'Do any of you work for him?' Brasti asked of the grey-robed Inquisitors standing around us, and when none of them responded he looked at me and asked, 'Any reason I can't shoot Jillard, then?'

I kept my attention on Quentis. 'How many?'

Finally, the Inquisitor spoke. 'Twelve.'

Twelve . . . I was struggling to grasp what it would take to . . .

'Twelve what?' Brasti asked. 'Would someone please tell me what we're talking about so I can decide if I care?'

Obladias snorted and said to Duke Jillard. 'Hard to imagine how that Ducal Council of yours thought to restore order to the country with geniuses like this on your side.'

Brasti shrugged. 'I leave the details to these two,' he said. 'Mine is a more infallible intellect.'

'He means ineffable,' Kest remarked.

'Which one's ineffable?'

'Shut up,' I said to them both, then to Quentis, 'Twelve dead Saints and you didn't think to inform the Realm's Protector?'

'Or the Ducal Council,' Jillard added.

'I don't report to her,' Quentis replied. 'Nor, your Grace, to you. The Order of Inquisitors-'

I cut him off. 'The last time I checked, the "Order of Inquisitors" had been reduced to a handful of angry old men sitting in their little dungeons staring at rusted implements of torture and trying to remember which one to brush their teeth with.' I motioned to Quentis' men. 'I see newly trained guardsmen here, in newly made coats and armour and carrying weapons that must have cost your churches half their reserves. So tell me, Lord Inquisitor, when did you first discover that someone was murdering Saints?'

It was, I felt, an impressive interrogation. I don't know why, but Inquisitors really piss me off. And Quentis actually bristled, which pleased me more.

'We found the first body a year ago,' he said at last. 'The second, six months later. After that, a month, and then . . .'

My temporary sense of self-satisfaction faded as the full force of his words began to take hold of me. A year ago, someone had found a way to murder a Saint. No doubt, when it was one Saint, Quentis and his Inquisitors had thought this was something they could manage an aberration that could be kept secret. But now more dead bodies were turning up and soon everyone, noble and peasant alike, would find out that the beings they prayed to for safety were no safer than they were. I looked at the gates, and out at the pilgrims on the other side. Hells. They already know something is wrong.

'The pace of the killings is increasing,' Jillard said, 'but why?'

My exhaustion returned and my wounds stung as if they were fresh. I glanced at Quentis and then at Obladias, wondering if they had already figured it out. I knew the answer because, as Jillard had already pointed out, I might be a little slow, but I get there in the end. I knelt down and picked up the body of Saint Anlas. Cradling him in my arms, I started towards the cathedral.

'The answer is simple, your Grace,' I said. 'Whoever is behind this is getting better at killing Saints.'

I found Ethalia waiting outside the cathedral for me. Barely an hour had passed since I last saw her, and yet she looked as if a week had passed. Her hair was dishevelled, her arms hung limp at her sides and her cheeks were streaked with tears.

'Birgid?' I asked quietly.

'She's awake,' Ethalia said, which surprised me, then she murmured, 'but . . . it won't be long.'

I felt a fool standing there with the rotting body of one Saint already lying dead in my arms while the woman I loved was breaking into a thousand pieces, already mourning the next one. Kest came and took the body from me, and I took Ethalia in my arms. She let me hold her, though only for a moment, then she stepped backwards, away from me. 'Birgid wants to see you,' she said.

'Not alone,' Quentis said, coming up the path towards us with Obladias close behind.

'She has asked to speak with Falcio,' Ethalia said. 'Not you.'

The old monk showed not the slightest deference to either Birgid's wishes or Ethalia's grief. 'The Saints, little girl, are the province of the church,' he started. 'Now step out of the way and-'

His words were cut off by the sound of wood creaking as Brasti bent his bow. The arrow nocked to the string didn't move an inch. 'I really don't care how many pistols your men have, Quentis,' he said conversationally. 'They won't be fast enough to keep me from sending the old man to whatever hell most deserves him. And whilst I might not be a progeny at deception-'

'He means prodigy,' Kest pointed out.

'Which one means I'm clever enough to figure out that the old bastard isn't just a monk and they probably don't want him dead?'

