Paladin's Faith

The novel opens with Marguerite, a spy living under an assumed name, infiltrating the offices of Bishop Beartongue at the Temple of the White Rat in the city of Archenhold. Years earlier, Marguerite's patron Samuel was murdered by the Red Sail, a vast merchant fleet company whose wealth derives from the salt trade. She discovered too late that she had been unknowingly working for a branch of the same organization, and a faction within the Sail now considers her a loose end worth killing.

Marguerite has learned that an artificer named Ashes Magnus has invented a device that converts seawater into salt cheaply, a technology that could destabilize the Sail's monopoly and the economies of half the continent. If the Sail collapses into disarray, the faction pursuing her will lack the resources to continue. She asks Beartongue for paladins, holy warriors who cannot be bought and are very hard to kill, to help locate Magnus before the Sail does. Beartongue agrees.

Beartongue assigns two paladins of the dead Saint of Steel: Shane, a tall, pale-eyed former knight who hides behind an unkempt beard and communicates mostly in grunts, and Wren, a stocky, axe-wielding woman with fine control over the "black tide," the berserker state that all surviving paladins of the dead god still experience. Their mission is to travel to the Court of Smoke, an aristocratic summer gathering held in a highland fortress, and identify the patron sheltering Magnus. Wren will pose as a minor noblewoman, Marguerite will use her established cover as a perfume merchant, and Shane will serve as her bodyguard.

During the overland journey, Marguerite works to draw Shane out of his reserve. She learns he trained at the Temple of the Dreaming God, the deity whose paladins specialize in fighting demons, but the god never chose him. The Saint of Steel later claimed him during a reckless solo fight, but that god's death left all its paladins scarred. A growing attraction develops between Marguerite and Shane after he uses "the voice," a paladin ability to project calm authority, to tend her when she falls from her horse. She is captivated by his gentleness, then mortified to realize the healer is the same taciturn man she has been traveling with. En route, a priest of the Dreaming God warns them of an old, powerful demon with human followers in the northern highlands.

At the Court of Smoke, Marguerite reconnects with Davith, a fellow operative she knows works for the Sail. Shane delivers a sealed letter to Lady Silver, a cynocephalic, or dog-headed, diplomat who shares crucial insight: The Saint of Steel was killed rather than dying naturally. Meanwhile, Wren befriends Lady Coregator, a well-connected noblewoman who maintains lists of patrons and the artificers they support.

The breakthrough comes when Wren spots Magnus's name alongside Baron Maltrevor on Lady Coregator's list. Marguerite seduces and drugs Maltrevor, then picks his desk locks to find a letter referencing the artificer being sent to "the Nallans at the ford." Davith then arrives at their suite and reveals himself as "Ian," the charming man who had been courting Wren, devastating her. He warns that Fenella, a woman Marguerite had spoken with at the Court, is actually the local Sail representative and has ordered Marguerite's assassination. During the conversation, Davith inadvertently reveals the artificer is in Cambraith, a highland county.

The group flees with Lady Silver's help; she releases a powerful scent that mimics smoke, causing panic throughout the fortress. During the escape through the cellars, seven Sail operatives corner them. Shane and Wren fight with berserker efficiency, killing all seven. When Wren, still consumed by the black tide, turns on Davith, Shane blocks her axe with his sword, which shatters, and uses the voice to bring her back. A mudslide on the mountain trail separates the group, and Marguerite and Shane shelter together in a stone hut, where they sleep together for the first time.

After reuniting with Wren and Davith, the group travels to Cambraith, where Marguerite locates Magnus at Nallanford under the protection of Lord Nallan, a mining clan chief. Magnus is a sharp-tongued, seventy-year-old artificer whose salt-making device uses a Forge God-blessed element to transfer heat from seawater, freezing fresh water off the top and concentrating the brine with minimal fuel. She agrees to leave before the Sail arrives.

Sail horsemen pursue them and crash their wagon. Archers from a nearby steading drive off the attackers but then capture the entire group, marching them to a keep led by a woman called Wisdom. Shane immediately recognizes Wisdom as an ancient, powerful demon. In a private meeting, the demon offers a bargain: It will form a bond through the scarred channel in Shane's soul where the Saint once resided, making Shane its champion, and in exchange all his companions go free. If he refuses, Wisdom threatens to possess Wren or Shane himself. Shane accepts, escorts his companions to the river, tells Marguerite he loves her, and returns to the keep.

Magnus, who survived by playing dead in the wreckage, reunites with the group at a nearby town. They reach a Dreaming God outpost temple whose leadership plans to assault the keep and kill Shane, believing he is or will be possessed. Judith, the most enigmatic of the Saint of Steel's surviving paladins, arrives and joins Marguerite's secret rescue plan. They ride to the keep, but Shane refuses to leave, insisting he must carry out a plan he will not explain.

The Dreaming God's forces launch a pre-dawn assault. Wisdom's plan was for Shane to publicly kill its host body while the demon secretly escaped to another host, unbound. Instead, Shane betrays the agreement, shouting for the paladins to bind the demon and stabbing it, because he cannot allow a demon to go free. Meanwhile, Judith finds Wisdom's host elsewhere and forces the demon to jump to her willingly in exchange for releasing Shane.

The demonic bond is violently torn from Shane's soul, and he collapses. In the crisis, Shane experiences a vision in which the Dreaming God explains that Shane was promised to the Saint of Steel from birth, which prevented the Dreaming God from ever claiming him. Now that the demon's passage has reopened the scarred channel, the god offers a choice: Let it scar over, or become a true paladin of the Dreaming God at last. Shane accepts and speaks with the god's voice. Every person present hears a different, personal divine message, confirming the intervention.

Weeks later, Fenella visits Marguerite at the White Rat's temple and concedes defeat. Magnus's blueprints have been distributed to Forge God temples across the region and cannot be suppressed. The Red Sail will not survive in its current form. Shane proposes that he and Marguerite travel together while he fights demons along the way, keeping them mobile and untraceable. Marguerite confesses she loves him and asks him to promise honesty rather than silence. He promises in the voice, so she knows he means it.

In the epilogue, Bishop Beartongue watches Magnus's machine being assembled, acknowledging it will change the world. The final scene reveals Judith walking into the desert with Wisdom inhabiting her body, the demon having escaped binding by jumping to a willing host. The unlikely pair disappear into the wind, their tracks erased behind them.