Page 66 of Crucible of Chaos

‘You really are a curious fellow, you know that?’ said Sir Daven, watching the Greatcoat with inquisitive amusement, the pistol in his left hand resting casually against his thigh. The other was still aimed at his captive’s chest.

As a travelling magistrate, Estevar was accustomed to the way some men–often knights, but particularly those vested with a modicum of legal authority over others–liked to watch him. They would try to puzzle out from his expressions or words some insight which they believed demonstrated their own investigative talents were equal to his. Lacking his intensive, all-consuming passion for detection and a willingness to devote themselves to the study of anything and everything that might serve in its pursuit, they pretended that his reputation was, if not entirely unearned, then certainly the product of luck as much as anything else. To such individuals, the art of peering into darkness and confusion, of reaching in with both hands and wresting from those shadows the unwilling truth, emerged from nothing more than instinct hardly distinguishable from their own over-confidence.

‘I really don’t think you appreciate the complexity of what’s going on,’ Sir Daven continued, clearly frustrated by Estevar’s silence. ‘You’re acting as if the margrave and I were villainous schemers pulled out of the pages of some old sword romance.’ He waved one of the pistols towards the island slowly receding in the distance. ‘As if those damnable monks were some sort of. . . well, holy brethren, I suppose.’

‘You believe them to be otherwise?’

Sir Daven leaned closer. ‘I know it with absolute gods-be-damned certainty.’

Estevar kept on rowing. To take the bait so soon would be to encourage the knight to embellish with extrapolation and conjecture what few pertinent facts he truly had to offer. ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d as soon wait until I may pose my questions to your liege. I doubt the margrave has shared all he knows about the events transpiring on Isola Sombra with a mere. . . how did you put it earlier? A “sheriff outrider”?’

Sir Daven laughed at that, not sounding offended at all, although he couldn’t quite mask the seething resentment observable in the tightening of his smile. ‘Oh, Estevar, you embarrass yourself. The question is not how much his lordship imparts to me, but how muchIchoose to share withhim.’

Estevar bent the oars back in the water. ‘We’re almost a quarter of the way there. If you have something to say to me, I suggest you do it soon.’

Sir Daven made a show of placing the back of one hand against his forehead as if he were about to swoon. ‘Saints protect my humble soul, are we near to fulfilling your dark prophecy regarding my future?’ He set his hand back down on his knee. The knight’s grin was congenial, like two friends sharing a joke. ‘Admit it, Estevar, that nonsense about me dying if I forced you to set foot on this boat was just a tactic meant to give lesser minds pause.’ He wagged the pistol like an accusing finger. ‘Even when stripped of your coats, you travelling magistrates always fall back on your little tricks and ploys, don’t you?’

Estevar returned Sir Daven’s smile. ‘That last is not an unfair accusation, I will confess as much.’ He kept the oars out of the water a moment to catch his breath. ‘But allow me to return to my allegation against the margrave. Isn’t this crusade he’s embarked upon nothing more than a means to expand his own territory? Feigning outrage over imagined spiritual crimes to justify the illegal acquisition of the island’s riches? I wonder what portion of Isola Sombra will be turned over to his trusted lieutenant in this affair once the bloodshed has ended?’

The young knight leaped on the insinuation of pursuing his own gain. ‘Ah, you see? This is just like you Greatcoats! So convinced of your own moral superiority that you would impugn those fighting a just cause while defending others engaged in a plot so vile it would wither your soul to hear it.’

Estevar resumed his rowing. The boat was pushed this way and that by the rising waves. Sir Daven kept close watch on Estevar’s movements, alert to any attempt he might make to use the oars as weapons.

‘What I believe, my friend, is that if you knew of a crime so severe it warranted invading a holy site, you would not keep it a secret from the one person you most need to sanction the margrave’s conquest of the island.’

Sir Daven sighed theatrically. ‘I suggested as much to my liege. But I fear he’s not one of us, Estevar.’

‘And what are “we”, precisely?’

‘Men of the law,’ Sir Daven replied, a sternness in his countenance challenging Estevar to call him otherwise. His expression softened. ‘When we got word that Abbot Venia had summoned a magistrate to the island, I had no idea it would turn out to be the inscrutable Estevar Borros. Imagine my surprise, finding the King’s Crucible himself riding towards the causeway on that mule of yours!’

‘You make me sound far grander than I am.’

‘Let’s just say I’m neither ignorant of your reputation, nor do I share the margrave’s disdain for the Greatcoats. It was my belief that if you were fully apprised of the horrors those mad monks sought to unleash upon this country of ours, you would be the first to take up arms alongside me.’

Estevar stopped rowing, letting the blades of the oars drift in the choppy waters. ‘I cannot paddle and dance at the same time, Sir Knight. Clearly, you’ve been instructed not to reveal what you know. You’ve made plain that this injunction goes against your own judgement. Now you must either disobey those orders or, for the love of the gods, keep silent. The waters grow more treacherous with every stroke, and I haven’t the time to be distracted by sly glances and unsubtle insinuations!’

Sir Daven made sure his captive took note of the pistols again. ‘You have an unwise habit of denigrating your equals, Estevar.’

‘Damn it, man! I’mtryingto address you as an equal. It is foryouto decide whether that is truth or lie–whether we are, indeed, both “men of the law”!’

Now we shall see, Estevar thought, watching the knight’s reaction to his words.I have played the penultimate card in this chancy game of ours.

Sir Daven stared back at him, and in that moment seemed to grow taller, more dignified, as if this was what he’d wanted all along: not power over an enemy or to instil fear in his captive, but to be seen as a colleague–a peer. How strange that Caeda shared this impulse, yet always sought toearnthat sense of camaraderie with Estevar, rather than demanding it as tribute.

Let him have this small grace, then, for whether or not we are equals in life, we are surely all brothers in death.

‘What do you know about the rise of the gods in Tristia?’ Sir Daven asked, now with no trace of his smug roguishness or haughty arrogance.

‘What most who pursue such matters have gleaned in recent years. When the first Tristians were brought here as slaves, the ores that ran in veins beneath the mines where they were made to work proved to be awakened by faith. Thus, the gods who arose from their prayers were shaped by the desires they felt most keenly.’

‘Yes, yes– but what you may not know is that Isola Sombra was the first and most potent location where this phenomenon occurred. In the prayer caves beneath what is now the abbey, masses of slaves were kept in pens before being sold to their Avarean masters on the mainland.’

Thousands upon thousands, Estevar thought,sharing their prayers in the darkness, adding to them over the years as one group of slaves departed and another arrived.

‘Think of it, Estevar: all those men and women, slowly forging a faith together, unaware that the very rock on which they knelt contained the means to create the gods they so badly needed– Craft, to teach them how to make weapons, War to give them the courage to fight, Death to take their enemies, Coin to reward their victories. But those gods died, murdered by—’

‘The Blacksmith,’ Estevar interrupted. ‘The first to devise a means of killing both saints and gods, releasing the esoteric forces from which they came so that he might bind them back together to create his own deity.’

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