“Any you might offer.”
His shrug apologized for useless honesty. “I was planning to.”
“Yes.”
“It was the best idea I had. The only idea. Assumption Day …” He met her scraped-raw gaze. “Shit that happened on Assumption Day shouldn’t have. Including you.”
“And yet—” The plank at the table’s edge tore free with a short harsh squeal. She lifted the splintered wood as though she didn’t understand what she was seeing, then let it fall at her feet. “And yet—”
“Yeah.”
“You saved my life.” Her flat tone softened into faded melancholy. “You saved my life.”
Well, sort of. Maybe. A twitch of his shoulder. “Seemed only polite.”
She lowered her head so the edge of her cowl shaded her reddened eyes. “Please—” she said softly, “I have asked you an honest question. I wish to know why you handed me your weapon, instead of using it. Please respect my desire for an honest answer.”
There was no reason why he should. Not a goddamn one.
She waited.
Finally he sighed. “Maybe you remind me of somebody.”
“Ah.”
Motionless in white: a pillar of salt.
“And was this person … special to you?”
“Yeah. I guess she was.” He found himself staring at his battle-scarred hands. “Not as special as she should have been.”
An infinitesimal lift of her head. “She’s dead, then.”
“A long time ago.”
“Did you kill her?”
“Fuck off.”
“I only wish to—”
“Let me translate, huh? Fuck off is Artan for I’m not gonna talk about that.”
The trace of a nod, a drift of her chin to a lower angle, and he felt like an asshole. But he was used to that.
She stared through the window bars. For a time there was only the breeze and the slow beat of the drummer, the creak of cartwheels and the distant clap of hooves on flagstones.
After a while, she said, “This woman, of whom you say I remind you—was this by any chance Marade Sunflash? Marade, Knight Tarthell of Kavlin’s Leap?”
“Um—” He squinted at her, surprised, even more wary. “Yeah, actually.”
“I had hoped it was.” Again she leaned her cowled forehead against the window’s bars. “Knight Tarthell was betimes a guest at my uncle’s manor. I admired her extravagantly. Her Legend is well regarded within the Order; in her day, she was considered a fair prospect for Champion herself.”
He felt smaller. “I remember.”
“She would bring gifts to me from exotic lands, and of course tales of her adventures reached mythic proportion among children my age—though we were forbidden to have any direct knowledge of them. For reasons I’m sure you can imagine.”
He could. For a couple years he’d been one of those reasons.
“When I was finally old enough to be permitted access, her Legend of Breaking the Black Knives made, ah … riveting reading. As you can perhaps imagine as well.”
He coughed as though something had caught in his throat. Better than trying to answer.
“It was Knight Tarthell herself who encouraged me to train for Khryl’s Own.”
He faked a swallow. “She was like that. She had a—way about her, I guess. A way of making you believe you could do anything. Just from that smile of hers.”
“Hence her epithet. Not only for her reknowned beauty, but for her nature. There was no one warmer, or kinder, or who enjoyed more a joke, yet her wrath was legendary; like the sun, she could kiss or she could burn. A magnificent woman, and a very great Knight.”
“Yeah.”
“So you must guess how flattered I am to bring her to mind.” She turned away from the window and came to the bars of the cell door. Her eyes were raw as bloody eggs. “Do you find me so very like her, then?”
Ohhh, crap. He knew enough about women to understand that this conversation had instantaneously transmogrified into a slippery slope above a lake of burning shit. “Uh, well … yeah, I mean—”
“And how would that be? Do you find me so warm? So kind?” Her tone sharpened. “Am I humorous? Or is it my lovely features that draw her to mind?”
Inside his head the turd-smoke thickened. “Look, I just—”
“I do not bear an epithet, did you know that? Other than those cast at my retreating back, when they think I cannot hear. Hatchetjaw. Gloomcrow. Steelcunt. Do you know that I no longer wear my helm?”
“I’ve heard—”
“I have not put it on since the day I overheard a pair of citizens sniggering together. ‘It’s true, Knights are supposed to wear full armor into battle, but one look at her face, you can see the helmet’s not so much a rule as it is a guideline,’ and the other replied, ‘If she were as smart as she is strong, she’d leave it off in battle and wear it to bed.’ ”
Jesus, what gets me into this crap? He glanced through the ceiling. I blame you.
He looked back at her and decided to hit the lake of burning shit face-first. “Y’know, for a girl raised by people as relentlessly, ruthlessly polite as you Khryllians, you should have better manners.”
She jerked as though he’d slapped her.
“When you ask a guy a question, isn’t it simple courtesy to shut up long enough for him to answer?”
She stood at the bars, her raw eyes staring unapologetic challenge. Whatever answer he gave her had better be good.
He discovered he did have a good answer. Better than good, it was useful: he could use it to work her. The best part?
It was even true.
“It’s because you’re so unhappy.”
Her raw challenge faded to quizzical melancholy. “Oh,” she said softly, but then her brows drew together and her chin came up and he knew what she was about to ask.
“I don’t know,” he said. “She never told me.”
