“Give it to me.” He doesn’t reach for the knife. Around his neck a gold cross, and a Builder talisman, a fone, the ancient plasteek fractured, part melted, chased with silver like the church icons. He says God hears him through it, but I sense no connection.
“The thorns wouldn’t let me go,” I tell him. Sir Jan had thrown me into the middle of the briar. The man had slabs of muscle, enough to tear the carriage door off and throw me clear before my uncle’s soldiers caught us. A strong man can throw a child of nine quite a way.
“I know.” Father Gomst wipes the rain from his face, drawing his hand from forehead to chin. “A hook-briar can hold a grown man, Jorg.” If he could truly speak to God he would know the judgment on me and waste no more words.
“I would have saved them.” The thorns hid me in their midst, held me. I had seen little William die, three flashes of lightning giving me the scene in frozen moments. “I would have saved them.” But the lie tastes rotten on my tongue. Would anything have held William from me? Would anything have held my mother back. Anything? All bonds can be slipped, all thorns torn free. It’s simply a matter of pain, and of what you’re prepared to lose.
Greb jabs me and I’m back on the mountain. The stink of him reaches me even through the rain. “Keep moving.” It’s as if he didn’t even see me kill Avery for the same damn thing. Judgment…I’m ready for it.
“Here.” John raises his hand and we all stop. At first I don’t see the arch, and then I do. A doorway rather than an arch, narrow and framed by the silver-steel of the Builders. It stands on a platform of Builder-stone, a poured surface still visible beneath the scatter of rocks. Twenty yards beyond is a pile of bones, an audience of skulls, some fresh, some mouldering, all cleaned of flesh by the dutiful ravens. “What happens if we’re not Select?” Dead men’s grins answer the Nuban’s question.
John draws his sword, an old blade, notched, the iron stained. He goes to stand beyond the arch. The other three men take position around it, and Greb, who took over Avery’s position as Jorg-poker, pulls his knife. “You, big man. You’re first.”
“When you pass through stand still and wait for the judgment. Move and I will kill you, without the mercy of the ritual.” John mimes the killing thrust.
The Nuban looks around at the faces of the Select, blinking away raindrops. He’s thinking of the fight, wondering where his chance will come. He turns to me, making a single fist of his bound hands. “We have lived, Jorg. I’m glad we met.” His voice deep and without waver. He walks to the arch of judgment. His shoulders almost brush the steel on either side.
“Fail—” The arch speaks with a voice that is neither male or female, nor even human.
“Move aside.” John gestures with his blade, contempt on his face. He knows the Nuban is waiting his chance, and gives him none. “You next.” The Nuban is secured by two Select.
I step forward, watching the reflections slide across the Builder-steel as I approach. I wonder what crimes stained the Nuban. Though he is the best of us you cannot live on the road and remain innocent, no matter the circumstance that put you there. With each step I feel the thorns tearing at me. They can’t hold me. But they held me on that night the world changed.
“Judge me.” And I step through. Ice runs down my spine, a cold fire in every vein. Outside the world pauses, the rain halts in its plunge for an instant, or an age. I can’t tell which. Motion returns almost imperceptibly, the drops starting to crawl earthward once more.
“Faaaaaiiiiilllllllu—” The word stretches out for an age, deeper than the Nuban’s rumble. And at the end it’s snatched away as if a knife sliced the throat it came from.
I believe in the arch. I deserved to fail, because I am guilty.
Even so.
“Join your friend.” John waves his sword toward the Nuban. His voice is wrong, a touch too deep.
“The rain is too slow,” I say. The quick-time is fading from me but still the arch’s effects linger. I step back through the arch. God made me quick in any event, God or the Devil, and the Builders made me quicker. This time the arch had no comment, but before the Select can close on me I step through once more.
Again the cold shock of transition. I ignore the arch’s judgment and dive forward, wrapped in quick-time, trailing it with me. John hardly flinches as I sever the ropes around my wrists on the sword he is so kind as to hold steady for me.