Fallen Blade 04 - Blade Reforged (26 page)

“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”

“First, he’ll stake Zass out, so that he can’t help me and has to watch. I’m sure
you can imagine it?”

I nodded, though it didn’t need imagination, only memory. I remembered Master Kaman
nailed to a cross with his Shade staked out in front of him, the iron spikes that
pierced Ssilar burning with a terrible intense light that prevented the shadow from
moving. I remembered as well the arrow that I had used to end Kaman’s life after I’d
offered to try to free him and he begged me to kill him instead.

Devin continued. “Then he’ll have me hung up in the center of a room with chains at
my wrists and ankles, all spread-eagled for his
artists
.”

“Artists?” I asked, confused.

“Tattooists,” said Devin. “Part of the Hand. They do exquisite work, both gently on
the willing, and…less so, on those who displease the Son. You’d be surprised at how
much blunt needles can hurt.”

“That sounds like experience talking.”

Devin nodded and pulled back his left sleeve. An incredibly detailed and beautiful
image of the god Shan adorned the inner side of his forearm. “The Son wasn’t happy
to lose Sumey, and decided that I should serve as a graphic lesson for my fellows.
When he had this done he also had the designs drawn up to expand the piece into a
full-body mosaic should the fancy take him. Then he took me into his gallery. Mostly
it’s filled with bits and pieces, a back panel with a battle scene from church history,
a scalp with an earlier Son’s death image recreated on it.”

“Ugly,” I said.

“And beautiful, and terrifying beyond words. He told me that he always has them removed
while the subject is alive, and that some of his better healing ‘canvases’ continue
to serve him to this day. He said that the only reason my arm piece wasn’t going on
display right now was that Kelos had spoken up for me. Then he told me that if I ever
disappointed him like that again, I would go into the section of the gallery where
the rest of the full-body pieces were displayed. So,
you’ll understand why I’d rather take a shot at the Kitsune, and force her to kill
me, than not, and simply fail.”

I found myself feeling a wholly unwanted compassion for Devin. “So what happens if
I kill the Kitsune for you, but also Thauvik?”

“I don’t know. I’m pretty sure that with both her and Kelos gone, I’ll be too valuable
for him to end up hanging on the wall anytime soon, though I might get some more decorations.
He really doesn’t have a better candidate for Heaven’s Shade. However, in my perfect
world, you and the Kitsune both die of your wounds and I quietly put Thauvik back
on his leash until I get his successor lined up.”

“Or maybe, I kill the Kitsune and you stab me in the back while I’m doing it?”

“That works for me, too, but I don’t expect to get the opportunity.”

My compassion was fading fast. “Charming.”

“Look, I hate your guts, you hate mine, that’s the way it is. Doesn’t mean we can’t
use each other against the Kitsune and sort out the rest of the details once she’s
dead.”

“Sure, it’ll be fun.”

Devin smiled sarcastically. “Glad you’re on board. Now, let’s talk plans. There are
going to be guards, Elite, soldiers. The palace is filled with Thauvik’s loyal subjects.
We’ll need a major distraction to keep them off our backs while we deal with Nuriko,
and any…” Devin winced and closed his eyes as the oath squeezed him. “While we deal
with whatever needs dealing with.”

He was obviously hurting, and after what he’d told me about the Son’s artists I wished
I had the grace to feel worse about it. “What do you want me to do about that?”

“You have access to Maylien’s forces, don’t you? I think my oath to the Son will extend
to arranging for you to bring some of them along to help me get rid of the problem
that Nuriko has become.”

“That’s got potential.” Mostly the potential to get a lot more people killed the way
I had so recently on the bridge,
but that was all too likely to happen no matter what at this point.

If I could stave off a full-scale war by the advent of leading a smaller assault,
I had to at least consider it, no matter how badly things had gone at Sanjin Island.
Of course, I would have felt a whole hell of a lot more comfortable with the idea
if I’d come up with it instead of Devin. If he was trying to suck me into a trap,
the addition of any number of the kinds of seasoned and loyal troops that Maylien
would have to send on a mission this important and dangerous would sure sweeten the
take.

I thought of Jerik then, as I had not in too long, and of his torments on Darkwater
Island, and I wondered how my desire to rescue an old friend had led me from there
to here. I suddenly missed the simplicity of having a goddess to tell me exactly what
to do and who to kill. Sorting out justice on my own was the hardest thing I’d ever
done, and I had no way of knowing if I was getting it right.

S
weet
and sad the dreams that bring us our dead. Kaman and Loris came to me in mine, master
Blades visiting me in the tomb where I lay in place of Ashvik’s risen corpse. They
brought portents and dire warning, railing against Devin’s treachery and speaking
darkly of the Kitsune’s cruel humor and terrible power.

Master Kaman was a gentle man who had taught me to dance, both court-style and silently
among the shadows, the master charged with our instruction in the arts of stealth.
Master Loris had taught advanced magery, my worst subject, and not my favorite teacher
at the time, but a good man who showed me far more patience than I had deserved on
the subject.

Loris had died in the same raid on the abbey that had cost me so much of myself this
previous summer. He had given his life to save mine and those of several of his younger
students who had been captured by the Hand of Heaven. Kaman had fallen at my own hand
when he begged that I give him death to free him from the torture that had broken
his soul. That was another crime of pain to be laid at
Thauvik’s feet alongside Jerik’s more recent suffering, though I did not absolve myself
of my teacher’s death, only of his reasons for asking that I kill him.

There in my dreams, I got the chance to thank Loris for my life, as I had not when
he saved it. Sweet reward, though I knew even then that I thanked the memory of the
man, not the man himself. But bitter was the balance, when Kaman thanked me for his
death with the very same quiet gratitude that I had showed Loris’s Shade. As everything
in my life since the fall, light mixed with darkness and no joy came without cost.

