Marguerite had to stop and think about that one. Was there a reason? Granted, slaying demons wasn’t quiet or subtle, but any sensible operative would be running in the other direction. Demons weren’t profitable for anybody. Frankly, if we’re tracking down demons, the Sail will be trying to get as far away from us as possible. And nobody can predict where they’ll show up, and if we’re moving from temple to temple, the Sail sure can’t buy off anyone there.
“Good god,” she said. “That might actually work.”
Shane stared intently into her face for a moment, and then, to her surprise, began to laugh.
“What? What’s so funny?”
“Sorry,” he said, immediately getting himself under control. “I’m sorry.”
“You’ll be really sorry if you don’t tell me why you were laughing.”
His lips were twitching and he couldn’t quite meet her eyes. “It’s just that you looked like someone had just hit you with a board. And I thought, oh hey, that must be how I look nearly all the time…”
Marguerite dug her elbow into his ribs. “Very funny. And how are you going to explain to the temple here that you have to go roam about the countryside with no forwarding address?”
“I thought I’d just tell them.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Seriously?”
Shane rubbed the back of his neck. “I realize I’m not as good at this as you are, but I was an avatar of the god for a minute or two, and they’re all still a little worried about that. But that won’t last forever. Every time I go over to the Dreaming God’s temple, I get the feeling that a lot of the priests would like me to go away. Not die, you understand. Just go be someone else’s problem. Does that make sense?”
“That makes a lot of sense, actually. We might make an operative of you yet.”
He made a hasty warding gesture and Marguerite laughed. The lump in her throat had gone, and left her feeling strangely light. Maybe she didn’t have to be noble and self-sacrificing after all. “I did
promise to do something about their intelligence network. But are you sure? Really sure? I know you don’t always approve of everything I do.”
He looked uncomfortable, and she suspected that he was thinking of Maltrevor. “Who am I to approve or disapprove?”
“You’re the man I love, for one thing. And you’re the only man I’ve ever known who makes me feel safe.”
He wrapped his arms around her, but not before she caught sight of the smile spreading across his face.
“We’ll work something out,” he said. “I’m told you’re a master negotiator.”
She leaned against him, feeling safe, blessedly safe, like she felt nowhere else. Thinking of how he looked, reading by rushlight, with spectacles perched on the tip of his nose, and how he felt in her arms, wrists bound by a fragile length of thread.
“If you’re sure,” she said. “But swear to me that you’ll tell me if something’s wrong. You won’t just suffer in martyred silence. Because I love you, and I want this to work.”
“I’ll tell you,” he said. “I love you, and I want it to work, too.” And he said it in the voice, so she believed him.
EPILOGUE
BISHOP BEARTONGUE LEANED on the upper railing of the warehouse, watching the work going on below. A machine the size of a small room was being slowly assembled on the floor of the warehouse, by a dozen harried-looking apprentices and two acolytes of the Forge God. Ashes Magnus sat on a chair in the center of the chaos, directing the streams of activity and occasionally shouting things like, “No, other way ’round!” and “If you hook that up there, your eyebrows won’t grow back in a hurry, my lad!”
“So you’re building it,” said Rigney, her assistant, coming to stand beside her. “I wasn’t actually sure that you would.”
“Neither was I,” Beartongue admitted.
“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.
<The desert, then?>
“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.
<I have never formed an opinion.>
“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.”
<We are not like most people> 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.