Murder victims are not supposed to reassure their murderers. I took a deep, shuddering breath, wiped my eyes with a sleeve, and sat back on my heels to look at him.
“Why do you need to kill me, Daimbert?” he asked again.
Any other man in the twin kingdoms he would have called, “My son.” If he had, I might have worked up enough indignation to try again. But it was now too late.
“Don’t worry,” I said wearily, although he did not look worried. “I’m not going to kill you after all.” We looked at each other in silence for a minute. “I would have thought you’d be terrified,” I said then. “Did you think I was joking?”
He shook his head, continuing to hold my eyes. “I’ve known you too long. I still do not always understand your sense of humor, but at least I think I know when you’re not joking.” He paused, then continued thoughtfully, “Maybe I should have been terrified. But as bishop, I need to keep life and death constantly in my thoughts.”
I wondered briefly and irrelevantly how terrified another bishop would have been.
“I know my sins,” he continued, “and am filled with remorse and the knowledge that I do not deserve salvation. But I also know the mercy and loving kindness of God, Who may save even a sinner like me.”
Fury slowly built in me again, but I was too weak to do anything about it, and, besides, I had already said I would not kill him. “Don’t be complacent,” I said in a low voice. “God may not forgive you quite as readily as you like to think. I should have realized how deeply you were sunk in sin when I heard a demon had boldly entered your cathedral. And this time you haven’t merely sinned against God. You’ve sinned against me.”
His dark eyes were genuinely puzzled. “Then I must beg your forgiveness, Daimbert. But you still haven’t said why you have to kill me.”
I started to speak and changed my mind. How could I have been so wrong?
A short time ago I had been absolutely certain. I had not just thought, not just decided, but known. Now that knowledge was gone so thoroughly it was hard to believe it had ever existed. And the bishop was still waiting for me to say something.
I’ve noticed this before. The earth never opens and swallows you up when you need it. But someone who had just been threatened with murder deserved an answer, especially someone who had been my best friend for twenty-five years.
I tried to say it and couldn’t. The silence became long and uncomfortable. At last I was able to force it out euphemistically: “You’ve made Theodora stop loving me.”
He immediately knew exactly what I meant and was immediately furious. His dark eyes blazed, and he half rose from his chair.
This was a new experience. I could only ever remember Joachim truly angry with me once before in all the years I’d known him. He might take my threat to kill him very calmly, but not the suggestion that he had broken his vows of chastity-especially with the woman his oldest friend loved.
“How do you dare-” He stopped and took a deep breath then, and I could see him fighting back his anger as though it were a physical presence. “No,” he said, quietly and icily.
“I know that now,” I said quickly.
He gave me a long, burning look. “I swear to you, by the blood Christ shed for us, that I have never touched her.”
I dropped my eyes, deeply shamed. I was fairly sure bishops were not supposed to utter oaths like that. When I finally dared look up again, Joachim was examining his hands as though he had never seen them before.
But he suddenly looked up at me and did the last thing I expected: he smiled. He was certainly full of surprises today.
“No wonder you wanted to kill me,” he said. “Well, I am grateful you did not. You were right to call me complacent.” He shook his head ruefully. “Sin always awaits us, no matter how carefully we think we guard against it. I had not realized that wrath could overcome Christian charity so easily.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “Forgive my anger if you can, and tell me why you think someone has taken Theodora’s love from you.” He smiled again. “We talk about you frequently, and I know she loves you dearly.”
Theodora and I sat on opposite sides of the gold-ceilinged room. I myself would have preferred to have her next to me, my arms around her, but she seemed to prefer it this way.
After several hours’ unconsciousness here in the bishop’s best guest chamber, the one where visiting church dignitaries stayed, I felt both rational again and deeply humiliated by my own actions. I had been guilty of some very strange behavior at times in the past, but this had gone beyond all bounds, even for me. In retrospect I could not imagine what madness could have impelled me to do something so eminently likely to lose me both my best friend-even if I hadn’t killed him-and the woman I loved. The wizards’ school would doubtless have agreed-not even raising a perfunctory request for mercy such as the cathedral would have forced itself to make-when the city authorities condemned me to hang. Theodora’s unwillingness to sit any closer seemed only appropriate.
“Theodora, you know I’d do anything for you. I’d die for you.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I realize you think you mean it, but that’s what the boys always tell the girls in all the songs.”
“I’d give up wizardry for you.”
“We’ve already been through that many times. You couldn’t give up magic, no matter how much you wanted to, no matter how hard you tried.”
I was rapidly running low on sacrifices I could make for her. “Then what can I do?”
She gave the worst possible answer. “I don’t want you to do anything.”
We sat in silence for a minute. “Can I still visit you and Antonia?” I asked then, trying not to sound abject and not succeeding.
“Of course,” she said in surprise. “It would take more than a nightmare to change that. You’re sure she’s all right alone in the castle?”
“I told you I telephoned Gwennie this morning,” I said wearily. I had talked to Elerius as well, making sure no more magical attacks had taken place while I was gone, but I did not want to bother Theodora now with undead warriors.
Silence stretched out again between us. “Well,” I said then, putting hands on my knees preparatory to rising, “if there’s nothing I can do to make you love me, then maybe I should get back to Yurt.” I waited to see if she would say anything but she didn’t. “At least Antonia seemed happy when I told her I was her father.”
Theodora abruptly smiled, with the lift of her brows and the dimple that I loved. “I’m so glad you told her! She had been asking about you the last few weeks, but I thought you would enjoy telling her yourself.”
It was as though the cool, reserved tone our conversation had taken had suddenly broken. I did not dare move but waited to see what Theodora would say next. She came across the room, took me by the ears and kissed me. “Maybe even in the bishop’s palace it won’t be too sinful to kiss the man I love.”
I wrapped my arms around her so she couldn’t get away again. “I don’t understand you, Theodora,” I said into her hair, feeling happiness breaking over me in spite of myself. “Why do you have to be so conventional sometimes? Why can’t you just tell me what you feel?”
She pushed herself back to look at me, though I kept a grip tight enough to forestall any attempts to escape. “Considering that you call me a witch,” she said, a smile twitching the corner of her lips, “I’m surprised to hear myself suddenly accused of conventionality.”
“You were just sitting there coldly, listening to me say I would do anything to make you love me, saying you didn’t want me to do anything!”
“Of course I don’t want you to do anything,” she said with a hint of a laugh. “I already love you! But it’s not respect for ‘convention’ that makes me feel that I should try to rise above concerns of the flesh here, as the bishop would surely want us to do. It’s respect for him, as the representative of God. He is so far above all of us-knowing him as well as you do, you must surely feel it too.”