Duskfall (38 page)

“This is why She wanted you to help translate. This is why She wanted
you
.”

“What are you talking about?”

Jane looked up at her. Cinzia was surprised to see tears on her sister’s cheeks. Was not this what Jane wanted?

“Don’t you see?” Jane asked. “You are a seer, Cinzia. Not a seer as you know, in the Denomination today, but a
true
seer. You can translate this, with Canta’s power.”

Cinzia put a hand on Jane’s shoulder. “This is a good thing, is it not? We can translate this together. Bring the Nine Scriptures—the Codex of Elwene—to the people, bring them the truth about Canta and Her works.” Cinzia could hardly believe what she was saying. Cinzia was already struggling with her faith in Canta, and had no faith at all in what her sister was teaching.

But this book, these scriptures, and the fact that she could, somehow, read these characters…
that
was tangible. That was something Cinzia
could
believe.

“You are right, of course,” Jane said softly. “This is probably for the best. I need to be humble and accept Canta’s will.”

Cinzia was about to ask what Jane meant by that when she stood, a new smile on her face.

“Let’s get started, then,” she said. “We have a lot of work to do.”

Reluctantly, but with the first feelings of excitement and anticipation in her chest, Cinzia obliged.

K
NOT KNOCKED QUIETLY ON
the door, rubbing his temples. Another headache had just begun, and it worried him. Since they’d left Navone, he’d had several. They came at different times, for a half-hour or so, then faded. Knot did the only thing he knew to do about them. He ignored them.

There was no answer. He knocked again, louder.

“Come in.” Knot heard muffled movement beyond the door.

He slung the leather pack he’d just obtained over his shoulder and opened the door. Winter jumped as he entered.

“Canta rising,” she gasped, “you didn’t have to bloody scare me like that.”

“You said ‘come in’—what’d you expect, darlin’?”

She just shook her head, so Knot turned to close the door behind him. When he turned back, he felt a wave of emotions. Her long hair was frizzed and sticking to her face, and he could make out the tracks of tears down her cheeks. Her clothing, mostly form-fitting leather—very different from the traditional tiellan garb she’d worn in Pranna—clung to her at odd angles.

Knot felt a powerful stab of regret at all that had happened to her. He hadn’t wanted her to get hurt, but he’d hurt her anyway. He should never have left her. Least he could do was tell her the truth.

“You all right?” he asked, heaving the pack off his shoulder and setting it down on the bed. He looked at her, not sure what to do.

“I’m fine.” Winter sniffed, wiping her nose. “You wanted to talk?”

Knot felt awkward. He didn’t know whether to embrace her, try to act natural, or something else altogether.

She stood at an angle from him, near the side of the bed furthest from the door. Her arms were wrapped around her stomach, and she looked at him through stray strands of long black hair.

“Well?”

Knot frowned, rubbing his head. The ache was fading, but it was still there. He could tell she wasn’t in the greatest of moods. Best to get to the point.

“Right,” he said. “You heard what I said to the innkeeper?”

“Most of it,” she said.

She wasn’t going to make this easy for him, that was certain.

“Yes… he mentioned a safebox to me. Do you know what a safebox is?”

Winter rolled her eyes. “What about your safebox?”

“I told him I’d lost my key, and he said that wasn’t a problem. Since he knew me, he could give me the spare.”

Knot waited for a reaction. Winter stared at him but didn’t say anything, her arms crossed. He wished they would sit down.

“I took the key, and opened the safebox.” He nodded to the leather pack. “That was inside. Thought I’d show it to you first.” He hesitated. “Wanted to tell you… about myself. Tonight. Figured this might help.” He wasn’t sure what else to say.

He thought he saw her eyebrows rise slightly. It was encouragement enough. He reached down to empty the pack onto the bed.

Winter joined him, looking down at the assortment of items that tumbled out.

The most eye-catching of them was a sword. The blade was roughly the length of a simple longsword, about a rod long, but slightly curved. It looked very similar to the sword the strange woman had drawn on him in Navone, before the Sfaera globe had crushed her. It was lighter, thinner, more balanced than most longswords he’d used. The blade, encased in a sheath of white leather, was of a simple, dark metal. The handguard was thin and wrapped around the entire circumference of the blade. The white leather of the handle matched the sheath, and below that the pommel was a simple, intricately carved piece of metal—a daemonic face of some kind that Knot didn’t recognize.