Quentis Maren's look of concern confirmed Brasti's suspicions, but the Inquisitor kept his eyes fixed on me. 'Falcio, you know how serious this is. You can't expect us to-'

'You'll come with me,' I said. I turned to Ethalia. 'Did Birgid specifically say I was to come alone?'

'No, but . . .'

I took her hands in mine. 'I'm sorry, but Quentis is right. If our situation was reversed I would never allow him to speak to the only witness . . .' I cringed at the use of the word. This is the woman she looks up to more than any other person in the world. 'He needs to hear what Birgid has to say.'

Ethalia acquiesced reluctantly, but let go of my hands.

'I'll be coming along as well,' Obladias announced.

Damn right you will. I looked from him to Quentis and gestured at the pistol hanging at his side. 'How fast are you at drawing that weapon?'

His eyes narrowed. 'Fairly fast. Why?'

I opened the door to the cathedral the one behind the statue of Death. 'Because if Birgid recognises either of you as the man who hurt her, you're going to find out you aren't nearly fast enough.'

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

The Last Breath

Walking down the stone stairs of the passari deo and into the shadows below reminded me that my primary aversion to religion was the practice of praying below ground. I mean, what sort of God thinks it's a good idea for their followers to entomb themselves, and then ask for health and long life?

'The sanctuary is not far,' Ethalia said, steering me along the trail of candles that began at the bottom of the stairs and led into the darkness.

'They go first,' I said, and stood aside to let Quentis and Obladias pass in front of us. If Birgid recognised one of them, I didn't want him behind me. I reached inside my coat and loosened the first of the six throwing knives in my leather bracer. For all my threats to Quentis, I was pretty sure I'd have a devil of a time drawing my rapiers inside the confined space of the sanctuary.

'Does it help?' Ethalia asked, her voice flat. She didn't turn to look at me and kept her eyes to the front as we entered the passage.

'Does what help?'

'Making yourself angry. Making yourself hungry for violence. Does it make you faster or stronger?'

'I . . . No, not especially.'

She still wasn't looking at me. 'Does it make you more cunning in battle, or shield you from pain? Or is it the pain itself that makes you-?'

'What? No, why are you saying this?' I started to take her by the arm, but stopped when she flinched. 'Ethalia, what's wrong?'

She finally stopped and turned to face me. 'I spent half my life cultivating peace inside myself, learning compassion, so that I might master the healing ways of my order. All those years . . . and now, when I need those skills the most when she needs me the most I find that I lack the strength because I have compromised my spirit with violence.'

I looked for words of comfort and reassurance, for some clear, logical argument why Ethalia shouldn't blame herself, but none came, because I realised that she wasn't blaming herself. 'You mean me,' I said. 'You think that being with me, with my . . . violence . . that it's weakened your abilities?'

Ethalia wiped a hand across her eyes. She looked like she hadn't slept in far too long. She stepped aside and gestured for me to enter the sanctuary chamber. 'Go to Birgid. She wants to speak with you and that is the only gift left that either of us can give her now.'

The sanctuary was a large chamber dug out of the dirt and rock, looking more like the abandoned den of some massive burrowing creature that had long ago left for more promising territory than somewhere to feel a God's touch. I dragged my boot heel against the floor for a moment, and then stopped myself. I didn't need to test whether the surface might be slippery; it wasn't going to come to a fight, not here. I did it by reflex, because there's nothing quite so embarrassing as falling on your arse when you're trying to draw your weapon at speed. Having done that, unintentionally, I could feel the ground was smoother than the walls, no doubt worn over time by the knees of however many thousands had come here over the years to pray. The only decorations were the silks in the six colours of the Gods of Tristia, hanging loose around the walls and shifting lazily in the faint breeze caused by our movements; I felt like I was entering a tent. Scattered candles had been lit around the chamber, but they provided little illumination and my eyes hadn't yet adjusted to the darkness.

'We pray in the shadows that we may summon the light,' a voice said from the far side of the room. I recognised the voice as Birgid's, though only barely.

