The oldest younglings in the room, Isooba von Joyful and Esmeralda n’Illustrious, were more interested in private whispers than public singing. They stood slightly out of sight of the rest of the party guests, in the hall behind the hearth, near the back of the house. While the guests sang, Isooba and Esmeralda leaned against the stairwell, sharing secrets and giggling. Paladin tried to keep his face impassive as he watched them, but jealousy came over him like a sudden fever. Isooba’s whispers were so intimate that his lips were close enough to put kisses on Esmeralda’s ear, and she giggled like a lackwit. A very pretty lackwit.
Esmeralda’s features were an exotic blend of Oestean and Shimabito. It was possible she wasn’t the prettiest girl in Santuario del Guerrero, but Paladin had yet to see one prettier. Over the last year, he had done everything he could think of to win a smile or kindness from her. He had rhapsodized poetically on her beauty, observing that nothing of the mere mortal world could compare to it. He had shared with her only the most sublime quips in his vast repertoire of witticisms, and when polite jests had not moved her, he had launched into the bawdy. When that had failed to win a chuckle, titter, or even a smile, he had changed tactics, employing the most flamboyant romantic gesture he could think of.
Phoenix Eyrie Castle was famous the world over for the flawless crimson dahlias grown only in its gardens, and Paladin knew one of the gardeners, Señora Bloomtender, from Templo del Guerrero. For months he had begged Señora Bloomtender to allow him fifteen minutes in the gardens, that he might pick a handful of pretties for Esmeralda. Señora Bloomtender had finally relented, but only after he had bribed her with a full silver penique, the whole of his life savings.
He had picked thirteen of the most perfect flowers ever to exist in the world, wrapped the bouquet in a bow, and presented them to Esmeralda for Festival del Año Nuevo. She had accepted the flowers grudgingly, with only polite thanks. She had even worn one twined through her curls. But when he sought her out that night, she had ignored him. She spoke not a single word to him during the entire festival. He overheard several people compliment her on the dahlia, but not once did she mention it as a gift from him. It had been amongst the most miserable nights of his life. And since then, every one of his attempts to woo her had earned him only courteous scorn.
The revelers finished singing the birthday song and the young people lined up for Paladin’s least favorite birthday tradition, el Puño del Guerrero, “the Warrior’s Fist.” They would take turns punching him, one blow for every year of life and a final punch for good luck. Tradition dictated the good-luck punch be as solid as the puncher could throw at the risk of insulting the birthday person’s fortitude. To pull that final punch would be the same as calling Paladin frail and weak.
Sometimes he wished for the insult, especially when it came to Drud. It seemed it had only been a few weeks ago that the purple bruise Drud had given him for his last birthday had finally faded completely. Paladin was left-handed, so Drud grabbed his right arm and hurled a jab into his shoulder. “Uno!”
It stung. For true it stung. But not as much as last year’s punches. Either Drud had gotten weaker or Paladin had gotten tougher. Like Walküre, Drud’s father was Nord and his mother Shimabito. But where Walküre was Nord tall and Shimabito slender, Drud was just the opposite: a squat stump of bulging muscles covered by a layer of fat.
Drud slammed punches into his arm, counting them out in the traditional language, Lengüoeste. “Dos! Tres! Cuatro …!”
Paladin barely noticed the blows. His eyes kept drifting over to the corridor next to the stairwell. Neither Isooba nor Esmeralda had bothered to acknowledge him since he’d arrived, and it was his birthday fiesta! They were too busy making cow eyes at each other, Esmeralda coiling her fingers through her hair—the color of sangria—and batting the lashes of her tilted, sapphire-blue eyes. In the short time Paladin had been home, all she had done was blush and giggle at Isooba’s crippled flatteries. Paladin watched the cloying scene unfold with head-scratching bewilderment. What was Isooba saying that was so funny? Paladin had known the boy for a lot of years and had never found him particularly witty. Isooba’s jests were as sharp and subtle as an iron maul. Blood and Thunder! Watching them ogle each other made him want to scream.
He screamed.
Pain unlike anything he had ever known shot through his shoulder and he squeaked out a high-pitched, whiny keen like the whistle of a boiling kettle or a little girl’s wail.
