Dave Duncan - When the Saints

They kissed again.

Eventually he muttered, “I must go to bed.”

He wasn’t exhausted beyond all reason. Their embrace was close enough that she could feel the signal.

“Anton may be here any minute.”

“He said he won’t sleep with you anymore.”

Joy! “Then into bed with you! Right over there, and right now. And sleep, my darling.” She would bolt the door.

“There’s something else we have to do…” he said vaguely.

“I’m willing!”

“Didn’t mean that.”

The door squeaked and Anton peered in. He opened it fully and stepped aside, admitting an ominous little figure in a black cassock and cloak; a jeweled cross hun g on his breast. His smile made Madlenka think of melting butter. Behind him came two tall men-at-arms bearing pikes.

amp;t size="#x201C; Wulfgang, I must ask you to come with me.”

“Where to?”

His only answer was a smile.

Madlenka opened her mouth to scream “Fly! Go away! Don’t do what he says!” but not a sound emerged. Her tongue lay limp in her mouth.

Wulf glanced at her and shrugged hopelessly. “When I said ‘brief,’ I didn’t expect it to be quite this brief.” He did not try to kiss her in front of the priest. Without another word, he walked to the door. The intruders followed him out, and Anton closed it from the other side.

On a dull winter morning, Madlenka could take two hours to complete her toilet. Today, she slipped on a better pair of shoes, coiled up her hair, wrapped it in a turban, pulled her fox fur cloak over her shoulders, and tore out the door, arriving at the solar out of breath but directly behind Anton. He turned in the entrance, frowning at her.

“I don’t think this involves you.”

“I am sure it does.” It was a real pleasure to contradict him.

“It may be dangerous. The Inquisition may draw the wrong conclusions.”

“I suspect it does so quite often,” she said with an airy confidence she certainly did not feel, “but I assure you that the Wulfgang problem now concerns me more than anyone. Shall we go in?”

She staged as regal an entrance as she could manage, nodding politely to Otto and Vlad and heading for an empty chair. There was a fourth person present, who was presented as Great-aunt Kristina, to be addressed as Justina. She was of advanced years, but well preserved. She wore a fine royal blue robe, which she had opened for comfort in the stuffy room, exposing a dowdy gray servant’s dress below it. Evidently the robe was the correct signal, for she did not rise to defer to a countess. In this company, it was a fair guess that Great-aunt Whoever was a Speaker and a member of the Saints guild that Wulf had mentioned.

Vlad rose and brought Madlenka a glass of wine, letting Anton take his chair. The big man would not normally defer to a younger brother like that, but Anton outranked all of them. And the youngest of all was a Speaker. If Vlad now saw himself as the junior brother, the big man’s self-esteem must be suffering, but he showed no sign of sulks. There was nothing small about Vlad.

“Wulfgang left with that priest,” Anton said glumly. “He put up no resistance. The four of them just walked out into the dressing room and vanished.”

The gloom spread as quietly as a stain. “Does anyone know who the priest was?” Madlenka asked. “Was he from the Inquisition? 3”

“The Inquisition usually sends friars, Dominicans or Franciscans,” Justina said, “but it is certainly possible. He was a Speaker.”

“Why did he come here first,” Otto asked, frowning, “instead of going directly to Wulfgang? Courtesy to Anton, as host?”

Courtesy did not sound like the Inquisition; but what other reason could there be?

“To warn me off, I think,” Justina said.

Madlenka suppressed a need to scream at the memory of Wulf’s despairing surrender. When no one else spoke, she did. “So what happens now?”

“We are waiting for the prelate of my order, the Saints. She was prepared to jess Wulfgang-bind him, that is. The time for that has passed, if he is in the hands of the Inquisition.”

“The time has passed because he is already jessed. To me.”

“What?” Great-aunt Justina could be very nearly as loud as Great-nephew Vlad. “Who told you the words of the jessing oath?”

“He did.”

Justina gave Madlenka a look that suggested a desire to burn her at the stake. “Did he include anything about transferring your authority over him to another by mutual consent?”

“Not that I recall.” Madlenka didn’t see why she shouldn’t lie if everyone else could. If she told the truth, they would just insist that she transfer his oath to someone else, which would be a betrayal of his trust.

Justina muttered something barely audible and likely indecent. “And what liberties did you give him?”

“Liberties, Justina?”

“Standard permissions. What did you tell him he could do? Defend himself from attack? Defend you? Look wherever he can? Walk through limbo to escape from jails?”

Madlenka saw the pit yawn before her and mutely shook her head.

Justina emptied her glass in one great gulp. “Then he is as powerless as a workaday. They can rack him, flog him, break him. Just like Joan of Arc, who worried him so much.”

“He did say something about defending me. Why don’t you tie me to the flogging post and see if he… No?”

“How is he to know you need defending, you witless wench? You left him blind and deaf.”

Holy Mary forgive me! Was she to be Wulf’s Delilah? Madlenka covered her face, unable to bear the reproach in their eyes. Wulf had been almost out on his feet, but she had no such defense. She had let love blind her, or at least bypass her wits.

“Let’s tilt at this thing once more,” said Otto, ever the peacemaker. “Where is he now, Justina?”

She bit her lip. “He’s asleep, that’s all I know. They took him straight to a dark room. I did see that it had a bed in it. He was out cold in seconds. He isn’t even dreaming.”

Vlad grunted. “Bed is good. Straw in dungeon is not.”

“But they may want to try jessing him. They’ll try kindness and trust-us first. If he refuses-as now he must-then things will get harder.”

“Let’s start with the Inquisition, then,” Otto said. “They’ll have trouble making a public case for the death of Father Azuolas without admitting that he was a Speaker himself. How did he come to Cardice? What was he doing in the bedroom with the two monks when Wulf shot him?”

“They don’t have to go public,” Justina said. “All they need is Wulfgang’s signed confession. They’ll leave him enough of a hand to hold a pen.”

Madlenka was confident that her stubborn beloved was as capable of resisting torture as any man, but all men could be broken eventually. She said, “Can we be absolutely certain that the Inquisition will try to make him confess? Won’t they try to enlist him in Azuolas’s place?”

“He’s already jessed by you, and you say your loyalty cannot be transferred. He killed a priest, so he must die, one way or another. He’s helpless without your permission to use his talent. If you die, he’s a workday forevermore. One thing that seems certain is that you will never be allowed near him again.”

Madlenka had not thought of that. Wulf should have known-must have known! But Wulf had been stupefied by lack of sleep and hadn’t thought of it in time.

Otto waited. When no one else commented, he said, “Can we rescue him?”

“Can I rescue him, you mean?” Justina said. “No. The Saints do not launch armed assaults on the Inquisition. The Church is leery enough of us already. We exist on its sufferance. Some future pope will launch a crusade and wipe us out.”