Weapon of Blood (15 page)

“Good morning, Mistress Mya.  How was
your evening?”

“Good morning.”  Mya hesitated, unsure of
what to say about this type of transaction.  She glanced at the young man. 
Gods,
I don’t even know his name!
  It felt so impersonal to discuss his
performance while he sat right there, but Madam Jondeleth waited with an
expectant smile.  “He was fine.  Very good.”

Her own words struck her like a kick in
the stomach.  She felt like she should have said something more, or nothing at
all.

“Good.  I’m glad you found him
pleasing.”  The woman snapped her fingers several times in quick succession. 
The young man rose to follow the sound to where his employer held out her arm. 
Mya found the gesture insulting, as if the woman was summoning a pet.  “If you
wish his services again, please do not hesitate to call on me.”

“I will.” 
When all Nine Hells freeze
over
, she thought, clenching her fists until her nails bit into her palms. 
There was no pain, of course, but she felt the oozing blood slicken her grip.

The woman nodded, smiled, and turned to
go.  The young man followed dutifully, his hand resting lightly on the madam’s
arm.  His blind eyes swept past Mya, and a sweet, secret smile touched his lips. 
Mya felt suddenly as if she owed him something beyond the gold she had paid for
his services, some personal acknowledgement.

“I…”  She stopped herself, but too late. 
Madam Jondeleth turned back, a question in her eyes.  “I’ll call on you again
soon.”

“Very good.”  The madam nodded again, and
they left, Mika pulling the door closed behind them.

Mya breathed a sigh of relief, looked
down at her bloody palms and wiped them clean on her robe.  The tiny wounds
were already closed. 
What the hells is wrong with me?  I go so far as to
pay for someone’s company, then can’t wait to be alone again.
  Anger and
unease boiled up in equal portions.  Fumbling with the key, she opened the door
to her apartments and strode through, slamming it closed without relocking it. 
If someone skilled or stupid enough to get past Mika chose this moment to try
to kill her, let them come.  She’d welcome a fight.

I just need a bath, maybe some
exercise.  Yes…  That’ll set me right.

She hurried through her living room to
her bedroom, and stopped short.  The disheveled bed glared at her like a
disapproving matron, condemnation plain in the rumpled sheets, the torn
pillowcase, the dampness of sweat and blood on the coverlet.  Mya had had few
lovers in her life, and none for the past five years.  No one had come close to
giving her the physical pleasure that last night had provided, and still, she
felt like she’d betrayed someone.

Sex and love are different, my friend…
  The words she had said to Lad felt like a slap in
the face.

Lad!  It would have been so easy for them
to ease their tension together, so natural.  Last night she had closed her
eyes, imagining that it was Lad who caressed her.  His refusal of her offer had
hit her harder than she imagined it could, but she should have known better. 
He was completely besotted with that scar-faced tavern wench.  How could he
love someone like her, someone so weak?

Angry with Lad and angrier with herself,
Mya turned away from the bed.  She tore off her robe and flung it toward the
clothes press on her way to the bathing room.  The warmth of the thick stone
walls greeted her like a welcome embrace.  She’d spent a good bit of coin on
this room, a refuge that nobody could invade.  Simple magic warmed the floor
and walls, and the water from the spigot high on the wall always came out at
precisely the temperature she desired, whether she wanted a hot bath, a tepid
rinse or a bracingly chilly deluge.

Scalding
, she thought, turning the tap on full.

Water just short of boiling poured forth.

Steam billowed as Mya stepped under the
torrent.  Looking down, she watched blisters bubble up on her skin, but she
felt no pain.  The blisters healed, and rose again.  Grabbing soap and a brush,
Mya scrubbed her tattooed flesh, washing away every vestige of the previous
night’s lovemaking.

No, it wasn’t lovemaking, it was sex,
straightforward, simple sex.  Nothing to be ashamed about!
  She scrubbed harder, wishing for the absent pain,
anything to clear her mind of these plaguing thoughts.

When she finally felt clean, she closed
the tap, grabbed a towel and scrubbed herself dry.  Her blistered flesh healed
once more, instantly and painlessly, resuming its seamless, scarless luster of
dark runes.  She cast the towel aside and strode through her bedroom without a
glance at the incriminating bed, through the living room and into the training
room.

On the floor in the corner lay her
wrappings, her armor against prying eyes.

