* * * *
The Statehouse loomed up, a penumbra of shadow slinking down the marble steps and onto the slate path that led from the street. Jacin toed the line of sunshine that edged the shadow, peered up, and squinted, looking for the blue hulking haze of distant Subie that wasn't there anymore. Smoke still tendriled from its sunken caldera, a thin, gray line linking heaven to earth, and he fancied he could see the ghost of Wolf hovering above it, grinning, so he cut his eyes downward.
It still smelled of seaweed and rotten fish. The floods had reached right to these very steps; he could still see the mud line on the riser of the second. He imagined there was probably a great deal of detritus lingering as a result of the destruction of the Kiwa Shuua, and he also imagined they must have passed at least some of it on the way here. He hadn't looked.
"Just ignore them,” Malick told him, his arm heavy across Jacin's shoulders as he frowned at the gathered onlookers, mouth set grim. “There'll be a crowd in the courtroom, too, but they'll at least have to be quiet in there."
Jacin hadn't noticed the din. He was good at ignoring noise. He noticed the stares, though, because they were different than the brief glances, the shocks of recognition, then the quick aversion of gazes. These gazes drilled into him, looked at him—curiosity, hostility, sympathy, expectation. No one got too close, though, as if an invisible bubble kept them back, and Jacin vaguely wondered if Malick was doing it, but it didn't really matter.
"What do I do about the carriage?” Joori asked Malick. Jacin peered back over his shoulder, saw Asai's expensive coach hitched to Asai's expensive horse, Morin with a hand on its harness, staring about, wide-eyed. Samin—as he always seemed to be these days—was standing just beside Morin, eyes sharp on the crowd, watching for threat. Jacin really should thank him some time.
He'd been told that he'd been taken from Yakuli's and back to the Girou in that same carriage, and he supposed they must have all made the trip here in it too. He didn't remember. It should have bothered him, but it didn't.
The weight of Malick's arm shifted on Jacin's shoulders as he half turned, thin stripes of chill blooming where his warmth had rested just a second ago. Jacin shivered a little.
"Just hand it over to him,” Malick answered, jerking his chin at a thin young boy—a page, perhaps—clomping down the steps of the Statehouse, preceding a stout man with a somber smile. The man's bald head caught a stray glint of the sun-through-shadow as he descended and stepped up in front of them. The toes of the man's flat, leather shoes, like the toes of Jacin's scuffed boots, edged along the band of light and shadow on the walk.
"Fen, this is Judge Canti,” Malick said. He paused while the man dipped his head respectfully, seemingly not offended when Jacin only stared. “He'll be leading the questioning."
"Your Husao has told me much about you, Fen-seyh,” the judge said, meeting Jacin's flat stare with apparent interest, his pale-blue eyes bright with intelligence and a hint of craft. “I trust you're prepared for what is to take place today?” The upward slant of the tone made it into a question, and Canti's eyes shifted from Jacin to Malick, directing the query at him.
Malick's hand tightened on Jacin's shoulder. Jacin was tempted to shrug it off, but he didn't. “Fen will—"
"Jacin will do what he can,” Joori cut in, sliding a dark, warning look at Malick, but he didn't snarl or growl, like he might've done before. He looked at Jacin, his mouth dragging slightly upward in a grim smile. “He's had a... a bad time.” He was either talking to Malick or Canti, but he was still looking at Jacin. “We never promised anything.” Joori sucked in a long breath and turned to the Judge. “We don't know what to expect today. But Jacin... well, he's Jacin. He comes through. It's what he does."
Jacin didn't know if he was inspired or horrified.
He knew what today was about in a vague, esoteric sort of way, knew what they were expecting of him, what was at stake. He just didn't know if he could do it. Didn't know if he cared to try.
"It is fitting,” Judge Canti said with a somber smile, “that great change should come through Wolf's Catalyst."
Jacin wanted to vomit.
He'd been a catalyst. Nothing more. The stumbling, fumbling center around which great things had occurred. He hadn't saved the Jin. He hadn't saved his mother. He hadn't saved anyone. Everyone else around him had managed to walk away from Yakuli's with at least one kill to their credit, even Morin, but Jacin had failed to accomplish even that much. It had been bad enough knowing that Asai had always meant for him to fail. What was he supposed to do with the knowledge that his god had intended the same?
