Chapter 12: Sanctuary

Frankie

Azrath had a solution to the paladin.

It involved lamp oil, which I was developing a dislike of.

“The building is old,” he said. “Flood damage has made it unsafe. Remove the occupants. Permit an unfortunate fire. The knight loses his refuge, and you lose an inconvenience.”

He stood beside a window overlooking the valley. In the afternoon light, his robes looked almost blue. Someone had placed fresh flowers on the table.

“The first white asters,” he said when he caught me looking. “They used to flower in my wife’s garden.”

I hadn’t known he’d had a wife.

Somebody had loved him when he still had a face.

I looked from the flowers to the oil.

“Can’t burn the church,” I said.

“You can certainly burn it. Whether you wish to is another question.”

“It’s full of people who lost their houses.”

“I said to remove them.”

“And the knight?”

“He will refuse. Heroes are wonderfully consistent when offered a grand gesture.”

Al had nearly broken his back getting Old Tem out of that warehouse.

Now I was supposed to burn him in a church.

“No.”

The word surprised both of us.

Azrath turned from the window.

The room got colder.

I kept my hands where he could see them. My gun might as well have been a tin whistle up here.

“Explain,” he said.

So I explained the business end.

You burn a church, people talk. You leave a holy man inside, they do more than talk. Next thing you know, the guy selling you cabbages has a sword under the counter.

And you can’t even haul the holy man in to shut him up. He’s dead. Everybody knows dead men give the best speeches.

“You squeeze people until the only thing they got left is God, you better be ready when He sends somebody.”

Azrath’s empty sockets remained on me.

“He has already sent somebody.”

“Yeah. And so far, people prefer supper.”

The Boss let me wait before he laughed.

“You are very difficult to replace, Francesco.”

He said it warmly. I wished I liked hearing it less.

“Contain him,” he said. “Do not allow my generosity toward your methods to become an excuse for weakness.”

“I can handle him.”

“Apparently not in the square.”

I looked at him.

He touched one finger to the seal on my coat.

“A ruler hears things.”

Then he returned to his flowers.

* * *

The guards were already at the church when I got back.

Naturally, nobody had told them we weren’t burning it anymore.

A tall orc captain had six men and two carts of confiscated oil. He was arguing with Benny on the steps.

Benny was holding a basket of bread. It did not look like an even contest.

“Evacuate,” the captain said. “The building is condemned.”

“The roof held,” Benny said.

“I have my orders.”

“Then you oughta read ’em carefully.”

I stopped. That wasn’t his usual accent.

One guard shoved past him.

Benny moved the bread basket to his left hand, caught the man’s wrist, and turned him against the wall. A small knife appeared beneath the guard’s chin.

I had not seen him draw it, and I spent a lot of time noticing knives.

Rosella stepped out behind him. She held a string of prayer beads wrapped twice around her fingers. The air across the doorway shimmered.

The other guards stopped.

“Nobody bleeds on my clean steps,” she said.

“They’re church steps,” Benny told her.

“I cleaned them.”

The captain reached for his sword.

“Don’t,” I said.

Every head turned.

That part of governing, I liked.

“New instructions.” I showed the written order Azrath had given me. “Church stays open. Captain, come down here.”

He obeyed slowly. The name on the orders was Dren.

“Your men get paid?” I asked.

He blinked.

“What?”

“Regularly.”

“Not regularly.”

“We fix that. In return, when you get an order involving civilians in my town, you check with my office before you start improving anybody’s life with fire.”

Dren looked at the oil, then at Benny’s knife.

“Gladly.”

Benny released the guard. The knife disappeared. He lifted the bread basket as though that had been his concern the whole time.

Aldric came out carrying a sleeping child.

He looked from the guards to me.

“The sanctuary stands,” I said.

“Because Azrath permits it?”

“Because I said no.”

He studied me.

For once, he didn’t ruin the moment by explaining it.

One of Dren’s guards lingered after the others began loading the oil.

