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Chapter Eleven
"You have to wake up now,” Caidi whispered, warm, sweet breath in his ear, but he was falling and it felt like flying, it was silent and it felt like rapture, not a sound, not even thwip-thwip-thwip.
Jacin didn't want to wake up, so he didn't.
* * * *
The sirens cranked, the wail reaching even as far outside the city as Lord Yakuli's estate. It took several hours for the Kiwa Shuua to hit, the lethal waves that crawled as high as the sky and rolled over the coast with deadly force. And if it wreaked even more havoc on a city already in near-chaos, at least it went a little way toward putting out some of the fires that had sprung up from falling ash.
The little grover's hut on the coast was pounded into driftwood and swept away as though it had never been.
The waves extended their destructive reach through Ada's Iron District, stretched their tendrils all through the Industrial Quarter and inched in toward the Judicial District, edging up the bottom steps of the Statehouse itself before they finally receded, taking ships anchored in the harbor out to sea with them. It would be weeks before a final count could be tallied in the wake of Subie's decisive fit of supreme wrath. Days of night before the ash and smoke cleared enough to allow the suns to burn through.
Retribution from the gods—the assumption ran rampant. Mortals tended toward Divine explanations when there wasn't another. In this case, they weren't entirely wrong, though the distinction would remain indistinct to most for a while yet.
Judges Canti and Girosui were well aware of that distinction. They had arrived at Yakuli's gates with a sizable company of the Doujou in time for the first tremors and witnessed the anarchy and resultant destruction. They followed in the aftermath with grave faces as the Temshiel Husao guided them through the surviving barracks and explained to them what they'd already suspected but could never prove. Neither of the men was able to keep their composure entirely. Girosui's cheeks were pale and wet when he emerged from the last barracks and called an order for the search for and arrest of Yakuli and his men, though all but those who'd been killed or injured too gravely to escape had already scattered.
"I have promised the Untouchable that Yakuli would twitch at the end of his blade,” the Temshiel told the judges, and though neither man could vouchsafe the promise, they both left pondering the possible advantages to an Untouchable testifying before the Courts, exposing the corruption of their fellows in public testimony. Justice's blade, so to speak. If the Untouchable survived, and if he remained as sane as the Temshiel claimed him....
The judges left Yakuli's estate already in deep discussion, planning their approach and debating details, with no doubt between them that what they did next would change worlds. The Temshiel Sora and the maijin Xari accompanied them. It would not do for the last two uncorrupted Court officials to fall to the treachery of the corrupt, just as the wheels of true justice began to turn. The fruition of the years-long conspiracy of Canti and Girosui to break the back of the Court was within their reach, and they were determined to see Ada once more a state in which they could take pride. With no magic to fear, the Adan could no longer justify the imprisonment of the Jin, and once the Court was exposed for the den of snakes Canti and Girosui had known it to be for too many years, perhaps they could begin the process of restoring honor and morality to Ada.
The end, they decided as they mobilized the Doujou and began the search for Yakuli, should begin in the Courts, from which the dishonor had taken seed and its rotted, twisted roots had spread.
The end should begin with the Untouchable.
* * * *
"It's time to open your eyes now, Jacin."
Caidi's voice was soft, cajoling. Almost wheedling. It made him smile.
He smelled cherry blossoms, felt them on his skin, feather-light on his closed eyelids.
"C'mon, Jacin, pleeeeeeeease?"
If she'd been anyone else, it would have been annoying, the whiny tone grating. But she was Caidi, so it was neither.
Jacin flickered open his eyes, blinked again as the layer of cherry blossom petals scattered and flittered off his lashes. He was blanketed in them, thick as a fresh fall of snow, warm and soft. He breathed in, sucking their light scent down deep into his lungs.
"Transience,” Caidi told him, and she giggled.
Jacin turned to her, gave her a smile. “Death,” he corrected.
Hazel eyes sparked mischief. “You're so morbid."