A pouch, containing enough coin for them to all travel to Triah and back without a problem, also fell onto the bed. A small crossbow the length of Knot’s forearm, jet-black in color and accompanied by a dozen small black bolts. Half a dozen stones of varying colors, all roughly the size of Knot’s thumb. A set of thin throwing knives, also jet-black. A necklace of a bright, silvery metal, the pendant a pearl-white stone. A stack of papers listing every possible official assignment Knot could think of—he could get in and out of Roden a dozen times and never be questioned. And, last of all, another leather pouch, this one full of small shards of some kind of crystal. The pouch contained a dozen of the strange objects. Knot emptied them onto the bed as well.

In the time it’d taken Knot to sort through the items, Winter had become much more animated. Her dark eyes glinted as she stared down at the bed. Her cheeks were no longer pale, but flushed and red.

“The weapons and the money are obvious,” Knot said. “The papers are orders, exemptions, and official declarations. Probably forgeries. But these other items,” Knot separated the stones, crystals, and necklace, “could be for anything. The necklace is probably decorative, but why I would keep it in the safebox, I don’t know. The stones could be just as meaningless. Might’ve been a rock collector, of all things, before I washed up in Pranna.” Knot had meant the comment to be funny. Winter didn’t laugh, and he didn’t feel much like it, either.

“These crystals?” Winter said, one hand reaching slowly towards them. “Do you know what they’re for?”

“No idea,” Knot said.

Winter picked up one of the crystals, cradling it in her hand. She seemed mesmerized by it. Knot looked at her, his eyes narrowing. Her forehead was sleek with perspiration. Had she been sweating when he walked in? He wasn’t sure. The weather in Roden was milder than in northern Khale, but Knot was still chilly in his furs and cloak; Winter wore only padded leather and a cloak. Her hands were trembling.

“Feeling all right?” he asked.

She looked up sharply, setting the small crystal carefully back on the bed. “Fine,” she said. “Just been feeling a bit ill, lately.”

Knot nodded. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before. He suddenly felt guilty for forcing her to listen to him.

“If you’d rather we spoke about this later, when you’re feeling better—”

“No,” she said. “It’s not that bad. Please,” she looked at him, finally glancing away from the crystals, “tell me what all this means.”

Knot sighed, looking back down at the assortment of objects.
That’s the question, ain’t it?
There was a lot he still didn’t know. But it was time to tell Winter what he did.

“Can’t remember anything about my past,” he said. “You know that. You’ve known it since we first met.”

Winter gave him a
get-to-the-point
look, and Knot didn’t want to lose momentum. Not when he’d finally worked up the courage to tell her.

“That’s not entirely true,” he continued. “I’ve had dreams about places I never remember visiting, people I’ve never seen. They’re real. Least, I think they are. They usually don’t make much sense, may not even be accurate. But considering what I’ve seen, I can make some pretty good guesses about my life.”

“From dreams?” she asked.

Knot nodded. “Dreams, but also… there’re times, in the middle of the day, when I’m doing something mundane, and then I’m somewhere else entirely. In Pranna I’d be hammering a nail, and then my mind would go somewhere else, even if my body just kept hammering. Glimpses into my past. Things I’ve done.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Knot looked away; his gaze settled on the sword. He’d gone back and forth between a number of ways to express it, but now, looking at the sword, he figured bluntness was best.

“I killed people,” he said. “That’s what I do in my dreams. I kill people.”

Winter began to say something, but Knot spoke over her. He had to get this out.

“Not the way a soldier kills people. Not the way of a thug or executioner, either.” He glanced back at her. She seemed to have cooled down, both physically and emotionally, but the black eyes staring back at him were blank, unrevealing.

“I was an assassin. I
think
I was, anyway. I killed people for money, but it’s more than that. In my dreams, I’m
enjoying
it. The hunt, the chase, the secrecy, the kill. I thrived off it. I killed soldiers, generals, nobles, whole families, rich, poor. I’ve killed them all, in my dreams. The Borderguard in Navone all but confirmed it, told me I’m an assassin, and some kind of government agent.”