A young kid with a split ear. He looked at Aldric like he wanted to ask something and expected to get hit for it.

“My sister,” he said to Aldric. “She’s been coughing since the lower houses flooded.”

The paladin shifted the sleeping child more securely against his shoulder.

“Bring her.”

The guard glanced at his uniform.

“She lives in the barracks quarter.”

“Does that change her need?”

“Some priests think it does.”

Aldric looked at the doorway, then back at him.

“This one doesn’t.”

The guard left quickly, as though someone might withdraw permission if he gave them time.

I watched him go.

“That’ll get around,” I told Aldric.

“I hope so.”

“You just made it harder for Dren to find men willing to burn your church.”

“I also agreed to see a sick woman.”

“Both,” I said.

He gave me a brief look.

“Yes. Both.”

Inside, people moved benches to make room for another family. Rosella handed bread to an old woman who had brought nothing but a blanket and a chipped bowl.

The woman waited in the doorway for somebody to ask what she owed.

Rosella put another piece of bread in her bowl.

That was the whole interview.

I looked away before Al caught me watching.

Benny adjusted his cuff over whatever held the knife. I still couldn’t see it, and I wanted to know where the hell an innkeeper learned that.

* * *

I closed the tavern early.

Rosella complained about the lost trade. Benny tried to disappear into the cellar. Hobb stood in the doorway with the relaxed expression of a man being paid to stand exactly where he wanted.

We all sat at the back table.

“The knife,” I said.

Benny sighed.

“Kitchen tool.”

“You put a kitchen tool under an armed man’s jaw without spilling a roll.”

“Good rolls.”

“Benny.”

There it was again. That little wince.

“You keep calling me that,” he said.

“Your name’s Bennaro.”

“Now.”

Rosella put her beads on the table.

Mara sat beside me. She had taken a needle to the loose cuff of my shirt while we waited. I held still because she had explained what would happen if I didn’t.

“Tell him,” she said to Benny.

Benny looked at Rosella.

She nodded.

“New York,” he said.

The room tilted a little.

“What?”

“I said New York. Five Points, mostly. A few places I wasn’t welcome after.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Often enough.”

“You knew.”

“We suspected. Then you started complaining about tomatoes.”

I looked at Rosella.

“Forty years,” she said. “Or near enough. You stop keeping track the same way.”

My chair scraped the floor.

“Did you ever find a way back?”

Benny shook his head. “Went back to the field. Walked it till we knew every stone. There wasn’t a door anymore.”

“You kept looking?”

“For years,” Rosella said. “Every story of a strange doorway, every traveler who might know something.”

“And?”

Her hand settled over Benny’s.

“No,” she said.

I sat back down. Mara still held my cuff. She waited before putting the needle through it again.

The strange crucifix, the food, Benny’s face when I’d called somebody a friend of ours. It had been sitting in front of me the whole time.

“Benny the Blade,” he said quietly. “That’s what they called me.”

Hobb looked impressed.

“Better than Hobb.”

“You can pick your own name,” I told him.

“I’ve grown attached by now.”

* * *

Their trouble had begun with a cellar door that should have opened onto stairs. It opened onto a field instead.

After that came the same things that usually happened to people who had no money, no local family, and no idea which animals ate men. Trouble. Work. More trouble.

They joined a band of travelers and learned to fight beside them. Eventually they found people who thought they could kill Azrath.

Rosella learned prayers that answered.

Benny already knew what to do with a knife.

“We got inside,” he said. “Thought that was the hard part.”

“What happened?”

He rubbed his right hand. I noticed two fingers didn’t straighten completely.

“He knew we were coming. Or he guessed enough. Took the towns along the road. Put people where we’d have to kill them to get at him. Our leader kept saying the sacrifice would be worth it.”

Rosella looked at her beads.

“It was always someone else’s sacrifice.”

They left the fortress with fewer people than they brought.

The survivors scattered. Benny and Rosella changed their names, bought a failing tavern, and grew old quietly.

