Page 55 of Paladin's Faith

The shockwave it sent through us was quite enough, I suppose. And what would I do if I found out that it was another god? Take up one of these god-slaying weapons in revenge?

He was very afraid that the answer was yes. Not for the Saint of Steel, precisely, but for His chosen, who had suffered and died alongside their god.

“How could a mortal kill a god, without a god-slaying weapon?” he asked.

Lady Silver’s eyebrows—or the patches of fur that served as eyebrows—went up. “You think like a warrior,” she said. “Think like a courtier instead. How would you kill someone, if you had no blade? If you were weak and they were strong?”

Shane frowned. “Poison,” he said finally. “Accident. You say that gods don’t fall down the stairs, but can you push a god off a cliff?”

Lady Silver flicked her ears, amused. “I don’t believe that’s ever been tried.” She looked down at the letter before her, then folded it and handed it to him. “For your Bishop. I do not know exactly how it was done, but someone or something killed your Saint. My own meager archives—” she waved her hand at the shelves of books “—contain nothing but hints. You will require a more specialized library for that.” She nodded to the letter. “I have listed those that I believe might contain more.”

Shane tucked the letter away, and Lady Silver rose to escort him out. “It is an interrresting puzzle,” she said, and he guessed by the growling trill that she had remembered to reassume her accent. No one fears the dancing bear. He wondered if she realized that he’d noticed. Probably. I do not think Lady Silver misses many things. I wonder how old she is? He had no way of knowing. She might have been half his age or a dozen years his senior, even assuming that her race lived the same span as a human would.

“One thing…” Shane paused, one hand on the door. “The weapons that could kill a god. Has anyone ever slain a year-god that way?”

A shiver ran through Lady Silver’s great ears. “Once, long ago. The year outside a year.”

“What happened?”

“For seven months, there was no one to stand between us and the world. Floods came, and famine. Many, many died. It broke the great cycle, and the next god was declared First Enduring and began a new one.”

“Oh.” I’m sorry I asked.

The cynocephalic’s eyes were brooding. “That is why it is important to learn these things. If someone can go about killing gods, what hope is there for mortals?”

She shut the door before Shane could think of an answer for that, assuming one existed at all.

Wren was still awake when he returned. Part of him noticed this in a detached fashion—of course she stayed awake, someone should be on guard when one of us is out—but the rest of his brain was a whirl of dead gods, dead priests, and dead years. He dropped into his chair and stared blindly at the ceiling.

“You look like you just took a board to the back of the head.”

“That’s about how I feel.”

Wren considered this, then said, cautiously, “Romantic evening go badly?”

It was such a completely wrong guess that it startled a crack of laughter out of him. “Oh gods and saints! I only wish!” Haltingly, he spelled out the details about Lady Silver, Beartongue’s message, and what the scholar had said. Wren’s eyes got rounder and rounder as he talked, until she looked like a small, muscular owl.

He finally ran out of words. A minute later, Wren said, in a small voice, “Whoa.”

Shane wanted to laugh again, or weep, or both. He put his face in his hands. “What do we do if it’s true?”

Fabric rustled and he felt Wren put an arm around his shoulders in a tight hug. “Do we need to do anything? Isn’t this all…I don’t know…god stuff?”

His laugh wasn’t entirely humorless. “God stuff. I don’t know. Maybe. Wouldn’t we want revenge?”

Wren was silent for so long that he wasn’t sure that she was going to answer at all. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “Are humans supposed to avenge gods? That seems like something a priest would know better than I would.”

“All our priests are dead,” said Shane wearily, dropping his hands. “Maybe they’re the ones we need to avenge.”

Since she was sitting on the arm of the chair, he couldn’t see her face, but he felt Wren go very still. He recognized the flavor of that stillness all too well. The black tide inside him tried to rise in response, and he pushed it back. “Wren.”

“I’d avenge you,” said Wren, her voice too cold and calm. “All of you who had your god torn away.”

He wanted to point out that she’d lost the god as well, but he understood too clearly what she meant. It was not in either of their natures to avenge a slight against themselves, only against others. Besides, at the moment, that was not what was important.

“Wren,” he said again, and put some steel into it. “Wren, step back from it.”

She inhaled slowly, let it out again. The air around her was as charged and prickly as a thunderstorm.