“But he came back. Even after I bonded the ka’kari.”
“Because he loved you, Kylar. He chose to die for you, to give up everything he still had—his sword, his ka’kari, his power, his life—for you. There is no greater love. Such a death was rewarded with new life.”
“By who? You?” Kylar asked. The Wolf said nothing. “The ka’kari? The God?”
“Perhaps it is just the way greatest magic works: justice and mercy entwined. It’s a mystery, Kylar. A mystery on a par with the question of why is there life at all? If you wish to answer the mystery by positing a God, you can, or you can say that it just is—and either way, be glad for it, for it is a gift. Or a most fortunate accident.”
Kylar felt suddenly small in the workings of a universe vast beyond comprehension, vast and yet perhaps not ambivalent even to Durzo’s suffering. One last life—a sheer gift. The ka’kari was even more strange and marvelous than he’d imagined.
“I thought . . .” Kylar shook his head. “I thought it was just amazing magic.”
The Wolf laughed, and even the ghosts in the room seemed startled. “It is amazing magic, it just isn’t just amazing magic. The most potent magics are tied to human truths: beauty and passion and yearning and fortitude and valor and empathy. It is from these that the ka’kari draw their strength as much as it is from the magic they are imbued with.”
“And the darker truths?” Kylar asked.
“All human truths. Vengeance and hatred and glorying in destruction and ambition and greed and all the rest have power. The trick to being truly powerful is that your character be in line with the magic you attempt. Meisters make terrible healers. By the same token, most green mages have too much empathy to make war. The more fully human you are, the greater the diversity of your talents. The more deeply you feel, the more potent your gifts. That, Kylar, is why you called the ka’kari. You ached for love. Not only did you want be loved, as do we all, but you wanted to lavish love on your beloved. You wanted it with your whole being and you thought it had been denied you forever.”
The way he said it embarrassed Kylar.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” the Wolf said. “What is more human than to love and be loved? Between loving and thinking that love was denied you, that tension amplified your power.”
“That tension’s with me still, isn’t it?” Kylar asked. “For my love will always be dangerous to those I love.”
“Clever, isn’t it? Your power is tied to your capacity for love. The creator of the ka’kari gave you a gift and built into it the means to keep it forever powerful. No mean trick, that.”
“A mean trick is exactly what it is,” Kylar snarled. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“It’s a problem,” the Wolf said, shrugging.
But Kylar wasn’t listening. He could feel the blood draining out of his face. “Oh my God,” he said. His heart was a thunder in his ears, a rock in his chest. He’d meant he was dangerous to those he loved because his enemies could always threaten them. That wasn’t what the Wolf meant. He’d been telling Kylar for five minutes and Kylar hadn’t understood. Breathless, Kylar asked, “You mean every time I’ve died someone I love has died for me?”
“Of course. That’s the price of immortality.”
Kylar’s throat constricted. He was suffocating. “Who . . . ?”
“Serah Drake died when Roth killed you. Mags Drake died for Scarred Wrable’s arrow on the trail. Ulana Drake died when the Godking killed you.”
Kylar’s knees buckled. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to faint. Anything, anything to not be. But the moment stretched on and in the midst of the gale, he found himself thinking, thank the God it wasn’t Uly or Elene, and then he cursed himself for the thought. Who was he to weigh one life against another and be thankful that one should die, simply because he loved her less? He’d killed them. Count Drake had taken in a foul-mouthed, amoral guttershite and made him part of his family. And Kylar had murdered the Drakes through his carelessness, his arrogance. For every gift Count Drake had given Kylar, he’d repaid him with grief.
“And for my blasphemy? When I took money to be killed?”
“Jarl.”
Kylar screamed. He tore his cloak. He pounded the ground with his fists, but there was no pain here, no body to mortify. The tears rolled down his cheeks and there was no comfort. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. Oh, God.”
The Wolf was astounded. “But of course you knew. Durzo left you a letter on his body. He explained everything. He told me he put it in his breast pocket.”
“I couldn’t read it! It was soaked with blood! I couldn’t read a damned thing!” Then the last revelation hit him. “Who is it this time?” he asked, desperately. “Who dies for me this time?”
