by Devin Madson
‘Can’t he?’ I sat on the edge of the divan, painfully aware of her smell and the alluring call of her desire. ‘I think we both know that isn’t true, yes?’
She flinched. ‘Don’t say that.’
‘Say what?’
‘Don’t say ‘yes’ like that, you sound just like him.’
‘Perhaps I am just like him.’
‘Darius–’
‘You have to go, Kimiko,’ I said, cutting her off. ‘And I can’t come with you. Endymion is going to fail.’
She froze in the act of reaching her hand to my cheek. Above her the trio of lanterns fought back the darkness of the house while outside the sun was shining. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, those bright blue eyes roaming my face, her brow creased with worry. ‘You’ve been teaching him how to control himself, haven’t you? How to stop being an Empath.’
‘How simple you make everything sound, my dear,’ I said, and I could hear the sneer in my voice. ‘We were born with the marks and we will have them until the day we die.’ I drew back my sleeve. Three horizontal lines cut the inside of my wrist, crossed by a single diagonal.
Kimiko looked away.
I let my sleeve fall. ‘We can’t do this,’ I said. ‘You have to go.’
‘Do you think it’s easy for me?’ she demanded. ‘Do you think it’s easy to give your heart to a man who is capable of such terrible things?’
Getting to my feet I strode to the other side of the room, to where the grimy window let in little light.
‘Darius?’
‘You have to go.’
Her steps came across the floor and I flinched as her hands touched my back. Sliding around my sides, she locked her fingers upon my stomach. ‘No, I don’t,’ she said, leaning her cheek against my shoulder. ‘You don’t belong to Malice anymore. You belong to me.’
I turned within the circle of her arms. ‘And what do you think he is going to do if you tell him that?’ I asked, leaning down, her lips soft and welcoming. The kiss lingered, the taste of her something I would never forget. ‘He will kill you,’ I said, our lips sticking as I pulled away.
‘He will kill you, too, if you stay.’
‘No, he won’t.’
‘You’re very confident.’
‘I am. I have to see him.’
Kimiko pulled back at that, those eyes once again searching my face for understanding, no Empathy to light her way. ‘Why?’
‘I told you why. Endymion is going to fail.’
‘Then let him fail. What has that got to do with you?’
‘I don’t think you understand how powerful he has become, Kimiko. I can’t control him on my own. For now he listens to me, he trusts me, but what comes of the moment when he realises his own strength? When he forgets everything his priest taught him?’
Despite the warmth, Kimiko shivered. ‘What will he do?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t want to know. He killed one hundred and four men on the road to Rina by filling them with despair. He’s capable of worse. I hoped I could teach him enough to combat the growth, but it’s too late. I think he’s beginning to realise his own strength, and nothing corrupts men faster than power.’
She gripped my chin, her fingers and thumb digging into my cheeks. ‘Why do you have to be so noble?’ she said. ‘Why do you have to be such a good man?’
Holding her wrist I prised my face from her hold. ‘You said earlier that I could do terrible things. Which am I? The monster or the paragon?’
‘I don’t know, but the monster would be easier to leave.’
‘I remember you saying something like that before. That you wished I were easier to hate.’
‘Or easier for my conscience to love.’
I cringed. ‘A fine way to put it,’ I said. ‘I am not noble. I am the worst man you know, but still I cannot run and leave Kisia to its fate. No one else can help him, but I need Malice. I need him to see things my way, I need to talk to him without either of you being here.’
Slowly Kimiko shook her head. ‘Damn you, Silver Tongue.’
Sliding her arms back around my waist she set her head against my chest, listening to my heart. Her hair smelt sweet. Everything about her crippled me and I could feel resolution draining from my bones. She was mine and I could keep her.
Gripping her shoulders I set her firmly from me and turned away. She was the weakness I had never meant to have.
‘You have to go.’
Without her, silence had settled over the house, and I sat down to wait with only the slow beat of my heart for company.
At dusk, I took down the lanterns, setting them on the low table where Kimiko had laid three places for the evening meal. The rice was still steaming. She had warned me not to forget it. Minutes slid by. An hour. I served myself from the steamer and knelt to eat, hardly tasting the food at all.
Malice was coming.
I could smell him.
For a long time I waited, afraid to move from the table lest I catch Kimiko’s scent on the divan, in the hallway, or upon the pages of the book she had been reading while Endymion and I were out. From where I sat, I could just make out the words on the spine: The Laroths of Errant Court: A Complete History of the Spiders of the West. Gods only knew where she had found such a thing, a dry history, a tome of lies.
Evening slid into night. And at last, Malice came.
Emerging from the shadowed hallway he stood, a silent figure at the edge of the light. Like me he wore simple linen, his dark hair, dark brows and deep-set eyes giving him the look of a creature born from the night.
He glanced at the place set at the table, the porcelain bowl perfectly centred. His lips parted into a smile. ‘Hospitality, brother?’ he asked, letting the tail of his silken hair slide through his fingers.
‘It does well enough,’ I said, not moving from my place.
‘Well enough? When has well enough been good enough for you?’
‘The house has other things.’