“Buena suerte!” Drud shouted.
Paladin stumbled from the force of the blow. He would have fallen to the floor, but he grabbed a chair to hold himself up. The agony in his shoulder made his head spin, but he had finally earned Esmeralda’s attention. She pointed at him. And laughed.
Drud’s good-luck punch had been as heavy a sledgehammer as Isooba’s wit. Even with the chair supporting him, Paladin barely remained upright, but his shame eclipsed the pain throbbing through his shoulder. Everyone at the fiesta laughed at him, but it was Esmeralda’s titters and the derisive guffaws of Isooba that stung the most. His face burned with embarrassment. Still, Drud had given him an incredible compliment. And if his arm wasn’t broken, he would thank his friend properly.
“Gods be good, Drud,” he said. “That was worse than getting kicked by a mule.”
Drud’s tilted, gray-blue eyes filled with sincerity. He gave Paladin a matter-of-fact nod. “You can take it, vato.”
Paladin hurled himself at Drud and wrapped him in a one-armed hug. “Gracias, vato mío! Muchas gracias!”
The other younglings—and even some of the grown folk—cheered. Esmeralda’s mother, Señora Chiyo the Illustrious, staggered over and clapped Paladin on the back.
“How are your studies at Temple Seisakusha?” she slurred at him, her breath stinking of sake.
“Fine, Chiyo-san,” he answered. He used his eyes to direct her attention to Esmeralda and Isooba, hoping she would follow his gaze. When that didn’t work, he signaled her with raised eyebrows and jerked his chin in their direction, hoping the woman would put a stop to her daughter’s shameful flirting. But she was too drunk to follow his hints. She just stared at him with sleepy eyes and a slack, silly smile on her face. Unsteady, she swayed for a moment, and then she overheard Henning von Brickmaker, the father of Svenja, Kreszentia, and Götz, mention the new tax on Higashi Shima imports. Señora Illustrious’s brows knotted above her tilted eyes, and she abandoned Paladin to rant at Señor von Brickmaker about the tyranny of taxes. She was furious that the price of sake was going up three coppers.
“My turn, Paladin,” Lalo said, grinning as he cocked his fist to take a turn at el Puño del Guerrero. Paladin offered Lalo his left arm. After Drud’s handling, his right would be useless for a while. Lalo’s father was Nord, but Lalo’s physique was more Oestean, like his mamá. He was slight of build, even for a ten-year-old, and his good-luck punch hardly stirred Paladin, though he meant no insult with it.
Esmeralda and Isooba continued to ignore the others, cloistered away in a world in which only the two of them existed. They were both seventeen, and Paladin supposed they considered themselves too mature for silly youngling games like el Puño del Guerrero.
“Feliz cumpleaños, Paladin!” Isooba’s younger brother, Tau, cawed. He sauntered forward smacking his fist into the palm of his hand, taunting, “Are you ready for el Puño?”
Tau was the same age as Paladin. He looked like a younger, less muscular version of his brother. He was fair to look upon, with bronzy coloring and chiseled features. The sons of a Nord father and Kusini Watu mother, the brothers wore their kinky, burnt-orange hair in the lionlockes style, a fashion made popular in the southern lands of the Nchi ya Kusini by the Dread Hunters of Kandopori. Like Paladin, Tau and Isooba claimed noble birth. Their father, Sieghard, was from a minor branch of House Jager in Winterewiger.
Tau didn’t wait for the good-luck punch to praise Paladin’s fortitude. He blasted sixteen powerful blows into Paladin’s shoulder, but combine
d, the strikes hurt but a fraction as much as Drud’s Warrior Fist.
When time came for Tau to throw the good-luck blow, he had little force left. Still, he reared back, cocked his fist, and swung. It was a wild punch that glanced off Paladin’s shoulder and knocked Tau off-balance. Paladin caught the boy under the arm and steadied him.
“What is that smell?” Tau wrinkled his nose, sniffed Paladin, and then pointed at his head. “Schöpfer’s Teat, Paladin! You’ve got shit in your hair!”
That got everyone’s attention.
Everyone, even Isooba and Esmeralda, crowded round, heads cocked, eyes squinting at the filth trapped in his loose copper curls. Gods, he wished he could just vanish from sight. Walküre grabbed him by the shoulders, inspecting every inch of him as if he were a plump turkey. He recoiled from the sting when she touched the scratches on his face.
