Chapter 40: The Truth of the Past
"Damn you! damn you!"
The Inquisitor’s voice dropped into sothing low and tight.
Her eyes were dark with it. But she was out of options, and she knew it, and after a mont she let the truth out with the particular grace of soone swallowing sothing they’d rather not.
"Fine. I received intelligence that a witch was operating in this area.
Like you, witches fall within our jurisdiction, unlike you, she’s considerably higher priority." A contemptuous sound.
"The little creature concealed herself sohow. I could sense her proximity and couldn’t locate her. Then you arrived, hunting for her without the faintest awareness of your surroundings. Convenient enough."
Raphael turned that over.
So the Inquisitor had co for Evelyn. And if she’d been sensing a witch’s presence in this area, that ant Evelyn was close, sowhere near this intersection, hidden in a way that blocked direct detection.
That narrowed things considerably.
He kept the gun where it was and moved to the next question.
"My father. What do you know about him? Where did he go?"
The old woman’s laugh was short and without warmth.
"He abandoned you so thoroughly that you don’t know where he is, and you expect
to?
I have no idea where that man went." She held his gaze. "But I’ll tell you what I know, in exchange for ten ters. You step back ten ters."
She closed her mouth and waited, reading his expression with the patience of soone who had spent decades learning to read rooms.
Raphael glanced at her ankles. A fraction of a second, then away.
"...Agreed. If you’re confident you can outrun a bullet, old woman, you’re welco to try. I’d suggest hoping your legs still have what they used to."
The Inquisitor’s brow ca together. The words read as taunt, but the angle of his gaze had suggested sothing more specific than taunt.
He considered which question to spend the distance on.
"In your records, what kind of man was my father?"
She made a sound of contempt, then answered honestly enough.
"What else? A criminal, a butcher, a killer with no aningful count to his na, a thoroughgoing madman.
That’s the external consensus, from the police, from the church, from IFSA. General and impressionistic." She drew a breath. "The Tribunal kept more specific records."
A pause, as though deciding how much to give.
"Falcon Alanster is not his true na, it’s a composite, a call sign rged with the surna.
He operated as a contract killer in the underground world. Whoever paid, he served. Confird kills exceed eighteen hundred, with no arrest to date.
The most severe case on record, the one the Tribunal classifies as worst in conduct, occurred on a rainy night.
He entered an orphanage under church administration and murdered a priest nad Noa Roge. thodically and without apparent difficulty."
Her jaw tightened.
"The Tribunal investigators found additional bodies at the scene. Children from the orphanage.
The youngest was seven years old. The oldest was twelve. They had futures. They had possibilities.
Your father, the one certain people call the White Death, took all of that and left nothing."
She added the last piece through her teeth.
"Satisfied? That is your father. A complete and irredeemable piece of human waste. A man who would kill anyone for money, including a priest who spent his life helping children."
Her eyes moved over Raphael’s face with open assessnt. "Like father, like son, I’ve always found. You may not be there yet, but you’ll arrive. Better I remove you now, before the damage is done."
Raphael listened to the whole of it in silence. When she finished, he drew a long breath in and let it out slowly.
He stepped back. Ten ters, as agreed. The gun didn’t move.
"Second question. Your history with him."
The Inquisitor glanced behind her, asuring the distance, calculating the geotry, then answered.
"I’m just another person he destroyed. Nothing exceptional about it." Sothing shifted in her voice, the contempt losing its edge to sothing older and flatter.
"I was a young nun. Twenty years old, under a vow of celibacy, and completely unprepared for my own curiosity about the world outside the vow. I encountered your father by chance. He was injured. I happened to know so recovery-based incantations."
A short, self-mocking pause.
"He was striking in the way that cold-featured n can be. I was twenty and foolish and I let him in. I bandaged his wounds, cooked for him, gave him a place to rest.
God only knows what was in my head. I told myself it was Christian charity and believed it because I wanted to."
The certainty in her expression softened into sothing more complicated, briefly.
"After that first ti, your father used the church as a base of operation. He ca and went, returning whenever he needed wounds treated. I didn’t understand what he was.
I kept doing my duty, healing him, caring for him, telling myself whatever I needed to tell myself. Perhaps I believed it was love. Twenty-year-olds believe remarkable things."
Her voice went flat again.
"One night he ca back badly damaged. More serious than usual, bones broken, blood loss, the kind of injuries that take real effort to address.
I treated him. And shortly after, Tribunal investigators arrived at the church. Harboring a heretic. Proof of faith required."
She looked sowhere past Raphael’s shoulder.
"That was when I learned who he actually was. I took a ceremonial sword from the vestibule, found him, raised it. But my arm had nothing behind it. I was crying. I told him I couldn’t do it. I told him to run."
A thin sound that wasn’t quite a laugh.
"He took the sword. One stroke, no hesitation, no particular expression. I went into shock and unconsciousness from the blood loss. When I woke, he was gone.
What the surgeons gave
back looked like this." Her hand moved toward the scar, not quite touching it.
"The congregation flinched when they saw . The other sisters talked. The children wouldn’t co near .
Everything that had made my life what it was, gone. Because I was foolish enough to feel sothing for a man who registered
as a resource and nothing more."
She tilted her head slightly.
"I joined the Tribunal afterward. That is the honest accounting of the hatred. Are you satisfied?"
She began to step back. Slowly at first, then with more deliberateness, each step placing more distance between them. Ten ters beca eleven. Twelve. She kept going.
"Stop."
Raphael’s voice ca out cold. But the finger resting against the trigger didn’t move. The command sat in the air and the action that should have followed it didn’t co.
The Inquisitor spread her arms wide. The gesture was theatrical and genuine in equal asure, the performance of soone who had reached the outer edge of caring.
"Then shoot. Kill . Let my life end inside the shadow of you and your father, sa as it began."
She kept walking backward.
The gun stayed level. The finger stayed where it was.
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