The Silver Scar Page 11

  She laid a hand on Castile’s back, ran her finger down the smooth grains of the silver scar. “Let’s have a talk, you and I.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Castile reminded himself he’d had worse. Still, his back tensed at Marius’ gentle touch. His chains rattled. They held his hands out to the side, stretching his arms. Cold shackles secured his ankles close to the wall. One of them had a metal burr inside that dug into his skin every time he moved. “I already told you. I’m not talking. Just do what you’re going to do to me and get it over with.”

  Something cold and sharp pressed along the edge of his scar. “What about what you did to me?”

  He forced a chuckle. “What about it? You should be dead. I’m out of practice.”

  The stinging edge of the knife dug in. Something hot ran down his skin. He hissed in pain.

  “See now? You’re much better at playing the victim,” Marius said.

  He grunted, tried to think of something to say to distract her. “And to think Trinidad defended you.”

  “He’s sworn to me. Of course he defends me.”

  The knife came away. Air stung his new wound. Her hand caressed the smooth skin of his hip. He quivered at her touch and willed his body still. It didn’t behave.

  She leaned in close to whisper, “You were close once. Maybe you would like to be with him again? But Windigo might not approve.”

  He stiffened. Not from the name of his cellmate but because it was a short step from his prison file to the truth. Fuck. Fuck. “You studied up on me. I’m flattered.”

  “Yes, once we suspected you. Paul thought he’d killed you, but since my wound healed it was logical to assume yours had, too. We had no idea who you were. There were rumors, though, about a Wiccan who had emerged so strong and clever after years in prison. Your description fit what we’d seen of you in the Barren. So, I read your records, the damage you caused, the lives you took. Father Troy saw you often in prison because you’d been friends with Trinidad.”

  Castile tried for a disdainful snort and failed. His sorrow from the priest’s death still resonated through his heart. “The sun and moon and stars don’t revolve around Trinidad.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder. Every time I find a problem in Boulder Parish, there he is, standing at the heart of it.”

  He shook his head, scraping his cheek on the wall. “I dragged him into this. He doesn’t know anything, not about roving or the Barren, none of it.”

  “No matter. He’ll come to heel. Archwardens always do. I’m more interested in you at the moment. You attacked me. Now my archwarden Paul is dead. I find it difficult to believe it’s all coincidence.”

  That he could deny calmly. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “You’re a convicted ecoterr. You’ve killed plenty. You all do.”

  “Convicted for possession of explosives, for my association with the movement. For arson. Not for murder.”

  “But you have, haven’t you? Murdered.” She pressed the sharp edge of the knife into his flesh again.

  Castile cringed away from it, pressing hard against the course wall. Jagged bits of stone bit into his chest and scuffed his cheek. His breath came in short pants despite all efforts to slow it.

  “You killed Paul in cold blood, a good man, a man of God,” she said. “Admit it. Tell me the truth—”

  “I didn’t kill him. It’s the truth!”

  “Surely even a heathen can see God has brought you to me for justice.”

  He twisted his head around to squint at her. Her scar reflected the faint light, glinting in his eyes. “At least I never pretended my gods liked it when I was blowing your town up—” His words broke off with a scream as she stabbed the blade through the fleshy part of his hand, between the thumb and forefinger. Blood coursed down the wall, painting over countless other stains. Tears slicked his cheeks

  “Where is your coven?” she asked.

  Castile shook his head against the rough wall, tried to think of words for prayer. None came.

  “I know there are more rovers,” she said.

  His breath came in pained gasps. She twisted the blade and he screamed again. Fragments of denial darted through the agony. He clung to them. “No! I’m the only one—”

  “You’re lying. You’re lying about your coven, about the rovers. You’re lying about Paul. Just admit it. Tell me where your coven is. Tell me why you killed Paul.”

  He rolled his forehead against the cinderblock wall. A deep whine caught in his throat. “I didn’t. I didn’t kill him. I swear it—”

  She yanked out the knife with a twist, drawing another sharp scream from him. “God brought you to me.”