“Seisakusha’s Tail,” Walküre said. “Niño, what happened to you?”
Paladin took a moment to consider his answer. He was no liar. He would tell the truth about his expulsion from temple and his enrollment in Torneo, but how much of the truth he told—and when he told it—well, that was all negotiable. He didn’t want to ruin the party. There would be yelling, screaming, and swearing when he told Rebelde and Walküre about his day. He didn’t want Esmeralda witnessing such a display at his own fiesta. “I—I was attacked by Viles.”
“What?” Rebelde roared. Paladin’s papá was already a giant of a man at nearly seven feet tall, but anger seemed to inflate him. “Viles attacked you? Where? When?”
“All’s well, Papá,” Paladin said. “I don’t think they meant to hurt me. Not at first anyway, but when I kicked the one who—”
“You kicked one of them?” Drud’s eyes sparkled with excitement.
“Sí.” He felt a surge of confidence. The party guests eyed him expectantly. Especially Esmeralda. He took a deep breath, enjoying the attention. If it was a story they wanted, then by the gods, he would give them one.
He told a harrowing tale of cowardly ambush by slavering Viles, and the dauntless bravery of a lone young warrior defending himself with nothing more than a stick. And yes, he saw a new respect gleaming in the sapphires of Esmeralda’s eyes. Finally, he had done something to impress the girl! And he wasn’t the only one who noticed the new way she looked at him. Isooba’s full lips twisted into a jealous sneer as Paladin explained how he had narrowly escaped with his life, fleeing across the rooftops of Eastgate with the fanatical Viles on his heels.
When he had finished his tale, Isooba said loud enough for only Paladin and Esmeralda to hear, “I would have stood my ground against one hundred Viles and fought to the death rather than flee like a craven child.”
Esmeralda’s giggle ignited a wildfire of anger in Paladin’s gut. Despite Isooba’s lack of wit and overabundance of muscles, the two had always been friends, but Paladin suddenly found himself questioning the worth of that relationship. He smiled away his anger, wondering if he was strong enough to throw Isooba out the window.
“But how did you get shit in your hair?” Tau asked. For just an instant, Paladin considered hoisting the boy over his shoulders. He had no doubt he was strong enough to toss Tau out the window.
“That is a tale for another time, chico,” he said with as much maturity as he could muster.
“Well, go clean yourself up.” Rebelde said. “I am sure it will be quite the tale.”
Paladin headed for his room at the back of the house, but the adults’ conversation turned to Viles. He paused to listen. Everyone had noticed an increase in both Vile faithful and fanaticism.
Alwin von Wildboar, Drud’s father, said, “There have not been this many Viles in the city since Prince Regio was banished.”
And others spoke of their encounters with Viles. No one said the words, but the quality of their voices made it clear that they were all frightened. Señora Illustrious was a successful moneylender, and she told how several borrowers had refused to pay back their loans, claiming The One God had absolved them of their debt to her, an infidel and “worshipper of sham gods.”
Lalo’s father, Utz Von Stalwart, claimed his tailor’s shop had suddenly gotten more business than it could handle. All of these new patrons requested the same things: white cloaks and mantles, embroidered with the Vile’s Ira de Dios.
But most disturbing was Rebelde’s and Walküre’s declaration that two of their apprentices, Doñato del Farmer and Sergio del Goodneedle, had left the Dragón & Arrow smithy to work for a Vile blacksmith because their faith prohibited them from working for worshippers of false gods. Paladin had known Señors Del Farmer and Del Goodneedle all his life. They had never shown any sign of being Vile Creadorians. Neither had they been particularly pious.
People were flocking to the Vile religion as if under a spell—as if Vicente the Vile himself had risen from his ancient grave, determined to resurrect his crusade to convert every man, woman, and child in the Thirteen to his religion.
Or extinguish them.
Chapter Seven
Papá
There was fresh water in the washbasin of Paladin’s room and a clean cloth. While scrubbing the dried muck and blood from his face and hair, he noticed Rebelde watching him from the doorway. “You startled me, Papá.”
