Page 165 of Paladin's Faith

“And will it work?”

“The Forge God’s people say it should. We won’t know until it’s built. And even then, we won’t know if it’s cost-efficient.” She waved her hand at the machine. “We’re having to bring in barrels of sea water for this one, which pretty much kills the budget, but if it does work the way Magnus thinks, we’ll put a much larger one in Delta. If it works.”

Rigney knew her far too well to be put off by that. “You think it will, though.”

Beartongue blew air out in a long sigh. “I do. That will make the most problems, so of course that’s what will happen.”

Rigney folded his arms and gazed down at the controlled chaos below. “It will disrupt a great many things if it does work.”

“I know.” Beartongue gave a short, humorless laugh. “Do you know that the damned thing makes ice too? Ashes didn’t care about that bit. Said it was just a byproduct and wasn’t that interesting.”

Rigney’s eyebrows shot up. Ice was expensive and had to be stored in sawdust underground through the summer months. In a city like Archon’s Glory, where the water table was never very far below the surface, that made it a rare luxury item. “The Rat have mercy,” he muttered.

Beartongue could see him doing figures in his head. “I know, right?” She rubbed her face. “Yes. It will change a ridiculous number of things, I expect. Probably even a few that no one’s thought of yet. But at least if we’re the ones building it, we can ease the world into it as gently as possible, instead of abruptly crashing a few national economies overnight. Some of which may well deserve to be crashed, but it’s never the people on top who bear the brunt.”

Rigney nodded. “I’ll prepare a report,” he suggested, “on what we can expect.”

“Do that,” said Beartongue. “Then you can be the one to read the report and summarize it for me.”

He laughed softly. “Naturally.”

The Bishop pushed away from the railing and moved toward the door, trailing Rigney like a tall shadow. Behind them, metal clanged and Ashes Magnus yelled, “Lad, if you can’t be more careful with your fingers, you don’t deserve to keep them!” and Beartongue shook her head and muttered something under her breath that sounded like a prayer.

And a long way away, on the edge of the dry, dusty plains of Charlock, a tall, auburn-haired woman stood looking across the desert.

She no longer had a horse. The horse hadn’t much cared for berserkers, and it cared even less for what this one carried. They had parted with much mutual antipathy.

“Do you dislike the desert?” Judith asked aloud. She didn’t need to, but speaking out loud made it easier for her to keep track of what was her and what was…not.

“You will,” Judith promised. “No one who goes into the desert comes out of it without one.” She considered for a moment, then, in the interest of honesty, added, “Most people hate it.”

said the demon called Wisdom.

Judith laughed. Her fellow paladins would have been surprised to hear it. In the years since the Saint of Steel died, she might chuckle, but she had thought that her old, full-throated laugh had been buried along with her god.

“No,” she said, pulling her scarf up to cover her face from the sun. “We most definitely are not.”

The heat haze drifted over their tracks and magnified them briefly, before the relentless wind pulled them apart and left no trace of their passage behind.