It was evening on the second day before they reached the town. Either the way was longer than the demon remembered, or—more likely—they were simply bone weary. Every step felt like a blow. Marguerite almost stepped into a ground-wight and was only saved because Wren was still far more alert than the rest of them.
She wasn’t paying attention properly, that much was clear. Both because she was tired and because one thought kept running endlessly through her head.
You left him there.
I had no choice! she argued, and the thought didn’t argue back. It just repeated, over and over. You left him there. You left him there.
Because there was really no argument to be made, was there? She had abandoned Shane as thoroughly as the Dreaming God once had. She had watched the demon unveil itself for an instant, and she had turned tail and run away, leaving Shane to bear the brunt.
The only thing that kept her moving at all was the belief that she would go back.
I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care if I have to drag the Dreaming God’s people out by the ear. I will go back and I will get him unpossessed if it kills me.
That she was relying on a god who had already discarded Shane once was an irony that was not at all lost on her.
When they reached the town, the three of them stood, swaying, just outside it. It felt bizarre that there were still towns, and other people going on about their lives, untroubled by demons or hired killers or lost loves.
“Right,” croaked Marguerite finally. “There’s an inn. If I get a hot bath, I may be able to feel emotions again.”
“Do you want to?” asked Davith.
She scrubbed at her face with her hands. “Not particularly, but I still want the bath.”
The inn was called The Fig & Murder and showed a crow holding what could, with some imagination, be a fig. Marguerite wondered where they were getting figs in the highlands, briefly considered whether she could undercut them on shipping, then decided that she just didn’t care anymore.
Shane’s gone. Shane gave up his soul to save us. To save me. What is even the point? I can’t buy him back from a demon.
Her uncaring lasted until she actually pushed the tavern door open, whereupon the first thing she heard was a familiar voice saying, “I know you people use all the dung. I’m not asking about the dung. I’m asking about horse piss. I need about a hundred gallons of it, and I’m willing to pay cash.”
“Lady,” said the bartender, who had backed away from Ashes Magnus until his spine hit the far wall, “I do not know anyone anywhere who has a hundred gallons of horse piss lying around! That is not a normal thing that people keep on hand!”
“Ugggh,” said Ashes. “What about a tanner? Tanners keep all sorts of horrible things.”
“Ashes?” whispered Marguerite. And then, louder, “Ashes!”
“What?” The artificer turned. “Marguerite?”
“You’re alive!”
“I could say the same about you!” The artificer swung around and caught Wren and Marguerite up in a bear hug.
“But what happened?” asked Marguerite, when they had finished hugging and a few tears had been shed and wiped away. “How did you get here?”
Ashes grinned up and down at them. “The usual way. I walked. At least until I found someone with a farm cart, and I bribed him to take me to the next town.” She waved an arm at the innkeeper. “And I’ve been sitting here, recovering from my bruises and trying to figure out what to do next.” She peered over their heads. “I see the snarky one, but where’s the pretty one?”
Davith, for once, didn’t issue a sardonic rejoinder. He dug his hands in his pockets and looked away.
Marguerite took a deep breath. “He’s still up there,” she said. “And there’s a demon with him.”
Ashes was quiet for a long moment. “Shit,” she said finally. “I can’t fix that.”
“I’m not sure anyone can.” Marguerite rubbed her forehead. “How did you get away?”
“Oh, that.” Ashes looked vaguely embarrassed. “Pure cowardice, really. As soon as the Red Sail fellows got shot, I knew that somebody else had joined the fray, and I was pretty sure they weren’t going to be friendly. Figured that maybe we’d crossed into the territory of someone who didn’t like visitors. Lots of the clans up here don’t, you know. And since I was already up against the wagon, looking for my gear—had some notion that I might have something explosive enough to make them think twice—I just dropped flat and wedged myself into the wreckage and pretended to be a corpse.” She gestured toward her head. “The blood helped. Head wounds always look spectacular.”
“And they thought you were dead,” breathed Wren.