“But—she seemed so …”
He took a long, slow, deep breath. “All I know is that she had … issues. Emotional problems. Deep ones. The kind nobody can really do much about. Being Marade—the Marade you knew, the parfit gentil Knight of Reknown, mirthful, valorous, surpassingly puissant and all that crap—that was her answer to her problems. That’s how she survived whatever was eating her from the inside. I think that’s why she was so good at it. It was the only answer she had.”
She looked down at her hands. “And how, then, did you know all this?”
“I didn’t. Well, I did sort of, but I pretty much didn’t care.” Not as long as he could use it to get between her legs. He shrugged, not much liking the feel of this particular scar. “I was just a kid. I had problems of my own.”
Her hands tightened on the bars. Iron groaned. “So this insight came to you … too late.”
“They mostly do.”
“In her pain,” she murmured, bowing her head until her cowl veiled her eyes once more, “she could only create herself anew.”
She seemed to find sad satisfaction from this, as though it was the answer to the last puzzle she’d ever solve. “The sole escape from her pain was … to be someone else. Someone who would never feel … feel such …”
Ah. He knew what page they were on now. “That’s something a lot of us try.”
Her reply was to turn her back on him.
“Sucks when you finally discover it doesn’t work, huh?”
With a faint sigh, she sagged against the bars, reaching up to hold on to them behind her head. “And how—” Her voice was muffled. Blurred. “—how did Marade handle … this discovery?”
“She didn’t. She … couldn’t, I guess. It was too much for her.” The memory burned even now. Working her was working him too. “She … did something stupid, and got herself killed.”
“In Yalitrayya. Searching with you for the crown of Dal’kannith Thousandhand.”
“Yeah.”
“Were you with her when she died?”
“No.” He had to look at the
floor. “I was late.”
Days late. Remembering made him dizzy with nausea.
“Her Legend is … silent … on her death.”
“It was ugly.” Whatever hell Berne was burning in wasn’t half hot enough. “Worse than the Black Knives. Worse than you can imagine.”
“Would you …” Her voice had faded into a faint, sad yearning as though she called to him from far away. “Would you have saved her, if you could? Not from her death. From her pain.”
“Oh, shit …” he breathed. “Jesus suffering Christ, what a fucking idiot I am …”
Obvious. So obvious a blind man could have seen it from the other side of town.
When she’d figured out who he was, it must have seemed like a gift from Heaven. A secret meeting, alone and unarmed, upon the holiest sanctum of the Order. Bathed in the blood of heroes to wash her sins away …
Handing a loaded gun to a man who had killed just about every kind of creature that flies, walks, or crawls in the fucking dirt.
And when he didn’t …
The deal. The deal with a man who had killed a god. A win-win.
Because she knew that jobs he takes tend to get done, and people who hire him tend to end up dead.
Jesus.
He tongued the pick and tension bar out of his cheek. This might be kind of tricky.
He cleared his throat, then coughed the tools into his fist.
“For Marade? I would have done just about anything.” He started on the left shackle, working by feel, talking to cover any metal-on-metal clicks. “Whatever your uncle told you about me, I’m not a monster.”
“I hope I have seen that already.”
The shackle opened in his hand, and he set to work on the other. “I don’t know her Legend. I don’t know what she said of—well, of us. There was a … moment … in the dark.”
“She wrote that you refused to take her life.”
That was one way of putting it. “Yeah.”
“She wrote that the darkness let her say things—do things—that she never could have said or done in the light. It made her see herself without eyes. She said it was a test. Of her virtue, her courage, and her faith. The direst test she ever faced.”
Her voice hushed to barely a whisper. “And that the only reason she passed it was you. Your faith in her gave her faith in herself.”
He had that taste in his mouth again. “It wasn’t like that.”
“It was for her.”
“Okay. Okay, yeah,” he said like saying that could make it hurt less. “I guess she wouldn’t lie.”
“Of course not.”
“It’s just …” He had to look down. “I wasn’t trying to help her. I was trying to fuck her.”
“This might explain why this memory is for you only painful, where for her it inspired greatness.”
Yeah, okay. He’d had enough of beating his skull against every cobble on memory lane. “So I wouldn’t do that for her. That’s the point. I wouldn’t take her life to save her from pain. Not even for Marade. Not even facing what we faced.”
“Ah.”
“So what in the fucking universe makes you think I’d do it for you?”
She made a sound like she’d been punched in the throat.
He pitched his voice low. Gentle. As kind as he could make it, which wasn’t very. No practice. “He can’t read your mind, y’know.”
Her back stiffened. “What?”
“Not unless you’re thinking at Him. Almost subvocalizing. Otherwise, He has to guess, based on what He can feel you feeling.” He chewed the inside of his lip while he got the right shackle open. “Yeah, you probably know that already: you’re pretty good at talking around shit.”
“I—” Her voice went thick, half-gargled. “I—”
“Can’t even tell me about Him, can you? Can’t tell me how He’s in your head. What He makes you do. Can’t tell anyone. Somebody might stop it.”
“Don’t—”
“I know you can’t ask me. And I can’t save you. Not in the way you want.” One shackle in each hand and the chain between them, he rose. “But I might be able to help you, if you’ll let me.”