  He shuddered at her breath against his ear.

  “You’ll realize that soon enough. But like Christ on the cross, sometimes the only path to peace is pain.”

  She pulled away from him and opened the door. It grated against the floor. The noise jolted through him and he scraped his chest as he startled. He drew a ragged breath, tried to marshal his wits and string her words into some kind of sense. She meant to torture him, but she had some sort of spiritual justification for it from her god. She was insane.

  That explained a lot. A sick tremble started in his gut.

  Marius spoke so he could hear: “James, I leave it to you to find out where his coven is.”

  The shaking spread out through his extremities, making his chains clink softly.

  A hoarse, low voice: “Yes, Your Grace. How badly do you need the information?”

  “Badly,” Marius said. “But the Wiccan may still be of use to me alive.”

  She summoned the others from the hall. A pause as the archwardens stepped inside and shut the door. Someone hissed a breath.

  “Surprise.” Castile drew a breath, then another. It steadied his voice. “She’s not the only one with a scar.”

  Boot steps.

  Another breath.

  And then pain.

  NINETEEN

  Trinidad paced the streets outside the church for a miserable hour. Sleet stung his cheeks and ran down his back, but it did nothing to cleanse away his grief and anger. He might as well have tried to climb ice without a pickaxe.

  At last some semblance of reasoned thought broke through. He knew he should be ashamed at how he’d spoken to the bishop, should go and beg her forgiveness. Castile had come inparish knowing the potential consequences and, of course, she had to take him into custody. Castile had broken his parole. It was law. Yet, he couldn’t let go of the thought of what they would do to him, especially once they found the scar on his back. Bishop Marius had called her silver scar a wound from an angel. What would it mean when others discovered Castile had one, too? He rubbed his hand across his breast plate, remembering the sand searing the pentacle in his chest. What were they doing to him right now?

  He clenched his hands into numb fists. What was he supposed to do? Stage a rescue for a convicted ecoterr, turn his back on all he believed for the sake of one good man in danger? Speak the whole truth, bare his own scar, and let the bishop deal with the fallout?

  The truth about his killing Paul would surely come out. If he confessed to even some of what he’d done in the past twenty-four hours, he’d earn discipline from his order for lying, or worse, be imprisoned and executed for murder. What would become of Wolf then?

  Wolf. He still had to tell Wolf about Father Troy.

  His younger brother sat cross-legged on his rumpled bed. He wore a pair of Trinidad’s old sleeping pants and clutched a blanket around him. A few tapers illuminated the burn scars on his face, which reached down his neck to wrap around his shoulder. Trinidad had grown so used to them, he barely saw them anymore. This night the scars glared at him, red and unforgiving. If he’d been taken to the Barren in time, that side of his face would be silver, and the skin on his damaged shoulder wouldn’t catch when he swung a sword.

  “Trin?”

  Trinidad stripped off his gauntlets to find his hands were shaking. My God,
please let it all be a dream. When he spoke, it didn’t even sound like his own voice. “Father Troy has … died.”

  Wolf shook his head, an uneven, jerky gesture of denial.

  Grief cinched Trinidad’s words to a whisper. “After Father Troy was kidnapped …”

  “What? K-k-kidnapped?” Wolf stuttered in his confusion

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I’ve been asleep. After practice, Roman sent me …”

  “Yes, of course. We … we found him and … escaped.” He couldn’t tell his brother the complete truth. “We were attacked by slavers on the way back here. He was shot. It was … sudden.”

  “He was fine. This morning he was—” Wolf’s voice pitched and broke.

  Trinidad pulled Wolf against his wet, armored chest, his heart tearing. “I’m sorry. We did everything we could. I’m sorry.”

  “No!”

  “You don’t understand. He was ill—he was dying anyway—”

  Wolf’s anguished wail drowned out the futile words. Trinidad hushed him with useless soothing noises. They stayed like that for a long time. At last Trinidad allowed Wolf to push him away. He dropped down on his bed.