“Yep. One nudged me in the ribs, but I stayed limp, and thankfully they weren’t interested in making sure. After they marched you all off, I worried someone’d be back to loot the bodies, so I made sure I wasn’t there for it.” She smiled sheepishly. “And so I’ve been sitting here for the past half-day, trying to figure out how to stage a rescue. Which fortunately you didn’t need, because about all I could come up with was using a beer wagon full of black powder to take down a wall, and I didn’t have that much black powder, which meant I needed a load of horse piss, which someone wasn’t willing to provide.” She glared at the barkeeper, presumably for his failure to stock large quantities of urine behind the bar. The man smiled weakly, clearly glad that someone had come along to distract the terrifying old woman.
“It’s the thought that counts,” said Marguerite.
“Not with explosives, it isn’t,” said Ashes, and on that point, Marguerite had to agree.
“Your task is simple enough,” said Wisdom, tapping a spot on the map. “The steading here has been raiding us for the better part of a year. They take our sheep and sometimes our children. I want them eliminated.”
Shane raised his eyebrows. “And you think I can do this singlehandedly?”
“I have faith in you,” the demon said. Shane didn’t know if it was unconscious of the irony or simply chose not to acknowledge it. “There are perhaps two dozen people there. Only the warriors need to die.”
“If there are only two dozen, why haven’t you stopped them before?”
Wisdom laughed softly and went to the window. “Come here.”
Shane approached warily. The demon pointed down, into the courtyard below, where a half-dozen people were drilling with swords. Erlick walked around the perimeter, shouting orders.
Shane looked the troops over with a practiced eye. Three of them were boys who probably didn’t need to shave yet. One was a man who might be the boys’ grandfather. The only two who might have crossed swords with him and lived for more than a moment were two middle-aged women with their skirts tied around their legs.
“Behold my army,” said Wisdom, with a grand sweep of its arm. “Inspiring, are they not?”
“The prison guard—”
“Bruno. The only other man of fighting age here. He can see about ten feet in front of him, so long as the light is good.”
Shane stared at the demon. “But when you captured us—”
“Archers. Nine of them, mostly under fifteen or over fifty, and Rory, born with a club foot, who cannot run. They also fill our stewpots with game.” It smiled down at the troops and if it had been human, Shane would have believed there was fondness in its gaze. “Shortbows only. We had two crossbows in the entire keep. Now we have three, thanks to your pursuers. Though they killed Sebastian in the process, and put one of my best archers out of commission until her arm heals.”
“I’m sorry,” said Shane, almost absently. My god. Wren and I could have taken this entire keep by ourselves. Hell, I could probably still take it by myself.
Something tugged inside his chest and he looked up sharply. Wisdom raised its eyebrows at him. “Don’t forget me,” it suggested.
“No,” said Shane. “I won’t.” He looked back down. “How did this happen?”
“This holding was in decline for years,” Wisdom said. “Then a rival clan descended on it. They slaughtered all the warriors and many of the rest. Then they took what they wanted and left.” The demon folded its arms across its chest, looking back down into the courtyard. “I found them a few days later. The survivors would not have lasted the winter, but I walked my host down to the nearest large town and jumped to a merchant. Then I drove all his stock here and told them that it was a gift from Wisdom.” Its teeth flashed. “I did that three times. By the time I arrived in this body, calling myself Wisdom, the people were feeling very well-inclined toward me.”
“So you killed three innocent merchants,” said Shane.
“One was a cheat and a liar, and one was going to die soon no matter what I did. The third one…yes. I regret the third one, I admit. He was a fair man and he did not deserve to have his mind torn in half. But these people also did not deserve to starve.” The demon stared broodingly out the window. “It is hard to be a god, and to make a god’s choices.”
“Do you actually regret it?” Shane asked. “Can you?”
“Does that surprise you, champion?” Wisdom looked at him unsmiling. “We pour ourselves into our hosts like whiskey into a barrel. You are not surprised when the whiskey tastes of the barrel, or the barrel smells of whiskey, are you?”
“Souls seem more complicated than whiskey.”
Wisdom barked a laugh. “Don’t tell Erlick that. He was a distiller before the raiders killed his family. But yes. First we must learn the lessons of physical bodies. Most of us are caught by your paladins then. If we live long enough or come back often enough, we may begin to learn other lessons. I know sorrow and regret and grief. And responsibility to my people.”