She shook her head, long, gold curls whorling around her open, smiling face as she leaned over him, almost nose to nose. She dropped a light kiss to his brow, and a swarm of moths flurried from the sea of petals, rising up through the branches of the cherry trees. Jacin watched them, squinting against the soft sunlight quivering through leaf and blossom, until he lost them in the patches of sky he could see through the thick puffs of the treetops and falling petals.
He hadn't heard a single, frantic beat of wings.
"It's so quiet here,” he breathed.
The fluted peal of Caidi's laughter was like bells. She sat back, hair and cloak dusted with petals. “It has nothing to do with ‘here',” she told him. “Wolf called the Ancestors home, and Joori and Malick set them free. You don't have to listen to them anymore.” She stroked his cheek, her small fingers just as soft as the petals against his skin. “You did well, Jacin. Wolf is pleased. You've earned his favor. Even salvation will be in your grasp, if you choose to reach for it.” Her hand pulled away, and she sat back, her smile sympathetic. “But not yet. You can't stay here."
"No?” There was no alarm; only curiosity. “Where, then?"
Caidi pursed her bow lips. “You have to go back,” she told him gently.
Now there was alarm. Jacin sat up, petals scattering everywhere. “But you said—"
"The Ghost will not survive the night.” She shrugged guiltily, even blushed a little. “The Ghost is gone. Jacin-rei is gone. There is only Fen Jacin now."
It wasn't silent anymore. His head was pounding with the thumping drumbeat of his own heart.
"I don't want it,” was all he could wheeze out on a thin thread of breath.
Caidi's eyes were glistening now, her smile trembling. She launched herself at him, wrapping her small arms around his neck. Jacin shut his eyes tight, breathed her in. “You can't stay,” she whispered. “You have to open your eyes now."
Jacin only shook his head and held Caidi in a grip that was likely strangling the breath out of her, but he couldn't help it. “I can't—"
"Yes,” she told him, her tone gentle but firm. “You can. When have you ever failed at anything?” Brutal for its sweetness. She turned her face into his neck, whispered, “No laws, Jacin. The one whose face hovers over yours when you wake from your death-sleep—that will be the one."
"I don't want—"
"We're all made for sacrifice.” She kissed him, then pulled back. Jacin resisted, clung, but she wrested away just enough that she could lay her brow to his. “Since when have any of us had a choice?” Her hand gripped his shoulder, shook, and her voice deepened, a harsh note of command. “You have to wake up now."
"No.” Weak protest, but it did no good. Already, the light was thickening, going smoky, and it was getting harder and harder to catch the sweetness of the cherry blossoms.
Caidi pulled away entirely, tears on her full cheeks, and she leaned in, kissed away Jacin's. When she drew back from him again, Jacin could see the shapes of the trees through her, and his throat clenched, his chest hurt.
"I'm tired,” he said, not even ashamed that his tone was edged in desperation. “I can't... I want....” It lost itself before he finished, because when had it ever mattered what he wanted? He tightened his jaw to make it stop quivering. “Where is Mother?"
Because Mother had always loved him, even though she wasn't supposed to, had touched her Untouchable son, dried his tears, because he was Wolf's but he was her own, and she'd held to him even throug
h her husband's condemnation, her own madness. Mother would let him stay. He'd weep and let her wipe away his shame, and she'd let him stay.
"Mother isn't here,” Caidi told him gently. “She awaits the fire."
She was fading, and it made the tears come harder, the anger rise. “So do you!” he rasped.
"But I have to go now too,” she answered. “You only needed me for a little while. You don't need me anymore."
"Yes, I do!” he cried, tried to snatch at her, but it was like trying to catch water. “Caidi, please—"
"The Ghost is gone. Back to Zero. You have to start again, Jacin."
He didn't want to start again. He wanted an end.
"I'm so tired, Caidi.” Weeping. Sniveling like a child. He didn't know what to say, how to make her stay, how to make her let him stay, except, “Please. Don't go."
But Caidi only smiled at him, that bright Caidi-grin as she faded to almost nothing, shook him again and snapped, “Damn it, Fen, wake the fuck up!"