  Wolf scrubbed at his wet face with his bed sheet. “You don’t care. You’re not crying.”

  Trinidad rubbed his hand over his eyes. Blood flaked off his palm, from Father Troy. Or when the Indigos had taken him, had killed Daniel. Or maybe it was Paul’s. He couldn’t make himself say two archwardens had lost their lives as well.

  “That’s not it. I just … I’m used to it.”

  “Because of your brother?’

  Trinidad shot Wolf an unintentional glare. “You are my brother.”

  Wolf rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry I cried.”

  Trinidad thought of what Father Troy had told him when he’d refused to cry over his parents. “We owe him our grief—we owe him that much.”

  A long silence before Wolf stirred again. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Anything.”

  “What did you do when you they died? Israel, I mean. Your parents.”

  After the explosion that had taken his family’s lives, Trinidad had been too numb to feel. They brought him to the rectory and put him to bed. Father Troy found him in a screaming rage late in the night, destroying the bedroom. His soon-to-be trainer Roman tackled him and held him down—a ragged, infuriated twelve-year-old—until the tantrum subsided.

  After that, against parish wishes and despite their Wiccan faith, Father Troy put his family’s shared urn into a hole in the church graveyard. For Trinidad’s sake, he said. A reminder to forgive. Trinidad never had the heart to tell Father Troy that he hated the marker with the pentacle amid all the crosses.

  His father had been holding Israel when the bomb had gone off. Even at six, Israel still wanted to be carried sometimes.

  “I don’t really remember.” Trinidad dropped his forehead to his palm. Exhaustion dragged at his muscles.

  “Before. About finding Father. You said ‘we.’ Who went with you?” Wolf asked. His voice was steadier.

  “Daniel …” Trinidad swallowed. “He was killed during the attack. We brought Father to the hospital, but it was too late.”

  Wolf was quiet for a few moments, and then: “I dreamed about you.”

  Trinidad lifted his head.

  “I thought you woke me up for guard duty, but you weren’t here. I slept some more but woke up again. Then I couldn’t get back to sleep. I was hungry. I found something to eat. Paul died. They told me in the kitchen.”

  Trinidad stared at him, then nodded. “Yes. Bishop Marius is very upset.”

  “I don’t know how he died.”

  Trinidad couldn’t answer. He lowered his gaze.

  “No one said anything about Father Troy or you missing, even when I was on duty.”

  “Maybe they didn’t know.” Or were so upset over Paul no one thought to tell him.

  Wolf faltered and snuffled his nose. “When you crashed the dray I thought you must be hurt, but then you got out.”

  “You were bold, flanking me like that,” Trinidad said.

  The smooth half of Wolf’s face flushed. “I thought that marshal was going to shoot you. I thought he might kill you.”

  “I’m all right, Wolfie.”

  “Who was that man in the dray?”

  “He’s a Wiccan. From the mountains.”

  “Did you know him? From before, I mean?”

  Trinidad hesitated before nodding. “We were friends, as kids. He helped me tonight. He tried to get Father to the hospital in time.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  Trinidad’s shoulders sagged. “No.”

  Wolf rose. “Do you want me to help you get out of your armor? You must want to sleep.”

  Sleep. As if. But he could see Wolf wanted something ordinary to do. His shirt and armor were soaked. And Wolf was going to see the pentacle eventually. He got to his feet. “Thanks.”

  He handed over his sword belt and his bracers with their knives, and stood, wavering slightly, enduring the ache in his head and joints as Wolf unlatched his armor. Trinidad lifted his sore arms when he needed to, bent over to let Wolf pull his chest and back plates over his head. His shirt came off with it.

  Wolf stopped and stared, the glow of the silver flashing in his eyes.

  Sickness welled in Trinidad’s gut. He crossed to his stash of his coveted whiskey, a birthday gift from Daniel, and swallowed two mouthfuls. His voice came out harsh. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But that’s—”

  “Not a word to anyone. You got me?”

  Wolf opened his mouth and shut it with a nod.