Meant to fail. Made for it.
Perfection at last.
They'd quarreled about today, Joori and Malick—Malick contending that Jacin needed to be pushed, Joori contending that he couldn't take being pushed any more—and Jacin had wondered if Joori realized they were bickering right in front of him, over him, around him, like Joori used to argue with their father about their mother. It was his own fault, Jacin supposed. He could have argued for himself, but he didn't feel like it.
He let everything sink into the background—whatever Judge Canti was saying to Malick and Joori, and whatever they were saying back, the steady murmur of the crowd as they watched—and let Malick hold onto his arm as he hobbled up the steps in Canti's wake. He didn't even curl his lip, just let Malick give him a little push as they stepped into the courtroom, and Canti gestured for Jacin to follow him. Canti ushered him to a small, raised platform edged with a polished walnut railing, and Jacin let his mind drift inward, let all the expectant gazes recede to irrelevance.
Found Yakuli's hate-filled glare, and let himself smile, just a little.
Remembered dark eyes and the scent of jasmine. A deep, smooth voice in the dark of night demanding magic from a maijin. The squelching crunch of a small body caroming into the cobbles. Remembered soft, hazel eyes, and a slender hand touching him when touching was forbidden.
And when Canti raised his voice, asked the Untouchable to speak... Jacin let his mouth open.
Let himself tell them everything.
* * * *
The breeze was cool and crisp for all it was briny, ruffling at his fringe, obscuring his vision for seconds then blowing back and clearing it again. He hadn't gotten used to the hair yet, his head still felt too light, so he'd let Joori pull it back into a stumpy tail at the back of his neck this morning. Joori had grinned like Jacin had just asked him if he wouldn't mind taking a bag of gold off his hands.
The voyage to Tambalon would take three weeks, if the weather was good, and the captain had assured Malick it would be. A thick, swart man, pierced and tattooed and unexpectedly jolly, the captain had seemed to take great pleasure in accepting their papers when they'd boarded. It was the first time ever, he'd said, that he'd taken a Jin onto his ship without the risk of the gallows, and if there was anything they needed in the coming weeks, they'd only to ask him. Jacin didn't need anything. Jacin had spent the first week exactly as he planned to spend the rest of them—planted in a spindly deck chair, one of several on the port stern, watching the waves, smelling the sea, feeling the wind on his skin, and the vague sting of salt.
The crew was small and went about their business with comforting ease, their chatter gruff and their looks at Jacin cursory and pleasant enough. A mix of Heldes and Thecians, their mingled accents were strangely reassuring in their distant snark and banter, a soothing background hum beneath the sound of the sea and the indecipherable buzz of his thoughts. No one stared, and no one sneered. They did what needed to be done and left Jacin to his solitude, such as it was. Malick was forever hovering, poking, prodding, trying to get conversation that Jacin wouldn't give, and Jacin's brothers were almost as bad. Samin more or less respected Jacin's wish for silence, but Shig didn't. Sometimes Jacin thought she annoyed him more than Malick did.
It wasn't until just two days ago, when he'd found himself alone on the deck and realized it was for the first time—and that only for perhaps
five minutes or so before Joori swung himself up on deck, a bit wild-eyed then too obviously relieved when he spotted Jacin—that it dawned on him why he was so rarely free of company. He'd almost snorted. Almost. The call of the depths might have been enticing, if he could bring himself to bother caring. For the first time, he connected it with the missing knives. He couldn't decide if he was offended or amused.
The water was pleasantly calm today, the breeze light, so the crew had finished whatever it was they did before Jacin had even gotten up here this morning. He'd only seen one or two a few times since, adjusting and checking sails and doing incomprehensible things with ropes. Jacin ignored them, and they never seemed to mind.
Shig sat in one of the chairs, two down from Jacin's right, but she looked tired and drawn, so Jacin pretended not to see her. He wasn't the only one who'd had a shitty time of it, and he probably had it a little better than she did right now. He didn't miss his voices, and he had another on whom to lean, even if he told himself most of the time he'd rather not. Not that it mattered—Malick didn't let up, and he apparently owned more patience than Jacin would have suspected.
