Paladin’s Hope: Book Three of the Saint of Steel

by T. Kingfisher

  Galen rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “And?”

  “Shane says she got that one look—you know, the I-am-taking-your-concerns-very-seriously look—”

  “That look terrifies me.”

  “—and said that of course no one could expect the guard to pay for it, but fortunately she and the other temples had recordkeepers ready to go, and since he had given his approval, they would report to work the following day.”

  Galen let out a low whistle. Then he tried to do math in his head and reached several large numbers. “Wait, but where did she get the money? Scribes aren’t cheap, and you figure there are…what, a dozen guard posts?”

  “Eleven,” said Stephen. “Thirty-six scribes, assuming eight hour shifts and an extra to cover in case anyone’s out. And she wanted people to record all the records in a central log as well, so forty.”

  “Where is she getting forty scribes? Are there even forty trained scribes in the city?”

  “The Scarlet Guild.”

  “The prostitutes?”

  Stephen chuckled. “That’s what I said. But it’s a field you age out of fairly young, and the Guild has been very concerned with finding gainful employment for members who aren’t officially working, in case they decide to start doing unlicensed work somewhere else. You know how the Scarlet Guild is about unlicensed competition. And as Beartongue said, if there’s one group of people who can remember names, faces, and respective deviant acts…” He spread his hands. “They don’t have to copy illuminated manuscripts or anything, just do basic recordkeeping, and most of them are a lot better at that than the guard. And they aren’t going to be appalled at anything they see in a guard station. So the Scarlet Guild is supplying the ladies, who don’t charge nearly as much as a scribe.”

  “Beartongue is a genius. A terrifying genius. Who’s footing the bill?”

  “The Rat, the Forge God, and the Lady of Grass. And the Dreaming God provided some of their nuns, who are extremely literate, and they’re training the ladies who want it on the finer points of recordkeeping so that they can hopefully use this as a springboard to other jobs.” Stephen shook his head. “And the Scarlet Guild approves of that a lot, so they offered to pay the nuns a commission because you know they don’t believe in women working for free, so the nuns plowed it back into the project. I’m told the Temple of the Rat has already taken three of the ladies for law clerks and there’s a waiting list at the Scarlet Guild to become one of the record girls.”

  “Saint’s teeth.” Galen chuckled. “Nuns and whores, doing the good work together. Only the Rat would see that as a great idea. All right. So let me guess…the guards aren’t pleased with outsiders checking their records?”

  “Oh, it’s much worse than that. When the records were spotty, it was a lot easier to extort prisoners and their families.” Stephen’s expression grew grave. “I knew some of that went on, of course—big city, you expect a certain amount of graft—but I don’t think even Beartongue quite knew the level of corruption that was going on. We’re hearing of cases where people would get picked up for being drunk, be unable to pay a bribe, and when they got to a magistrate, they were charged with theft and assault. How can you prove the records were altered if the guard are the ones in charge of the records?”

  “Oh hell.”

  “So now a whole lot of guards found themselves out a major source of revenue. A bunch of them quit outright. Even the ones like Mallory who are relatively honest have gotten used to telling themselves that this was just how things worked and the people in jail were undoubtedly guilty of something.”

  “The broadsheets must have had a field day,” muttered Galen.

  “Oh yes. Caricatures of nuns and prostitutes standing over the downtrodden, holding the guard back with fans and switches. Frankly, I’m surprised that Mallory will even talk to us any longer.”

  “Why did he, do you think?”

  Stephen raised an eyebrow as they turned down the street housing the entrance to the Temple of the White Rat. “He wanted Piper, not us. Piper’s the best at what he does, bar none. And Piper happened to be visiting the Temple when word came down.”

  “Well,” murmured Galen, remembering the pale, thoughtful-eyed man. He’d been classically handsome underneath his annoyance, and his hands had been swift and sure as they worked. “Isn’t that interesting…”

  Three

  Two days later, Piper was wrist-deep in a corpse.

