Chapter XXV

For Grigori there was a whole new world to explore. Granted it was a world he had seen, but he had yet to experience it with his new-found sight. It was like his whole life he'd just seen everything in shades of gray and was just now being introduced to colors. He and Hadar needed an excuse to shop for new clothes for him, something that it would be unusual for a king to do with someone he hired merely to catch demon-conjurers, so they told everyone who asked part of the truth, that Grigori had turned his back on the Inquisition and was becoming an Agalmite. Hadar was merely helping him start his new life. Some people applauded Grigori for turning away from that twisted order, others didn't fully believe it and were even more suspicious of him than they were before.

As Grigori walked through Aius this time he could stop and admire the beauty in the architecture. Hadar explained to him that a theological philosopher once said that art was an attempt at following in God's footsteps. God created something truly beautiful when he created the world, so human beings were attempting to create beautiful things in turn, as a sort of mimicry of God. Hadar further explained that this was less akin to attempts to become God and more akin to the way children mimic their parents. Because of this Grigori could look at the well-designed and colorful buildings and the nice clothes in every tailor shop and not dismiss it as mere vanity.

Of course, Grigori had very little money, so Hadar offered to pay for everything Grigori wanted. Grigori protested at first. Then he offered to find a way to pay Hadar back, to which Hadar leaned in close to his ear and whispered, “Buying these things for you is part of an old courtship ritual.” It was true. Long ago a tradition had started that when trying to convince the ones they loved to marry them men and women of wealth would prove that they could provide for them by buying them things. Since then the true purpose of this ritual was more or less forgotten, but it had fallen into tradition, one of those traditions that no longer truly makes sense. It certainly wasn't done to prove wealth any more, and not always to convince someone into marriage.

In any case, Hadar's word was enough for Grigori. Grigori tried on nice clothes of all sorts of bright colors. Blue satin robes. Red silk tunics. Forest green linen shirts. Bright orange wool coats. He was dazzled at the way they looked when he wore them, at the way he looked when he wore them. Furthermore he was surprised just how comfortable such clothes could be. The clothes the inquisitors always wore were meant to be plain, practical, and uncomfortable. These clothes were meant simply to look good and be comfortable in the process. He tried on various different kinds of hats, some with wide brims, some that were just caps, and others that were so tall that he would have to duck when he passed through doorways or near chandeliers.

Grigori eventually settled on a blue, loose-fitting robe, with a bright, red sash and a wide-brimmed purple hat with a red, feathered plume in it. If Hadar was being honest he'd say Grigori looked a little ridiculous, actually, especially with that hat, but for the time being he wanted Grigori to have his fun trying new things.

As they left that clothing shop the two of them caught the sweet aroma of pastries, wafting over to them from the nearby bakery. The wind was just right to carry the scent through the main strip of the marketplace, and the baker had been doing great business that day due to that wind.

“Smells amazing, yes?” Hadar said.

“It does...” Grigori was hesitant. He'd indulged in a great many things that his people would consider sinful. He'd indulged his lusts by kissing Hadar. He'd indulged his vanity by wearing attractive clothes. Did he dare indulge hunger by eating something that would obviously be so delicious?

“Come on,” Hadar said. “I'll buy you a sweet roll.”

The aroma got far stronger as they entered the bakery, and it was a lot warmer in there too, with three wood-burning ovens going. The baker was a portly fellow who was pulling a cake out of the oven as he sang:

“And where are me boots, me noggin' noggin' boots?

They've all gone for beer and tobacco!

Well the heels, they're worn out, and the soles are kicked about,

And the toes are lookin' out for better weather!

And where is me wench, me noggin' noggin' wench?

She's all gone for beer and tobacco!

Well her...”

The baker stopped as he turned around and saw Hadar and Grigori standing there. “Your Majesty!” the baker bowed his head. “What can I do for ye, Sire?”

“You're not going to believe this, but my friend here has never...tasted a pastrie!”

“Why that's a cardinal sin, it is!” the baker said.

Grigori whispered to Hadar, “Is it?”

Hadar laughed and whispered back, “No, he's joking,” then turned back to the baker. “We're probably going to start off small, don't want to over-indulge on the first time.”

“Well, I do have me a few cookies here...and some butter-creme pastries...”

“Actually, I was thinking maybe just two sweet-rolls.”