Jacin's eyes flew open, squinting against sunlight that wasn't there, lashes thick and clumped with tears. Pain stitched itself to the corners of his awareness, but it wasn't sharp and focused like a knifepoint; more dull and dissipated, a low ache that throbbed beneath his skin, wound itself into muscle and sinew, just enough to let him know it was there. The ceiling was familiar, but not quite, rough beams and whorls of plaster that he almost recognized, but wouldn't, because he didn't want to. He breathed in, trying to catch the scent of cherry blossoms, but all he smelled was sage and pine soap and light, musky sex.
His vision was smudgy, at best, but still, almost reluctantly, he blinked at the blur, focused on smoky-brown hair and a handsome face hovering just above him, tea-colored eyes watching, narrowed in worry. “About fucking time,” Malick breathed. He gave Jacin a grin that held not even the slightest hint of snark or a gleam of disingenuous pretense. Relieved. Glad.
That will be the one, Caidi's voice whispered.
No. It was supposed to be Joori, maybe Morin, or... anyone else.
Instead it was Malick. It was always Malick—dragging him back, making him stay, telling him he was things he knew he wasn't, almost making him believe them, when he knew it would only rip him up later.
"Oh,” Jacin breathed, shut his eyes and tried not to start bawling again, “it's you."
* * * *
The days passed in clear spots between long periods of fugue. There was no great ball of emotion in the middle of his chest threatening to shatter. There was silence, deafening, and there were his brothers, hovering close, almost clinging, and there was a pyre that was almost too big for the Shrine's altar, but it was somehow fitting that they all burned together.
It had been Morin who had found their mother, and it had been Morin who had ended her torture, though Jacin thought the torture had only just begun for Morin. Jacin took their word for it that the tight-wound mass of linen held his mother's body, and that Joori had painted the prayers on her brow and Caidi's before they'd been lovingly and securely wrapped for the fire. He didn't demand that they be unwrapped so he could see them one last time, so that he could see for himself that the prayers were flawless with no errors to prevent their acceptance and eventual rebirth. He didn't want to have to see his mother the way Morin and Joori had seen her, didn't want to see her naked scalp, shorn of the golden cascade she'd bequeathed to her daughter, and would now be just as gone as hers was. He didn't want to have to see the ragged smile-that-wasn't-a-smile torn into her smooth throat.
He only watched the blaze catch and climb, tried not to gag on the thick haze of incense, and looked for Caidi's face through the flames but didn't see it, listened for her voice telling him goodbye, that he'd see her again, but he didn't hear it. He wondered if it would be unseemly for him to stretch his hands out over the fire to warm them—he was cold, all the time, freezing—but he didn't know, so he didn't chance it.
It took him a week to notice that all his knives were missing. He didn't care enough to wonder where they were.
A very near thing, the gut wound, Joori had told him. Another Temshiel had tried to heal him, but it hadn't worked until Malick shoved his magic into the mix and made it work. Apparently, Jacin was still mostly immune to magic. Except for Malick's. He wondered if he hated Malick for that.
Scabbed over and just raw enough that Jacin could poke and pick at it now and then if he wanted to feel something. Except Malick always seemed to show up, fussing and cursing and redressing just when Jacin got a good flow going. Like he could smell the blood or something. Jacin stopped picking at it.
The Girou went on. Malick told Jacin that Umeia would have wanted it to, like Jacin might care, told him he'd signed it over to Lex, and since Jacin had no idea who Lex was, he didn't answer. He never answered, but that didn't stop Malick from talking. Because Malick never let up.
Shig slept with Samin now, because she couldn't sleep alone, and Morin and Joori couldn't stay in the room where Caidi's first real bed sat with its pretty linens, so they shared Jacin's. Malick didn't exactly tell Jacin to share his bed with him, but it was where Jacin had woken up that first day, and it was where he always ended up shuffling back to when he was forced from its seclusion. Sometimes Malick would make him move to the couch in his little sitting room, but most of the time, he just let Jacin stare at the wall from his little cave of blankets and bedding, and ignore time.
