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Penric walked brusquely down the hill toward the harbor. The terse message from his brother-in-law said that he was needed in his capacity as a translator and “possibly more,” but Adelis hadn’t specified what he meant by this. As a sorcerer? As someone Sighted? As a trusted family member? He’d find out when he arrived, apparently. Adelis had sailed out with the Duke’s fleet some days earlier for maneuvers, with a primary goal being clearing the sea near Orbas of pirates. They weren’t necessarily intending to battle pirates — the Duke’s hope was that the show of force would encourage them to hastily depart Orban waters.
From the view above the harbor, it looked as if a fight had found them: several of the Orban ships were damaged, and they also had a number of what looked like Rathnattan pirate ships in tow, all much the worse for wear. On shore, Penric saw Adelis and his second-in-command standing with two men. Two strangers, he corrected himself; one of them might actually be a woman. The other was clearly a man, though very young. He had an unkempt beard, and stood with his head bowed.
“Learned,” Adelis greeted him. “The pirates had a number of prisoners. These two don’t speak Cedonian, or Roknari, or any other language we had on board.”
Penric looked them over. The one of indeterminate gender looked over Penric’s vestments and Penric thought he saw a look of intense relief settle over them. They said something in a language Penric did not recognize.
Penric tried out the languages he knew, and when he tried Wealdean the person said, “Oh, thank the gods. Yes, I speak that one.”
“Welcome to Orbas,” Penric said. “I am Learned Penric, of the Bastard’s Order.”
“I am Learned Zale, also of what you would call the Bastard’s Order, though for obvious reasons I kept that concealed during our sojourn with the Roknari. This is Dimitri, Knight of the Circle of Justice.”
“How did you find yourselves here?”
“That is a very long story,” Learned Zale said.
Penric glanced over at Adelis. “I’d like to take these two up to the chapterhouse.” Adelis waved permission. “It’s a bit of a walk,” he warned the two newcomers, and tried to get a look at the face of the man with bowed head. “Are you feeling well enough for that?”
“Thank you for your concern, Learned,” the man said, in heavily accented Wealdean, not raising his head. “I will be fine. There’s nothing wrong with my legs.”
Penric glanced at Zale, who gave him a half-shrug as if to say, yes, that would be part of the very long story, better told elsewhere.
“I’ll lead the way, then,” Penric said, and did.
❧
Learned Sioann had hosted far stranger arrivals than Zale and Dimitri; she insisted that Penric allow both their guests the opportunity to wash up and put on some borrowed clothes. She spoke a little Wealdian, and Penric listened with curiosity as Sioann lowered her voice to speak to Zale. “Learned Zale, I beg your pardon for my confusion here, but I am not sure what style of clothing to provide for you.”
“I am a Learned Divine of your Order — in a sense — and not a sorcerer.” Zale hesitated just a moment longer and then added, “I will wear the robes in the masculine style, although I consider myself neither a man nor a woman.”
“I see,” Sioann said, with a friendly smile. Penric thought she was as baffled by the newcomer as Penric, but their god was, after all, the god of all sorts of people who did not fit neatly into the categories offered by the rest of society.. “One of the dedicats will bring them up.” She turned smoothly to Dimitri. “And you, my friend…?”
“Any men’s garments will do. It doesn’t matter.”
One of the chapterhouse sitting rooms had been laid out with tea and food: dried apricots, smoked fish, fresh bread, and the ever-present olives. The two strangers fell gladly on it when they came back downstairs, now clean and dressed in fresh clothing, even eating the olives, which Penric knew were something of an acquired taste for foreign visitors to this part of the world.
Finally Zale sat back in their chair with a cup of the hot tea. “The White God’s blessings upon all of you. I’m sure you can imagine what a relief it is to be welcomed here.”
“I was at one point captured by pirates myself,” Penric said.
“Ah! So you don’t even need to imagine it. Is that how you first came here?”
“No…” Penric gave an abbreviated version of his sojourn on Lantihera, and the destruction he and Desdemona had left in their wake, introducing Desdemona as he went. Zale seemed heartily amused by the whole story. Even Dimitri’s lips quirked, though he listened mostly silently.
“So,” Penric said. “You mentioned you had a story of your own.”
“Indeed. So: we are from Astli, which is on the far south side of the Weald.”
“Are you Ice Islanders?”
“No. Astli is not an island, but clings to the side of the coastline that faces the great cold sea of the far south. Our people tend to alternate between trading with the Ice Islanders, and fighting them off as best we can. We are far enough into the wilds that we were never part of the Cedonian empire. Or conquered by the Great Audar.”
“I would be greatly interested in hearing more about your history and language,” Penric said. Not now, Penric, let them finish their story! Desdemona said, and he grimaced a little. “Later,” he added.
Zale’s lips quirked. “I had never heard of — Orbas, is that correct? — prior to being brought to your shores. Perhaps we can exchange knowledge. For now, I will not bore you with a long political saga: the important thing is, there are political difficulties, as always, and I was sent with a group of Astlii to negotiate a treaty with Kven, which is one of the Ice Islands.”
“Are you a diplomat, then?”
Zale shrugged. “Not by training, not exactly. Ordinarily I help people with contracts and occasionally defend them against criminal accusations.”
“That is an unusual occupation for a Learned of the Bastard.”
“Not in Astli. There, those who sit in judgement are sworn to the God you know as the Father, but those who speak for the accused are sworn to the White God.”
“I see.”
“I was sent along on the grounds that a treaty is at its heart a contract, I am familiar with contracts, and most importantly, I was available. Officially, I was merely an advisor; the person in charge of the negotiation was the third son of the ruler of Astli. I guess you would call him a Duke.”
Next to them, Dimitri made a faint noise, like a swallowed sob.
“Things went — hmm. I hold out hope that one of the other ambassadors might have done better. Things did not go particularly well. We left in a hurry, without regard for weather, and were caught in a storm and blown far off course, in the opposite direction from home. We were hoping to limp to safety, but instead we encountered pirates, while in no shape to fight them off.”
