Elene closed her eyes and when she opened them, the anger was gone. “I’m sorry. I’m feeling really emotional and upset, but that doesn’t make it right to take it out on you. You’re not stupid. I’m sorry.”
“But I am callous.”
Elene paused. “You’ve been through hell, Vi. You are callous, but less and less every day, and I’m sorry I said that. Can you forgive me?”
The thing about Elene that made her a good friend and a pain in the ass was that she didn’t lie, not even when apologizing. If she were less tender-hearted, the lack of guile would be infuriating. Hu Gibbet had “always told the truth” and used it to hammer everyone. Elene’s gentleness made it hard to stay mad. “Yes,” Vi said. “What do you need?”
Elene smiled slowly and it was like the sun breaking through dark clouds. When she smiled unself-consciously, she was beatific. It wasn’t a courtesan’s beauty—though the gods and Vi knew that Elene had spent a lot of time in the last two months exploring the courtesan’s skills and pleasures—yet it was feminine and utterly alluring. When Elene felt joy, it was always joy shared. Her naïveté in expecting the best from others somehow drew out the best in them. “I’m glad you’re my friend, Vi. I’ve been meaning to have this talk with you for a while.”
She scowled, uncertain how to begin. Vi felt the lump rise again in her throat, but there was no leaving, no escape.
“I’m going to die,” Elene said. “I’m scared, especially with this.” She put her hand on her stomach protectively. “I’ve complained to the God a lot about it, to tell you the truth. I know you think I’m either totally holy or totally deluded, but I’ve asked God every way I know how to let me live without it disrupting His plan. I want to live, and I want Kylar to live, and I want our baby to live, and I want Kylar to do all the big things God created him to do.”
“And what’s your God say?” Vi asked. The way Elene related to her God wasn’t at all how Vi had related to Nysos, but whether or not He was real, He was real in Elene’s mind, and you don’t mock the beliefs of someone so near death.
“He says He’s with me.”
“That’s helpful,” Vi said.
“Yes,” Elene said, missing or deciding to miss the sarcasm. “Kylar thinks . . . Kylar fears that he’s a man born to be forever alone. He thinks the last couple of months has been him cheating fate. He’s not a man born to be alone, Vi, but some lies take a long time to heal. I don’t have time. When I’m gone, I want you to take care of Kylar. In every way. He is the most precious thing in all this world to me, and I trust you with him. He’ll need you. You’ll know when he’s ready, and when you are.”
Vi had thought of it, of course. As she sat in her room with the newlyweds canoodling on the other side of a not-thick-enough wall, she’d thought of it a hundred times: this torture wouldn’t last forever; Elene would die come spring. Worse, she’d thought that once Elene was dead, she might have Kylar herself.
“I’ve been selfish,” Elene said, “I knew we only had a couple of months, so I’ve been selfish for myself and for Kylar. I know you’ve paid the price for that. I’ve seen your face some of the mornings after—” Elene cleared her throat, “after Kylar and I stayed up late. I know you love him, Vi, and I can’t imagine how I would have felt if our places were reversed. If I were in your place, I’d look forward to . . . this ending. It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right to wish your friend was dead,” Vi said stiffly. Her eyes felt hot.
“For that and anything else you may have thought or done, I forgive you, Vi. Everything really is going to be all right. God has a purpose in this, even if we don’t see it.”
“You’re leaving,” Vi said.
“Yes.”
“And you haven’t told him.”
“I’ve tried. Kylar’s not ready to hear it. Vi, help him know that loving again is no betrayal. He’s immortal, and living forever without love is hell.”
“When are you leaving?” Vi asked.
“Now.”
“Where?”
“King Gyre’s marching into Khalidor in a few weeks. There are women in his army. I’ll join them. At least that’s my plan. God might have something different for me.”
“Why join them?”
“To force Kylar to be there. He’s sworn he wouldn’t leave me again for Logan, but that’s where he needs to be. If nothing else, I’ll die fighting for something.”
“You’re not a warrior, Elene.”
“No. But I am a fighter.”