“Jus' two sweet-rolls?” the baker seemed baffled by this idea. To him sweet-rolls weren't so much a desert or a treat, they were part of a regular meal. How deprived had the King's friend truly been all his life. The baker had heard few things so sad as a man who had never tasted sweets in his entire life. “When 'e's more accustomed to it, bring 'im back fer cake, please.”

“I'll do so,” Hadar said with a laugh.

The baker scooped up two sweet-rolls in paper and handed them over to Hadar and Grigori. “That'll be two talents, Sire.”

Hadar paid him and took a small bite out of his sweet-roll, and then turned his eyes to watch Grigori do the same. Following Hadar's lead, Grigori took a small bite out of his and let the small piece he was eating roll across his tongue. Father Gonen used to tell stories about how when people enjoyed something sinful far too much they'd become overwhelmed and die on the spot. Obviously this was a lie, because if it were true, Grigori thought, he'd have been dead the instant the sweet-roll was in his mouth.

“Eat slowly,” Hadar advised him. “Savor it.”

Grigori almost seemed to not hear Hadar at all as he quickly devoured the whole sweet-roll, barely giving himself enough time to chew it well enough or breathe. Once it was gone Hadar laughed and offered Grigori the rest of his.

“This time, savor it!” he said. This time Grigori ate it much slower, memorizing the sweet flavor, and how good the warm, gooey bread felt in his mouth. He took time to memorize the feeling of the sugar on his lips, and the way it tasted as he licked it off. He stopped to enjoy the warmth as it went down his throat and settled in his stomach.

“Good?” Hadar asked.

“Do ye need ta ask?” Said the baker.

“Yes!” Grigori said.

“Alright, then, let's move on.”

Back when he had been learning to be an inquisitor Grigori was taught about the various blasphemous religions of the world. The worst of these, Father Gonen always said, was the Nihilite religion. This was said to be the worst because they worshiped demons and because they wanted to destroy the world. At the time Grigori thought this was only such a bad thing because they'd also be destroying Heaven, which was said to be a place of infinite joy and pleasure. As far as Father Gonen was concerned, the surface world where mortals lived was corrupted with sin and wickedness, it didn't matter to him if it burned. Now that Grigori had his eyes opened to just a small part of the joys of the mortal world his view on such things changed drastically. He thought about the beautiful countryside he'd ridden through on the way to the capital, about the beauty of the capital, about the joy of eating sweet-rolls, and about the beauty of the people in the capital. This included Hadar, of course. It was suddenly shocking to him for the first time that anyone would ever want to destroy such a world. How could anyone want such a glorious gift cast aside like rubbish?

All this is not to say that Grigori didn't notice that the vices were still there. He still saw pickpockets stealing from coin-purses, he still saw harlots plying their trade, he still saw the very rich refusing to give even a talent to the beggars beside the road. The sin was still there, but for the first time he could see the joys of life too.

As he looked around the crowd, however, a certain particular man caught his eye. There was a cruel-looking man in the crowd. He wore a straw hat and a sack-cloth tunic, and dirt covered his face. He didn't exactly look starved, as his attire might suggest. He wasn't fat at all, mind you, but rather very muscular, far more than most men, even the strongest laborers and knights. His face was covered in scars that were in neat, symmetrical lines. He stared at Grigori with a look so intense it was as if he were attempting to shoot arrows at him with his eyes. After a moment, once Grigori had a chance to look past the grime and dirt on the man's face, he recognized him. “Enoch!”

“What's that?” Hadar asked.

“We need to get out of here! Enoch is...” Grigori had turned his head to look at Hadar for a moment, and then looked back at where Enoch had been standing a second ago. Enoch was no longer there, and several crowds of people were moving by in various directions. “Oh, schyte! he could be anywhere!” Grigori trembled and instinctively grabbed Hadar's arm. For so many years Grigori simply didn't fear death, so very little could actually scare him. As far as he was concerned death was just a doorway to Heaven, that was the way he thought his whole life. Suddenly he was enjoying life, and had things to look forward to within his mortal lifetime. For the first time he was truly terrified of dying.

“Grigori, calm down! What's wrong?”

“Calm down? The Inquisition has sent a killer after me! A good one!” Grigori protested.

“A killer?”

“Yes! As good as I am an inquisitor he is a murderer!

Hadar scanned the crowd with his eyes, trying to spot anyone who looked suspicious. “Are you sure he's after you?”