“They brought you all the way from the Ice Islands?” Well, something similar had happened to Otta’s mother, so perhaps he should not be so surprised.
“It was a long and complicated journey. I believe that the Duke’s son still lives, but I was seriously ill when we were separated. Dimitri was allowed to stay with me.”
“My brothers-in-arms were not,” Dimitri said. The self-loathing in his voice was clearly audible even in his halting Wealdean.
“For the last time, Dimitri, you were all ordered to lay down your weapons and surrender. We were at sea; the captain had been killed by the pirates; we were not going to be able to escape.”
"As you say," Dimitri said, his voice faint.
Zale sighed and looked back at Penric. “Dimitri is a member of a Militant Holy Order,” they explained. “The Knights of the Circle of Justice can, at times, answer solely to their God.”
“Our God guides our sword,” Dimitri said, looking up for the first time. He had blue eyes similar in color to Penric’s, which were startling to see in Orbas. “And our steps.”
“Are you saying that you are all Saints of the Father?” Desdemona asked, clearly startled. If there’d been any hint of the Father in the room, she perhaps would not have fully retreated, but she certainly would have known, and Penric with her.
“Not anymore,” Dimitri said, and dropped his head.
“I’ve learned in my travels that the Circle of Justice is unique to Astli,” Zale said. “They’re both mounted soldiers and a holy order, devoted to the Father. All of them are God-touched. Usually.”
Sight, please, Penric asked Des, and turned his gaze on Dimitri. The man’s soul was roiled with conflict and grief, and bore odd scars, but no sign of any God.
“He has withdrawn His presence from me,” Dimitri said, his voice almost inaudible. “Because I am no longer a worthy vessel for Him.”
What on earth does this boy think he did? Desdemona asked, perplexed.
“So — you were captured by pirates, you fell ill,” Penric said. “Dimitri, were you also ill, is that why you were left behind?”
“I begged,” he said. “I told them no one would ransom me, and I begged to be sold with Learned Zale, because without care I thought they’d simply die.”
“You were right,” Zale said. “And I greatly appreciate the fact that you kept me alive.”
“So then they took my brothers away, and left me with Zale. And when I said my prayers the next morning, the God had departed.”
Fascinating, Desdemona said.
Why do you say that? I mean, it is fascinating, you’re correct.
Have you heard of anything like this? Penric asked.
Yes, stories, occasionally. Desdemona spoke in Ruchia’s voice, now. There was a traveler who claimed he’d met such an Order. Ruchia was skeptical. I am skeptical now, though the man’s pain is real enough.
“Well. It sounds as if at present, you need food and shelter, which the chapterhouse can provide to both of you.” Penric briefly wondered if Dimitri would prefer to seek out the chapterhouse of the Father’s Order, then dismissed the thought. “Once you’ve had the opportunity to rest, we can discuss how best to help you return to your homeland.”
Dimitri started to shake his head and was overborne by Zale. “Dimitri, I order you to rest,” Zale said. “We will discuss what to do next once you have had at least several days of it. In the meantime, we accept your hospitality, Learned Penric, and we thank you for it.”
❧
Sioann arranged for beds for the two strangers, and started the process of sending a message back to Astli to explain what had happened, though even via the network of Bastard’s chapterhouses, it would take a long time for the message to either cross the Weald or make its way by sea. Sioann had sent messages by both means, in the hopes that one would arrive eventually.
His most urgent duties to the travelers discharged, Penric walked across Vilnoc to the chapterhouse of the Father’s Order. His duties rarely brought him in the orbit of the Father’s servants, but the porter recognized him immediately and ushered him into a sitting room. He was presented with tea and a tray of snacks nearly identical to the tray of snacks offered by the Bastard’s hospitality to his strays. The head of the Father’s Order in Vilnoc, Learned Johan, arrived a few minutes later. Johan was a middle-aged man cut from much the same cloth as Sioann: an able administrator and devoted servant of his God who had risen to a position that offered a great deal of responsibility and much less power than people tended to imagine.
“Learned Penric,” he said. “What brings you to the Father’s door?”
“I was hoping to borrow your library, but I thought I’d start by asking you for any information you might know. Have you ever heard of the Order of the Knights of Justice?”
Johan sat down and poured a cup of tea for himself. “I don’t recognize the name.”
Penric described his two arrivals, and the story Zale had told him. “You’ll probably want to pass word through your own chapterhouses about Dimitri, but I didn’t want to bring him here quite yet, he seemed … too distressed.”
“Wise.” Johan leaned back, turning his teacup in his hands. “I think I have heard of this Order before, but their name was translated differently — they were called the Riders of the Law.”
“Ah.”
“And we do have a book that mentions them; I’ve seen it. Wait here and I’ll get it for you.”
❧
Before the initiate may begin his period of study, he must first be questioned by a senior Rider, who will seek with the help of his God to discern whether the initiate is fit for such duty. The initiate must be pure of heart, desiring only to serve the Lawgiver Divine, willing to lay down his life at need. Not only to die for the God but also to live for the God, for sometimes that is the harder task. If the God asks of him his sword, he will bring his sword; if the God asks of him his pen, he will bring his pen; if the God asks of him his broom and scrub-brush, he will clean the floors on his knees as willingly as he would fight to the death.
When an initiate is found fit, he will begin his period of study. If he knows not how to read, he must be taught: to read, to write, to calculate numbers to some complexity. He will learn to ride, for he will be a Rider, hastening both to battle and to the aid of others, and he will also learn to fight with sword and spear, and whatever other weapons the Grand Master of the Order deems needed.
Likewise he will learn how to care for his clothes: if he knows not how to stitch, he must be taught to stitch. Also to knit and spin, to scrub a dish, to cook a meal. For the Riders must not expect to be served, but to serve.
When all is complete and the Grand Master of the Order deems him fit, he will keep a vigil for three days with water but no food. During this time he will not sleep, but will stand or kneel before the altar of the Lawgiver. He will keep this vigil alone. At midnight on the third day, for such an hour is sacred to all the Gods but especially the Lawgiver who sees even in the darkest dark, the Grand Master of the Order will come to him and offer him the Sword of Justice and Truth, which is sacred to Order, and upon that Sword the initiate will lay his hands.
