Chapter 81. The Man Who Carried Her Off a Wall Might Have Signed the Order Against Her

Chapter 81: 81. The Man Who Carried Her Off a Wall Might Have Signed the Order Against Her

For a long time, she didn’t speak. The light shivered on her features.

She was reading the signatures, one after another, and then her eyes stopped on the middle one, and her fingers went white around the paper.

"Dorian Kell," she said.

"Sharon..."

"No."

"I know that it’s hard."

"It’s a forgery."

"It might be... One of them is, so there’s a precedent." I knelt in front of her. "But I won’t lie to you... It could also be real."

"I don’t know... That’s the honest truth," I sighed. "I only know what’s on the paper."

"I know that man," she said, hoarsely. "I’ve known him for twenty years."

Nobody said anything.

"Do you know what he did for me?" she asked.

Her voice was low and strange. "At the Black Gate... Fifteen years ago."

"After my squad died... I was alone on that wall for two days."

"I’d lost nine people... I couldn’t leave."

"I thought if I left... their deaths would have meant nothing! So I stayed, and I fought, and I stopped feeling anything at all." She swallowed. "On the third dawn, a column came over the hill."

"It was the Crystal Guard, with a gray-haired officer riding at the head and a banner as big as a house... That was Kell."

I didn’t move.

"He rode up the stairs to the wall, with the whole garrison watching... He didn’t say a word."

"He picked me up, carried me down, wrapped me in his own cloak, and put me on his horse... I was too weak to walk."

"He fed me soup from a tin cup... And when I finally started to cry, he sat beside me for an hour, and he said, ’You held it, girl. You held it. Now let go.’" Her voice cracked. "He trained me for two years after that..."

"He taught me everything about discipline... He made me... what I am."

"I’m sorry," I said.

"Don’t be sorry." She laughed, a harsh, unsteady sound. "Be useful... Tell me it’s a lie."

"I... can’t."

"Tell me someone planted it!"

"It’s possible... and I’m not saying it isn’t."

"But?"

"But the same ledger has a forged signature right next to it... Whoever did that knows how to forge."

"And they put it on the page with Kell’s." I took a breath. "Which means that either they’re covering their tracks with a lie, or they’re covering a lie with a truth."

"I don’t know which, and I won’t pretend I do."

She stared at me for a long time. Then she stood up and kicked the nearest chair so hard that it spun across the nave and shattered against the wall.

"DAMN IT!"

The echo rolled through the ruined chapel. A flock of roosting pigeons exploded out of the rafters.

"I’d rather be ambushed!" she roared. "I’d rather get an arrow in the heart and die!"

"At least then I’d know who my enemy was!"

"But... instead I have to sit here and wonder whether the one man in the world I trusted has been..." Her voice broke.

She stopped, put both hands over her face, and for a moment, her shoulders shook.

Then, slowly, a sound came out of her that I hadn’t expected.

It was a laugh, but... It was a broken, bitter, exhausted laugh.

"You’re right," she said, from behind her hands. "You’re right, and I hate you for it."

"I’ve been told that before," I said.

She dragged her palms down her face and looked at me. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she’d aged ten years.

She sat back down on the bench, and she stared at the ground between her boots.

"I have a confession," she said.

"You... don’t have to."

"I do." She drew a long breath. "When I put in that request a few months back, the one for the crystal routes."

"When it got killed... I told you someone higher had blocked it. And I never said who."

"You didn’t."

"Because I didn’t ask." Her jaw tightened. "I had a name in my head the whole time."

"I knew the only person with the authority to do it, the only person who could kill a request from the Order’s senior instructor with a single note..."

"I never wrote to him. And I never asked..." Sharon gritted her teeth. "I told myself it didn’t matter... I told myself I’d rather not know."

"Kell," Laura said quietly.

"It might have been Kell... or maybe... I don’t know."

"I was afraid to find out." She looked up at us. "I’m the best swordswoman in the kingdom, and I couldn’t ask one question...!"

Nobody had an answer. The silence stretched out, feeling all thick and heavy.

Then I heard a soft scuffle of boots on stone, and I looked up in time to see Eveline cross the chapel.

She didn’t say anything. She walked straight up behind Sharon, wrapped both arms around her shoulders, and held on.

It was a clumsy hug... It was far too tight, and it pressed Sharon’s wounded shoulder awkwardly against her chest, and one of Eveline’s long ears flopped over the side of Sharon’s face.

Her arms were shaking. I could see her fingers digging into the cloth of Sharon’s shirt.

Sharon went absolutely rigid.

I held my breath.

Beside me, Alicia put a hand on my arm, and the three of us began to back away, silently, toward the door.

For a long moment, Sharon didn’t move.

Then, slowly, awkwardly... one big calloused hand came up and closed over Eveline’s smaller one. It rested there, heavy and warm.

Neither of them said a word.

I didn’t know how long it lasted... Time stopped working in that chapel.

Somewhere outside, a night bird called. And the lamp guttered.

Finally, Sharon let out a long, shaky breath, and she murmured... in a rough voice that was nearly gentle:

"You’re strangling me, rabbit."

"Sorry," Eveline whispered.

"Don’t be."

She didn’t let go.’

...

Eveline found me outside the chapel a little while later, sitting on a fallen column with my elbows on my knees, staring at the stars.

I hadn’t heard her approach, which was a talent of hers when she wasn’t tripping over things.

One moment, I was alone with the crickets and the dark shapes of the yew trees, and the next... a small, hesitant cough came from somewhere near my left shoulder.

"Roland?"

"Hey," I said.

She stood a few feet away with her hands clasped in front of her and her ears halfway down.

She’d tied her golden hair back with a strip of cloth, and in the faint moonlight, her face looked pale and drawn.

She’d been crying, I thought... Not recently. But probably a while ago, and then she’d washed her face.

"Can I... talk to you?" she said. "Just for a minute?"

"I know you’re tired... and you don’t have to—"

"I’d like that."

She sat down on the other end of the column, as far away as the stone would allow, and for a while she didn’t say anything.

She picked at a loose thread on her sleeve. And a night breeze rustled through the yews.

"I wanted to say sorry," she said at last. "About Lady Sanford’s shoulder."

"Eveline..."

"No... let me say it! Please!" She drew a shaky breath. "It was my fault... I know it was."

"I got excited, and I spun too fast... and I fell into the line of fire."

"If she hadn’t jumped in..." She swallowed. "She was hit because of me."

"She took an arrow that would’ve gone through my neck... And I just knelt there like an idiot."

"You didn’t just kneel there."

"I did."

"You knelt there for about four seconds... And then you got up and took out three archers and a signal master in less than a minute." I turned to look at her. "I was there... I counted."

"But you had to tell me to."

"I reminded you... That’s different."

"It’s not different if I can’t do it by myself."

"Sure it is." I leaned back on my hands. "Everybody freezes sometimes."

"You should have seen me in the first minute of that fight in Dunmore..."

"I was so scared... to the point that my knees stopped working."

"Alicia had to yell at me... The point isn’t never freezing." I smiled at her. "The point is what you do afterward..."

"...and what you did afterward was incredible."