“They'd only send him here for one reason, to kill the traitor! Me! I'm the traitor!”

“Alright, don't panic!” Hadar said. “Look, I've had some guardsmen following us at a distance, we just have to get closer to them and we'll be safe. Might it be better if I ordered the crowd to make a path for us?”

“Not if he's got a crossbow and is preparing a shot,” Grigori said. “But if he's walking among the people...”

“So no way of knowing just yet. Fine, you keep an eye on the crowd, I'll keep an eye on the rooftops and we'll start making our way towards the guardsmen.”

With Grigori hanging on his arm, shaking, Hadar started to inch his way along towards the guards. To Grigori almost every face in the crowd looked like Enoch at first. He'd look at someone's face and jump only to find that they didn't even bear a passing resemblance to the Inquisition's well-known witch-hunter. Every set of eyes looked like predator eyes, watching Grigori with that foreboding stare that one gives a man on his way to the gallows.

Similarly, to Hadar every slight abnormality or shape on a rooftop looked like an assassin preparing for a shot. Every smoke-stack, steeple, and even bird's nest looked like cover that a man with a crossbow could hide behind. Hadar had long thought that he'd never find happiness or love in his lifetime, but now here was a chance at both, and that chance was being threatened. He couldn't let the only man he'd ever truly had feelings for die like this.

“THERE he IS!” Grigori shrieked when he saw Enoch's face, just a few yards away. Then someone passed in front of Enoch and he was gone again.

“So he's not going to shoot at you,” Hadar said. “We know what his strategy is now. Don't panic, if you panic you'll play right into his hands!”

Hadar pulled Grigori a little faster, making sure to go in the opposite direction from where Enoch had been as much as possible. He gestured for the guards to move in closer and pushed the commoners out of the way a bit more forcefully now.

If fear truly was a sin as the Inquisition taught then Grigori was damned for sure. His palms were sweating, his whole body trembled, and his teeth chattered. He could feel his heart racing, and the veins in his head and neck pounded wildly. The thought that maybe the Inquisition had been right about everything all along did cross Grigori's mind for a moment, which made the fear even worse as he realized that if everything they taught was true then if and when he died demons would take his soul into the Void to be tortured for all eternity. His sins would make him a tasty treat, and they'd rip him apart and devour him over and over again, without end and without respite. For a brief time Grigori wished Hadar hadn't saved his life, that he'd died by his own hand back when Sandalphon still would have deemed him worth saving. Then he wished he'd have never lived to begin with, wished he would have died at birth. He wished he'd gone “from womb to tomb,” as the old saying went, then he wouldn't have had to risk damnation.

All of these thoughts were just distracting enough for Enoch to slip in from Grigori's peripheral vision and stab him in the stomach with a large knife. “To the Void with you,” Enoch said as he wrenched the knife in as deep as he could. Grigori gasped but the wind had been knocked out of him, so he couldn't scream as the knife was pulled back out and blood began to flow out of the wound like a fountain. It wasn't so much the pain that surprised Grigori, he was no stranger to that. It was the shock that he'd been wounded, such that he would likely die in a very short time. He felt like the whole world was disappearing around him, and thought for sure that this was what being pulled into the Void felt like.

Hadar immediately noticed what was going on and swung out at Enoch with his sword. Enoch managed to get out of the way, mostly, but his arm still suffered a major cut. Enoch didn't scream, even though the cut was deep, he barely even winced. He simply switched the knife to his other hand and stabbed out at Hadar. Hadar reacted quickly. He defended himself by swinging out his sword at the knife and cutting it clean in half. Obviously, the diamond of Hadar's sword was far stronger than the steel of Enoch's knife. Enoch immediately stepped back into the crowd again and disappeared with them as the guards finally closed in.

“Surround us!” Hadar commanded them. “Weapons out!”

The guards obeyed, making it impossible for Enoch to attempt an attack on Grigori or Hadar again, as Hadar knelt down with Grigori and placed his hands on the wound.

“I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!” Grigori choked out.

“Don't be afraid,” Hadar said. “I won't let you die!” Hadar held his hands tight over the wound and closed his eyes. “Merciful God, please heal this man's wound, I beg you! he was attacked for doing the right thing, for trying to enjoy your wondrous gifts, please don't let him die for that!” In seconds the wound healed up and the pain subsided. There was still blood all over Grigori's new robe, but the wound was gone, and Grigori was saved.

