fight yesterday. Already yesterday, I mused. How long did the Fratriarch have? 'What did you find?'
'It's… unclear. An icon, perhaps. It might be nothing.'
'Nothing, huh? That would be in line with the rest of your findings.' I reached the crowd of whiteshirts who had gathered around the crater and muscled my way through.
It was far from nothing.
The crater was shallow. I didn't remember it from the fight-at least, I didn't remember doing anything dramatic in this particular spot. Close to the tracks, but not where I had engaged the two burnpack soldiers. My line of retreat had been… over there. This hole could have come from something the coldmen had done while they tried to get to Barnabas and the girl. The sides of the crater were charred, and most of the indentation was filled in with rubble. The cobblestones here had been pulverized but left in place, like a giant cube of ice crushed in a bowl. The Amonites had been clearing it out, from the looks of things. And among the shards of stone was an icon, torn from someone's ceremonial robe.
We all wear icons, the scions of the three Cults of the Brothers Immortal. My armor is an icon, as are my sword and revolver. Very practical icons. But I wear others, noetic symbols of the power of Morgan. An iron fist pendant at my neck, the bound copper wire around my wrist, tattoos on my chest and legs. There is a holy symmetry to my symbols, brought to arcane life by the power of Morgan. The Fratriarch jangled with the icons of the holy Brother.
This was not his symbol, not a symbol of Morgan or of Alexander or any of the other minor sects dedicated to inchoate powers of significant events or famous battles. This was a symbol of the Betrayer. Amon, in his aspect as murderer and assassin. It was a pendant, silver clasping the gnarled blade of that darkest aspect of our darkest god. No wonder they had the Amonites so tightly reined.
'Is there any doubt now that the Betrayer was involved?' the inspector whispered at my side.
I holstered my revolver and looked back nervously toward the pack of Scholars at the far corner of the square.
'Did any of them touch it?' I asked.
'One of them found it, but swears it did not reach his skin.'
'Contain him. You'll need to keep the rest out of the general population until you can confirm they were not infected.'
'We know the rites of infection, my lady.' The inspector sniffed and waved a hand at some of his fellow whiteshirts. 'We will do our duty.'
'Whatever.' I bent to the icon and dusted the debris away from it. It had been embedded in a cobble, like a stone pressed into hot wax. I removed the penetrated cobble and slid it onto the ground. 'Some force that was.'
'Your battle was mighty, my lady.'
'I had nothing to do with this,' I said. 'Those weren't servants of the Betrayer I was fighting. Not scions, at least. Evil creatures, perhaps, but there was nothing… blessed about them.'
'Who, then? The Fratriarch?' the inspector asked. Doubtless remembering the old man who walked in the parades. Not exactly a figure embodying power.
'What is it?' Owen asked, running up. He skidded to a halt and looked over my shoulder at the stone and its infernal decoration. 'Ah. Oh… huh.'
'You are a man of culture and insight, Justicar. What do you make of it?'
'You did not speak of scions of the Betrayer, though we all suspected they were the power behind the attack.'
'Suspected,' I said, nodding. 'But unknown.'
'We can lay that to rest, it seems. How did it get here?'
I craned my neck to look up at the elevated track. The damaged car had been removed, and the twisted support towers were being rebuilt. The tracks themselves looked solid enough.
'A fight,' I said. 'The icon gets ripped off in the heat of battle.'
'When, though? You stated that the Fratriarch was locked away in a column of steel, and the coldmen could not break him out. Then you returned and he was gone. They were all gone.'
'They didn't break him out.' I stood, looking around at the damage of the square, seeing lines of force and advance in the arrangement of wreckage. 'He fought his way free. There was a body in the door of the car. I never really thought about how it got there.'
'So he might be out there, free?' Owen turned in a slow circle, gazing around at the buildings on the square as if the Fratriarch might be looking down at us from some terrace. 'We should organize search parties.'
I snorted. 'You should? Maybe a day ago, when I first came to you with this. No, he didn't get away. The living Fratriarch would have returned to the Strength of Morgan, no matter his condition. He battled, and was defeated.'
'Who could do such a thing?' Owen asked, quietly.
I kicked at the stone-wrapped icon of the Betrayer, then looked up at the Justicar. 'They have a history of it,' I said, and walked off.
Behind me the whiteshirts started making plans to contain the Amonites, seal away the icon, and continue with the repair of the site. I walked over to the nervous pack of Amonites. There was an Alexian with them, his fist white around a jumble of those soul-chains. He was a thin man with a weak chin, but large, strong hands.
'Which one was it?' I asked.
He volunteered himself, before the whiteshirt could compel him forward. Another small man, though wide and strong. There was grease under his nails, and calluses on his hands. His skin was the color of worn leather. For all his strength, he quivered under his hood.
'You found the icon?'
'Yes, my lady.'
'How?'
'I was… I was repairing the cobbles, my lady. As ordered. I was clearing out that ditch there, and turned a stone. The icon was there.'
'Did it call to you?'
'No, ma'am. I heard nothing from it. I'm not… attuned to such things.'
'You are a scion of the Scholar,' I said. 'You are attuned to his symbols.'
'That aspect of the lord Brother… of Amon… such symbols are forbidden, as they have always been.' He shuffled his feet. 'And even if they weren't, I'm not… gifted, my lady.'
'You can't invoke?' I asked, surprised. Rare for someone to swear to one of the gods without showing some noetic talent. Rarer still for that someone to swear to Amon.
'No, my lady. I worship with my hands, and my back, and my mind.'
I stood quietly in front of him, looking for some lie in his broad, sun-scrubbed face. There was fear, but who was to blame for that? I turned to his keeper and nodded. When I turned around, Owen was two steps behind me.
'Scaring the witnesses?' he asked.
'Questioning them. I believe that's your job, of course, but someone has to actually do it.'
'It is my job, Eva. Leave it to me.'
'If I had, Justicar, where would we be? Kicking our heels in that lovely station? Drinking coffee, perhaps? Maybe we would have been able to question this man there, after someone else had found him and brought him to us.'
'Better that than rushing around the city all night,' his voice was steadily rising, 'chasing ghosts and digging through bodies. There are people for these jobs-'
'We are those people, Owen. I am that person. I let the old man down. I will not sit and wait.'
'You're overexcited. It's time we were back at that station. There is much to report on,' he said, and put his hand on my wrist. Oh, mistakes, mistakes. Such glorious mistakes.
I pulled his hand toward me, until his knuckles brushed my belly, then flipped my hand over and grasped his elbow. Rotate, hip-check, and then toss. He hit the ground like a sack of flour, and then I was past him, turning from his rapidly reddening face and walking briskly to the taped barricade. The crowd that had been gathering at the yellow tape line was staring at the furious Justicar and the Paladin who had put him on his ass. Not every day