He will kneel, and lay his hands upon that blessed artifact, and he will ask the God to live in him and guide him. And the God will accept him, yea or nay. If the God’s answer be nay, the initiate may remain as a servant of the Order, or he may leave, the choice is his. If the God’s answer be yea, he will be invited to take the holy oath of the Order. The oath is not to any mortal power but to the God alone and he will swear obedience, fidelity, and truthfulness at all times, for the truth is sacred to the Lawgiver.
❧
“An entire Order of Sainted Knights,” Penric said, torn between awe and skepticism.
“And do I understand that you have one staying at your chapterhouse?” Johan said, a little startled.
“Yes, although he says the God has withdrawn His presence. And I would be able to see it, if he were a Saint — as could any Temple sensitive. Is that something you’ve heard of?”
“Hm. Not in the case of this Order, specifically. I have never met one of these Riders. But I have met two men who once were saints, and then were saints no longer.”
Penric made an encouraging sound. Desdemona, much though she disliked Gods, was similarly riveted.
“There are saints who are chosen for a lifelong task — the saints of the Bastard, for example, who remove stray demons, which are in the keeping of your order. In my order, there is the occasional saint who is granted the gift from the Father of knowing whether people speak lies, or the truth.” He looked into his tea for a moment, then took a sip. “There are also saints who are chosen for a single task. Such saints might be granted miraculous gifts, or they might not. When the task is completed, the God withdraws.” He paused, then added, “Or if the task is bungled beyond all repair, the God might withdraw then, too.”
“Of which variety were the two you have met?”
“One of each. Both Saints of the Father. The first I met was a man who had been given a task by the Father that had brought him to Thasalon when I was a new dedicat there.” He settled back in his chair, looking both deeply reflective and a bit uncomfortable. “This was …I assume you know a bit of Thasalon’s recent political history. This was just before the civil war a few decades back, the one that brought the old emperor to power. I believe the saint’s task was related, though I didn’t know exactly what it involved. He came to the chapterhouse in Thasalon, seeking shelter and aid. I was young but was trusted not to gossip, and I was sent to wait upon the saint, to provide for his needs while he stayed with us.”
“I see.”
“He looked very ordinary, to my untutored — and extremely young — eyes. No one told me that he was a saint, just that he was a traveler of some importance and I should give him whatever he asked for. He asked for food and fresh clothes, and then he asked for information. I didn’t have any of the answers he needed, but I knew who would, which turned out to be the most helpful response under the circumstances.”
“I quite expect it was.”
“At any rate, I did my best, and so did he. His task was completed, his gift taken back. My superiors decided it would be best if both of us left Cedonia, and sent us by ship to Orbas, which is how I came to live here. The former saint seemed entirely at peace with all of it. He stayed in Orbas for a year or two, then left for Lodi. I haven’t heard from him since. He did find me to bid goodbye before he left. He had put in a good word for me with my superiors; I think my position here today is due in part to those events, despite my extremely tangential involvement.”
“Tangential, you say,” Desdemona said. “But even as a very young man, you knew exactly who the Saint needed to speak with, and brought them together.”
“Well, yes.” Johan’s eyes glinted with faint amusement. “Perhaps not entirely tangential.”
“So, the other former saint,” Penric prompted.
“The other former saint … this was about fifteen years ago now. No, fourteen. I was a Learned Divine by then, but not running the chapterhouse yet. There was a judge in Dogrita who was god-touched, and could sometimes know whether people were telling the truth. Apparently it wasn’t all the time.” Johan signed, his face troubled. “He was growing old, and one day was struck down by apoplexy. He survived it, but the Father withdrew His presence and His gift. That was hard for him — very hard. He would have had to give up his judge’s bench in any case as he lost the ability to speak clearly, and some days could not understand what people were saying. He died a few months later, and the Father took him up. There was a physician who thought perhaps it was not quite that the God withdrew from him, and more that his brain was like a damaged vessel that could no longer hold the God, as a cracked pot cannot hold water. You mentioned that the two men were ill; did they both have fevers? A very high fever can be much like a blow to the head, or so I’ve heard.”
“Learned Zale, the Divine of the Bastard, had a fever. I don’t think Dimitri did.” Penric pondered this for a moment. Would it even be a comfort to Dimitri, to hear that he’d become a cracked, imperfect vessel? Possibly, if the alternative was that he’d sinned so gravely as to lose his God entirely. “Have you ever heard of a Saint who lost their God through sin?”
“I have not,” Johan said. “There were moments, when the stricken former saint said so, to me. That he felt he had been punished, and he didn’t know why. Apoplexies fall upon good and evil people alike, though.”
“I don’t believe that any illness is a punishment,” Penric said. “And his God took him up, in the end, which also suggests he was not disdained.”
“Exactly.”
“Is there…” Penric pondered a bit more. “Even if saints do so rarely, surely there are people sworn to the Father who violate their oaths, from time to time. How does the Order handle this?”
“It depends, of course, on how they violated it. If a judge is found to be taking bribes, for instance, they would be expelled permanently from the Order and turned over to the civil authorities for punishment, as such corruption is both an affront to the Father and a crime.”
“That makes sense,” Penric said.
“On the other hand, if someone sworn to the Father were dishonest in a more trivial way, in a way that did harm but did not create distrust in the very concept of justice, as corruption does — there is a process of penitence. Surely your Order has something similar?”
Penric shrugged. “The Bastard is a very flexible god.”
“I see. Well, in the Father’s Order, a person who has fallen short of his oaths in a shameful yet non-catastrophic way can perform a ritual expiation. It involves fasting, a vigil through the night, a penitential act prescribed by another from the Order, and then a renewal of the vow that was stained.”
“Perhaps the Knights — the Riders — have something similar.”
“I see no reason he could not go through such a rite, if it comforted him. Do you know why his God withdrew from him?”
“No. I don’t think he does, either.”
