Marguerite snickered. Shane stared at the priestess, too worried by the word avatar to even protest.
“You’ll be fine. You just…I don’t know, sprained your soul. Stay off it for a few weeks.” Gwen waved her hand. “If it doesn’t stop hurting, come talk to me. Quit snickering, Jorge, or I’ll tell everyone about that ‘personal problem’ I cleared up for you last year.”
Jorge immediately clammed up. The priestess shook her head and bid them farewell.
“I like her,” said Marguerite.
“She’s superb,” Jorge said. “You couldn’t be in better hands.” He turned back to Shane. “I’m very glad you’re feeling better. I wanted to apologize to you.”
“Eh?” Shane blinked at him. “I should be apologizing to you. You had to storm a keep because of me.”
“Yes, but…” Jorge raked his hands through his hair. “But that was because of the demon. But then, after…I might have let them kill you!”
“You didn’t, though.”
“But I didn’t stop them. Hell, I offered you the sword.”
“Which was probably the right thing to do at the time,” Shane pointed out. “It’s not like you knew that the Dreaming God was going to take a personal interest. I certainly didn’t.”
Jorge looked unconvinced. Shane cast a look of mute appeal at Marguerite, who did not let him down.
“If you want to be ashamed of something, be ashamed of this intelligence network of yours.
Wisdom was up there for years and you missed it? And it’s not as if it was hiding all that well. The locals all knew there was something weird going on.”
“Uh…” Jorge was not expecting this sudden flank attack. “I…well…I mean, we asked around…”
“You asked,” said Marguerite in obvious despair. “You asked and then you believed what they told you, didn’t you?”
Jorge’s eyes darted back and forth. “Were we not supposed to do that…？”
“Paladins.” She dropped her head in her hands. “And if that’s not enough, your recordkeeping looks like the sort of thing a drunken mercenary would scribble down to justify his bar tab. Do you know that your people lost a whole entire possessed paladin? Just lost him?”
“What?” said Shane.
“What?” said Jorge.
“This Lord Caliban person that you all speak in such hushed tones about. I went looking to see what happened to him.” She thumped the stack of papers. “There’s a trial record, he’s remanded to local custody, somebody scrawls a note that says, Ask the captain of the guard, and then absolutely nothing. Your cautionary tale could be running around loose somewhere, and nobody has ever followed up?”
“Uh,” said Jorge. “Um. This isn’t really my field. I just kill demons. You want to talk to one of the senior priests—"
“Who do you think I got the papers from?”
Shane started to laugh. His ribs were sore but he didn’t care.
“Right.” Jorge stood up. “I should probably go…uh…check on something…”
“Wait,” said Shane, a thought striking him. Jorge paused and raised his eyebrows inquiringly. “In
the courtyard. Marguerite said that I said something. But what was it?”
An odd light flickered in Jorge’s eyes. “You don’t…no, of course you don’t know. Everyone heard something different.”
“Oh.” Shane hadn’t expected that. “That’s why you knew it was the Dreaming God speaking?”
“We would have known that it was the God anyway.” Jorge rapped his knuckles on the doorframe.
“There was no doubt at all. I’ll go check on that food, shall I?”
Shane sagged back in his chair, feeling suddenly exhausted despite having been awake for less than an hour. “Huh.”
“He’s right, you know,” said Marguerite. “There really wasn’t any doubt. You’re good at the voice, but not that good.” She rose to her feet. “Most of the paladins who were there won’t tell anyone what they heard. Just that it was for them alone.”
“Huh.” It made a certain kind of sense. Perhaps if You could rarely speak directly to mortals, You seized the opportunity when you had it. A little rawness in his soul was a small price to pay for that, surely.
“Did you hear something too?” he asked. “You don’t have to tell me what it was.”
“I did,” said Marguerite. To Shane’s surprise and delight, she sat on the arm of the chair and leaned against him, her hip against his side and her cheek against the top of his head. “He told me to have faith.”
FIFTY-FOUR
“YOU HAVE A VISITOR, MISTRESS FLORIAN,” said the very young acolyte of the White Rat. “She’s waiting in the small courtyard.”
“A visitor?” Marguerite raised her eyebrows. “Me?”
“I did not realize anyone knew that you were here,” Shane murmured.
She glanced up at him and felt an involuntary smile curve her lips. Look at me, mooning around like a teenager. It must be positively disgusting to watch. “Oh, a few people do, I’m sure. It’s not as if it’s a secret. But I don’t know anyone who would need to be announced, instead of just showing up.”
“She did not give her name,” the acolyte said. Marguerite and Shane followed him through the bustling halls of the temple, dodging law clerks and supplicants.
Marguerite would not have expected to enjoy spending time in a temple, but the last few weeks had been surprisingly peaceful. They had escorted Ashes to Archenhold, accompanied by multiple paladins, and then the Bishop had extended the Rat’s hospitality until, as she said, “the Sail realizes just how much trouble it’s in.” Marguerite had been touched, and more than a little grateful. She could have stayed with Grace, of course, but she did not want to put her friend in any danger—and the Rat’s temple, as she knew well, was surprisingly difficult to infiltrate.
I would probably feel different if it was a temple of the Dreaming God. I’m still a little miffed at them. Although I swear to their god, I’m going to fix that spy network if it kills me.
…oh, who am I kidding? I could probably be happy in a temple of the Hanged Mother, if Shane was there with me.
He reached out and took her hand as they walked, and she felt a by-now familiar rush of affection.
She kept waiting for the feeling to wear off. It kept not doing so.
The acolyte halted at the entrance to the small courtyard and bowed them through. Marguerite took two steps inside and stopped as if she’d run into a brick wall. Her fingers closed tightly on Shane’s.
“Peace,” said Fenella, raising one hand. “I’m only here to talk.” The older woman sat at a little table, sipping a cup of tea, her embroidered shawl loose around her shoulders, exactly like the fabric-buyer from Baiir that she had pretended to be in the Court of Smoke. Perfectly relaxed and perfectly
harmless: Marguerite doubted either one was true.
She dropped Shane’s hand and sat down across the table, already cursing herself for having let her alarm show. “I admit that I am surprised to see you here,” she said.