“Do you have any idea what Kylar will do when he finds out?” Vi said.
“I’ve left a letter for him on the table telling him that I’m staying at the Chantry overnight. I hope I lie better in writing than in person because I’ll need the head start. But here’s another letter that tells the truth.” She paused. “Well, not the whole truth. I didn’t tell him I’m pregnant. He’s going to hurt enough. Please make sure he gets it.” She handed the note to Vi.
“You’re putting me in the middle of this?”
“He’d feel your complicity through your bond. You might want to stay at the Chantry for a couple days.”
Elene hugged her. At first awkwardly and then fiercely, Vi hugged her back. Her eyes teared up faster than she could blink away, and through her bond, she felt Kylar’s sudden alarm from a mile away. It wasn’t in words, but she could feel his wonder: are you crying?! She sent a wave of reassurance to him, which left him even more befuddled.
“I don’t want you to go,” Vi said.
Elene pulled back and searched Vi’s eyes. “You mean that. I can tell. Even with how hard this has been, you mean it.”
“I’ve never had a friend,” Vi said. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“You’re a better woman than you know, Vi. God bless you.”
75
The passes are clear,” Durzo said. “The magae are going to march tomorrow.”
Kylar had known there was something different in his master’s attitude as they’d sparred today. They sat together on a table in the practice room of Durzo’s house, each holding a towel and blotting the sweat from their faces. Durzo didn’t make eye contact. “You’re leaving,” Kylar said.
“If you can believe it, Uly’s kicking me out the door,” Durzo said ruefully.
“I thought you were getting along great.”
“She’s worried about her mom. Says I should have gone to her first.”
“I think Uly’s smarter than both of us put together,” Kylar said lightly, though his heart was lead. Durzo was leaving him again, and if for the first time Durzo was letting him know about it beforehand, it didn’t make it much easier.
“Watch out for women smarter than you, kid. By which—”
“You mean all of them, I know.” Kylar shared a grin with his master.
“Guess I need to give you your gear,” Durzo said. “You going with the magae?”
“If I go, Elene will go, and she’ll die. I’m steering clear of this fight.”
Durzo examined his fingernails. “I told you that’s not how it works. She can fall in a puddle and drown as easily as take a sword in the guts. Death won’t be cheated, not in this.”
Kylar took it like a shot in stomach. He said quietly, “I won’t let her die. I won’t let anyone take her away. Not Death, not the Wolf, not God himself.”
“Kid, remember your first time in the Antechamber of the Mystery? Was there one door or two? It wasn’t Death or the Wolf or the boogeyman that made you immortal. This was your own damn choice.”
“I became immortal so I could save Elene, not so I could kill her.”
“You want her to live forever? Go ahead. See if you can make another deal with the Wolf so someone else will die in her place. Maybe you can choose which one of the other people you care about dies. Won’t that be fun? Maybe then you can get a ka’kari for Elene, so she won’t age. But be glad that the other ka’karis’ immortality isn’t like our own. She won’t age, but she can stil
l be killed. And be glad for that too. Because when she becomes a monster, corrupted by the very gift you sold your soul to give her, you’ll be the one who has to do something about it.”
Durzo’s anger was too focused, his description too detailed. “You did that?” Kylar asked.
His master didn’t answer him, wouldn’t even look at him. He opened the bureau, released the bottom drawer and pulled it out. He lifted Retribution, skinned black with the ka’kari, from the false bottom.
“I can’t let Elene die for me,” Kylar said.
“You haven’t got any goddam choice. You’ve had a few months to get used to the idea. That’s more than the Wolf ever gave me. Be grateful. Now take your shit and get out.” Durzo tossed the big black sword to Kylar.
As soon as the ka’kari touched his skin, it began shrilling. ~Why didn’t you listen! I tried to tell you! It’s gone. Three months gone. Stolen!~
Dumbfounded, Kylar stared at the sword. Frustrated at his stupidity, the ka’kari sought to sink into his skin of his hand and he let it, forgetting that it would destroy his disguise. As the black metal rushed into him, it revealed a pitted, half-devoured sword blade. Retribution was gone, replaced with a counterfeit that Kylar hadn’t noticed when they’d hidden the blade. It was impossible, but someone had stolen his sword before he hid it here, probably when he’d first been gawking like an idiot on the crowded sidewalks of Vestacchi.
