It sounded to Jael like a half-truth, sardonic, as if the words belonged to somebody else. Yet no further argument came from the council. It was decided that the attack would commence tomorrow at midday. Tactics were discussed: the Cross would be held in reserve with an escort of clerics while Elder Frampt led the rout. Any pagan’s fleeing onto the high road were to be ridden down—lest they immediately surrender: a concession made on behalf of Elder Lloyd. And in the case of mist, the raiding force would meet with their support, the Cross and junior clerics, on the road. They would lure out whatever committed the Cinnehollow massacre, surround it, and deliver it to Hell.
Then the council adjourned, and the clerics dispersed, all save for the commander at Gildmane’s request for a word with him alone. Leonhardt asked if she could stay and listen—she knew that whatever Trey wanted to talk about had to do with the unrest in Pareo—but the captain sent her to the barracks with the others. He wanted her well rested for the raid tomorrow. It would be her virgin battle, and with real blood on her blade, she’d be no longer a maiden swordsman. Jael couldn’t argue. She was exhausted, and while the tensions simmering in the capital seemed of grave concern, more pressing to her was the prospect of murder. Since her exchange with Trey in the Temple Rock cloister, she’d been trying to imagine that it was her who swung the axe that severed Blackheart’s head, that she was the one to loose the arrow that killed Bishop Vaufnar. Part of her believed it, and to that part of herself she asked, What are another dozen pagans? Why fret for them and not for the others? So far, she’d not thought up an answer, nor did one manifest to her as she descended the spiral stairs, from the sixth to fourth floor, where in the barracks she prayed at the foot of her cot. Still, her mind was silent.
Sleep came hard. It was hot in the chamber despite the winter winds blowing bitter outside. Bishop Berthold’s design, so the stories told, each of the floors modeled for a specific purpose determined first by its king and then by the clerics. Most famous was the bath in the basement, built for Saint Maxim, known then as Usurper King Wulfhart. He had a furnace installed tall as the first three levels—the bath, the kitchens and smithy, and the armory—with pipes and chimneys as high as the commander’s quarters on the seventh floor. The council chamber was modelled later, as was the sanctuary situated on the fifth floor. Jael considered sneaking off there to pray over her fears and to escape the snores and odors of the slumbering clerics.
There were at least three hundred of them piled atop stacking cots four layers high, though the worst of the smells and noise came from her own men. All was quiet where Harpe rested above, but on the bunk below, Sir Schirmer’s every sleeping breath sounded like the snarl of a boar. On the stack beside hers, Ogdon lay pained and moaning. He had not emerged from their dragon hunt unscathed. His ankle had broken under the weight of the monster’s jaws, and the squalid water had festered his wound. Jael worried that if his fever didn’t break soon, he might lose his foot, or his life. She could already smell the blight burgeoning beneath his skin, dripping from the lingering puncture wounds and into the pan set below his swollen ankle.
It was when she caught a whiff of herself that Leonhardt finally climbed out of bed. Never in her life had she reeked so, not even after cleaning the stable on a summer day back home in Herbstfield. The bath, she decided, figuring it to be unoccupied given the hour. She moved barefoot through the barracks and onto the spiral stairs, descending noiselessly on the wood and stone. It felt what she imagined as a girl it would be like to climb the tower of a castle: steps broad enough for five men abreast—a set of seven, a flat, then another set—again and again with a sconce at each landing lighting the way, moonbeams between, shining through shutters and arrow slits.
Jael counted twenty-one stairs, three sconces, and no clerics by the time she reached the basement. There, the steps were stone and the air a wall of white humidity. No sconce illumed this landing, only the dull-yellow light which spilled under an arched portal fitted with an old, warped, whitewood door. She grabbed the iron door ring half rusted to nothing and pulled, smooth, despite the warped wood’s weight, and was at once hit full in the face with sweet cinnamon vapor. She padded inside the antechamber, a changing room, the like of which put to shame the gray and whitewashed stone that made up the rest of the citadel. Her feet fell warm onto its speckled granite floor, her fingers ran smoothly over the resin preserved benches and shelves hewn from ancient, eternal whitewood. Flames danced in inlets sculpted into the walls—in each, an oil lamp glowing yellow-gold.
Leonhardt breathed deep the scented air. It pained her to sully something so pristine, but the itch of filth convinced her to take a seat on a bench and strip away her chaffing wear. Each piece came off with a sigh of relief to be tossed haphazardly onto the nearest shelf. Had she looked more carefully, Jael would have been unable to ignore what she had seen—an unmarked doublet and riding breeches—but her heart was clever, it led her unwittingly to the inner door. With ease, it opened.
Her awe redoubled from its crest in the changing chamber. “Bath” did not do justice for this temple of marble and waxing moon pool. Its waters
