The warden grunted. Slate flapped a hand at the prisoner irritably, face buried in the damp handkerchief.
Eight nuns and novices and two guards. Would you do that if the bars weren’t there?
Oh, probably.
“Wait—” she said, as it finally dawned on her. Possibly the sneezing had knocked some stray memory loose. “Possessed? Eight nuns?” She turned to look at the warder, who nodded glumly. “LordCaliban?”
It had been a nine-day wonder through the capitol—the madness of Lord Caliban, the Dreaming God’s knight-champion, paladin and demonslayer, who had been taken by a demon himself and run mad, killing half the priestesses in his god’s temple in one single bloody morning.
She stared at him.
He inclined his head. “SirCaliban, actually. They stripped me of my title, although they were forced to leave me the knighthood. At your service, I’m sure.”
“I thought they’d hung you!”
This was perhaps not the most tactful thing that Slate had ever said. Judging by the angle of his eyebrows, it was not the most tactful thing he’d ever heard, either.
He rose to his feet. He moved well enough, for a tall man in a box barely six paces wide. He lacked Brenner’s dangerous grace, but knights were in a different line of work than assassins, at least technically.
Same line of work, different approach, I suppose.
“Indeed,” said Sir Caliban. “It was judged that since I was possessed, I was not exactly responsible for my actions, and so I was given…mercy.” He sketched the lines of the small cell with one hand.
“Did they exorcise your demon?”
“The demon is dead.”
“But if you were possessed, why did they lock you up at all?”
He exhaled, a sound a little short of a sigh but rather longer than a snort. “Must I go into it?”
“Do you have anythingelseto do today?”
“Fair enough.” He gave her a small, mocking salute, perhaps in acknowledgement. “Well. Questions of guilt have always been difficult with demons. It was determined that a soul such as mine must have been guilty of…something…to allow the demon entrance. And so…” Again, that quick sketching gesture, marking the boundaries of a severely limited world.
“Were you guilty?”
His eyes glittered, but he didn’t say anything. Slate hadn’t really expected an answer.
She leaned against the bars, moving more slowly. The warder started to say something, and she waved him off.
Moving equally slowly, like a strange cat meeting another in an alley, Caliban approached the bars.
“You’re not from the temple. For a gawker, you’re singularlyill-informed. And you’re standing much too close to the bars for anyone with sense.”
If he expected her to recoil in horror, he was disappointed. He stopped a foot or two away. Slate was fairly sure that he could get an arm through the bars and around her throat if he chose, and equally sure that she could get out of the way if he tried, as long as the warden didn’t do anything stupid, like rush to her defense.
She wondered briefly if she’d eventryto get out of the way. It seemed a matter of academic interest only.
He’d have to make it a quick death, he’ll hardly have time for a long one…
Her hands were wrapped around two of the iron bars. He looked down and very deliberately gripped the bars to either side.
Her fingers were small and scarred and nimble, darkened with ink and spattered with the pale marks of engraver’s acid. Her fingernails were somewhat chewed—a vile habit, but she didn’t expect to live with it much longer.
His hands were much larger but also scarred, old cuts forming a raised and random pattern across the backs. The sleeves of the prisoner’s tunic were too short for him, and when she followed his wrists upward, she could see the thick band of muscle across each forearm.
Swordsman, then. God’s teeth and toenails, I believe it actuallyisLord Caliban.
