If you’re reading Paladin’s Hope for intricate plotting and subtle character development, you might want to let this essay pass by in silence. This book doesn’t have either: the bulk of the plot is an excuse for two damaged, lovely, lonely men to fall in love through a dreadful and hazardous trial. There’s lots of longing and more than a little eroticism and that’s just fine.
No, book three of the Saint of Steel series* is mostly about two people banging, and a plotline that’s not much more than a contrivance to throw the pair together, along with a sardonic gnole. Put them all in mortal peril, shake and/or stir, and enjoy.
There’s more around the edges, though, that interests me, and that’s what I want to look at. Archon’s Glory has a corruption problem that has reached the city guard. It’s so endemic that there’s only one honest cop, and he’s been assigned to the worst quarter of the city because of his honesty. And he’s not happy about it, either.
Piper, a lich-doctor who works almost exclusively as an autopsist, has been summoned to look at a dead body that’s fetched up on the bank of the Elkinslough River that runs through the city. Enough time has passed since the Clocktaur Wars that gnoles are firmly part of the city now; there’s even a gnole guard, Earstripe, although Earstripe is very much a token guard and his superior officer, Captain Mallory, is not much interested in either the bodies that are showing up with strange mutilations, or Earstripe’s opinion about anything.
Corruption in the city government bears watching, as does the prejudice that Earstripe encounters in the performance of his duties:
“If a human and a gnole are in the same room, a human did the thinking.” He curled back his lip. “A gnole is only a slewhound who talks.”
p. 36
Earstripe is very aware of his marginal status and, in fact, when he reaches out to Galen and Piper about a new murder victim before he advises Mallory, he gets in trouble enough to lose his job. But he trusts the paladins who serve the Temple of the White Rat, and he trusts Piper, who treats him with respect greater than he receives at work. He is also honest and dedicated to finding the truth, despite the prejudice his commanders and fellow officers exhibit. His fidelity to the truth, as well as Brindle’s loyalty to him, suggests that Piper and Galen have more in common with gnoles, the strange badger-like critters, than they do with the city guard. They’re all outsiders looking in.
And Piper has a secret talent, one that is both useful and disturbing: he can relive someone’s last moments by touching their corpse. He keeps this talent secret. “The Hanged Mother’s priests would have tied Piper to a stake and set him alight just on general principles” (p. 25) and, although he trusts the paladins a bit more, he’s cautious.
And Earstripe, freed from the restrictions of his job but enough of a good cop to want to find the bad guy, enlists them both on a quest, to find the murderer.
That’s the set up. And the story is a fun read, but a simple plot.
Here’s the part that I want to pay attention to, though, because Kingfisher embeds some awfully detailed information into a casual breakfast conversation, information that I strongly suspect will come back in a later book. It starts when Galen asks Piper how bodies are moved down into his office under the Archon’s palace: down a shaft from under the outside wall that was supposed to have been dug “by sappers during some war a few hundred years ago, but let’s say that I’m very, very skeptical” (p. 44).
He’s skeptical because the tunnel is reinforced and smoothed, and because it ends, not in the old wine-cellar-turned-mortuary, but beyond it, at an ivory door.
“A what?”
“You ever seen a wonder engine?”
“Those big statues they find that the ancients left behind? No, but I saw plenty of clocktaurs back in the day.”
Made of the same stuff. Looks like ivory, but much harder.”
p. 46
There’s a wonder-engine door sealed up under the archon’s palace.
“What do you think is behind it? [Galen asked]
“Water,” said Piper unexpectedly…. “It’s well below the level of the river. High water marks on the walls, and there’s about six inches worth of standing water down there. I’m surprised that the tunnel isn’t filled, but I suspect that whatever structure is behind the door may be blocking off the worst of it.”
p. 47
And then Kingfisher drops another enormous hint: dedicates of the Many-Armed God found what sounds very much like a cigarette lighter wrapped in cloth, “a finer weave than anything we could make,” (p. 48), and it’s fabric that melted in one corner.
Natural fabrics burn; synthetics melt. Nylon melts.
File that away.
Piper is extremely likeable, and he’s a good match for Galen in a story that’s heavy on desire and true love.
“I’ll dedicate my entire life to making you happy. If you have any enemies, I’ll kill them. Then you can dissect them if you like. Would you like that? I’ll do it. Just marry me.”
p. 298
That’s one better than the old saying “Friends help you move; real friends help you move bodies.”
Kingfisher has one more revelation to deliver to those of us keeping count, and it comes at the end.
We already know that the Saint of Steel died on the summer solstice (a throwaway line from Paladin’s Strength), and that when it happened, the high priest at the god’s main temple burned it in a frenzy. Now it’s being cleared in Anuket City, and all the surviving paladins, along with Grace and Clara, Zale, and Jorge, paladin of the Dreaming God, pilgrimage to the ruin so that the grieving warriors can maybe find closure. Zale is there for the Temple, Grace is there to be with Stephen much as Pipe is there for Galen, and Jorge and Clara provide the muscle in case the berserkers come out to berserk.
But it isn’t needed — the paladins are still wounded, still grieving, men just saying goodbye.
Something that big shouldn’t die. It’s like the ocean or the wind dying. It doesn’t make sense.”
p. 301
Piper touches the altar and “knew what it felt like when a god died” (p. 302)
But we’ll have to wait for the next book, Paladin’s Faith, for an explanation.
Meanwhile, along with the rest of the country, Virginia feels like an outer circle of hell this week. The solstice has come and the long evening lingers and the sun rises early. Be safe, stay in the shade, and remember, heat kills and it doesn’t care how tough you are, so kindly refrain from toughing it out.
It’s about as futile as trying to stop a berserker is.
* All the books are available at this link — Go wild.
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