A brief flash of white light filled the room and then just as quickly disappeared, leaving me twice as blind as I'd been before. I was halfway to drawing a knife when I realised what had caused it. 'You would think that if the Gods intended Saints to be candles in the dark, they might have made them a little more reliable.'

'Had the Gods made the Saints,' Birgid replied, 'then I'm sure they would have done a more thorough job.' I saw the blurry outline of an arm reaching up from a sleeping pallet at the far end of the room. 'Come then, man of valour. I have little enough time left to me without you standing there like a tree waiting for the woodsman.'

With the room blanketed in darkness once again, I picked up one of the little candles on the floor and walked over to where Birgid was stretched out on a pallet. 'You know, if you keep talking like an old granny, people are going to think you're . . .'

The words left me as I reached the bed and saw what had become of the Saint of Mercy. I'd known she was dying, and I knew well what dying looked like. But I hadn't expected this.

When I'd met Birgid-who-weeps-rivers for the first time, just a few months ago, she had looked to be no older than twenty, with hair so blonde it cascaded over her shoulders like white gold, resting against skin of a pure, pale honey lit from within by the morning sun. Even a week ago, when she'd turned up at the Palace of Baern, her face and body covered in filth and wounds, some of that ethereal beauty had remained. The woman on the sleeping pallet was not the Birgid I knew.

'I'm old,' she said, narrowing her eyes and turning a hundred wrinkles into a thousand. 'Get over it.' She coughed into a piece of white cloth held between bent, stiff fingers and examined the results. 'Can we skip the part where I spend hours trying to explain to you how the youth I retained whilst I held onto my Sainthood now flees my body?' She coughed again. 'Along with other things.'

I glanced back at Ethalia, but she stood outside the door, out of view. Had this happened all at once, or had Ethalia been watching, day after day, struggling to save this woman so dear to her as she ever so slowly faded? 'Well,' I said, turning back to Birgid, 'I'd sort of had my heart set on an extended discussion of just how terrible you look, but if you insist, we can move straight on to how bad you smell.'

I heard a sharp intake of breath a few feet behind me, but she laughed then, and a little bit of the woman I'd first met on the road came back. Apparently Quentis or Obladias had taken offence at my jibe, but Birgid hadn't. 'Ah, now I remember why I liked you, Falcio val Mond. So very, very belligerent in the face of those whose very nature demands you revere them.'

I looked around until I found a small but sturdy oak box which I assumed housed the sanctuary's religious texts. I dragged it over to Birgid's bed and sat on it. 'Belligerence comes with the coat, I'm afraid.'

She reached out and ran the tips of her fingers across the cuff of my sleeve. 'A slave to your ideals,' she murmured. 'And therein lies our one hope.'

'All hope is given by the Gods, and all glory owed to them,' Obladias said from behind me. 'You of all people should know that, madam.'

There was a brief flash of light again, a sudden glow around Birgid that came and went in an instant. 'I assume, Venerati,' she said coldly, 'that there is some reason why Falcio brought you with him. Knowing him as I do, I doubt it was so that you could quote verses from the Canon Dei at me.'

'You've got that right,' I muttered, then turned to what I really needed to know. 'Birgid, can you tell me who did this to you?'

'Did you know that the first Tristians came here as slaves?' she asked, ignoring my question. 'That's why our churches are almost all underground because our ancestors were brought here in chains to work the mines. They spent their nights on their knees, passing around whatever little lump of ore they had managed to hide and smuggle out, taking turns smoothing it in their hands, rubbing their skin raw as they prayed to any God who would listen to come and destroy those who oppressed us.' She glanced over to where Obladias and Quentis were standing by the door of the sanctuary. 'But you won't read that little fact in the Canon Dei, will you, Venerati?'

'Nor will you find any reference to the Saints,' the old monk replied. 'Shall we debate the relevance of that "little fact" too?'

I felt my jaw tighten, along with a profound urge to deliver my thoughts on the subject forcefully to the bridge of Obladias' nose. Focus, I told myself sternly. You have a job to do, and Quentis has a loaded pistol at his side. 'Birgid,' I said gently, 'have you seen either of these two men before?'