  This wasn’t an unusual situation for him. He spent a lot of time with his hands in corpses. He didn’t like it. He didn’t dislike it. It was just what he did. He enjoyed putting the mental pieces together about why someone had died, and he liked being able to provide certainty to families, but mostly what he liked was being good at his job.

  And Piper was, for reasons he kept to himself, very, very good at his job.

  This particular corpse was not a difficult problem to solve. He found what he was searching for and carefully pulled the flesh back to reveal it. The man’s liver was a horror show, knobbly and puckered, with a growth that looked like a fleshy cauliflower. The man’s wife was convinced that he had been poisoned, and arguably he had been, but the poison was self-administered over a long period of time and came in brown glass bottles. Piper sighed. He’d suspected as much, but you had to be thorough.

  He cleaned his tools in the little sink in the corner. It connected to a cistern on the roof and the water was cleaner than the sludge in the Elkinslough. He scrubbed his hands down to the elbow as well. It didn’t matter as much, perhaps, since he never treated live patients, but it made him feel better not to carry traces of the job home with him.

  He was nearly finished when there was a knock on the door.

  “Just a moment!” Now who could that be…? Normally people made appointments. The families of the bereaved did not get past the door guard, assuming they could even find his workrooms in the basement of the tower. He wasn’t expecting anyone, and lich-doctors didn’t get a lot of social calls.

  Another, louder knock. Bless it, couldn’t they wait? Was it an emergency? No, that was ridiculous: by the time Piper got to a patient, urgency was a thing of the past. He pushed the door open to find the red-haired paladin from the river standing on the other side, his fist raised.

  Piper took a step back and lifted his hands defensively. The paladin’s eyes went very wide. He had dark green eyes with paler flecks in them, like flawed jade. Very pretty eyes, except for the alarmed expression. Piper looked at the man’s raised hand—oh, right, he’d been knocking—and then at his own. He was still carrying the bonesaw.

  “Um,” said the paladin, eyes locked on the saw.

  Generally it takes longer for me to make a fool of myself in front of good-looking men. I’m getting more efficient.

  “I apologize,” said Piper, lowering the bonesaw. “I, err…wasn’t expecting a visitor.”

  He looked down and discovered that he had two visitors. Earstripe the gnole was looking up at him with a bemused expression, although it had to be said that gnoles nearly always looked at humans with bemused expressions, so that might not mean anything.

  “Doctor Piper?” said the paladin.

  “Yes.” He remembered he was wearing his mask and pulled it down. “Sorry. What can I do for you?” He instinctively tried to block their view of the room, even though the constable had undoubtedly seen dead bodies before and the paladin had undoubtedly made a number of bodies dead himself. For some odd reason, there was something different about a body on a slab. Men who thought nothing of sticking a sword into a living human being went green when you stuck a little tiny scalpel into a dead one.

  “We were hoping to speak to you, if we may?”

  Galen, that was the man’s name. Piper hadn’t forgotten. It would have been very difficult to forget a face like that, or hair like that, but of course the face came with a name as well. “Yes, of course. Shall we go into my office instead?” He gestured down the hallway with his free hand,
glad that he’d already mostly washed up.

  The paladin looked at the gnole, who arched his whiskers forward. Interesting. Apparently the gnole was the one who had instigated this visit and Galen was deferring to him. He wondered if the gnole was uncomfortable coming by himself. Then again, there are still people, even in this day and age, who think gnoles are animals or devils or some other goddamn foolishness. I suppose I might want an escort to talk to someone I didn’t know, too.

  “Good, good. Can you—um—look, wait there, I just have to finish washing up.” How much blood was there on his apron? And his mask? Oh dear…

  Piper closed the door and hastily shucked out of his work clothes and into the clean set he kept on hand. There was a scrap of polished tin mirror over the sink, and he checked to make sure he hadn’t unthinkingly wiped his wrist across his forehead and left smears. Looks clear. All right. Stop panicking. This isn’t a date, no matter how pretty the paladin is. This is a meeting with a gnole. Probably about that dead body. Granted, Piper’s dating history was not particularly extensive and he had always been terrible at pursuing other men, but he was still pretty sure that the morgue wasn’t the place where you were supposed to start.

