“He’s a complete wreck,” said Brenner, displaying his grasp of the obvious. The caterpillars slammed together over his nose.
“Shut up, Brenner,” said Slate tiredly. “And sit down, too. The poor man’s been in a cell for months, he’s hardly at his best. You know how people get when they’ve been on the inside for too long. Some rest and decent food, and he’ll be fine.”
“I just don’t seewhy,” said Brenner. “Do you have some kind of armor fetish you never mentioned before?”
A whining assassin. Caliban had seen everything now.
“I had a feeling, okay?”
Brenner turned away from his quarry and toward Slate. Caliban felt a shameful flush of relief that the man was leaving him alone, and an immediate twinge of guilt. The assassin looked half againas large as Slate, and he descended on her like a stooping hawk.
Caliban took a step forward, despite himself. He had thought that he had slaughtered chivalry on that red morning four months ago, but perhaps there was a little left after all.
Slate seemed unimpressed. She waved Brenner off with a backhanded gesture, a slap at the air, and stalked over to the room’s narrow window. “Relax, Brenner.”
“Tell me why!”
“I told you! I had a feeling!”
“If you think I’m traipsing over half the countryside with a bloodyknight-errantbased on some kind of woman’s intuition—”
She growled, turned around, and planted a hand in the middle of the assassin’s chest. She pushed. He fell back a step, probably out of courtesy. “Afeeling, you idiot!”
Brenner opened his mouth, shut it again, and said, in a rather different tone, “Oh.”
“Yes.”
“Like that one time—”
“Yes.”
“With the sneezing—”
“Yes.”
He folded his arms and leaned against the wall, looking deflated. “You should’ve said.”
“I thought I did!”
There was some shared knowledge here that was lost on Caliban. He found that he didn’t care. The world was starting to spin again. He looked around for another chair, found one in front of the fire, and sat down. The world slowed, jerking rather than spinning. He put his face in his hands.
“All right,” said Brenner, behind him, “if that’s the way it is. I still think—well, never mind.”
“I’m not a knight-errant,” someone said. Caliban realized after a moment that it had been him. He dropped his hands.
“What?” Brenner turned around.
“I’m not a knight-errant. Errants are questing knights. I don’t. Didn’t.” He cleared his throat.
Brenner’s eyebrows didn’t know whether to pull down in a scowl or go up in astonishment. The caterpillars did a complicated jig across his forehead instead.
“I was a paladin, actually. A holy champion of the Dreaming God. I killed demons. No questing.” It sounded strange to say it. It seemed so unlikely now. He had once kept vigils in white marble halls, his nostrils full of the scent of incense and holiness. It was a long way from this small, cramped room over an inn, and the only thing he could smell were cheap candles and his own sweat.
He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s a minor theological difference, I grant you.”
The assassin stared at him then swung around and stared at Slate, who spread her hands helplessly.
There was a silence, except for the rustling of cloth as the other two shifted their feet. Then a loud bark of male laughter rang by his ear.