In the days when Namara yet lived, I might have taken my dreams for a communication
from my goddess. She often spoke to her champions in the quiet darkness of our sleeping
minds. But Namara was dead and gone out of the world, and even as I woke, I recognized
my dreams for what they were, the voice of my under-mind speaking in the only place
where it could be heard.

The first message was clearly born in my heart—my own anger and disappointment with
myself crying out to me against this compromise I was considering in pursuit of what
seemed increasingly a phantasm of justice. The second spoke more of my fears in facing
an enemy who had beaten me so easily in our first encounter—a mad legend out of my
order’s past.

The transition from dream to waking came with Kaman’s quiet thanks and the fresh sprouting
of the arrow I’d put in his chest, growing now like a rose. I closed my eyes to a
memory I would never erase and opened them to a view of rough carved stone. The light
was dim and green and I could hear water gently splashing behind and below me.

Normally, if I haven’t been drinking, I wake smoothly and aware of my surroundings,
a skill mastered through long practice. Not this time. This time, I had no idea of
where I was, and my head was full of cobwebs and creepies carried over from Ashvik’s
tomb into the waking world.

Triss?

Yes?

Where the hell are we?

Fallback. Used to be a transshipment point for Miriyan Zheng.

Got it.

Zheng was a sellcinders, or fence, who used to deal big money items out of Highside.
She’d specialized in artifacts that came out of the nonhuman Other cultures, mostly
Durkoth stuff. It made her rich. And then, later, when she got involved with the wrong
item, it made her dead. Both the Durkoth and the Elite had come after her, and between
the two they’d burned her operation completely to the ground.

I’d built my fallback in what was left of a secret little transshipment point and
tuckaside warehouse she’d used for the smuggling side of her operations. Both had
been carved into the broken cliffs on the Quarryside face of the harbor where the
currents and rocks made the waters far too dangerous for any boat bigger than the
tiniest flat bottomed sampans. That was fine by Zheng, who only dealt in small items
anyway. The Durkoth had destroyed the tuckaside above me, using their power over earth
to collapse the chambers and entry tunnel, but the water cave where the sampans had
docked remained because the Durkoth preferred to avoid the interface between elements.

With all the human people who’d known about it dead but me, and the Durkoth avoiding
the place, the cave made a perfect fallback. Judging by the light and the level of
the water—high tide submerged the cave’s mouth—it was midafternoon. I slipped out
of my hammock—hung over the water—and swung down to the narrow stone ledge that had
served as a dock. It was the only dry ground in the cave, running along the eastern
wall. A narrow stair led up into a passageway off the back of the ledge, but ended
in a solid rock wall only a few steps up where the Durkoth had closed things off.
I’d parked my emergency supplies on the highest of these along with the basket of
clothes and other gear I’d stripped off earlier.

As was my wont, I’d put all of my supplies in wide-mouthed
amphorae and sealed them with thick stoppers and preservation spells. That kept things
fresh and dry for the months I might go between visits. With a word of opening and
a twist of my wrist I popped a seal, set the lid on the step, reached into the jar,
and…froze. The first thing my hand touched was a twelve-year-old bottle of Kyle’s
whiskey—I could identify the vintage by the shape even without looking at the label.
I’d set up this hidey-hole in the weeks after the affair with the Durkoth, using supplies
hauled from another, recently compromised, fallback, and I hadn’t cracked into them
since I’d mostly stopped drinking.

Finding the bottle just then, so soon after having to deal with Devin and all the
bits of my past he brought with him was
not
what I needed right now. With my hand shaking, I pulled the bottle out and held it
up in the light. Rich amber heaven stared back at me through the glass. I could already
taste the peat and the fine honey notes the twelve always brought with it.

Aral?

I didn’t answer Triss. I couldn’t. It was taking everything I had not to tear out
the cork and drink off half the bottle on the spot. I could feel sweat breaking out
on my brows and the palm of the hand holding the bottle as I fought with my own desire.
Fuck me but I wanted that drink
bad
. Without seeming to cross the intervening space, I found myself holding the whiskey
out over the water, willing my hand to unclench. It wouldn’t, and probably better
that it didn’t. Whoever had built this tiny hidden slip in the long ago had smoothed
the bottom when they carved out the rest of the cave to make it into something people
could use. Dropping the bottle wouldn’t put it out of reach, it would just make it
a little bit harder to get at. A little bit harder and a lot more humiliating.

Aral!
Triss shifted into dragon form beside me, poking me in the ribs with his nose.

I ignored that and the increased urgency in his voice and used a word of opening to
free the cork—a spell where normally I would have simply torn it free with my teeth.
Then, slowly, oh so very damned slowly, I turned the bottle over and poured the contents
into the sea. It felt more than half like I’d opened a vein and it was my own blood
I was draining away, but I did it. When it was empty, and only when it was empty,
did I let the bottle fall into the water and sink to the bottom. I watched it all
the way down. Then I sat back against the wall of the cavern and dangled my bare feet
in the cool water.

Yes, Triss?
I sent back.
What is it?

Nothing now. Thank you.
He slowly slid back around behind me, where the light would have put him naturally—it
took effort for him to fight the light.

You’re welcome, though I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have done the same with a twist
of efik powder or a sack of beans right now. I miss her, Triss. I miss Namara like
my own soul.

I know you do. I miss her, too.
I could hear how much in his mental voice.
She was the foundation atop which we all built the structures of our lives. Now Justice
is dead and gone into a cold and watery grave and we who once worshipped her have
to stand alone upon the shifting sands of the world.