Page 161 of Paladin's Faith

“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.