“Yet you still want to become a god.”
The demon smiled, showing teeth. “How else shall I best take care of my people? And how else shall I avoid taking these lessons back to the abyss with me, and dwelling for eternity on my failures?” It stretched. “My reasons are not entirely selfish, but neither are they entirely pure. They are only entirely mine. And now I wish you, my champion, to go and make certain that these troublesome raiders no longer trouble me and mine.”
Shane grimaced. “Do they have innocents among them?”
“Very likely.” Wisdom smiled. “And that is where I come in. We’ll see if a demon can stand in for a god, shall we?”
It took them five long days to reach the town that had an outpost temple of the Dreaming God. There was an easier route, the locals said, one with inns and traveler’s rests, but it took twice as long. Marguerite thought of Shane in the hands of a demon and simply started down the shortest road. Not even Davith argued.
Dreaming God, if You are listening, let him hold on until we can save him. You owe him that much.
“You can leave me behind,” said Ashes on the second day. “I know I’m not setting any speed records.”
“No,” said Wren, before Marguerite could speak. “We’re not leaving anyone else behind.”
Marguerite glanced at the paladin, who had been as silent as Shane used to be. The younger woman’s face had aged a decade in a few days. If we lost Ashes to the Sail, all this would be for nothing.
It already felt like that. Vengeance was a stupid hollow thing and the only salt that she cared about any longer was the kind in blood and tears.
“We’ll get him back,” she said out loud, trying to convince herself as much as Wren.
Wren looked at her and looked away. “Of course we will,” she said, but she didn’t say it in the voice and Marguerite knew that she didn’t actually believe it.
They were able to buy food at farms and Davith found a farmer willing to part with a dogcart and a pony and charmed both out of her at a decent price. Ashes rode in it and they made better time after that, but it was still a long and weary way. At night, they did not so much make camp as collapse where they stood.
Perhaps their luck turned. Perhaps the Dreaming God, absent from His duties where Shane was concerned, had belatedly turned an eye toward them. Regardless, they were still almost half a day out from the town, at Marguerite’s best guess, when they heard hoofbeats.
Looking up, Marguerite saw a trio of remarkably handsome people atop moderately handsome horses. They wore armor and white tabards with a closed eye.
Paladins, she thought. The word drifted through her head and she knew that she was supposed to do something, but she was so very tired.
It was Wren who stepped forward, waving her arms. “Jorge? Is that you?” She broke into the first smile that Marguerite had seen from her since they’d been captured by Wisdom’s people.
“Wren?” One of the paladins laughed aloud and swung himself off his horse. He was tall and muscular and something about the way he held himself reminded Marguerite very much of Shane. Jorge’s skin and hair were much darker and a scar cut rakishly through his right eyebrow, but he moved the same way and the massive sword slung across his back was a twin to the one that Shane had broken. “Dreaming God save us, what are you doing this far from Archenhold?”
“It’s a long story.” Wren looked back at Marguerite, as if for orders. “A very, very long story.”
“It must have been.” Jorge eyed their party sympathetically. Marguerite glanced back herself, seeing the layers of caked-on dust, torn clothes either hastily mended or covered with cloaks, and the fading bruises on Ashes’ face. “Please, let us offer you the hospitality of the temple. You can tell me all about it on the way.”
Davith spoke up. “Will there be baths?” he asked.
The paladin laughed. “I think we can manage that. But come, Wren, introduce me to these lovely ladies, will you?”
Wren rolled her eyes and made the introductions. Jorge bowed over Marguerite’s hand and kissed the back like a chevalier. “Charmed,” he told her.
“Tired,” she told him.
To his credit, he bowed just as deeply over the hand of Ashes Magnus and if anything, lingered longer on the kiss. Ashes snorted, but there was an appreciative glint in her eye. “You’re lucky I’m not twenty years younger, paladin.”
“And yet I find myself feeling deeply unlucky.”
Marguerite heard Davith mutter something under his breath about goddamn amateurs.
“Jorge, stop flirting and let us get these poor people to hot water and beds,” said one of the other paladins.
