They’ll be so very glad to see me. One more loose end to tie off. Messily.
For all her fatalism, it had not truly occurred to her that the Clockwork Boys might get her beforehand.
Heh. What everybody told mewasthe great threat actuallyisthe great threat. Who knew?
“How the hell do we fight something like that?” asked Brenner.
Nobody had to ask what he meant.
“You don’t,” said Caliban. “You run, unless you have an army with you.”
“They do not float,” offered Learned Edmund. “Most of those who escape, I am told, have been able to get into deep water. They walk along the bottom unharmed, but they cannot reach you if you swim.”
“That won’t work for me,” said Caliban, sounding more clipped than usual.
“You can’t swim?” asked Slate, bemused.
He did not meet her eyes, which was strange. “I do not do well with deep water.”
“An exorcist afraid of drowning,” said Brenner. “There’s irony for you.” Caliban ignored him.
“I said, it’s ironic that an exor—”
“I heard you.”
“You two stop bickering or I’ll scream bloody murder and call the whole lot of them down to put me out of my misery.”
“That seems excessive,” said Learned Edmund.
“Does it? Does it really?”
Learned Edmund fiddled with the reins in front of him and said nothing, which was the way that Slate liked it.
For Caliban, the Clockwork Boys had been less revelation than confirmation. He was a temple knight, not a soldier, but he had seen siege engines before. The Clockwork Boys were living siege engines. Monstrous, like no construct of wood and metal that he had ever seen, but not profoundly shocking.
What had shocked him far more was Slate and Brenner.
If the Clockwork Boys had not come down the road when they did, he would have probably pulled his sword on the assassin. The man’s gloved hands had literally been around Slate’s neck.
And then she had ordered Caliban to stand down and the Clockwork Boys had gone stomping by and he had realized that the forger and the assassin shared some knowledge he didn’t.
If it had been left up to Caliban, they would all be crushed under clockwork by now.
Slate knew that. Slate called on the assassin to help her, not me.
Because she had trusted Brenner to do what needed to be done, and not Caliban. And she had been right to do so.
In his heart of hearts, he had been feeling superior to the two of them. Not just because they could not ride horses worth a damn, but because he was a knight and they were criminals. Slate was in command, but Caliban had always known that if she floundered, he could step in and lead.
And if I had just then, I would have killed us all.
Worse, even as he’d been silently judging the forger and the assassin for being what they were, it wasSlatewho had been willing to sacrifice herself to save the rest of them. Slate who’d been begging the assassin to keep her from giving them away to the enemy.
All the platitudes he’d mouthed over the years about self-sacrifice, and here he was being shown up by a forger who’d been arrested for treason.
As for Brenner…well. He still didn’t know what to think of Brenner. The assassin was a weapon and Slate clearly had no qualms about using him as such. Even on herself.
Caliban rode his horse close beside Slate’s and could hear the rasp as she inhaled. He listened to it like a penance.