“You could’ve told me,” I said.

“You work for him.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. He had me there.

Benny looked at Mara, then at Hobb and Brannik.

“And then you started collecting people. Thought maybe you were just collecting useful things. I’ve seen that before.”

“And now?”

“Now I put a knife on a soldier for a church full of strangers. So apparently retirement ain’t taking.”

Rosella took his hand again without either of them looking. Forty years.

I couldn’t remember keeping a woman interested for forty days. Usually she got tired of waiting for me to come back from something I couldn’t explain.

Mara tied off the thread at my cuff.

“Done,” she said.

I looked down too late to keep her from noticing.

* * *

After Hobb and Mara went upstairs, Benny brought out a little wooden box.

Inside were four knives, a folded map, and a ring with a chipped red stone.

“Old service passages,” he said, handing the map to Brannik. “Some will have changed.”

Brannik spread it across the table.

His finger followed a line beneath the fortress kitchens.

“Some haven’t.”

“I’m not planning a war,” I said.

“Nobody ever is,” Benny said. “Until somebody starts one.”

He kept the knives.

Rosella let him.

Outside, the bell rang for evening prayers. People came out of the tavern with full bellies and walked toward the church.

I watched them go.

Two places in town where people thought somebody might help them.

Al would probably make a speech about the difference. I intended to point out that we served wine.

Then I remembered he did too.

Religion was a competitive business.

Mara joined me at the window.

“Was it only because burning the church would cause trouble?” she asked.

She waited.

“My mother used to light candles,” I said. “When she couldn’t fix something herself.”

“Did it help?”

“Helped her.”

I could still picture her hands protecting the match from the draft.

“You don’t burn a place people bring that to.”

Mara stood closer. Her shoulder brushed mine.

Neither of us moved away.

For a while, we listened to the bell.

* * *

The next morning, Dren brought me a problem with no church attached.

Three wagons of bridge timber had been taken on the west road. We knew the leader. We didn’t know where he had put the timber, and the bridge crew had four days’ wages left before I started paying men to stare at the river.

“His brother sells harness in the square,” Dren said.

“In on it?”

“Nothing to say he is.”

“Bring him in.”

The harness maker was called Corven. He came with a strip of leather still wrapped around his wrist and kept asking who would watch his stall.

“Your brother took my timber.”

“My brother hasn’t spoken to me since winter.”

“Then he’ll be interested to hear where you are.”

Corven looked at the door. I told Dren to give him food and leave the cuffs off. Nobody laid a hand on him.

One night in a room. I’d done worse before breakfast in Chicago.

Mara came to the office when she heard.

“What has he done?”

“Nothing. That’s why nobody’s hurting him.”

“He has a wife waiting.”

“Tell her he’ll be back.”

“When?”

I looked up from the bridge accounts.

“When his brother answers.”

She left with the harness maker’s name on a scrap of paper.

Aldric came before the lamps were lit.

Apparently she knew where to take a complaint.

I met him outside the watch house.

“He is not responsible for his brother,” he said.

“He’ll be out by morning.”

“Open the door.”

“You gonna hit me again?”

His eyes moved to the lock. Light gathered along one gauntlet.

For a second I thought he would do it.

Then Corven called through the door that his brother had sent a message.

Dren’s runner came around the corner holding it. The timber lay in a charcoal clearing. Untouched. We could collect it if Corven walked free.

I showed Al the note.

“Bridge gets built. Nobody gets hurt.”

“You have kept an innocent man here all day.”

“And now he’s going home.”

I opened the door myself.

Corven walked past us without speaking. His wife waited beside Mara in the street. She had shut the stall when she heard. Neither of them looked at the silver I offered for the lost trade.

Al waited until they were gone.

“Do not do this again.”

I held up the note.

He wouldn’t look at it.

That night, the first timber came back. By morning, Hobb had men lifting beams into place.

I put the recovery in my report to the Boss.

One day. No blood. All three wagons returned.

It looked good written down.