“Yes, of course. Forgive me.” He turned away from Ashes, (who definitely eyed his backside as he did) and picked up his horse’s reins, leading the animal on foot. “So, what brings you so far from Archenhold?”
Wren took a deep breath and looked at Marguerite for permission. Marguerite nodded to her. If we have to worry about the Dreaming God’s paladins working for the Red Sail, we are so utterly and comprehensively fucked that we might as well slit our wrists and be done with it.
“We came looking for Ashes. Some other people were, too. It got messy. But that’s not the important bit.” She waved a hand. “You’ve heard the rumors about a demon with followers in the hills?”
Jorge’s face went grave. “We have, yes.”
“We found them.”
The three paladins of the Dreaming God all reached for their swordhilts simultaneously, probably unconsciously. It would have been amusing if Marguerite had any amusement left in her.
“Shit,” said Jorge, letting his hand fall away. “It’s true, then? How many? Did you see the demon itself?”
“At least twenty people,” said Wren. “Maybe more. Not many fighters, I don’t think. Lots of kids and old people with bows, though. We saw the demon when they captured us.”
The paladin who hadn’t yet spoken until now slid off her horse, and grabbed Wren’s chin, staring into her eyes. Wren bore this patiently. Marguerite had only a moment’s warning before Jorge had her by the shoulders and was dipping his head to meet her eyes as well.
His eyes were deep, velvety brown, framed with fine laugh lines, and he was very handsome. Lucky, too, if the scar through his eyebrow was any indication. It picked up again on his cheek, which meant that he’d come within a hair’s breadth of losing that eye. Marguerite noted all this dispassionately. I must be tired. Normally I’d at least wonder if he was single. She found that she could not possibly care less. Behind her, she heard Davith squawk indignantly as the third paladin manhandled him.
Jorge nodded to her and stepped back, glancing at his fellows. “I don’t see any sign,” he said, “but if the demon’s as old and smart as they say, it could probably hide.” His lips twisted ruefully. “Forgive me, ladies, gentleman, this is extremely rude of me, but…KNEEL.”
His voice wrapped around her spine like a mailed fist. The paladin’s voice, no longer kind and patient but as implacable as winter. Marguerite’s knees tried to buckle under her, but she caught herself and glared at him.
“Son, I don’t care if you’re a paladin, I’m too old to kneel for anything less than a god,” Ashes said. Behind her, in honeyed tones, Davith invited Jorge to eat shit and die.
“Thank the Dreaming One,” Jorge said, stepping back. He clapped his hands together. “I’m very sorry about that. We don’t dare take any chances.”
“What did that prove?” Davith asked.
“If you held a demon, you would have knelt,” said Jorge simply. “Even if it resisted, we would have caught something of its shape when it did.” He looked back at Wren. “Forgive me, sister. We had to know.” He sighed. “I suppose it would take a berserker to escape such a demon’s clutches. How many did you kill?”
Wren paused, and Marguerite thought that she braced herself, as if expecting a blow. “We didn’t escape. Shane bargained for our lives and stayed behind.”
Jorge missed a step and nearly stumbled. The other paladins went gray. “Shane?” Jorge began to shake his head. “No. That’s not possible. Not Shane. He was one of us. He would never have bargained with a demon.”
“It’s the only reason we’re alive,” Marguerite said.
Jorge looked at her, all humor and flirtation gone. “Forgive me, madam,” he said. “But all of you should be dead, then.”
“You know, I can probably find a bath somewhere else,” said Davith. Marguerite was beginning to agree with him.
“No,” said Wren quietly. “He’s right. I should never have left Shane there.”
“We had no choice!” Marguerite snapped. “He sacrificed himself, and now we have to go back and get him. As soon as possible.” She faced Jorge, feeling anger starting to rise inside her, the sort of hot red anger that she always tried to avoid. “You’re paladins, you fight demons, bring an army and help us save him.”
“If he went with a demon willingly,” said one of the other paladins, in a voice as cold and clear as broken glass, “then it has taken him as a host. A berserker paladin, with all that entails, ridden by a demon so old and canny that it has eluded us for years.”
“And in that case,” said Jorge softly, “an army might not actually be enough.”