Rebelde’s lips twitched. He was trying not to smile, but there was mirth in his big, almond-shaped eyes. “That was quite a tale you spun for your friends.”
Paladin shrugged. “I was attacked by Viles. That was true.”
Rebelde’s knowing smirk was infuriating. “Oh, I believe your story was more or less true. You told a little more than was true to impress your friends, and a little less than was true to avoid trouble. Now, tell me what happened today.”
He stared at his papá, doing his best to keep a neutral façade over his roiling vexation. It was like his papá could read his mind! How in the name of the gods did Rebelde always know when he bent, stretched, or otherwise tampered with the truth? It was maddening. “I was expelled from Temple …”
Rebelde winced. “Oh, no, boy. Why? Same as before?”
Paladin nodded.
Rebelde looked ill. “This is—this is very bad.”
“I know it, Papá.”
Rebelde pounded the wall, growling, “Gods damn them! Your martial system is superior to Ashi-Kobushi, and all the other disciplines for that matter. They are fools who cannot see it! All you have worked for—la Orden Majestuosa de la Lámina Incendiaria—”
“I know it, Papá. I know it.” The significance of it all congealed in his gut like grease at the bottom of a cold skillet. Until that moment, he had held only an intellectual appreciation for what expulsion from Temple Seisakusha might mean, but the despair in Rebelde’s gaze made understanding a painfully visceral thing. Paladin’s aspirations were as dead as his Seisakushan discipleship.
Rebelde let out a long sigh. Sorrow slipped from his face with the air he expelled from his lungs. He stared at Paladin for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then he flashed his dimpled smile. “Do not worry. All will be well.”
Paladin frowned. “What? For true?”
“Yes. All will be well, just let me think on things.”
“What about Mamá? She will—”
“Say nothing to your mother,” Rebelde said sharply. “I will give her the news gently.”
Rebelde wrapped his massive arms around Paladin, squeezing him in a suffocating bear hug. “Go on back to the fiesta and let me think on this. All will be well. Well enough, anyway.”
Paladin allowed himself to hope it might be so, but he had not yet given Rebelde the worst news. He doubted his papá would be as understanding of his enrollment in Torneo. He also doubted Rebelde would ever be in as forgiving a mood as he was now, and felt compelled to tell everything. “There is more, Papá. I signed up—”
Rebelde waved him off and sat on the bed, rubbing his temples. “Go on now. I need to think.”
“But—”
“Please,
boy.” He sounded tired. “You have left your guests waiting most of the night. Go on back to the fiesta now.”
“Sí, Papá.” He left Rebelde sitting alone on the bed, but did not immediately return to the fiesta. He took a moment in the hall outside his room to breathe a sigh of relief. Though he still bore some guilt over signing up for Torneo, he had confessed about temple, and his papá’s reaction had been much better than he could have anticipated. Rebelde and Walküre had shared in his ambitions of knighthood. They too had longed to serve the Majestic Order of the Blazing Blade. Walküre, however, was of no House, and to serve as a Blade, one had to be of noble birth. Rebelde, once a Knight of the Lightning Lance in Kavunchi, was of noble birth, but was a devout Muumban. He loved all the gods, but Muumba was first in his heart. Until recently, only Creadorians could serve as Knights of the Blade. By the time that restriction had been lifted, Rebelde was too old to join.
Paladin had often felt his mamá and papá wanted him to become a knight even more than he wanted it for himself, that they might share in his honors if only vicariously. It struck him odd that Rebelde should overcome his disappointment so quickly. Odder still were the breathy noises coming from his room. It sounded like Rebelde was laughing so hard he couldn’t catch his breath.
Paladin crept quietly back to the door and peeked in. Rebelde sat on his bed holding his face in his hands, his large frame quaking from emotion that was not laughter. Rebelde was crying, sobbing as if the world had come to its end.
He had hardly been missed at the fiesta. The grown folk stood to one side of the room while the younglings kept to themselves, eating treats and talking about what was truly important: Torneo. After a while, Rebelde returned. He had put away his sorrow, or at least made a good show of doing so. He laughed at Alwin von Wildboar’s bawdy jests and told a few of his own. But Paladin saw through the cheeriness. Rebelde’s heart was broken.
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