“In any case, it sounds as though he’s in no shape to fast from food. Perhaps when he’s a bit recovered, we might consider it.” As Learned Johan saw Penric out, he added, “There may be more about the Knights in our library; I will see what our archivist can dig up.”
Do you think Dimitri is truly a failed saint, Pen? Desdemona asked as he walked home.
I think he’s a failed something, Penric replied. And he certainly sees himself as damaged. Perhaps something like this rite will help him to feel forgiven by his God.
❧
Penric returned to the Bastard’s chapterhouse the next day and found Zale much recovered, Dimitri still in bed.
“I’m not worried about him yet,” Zale said. “He’s been under a great deal of strain, and a day in bed is probably the best thing for him. Maybe even two days in bed. If he’s still in bed the day after tomorrow, I will begin to worry.”
“Surely both of you were under a great deal of strain,” Penric said.
“Oh, definitely,” Zale said. “But I’m not any sort of fighter. All I could do was keep my head down and hope no one somehow guessed I was a Divine of the White God. But if that had happened, all I had to do about it was die. Dimitri would have had to worry about defending me, somehow.”
Penric found himself liking this odd Divine. “Would you like a tour of the neighborhood? The sights in Orbas are not, sadly, as notable as the sights of Great Thasalon.”
Zale accepted, and they went for a walk around the area. “Can you explain to me what you meant when you said Dimitri was of an Order of the God we call the Father?”
“Ah, indeed. Yes. In Astli, we are fellow Quintarians — we worship five gods, with no nonsense about the White God being a demon — but we name them, and I believe perceive them, somewhat differently. The God you call the Mother of Summer, we call the Great Bird. The God you call the Father of Winter, we call the Stag, or the Night Stag. The God you call the Daughter of Spring, we call the River Otter, and the God you call the Son of Autumn, we call the Hare. Finally there is the Bastard: the White Rat, or simply the White God.”
Penric was fascinated. “Do you associate the Night Stag with justice, truth, and death in its time?”
“We do, although in general we assign tasks to the gods with rather less rigor than you.”
“Do you do the rite of the animals at funerals?”
“Oh, yes. Actually, I’ve been wondering about that. Of course, all of our gods are associated with an animal, and that isn’t the case for you — how do you know which animal represents each god?”
Penric ended up taking Zale on a tour of the sacred stables at the central Vilnoc Temple. Zale admired the raven that was the sacred animal of the Bastard at funerals at the Temple, and fed the bird a hard-boiled egg.
“Do your people practice shamanism, with Great Beasts?” Penric asked.
“As they do in the Weald? There are stories that our ancestors did, but the practice died out at some point and has not returned.”
“I found some information on Dimitri’s Order,” Penric said. “And there’s a rite of expiation for members of the Father’s Order who feel the need for forgiveness, which might help him.”
“Well, it can’t hurt,” Zale said, not sounding terribly optimistic. “Or at least, it can’t hurt much. A fast and an overnight vigil wouldn’t be very good for him, at this point, and he’ll undoubtedly want to rush it.” They left the stable and continued their stroll around Vilnoc.
“How well do you know Dimitri? Or how well did you know him before your adventure together, and before he lost his god?”
“Not well. The Order is somewhat secretive, even in Astli, but they sent six of their Knights to act as entourage and bodyguards for Lord Indrek and myself.”
“It sounded as though the god’s presence disappeared along with the other members of his Order.”
“Yes, that’s my impression as well. To be clear, I was not in any condition to make a close observation in the moment; I was delirious with fever at the time. Dimitri was able to persuade the Roknari to let him stay by my side, and he was able to persuade me to drink enough water to remain alive, so I’m very grateful to him. He seemed less like a man gut-stabbed when he had something to do that he regarded as a duty. Now that we’re safe, I wonder if it was only the pressure of our captivity that was keeping him in one piece.”
There was a hill that rose up to an overlook, with a nice view of the city; Penric led Zale to the top, pausing to let Zale catch their breath. They could see the harbor, a boat with full sale heading out to sea.
“Did Dimitri have a fever as well?” Penric asked.
“No. He was a little ill, but not seriously, from what I understand.”
So it wasn’t that his brain got cooked, Desdemona put in.
“Do you know if he might have sustained a blow to the head, perhaps when you were taken prisoner, or while protecting you?”
Zale raised their eyebrows. “Not that he mentioned to me, but then, it’s possible he wouldn’t have. Why?”
They’d reached the top of the hill: there was a small marble pavilion that was a shrine to the Daughter, and also had a bench on which visitors could sit and survey the town below. Penric settled on the bench, Zale beside him, and related the story of the saint with apoplexy.
Zale mulled that over. “When I recovered, I saw no bruise and no blood, and we had no water to spare for washing for quite some time. So it’s possible, but unlikely. Head wounds tend to bleed quite a bit.”
“Do you believe that the God withdrew from him due to him committing some sin?”
Zale let out a deep sigh. “No,” they admitted. “I don’t believe that’s what happened, but I also don’t know how else to explain it.”
“How certain are you that his Order is truly God-touched? You’re not Sighted, are you?”
“No, but we do have Sorcerers in Astli, and the occasional other saint does turn up. If the Order were not God-touched, surely someone with the Sight would have mentioned that to the rest of us by now.”
Our friend raises a fair point, Desdemona said, and then seized Penric’s mouth to say, “Perhaps time, and sleep, and food will help.”
“They certainly can’t make things any worse,” Zale said.
❧
Three days passed, and Dimitri had risen from his bed, but become, if anything, even more withdrawn.
This is a man who needs spiritual counsel, Desdemona said.
Perhaps I should send for Learned Johan.
Learned, Desdemona said, her tone exasperated even in silent speech, right now the Father’s Order represents failure to that man. Also, Johan doesn’t speak Wealdean. And also, it might just be the counsel of your god that man needs just now.
Penric sat down, finally, by Dimitri’s bedside. He’d learned enough of the language from Zale that he was able to start out in Astlii: “My friend, your heart is heavy. I would bear some of your burdens, if you would share them.” He switched to Wealdean. “You must talk to someone, Dimitri. I can send for a Divine of one of the other Gods if you’d prefer.”
