Bernard lets out a heavy breath. “That’s good. We’ll wait here until they catch up, then. I’m excited for this guy to be someone else’s problem.” He cocks his thumb back towards the warded carriage.
Karis runs his hand through his bangs. “Need anything else, sir?” The words are polite; the tone isn’t. He can’t help it.
But Bernard doesn’t seem to notice his sarcasm. “Go help the rest of the squires move everyone in. The Maizans gave us enough rooms for the night. Sir Dace will tell you what to do.”
“Right away, sir,” Karis says, then runs off to make himself scarce. He’ll find Dace later. First, he has someone to talk to, if he can avoid any more interruptions.
He walks briskly towards the entrance to the barracks, then veers around the corner of the building. A graveled path leads through another side garden, and Karis appreciates the thick hedges and flowering trees not for their beauty but for their privacy. He finds a stone bench in a patch of sunlight and slumps down on it. Warm light soaks into his bare hands.
He calls out silently,I swear, you are the neediest god. What is it now?
Radiant Vara’s answer is colored with divine amusement. Mostpeople would be grateful for my counsel, you know.
Then talk to them instead,Karis thinks back. He doesn’t expect an answer to that, though. Vara never answers when Karis asks why he doesn’t talk to other paladins or priests directly. There are a lot of topics Vara never answers—why he never talks in the Bright Cathedral, whether it’s legal or moral to make Karis work dinner shifts on holy days, how to flirt with men. Karis likes to ask anyway.Fine, fine. Your noble and shiny graciousness, how can this humble servant do your bidding today?
There’s a hum in the back of his mind. Karis looks down at his hands, his skin seeming to glow in the sunlight. Every freckle is starkly outlined. The edges of his nails are sharply white. His veins are blue beneath the skin. The sunlight brightens until his eyes sting.
Vara says,Talk to the thief tonight.
“Ronan?” Karis asks out loud, startled. “Why?”
Vara doesn’t answer, and merely says,Go alone.
The afternoon dims to ordinary brightness, and Vara’s voice recedes. Karis sits there stunned for a moment, then flees from the side garden before anyone comes to look for him.
?
CHAPTER TWO
RONAN
The last time Ronan was in a Harvest Lord church, he was stealing the Scepter of Maiza.
That was an easy job. Quick in and out, no blood, no fuss. Nobody even realized the relic was gone until a week had passed, by which point it was already safely hidden in a telliron box in the Locksmiths’ vault. Of course, the Scepter of Maiza was the first of the Charaini holy relics they stole. Security on the others increased exponentially after that.
Now, Ronan’s bound in gold-embossed iron cuffs, marching through a back hallway with a Varan paladin at each arm and Maizan priests in front and behind. And he doesn’t want to break into the church; he wants to breakout. The copper coin in his pocket burns temptingly, and he has a safe house in Marrick, just a few city blocks away. But it isn’t time yet.
The Varan’s haven’t blindfolded him today, so he keeps careful track of doors and directions as they move deeper into the church. They take one flight of stairs down to a dimly lit hallway with a row of closed doors. Lamps hang in copper sconces shaped like flowering vines along the walls. It’s pretty, for a prison.
“You could have just kept me in the cart overnight,” Ronan tells his paladin escorts when they stop at the last door to the left. “You didn’t need to make the priests clear out a guest room.”
“Don’t worry, we told them not to tidy up,” says the one to his right. Dace.
“Don’t talk to him,” says the one to his left. Bernard.
“In here,” says the mousey little priest in front, unlocking the heavy wooden door. There’s an iron grate at eye level, and when the door swings out, the interior of the room is bare. Stone walls, stone floor, a rough wooden cot and a pail under it. Metal rings hang at intervals along the walls.
What use is a prison to the Harvest Lord?
The thought is rhetorical. Ronan has long since learned that Charaini churches are built more for their religions than their gods. These self-righteous priests and paladins would never believe that Ronan is doing more for their gods than they ever will. Their leaders are the ones imprisoning Radiant Vara and Lord Maiza, Cold Sephine and Ka Dravos and Songbird. Ronan is the one trying to free them.
A powerful pang of homesickness strikes him. He misses Praia. The chaos of worship, the magic in the air. The dancing lanterns of the Trickster’s altar in his teacher’s labyrinth workshop. The quality of magic, instead of the quantity.
Forcing the homesickness away, he stumbles obligingly as Bernard and Dace shove him into the cell. They just might be dumb enough to believe his show of weakness.
“Nice place,” Ronan says. “Cozy.”
None of them takes the bait this time, which is progress. After weeks on the road, his captors are finally getting bored of him. If what he heard while in the cart earlier is correct, Edith Tanner returns in a day. That makes this the perfect time to escape, while their guard is down and the boss is still gone, and a safe house waiting nearby. All he needs is the right opportunity.