breaths.
'I know you're working for Goran Kell' Gabriella snarled. Batsen only laughed, an agonised, bubbling sound. 'But you're not going to stop me finding him.'
Batsen struggled for another breath. 'Who would have… thought? Brotherhood and Faith, working together. You and Travis.'
'What?'
'Sister DeZantez… and Brother Crowe. It won't last.' Batsen's laughter dissolved into bubbling coughs. 'Give my… regards… to Kell…' With a final cough of thick, almost black blood, he fell silent.
Gabriella stood and wiped the blood from her blade before turning to Crowe.
'So, 'Brother' Crowe?'
'You're making a big mistake.'
'No.' She stalked towards him. 'You did that.'
He backed off. 'Don't do this, pet. I've almost gotten to like you. There aren't many people who get to there and it'd be a shame to have to keep their numbers down, even by one.'
'I wish I didn't have to do this.'
'You don't.'
'I have a duty to God.'
'God never asked you to kill me.'
'He just did.' She stepped into his path, one blade going for his sword hand, the other, drawn quickly, for his throat. He deflected the shot at his throat and suddenly the blade heading for his hand was slashing across his shirt at gut-level.
They danced back and forth, he trying to use his longer sword to block both of hers, she trying to get around his from two directions at once. They were quite evenly matched, but Crowe could already see blood seeping though her surplice from her earlier wounds. Quick as a flash, he shouldered forward. He struck home accurately, causing pain to explode across her body.
Gabriella fell and he batted her swords away. He stood over her, one boot crushing the hand that was reaching for one of the felled blades. He rested the point of his broadsword against her throat. 'All I have to do is push.'
'Then do it,' she snarled. 'I'm your enemy and you're the self-proclaimed murderer. Get on with it.'
'I'm no more a Brother of the Divine Path than I'm an Enlightened One of the Final Faith.'
'That's not what your Shadowmage friend said.'
'You're going to take the word of a man who's tried to kill both of us over mine?' Crowe shrugged. 'All right, love. I never claimed to be the world's most trustworthy man. But neither is your average hired assassin. Think about this one, right? This bloke was hired to kill you, and failed. With his dying breath, he got you into another fight, against a man who was a better fighter than he was.' He paused to let that sink in. 'Against a man who, being a better fighter than him, might have more chance of killing you than he did.' He could see in her eyes that this was making sense to her. 'Not many people get recruited as a willing participant in their enemy's revenge, Dez. But it is a pretty bloody good trick if you can manage it.'
'And what's this speech meant to do?'
'Save your life. I will kill you if I have to, but I'd rather not have to.'
'Why? Don't you want me off your back?'
'Sure I do. But that bastard just did his damnedest to kill me as well as you and I'm in no mood do him any bloody favours.' He spat on Batsen's corpse.
Gabriella relaxed slightly. 'All right, so you're not a Brother, but you've worked with them.'
'Their money's as good as anyone's. I've worked with the Faith too. That's why they call it being a mercenary, love. The clue's in the name.'
'And are you working for the Brotherhood now?'
'If I'm not working for them I'll say no and if I am working for them I wouldn't want you to know, so I'd still have to say no.'
'So, someone, who may or may not belong to some religious organisation of which I can't approve, paid you to do a job…'
'I ain't in the habit of risking my life for free, Dez. Or fraternising with members of the Faith's military order for free. Actually I should have charged double for that.'
'What sort of job?'
'I was hired to find out who hired the man that shot Ludwig Rhodon. I'm told Goran Kell's the one who wants to know, for some reason.'
'You're working for Kell?' She was astonished and reached for her sword.
'I'm not working for Goran Kell, Dez. Not directly, anyway. I'm working for a man who Kell went to, to try to find out who's making him look like an arse. Sandor Feyn,' Crowe went on. 'You won't know him. He usually goes by aliases.
Gabriella grimaced. 'I've heard enough bedtime stories, sinner. Karel Scarra already told us that he and Kell — '
'Hired a bloke called Lukas Bertam to off an Eminence? I heard that too. What you don't seem to have heard is that Lukas Bertam isn't the assassin who took the shot and isn't the bloke you and Brand killed.'
'Of course he is!'
Crowe radiated smugness. 'Did you get a relative to identify the body? Didn't think so. Bertam got himself fished out of Turnitia's harbour two weeks before the big day and someone took his place. Anyway, so Kell's worried that someone is setting him up and he goes to his opposite number in Turnitia. Kell asked him to find out who hired the assassin that took the shot and Feyn asked me, as I do a run between Turnitia and the Huntress. Apparently Kell wanted to ask me himself, but Feyn isn't stupid enough to put us together. Kell doesn't know who I am and I don't know any more about him.'
'Can you arrange a meeting with Sandor Feyn?'
'Why?'
'Maybe I can help him out.'
Crowe laughed. 'You? Help the naughty Brotherhood types? Bollocks, love.'
'It's not unknown. We both worship the same God and sometimes we share a common enemy.'
He scanned her face, trying to analyse her expression. 'No… There's something else, God-girl.'
She nodded slowly, as if admitting defeat. 'I still want to find Kell. Perhaps Feyn can point me on the way.'
Crowe didn't know that she had good cause to place Kell at the Glass Mountain so recently cleared of goblin- kind. He knew she had an ulterior motive for wanting to see Feyn, so she gave him an ulterior motive; one which anyone among the Swords at Solnos could confirm.
Crowe thought about it. 'And what are you offering?'
'The face of the assassin from Kalten.'
They buried Erak the next day, under a flagstone in the plaza. Crowe hung back, because it just wasn't his place to be in a Final Faith ceremony. It wasn't that he didn't believe in God — like most soldiers, so likely to meet the Lord of All at any moment, he had his beliefs — but Makennon's rules were another matter.
When the funeral party broke up and the Knights relieved their fellows on guard duty, Gabriella stayed where she was, by the fountain. She dropped to her knees, but when she tried to summon the words of a prayer, she couldn't think of a single one. Oh, she could have recited any of the Faith's standard prayers easily, but she realised that she simply didn't know what she wanted to pray for. For Erak to survive? Too late. For his resurrection? The Lord of All didn't work that way. For him to be with the Lord of All, flying through the clouds of Kerberos? That went without saying and to pray for it would be to insult Erak by suggesting that he had not been a worthy enough man, to have achieved that. Pray for the strength to carry on without him, or to bear the loss? She was strong enough, or she would never have been confirmed as a Knight of the Swords.
So, what to pray for? Nothing, she realised. She didn't need to pray for anything, she just needed to pray and to know that she could always feel that connection to the Lord of All. Perhaps, she thought, her prayer had been