“Stop—stop—you don’t understand—”
“Can you not do things? Will He let you?” He moved toward her, his bare feet utterly silent on the scuffed plank floor. The chain hung without swinging; he measured the back of her cowl through the bars. “Will He let you not move?”
With a shuddering gasp she burst away from the bars, invisibly fast: frames cut out of the film inside his head. She flattened herself against the wall across from him, trembling.
Nodding, he dropped the chain, and showed her his empty hands. “Listen to me. I know some things about being godseized, all right? Not just Monastic shit. I know what’s happening to you. I even have a pretty good idea how it feels.”
He went to the cell door. Across the walkway she shivered against the stone. “I don’t need to know how it started. What damage somebody did to you. What made you think it’d be worth it. I only need to know how much you can do for me.”
“For you? For you?” Her voice went shrill. Her gloved hands crushed chunks from the wall. “Why did you have to speak? If you even hint—I’ll have to … have to …”
She squeezed shut her eyes. “I might have to, anyway.”
“How about you walk out of here? Turn around and just walk away.”
“I … can’t. I can’t. You’ve said too much. Too much already.” Her shivering deepened toward tremors.
“Angvasse, listen to me. I will not harm you. Ever.”
“We both know your word means nothing.”
He knew we both didn’t mean her and him. We both meant her and Him. “Everybody knows lots of shit about me. Some of it’s even true. Like, for example, mercy killing isn’t my thing.”
“Mercy isn’t your thing.”
“Yeah. I’m not the guy who puts you out of your misery. I’m the guy who makes your misery worse. Khryl knows it. That’s why He let you hire me.”
“To torture me?”
“Gods are what they are because we are what we are. There’s not much you can do about it.”
“Do you want to see?” Tears now streamed from her swollen eyes. “Do you want to see how much I can do?”
“Okay,” he said, low. “Okay, it’s okay. Relax.”
With that invisible speed she snatched up the Automag, thumb on the trigger and her mouth wide open, and when she lifted it blue faerie fire flared from her shoulder to her wrist, and one inch shy of pointing at her face, the muzzle froze.
The air around her shimmered. Hummed with power. Veins bulged in her corded neck and spidered across her forehead. A spray of blood burst from her nose and her face was turning black and he said, “Okay, stop it, enough, for shit’s sake!” and she dropped the pistol back onto the table and half fell against the wall behind her, gasping.
“Do you see?” Her sobbing was open now. “I only wanted … it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I only wanted … to be good at it. I didn’t even need to be a great Knight. Just a good one. And now … and now …”
She sagged on the wall, her face twisting, tears streaking the blood from her nose. “There is … so little left of me …”
“Fuck me,” he breathed, and she startled him with a sharp bitter laugh.
“That I can still do,” she said, straightening. “That is nearly all I can do.”
“Um, hey, y’know—”
She pushed herself off the wall and leaned toward him, a dangerously manic light kindling in her eye. “Is that what you want? You want me to fuck you?”
He stepped back. “It’s a figure of speech.”
“How did you get those shackles off, I wonder?” Her hands now gripped the bars of the cell door near the lock. Without any sign of effort she gave the door a wrench that split open the lock with a brief hoarse squall. “Were you not searched? A poor job we did of it, then.”
Way too soon he foun
d a cold stone wall against his back. “Look, you don’t really want to do this—”
“Marade Sunflash herself gave her virtue to you. How can I do less?”
An eyeblink brought her to him and then her arms were around him and her hands were on him and his ribs groaned inside him like the cell’s bars had in her hands. Her face met his and her breath tasted of mint and honey and she crushed her lips against his teeth and drew them off with blood.
“Stop …” Breath crushed out of his lungs and black clouds bloomed in his head and he fell back on instinct: a quick snap smashed his forehead into her nose and blood sprayed down their faces and she moaned.
Not in pain.
“Fight me,” she whispered. “Fight me, Caine …”
Something in how she said the name brought blood thundering to his ears. And not just his ears. She pulled her face back so that her eyes of indigo could gaze into his while her splattered nose rebuilt itself and she murmured, “And where did you hide those lock picks?” and her gloved fingers began to force open his asshole.
“Fucking stop it!” he said, but he could say no more because her mouth was against his again and her tongue forced into his mouth. He bit down, hard, blood and live meat between his teeth, and she released his mouth, moaning as her tongue knit until she could gasp, “Yes …”
He worked one arm up between them, the back of his hand brushing a bullet-hard nipple, and hooked two fingers into the notch of her collarbone. Slow steady pressure forced her gagging backward enough to let him talk. “Angvasse—this is rape. You understand? Rape. Is that what you want?”
She released his ass and slid one hand around to his penis.
He looked down. He was hard as drop-forged steel.
“You want me,” she murmured. “You do.”
He couldn’t deny it. “Maybe a guy likes to be asked.”
“Is that it? You find me insufficiently polite?”
That and he was a little down on sex with suicidal superhuman killing machines.
“Please, then, Caine. Please,” she said, and dropped to her knees in front of him and slid her mouth slowly, firmly, inexorably, down over the length of his cock.
He nearly lost his concentration right there, because he was remembering something Tourann had said about Khryllians and their firearms.