Durzo was aghast. “Kid, you have no idea what that sword is. You have to get it back.”
Then Kylar felt Vi through his bond. She’d been nervous since yesterday, and now he could feel her starting guiltily as she felt his emotions. Vi knew, and she was hiding in the Chantry, certain he wouldn’t go there. For all his help, the Sisters had stabbed him in the back. They’d stolen Retribution.
“I know where it is,” Kylar said.
The closer Kylar got to the Chantry, the more his anger grew. He became more and more certain from Vi’s guilt that Elene was somehow involved too, and that lit a fire in him. He thought he could read her. Yesterday afternoon he’d gotten her note that said she had some things she needed to work on in the Chantry, and she still wasn’t back. The timing seemed strange, but there was no doubting Vi’s guilt as he came closer. Having the vastness of the Chantry against him blew his rage to a flame. They wanted him passive, tame, emasculated, obedient. He was sick and tired of it. Sick of being worked on by vast, remote powers he couldn’t understand or counter. The Chantry was like fate, like the Wolf, like Death itself, working inexorably on the world, on Kylar, and turning a deaf ear to his pleas.
When he stepped out of the punt onto one of the Chantry’s docks, two dozen pairs of eyes turned to him, scandalized. Some he recognized from Vi’s training sessions; others were more hostile. A Sister was lecturing a class of teens on the workings of the punts. Others were doing maintenance magic on the little bay itself, reworking the rain shield overhead. He ignored them and strode toward the double doors that led inside.
A white robed woman stepped forward, “Sir, no men are allowed here.”
He walked past her.
Before he could touch the double doors, magic bonds latched onto him arm and leg. “Please, sir, we don’t wish to harm you—”
Kylar shrugged the bonds off as easily as he might shoo a fly. He turned and looked at the faces of the two Sisters tasked with guarding the door. They were stunned. One of them was readying a lash of magic.
“Don’t,” Kylar said, staring her in the eye. As he held her gaze, something in his eyes turned her resolve to water. The weaves slipped away. He threw the doors open.
Vi was in a panic upstairs. Good.
Kylar walked straight down a long hall to a set of huge double doors three times a man’s height. Doors along the length of the hall opened and Kylar heard cries of alarm. The smaller door inset in the double doors slammed shut by magic and a young maja yelped. The scraping of metal on wood told him that the double doors had been barred. Kylar didn’t slow; he didn’t turn to the right or to the left. He gathered power to his hands.
~I’ve seen stupider things, but it’s been centuries.~
The voice was the buzzing of a gnat. There was something beautiful in this simplicity. Someone had stolen Kylar’s birthright. He was getting it back. This door was in his way.
Kylar’s open hands shot into the doors. They bowed and then crashed open. One half of the timber that had barred the door shot across the floor toward dozens of tables. Perhaps two hundred magae were seated in the great hall, enjoying lunch. The splintered timber skimmed down one aisle at great speed, shooting between a Sister’s legs and finally crashing against the first step of a great curving staircase.
As Kylar stepped through in a shower of kindling, the other great door sagged on its remaining hinge. Every eye turned to him.
Sisters began standing all around the room and shields blossomed everywhere, but the first woman on her feet was Sister Ariel. She moved faster than Kylar had ever seen her move, coming straight at him. “What do you think you’re doing?” she shouted.
“Where’s the Speaker? She’s stolen from me,” Kylar said.
“You will go no further!” Sister Ariel shouted. She was purple.
“Stop me,” Kylar said. He could see that his smirk infuriated her.
Faster than he thought possible, she did. Giant chains of magic lashed his arms to his body, clamped his legs together. Magae around her openly gaped at her sheer power.