Mya held one end of the supple cloth
against her ankle and began wrapping it up her leg, overlapping each successive
layer.  The cloth felt good against her skin, smooth and comforting.  Her
anonymity in physical form, it kept her secret from the rest of the world. 
With this simple layer of cloth, she looked normal, helpless, vulnerable—until
someone tried to hurt her.

Halfway up one leg, she glanced up into
one of the mirrors that lined the walls.  She stopped and stared as her flesh
writhed with magic, her beautiful gifts…

If you’re so beautiful, why hide? Why
pay a blind man to pleasure you?

Mya cursed at the nagging voice.  She
knew why.  She had to keep her secret safe from her enemies.

Is that the only reason?

She stared into the mirror, barely recognizing
herself, black tattoos against pale flesh, more magic than human.  Who was
she? 
What
was she?  Memories flashed into her mind of the Grandfather
as he disrobed in his dreadful torture chamber, the dark, ancient runes
revealed on his flesh as he prepared to fight Lad.  Another memory, lying on
his table as his blades sliced through her flesh, screaming as he laughed,
realizing what he truly was.  She had loathed the Grandfather, his domination
over her and her fear of him.  Now she had made herself into his likeness, his
offspring.

Monster
…

Mya stared at her tattoos.   Before today
they had always seemed to dance to unheard music before her eyes, they now
writhed across her flesh like snakes.  Lad had freed her from the Grandfather’s
slavery, and she had wrapped herself in her own dark chains.  She would never
have an honest lover, never be touched by someone who was not paid to pleasure
her.  She had thought being alone would make her safe, that relationships would
only make her vulnerable.  And Lad, the only man who had any chance of
understanding her, any chance of being an honest lover, had spurned her.

With a surge of self-loathing, Mya lashed
out.  Her fist impacted the mirror, shattering her image into a thousand
shards.  Another mirror, another image, and her foot smashed it to splinters. 
Again and again she struck, spun, struck once more.  Glass showered the floor,
stained crimson beneath her feet.  The wrappings trailed behind her, fluttering
like a murder of crows in her wake as she spun and lashed out at herself,
destroying every image, every semblance of what she was.

What she had made herself.

Monster
…

Finally she slowed, and then stopped,
gazing around.  The room lay in ruins, blood spattered in decorative arcs where
she had lacerated herself in her self-destruction.  The black wrappings trailed
away in a knotted tangle.  Mya stood at the center, surrounded by splintered
fragments of herself.

“What am I?” she whispered as she watched
the cuts on her hands and feet heal painlessly.

“You’re strong,” she declared, though the
timidity of her voice belied her words.  “You’re fast.  You’re deadly.  You’re
safe!”  Her last words boomed through the room, echoing off of the naked
stone.  Slowly, deliberately, she pulled the wrappings—her armor of anonymity—to
her.

Untangling the knots and twists, she
wrapped the cloth tightly around her limbs, her torso, her loins.  Splinters of
glass glittered like diamonds on the dark fabric, but she ignored them. 
Tighter, she wrapped and wrapped, ignoring the painless prick of broken glass,
ignoring the blood that seeped through, until she was covered in her blanket of
painless pain.

Blood, but no pain
.

Mya lifted a large shard of mirror and
looked at herself.  A mote in the reflection caught her attention.  Tears,
clean and pure, tracked down her cheeks.  She wiped them away with the edge of
the shard, ignoring the wetness that flowed in the wake of the razor-edged
glass.

This is what she was; blood and pain that
could never be felt.  This was what she had made herself into.

Monster
…

Chapter
XI

T
he morning
sounds of the
Golden Cockerel
’s common room faded behind Lad as he
approached the door to Mya’s office.  Ahead, Mika stood like a granite statue
at his post, a head taller than Lad and weighing twice as much.  The two men
had never spoken much, even though they had the same job: protect Mya.  They
nodded to one another, and Mika knocked upon, then opened, the door to the back
room.

“Lad.”  Mya, eyebrows raised, stopped her
fork halfway to her mouth, then lowered it to the plate with her half-eaten
breakfast.  “You’re early.”

“Yes.  I need to speak with you.”  He
glanced at Mya’s assistant, Dee, who sat patiently across the table from her with
a pen poised above a piece of parchment, then back to Mya.  “In private.”

Mya’s eyes narrowed and her mouth
twitched into an expression that Lad couldn’t quite interpret, though after
five years of watching her, he had become quite adept at reading her moods. 
Worried,
startled, tense, upset?  Why?
  He brought his vigilance up a notch. 

