"Why? Don't you want me off your back?"
"Sure I do. But that bastard just did his damnedest to kill me as well as you and I'm in no mood do him any bloody favours." He spat on Batsen's corpse.
Gabriella relaxed slightly. "All right, so you're not a Brother, but you've worked with them."
"Their money's as good as anyone's. I've worked with the Faith too. That's why they call it being a mercenary, love. The clue's in the name."
"And are you working for the Brotherhood now?"
"If I'm not working for them I'll say no and if I am working for them I wouldn't want you to know, so I'd still have to say no."
"So, someone, who may or may not belong to some religious organisation of which I can't approve, paid you to do a job…"
"I ain't in the habit of risking my life for free, Dez. Or fraternising with members of the Faith's military order for free. Actually I should have charged double for that."
"What sort of job?"
"I was hired to find out who hired the man that shot Ludwig Rhodon. I'm told Goran Kell's the one who wants to know, for some reason."
"You're working for Kell?" She was astonished and reached for her sword.
"I'm not working for Goran Kell, Dez. Not directly, anyway. I'm working for a man who Kell went to, to try to find out who's making him look like an arse. Sandor Feyn," Crowe went on. "You won't know him. He usually goes by aliases.
Gabriella grimaced. "I've heard enough bedtime stories, sinner. Karel Scarra already told us that he and Kell — "
"Hired a bloke called Lukas Bertam to off an Eminence? I heard that too. What you don't seem to have heard is that Lukas Bertam isn't the assassin who took the shot and isn't the bloke you and Brand killed."
"Of course he is!"
Crowe radiated smugness. "Did you get a relative to identify the body? Didn't think so. Bertam got himself fished out of Turnitia's harbour two weeks before the big day and someone took his place. Anyway, so Kell's worried that someone is setting him up and he goes to his opposite number in Turnitia. Kell asked him to find out who hired the assassin that took the shot and Feyn asked me, as I do a run between Turnitia and the Huntress. Apparently Kell wanted to ask me himself, but Feyn isn't stupid enough to put us together. Kell doesn't know who I am and I don't know any more about him."
"Can you arrange a meeting with Sandor Feyn?"
"Why?"
"Maybe I can help him out."
Crowe laughed. "You? Help the naughty Brotherhood types? Bollocks, love."
"It's not unknown. We both worship the same God and sometimes we share a common enemy."
He scanned her face, trying to analyse her expression. "No… There's something else, God-girl."
She nodded slowly, as if admitting defeat. "I still want to find Kell. Perhaps Feyn can point me on the way."
Crowe didn't know that she had good cause to place Kell at the Glass Mountain so recently cleared of goblin-kind. He knew she had an ulterior motive for wanting to see Feyn, so she gave him an ulterior motive; one which anyone among the Swords at Solnos could confirm.
Crowe thought about it. "And what are you offering?"
"The face of the assassin from Kalten."
They buried Erak the next day, under a flagstone in the plaza. Crowe hung back, because it just wasn't his place to be in a Final Faith ceremony. It wasn't that he didn't believe in God — like most soldiers, so likely to meet the Lord of All at any moment, he had his beliefs — but Makennon's rules were another matter.
When the funeral party broke up and the Knights relieved their fellows on guard duty, Gabriella stayed where she was, by the fountain. She dropped to her knees, but when she tried to summon the words of a prayer, she couldn't think of a single one. Oh, she could have recited any of the Faith's standard prayers easily, but she realised that she simply didn't know what she wanted to pray for. For Erak to survive? Too late. For his resurrection? The Lord of All didn't work that way. For him to be with the Lord of All, flying through the clouds of Kerberos? That went without saying and to pray for it would be to insult Erak by suggesting that he had not been a worthy enough man, to have achieved that. Pray for the strength to carry on without him, or to bear the loss? She was strong enough, or she would never have been confirmed as a Knight of the Swords.
So, what to pray for? Nothing, she realised. She didn't need to pray for anything, she just needed to pray and to know that she could always feel that connection to the Lord of All. Perhaps, she thought, her prayer had been answered before she even recognised its nature herself.
"I miss him," she said softly. And she felt that the Lord of All had somehow responded that He knew and that He understood and that Gabriella shouldn't be ashamed.
Crowe appeared beside her.
"I'm sorry, you know." He said.
Gabriella nodded. "I know. We'd made the Pact, Erak and me."
Crowe looked blank. "Pact? You mean like a marriage Binding?"
"More or less. Whatever branch of Faith the faithful work in it is the duty of each couple to produce one child between them."
"One?"
Gabriella nodded. "One only. One to carry on God's work and spread His word."
"Wouldn't a whole brood do that more?"
"More would distract from God's work."
"Too much pleasure, eh?"
"You mock my grief! What do you know about grief, anyway?"
"If you think I haven't lost a loved one before, you're wrong. You don't grow up in my business without that happening a few times."
"Why are you still here?" she asked at last.
"There are two things nobody should do alone. Nobody should die alone and nobody should grieve alone."
DeBarres came over and Crowe nodded to him before leaving the Knight and Preceptor in private.
"I don't know what to say. 'I'm sorry' is just nowhere near enough. Nowhere near." DeBarres said, putting a hand on Gabriella's shoulder.
"Seeing you helps."
DeBarres hesitated. "This Travis Crowe… Who is he?"
Gabriella held her tongue. Crowe. Crowe the heretic. Crowe the immoral. Crowe the murder and corruptor. Crowe the man who knew such a high figure in the Brotherhood.
"He's a mercenary who helped with the defence of Solnos."
"Good man?"
"Professional. Good fighter."
"Then he has the thanks of the Order. Now…"
She looked at DeBarres sadly. "No rest for the… Well, anyway. I have a lead on Goran Kell. Sandor Feyn."
"Feyn? DeBarres was either shocked or impressed, but Gabriella wasn't sure which it was. A mixture, perhaps. "One of the legends, Gabriella, equal in notoriety to Kell. We've wanted to bring him down for years."
"I remembered his name. Apparently he's in Turnitia. Crowe and I will be following that up in the morning."
"Do you need any reinforcements?"
"I don't think so."
"If you insist. Excellent work, as always." He straightened out a crick in his back. "What about Kell?"
"We'll have to deal with the goblins first to get near him. I know where I can probably find a map to his more precise location. I'll be fetching that after I've visited Feyn. Also, Feyn apparently has been in contact with Kell. If he still has a contact, I'd prefer that contact to stop before we get near Kell."
"Good thinking. The Lord go with you."
A few days later, after a long and painful ride northwards, Gabriella was wearing nondescript black and grey armour. Some of it, including the cloak, had belonged to Kannis' fallen man. Beside her, Crowe wore the same colours as they rode westward through the southern end of the Anclas territories. Gabriella scowled, her nose wrinkling as the stench of rotten fish rolled from the Turnitia docks as they entered the city.
They dismounted outside a tavern squeezed between two ship owner's offices. The ruffians lounging outside let them through without a word, as soon as Crowe said: "It's raining blood out here."