The Wolf was aghast. His lambent eyes and scarred face softened, and he looked fully human for the first time. “Kylar. I’m sorry. I thought you knew. I thought you knew all along.”
“Please. I’ll trade back! Let me trade back.”
“It doesn’t work like that. There’s nothing either of us can do. This time it’s Elene.”
58
Kylar woke on a cold stone slab in a cold room. He didn’t open his eyes. If he could have willed himself never to wake again, he would have. He was still except for his breath and the currents of his life’s blood rushing through his veins. As always when he came back from the dead, his body felt wonderful. Absolutely whole, powerful, bursting with energy. He’d stolen a life and it came to him abundantly. He was overfull, spilling life in every direction. His health was a mockery.
Tears welled in his eyes and spilled down his cheeks to his ears. No wonder the Wolf had thought him a monster. He’d thought Kylar was throwing away the lives of those he loved and who loved him.
He lay on his back, but it only got worse, so he opened his eyes. The air was stale, dank. The ceiling was ornate, cool white marble. He was in a crypt. Only feet away, on slabs like his, were a man’s body and a woman’s. The man was big, holding a big sword. The woman’s throat had been cut, and from how she’d decomposed, Kylar guessed she’d been bled dry. The man had died around the same time, surely during the coup. They were Logan’s parents. Around them, the walls were filled with row upon row of Gyre corpses, stretching back centuries. Logan had put Kylar in his own family’s crypt.
Kylar stood, not even feeling stiffness from having slept on marble. He’d been dressed in a cloth-of-gold tunic and white breeches, and fine fawnskin shoes. It was, of course, pitch black in the crypt. There was no way of telling what time of day it was, and the mouth of the crypt was sealed with a massive rock cut into the shape of a wheel taller than a man. If Kylar remembered correctly, the crypt was located outside the city and sunk beneath the ground. If so, he had a good chance of getting out without anyone knowing. Regardless, he had to get out, so he grabbed the wheel and heaved with his Talent.
Slowly, the massive stone rolled a half turn and settled into another rest. Kylar went invisible and stepped outside.
It was night, but the harvest moon was bright and high overhead. In the narrow stairwell that led to the crypt stood a young girl, her eyes wide with fear. It was Blue, the little guttershite from Black Dragon guild.
Kylar stopped, still invisible, and rubbed his face. Blue didn’t move. He could tell she wanted to run but refused to. Brave little shite. “Kylar?” she whispered.
What was he supposed to do? Kill her? Avoid her and let her blab stories about the crypt opening? It was unlikely, but someone might open the crypt to check it out. And what would they do when they saw Kylar was gone?
“Kylar, I know you’re there. Take me with you.”
Staying invisible, Kylar asked, “Have you ever killed anyone, Blue?”
She gasped and swallowed, looking for the source of the voice. “No,” she whispered.
“Do you want to kill people?”
“I’d kill Dag Tarkus. He kicked Piggy in the stomach for stealing and the next day he died.”
>
“What if I told you that to be my apprentice you’d have to kill a dozen kids like Piggy? What if I told you you had to kill your whole guild?”
Blue started crying.
“You just want out, don’t you?”
She nodded her head.
“Then I need you to do two things, Blue. First, never—ever—speak about this. If you tell anyone, bad people will find out, and they’ll kill lots of good people. You understand? You can’t even tell your best friend.”
Blue nodded. “I got no friends, not after Piggy died.”
“Go to the corner of Verdun and Gar. I’ll meet you in an hour.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Blue left and Kylar closed the crypt. He found a safe house and loaded up everything he needed, including Retribution, which he had left before he killed the queen, knowing his weapons would be confiscated. He wrote a note to Rimbold Drake, first explaining about the laundress he’d maimed and asking Drake to pay restitution, and then explaining what the Wolf told Kylar he’d cost the Drakes. He grabbed several bags of gold and a few poisons and changes of clothing, took a cloak and pulled the hood over his face.
He found Blue sitting at the intersection. She scrambled to her feet.