She looked up at me for a moment as if she hadn't understood the question, then gave a little chortle. 'You mean, is the man who captured me, bound me in an iron mask, forced horrible liquids down my throat and cut my flesh here in this room? Is the murderer of my fellow Saints standing a few feet away so you can challenge him to a duel to the death and save us all a great deal of time?'

'See, when you put it that way I don't sound very clever.'

Birgid lifted a hand and motioned me with her finger to lean in. When I did, she whispered quietly into my ear, 'I don't know.'

As she pushed me away, without much force, I could see tears of frustration in her eyes. 'The mask . . . it bound more than just my body,' she said. 'It denied me the abilities of my Sainthood.'

I really wanted to ask her what those were I really hadn't the barest idea of what being a Saint really meant but I could feel time slipping away from us. Deal with the things you know, I reminded myself. Deal with the crime. So instead I asked, 'How did you get free? How did you manage to get to the Palace of Baern?'

There was silence for a little while, then she started, 'They had me chained to a wall. When nothing else worked, I began smashing my head against it, over and over, until, finally, a piece of the mask shattered. There was a man there, a servant, who tried to stop me. His will was weak and I found that with the mask partially broken I could set my Awe upon him. I forced him to free me and then . . . and then I walked. I was in a daze, a fog so thick that the days and the miles meant nothing to me. I walked so long and so far that I couldn't mark the weeks or the miles. My need drove me, directed my steps, even when I couldn't see or hear or think.'

'Your need?' I interrupted, but she dismissed the question.

'I cannot guide you to the man who did this to me, Falcio.' She glanced at Quentis and Obladias. 'He could be one of these two, Falcio, or he could be you, for all I know. That damned mask . . .' She drifted off for a moment, her eyes closing.

'Birgid?' Though I hated it, I needed to bring her back to the subject at hand.

'There is a weight to him,' she said, slowly, as if searching for words to encompass the nature of the enemy. 'A great and terrible intellect. A mind that would see this world shaped to his liking.' She opened her eyes then. 'Falcio, his desires cannot abide Mercy. He will destroy it unless you stop him.'

Quentis Maren spoke for the first time. 'Why the others, then, Saint Birgid? He may despise Mercy this much, but why kill the others?'

'I suspect he despises a great many things.' She shifted on the pallet. 'Do you know why the Saints came into being, Inquisitor? We had a purpose once, and it wasn't wandering around giving blessings at weddings and harvests and being worshipped.'

Quentis came a little closer and I started to reach into my coat, but Birgid touched my arm, stopping my hand. The Inquisitor spoke carefully, respectfully. 'I know what I have been taught, my Lady, but I have the sense that you would disagree.'

'Trust that sense, then, Inquisitor. For it is rare in a man who chooses your rather idiotic profession. Tell me, how many so-called heretics have your men tortured today? How many senile old codgers or silly children have your men put to the knife for misquoting the canons?'

'That was a different time, my Lady,' Quentis replied, 'when those of my order misunderstood the calling of the Gods.'

Birgid gave a soft snort. 'The only thing the Gods ever call any of us is fools, Inquisitor.'

To his credit, Quentis took the jibe with good grace and merely bowed. 'We all play our roles, my Lady.'

'What then is the actual role of the Saints?' I asked, not wanting to waste time on a theological debate.

Birgid opened her mouth and for an instant, for the smallest fraction of a second, I thought she would answer me. Instead, she pursed her lips. 'No. This is a thing which each Saint must learn for themselves; it has never been shared with those not called and I will not be the first to break that Law.'

She started coughing then, a great, wracking cough that shook her so hard I thought it might be her last. When it was finally over, she said, 'Damn it all! Ethalia! Are you too busy sleeping with men for money to bring me some tea?'

'It wasn't I who bedded Caveil-whose-blade-cuts-water,' Ethalia said archly as she leaned over me to pass a mug to Birgid. The smell of lemon and ginger-root rose in the air. 'Remind me again, who was it who got pregnant with Caveil's child and gave birth to Shuran, the man who nearly destroyed our country? I wonder, oh wise and terrible Saint, if perhaps we should withhold judgement about the value of our respective professions?'