  There were two chairs in his office, plus the one behind his desk. The gnole was sitting. The paladin stood behind him like an honor guard. Piper filed that away mentally with the deference the paladin had shown to the constable earlier. As he moved past Galen to take his seat at the desk, their eyes met briefly. Green eyes narrowed slightly, not unfriendly but definitely weighing. Wondering if I’m the appropriate person to be talking to? Wondering if I’ll help in this…whatever this is? Wondering if I usually run around waving bonesaws at people?

  He sat down behind the table, and pushed a stack of papers aside. “I apologize. I don’t usually meet visitors with a bloody saw in hand.”

  “A gnole has seen worse.”

  “Of course. Being a constable, you would have.”

  “Not then.” Earstripe gave him a drop-jawed gnole smile. “A gnole worked in a human burrow, before. Old human there used to walk always with hatchet with red paint. Old human said, ‘Any nasty buggers who want to rob an old lady will think twice when they see Betsy.’ Said it many times.”

  Both humans in the room digested this. “She sounds very…impressive,” said Galen.

  “A gnole does not think she was ever robbed.”

  “I can see that.” Piper focused on Earstripe. “Right. Okay. How can I help you?”

  The gnole arched his whiskers forward, then nodded human style. “A bone-doctor remembers a dead human on the riverbank?”

  Bone-doctor. Well, it was better than a lot of things he’d been called. “Yes, of course, the one impaled on the wooden stake.”

  The gnole tapped his clawtips together. Piper got the impression that he was choosing his words carefully. “Mallory-captain is not a bad human,” he said, sounding a bit defensive. “A gnole is not complaining.”

  Piper had his own opinions about the city guard, but suspected this wasn’t the time. “I have always thought Captain Mallory was honest and did his best for the people he served.”

  Earstripe relaxed slightly. “Yes. A gnole has been fortunate to serve under Mallory-captain. A gnole would wish to continue to serve. But a gnole has been thinking about the bodies at the riverbank. Can a bone-doctor find the other bodies? The ones with no head?”

  Piper sat back, exhaling. “Oof. How long ago were they found?”

  “Nine days. Seven days.”

  Piper shook his head. “They’re in the pauper’s field by now, if no one claimed them. And I’m not sure how much I could tell from bodies that old, particularly ones soaked in the water. Anyway, the cause of death sounds like it was pretty clear in those cases, so they wouldn’t have brought the bodies to me.”

  The gnole nodded again. “A gnole suspected as much.” He turned his head to look at Galen.

  “You were right,” said the paladin. “I thought it was worth a try, though.”

  “So you still think they’re linked to this third corpse?” said Piper. He was interested despite himself. It was a puzzle, and he’d never been able to resist a puzzle. It was what kept him rummaging around inside the bodies, trying to find answers.

  “A gnole smells it.”

  “There’s a smell?” Piper found that interesting. The smooth men had left a very distinctive odor on their victims, and the Temple of the White Rat had found a perfumer to mix up a facsimile to guide the slewhounds. From what he’d heard, it had actually helped to track down two in Anuket City and another headed to the Dowager’s lands.

  “Ah. No.” Earstripe waved his hands. “Not a real smell. A gnole senses it, but a gnole cannot…” He trailed off.

  “A metaphorical smell,” said Galen.

  “Humans can’t smell,” said Earstripe, sounding philosophical.

  “So you’ve got a hunch they’re connected,” said Piper.

  “Hunch. Yes. A gnole has a hunch.”

  “And what is your role in all this?” Piper asked, looking over at Galen.

  Galen shrugged. “Earstripe felt having a human around would make things go more smoothly. He came to the temple and found me. I agreed to do what I could.”

  “A human is good at talking to other humans,” said Earstripe. He gave an exaggerated human-style shrug, palms up. “A human doesn’t always listen to a gnole. And a gnole did not know where to find a bone-doctor, so a sword-human helped.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t help you more,” said Piper. “Unfortunately we just don’t have the morgue space to keep bodies cold for long.” Down here, in the cool stone rooms under the tower, he could get three or four days, sometimes more in winter, as long as they were brought in promptly. A body that had been pulled out of a river nine days ago…no, there was nothing he could have done, except tell them what the person’s last sensations had been, and Piper could guess that had been a sudden, surprising pain in the neck. Well, now, don’t assume. He could have been beheaded post-mortem. You don’t know.