“Inside that house lives a good man, Blue. He was poisoned and nearly died during the coup, and the Khalidorans killed his wife and two of his daughters. He’s the best man I know, and I think he might need you as much as you need him. In my note, I’ve asked him to raise you. He’ll give you the only chance you’ll ever have to make something of yourself. But it won’t be easy. If you go in this house, you stay until you walk out a lady. Is that what you want?”
“A lady?” Blue asked, her face lit with impossible yearning.
“Say it.”
“I want to be somebody. I want to be a lady.”
“I believe you.” Kylar put his hand to a crack in the door, sent the ka’kari through, and opened the latch. He opened the door and they walked past the porter’s hut to the front door. Kylar handed a bag full of gold crowns to Blue. It was so heavy she could barely hold it. Then he put the note in her hand and threw back his hood, so she would never doubt that it was him. “Blue, I’m trusting you. I see souls. I weigh them. From yours, I know you’re worth it. Be good to Count Drake. I wasn’t as good to him as he deserved.”
With that, Kylar pounded on the door and went invisible. He waited until the bleary-eyed count opened the door. Rimbold Drake looked at Blue, confused. She was too terrified to speak. After a moment, he took the note from her hand. After he read it, he wept.
Kylar turned to go.
“You were better than you know,” Drake said to the night. “I forgive you any wrong you think you have done me. You will always be welcome here, my son.”
Kylar disappeared into the night. It was where he belonged.
59
After two days, they moved Solon to another room. It was still locked, the windows covered with bars, the cedar door banded with iron, but this room had a view of Whitecliff Castle’s courtyard. The courtyard was decorated in a style fit for the wedding, greens the color of the vines and the seas, and the purples of wine and royalty dominating.
“I don’t know who you are, Pretender,” one of Solon’s guards said. He was a paunchy man with heavy jowls and haphazardly polished armor. “But enjoy the wedding, because it’s the last thing you’ll ever see.”
“Why’s that?” Solon asked.
“Because the Mikaidon wanted his first order as emperor to be your death.”
The other guard, a rail-thin man with a single eyebrow, looked nervous and guilty. “Shut it, Ori. Nysos’ blood, it’s gonna be a bad enough day as it is.” To Solon, he said, “We’ll make it quick, I promise.” He exited, watching Solon for any sudden movement, and locked the door behind himself.
Solon was surprised to find a tub full of water and fresh clothes in the room. He scrubbed himself and donned the clean garments, thinking. Oshobi was already giving orders to Kaede’s guards. That couldn’t be good, but it didn’t necessarily mean what Solon suspected. Solon had never learned how much power Kaede intended to share once she married. When she talked with him two days ago she hadn’t seemed desperate enough to grant Oshobi total power.
It made him feel sick. For the last two days, he’d thought through every option he had, and he couldn’t find anything that would assert his own rights without undermining Kaede’s. He didn’t know what any of the political undercurrents were, so anything he did could have the opposite of the intended effect. But the clean clothes laid out for him, clothing fit for a noble, if not quite royalty, told him that Kaede most likely hadn’t intended him to die today. Was this his chance? Or was she punishing him by forcing him to watch a wedding that she saw as his fault?
Outside, the nobles were gathering in order of precedence, standing as Sethi always stood to witness a wedding. Soon, at least four hundred of them surrounded the platform where the Empress and Emperor-to-be would be wed. Solon could pick out many faces he recognized, and saw a frightening number of absences, too. Had his brother killed so many? How had Sijuron become such a monster without Solon knowing?
The ring of the singing swords announced the beginning of the ceremony. On the platform, the dancers faced each other. Each wore a mask, the man the suitor’s mask, which today was deadly serious. A pubescent boy wore the woman’s mask, today lovely but austere in keeping with the empress’s dignity. Each held a specially shaped hollow sword that would sing in the dance, tones varied by the dancers’ grip and where each struck the other. The swords were pitched at octaves, and the duel—symbolic of the couple’s courtship—was always partly choreographed and partly extemporaneous. It was a perennial favorite, and skilled dancers were the most expensive part of a wedding. The dances, proclaimed sacred to Nysos, ranged from the erotic to the comedic. It was also usually the most anxiety-provoking time of a wedding for the couple. Dancers being the artists they were, there was no guaranteeing they wouldn’t make the man or woman or both look like fools, and the sword dance was often the only thing remembered about the wedding.