His request to speak to her in private
shouldn’t have worried her.  He had been in her office often enough, usually
when she had a meeting with some nefarious sort and wanted protection.  Today
he needed to speak with her privately, before they started their rounds.  It
wouldn’t do to have a curious shopkeeper or passerby overhear this discussion.

So why is she worried?

“All right.”  She made a shooing motion
at Dee.  “Go have a blackbrew.  We’ll finish this when I’m done with Lad.”

“Yes, Miss Mya.”  Dee put down his pen
and stood to go, glancing curiously at Lad in passing.  Lad paid him scant attention,
his senses attuned to Mya.  When the door closed behind Dee, Lad settled into
the chair the assistant had vacated.

“The captain of the Royal Guard came to
the
Tap and Kettle
yesterday, Mya.”

“I know.  His name is Norwood.  My people
spotted him, and I received the report last night.”

Of course.  She already knows Norwood
came to the inn.   Is that why she’s tense?  Is she afraid of what I might do,
or afraid of Norwood?
  “What are you
going to do about it?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”  She sipped her
blackbrew and took a bite of toast slathered with preserves.  “To do anything
constructive, it would help to know
why
Norwood was there.  My people only
saw him arrive, go inside, and come out again a while later.  Do
you
know why he was there?”

“Yes.  He came to talk to Wiggin.  He
told her that Vonlith had been murdered.”

“Vonlith?  The runemage?”  Her eyebrows
raised in question, Mya put down her cup, dabbed her mouth with her napkin, and
put it down beside her plate, her movements measured and precise.

Too measured and precise.  Nothing
causal about her motions.
  He’d seen
this mannerism many times before.  It was subtle, and most would have missed
it.
  She’s straining for calm.

“Do you know
another
Vonlith?”  He
didn’t bother keeping the ire out of his voice.

“Relax, Lad.”  She leveled a stare at him
intended to snuff his anger.  “I need to know the details.  Why would Norwood
tell Wiggen about Vonlith’s death?”

“Norwood somehow found out that Vonlith
worked for the Grandfather.  Since Wiggen was the one who told him about the
Grandfather in the first place, he thought she might also know something about
Vonlith.”

“And what did Wiggen tell him?”

“The truth; that she had never heard of a
wizard named Vonlith.”

“So, that’s that,” Mya said lightly as
she picked up her blackbrew and sipped.

Lad was surprised by Mya’s cavalier
response, and wondered if perhaps he had read too much into the captain’s
inquiry.  They hadn’t seen Vonlith in five years.  There was no way for Norwood
to trace the wizard to them.

“Norwood hit a dead end and he won’t be
back,” Mya continued.  “End of problem.”  Then Mya brushed her hair away from
her ear.

That stopped Lad cold.  After five years,
he knew that one tell better than any other.  She only brushed her hair away
like that when she was being evasive.  Looking more closely, he noticed a
slight quiver in her hands.  The blackbrew rippled in the cup.  She was uneasy.

Why
?

He chose his words carefully, trying to
think of the best way to provoke a reaction without letting her know that he
was gauging her response.

“That’s
not
the end of the
problem!”  Standing, he pulled up his shirt to expose the neat row of tattooed
runes down his chest.  “If Norwood finds out just
what
Vonlith was doing
for the Grandfather, he might also figure out that I’m not dead.”

Mya’s eyes flicked over his chest, but
this time he didn’t recognize the expression in her eyes.  He decided to push
it farther.  “And if he figures out that I’m not dead, he might think
I
killed Vonlith.”

“Did you?”  Mya’s eyes snapped up to his,
narrowing.  Whatever emotion had been in them a moment before was gone, purged
by a mien of pure calculation

Lad rocked back on his heels, shocked by
the question.  “I’m not a killer anymore, Mya.  Besides, why would I kill
Vonlith?”

“He was the only person outside the guild
who knew what you are, Lad.”  Keeping her eyes locked to his, she placed her
blackbrew on the table and raised her toast for another bite, her motions
precise, exact.  “I’d think you’d be relieved that he’s dead, even if you
didn’t do it.  Now he can’t betray your secret.”

“If he was going to betray me, I think
he’d have done it by now.  Killing him would only draw attention to me.  I’m
not
stupid!”

Mya’s eyes dilated and the tiny vessels
under the skin of her face flushed with blood.  The involuntary response faded,
but not before Lad interpreted it.  She was seriously upset. 
But why?