“There’s nothing to say,” Dimitri said.
“You seem to believe that you have committed some unforgivable sin, but nothing Learned Zale has told me about your sojourn with the pirates suggests sin to me. You bravely chose exile with Zale, and nursed Zale back to health. Do you think the Father — the Night Stag — expected you to fight to the death?”
Dimitri was silent for several minutes. Sight, Des, Penric asked silently; it showed him the roiling of Dimitri’s soul, knotted with grief and guilt.
“That wasn’t it,” Dimitri said, finally. “I know that wasn’t it.”
Finally maybe we’re getting somewhere, Des muttered. Penric made the faintest possible encouraging noise, hoping Dimitri would keep going.
“We laid down our swords as ordered, and surrendered. We were stripped of everything but our clothes — all our weapons, all our letters, the medallion of our Order that we all wear on a thong of deer hide, next to our hearts — and put in irons, together in a hold. Lord Indrek claimed noble blood — not that he was the son of the Duke, because he wanted to suggest that he’d be worth ransoming, but he hoped to be sold back for less than they would expect for a Duke’s son. Astli is a poor country, and things are very difficult there at present. The six of us said that we were from a Military Order of the Night Stag — of the Father, we used your name for Him — and the pirate captain agreed that we’d all certainly be worth ransoming. And Lord Indrek told them that Zale was a clerk. Because we didn’t know if these pirates might be Quadrenes. And that was a mistake, because they said that no one would bother to ransom a clerk. Zale was sick, and I think the captain was afraid Zale would die before they could be ransomed, anyway, and by selling them immediately he’d at least get some money. I was afraid that Zale would be taken alone; I was sure they’d die without care. And I was the newest and youngest of my Order, and thus the one most likely to be believed. So I said that I was merely a page, an initiate, that the others had claimed me as a member to protect me, but that I wouldn’t be ransomed, and they should sell me with Zale. This was a lie. All of it was a lie. But they were taking Zale away alone, sick, and I had to think of something quickly.”
“Yes,” Penric said, encouragingly, and then looked at Dimitri’s face and realized: No. The initiates swore obedience, fidelity, and truthfulness at all times, for the truth is sacred to the Lawgiver, that’s what the book had said. Dimitri was foresworn.
“And that was only the first lie, because they sold us to the Roknari, and Zale gave themself away as a Divine in their delirium. I said that Zale was an Acolyte of the Father. I swore in the Father’s Name that Zale was one of His. I lied, and I lied, and I lied some more, and I should repent, but I don’t know how to repent when I would not change a thing if I could go back and do it again. If I’d told the truth Zale would be dead five times over. From fever if they were lucky. What I did wasn’t wrong, but I broke my vow. And so the Father withdrew from me.”
I am not an expert on the Gods, Desdemona said. But is the Father actually that picky, that he’d abandon someone for lying to protect another person from being horribly murdered by a bunch of Quadrene pirates?
No, Penric said. I mean, I am also not an expert on the Father but I’m just going to say no, He’s not. Something else has to be going on here.
It might just be that Dimitri’s all-consuming shame had shut out his God. But everything about this Order was so strange, Penric was not sure that was it, either.
“Dimitri,” he said. “I’m going to tell you something as a Learned Divine, and I want you to listen to me closely. You did the right thing. The Truth is sacred to the Father — to all the Gods — but persecution is not, piracy is not, and slavery is not. You volunteered to be separated from your brethren and sold to pirates in order to protect a sick, maybe dying Divine of my Order. The Father would not disown you for that.”
“But—”
“But you swore an oath not to lie. I know. But your first oath, your true oath, was to put yourself in the hands of the Father, to let Him send you where He would, to do His will as you perceived it every moment of every day, whether that meant fighting, or scrubbing floors. And you kept that oath. If you’d let the Roknari take Zale away alone, that would have broken your most important oath.”
Dimitri lay silent, for a moment, digesting this.
Finally, he spoke again: “But the God is gone, nonetheless.”
Penric took a deep breath and told Dimitri the stories Learned Johan had told him of the two former saints. Dimitri struggled up onto his elbow to face Penric properly for the first time since he’d arrived. “But neither case applies here! I was not injured, I was not sick — not seriously. And my task is far from complete and anyway, Knights of the Order of Justice have a lifelong vocation.”
“This is true,” Penric said. “And if you’re feeling well enough to get out of bed, perhaps we can start trying to answer that question together.”
❧
Years earlier, Penric had been faced with a Shaman who had lost access to his powers — Inglis kin Wolfcliff, who had been unable to go into a shamanic trance due to his own guilt and shame. He’d given Inglis a new meditative chant, which Inglis had complained about but went on to use successfully.
But Inglis had remained a Shaman that entire time. Penric could see no god-light about Dimitri.
Inglis had told him that he and his mentor had chosen a chant for his meditative focus; other shamans had used songs, or objects, or movement. His powers had been blocked by his self-loathing. Perhaps Dimitri’s God waited just beyond material perception, to return if Dimitri could be reconciled with himself?
Penric discussed the young man’s story with Learned Zale, then with Learned Johan. Johan spoke no Wealdean and thus could offer his consolation only through Penric, but after consideration had a rite to propose.
“What Dimitri did was not wrong, but it was a violation of his vows. It is actually not uncommon for people to take vows they later regret, and the Gods do not wish to hold people as unwilling servants, so there is a rite to release a petitioner from the vows they have taken in the past. We can do this rite, cleansing his sin.”
“That would make him no longer a member of his Order, though,” Zale said.
“He could then re-take the vows,” Johan said.
“Let me see that book again,” Penric said. Johan had it, and Penric looked over the text again. “Right, vigil for three days, fasting, no sleep, and then … ‘At midnight on the third day, hmm, the Grand Master of the Order will come to him and offer him the Sword of Justice and Truth, which is sacred to the Order—I don’t suppose you have one of those, here in Vilnoc?”