‘Ghosts and old memories, yes?’ Malice entered with his quiet steps and took the place opposite, folding himself up like the spider he claimed to be. ‘Where is Adversity?’
‘Kimiko is gone.’
‘Ah, so you guessed. Of course you did. You have always been so very clever, yes? Where has she gone?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘No further use for her? You stole her from me. I might have forgiven you had you given her back.’
‘You’ll forgive me,’ I said. ‘You love me.’
Malice had picked up the bowl and now paused with it part way to his lips. ‘How well modesty becomes you, Darius.’
‘And how well walking across Kisia like a peasant becomes you, Malice.’
He flashed me a humourless smile and took a mouthful of rice. He chewed. He swallowed, throat bulging. ‘That’s something else I have to find it in my heart to forgive you for. I do not take kindly to having to chase you like some unwilling woman.’
‘I’m not the only one you’re chasing. You lost our brother, too, it seems.’
‘That boy broke my mark, Darius.’ Malice placed his bowl back on the table. ‘No one has ever done that before, nor even come close. He is dangerous, yes?’
‘I know. That boy, as you call him, followed me across Kisia, sniffing like a dog. One connection and I had given him enough to seek me out from any distance.’
I felt the suspicion, so strong he could not contain it. ‘And why did he come to you?’
‘To learn control, what else? I made the world believe I was not an Empath for five years, or had you forgotten?’
‘Forgotten? How could I when you left me alone for those five years?’
In that small room the air felt close, the smell of w
arm rice giving it a homely feeling at variance to the fierce eyes flashing at me from across the table. At my elbow the lantern began to flicker. It needed a new candle, but I could hardly focus my mind on anything so mundane as where Kimiko had put the fresh supplies.
I watched the flicker out of the corner of my eye while Malice ate, hardly taking his gaze off me. When he did, it was to look around the room, at the cooking stone with its cedar rice pot, at the divan covered in old furs, and the book laying neglected upon the table.
We didn’t speak again until he had finished his meal. ‘Why did you come?’ I asked then.
He picked up the wine bowl and sipped from its edge, then pulled back to glare into the clear liquid. ‘What is this? Did rats piss in this?’
I could not fight the smile, his outrage bringing with it so many memories. ‘No,’ I said. ‘At least I don’t think so. Not here. I didn’t get that from the cellar. It’s millet wine. The townsfolk drink it.’
He poured it on the floor, the liquid splattering across the old boards. ‘May the gods preserve me from such concoctions. I never thought you so honourless that you would invite me to eat and then poison me, yes?’
‘I did not invite you. Why did you come? Don’t you have an empire to rule?’
Malice eyed me levelly from the opposite side of the table. ‘When was that ever my ambition?’
His words sent my heart racing. ‘Then what?’
‘I want my brother back, yes?’
‘Even against my will?’
‘You knew I was coming,’ he said. ‘You could have run.’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘Endymion is a problem. You were right. If we let him loose he will bury the empire in pursuit of his precious justice.’
‘And you are proposing that we save it, yes?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And after we save it?’ His eyes were bright. ‘Who do we crown?’
‘No one. Kin already has a crown.’
He sighed, closing his eyes in a moment of pain. ‘You’re breaking my heart, Darius, yes? Where are you hiding my Mastery?’
‘He’s gone.’
‘You’re lying. With Hana’s pretty face upon the throne you were going to rule the empire from the shadows, the power–’
‘Enough.’
Malice’s fine eyebrows rose. ‘Denial, Darius?’
‘I did not stay to talk about me. It’s Endymion we need to do something about.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Very well, say we save Kisia, yes? What, after this heroic rescue, is to become of us?’
I held his gaze. ‘We go our separate ways.’
‘To slowly grow old? To wander the world telling the story of glorious battles? You intrigue me. What do you propose I do when we… part ways? Again.’
‘Whatever you like.’
‘Whatever I like. Almost you have me convinced, brother. I sacrifice my time and skill to protecting Kisia and all its fine peasants from Endymion’s wrath and, I assume, fight to end the civil war, letting Kin keep his blood-soaked throne, only to leave the battlefield with nothing. Shall I disband the Vices, too? Shall I send them back to the families who cared so much for them that they sold them to me?’
‘Those are my terms.’
He pushed the empty rice bowl to the centre of the table, lantern-light dancing on its finely painted surface. ‘You are expensive, my dear,’ he drawled. ‘I do not like your terms, yes? Do you hate me so much that you would bargain a future without me?’
The lie stood on my tongue and made itself fat, paralysing speech. I forced it out. ‘Yes,’ I said, the word tasting wrong.
Malice swept the bowls from the table. They flew from its edge and smashed, thin shards of porcelain scattering to every corner of the room. He lunged forward, gripping my arm, fingernails digging into the soft fabric. ‘Something has changed,’ he said, eyes roaming my face. ‘You’re using your Sight, but you’re still not my Darius.’
