hall or two, if you encounter a patrol—tell them you’re going in through a different door, because the beast door will give away too much.”

  Clara nodded. She traced her finger from the beast level to the inland dock, over and over, her eyes shadowed. Istvhan wondered what she was thinking. “Can this route be done?”

  “There is one portcullis,” said Sparrow, “but it has levers on either side, with locking mechanisms, and it is only meant to keep beasts in, not someone who can throw switches. There are guard patrols, but no checkpoints. They expect human prisoners to escape, not…”

  “Not beasts,” said Clara, still in that soft, flat voice. Sparrow and Halishi winced. Istvhan reached out and took her hand, but her fingers were cold as ice.

  “Once at the water stair, you would only have one direction to defend against,” said Halishi, tapping the corridor that led onto the docks. “But as we said, there’s no way to get a boat into the river from there. They’ve got towers with archers on either side of the bridge. They can’t hit the water stair because of the angle, but you’ve got nowhere to go but the sea. And any craft that handle the sea is a target for more archers above.”

  “A craft, yes,” murmured Clara. She moved over to the map that showed the coastline and the bulk of the island, drawing her finger from the inland side of the island, down, along the coast.

  Halishi looked up suddenly, nostrils flaring. Sparrow was already shaking her head. “Don’t even think of swimming. You’d freeze.”

  “A human would freeze,” said Clara. “But I have stood in fresh snow melt up to my chest and flipped fish onto the banks with my paws.” She tapped the water stair. “My sisters and I will swim for it. If you can arrange for a bonfire on shore…say, a mile south…we will make our own way off the island.”

  “We can
do that,” said Halishi. “But they cannot leave the bonfire lit forever without attracting attention. You must get them all out at the same time. Once the colosseum locks down, you will have no more than an hour, and perhaps less.”

  Clara nodded. “Bears are swifter in the water than humans. I doubt most people realize how much swifter. And they will not be expecting us to swim.”

  Something chill and hard sank into Istvhan’s bones. The dark water at night, impossibly cold, impossibly deep, the current sweeping them south… “Are you sure?” he said. His voice wanted to crack as if he were a boy. He swallowed and forced it to obey him. The paladin’s voice. The calm one. You do not add your fears to her burdens. “There will still be archers.”

  “Dark bear, in dark water, at night,” she said. “If they can hit us, they deserve to.” She frowned, looking up at him. “But we’ll still need to find a way to get you out.”

  Fear was not the only burden that he would not add to hers. “Don’t fret for that, Domina,” he said. He could not use the paladin’s voice for this, because it was not entirely true, but he managed a smile anyway. “Get your sisters out. I’ll make my own way home.”

  He made love to her fiercely that night, as if she were already slipping away from him and by passion alone he could win her back. In a sense, perhaps, she was. Istvhan could feel her retreating, pushing back the emotions that threatened to overwhelm her, and even knowing why she was doing it, it felt as if she was pushing him away as well. He did not know how to bridge the space between them with words. Anything he said would come out wrong or would threaten the fragile equilibrium that Clara was trying to maintain. Instead, he tried to fill the gap with his body, wringing pleasure out of both of them until they were tired and sated and sore.

  “Mercy,” she said, as he rolled over to face her. “I am middle-aged and another round will kill me.”

  “I’m as middle-aged as you are,” Istvhan said, amused. He brushed the hair back from her face, letting his fingers linger against her cheek.

  “Yes, but you seem to have forgotten that fact.”

  “You inspire me to great acts, Domina. Also, I had quite a large breakfast this morning.”

  She swatted at him. “Must be the beach plums.”

  “It was not the beach plums. Bah.” He caught her hand and flattened it against his, playing with the fingers in the way that lovers had done for a thousand years and probably would for a thousand more. “Look at you.”

  “Don’t start in about my dainty fingers again.”

  “Compared to me…”

  “Compared to you, everyone in this city is dainty.” She shook her head. “God, it was no wonder they got wind of us. A pair of giants roaming around, what else were they going to think?”

  Istvhan chuckled. “It’s a very cosmopolitan place. I didn’t think we’d stick out that much.”

  “Yes, but it’s a port city. Sailors tend to be wiry and short. The occasional giant for muscle, but you mostly want people who can climb rigging and fit under these damned doorways.” She waved toward the lintel. “Plus the locals all run about five-six. I was afraid I was going to break the chairs at a couple of those inns.”

  “It wasn’t the chairs I worried about, it was the spoons.” Istvhan shook his head mournfully. “Did you notice how short the handles are compared to the bowls here? I was afraid I might accidentally swallow one.”

  “What an ignominious death. ‘Here lies Istvhan, Paladin and Hero, choked to death on a small spoon.’”

  “I was really hoping for more of a death-and-glory charge at the end, I’ll be honest.”

  She sobered. “Well, you might get your chance in a day or two.”

  He propped himself up on one elbow. “Do you want me to be comforting or tactical?”

  “Tactical, if you please.”

  “It’s not the worst plan I’ve ever seen. We know a great deal about the territory, and you and I are more than a match for most. But I’d be lying if I said that I thought the odds were good. There’s just too many of them.”