  And how exactly are you going to explain that? The gnole might not care, but paladins are traditionally somewhat suspicious of wonderworkers, even such marginal talents as mine.

  At least Galen was from the Saint of Steel’s order. The Hanged Mother’s priests would have tied Piper to a stake and set him alight just on general principle. Still, it was best to stay out of these things as much as possible. The profession of the lich-doctors was only a few decades old in Archenhold, and while their word was law within the courts, religious orders were traditionally skeptical of people who carved up the dead for a living.

  He nevertheless heard himself saying, “If there’s another body, call me as soon as you can, and I might be able to help.”

  Four

  The call came more quickly than he expected. It was a bare two days later when there was a knock on the door and Piper stumbled out of bed and found himself face-to-face with Galen, yet again.

  No shirt. Slightly hungover. At least I’m not carrying a bonesaw this time. That’s got to be worth something.

  “Ah,” said the paladin, his eyes flicking down Piper’s torso and back up again. “Did I wake you?”

  If the man’s eyes had registered approval or interest or even acknowledgment, Piper might have considered it a worthwhile way to answer the door, but Galen’s face was carefully blank. Well, I can hardly blame him. The last time he saw skin this pale, it was probably on a dead fish.

  Pain throbbed against Piper’s temples. He should not have gotten drunk. He should have stopped after the first few shots, or at least he should have drunk a lot more water. Still, given the circumstances…

  “Yes, but don’t worry about it.” He turned away from the door. “Another corpse?”

  The paladin followed him inside his apartments. “Yes. Earstripe says it’s another one of the set.”

  “What does Mallory say?”

  “He hasn’t told Mallory. I quote, ‘A gno
le doesn’t feel like twisting his own whiskers.’”

  Piper grunted. “Sensible.” The shirt draped across the back of the chair was clean, insomuch as it hadn’t been worn to chop up a corpse. He dragged it on. “Give me a minute.”

  “I don’t think our friend is going to get any deader.” The paladin’s eyes lingered on the bottle and the single glass next to the chair, but he didn’t say anything.

  In fact, he so obviously wasn’t saying anything that Piper found himself annoyed. “I don’t make a habit of it,” he growled. “But they brought in a baby last night with a broken neck. The father says she fell; the mother says he shook her. You’d drink too.”

  “I would,” said Galen. There was a bleak sympathy in his eyes, not the shallow kind, but the kind that had been there and remembered. “Which was it?”

  The last memory, looking up, her eyes going through that strange lock-and-stare stage that babies went through and so unable to look away from the face looming over hers, everything so much bigger, the mouth open, loudness in her ears and motion she didn’t understand and then a popping feeling and…nothing.

  His own despair annoyed him. It did the child no good now. “If she’d fallen, I wouldn’t be drinking,” said Piper. He went to the basin, dumped out tepid water, and splashed it on his face. Galen winced.

  “Can they make a charge stick?”

  “On my say-so? Yes. As far as the courts are concerned, a lich-doctor is the last word on cause of death. The White Rat will be left representing both sides, but they’re used to that.” Piper raked his hands through his hair, trying to settle it in something that didn’t look like a bird’s nest. “Fortunately, I’m an honest man, or something like it.” He grimaced at the scrap of mirror. There was nothing to be done about his hair. The polished tin was slightly warped, and he turned his head from side to side, watching his reflection distort. He could just make out the paladin behind him, a pale oval framed by hair the color of…no, don’t start trying to decide what organ at what stage of decomposition is that shade of red. Pick something else. Something that isn’t horrible. Piper wracked his brain for a comparison and finally settled on smoked paprika. He liked smoked paprika. He liked visiting the spice stalls in the market and seeing the rows of jars, the purity of the colors in a dozen shades of orange and umber and scarlet. Yes. Much better.