Knot had skirted the issue with Astrid once or twice, but this was the first time he’d said it out loud. The detachment in his voice surprised him. He felt as if he were stone underneath his skin, and nothing else. Neither cold nor warm, just hard and unyielding.

“If, as they claim, I worked for those people you traveled with,” he said, “the Nazaniin, then they are powerful. The papers from the safebox—and what happened in Navone, of course—prove that, if nothing else. The Borderguard captain recognized me, the owner of this inn knows me… whoever I was, whoever I worked for had a long reach.

“I still don’t know why I was in the Gulf of Nahl, but it had to be because of something I was doing in Roden. A job, maybe, and something went wrong, something to make Rodenese fighters come after me.” Knot took a deep breath. “And because they’re after me, you’re tangled up in it, too. I don’t think the Rodenese who sent the men to our wedding or the Nazaniin will leave us alone, not until I figure this out. That’s what I need to do here.”

Winter hadn’t moved—or reacted at all—since he’d begun speaking. She only looked at him, her large, dark eyes shining.

“That’s it,” he said, feeling incredibly anticlimactic. “I’m an assassin. Or, at least, I was.”

They stood there for what seemed a very long time. When Winter spoke, her words were quiet and even. Knot would have much preferred shouting, crying, sarcasm,
anything
, really, to the quiet reason of her voice.

“That’s what you’ve kept from me?” she asked. “That’s the reason you left? That’s the best you can do?”

Knot was unsure of what to say, or whether to say anything at all. He saw it clearly, now. He’d told himself he’d left her to protect her, and that’d been true, in a way. But, deep down, he knew there were other factors, too. Race. His past. He’d left because he was selfish.

“I shouldn’t have,” Knot whispered. He felt shame like a weight around his neck. He wanted to reach out to her and touch her, but knew he couldn’t. Didn’t deserve it. “I was scared and selfish,” he said. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You think I
wasn’t
scared? That I wasn’t worried about what would happen to us? About who you were?”

Winter slapped him. Knot felt the sting of it on his cheek as she continued, her voice louder. “How dare you think that you were the only one, Knot! That you were the only one who had doubts. Who was afraid.” She hit him again, her fists pounding against his chest. She pushed him back against the wall and hit him again and again.

Knot absorbed the blows easily. He reached out, wrapping his arms around her. He just wanted to make everything all right again. He tried to embrace her, but she fought him, punching and kicking. She stumbled back, but almost as quickly returned, burying her face in his chest. He stood quietly, his arms slowly rising around her, one around her back, one to her head, barely touching her hair. Winter was motionless in his embrace, trembling, but Knot couldn’t hear her crying.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

I’m so sorry
.

She shifted in his arms. He looked down to see her looking up at him. They remained that way for a fraction of a second, and then he felt her body rise up to meet him. He didn’t kiss her back, at first. He didn’t want to let himself. But soon his lips moved with hers, and all questions fled. They didn’t return until sometime later, among rumpled sheets and discarded clothing, objects from the safebox strewn across the floor as they’d been hastily swept from the bed.

N
ASH WATCHED
K
ALI SLIDE
down the rope on Navone’s wall like a spider slipping down a strand of web. In the distance, moonlight illuminated the Blood Gate’s outline against the large black mountains. Getting over the city wall had been easy enough, but he was still worried about the gate; the telenic power flowing through him wouldn’t amount to much if things went badly there. Not even Winter could have made a difference if the guards got it in their minds to kill them. Nash shivered. He had never seen anything like the destruction Winter had wrought in Navone.

He looked down at Kali, almost at the end of the rope. Kali was invaluable in a battle, but she was also their best hope of preventing one. But Nash feared she wasn’t focusing enough on prevention.

Nash was still unused to her new form. Their lacuna, Elsi, had barely seen twenty summers. But she was Elsi no longer; Kali now inhabited Elsi’s body, as surely as Nash had always been—and always would be—stuck in his. Kali’s ability to brand other lacunas with her sift had only recently been discovered, and was the subject of some debate. Only one other acumen was capable of such a feat; Kosarin had only done it once. Kali had transferred her sift at least four times, now. Nash didn’t mind the changes in some ways, but he had grown used to Kali’s maturity, her authority. Her most recent body, brown-haired and tall, had personified those qualities. Now, it was difficult to take her seriously.