Paladin's Faith (The Saint of Steel, #4)
T. Kingfisher
ONE
BREAKING into the Bishop of the White Rat’s office was far more trouble than it had any right to be, and Marguerite was a bit annoyed by it.
To start with, the room where the Bishop saw petitioners was not actually her private office but a suite of rooms set aside specifically for that task, so Marguerite spent three days staking out the wrong room entirely. Secondly, her actual private office did not have windows, but instead a series of ventilation slits that could not have been infiltrated by anything larger than a ferret. (Not that Marguerite wanted to break into a third story office from outside. She had done such things before, but they did not rank among her fondest memories.) Thirdly, the only way to reach the office was to go through the offices of a whole cadre of staff, all of which were fanatically loyal and most of whom worked late.
All of these issues might have been surmountable, if Marguerite could have, say, bribed the cleaning staff, but even that proved difficult. The Temple of the White Rat solved problems. That was their god’s entire purview. They were staffed with lawyers, social workers, healers, and organizers.
Apparently one of the problems they had solved was bribery. You couldn’t bribe a Rat-priest.
(Well, you probably could, but only by offering to donate the money to the poor.) They were all genuinely good people who wanted to make the world a better place, and how obnoxious was that?
You might be able to blackmail one, but Marguerite suspected that the Bishop already knew exactly who had skeletons in their closet and had taken steps to quietly remove the skeleton and brick up the closet door for good measure.
The general cleaning staff was made primarily of people fleeing terrible domestic situations, who were given a place to stay, food, and a wage as long as they needed it, and not even Marguerite was enough of a monster to try to blackmail one of those wounded souls. And the Bishop’s private offices were cleaned by the head of Housekeeping himself, who felt that no one else on earth could be trusted to clean the Bishop’s desk without muddling her papers, and who would have cheerfully slit his own throat if he thought it would make the Bishop’s life easier.
Really, it was enough to give an honest spy heartburn.
After examining the problem from all angles, including the roof of the nearest building outside the
temple compound, Marguerite gave up on her initial approach. She’d hoped to rummage through the Bishop’s files first, but it looked like she was going in cold and hoping for the best.
Her next thought was to break into the Bishop’s bedroom, but that proved equally fruitless. The Bishop had a perfectly normal suite of rooms, guarded by an anteroom full of old women who sat in rocking chairs, knitted and played cards. They were delighted to see visitors, they were happy to chat for hours about their grandchildren, and they would not let a stranger inside the Bishop’s door for love or money. You couldn’t out-argue them and you couldn’t outlast them. If you tried, you were just the entertainment for the day. It was positively fiendish.
A trained guard costs a decent amount of money. A trained guard you can’t bribe costs an in decent amount. Or you could get a dozen old ladies, give them a warm, comfortable room to sit and play cards all day, pay enough that none of them have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, and you’ll still come out ahead.
It was such a Temple of the White Rat solution: Take two problems and use them to fix each other.
Marguerite would have been in awe if she wasn’t ready to scream.
At one point, she actually sank so low as to consider making an appointment like a normal person.
It offended her sense of craftsmanship. It’s also just a bad negotiating tactic. If I start out asking instead of telling, I become a supplicant, not an equal.
Eventually she gave up, disguised herself as one of the cleaners, snuck into the suite where Bishop Beartongue saw petitioners, and hid under a desk for three hours.
At least it was a nice desk. The wood on the underside had been sanded to velvety smoothness and then oiled. Marguerite found herself petting it. She was a sensualist at heart, and she had always had a weakness for interesting textures.
Still, she was glad when all the cleaning sounds had faded and she was able to stretch her legs and stand up. By the time an aide came in to make sure the lamps were lit, Marguerite was sitting behind the desk, in the big chair.
“Tell Bishop Beartongue that her morning appointment is here,” she said.
The aide looked like the sort of person who would correct your grammar while you yelled at him that the building was on fire. “But the Bishop doesn’t have a morning appointment today,” he said.
“She does now. Tell her that Marguerite is here to see her. Yes, that Marguerite.”
“But—”
Marguerite tilted her head back so that she could gaze down her nose at the aide. “The Bishop is a very understanding woman,” she said, in a tone that implied that this was not a trait that Marguerite shared. “I am certain she’ll understand that you, personally, kept her from receiving information that she has been waiting for…eagerly.”
The aide squeaked and fled.
TEN MINUTES LATER, the door opened again. The first person through was a big, mild-faced man with thinning hair and spectacles. This must be the Bishop’s private secretary. If Marguerite’s inquiries were correct, his name was—
“Rigney, you’re blocking the door,” said Bishop Beartongue from behind him.
Bishop Beartongue herself was a tall woman in her early fifties, with short, iron gray hair and the quiet confidence of a woman who knows where the bodies are buried. Her robes were the same material as Rigney’s and the aide’s, with only a narrow scarf-like vestment to indicate her rank.
“I am concerned that she may be an assassin, Your Holiness,” said Rigney. He filled the doorway, not letting her pass, while his eyes traveled over Marguerite. Spectacles or no, Marguerite suspected that he didn’t miss much.
The Bishop sighed. “If she was an assassin, I’d probably already be dead by now, Rigney. The only reason I’m alive is because I’d be so much more trouble for everyone dead.”
Marguerite put her hands flat on the table. “If you’d like to search me for weapons, you may. I’ve got a knife strapped to my left calf and a bodice dagger. I feel underdressed without them, but I’m telling you they’re there as a sign of good faith.”
Rigney narrowed his eyes. The Bishop thumped his shoulder. “There, you see? Gesture of good faith.”