He pulled me forward, the edge of the table digging into my stomach. From my arm his fingers crept toward my hand, his eyes never leaving my face. My pulse thrummed in my ears, every moment he wasn’t touching my skin like a hellish eternity. Slowly he lifted my sleeve; slowly he bunched the fabric above my wrist. There, my birthmark. There, my skin. But he did not touch it. His hand hovered, teasing, the urge to make the connection myself almost overwhelming.
At last he clasped his fingers around my wrist, opening the path between us. It was well travelled, a little overgrown perhaps, a little strange from so many years apart, but beneath the new growth beat the old, so natural, so true. I could not hide, not from him. He held the keys to every door.
But now there was Kimiko. Her taste, her smell, the curls against my cheek. Her hatred had tasted as sweet as her love, their friction beautiful to my other sense. And the shame, admitting to herself how good it felt, that great rush of combined ecstasy that could only be experienced when it was an Empath inside you.
Malice dropped my hand with a hiss, real shock twisting his proud features. ‘You’ve let her mark you as much as you marked her.’
I slid back off the table, straightening my robe as I stood. One by one I hung the lanterns back upon their rein where they rocked gently to and fro. ‘She’s gone now,’ I said, able to feel his eyes following me. ‘Leave it be.’
‘Leave it be?’ Malice rose and came around the table, each step soft. The door was behind him, but the urge to run was swiftly repressed. He stepped close, the smell of him unchanged by so many years. ‘Leave it be?’ he repeated. ‘You are mine, Darius.’ He leant forward to breathe the words into my ear. ‘I will not share you, yes?’
He gripped my hair, strands pulling from my scalp as he dragged my head back. ‘She is yours to command now, yes?’ Malice said, running a finger softly down my bared throat. ‘Call her back.’
‘No.’
‘You think she will be hard to find? My Vices did not take kindly to her, yes? There is not one who would not relish the chance to have their way with Otako’s spirited little sister.’
I pushed the heel of my palm into his chin, thrusting back his head. ‘She’d kill them first,’ I said as his grip tightened in my hair. ‘She’d slit them from groin to throat for even thinking about it.’
His wet tongue darted across my fingers and I slammed his head back so hard his teeth snapped together. Hair ripped from my scalp as he fell back. A hand flew instinctively to his jaw, a grin splitting his lips. ‘You think they couldn’t hold her down?’ he said. ‘She couldn’t kill them all, and maybe she wouldn’t even want to. She’ll moan as they rape her.’
She had sold her body to many men. How many had taken her against her will? How many had held her down and had their way?
‘She’ll scream and beg for more, right until the moment they slit her throat.’
A snarl leapt up my throat and I charged. Thrown back, Malice hit the edge of the table and fell heavily, his head slamming back. His ribbon snapped. Little shards of bone scattered across the worn table top, and while he lay stunned, I snatched the rice pot off the cooking stone. Its base was made of iron. Malice rolled as the pot hit the table, splitting down the middle. Its lid shattered into a thousand cedar sticks, spilling cold rice like an army of maggots.
Malice pushed to his feet, panting, his hair falling around him like a veil. His eyes gleamed. ‘Angry, Darius?’ he said. ‘Is she that good? Perhaps I should do it myself, see if she’ll scream the same for me, yes?’
My nails cut into my palms, rage masking the pain.
‘You amaze me,’ he went on. ‘I know her. I marked her, and I find it hard to believe she can stand to be near you if she knows the truth.’
I was breathing fast, pressed lips keeping back words I could not trust.
‘Did you t
ell her the truth, Darius? Did you tell her that you made the first Vice? Did you tell her that it was you who experimented to perfect the process? That it was you who stole people from their homes and ordered their bodies buried in the back field when you were done? Did you tell your dear Kimiko how much blood was on the hands you touched her with? No?’ He was smiling now. ‘Perhaps you should do that the next time your fingers are so far up her cunt you can’t see them. Tell her you made the Vices. Tell her you made me.’
A monster would be easier to hate. A monster would be easier to leave.
Malice moved the hair from his eyes, shaking it back like a mane. ‘It sounds like fun, yes? Maybe I’ll do it myself. Especially the part where I have my fingers inside her. I could mark her again from there. Do you think she’d like that? The little whore has a taste for Empaths, perhaps.’
Too easily could I imagine her moaning at his touch, digging her claws into his shoulders as she sat in front of him, legs parted in invitation. He knew how to be charming when it suited him, knew how to touch people in ways they would never forget.
‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ he said. ‘How loud did she scream for you, Darius? How loud will she scream for me.’
My pulse pounded like a war drum and I lunged, wanting nothing more than to choke the words from his throat. He ducked and came up grinning.
‘Too angry, Darius, too angry.’ He gripped a fistful of fabric at my throat and yanked. White lightning shot across my eyes as his skull slammed into my brow bone. Released, I staggered blindly back. Blood dripped down my face. The room spun, but I could hear Malice breathing, close.
‘Did you tell sweet Kimiko about our father?’ he said, the words ghosting past my ear. ‘Did you tell her about your mother? Did you tell her that every time she begged you for it she was begging for death?’
His sharp fingernails cut my cheek, shredding the skin like a handful of knives. Hot blood bloomed, but though I stepped back, Malice was still there.
