"I've exactly enough magic to do exactly what I need to do,” Malick snapped. “And speaking of which.” He peered closely at Joori in the dark, glaring. Then shocked him by abruptly giving Joori a firm clap on the shoulder. “Good going back there. Be careful how you use it—you're about as elegant with it as Shig is with mine—but damn, you've a lot of it, and you could too easily take yourself out next time. Just because it comes from you doesn't mean you're invulnerable to it."
Joori was... annoyingly touched and ridiculously pleased. Still, even through his irritation with himself, it pinged something in the dark part of his heart he hadn't known was there until tonight. “Why can't you direct it?” he asked Malick, a little rush in his chest winding out as the idea took shape in his mind. “I mean, take it like you did before, make it stronger, and we could just crumble the whole place, open it right up, and everyone—"
"And everyone here would go down with it,” Malick finished for him. “Which would be fine, if it were only Yakuli and his men, except it's not.” He paused, grim but strangely sympathetic. “Your mother's not the only one in need of saving, Joori."
Oh. Right. As Malick had said before—kinda the point.
"Anyway,” Malick went on, “I can't actually kill Yakuli."
He could tell Malick was seething about it. Joori didn't blame him. It seemed so... arbitrary. So unnecessarily complex. Malick could walk in and direct chaos and destruction, but he couldn't actually kill the one man who desperately needed killing. He could give his magic to Shig to do whatever the hell it was she was doing with it, but he couldn't let her use it to kill Yakuli.
"That's....” Joori shook his head, teeth tight. “That's really stupid,” he muttered.
"Yeah,” Malick agreed. “All right, the good news is that whatever Xari's up to, she didn't warn Yakuli we were coming. Or at least it looks that way. The bad news is—” Malick stopped abruptly. His eyes went vague for a second, narrowed, then widened, and he shot his glance up the hill.
Joori turned to follow it, scanned the rise but saw nothing. Joori was just about to turn back to Malick, ask him what was wrong, when a brief flicker caught his eye to his right, disappeared for a second, then flared up like an unfurling fist. It took a moment for Joori to make out the shape of another barracks through the flames, another moment for him to realize that what he'd been unconsciously waiting for wasn't happening—there were no men stumbling from the building, aflame and screaming.
"That,” Malick said slowly, “was not supposed to happen yet."
* * * *
He was selfishly sorry he'd given Malick's ring to Morin. The Ancestors were loud, insistent, the chaos a crescendo that would have deafened him, had he been hearing it with his ears, and it was making it too difficult to think, to track, to do anything at all but what his body told him to do. The residual pain of mostly healing injuries couldn't cut through it all like it had always done before.
not be thwarted Wolf acid to the skies Raven duplicity only one only on
A big man, Yakuli—younger than Jacin had thought, and not nearly as revolting-looking as he'd imagined. Men like this should be ugly, twisted out of shape and plagued with growths, so people could tell just by looking that they should turn and run the other way. This man was almost handsome, with his sandy-blond hair, and eyes nearly the color of winter pine. Wide and fit, a full head taller than Jacin, and with a voice that could either command or seduce, depending upon how he wielded it.
Jacin remembered the voice. It had been seared into his memory that night when he'd watched and listened from a hallway window as that voice demanded more ammunition against his family. And Asai's response had delivered the first real blow in the violent deconstruction of Jacin's life. And so to hear Yakuli nearly cooing at him, trying to pretend to be a friendly, reasonable man....
It made him sick. It burned through the noise where thought and pain could not. It nearly sent him screaming just as loudly as the Ancestors, who wouldn't shut the fuck up for even a bloody second.
"Ever had your body move to someone else's tune, like you were a puppet?” Caidi asked. Jacin could barely hear, because the Ancestors were singing, singing, loud and nearly painful in their harmonic perfection—clinging to corpses Wolf leers through a veil of burning skies to Raven's duplicity—and Caidi grinned at him, like she heard it too, so Jacin grinned back.
Look at them, Asai whispered. Alive. Your mother is still alive. You can still save her, you can save them all.