~You deserved that. Take it, apologize, and come back later.~
Kylar had had enough of taking it, apologizing, and coming back when it was convenient for someone else. He was sick of being trapped. He felt something mighty rising within him.
Fear flickered over Sister Ariel’s face at whatever she saw. Kylar sucked in a great breath and flexed, tensing every muscle in his body, physical and magical. He felt suddenly gigantic, his body a tiny vessel for a giant soul. As he strained, a groan deeper than Kylar’s voice came from his lips.
His chains shattered, blew apart with a magical concussion that swept through the room. The tables didn’t move, the air didn’t stir, but everything magical was flattened. Every nimbus in the room winked out. Only a few held for an instant before popping and blowing away.
A dozen of the standing magae simply folded and dropped to sit on their benches or the floor. No one else moved, not even Sister Ariel. “What are you?” she whispered. The question was mirrored in every eye.
“Out of my way,” Kylar said. He strode forward. They got out of his way.
76
Istariel Wyant eyed the Alitaeran ambassador’s untouched ootai. Marcus Guerin was bordering on fifty, bald with a fringe of blond hair, a small paunch, no bottom, and a restless intelligence in his blue eyes.
“There are some troubling rumors we’ve been hearing that I think we need to discuss,” Ambassador Guerin said.
Istariel took the opportunity of taking a sip of ootai to cover her sudden rage. Someone had leaked this to the Alitaerans? If he’d learned about Vi’s practices, that was one thing, but Istariel had only told three Sisters about her plan to withdraw from the Accords. If he knew about that, it was treason. She simply arched an eyebrow.
“What do you know about this ‘High King’?” he asked.
Oh, those rumors. Thank the Seraph. “Little,” she said. There was a twinkle in his eye that made her wonder if he had done that on purpose. Bastard. “What we’ve heard has only told us that you ought to know more than we do. He’s Alitaeran, or at least raised in your glorious country. His name is Moburu Ander, though he claims Ursuul blood. We know he’s half Lodricari, he led a company of lancers, and he’s found a position of some importance among the savages of the Freeze.” She knew more, but there was no point telling Ambassador Guerin.
“He’s the adopted son of Aurelius Ander, of a once-powerful family that has fallen far in the last two generations. Moburu was adopted at fifteen, before that, we can’t find any record or recollec
tion of him anywhere, so we give some credence to his claim of Ursuul patrimony.”
“I doubt that an absence of records was enough to make you believe he’s an Ursuul,” Istariel said.
The ambassador stroked his moustache. “The captain is both intelligent and charismatic. Nothing was ever found to link him to the scandals and disappearances that seem to swirl in his wake. Last autumn, the king’s sister bore a daughter, Yva Lucrece Corazhi. The child and her wet nurse disappeared. At the same time, Moburu led his company—all of them—to a place called Pavvil’s Grove, where they fought beside the Khalidorans. There are wild tales surrounding that, but most of Moburu’s company escaped and headed north.”
“You believe he kidnapped the child?”
“What I believe has no relevance. Some very powerful people in Skon insist that he did not. They are having a harder time explaining why he has taken an entire company out of our country without leave, though some whisper it’s a secret mission for the king. There are generals who don’t wish to appear fools who have not discouraged such whispers. There are even those who claim that Moburu’s company itself is trying to recover Yva Lucrece.”
“It appears to me that this man must be declared a traitor,” Istariel said. “Otherwise, if he joins Khalidor again, this time to attack us, Alitaera will be making war on the Chantry.”
The slight wince that passed the ambassador’s face told Istariel she had voiced an argument he had presented to his superiors himself. “Our response to Captain Ander will be determined soon, and I promise you will be among the first to know.” Ambassador Guerin’s face looked like he was chewing lemons. “Now speaking of sharing intelligence,” he said, “you never did turn over that intelligence you told us about a few months ago,” he said. “But let’s return to that in a moment. First, we were hoping this house of learning might tell us some more about who this High King is supposed to be, and how one identifies him.”
Istariel leaned back in her chair. “Meaning you won’t move against Moburu until you know if he’s the real thing.”