“There are swords that are in the possession of the Order, some quite old, with impressive provenance. Perhaps one might do?”
Penric translated this conversation for Zale, who had come along for the conversation. “What exactly is the Sword of Justice and Truth?”
“I don’t know either. You’d better ask Dimitri.”
They found Dimitri back at the Bastard’s chapterhouse, though for the first time he was up and about, eating some food in the refectory. Penric sat down across from him. “Tell me about your initiation,” he said, realizing he had no real idea how accurate the book was.
Dimitri set down his spoon. “Well, first there was a long period of study—”
“Of course. But your actual vow-taking.”
“I fasted and did not sleep for three days. Then our Grand Master brought me the urn in which the bones of our founder are sealed.”
“Not a sword? There’s a book that says it’s the Sword of Justice and Truth.”
Dimitri brightened with a little bit of humor, the first such hint Penric had seen in him. “Our founder is referred to as the Sword of Justice and Truth. It’s a pun on his name that makes sense in Astlii.”
“I see.”
“So I held the urn in both hands, and I humbly asked the Night Stag to come live within me. And the God chose to come. The Grand Master gave me my sacred medal of the Order, and I cut my hand and held the medal as I took my vow. I swore—” his voice roughened and he took a moment to compose himself. “I promised obedience to my superiors within the Order and to those I was sworn to serve; faithfulness to my God; and truthfulness at all time, for truth is sacred to the one you call the Father.”
Penric, Des interrupted. The medal. The pirates stripped it from him. Perhaps that medal was more than just a symbol; perhaps it was like Inglis’s shamanic focus, or maybe even more than that.
“Let me tell you a little bit about shamanic magic,” Penric said to Dimitri. “The magic of the Great Beasts, as they practice in the Weald. Their magic is somehow in their very blood, and the blood of a shaman is different from the blood of an ordinary person. I think there is something about your medals, and your blood, that allows the men of your Order to maintain your link to your God. I don’t think you lost your connection to your God because you told a lie, Dimitri, I think you lost it because the pirates who kidnapped you stole your medal.”
“I don’t know how much that matters,” Zale said. “It’s not as if we can go get it back from the pirates.”
“No, it does matter,” Dimitri said, softly. “Because it would mean that Learned Penric and Learned Johan are right. It wasn’t that the Night Stag cast me aside.”
“Surely people have lost their medals, occasionally?” Penric said. “Is there a process for replacing them?”
If Dimitri needs to go on a quest to recover his stolen medal, I don’t think Zale is going to want to go with him, Desdemona said.
“I know of no one who’s been so—careless,” Dimitri said, his voice breaking again.
“Well, it was all six of you,” Zale said. “It’s not as if everyone else was careful and you weren’t.”
I wonder if all five of the others are having this same crisis of inadequacy that Dimitri here is having, Desdemona said.
Maybe the fact that it happened to all five at once would mean they’d work out it wasn’t their fault, Penric said.
Oh, I bet I know what happened, Desdemona said. I bet all five of Dimitri’s brother-knights are convinced that they sinned by letting Dimitri go alone to care for Zale. Poor Lord Indrek. Can you imagine this sort of moping but five times over?
❧
Learned Johan came to the Bastard’s chapterhouse a day or two later. “I sent to the seminary in Dogrita, and they sent all the books in the library which mentioned warrior-saints. There were six, in a range of languages, one of which I don’t even recognize. I just brought them all here.”
“Excellent,” Penric said. The books were packed neatly into a chest, and Penric sent for the two guests as they unpacked them onto a table. Two of the books were in Darthacan, one in Wealdean, one in Ibran, one in a language Penric recognized as Southspeaker, which was commonly spoken in the Ice Islands but he only sort of understood, and one that Zale identified as Ruthenian. Zale, fortunately, was fluent in Southspeaker and Ruthenian, and there followed a great deal of reading and translating.
Four of the books offered only a passing mention. The most useful, perhaps, was a very old book in an esoteric form of Darthacan, which provided a set of rules for a different order of warrior-saints. Dimitri was fairly certain this was a different order because initiates laid hands on an artifact described as “the phial of holy light.” This book also included a rite of repentance for a member of the order who had stained his vows.
“It doesn’t describe people being cut off from their god due to sin, or restored after the ritual,” Penric said, studying the text. His Darthacan was excellent, but this text was old.
“Learned Sir, I beg you, let us try,” Dimitri said.
“Give me some time to study the text,” Penric said. “I will see what is required.”
❧
“We need a saint,” Penric said, exasperated, to Zale, after some additional time working through the text. “It doesn’t say it has to be a saint of the Father, but it does say it needs to be a saint.”
“I suppose when you’ve got a whole order of warrior-saints on hand, it’s easy enough to rustle one up,” Zale said. “I don’t imagine they’re quite so easy to find in Orbas?”
“I actually do know one,” Penric admitted. “Blessed Iroki. We’d need to go to him. Also, he’s not a Saint of the Father but a Saint of the Bastard. The nearest Saint of the Father I know of is all the way in Thasalon.”
Zale bit their lip and sighed. “What else is required for the rite? Would we need to bring Learned Johan?”
“Yes. The rite also mentions a Divine of the Father and seems to assume this will be the same person as the saint, but it isn’t stated. It doesn’t require any particular location, fortunately, and it doesn’t require the artifact they all swore their oaths on to begin with.”
“Will this do anything? I mean, if you’re right, and the reason he lost his communion with his god was because he lost that medal they all wear…”
“I don’t know if it’ll do anything.” Penric sighed, and thought of Dimitri’s face. Learned Sir, I beg you, let us try. “I’m pretty sure Dimitri will want to try it, though.”
“Do you think Blessed Iroki would mind if we came to see him? Does he get a lot of visitors?”
Penric thought back to his last visit to Pef, with his wife and two daughters, one of whom wasn’t his daughter yet. “No, Iroki wouldn’t mind. If nothing else, he’ll take us all fishing.”
“Then if the weather holds, let’s try this. It’s a great deal further back to Astli, and I should hate to arrive alone because I accidentally smothered my companion with his pillow at some point on the way.”
