Chapter 41

Pips bounced off the far wall, all the while cackling madly. Donaley barely spared them a glance before shaking his head. “Pips, don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Nope,” Pips said, popping back up to its feet and buzzing through the air again.

Luke resolved to ignore the tiny thing, though he was curious about what they were. It felt like it’d be rude to ask, and also something he probably should already know if he wasn’t an off-worlder. The best thing to do was just ignore Pips.

“Anyway,” the shopkeeper said, shooing Pips away again. “That last one is dead steel, like I said. My old man got it off a dark revenant years ago. Not sure how much you know about dead steel, but it’s great for people with high strength. Not only is it strong, it regenerates. For dark revenants, the armor is actually part of their body and will regrow if damaged. When it’s properly harvested and treated, weapons made out of that steel will retain that property.”

“It’s kind of edgy, don’t you think?” Luke said.

“Edgy? I guess. It’s not really that sharp, but with all those little spikes, it can bite down on something if you need it to. Rips them right apart when you pull the mace back out.”

That wasn’t really what Luke meant, but he didn’t bother to correct Donaley. Instead, he said, “How much is it though? It sure looks expensive, maybe more than I’ve got on me.”

“Thirty gold, firm,” the shopkeeper said, no trace of hesitation in his voice.

“Too much,” Luke replied. “If it were half that, I’d think about it, but even that would be tight.”

“Hmmm, pure blood silver’s probably going to be too soft for someone with your strength. Stone wood might hold, but it’s so light that it’d be a waste.” Donaley scratched at his chin while he stared at the wall. “What I’d really like to sell you is a weapon with a blood silver core braided with living steel. With the right bonding catalyst, you’d have something flexible enough not to break the first time you slam it down but still resilient and heavy enough to let you leverage your full strength.”

“That sounds good, but again, budget.”

“I don’t have any maces in stock made that way. Got a sword, if you’re interested, but I really doubt it. It’s that one right there, with the basket handle and the thin blade.”

Luke followed Donaley’s gesture to see a sword nestled into a display rack with a long, thin blade that looked like it was made of chrome and tinged red. It was something he pictured a fencer using, or maybe a too-handsome pirate in a movie. He expected agility would be more useful than pure strength for a weapon like that, though he did have [Sword Mastery]as well and a 32 in his agility stat. He probably could use it effectively.

“I could make you a mace the same way, if you can wait a week.”

“That… might be acceptable. I’m not sure how long I’ll be in town.”

“Go on over and test that sword out. Get a feel for the metal. You can damn near bend that blade down to touch the hilt and it’ll snap back into place. Then after you do that, tell me it’s not worth waiting a week.”

Luke did as he was told. The sword’s handle was perhaps a bit too small for him, or rather the basket guarding his fingers was a bit too tight, but after using those swords he’d looted from the goblins, it was nothing he couldn’t deal with. He gave it a few experimental slashes and jabs, but he could tell right away that it was far lighter than what he was looking for.

That wasn’t what he was supposed to test though. He brought the blade up near his face and peered at the metal. “Living steel is porous,” Donaley said from across the room. “Takes well to the bonding process. It lets the core metal seep into it, all the way through it.”

Sure enough, he could see the pattern in the steel, and he could see little spots of brighter red where the blood silver had seeped in. Without his perception, he doubted he’d ever have noticed; it all would have been just a reflective red sheen on the metal. Luke put some slight pressure on the blade and watched it flex. He increased the pressure until it bent almost ninety degrees. The steel started to crack, but the red silver just filled the gaps and forced the steel back into shape once he released the metal. A few seconds later, he couldn’t tell that there had ever been anything wrong.

“That’s amazing,” Luke told the shopkeeper.

“Yes, quite. Would you like to talk about a custom order?”

“Let’s talk price first.”

“Mace uses a great deal more metal than a sword does. Eighteen gold.”

“Too high,” Luke said. He didn’t know how much a boat ticket was going to cost, but he was betting more than two gold, and that wasn’t including things like food. He liked food, and he liked it cooked by someone else if possible. “Twelve.”

“Ridiculous. I’d be losing money on the material alone, not even looking at the labor.”

“Fourteen then, and that’s as high as I can go. If you won’t take it, I’ll have to find something else.”

“Fourteen… and I’ll take your old mace. I want to study it and see if I can figure out what went into the forging process.”

Luke hesitated there. The weapon was kind of junk now, but Curt had made it, and it had kept him alive for weeks now. It had sentimental value, but at the same time, he needed to live so he could get Curt back. “Deal. Half of up front and the mace, half upon delivery.”

“It’s a deal! It’s a deal!” Pips shouted while bouncing around the room. Donaley clotheslined them as they were going by, sending the pint-sized thing into a spin that ended with them crashing into the floor.

“Swear to Hestoc, if you weren’t so useful, I’d have booted your ass out years ago.”