“Oh, Hadar! Thank you so much!” Grigori said as tears welled up in his eyes.

“Come on, let's get you back to the castle,” Hadar said. “That bastard is still out there.”

The guards all escorted Hadar and Grigori back to the castle, all the while keeping their eyes out for anyone suspicious.

As Hadar and Grigori disappeared through the castle's gate Enoch watched from a distance and cursed himself inwardly. Failure was not a sin in the True Way, but Enoch took it just as seriously as one. He beat his chest with his fist and chanted, “By my fault! By my fault! By my own most grievous fault!” he hadn't realized that Grigori's friend was a heretic priest or paladin, he didn't even know who it was whom Grigori was walking with, or he would have made the wound much more instantly fatal. Maybe stabbed Grigori in the back of the head, or in the heart, something that would make it far more difficult, if not impossible, to heal him before he died. Once the two of them had disappeared into the castle, Enoch realized who Grigori's friend was. It was the only thing that made sense, he was someone who lived in the castle, was about Grigori's age, wielded diamond weapons, and could heal the wounded.

The King of Arx was protecting the traitor Grigori. For what purpose? Enoch could only speculate. Perhaps King Hadar was planning an attack on the Inquisition and needed his information. If this was so then the threat was far more serious than even Father Gonen had realized. Before proceeding Enoch would need to spend much time in meditation and prayer, to see if he could discern the will of Sandalphon in this. If Hadar was protecting Grigori then going after Grigori, putting Hadar's life in danger, could give the Arxian heretics the excuse they needed to start the war, a war the Inquisition definitely could not win. However, if Hadar was already planning war with the Inquisition and protecting Grigori because he was a useful informant then he might believe that the only way to avoid substantial casualties in such a conflict might be with Grigori's help. Then killing Grigori would be the only thing that could prevent such a war. Pondering all of this, Enoch took out a needle and thread from his pocket and stitched up the wound on his forearm. With any luck the wound would heal up well enough within a few days.

“Sorry!” Grigori kept repeating, even after he and Hadar were inside the castle and in private. “I'm so sorry! Please forgive me!”

“What do you need to be sorry for?” Hadar asked. “You were attacked!”

“I put you in harm's way,” Grigori said. “When I saw that he was after me I should have left your side and walked towards him, let him kill me, rather than make you risk your life! I'm so sorry!”

“Don't talk like that!”

“My fear got in the way. I sinned against you, Hadar! I'm so sorry!”

“The Inquisition really knows how to wield guilt, don't they...” Hadar mused.

“I'm sorry! Please forgive-”

Grigori's words were cut off when Hadar grabbed him by the face and pulled him into a fierce and passionate kiss. When Hadar broke the kiss and saw that Grigori was finally silent he said, “I'm just glad you're alright. I'd be far worse off if you'd actually died. Don't you ever say you should die, Grigori, you hear me? I thought you promised me you'd never try to take your own life again. Well, walking towards a man who wants to kill you with no intention of fighting back is just as bad! I thought you'd decided that life was worth living!”

“...You're right. And I did...I'm sorry...”

“Stop saying that! It's alright!”

“Oh! I'm s...thank you.”

“That's better.”

“What do we do, though? he won't stop until I'm dead, I'm sure of it!”

“I want you to describe him to Captain Gedon. We'll have the city guard search him out. He can't hide forever. Sooner or later he'll slip up. In the mean time I want you to stay here, in the castle, where it's safe.”

“Yes! Captain Gedon can catch him! With the whole city guard after him he doesn't have a chance!”

“Exactly,” Hadar kissed Grigori again, this time on the cheek. “Now don't be afraid, Grigori. I'll keep you safe. That monster won't get anywhere near you ever again!”

“When you say that I almost believe it,” Grigori said.

“Just almost?”

“Enoch is still one of the best professional murderers I've ever seen. The man is never truly unarmed because he can turn anything into a weapon. As you saw he slips in and out of crowds easily, in spite of his size.”

“Well, he's never fought a paladin of Caelum before.”

Grigori was overcome. With Hadar looking out for him he felt safe, even with a master killer after him. And just the fact that Hadar would go so far to protect him, it was truly more kindness than anyone had ever extended to Grigori before. “I love you!”

Hadar laughed and shook his head, “I know you're in shock, and that I just saved your life again, but it's still far too soon to be saying things like that.”