Asai told Jacin everything he wanted to believe, and Caidi told him everything he feared. Even now, he wanted to believe his beishin, wanted Asai to lead him, tell him, show him, but Beishin lied, Beishin told him things he wanted to hear, wanted to believe, and all of it was lies. I know he loved you in his way, Yakuli had said, all sincerity and somber compassion, but Yakuli lied, too, and Jacin knew better, had finally learned better. Beishin had never loved him, Jacin would never be perfect, and so he would always fail. It still hurt, but at least now he knew what to expect.
He widened his smile at Caidi, flicked his glance up to Samin, surprised and not at all pleased to see that Morin hadn't listened to him and run when Jacin had told him to. Some part of him had been weirdly relieved when Morin had emerged from Asai's carriage and Jacin had realized he wasn't Joori. Joori would argue with him and lose precious seconds, if Jacin told him to run, always trying so hard to be the protector, but Morin didn't like Jacin much and wouldn't have to be told twice to abandon him. And yet there he still was.
Then again, where was he supposed to go? Xari was maijin, and Yakuli apparently had complete control of enough magic that he could keep Blood flowing through the veins of corpses and animate them to strike a lopsided “bargain” he likely had no intention of honoring anyway. Malick had sworn protection for Morin and Joori, but Malick couldn't kill Yakuli, and Yakuli had no such restrictions when it came to killing Malick. If Jacin wanted to keep Joori and Morin alive, he'd have to keep Malick alive, and to do that, he'd have to kill Yakuli.
"Where is she?” Jacin grated.
Yakuli smiled, that kind, condescending thing. “She is waiting for you. Let me take you to her."
The creatures that used to be people began to stir, began to move with lurching purpose, and it made Jacin's stomach flop about, but he didn't move, didn't react. Samin would protect Morin, and Malick still had him shielded. Yakuli was trying to distract him, and Jacin was already too distracted as it was.
The Ancestors shrieked, agonized and wordless, the volume nearly crowding out everything else, but Jacin couldn't let it. He kept his hands from flying uselessly to his head to try and block them out. Fire flared, right at the spot Jacin knew Morin and Samin were trying to hold their ground, and he let his concentration slip just enough to hope Samin knew what the fuck he was doing, before he trained all of it on Xari and Yakuli again.
"Tell me where she is,” Jacin rumbled.
"Do you know what Asai wanted?” Yakuli asked, like almost-corpses weren't closing on Jacin's brother down at the other end of the hut, and the hut itself wasn't going up like a candle. “How much did he tell his Ghost, I wonder...?” Yakuli sighed, leaned casually against the bunk behind him, eyeing Jacin thoughtfully. “Asai was an ambitious man. He wanted to provoke chaos and then rein it in, make himself the hero of the Jin as he was the hero to the Catalyst."
It was all Jacin could do not to flinch, but he might have paled a little. Perhaps he did, because Yakuli's smile got a touch more smug. Smoke curled into Jacin's nostrils, and he forced himself to breathe shallowly, not to look at what was happening down at the other end as Samin snapped out orders to Morin, and Morin answered them in breathless mumbles. The thunk and thud of butchered meat and falling bodies battered at the back of Jacin's senses, rising bile that he willed away.
"I don't want chaos,” Yakuli went on. “I want order. Do you know why my careful plans, half of my painstaking work is now lying in smoking heaps about my estate?"
burning
skies clinging to corpses our boy liste
Smiling wider, Yakuli held up a hand when Jacin curled his lip and tightened his fists about the hilts of his knives. “It is because I cannot see you, Wolf's Catalyst. The Voice of the Ancestors. The Abomination that should have never been at all."
once only once our boy we've chosen only say it once
"Look around you.” Yakuli waved his hand back over his shoulder to the fire that steadily ate away the other half of the long hut, creeping closer, then to the blank wall behind Jacin, presumably to indicate the encampment in general. “Asai is now dead because he could not see you clearly enough to know the knife was coming for him. Such treachery he must have felt in his last moment, betrayed so profoundly by the one he loved so well.” He grinned. “Your comrades even now waste precious magic with each of my children they cut down."
will not be thwarted cast acid to the sky
"And all because the Abomination wants his mother back.” Yakuli's teeth tightened, and the friendly facade vanished. Those of his “children” that had still been on their feet abruptly dropped like dead things.
balk batter baffle them all crushed and craven Wolf will not be thwarted he sees the Eye and calls the Prime to his own leers through a veil of burning skies to Raven's duplicity the gods speak no more silent silent dead and quiet
"Tell me where she is,” Jacin said evenly, “and I'll go.” And he wasn't even sure if he was lying or not. He couldn't think clearly enough.