Sometimes Jacin heard Beishin, heckling him, telling him it hadn't been the Ancestors who'd made him insane, and sometimes he saw his father, looking at him with disdain and disgust. But then there would be Joori, holding onto him, weeping into his shoulder, maybe, or just sitting quietly beside him, nudging Jacin when he forgot halfway through a bowl of rice that he was supposed to be eating. Or Morin, snarking at his idleness as Jacin lay on Malick's great big bed, burrowed in and barricaded, though it didn't keep them out. Sometimes Morin read aloud from books Samin had found for him, pretending he was just doing it because he felt like it and not because he was trying to get something from Jacin that Jacin suspected he couldn't give. He never remembered the stories.
"You would've been proud of him,” Samin had told Jacin, his gruff voice a weird anchor in the silence that had felt somewhat comfortable between them before it was broken, and now in hindsight seemed tenuous, like it had never felt with Samin. “He almost couldn't see for the tears, but I told him he wouldn't be a man if he hadn't wept, and that seemed to make him feel better.” A long, timeless pause before Samin went on, “His hand was steady. He gave her a clean end. Just like you showed him."
Jacin thought Samin made a better father for Morin than their own had done. He thought perhaps he should tell Samin this, but he lost time, and when he found it again, it had gone dark and Samin was gone.
Shig, it seemed, was always curled up in Malick's big, ugly chair whenever Malick would drag Jacin from the warm cocoon of the wide, goose-down mattress and fine, heavy linens and dump him on the couch for a while. Jacin didn't try to decide if it annoyed him. Anyway, he was forever cold anymore, and the fire was out in the sitting room.
He still had a limp, some of his wounds bone-deep, the mangled muscle of his calf beyond full healing, but the short, enforced walks didn't pain him as much as he'd pretend if Malick tried to make him leave the room for a trip any farther from its threshold than the baths. Somehow, though he always started out on the couch alone, with Shig in the chair across from him, Jacin usually managed to drift from his haze after a while to notice that she'd moved to the couch to curl up against him like a cat on a hearthstone
"Malick wants to take us to Tambalon after Yakuli's trial,” Shig said softly. She puffed a light, humorless snort, and shrugged. “I wonder if I get seasick?"
The streaks of green and blue and red weren't as vibrant a contrast to Shig's blonde hair as they'd been, like all her losses had dulled her on the outside as well as on the inside. She missed her sister. She probably missed Umeia. She missed her spirits. Jacin almost u
nderstood it. It was hard to get used to all the empty space, all the silence, when you were so accustomed to shoving your thoughts through the noise. Like trying to batter through a stone wall, and then the wall crumbles, and you go careening off the cliff on the other side of it. And you can't even pretend you're flying.
"How do you go on?” Shig asked him, her voice weirdly solid without its edge of singsong. “What do you hide behind, now that the braid can't hide you anymore?"
Jacin had thought maybe he'd like her more without all her spirits telling her how to sucker-punch him. He didn't. With the exception of a reflexive touch to the ragged ends of his now shoulder-length hair, he didn't bother to answer her.
Had he hidden behind it? He didn't think so. More like it obscured him and everything he was to the point where hiding was entirely unnecessary.
"You have to start again now too,” Shig whispered, wrapping herself around his arm like ivy. “You wanted an end, and instead you got a beginning. Poor Fen."
He almost wanted to shove her away, tell her to fuck off, but he couldn't make himself muster the will, and still, he didn't bother to answer her.
He didn't bother to answer anyone. Not even his father. Not even Beishin. He would have answered Caidi, maybe, but she never came.
Instead, always, right beside him—holding him up, pushing him forward, telling him he wasn't nothing, poking him, prodding him, annoying him enough that he was sometimes moved to growl a warning—it was Malick, tarnished bronze eyes watching, waiting for something. Except Jacin didn't know what it was, and he couldn't make himself care. But he let Malick do it, let Malick take him to bed at night and curl himself around him, hold him, warm him, and Jacin slept and felt improbably safe and distantly... something. Grateful? Surely not.
Wolf's-own: Weregild Page 43