The dancers bowed low, but kept their eyes up, as if suspicious of each other, and then they began. For a time as they danced, Solon forgot that he was in a prison. They gave the boy a quick hand for Kaede’s quick tongue, and a wide range. A woman known as a scold might be given a single note for an entire dance, while an excitable man might be given only notes at the extremes of the singing sword. The man playing Oshobi was a huge presence, forceful and manly and, if slower, also stronger than Kaede. Whoever they were, these dancers were incorruptible, unafraid of even a man who would be emperor. In their dance, Solon read the courtship perfectly.
Oshobi had always pursued with a single-minded determination. Kaede weakened early, then rallied for years. Always, Oshobi pursued, and the dancer gave a lightly mocking tone to it that only a skilled eye would have seen. There was the suggestion that Oshobi wanted not Kaede, but that which was behind her—missing opportunities at the woman as he aimed at the throne.
Kaede slowly tired, but the dancers underplayed it, not suggesting that Oshobi beat her into submission, but simply allowing her to slow to his level and make him look more brilliant as he matched and overmatched her, cadences singing together until Oshobi took up Kaede’s line. As the dance wound to a close, Kaede bowed to her knees and spread her arms to take the ceremonial touch over the heart. In apparent haste, the dancer playing Oshobi stepped forward too quickly and slipped, his sword tapped her throat for the barest instant before he righted himself and touched it to her heart.
It was so well done that even Solon believed for a moment that the dancer really had slipped. Everyone took it as that, or decided to take it as that: a slight error in an otherwise flawless performance. They cheered wildly and once the cheering stopped, the betrothed entered.
Solon’s heart leapt to his throat as Kaede strode forward. She wore a purple samite cap
e with a long train, edged in lace. A crown of vines with ripe purple grapes was woven through her long black hair. It being her wedding, both of her breasts were bare, the nipples rouged, and beneath her navel her bare stomach was adorned with ancient fertility runes. A cloth-of-gold skirt hung low on her hips, trailing slightly behind her, her wine-stained bare feet barely winking out. Most women exposed more of their ankles, saying the juice of the grape is clothing enough for a wedding. Apparently Kaede really did believe that a queen was a queen first and a woman sometime later. But after a decade and a half in Midcyru, the modesty was lost on Solon. The sight of her here, like this, filled him with every sort of longing. The skirt had neither buttons nor clasps nor ties, nor underclothes beneath it. It was finished the morning of the wedding with the woman inside it. It was to be torn off by the groom in his passion. Revelers outside the wedding chamber would call loudly until the groom threw it out the window. In ancient times and in some rural areas still, the skirt was always white, and ripped open but not removed until the wedding was consummated. Then the revelers would parade with the “proof” of the woman’s virginity, which as often as not was sheep’s blood. Most mothers provided their daughters with a vial of it, in case she had broken her hymen licitly or illicitly. It was a tradition Solon was glad had mostly disappeared, not only because he thought it was gross, but also because he found it hard to imagine enjoying consummating his marriage with drunken screaming assholes pounding on the walls.
In the courtyard, Oshobi Takeda walked forward. Solon felt a stab of hatred. He should be walking forward now. He should be the one who tore Kaede’s skirt tonight. Oshobi Takeda came into the circle bare-chested as well, runes of vigor and potency painted on the surface of a stomach so muscular and devoid of fat that it wasn’t flat but ridged. He too wore vines through his hair and a simple green cape, paired with cloth-of-gold trousers that ended just below the knee.
Oshobi mounted the platform, barely looking at Kaede. Solon thought he must be either blind or homosexual to disregard such beauty. He turned and addressed the assembled nobles. “I came here today to marry our empress. It was in my heart to unite this land as it hasn’t been united for more than a decade. I know all of us were dismayed when we heard of Daune Wariyamo’s infidelities, and though it strained my family’s honor, I came here determined to wed.”