  “Yeah, we’ll probably all die. But I have to at least pretend we’ll succeed, or I won’t be able to do anything at all.” Her smile was wry and self-deprecating and Istvhan didn’t believe it for a moment.

  “Domina, that’s a load of bull. You’d storm the gates alone if it was the only thing you could think of to do.” He paused, then added, “And I’d be right there beside you, so I guess that makes two of us.”

  She met his eyes and suddenly the look was too intense. The two of them, together, against all enemies. It felt too right. It felt like an echo of the godhead that he’d never thought to feel again, the belief that he was standing in the one place in the universe where he utterly belonged.

  Next to her.

  He had to look away, and so did she. His chest felt tight and he understood why she was always rubbing hers.

  Do you feel the same? When all this is over, you’ll go back to your convent. And I…what will I do? A group of nuns who can turn into bears hardly needs me to escort them. Although I could smooth the road for you, certainly with the Arral.

  He wanted to offer. He wanted to believe that she felt it too. And if she doesn’t? And if you make her think about it now, at this moment when the last thing she needs is more emotions? To confess to her that you think about a future with her? What if the only reason she was able to bed you was because she thought it would not last?

  It would be the depths of selfishness to throw himself at her feet two days before the battle and demand that she deal with his feelings, on top of everything else. So he yawned instead and curled up around her, and felt her body molded against his as if they had been made to fit each other.

  I don’t fall in love, he’d told Doc Mason. He’d been telling the truth, or so he thought. He had his brothers and his work and the drive to make the world a little better before he died. That had always been enough. He’d never needed more.

  I could go back to that life. I could pick up where I left off.

  He tried to imagine bedding another woman. Doing the whole dance again, watching a stranger’s eyes to make certain that they weren’t physically afraid. Constantly watching himself, never letting go completely, the whole world too fragile, too damn small.

  Just thinking about it was exhausting. But that wasn’t love, was it? You are my friend and we understand each other and the thought of bedding someone else makes me tired? Saint’s balls, try to put that in a love letter, see how far you get.

  Hell, he couldn’t even say that he’d die for her. He was a paladin. He’d die for almost anyone. It was part of the job description.

  I trust you to watch my back. I have enormous faith in your competence. I want you to be happy. I want to carry extra robes around in my pack in case you need them and I want you to eat the beach plums I won’t eat and I want to wander around the world with you and complain about the size of the silverware and I’m afraid that you’ll go back to your convent and you won’t need me any longer and I’ll be so glad that you’re happy and so damn miserable that you’re not beside me.

  Clara fell asleep long before he finished brooding, and he breathed against her hair and wondered what would happen to them.

  Forty-One

  A messenger came for Istvhan in the morning, telling him that he was summoned to the Temple. Even though the message said that it was not an emergency, he didn’t linger. Once he arrived at the main courtyard, though, he wasn’t sure who had sent for him. He gazed across the crowd of people, wondering what was going to go wrong now. A very pregnant woman caught his eye. She appeared to actually be in labor. He couldn’t do much about that, so he got her a chair, and thus was occupied when someone came up behind him and said, “Well, the Rat’s letting just anyone in here these days.”

  “Galen!” He spun around and grabbed the other man’s shoulders. “Galen, you made it!”

  “Don’t sound so surprised, Boss, I’m not completely incompetent.” Galen embrac
ed him briefly, a ferret hugging a mountain, then stepped back. “I was much more worried about you. Is Clara…?”

  “All in one piece. Saint’s blood, so much has happened.” He rubbed his forehead. “What about your people?”

  “All good. Brant’s delivering his barrels now. We’d have been here two days ago, but Brindle rescued an ox. They’re at the South Gate.”

  “Rescued a…no. Not here. Let’s get a drink and I’ll get you caught up. And you can get me caught up. Everyone will be caught up.”

  “Judging by the look of this place, nobody’s been caught up for a while.” Galen shook his head. “What a madhouse.”

  “They’re doing the best they can under the circumstances,” said Istvhan. “They’re working miracles, frankly, given…” He had to stop, because the pregnant woman had just let out a bellow and clutched at her belly. “Oh no. Madam, can I help you somehow?”

  “You can get this baby out of me,” she hissed.

  “Squeeze my hand,” he said, offering her two fingers. She gripped them like grim death.

  “So I’ll just go get that drink and bring you one, shall I?”

  “That would be for the best.”

  “Bring me one too,” growled the pregnant woman.

  “Make hers a double,” suggested Istvhan. Galen saluted.

  A healer came out, swore, timed the contractions, said, “It’ll be a bit yet, we’ll clear a bed,” and went away again. Istvhan told the expectant mother a long, rambling, mostly-true story about one of his sisters, who thought that she still had a few days left and had gone out to check on her flock of sheep because one of the ewes had steadfastly refused to give birth, and had ended up flat on her back under a tree with a sheepdog as a midwife. “The damn ewe lasted three more days. But my nephew was healthy and happy and is now taller than I am, so believe me, you’ll do fine.”

  She fixed a gimlet eye on him. “Get me the drink or the dog. I don’t care which.”