  Trinidad pulled a tunic over his head. The silver light winked out. Then he sat to remove his greaves and leg armor. He needed a shower, but he didn’t have the energy to face the cold water in the basement of the archwarden barracks.

  “Don’t put my kit away. I’ll be up in a few hours.” He lay back and pulled the covers up and Wolf climbed into his bed.

  Each aching vertebra rebelled against relaxing. The scar felt like a weight on his chest. He’d once worn a pentacle necklace, like all his fellow coveners did, like the one Castile still wore. He’d dropped it in his family’s grave, trading his whole life for the cross. Now his old faith had chased him down and imprisoned him with the past as surely as the cross tattooed on his forehead marked him as an archwarden. But he couldn’t be both. He was an archwarden, had sworn his life to Lord Christ. He would die an archwarden, no matter what was graven into his skin. But he’d been a witch, a heretic, something few parishioners ever forgot.

  He almost envied Paul. Whatever he had done, whatever his mislaid ideas and violence, he had died an archwarden. Paul had held fast to what he was through the end.

  “Trin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What will happen to us?”

  So much death. Paul’s body rested in a room nearby. Daniel had been reduced to a stain in a gully. Father Troy? Probably in the hospital morgue. Alone. Cold. He sighed deeply, feeling the air fill his marked chest and yet feeling disconnected to his own breath and body. “I’m not leaving you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “But what if the diocese reassigns you?”

  That was the least of his worries. At best, the bishop would demand he take the cross to prove his loyalty. At worst, he’d be brought up on charges of heresy and murder. His throat tightened. What would he do without the old priest’s guidance? How would he ever see Wolf to adulthood alone? He abruptly realized that some of Father Troy’s wisdom had actually been stalling tactics.

  “Let’s worry about it as it comes, all right, Wolfie?”

  He rolled over and stared at the ethereal dance of shadows cast by the guttering candle on the table between their beds. Before his eyes could well with tears, he squeezed them shut.

  Trinidad?”

  Trinidad recoiled from Castile’s strained
voice. A cold stone sank in his stomach, anchoring him. “Where are you?”

  “Still in my dreamscape. I can’t get to the Barren. I can’t get deep enough. It still hurts.”

  Trinidad held for another moment, considering. He had Wolf to think of, a priest to bury, a parish to defend. Mostly he didn’t want to see what they’d done to the Wiccan.

  Witch, came the memory of Castile’s soft voice. We’re called witches.

  “They’ll be back—soon—” The words came in stunted gasps. “Please, Trin.”

  Trinidad willed himself to drift, let himself shake free of his body, and he reformed at Castile’s side.

  Nude and soaking wet, the witch shuddered on a stained concrete floor. Someone had splashed water on Castile and the floor recently, but it hadn’t cleared all the muck. One of his hands stretched out by a filthy drain, missing fingernails. Blood oozed from a wound in his palm. Bruises marred his face. One of his torturers must be left-handed.

  Malachi was left-handed.

  Trinidad crouched down next to Castile. “What did you tell them?”

  “Do I look like I’ve told them anything?” Castile’s swollen lips slurred his words.

  I said I would protect you, and I will. Trinidad didn’t repeat the promise again aloud, though. God might be listening. “I’ll get you out of here.”

  Castile’s voice strengthened. “You don’t owe me anything. I’m the one who dragged you into this, took you back there—”

  “Exactly. You took me back there. And it changed things. But not everything.”

  Castile stirred, met his gaze with the eye that wasn’t swollen shut. “She keeps asking about the coven. She wants to know where it is.”

  Trinidad frowned. “She wants more rovers.”

  “I said there weren’t any. Look, Hawk …” Castile stopped to cough and Trinidad waited. Even in his dreamscape, blood drops splattered the concrete in front of Castile’s mouth.

  “What about Hawk?”

  “You have to warn him. He told me he’d come inparish if I didn’t make it back. But it’s too dangerous. He needs to stay with the coven, keep them safe.”