Yakuli pulled out of his slouch against the bunk, leaned in. “She is merely one more spirit-bound to me. Her worth does not approach what you have cost me tonight. But do you know what your worth could be?"
"He doesn't know about Malick,” Caidi told Jacin. “If he did, he wouldn't be piddling about here, he'd be trying to add him to his ‘fold'. Xari didn't warn him."
Relief washed through Jacin, and he hadn't even known he'd been anxious about it. Good. As long as Malick stayed alive, so would Joori and Morin.
Yakuli took a step closer. “A blank spot, Untouchable even to Fate, defying sight by your mere presence.” His brow creased, and he peered at the lifeless bodies littering the floor, cooking slowly, then turned a thoughtful glance on Xari. “I wonder if—?"
"You cannot touch the Untouchable,” Xari told him, her expression unreadable. “The gods—"
"The gods approve,” Yakuli cut in, his tone derisive. “If they did not, they would have moved the Temshiel, and we would not be here talking about it."
"He wants to make you one of his ‘children',” Caidi whispered. “He wants to see if the magic that took their spirits from them would work on you."
Jacin's gut roiled.
Xari looked calmly enraged. Jacin couldn't decipher it, so he didn't try.
"Where is my mother?” he snarled, one last time, and he twirled his knives to make that clear.
Yakuli laughed this time—laughed—and shook his head. “Do you really think I know? Did you suppose she had some special import for me? That she was somehow more than all of my other children, merely because she is special to you?"
Yes, Jacin supposed he had.
"She is one Jin among hundreds,” Yakuli went on, almost sneering now. “She is clean. She is cared for. She will live longer than perhaps even you will, and her magic is being used as it ought, not hidden away in a prison camp and wasted on one who has neither the wit nor will to use it. You should be thanking me. I have done more for the Jin and their magic than the Ancestors and the gods combined since before the Binding War.” He grinned again, dipping his head on an ironic bow. “And I thank you for bringing the possible value of the Untouchable to my attention. I don't believe I would have thought of it, had the little lost Ghost not been so... persistent in his want for his mother."
Mocking. Taking because he could. Withholding because it amused him, and threatening to take even more.
And Xari was just standing there.
It wasn't right. It wasn't fucking fair.
Jacin couldn't decide which one to go for first, but he had two hands, after all, so he went for both of them at once. He lunged in, blades twirling horizontal, aiming for quick double-decapitation—let them try to use their magic to fix that—but they were both too fast. Shadows swirled around them, and they were both suddenly behind him. Jacin spun, brought his knives up in defense. Xari didn't move on him, just stood there and watched, but Yakuli drove in with a hard fist to the side of Jacin's head that set him staggering. Fucking shadows.
Shit. He hadn't thought of that. And he didn't have Malick's ring to fight back in kind.
He wheeled around again, a little off balance, his head humming so loud it almost drowned out the Ancestors. Furious, he raised his knives again, and again, Yakuli was gone in a swirl of shadows. This time, Jacin spun around and aimed for the empty space behind him, but Yakuli apparently didn't use the same tricks twice—he rematerialized right back where he'd started and nailed Jacin again, this time in the temple. Go with the impact, don't resist it, don't try to absorb it, you'll take less damage that way—Samin's voice, steadily instructive, somewhere in the back of Jacin's head. He followed the advice without thought, yet still, it was all Jacin could do to keep his feet. He reached for the frame of a bunk, clung.