❧
Penric had thought Learned Johan might send along one of the other Divines of the Father for the trip to Pef. Instead, he seized on the opportunity like a child offered a picnic. “Perhaps I am neglecting my duties a bit,” he admitted when he presented himself with the chest of books and a packed bag at the Bastard’s chapterhouse the next morning. “But this will let Learned Mila take over for a week to see how she does.”
“What did poor Learned Mia ever do to you?” Desdemona asked.
“I’ve been training her to take over for me one day. I was put in charge rather abruptly, when my predecessor was taken ill. I think a short trial, with me nearly guaranteed to be back in one piece at the end, is a rather kinder approach.”
The trip to Pef was much more pleasant than their last, when Penric had taken Otta and her demon Atto to be examined by Iroki, over Desdemona’s furious objections. This time, she was much less dismayed about the trip, and much less interested in causing delays. They stopped overnight in Dogrita to return the books to the Father’s Order, and arrived in Pef in late morning, the following day.
Iroki was waiting for them. “Penric! How’re Miss Otta and Miss Little Demon?”
“They’re both fine.”
“Seems you brought me something different today,” Iroki said, looking over Zale, Dimitri, and Learned Johan. “Better come in.”
As on previous occasions, he’d pulled his chairs into a circle, and handed around tea.
“Two of our visitors don’t speak much Cedonian,” Penric said. “Or I’d let them tell their story themselves.” He launched into the explanation of Dimitri, his Order, all of it.
Iroki looked perplexed. “What is it you’ll need me to do?” he asked.
“There’s a ritual,” Penric said. “We got it out of a book, and it needs a saint, so…” He turned his hands up. “I honestly don’t know if it will work or not, but Dimitri wants to try.”
Dimitri spoke in Wealdean to the saint: “You must understand what it would be like to lose the god,” he said.
The pain came through, even if Iroki didn’t understand his words. “Well, now. Don’t fret. Sure, we can give this a try. I’m not much for rituals, to be honest, never had much need for ‘em, but if you need me to stand up and say a prayer for you, I can do it.”
The rite had to take place late at night, at least an hour after the last of the sun’s light had vanished from the sky. Iroki made them all supper, then said, “I’m going to go sleep till it’s time. Just wake me up when you need me.”
“That’s actually a very good idea,” Zale said. They’d brought along bedrolls, since the rite required night and Iroki didn’t have any spare beds, and Zale unrolled theirs on the floor by the fire.
Dimitri had gone to kneel outside, because the penitent was instructed to wait a little apart; Learned Johan, for his part, was supposed to be engaged in holy meditation. Penric gathered the supplies that the book described the rite requiring: water from the stream (he drew it in Iroki’s bucket), an unlit candle, flint and steel. When the night was very dark and all was ready, he woke everyone who’d gone to sleep, possibly including Learned Johan, who had done his holy meditation sitting in a chair, and perhaps dozed just a little during the long, dark wait.
“Where are we going, now?” Iroki asked, rubbing his eyes.
“Dimitri is meditating outside, just beyond the clearing,” Penric said.
“Can we bring a lantern? It’s awful dark out there. No moon tonight. If the Father wants us all to stumble our way across the clearing, I suppose we can, but if the rite doesn’t call for it specifically…”
Penric had been preparing to do just that, but the rite didn’t say, so he shrugged, and Iroki fetched his lantern and lit it. “Right, then,” he said. “What next?”
“Learned Johan will lead the holy procession,” Penric said.
They all fell into a line, less sleepy once they stepped out into the cool night air. A cricket was chirping near the cottage, and from the woods, they could hear a nightingale beginning to sing. Dimitri was kneeling under an oak tree, and did not look like he’d had any trouble staying awake, though his eyes were closed.
Learned Johan called, “Dimitri, Knight of the Circle of Justice, what brings you here tonight?”
“I have stumbled on my path.”
Penric spoke next. “Dimitri, Knight of the Circle of Justice, what do you ask from the gods?”
“I ask forgiveness.”
Then Zale: “Dimitri, Knight of the Circle of Justice, what brought you the Order to begin with?”
“I want to serve.”
Iroki’s line was next, and he was supposed to say, “Be cleansed, my son.” He hefted the bucket and said, “I guess I’m s’posed to give you a bath, then,” and poured the water over Dimitri. “I’ve got a wash tub, you know, if you wanted to do it proper.”
Zale, who’d learned enough Cedonian by now to understand most of that, choked back something that might have been a laugh.
“Speak your vows before the gods,” Learned Johan said.
“Upon my honor, this is my holy vow,” Dimitri said. “I will faithfully obey my superiors in the Circle of Justice. I will be faithful to the gods, to my brothers, and to my order. I will be truthful at all times, for the truth is sacred. I swear this before the Night Stag, the Father of Winter, the Lawgiver, the Wellspring of Justice.”
Penric, Zale, and Johan had debated whether he should swear before the Father or the Night Stag and had finally decided to just have him do both.
Iroki’s line was supposed to be, Kindle your light, and be blessed by the gods. “Go ahead and light that candle now, using that flint and steel,” he said. “All the gods bless you.” He made a sign of fivefold blessing, rather more precisely than he’d recited any of his lines.
Dimitri needed three tries, but he did get his candle lit. “And that’s it,” Iroki said. “You’re forgiven now, let’s go on in and to bed. I put a dry nightshirt for you just inside the door, don’t go dripping all over your bedroll, and watch your step going back.”
If any of the gods had been present for that rite, Penric would have known, from Desdemona’s reaction; she’d been watching, sympathetically. I don’t think that man got what he was hoping for.
I know, Penric said. I think we were right about the medallion. He’s going to need to go home and bleed on a new one, probably.
“Oh,” Zale said, pausing in the clearing to look up. “A shooting star, look.”
They looked up. “There’s another!” Learned Johan said.
“There’s a period of nights in the Mother’s season that always sees shooting stars,” Penric said. “Sometimes just a few, sometimes more. I suppose that’s right about now.”
