Martyr's Rest

Synopsis

The cathedral at Vigil is cold gothic stone, and the three who run the town were waiting in it. Rafi announced the party’s deeds without ornament (the slaves freed south of Haudh-Gwenn, the end of Captain Torr’s ring), and Venessa Hasek said the words the town says over such things: let it be written, judged, and remembered. Each man was then asked which deed mattered most. Mikhail named the slaves and Torr. Koa could not answer cleanly, the work being unfinished. Aldo refused to rank his at all, quoting the town’s own saying back at it: speak plain or not at all. Casimir Kasun took that for evasion; Venessa defended it, on the grounds that the page remembers everything.

They were lodged in a furnished stone house, unlocked like every door in Vigil, and told they were guests who could leave whenever they liked, and that leaving would end the assessment. Rafi, worn down by courtesy and a good question, let slip what is wrong with the place. Theresa Sarros is newly styled Lady Vigil and stands without the sword. The last one, Octavia, was killed in a night raid: retaliation, after Vigil captured a band of outsiders, executed the mage among them and returned the rest. Blackguard Jack of the Tillermen did it, and got away wounded.

The next day was theirs to be useful in, the first rung already passed. Koa rode; Aldo told the town’s children old stories with the morals filed off and put back straight; Mikhail argued Mól history with the elders and won them. At the graveyard, where only the titled are buried, Koa read the old Peren carving on the obelisk: who martyred herself for our freedom. It is Vëné’s grave. He alone saw the Mól filigree in its base shimmer and carry on down into a network under the cemetery. Crossing the yard was Erwin Emeric, wearing two swords, the ornate one on his back not his own.

Then the leaders came to the house one at a time, which was the real assessment. Venessa had trained at Lux Astralis and knew Mikhail’s mentor Kadero; she left advice about knowing when to stay a hand, a blade or a tongue. Casimir demanded to know how they meant to fight Beltran and judged that they had a political strategy and no combat strategy whatever; they saw the provocation and declined it. Theresa came to answer questions. Vigil is a hundred and twenty-five years old and has had a dozen Lords and Ladies, most of whom met untimely ends; it was founded by Xander Sarros, their grandfather, alive and failing; it does not enforce the mette-hina. And the Sword of Vigilance chooses the leader as an extension of Lady Eravil herself, which is why Theresa stands without it. Since Octavia was buried it has chosen nobody.

They passed, and were named Friends of Vigil. The oath came on a scroll, and Mikhail read it first: no compulsion in it, only a case that cracks open if the word is broken. Aldo declined. He would have stood with them anywhere else, he said, but he would not be bound, and the price is that he is now an outsider to whom the other two may not repeat what they learn. Koa and Mikhail signed, privately promising each other they would break it and answer for it in Vigil’s courts if the curse required. Venessa explained the sponsorship afterwards: with no Lady Vigil chosen and its assessors unable to travel far, Vigil has decided the Valiant Few are Lady Eravil’s instrument for putting Haudh-Gwenn back in order, and a Haudh-Gwenn in order is a Vigil that can prosper.

That night Koa went alone to the obelisk, prayed, and offered himself. After a long silence a glow rose out of the ground into the stone, and out of the stone came a thing like a wagon wheel of metal wreathed in yellow-white flame: an Iophanite, a messenger, and far more talkative than anything holy has any business being. The souls trapped under Haudh-Gwenn, it said, were joined together by alchemy and can be parted by it. Gwen is caught in a nightmare of her own making and cannot heal until she is loosed from it; he must search deep. Names are only mortal words, and the meaning behind them is what matters. The Elder is the Martyr’s own brother, cursed as she was, victim and rescuer both, and also a part of the curse, growing in memory and power with every keep. And when his hardest hour comes, she will be beside him. Then it went back into the stone, and Koa walked home to tell the others.