“No, you’re
not
stupid, but
sometimes you’re a little naïve, my friend.”  Taking the last bite of toast
into her mouth, she looked down at her plate as she chewed, then picked up her
cup and sipped.  By the time she looked back up to Lad, her features were calm;
she was in complete control again.

He realized then what she’d done.  Mya
had put him on the defensive, turned the table so that this was about him, not
her.  She was a master of manipulation, but even she couldn’t always control
her reactions.  He knew she was hiding something from him, but had no idea what
it might be.

“Of course I don’t think you had anything
to do with Vonlith’s death,” she continued, “but it does neither of us any good
for you to get angry with me over something I knew nothing about.  As far as I
know, the guild wasn’t behind Vonlith’s death, but I
have
missed a few
meetings.  I’ll look into it and try to find out what’s going on.  I’d like to
know who put a chill on Vonlith, too.”  She dabbed her mouth with her napkin,
then brushed her hair back again. 
Another evasion
.  “We might even be
able to pin it on Horice.  That’d be a nice payback for the attack on us, wouldn’t
it?”

“His attack on
you
, you mean.”

“In their eyes, we’re inexorably linked,
Lad.”  Mya dropped her napkin onto her plate.  “I’ll do everything in my power
to keep you out from under Norwood’s magnifying glass.  Keeping you free is in
my best interest, Lad.  You’ve saved my life more times than I can remember.  I
don’t take that lightly.”

“I gave you my word, Mya.  Did you expect
me to break it?”

She laughed, a short, scornful sound. 
“You’re just about the only person in this city that I
don’t
expect to
betray me.  I just wish you’d trust me as much.”

“I…”  Lad stumbled over the words.  This
was the woman who had tricked him not once, but twice.  In doing so, she had
made him a slave and a murderer.  But she had also released him and helped him
kill the Grandfather.  One thing remained certain: Mya would always do what she
thought was best for herself.  He hedged his response.  “You always told me not
to trust anyone completely, so I don’t.”

“What about Wiggen?”

Mya rose and stepped around the table,
brushing a few crumbs from her lap.  A speck of reflected light fell from her
clothes, and Lad heard a faint chime as it met the floor. 
Glass
, he
thought automatically.

“You trust
her
, don’t you?”

His mind snapped back to the question. 
“That’s different.  She’s my wife.”

“Wives betray husbands all the time,
Lad.  Just like husbands betray wives and siblings betray one another.  Just
because someone’s married or related to you doesn’t make them trustworthy.  If
it came down to a choice between your life and Wiggen’s, who do you think
Forbish would betray?”

“If you’re trying to make me suspicious
of my family, Mya, you’re wasting your time.”

“I’m not trying to
make
you
anything but aware of the real world, Lad.  You’re going to get hurt if you
don’t open your eyes.”  She strode past him toward the door.

Bending quickly while her back was
turned, he pressed a finger to the shard of glass that glinted on the floor. 
It stuck.  Pinching it between finger and thumb to keep it hidden, he followed
her to the door.

“I don’t understand you, Mya.  You tell
me to trust you, then tell me
not
to trust my own family.  How do you
live like that?”

“There are different levels of trust,
Lad.  I trust no one implicitly, but you more than anyone else.  There is no
one in the world who wouldn’t betray someone with the right incentive, my
friend.  The sooner you realize that, the better.”

Lad nearly laughed with the irony.  Mya
had taught him that very fact.  She had delivered him to the Grandfather for
power and position, only to turn around and betray the Grandfather when she
realized that her vaunted position was just a polished form of slavery.

She opened the door and sent Mika to
fetch Dee, then turned back to Lad.  “Wait for me in the common room, Lad, and
try to relax.  I’ll look into this and see what I can find out.”

“Tell me what you learn.”

“I will.”  Her eyes flicked away from his
for before she dismissed him with a nod.

Lad took a seat near the common room’s
front window and waved the morning barmaid away when she asked if he wanted
anything.  This early, the place was virtually deserted save for Mya’s people. 
He watched the city through the window, but his thoughts remained focused on
Mya.

Why was she being so evasive
?

He felt the shard of glass from the floor
between his fingers and examined it in the light.  The splinter was perhaps as
long as his fingernail, and silvered on one side.

A mirror
.  Looking closer, he noted a faint brown stain on one
end.  He scratched at it with his thumbnail, brought the residue to his nose,
then his tongue. 
Blood
.