“I never knew that,” Iroki said. “Such a wonder, right outside, and I only saw it because you rousted me out of bed for that rite!”
“Ah!” Dimitri said, wordlessly, pointing at a fireball that streaked across the sky.
They watched for hours, finally going in for a few hours’ sleep as the sky showed signs of dawn.
❧
Penric woke before Dimitri did, and took a look at him as he slept; perhaps the god had arrived in the night? But there was still no sign of god-light, and it made him fret. Iroki was gone, as well, with his fishing pole, and he went outside to look for him.
It was a glorious morning: clear, not yet hot. He walked down the path to the stream, thinking he’d probably find Iroki there. Sure enough. He sat on the fishing bank, a rod beside him with no line.
“Penric,” Iroki greeted him. “Come sit a spell.”
Penric sat down on the bank beside Iroki. “Thank you for your help last night, Blessed.”
“Eh. I hope the boy found some comfort in it.”
“It didn’t work.”
“‘Course it worked.”
“What do you mean? He didn’t get his god back.”
“That’s not what the rite was for. It was for forgiveness.”
“Do you think the rite did anything, though? I mean, do you think he needed to kneel in the dark and have a bucket of water poured over him by a saint to be forgiven?”
“No. Guess he needed to kneel in the dark and have a bucket of water poured over him by the saint for some other reason, though.”
Penric flopped back into the grass and stared up at the vivid blue sky. “Zale and I have tried so hard to point out to him that what he actually vowed to do was serve the Father. And he’s done that. He did that when he went with Zale, he did that when he lied for Zale, he did that when he stayed faithful even as he lost his god. And most people, we don’t get to be saints. I’m lucky to have met saints, lucky to have felt the hem of a god’s cloak brush the air beside me…” Penric’s own voice clotted, a little, in frustration.
“You’re not wrong,” Iroki said. “But no one ever argued someone into finding peace with themselves.”
Penric propped himself up on his elbow and looked over at Iroki. He was just Iroki today. “I don’t…” he paused. “I don’t know any other way to do this.”
Iroki laughed. “Maybe someday.”
❧
Something had changed, with Dimitri, Penric realized on the trip back to Vilnoc. His god wasn’t back, but he seemed easier in his soul about it. He helped Zale teach Astlii to Penric, and did his best to learn Cedonian, instead of withdrawing into himself as they rode.
When they arrived back in Vilnoc, Dimitri said, “I should like to visit the Temple tomorrow. Zale, could you show me the way?”
“Certainly,” Zale said.
“You could stay at the Father’s chapterhouse, if you’d like,” Learned Johan said.
“I appreciate the offer but I would prefer to be with Learned Zale, and I think Learned Zale would be rather more uncomfortable in the Father’s chapterhouse than I am in the Bastard’s. Thank you, Learned, for helping me with this.”
“You do seem to be feeling better,” Johan said. “Has there been any hint of the god returning?”
“No,” Dimitri said. “But that night, watching stars, I thought about how for years, before I was sworn into the Order, I wanted to serve the Night Stag. We swear to die for Him if necessary but also to live for Him. I promised to serve the God with my sword, if that was what was called for, or my pen, or my shovel, or my cleaning rag. When I threw myself upon the mercy of the pirates and asked to stay with Zale, I thought, I will serve Him with my wits. And then I thought I’d made a terrible mistake. But I didn’t. I was serving him, that whole time. And I can keep doing so.”
“I can’t believe we had to go all the way to Pef for him to learn something I’ve told him a dozen times over, at least,” Zale muttered in Cedonian.
Zale had underestimated how much Cedonian Dimitri had learned, because his lips quirked at that, though his answer was in Wealdean. “Perhaps if we’d gone out to watch the falling stars in Vilnoc.”
“Perhaps,” Penric said.
❧
There was a brusque autumn wind in the harbor when Penric saw the two visitors off for their long voyage back to Astli. The Father’s Order and the Bastard’s Order of Orbas had together decided to pay for a sea voyage for Zale and Dimitri to return to Astli.
“I will pray that you return to news that Lord Indrek and all your brothers were successfully ransomed months ago, and that one of the other diplomatic missions prospered,” Learned Johan said.
“Bless me, Learned,” Dimitri said, and knelt before Johan so that Johan could place his hands on his head.
“Father of Winter, protect these two on their trip, and may Dimitri rest safely in your care until he can be fully restored to you,” Johan said. Dimitri stood, and Johan knelt in turn.
“Blessed Dimitri,” he said. “Give me your blessing, now.”
“I’m not—”
“Blessed Kaito, of whom I spoke to you, had completed his task for the Father when he left Orbas, and the god was no longer present in him. I had only his word for this, but I had no reason not to believe him. I asked his blessing, as well, before he departed.”
Dimitri hesitated a moment longer, and then placed his hands on Johan’s head.
“Father of Winter,” he said. “May this man your servant walk in truth, serve with purpose, and be welcomed to your arms when that season arrives.”
The two men embraced, and Dimitri boarded the ship.
“I think the Order of the Knights of Justice may have been a mistake, on the part of their God,” Zale said meditatively to Penric.
“You’re accusing a God of not thinking something through?”
“Well, He’s not our God,” Zale pointed out. “And Astli is the only place I’ve heard of that has an Order like this. Other places have saints, but the saints are chosen singly, not in groups. I’m not sure God-touched soldiers are a particularly good idea.”
“I agree with you,” Desdemona said.
“Thank you, Lady Desdemona,” Zale said; they’d learned to spot her interjections. “Clearly, the Gods should ask for our advice more often.”
“Or perhaps the Father should ask advice from the Bastard,” Penric said.
“That, too, no doubt! Well. I shall write when we get home, which means that in a year or two, you might hear we arrived safely.”
“Perhaps we’ll hear word of your young Lord’s ransom, and Dimitri’s brothers, before then.”
“I will pray that it be so,” Zale said. They made their own ritual sign of holy blessing, which Penric returned, and then boarded the ship that would — if all went well — take them to their distant home once again.