Pips’s enthusiasm was not diminished in any way by that declaration, but the two humans both ignored them while they completed their business. “You want the new one shaped to match this one?” Donaley asked, gesturing towards the broken mace.

“If you can, yes. That’d be great.”

“Sure, no problem. Might not look the exact same, but it’ll be close.”

“Thanks,” Luke said.

“Like I said, no problem. Easy enough to do. Now, get on out of here and I’ll see you in a week. Don’t forget to bring the other half of the money!”

* * *

Myla was so surprised at the front door of her house being thrown open that she nearly nicked her finger with her knife. That would be a disaster, since she was in the middle of dissecting a ribbon toad’s poison gland so she could drain the fluid out. It wouldn’t be immediately fatal, and she did have an antidote on hand as any competent poisoner should, but her master would be… displeased.

She set the knife aside carefully and wiped her hands clean of blood while she sorted through what her perception was telling her. Two people had entered the house, one in armor. The other was wearing something with layers, judging by the swish of cloth on cloth. They walked confidently, which told her they were either fools or incredibly dangerous. No one with any sense barged into an inquisitor’s home, not if they valued their lives. That went double if the inquisitor in question was their Master of Poisons, Adrevald Lath. There were maybe four or five other people in the entire Inquisition Department who outranked him, and all of them respected him and his talents far too much to rudely barge into his home.

This was likely a visit from someone inside the church hierarchy, but not part of the actual Inquisition itself. Considering that one of the intruders was heavily clothed and the other was in armor, they were probably a priest and a templar. She was so sure, she’d bet her favorite stiletto on it. Well, maybe not. It was a gift from her master, after all. It was precious to her.

A twitch of her legs was all it took for her to leap the eight feet to the ceiling and enter the secret passage there. She crept forward, silent and blade held at the ready, until she was over the foyer. One of the maids was standing there, scraping and bowing in front of a tall man with thinning grey hair and a bad combover.

Though she’d never spoken to him personally, she recognized him immediately. The armored man standing behind him and slightly to the left was new to her, but she didn’t suppose he mattered. He was muscle, there to keep his boss safe.

Her favorite stiletto would remain in her possession, it seemed.

Myla dropped down from the ceiling behind the two men, one hand trailing against the wall to help control her descent. She landed without a sound, blade held down against her leg. “Hello, Cardinal Gnox,” she said smoothly, interrupting the maid.

The templar reacted immediately, which was somewhat admirable she supposed. His sword cleared its sheath and whipped around in an arc, where it would have sliced her skull off at the nose if she’d let it. Instead the knife she was holding came up, flicked forward to smack the base of the sword, and knocked it straight up into the air. The templar managed to keep hold of it, but he was thrown off balance in the act.

It would have been trivially easy to put the knife in his throat then, but Myla restrained herself. It was best not to make enemies of the other branches of the church, and moreover, her master would be upset if she stained his foyer with blood. He was rather fond of several of the paintings hung on display. Myla was confident she could angle the blood down and away from them, but it was best to let the intruder live.

“As I was saying,” she continued as if a man hadn’t just tried to reflexively murder her, “what can I help you with today, Cardinal?”

“Ah, yes, the apprentice. Where is your master, girl?” Gnox stared down his nose at her. She was used to that. At barely five feet tall, everyone looked down on her. Most didn’t manage it with quite the same level of contempt as he did, but she’d seen worse from more dangerous people.

“I’m afraid he is unavailable at the moment,” Myla said smoothly. She knew better than to reveal even a hint of Master Lath’s business, even to high-ranking members of the church. “Is there something I can do to assist you?”

“There is an apostate running around, still breathing the air that the gods have gifted this world. He needs to be scrubbed from existence, lest his heresy taint us all.”

“I’m sure there are many apostates,” Myla said. “What makes this one so special that Cardinal Gnox himself comes to request the services of an inquisitor?”

“I request nothing!” Gnox hissed. “I demand that you and your master do your jobs before you find the blades of the Inquisition turned on you!”

Myla gave him a blank stare. “Mmhmm. Interesting. What did this guy do, anyway?”

“Does it matter? Do you doubt my word?”

“Of course not, Cardinal. I would never.”

Something in her tone must have tipped him off, because the man’s eye started twitching. No doubt the threats would start spewing out any second now, which would likely spell the end of his career. Master Lath did not tolerate disrespect, not towards himself, and not towards his apprentice.

Surprisingly, Cardinal Gnox mastered his emotions. “He killed a patrol of templars,” he said, his voice tight and strained.

Myla found herself nodding along. It didn’t take much to get on the church’s bad side, or rather, on the bad side of some power-hungry individuals within the church, which was the same thing. Inquisitors didn’t take orders from cardinals though. But in this case, if the man really had slain templars, she would gladly hunt him down.

“Tell me, what does he look like, and where might I find him?”