"Told you, I did,” Xari snapped, then took Yakuli by the collar like a recalcitrant child and shook him. “Mortals with your foolish attempts to finesse and beguile with all the cunning of a gullible newborn. Told you, did I not? You cannot touch the Untouchable.” She turned her glare on Jacin. “He bargains with what he does not have,” she told him. “He cannot give you your mother back, this you know. But he can take more than you can give and keep your mind.” She shoved Yakuli away. “A trade. A true bargain. Take your brothers and go, take Kamen with you, and I will place your mother in the pyre myself. You don't know what I've seen, child. You don't know what Kamen will forf—"
"Lie,” Jacin growled. He gave his head a bit of a shake to try and clear it, but his vision was doubling. Smoke curled into his nose, down his throat, and he tried to keep himself from choking on it, tried to keep himself from panicking when the other end of the hut suddenly went up in a great whoosh of flames and the walls collapsed outward. “All you know is self-interest and betrayal,” he sneered at Xari, then he pushed himself away from the bunk and stood straight. “Come a little closer, and I'll show you what happens to those who betray me."
Raven's duplicity Wolf will not be thwarted
Xari's eyes narrowed. Jacin had no idea if it was a giveaway on her part or instinct on his. He spun again, slashed at darkness, almost giddy with satisfaction when Yakuli barked a curse. His voice was edged, brittle with pain. He solidified a few feet away from Jacin, his arm bleeding and rage twisting his face. Jacin snorted, head still a little light, knees still a little weak, but the look on the man's face—surprise, affront, indignant anger—Jacin had to laugh. He couldn't help it.
the one the only one listen always listen our boy we've chosen
Enraged, Yakuli swirled into shadow, came up at Jacin's left and leveled a solid blow to his kidney then whirled away again. Gasping now, the snorts more like animal grunts, Jacin tried to turn, came up short when Yakuli was there again. This time, an elbow smashed into Jacin's jaw. Sweet copper exploded in his mouth, and his head throbbed with noisepainvoicesrage. Jacin swung wild, knife flashing out from his hand. Aiming for the throat and only getting a good gouge down the side of Yakuli's face. The yelp of pain was satisfying, but Jacin had stupidly left himself open for a ruthless thump to the ribs in payment, and it took his breath.
Again, he lashed out, felt one blade sink home somewhere, but he couldn't tell where. More shadows, too fast to track, then his head was yanked back by the braid, so hard and quick he felt the heat of strained joints and tendons burning up behind his jaw. He had perhaps a second and a half to register the smoke gathering in great, thick clouds at the ceiling. He jammed an elbow back, hoping to hit ribs, before Yakuli's fist again
eclipsed his vision. Jacin managed somehow to keep his feet when everything went black for a second, managed not to sway when the pain finally hit him and made him wonder if Yakuli hadn't actually taken off the top of his head.
And all the while, he managed to keep slashing, keep swinging, keep whirling until he made himself dizzy. His knives missed more often than they hit, but they were hitting, and he had to be doing some damage. Not nearly as much as Yakuli was doing to him, but at least Jacin wasn't bleeding yet, and he knew Yakuli was. He couldn't get a long enough look at Yakuli to confirm it, but the blood on the edges of Jacin's knives told him so.
Once again, his braid was gripped, yanked, only this time, Yakuli used it as a tether and swung Jacin headfirst into a wooden bunk. Jacin's chest and face took the brunt as the bunk shattered beneath him and he went to the floor amidst a pile of kindling. It took him a few seconds longer than was healthy for him to get to his feet again.
Too strong, too fast. Jacin had taken out a maijin, had held his own with a Temshiel who made it a pastime to fight dirty, and this man who couldn't even use magic against him was beating the shit out of him. It was ironically fucking hilarious.
the one the only one listen always listen our boy we've chosen
Chosen.
Chosen
It was too fucking funny.
He laughed when Yakuli's sweeping kick took his legs out from under him. Laughed some more when Yakuli's hands on the back of his coat—Malick's coat... where the fuck was Malick?—lifted him back up and pulled the coat down so his arms were clumsily pinned to his sides. Jacin had lost a knife somewhere, and he couldn't even get his vision under enough control to look around for it, but he gripped the other more tightly, slashed out blind. Reeling, he wheezed out a truncated snort when another blow landed on his temple and his vision blacked again. He was on his knees on the floor, the coat half-on and half-off, when it came back again, and he dragged himself up, coughing through the chuckles as smoke filled his lungs and took all the breath he'd managed to get back.
Wolf's-own: Weregild Page 40