Odd. Unfathomable, really. Jacin was extraneous now. He'd done what he'd promised, fulfilled his end, and so had Malick. They were square.
So why was Malick still here?
"Are you that determined to be a ghost?” Shig had asked him just last night as she'd sat in that same spot and held a smoke out to him, eyeing him narrowly as he took it and sucked in a long drag. It had been windy last night, more than usual, and he hadn't been able to see the stream of smoke as he'd blown it back out, but he'd tasted the sharp cherry tang on his tongue, felt the low burn as his lungs compressed and expelled. “You don't have to drive yourself with the pain anymore.” Shig's voice was soft, just loud enough to hear above the wind and waves, and Jacin watched as she flicked her own smoke over the rail. “And it's still all right to snatch the things that take this new pain away. They'd want you to, don't you think?” She leaned back in her chair, turned her head, and looked at him straight, eyes sharp and lucid. “Alone is the only thing that'll truly break you, Fen. I know love's not a safe thing for you, but he loves you. He risked his soul for you because he loves you, and you couldn't let him do it, because....” She paused, tilted her head. “Why d'you think that is?"
She'd asked it like she didn't think she already knew the answer. And Jacin didn't think she'd like it if he gave her the real one. Because it had nothing to do with love or anything else so soppy and dangerous. It had to do with right and wrong, and he'd chosen “right” as what he'd thought to be his end had loomed over him in the perdition of souls Yakuli had created. He hadn't wanted to be responsible for the damnation of one more soul, had thought the gods might let him rest if his last act was one of repentance and sacrifice. And then Malick had snatched that end away from him.
Shig snorted, like he'd said it all aloud. “You're the only one who's ever seen living as a failure, Fen. Maybe you didn't do all the saving, but none would have been saved without you.” She tilted her head, shook it. “You saved their souls, Catalyst, including his. What more did you want?"
Jacin had merely stared, for quite a long time, and Shig had stared back with a small, weary smile. She wouldn't look away, so Jacin did. He'd gotten up, taken one last drag from the smoke, then pitched it over the side and gone to bed.
"You're just a living ghost, Fen,” Shig had called after him. “Did he risk it all for nothing?"
Jacin had found the energy to flip her off as he descended the rickety stair to the sleeping quarters below.
Malick hadn't been in the tiny cabin, hadn't been there to chatter at him and drown out Shig's voice with snarky teasing, or news of Ada and the release of the Jin, or just his presence. Somehow, the emptiness of the cabin stung.
The bunks were hard and small enough that Jacin wondered if mats wouldn't have been better, but he hadn't complained that first night after they'd boarded and Malick squeezed into Jacin's with him, crammed him up against the curve of the hull. He'd gotten used to Malick's shape against him as he slept, had gotten used to the particular level of heat he generated. Always with Jacin's silent permission, his acceptance. He didn't even have the dignity of denial, only the indignity of pathetic, nameless need. Malick never touched him, except to hold him, talk to him softly until he drifted into sleep, and that queer feeling of safety kept hovering at Jacin's edges. It bothered him a little, because he'd never really thought safety was a thing he craved, but he didn't allow it to niggle him enough to turn Malick away.
It didn't seem fair that he had safety he'd never thought to ask for, never assumed he deserved, when others who deserved it more were gone.
Perhaps Shig was right: perhaps he really was a living ghost. Because whatever this was he was doing, it couldn't possibly be living. Then again, how would he really know? He'd never had an actual life before.
He'd tossed about in the scratchy blankets and wondered—as he'd done when he'd looked through Yakuli's genteel bullshit and seen the monster looking at him from behind leaf-green eyes—what had he been expecting? What had he really been expecting?
That he'd somehow go home? That his father would be resurrected and finally love him? That his mother would be restored and somehow stop her steady slide into gentle insanity? That Joori would be safe, and Morin would torment them all, and Caidi would be... Caidi?
What had he thought? Had he thought at all?
You thought you'd be dead.
Yes. He had. And then he'd never have to deal with hurt or shock or pain or questionable sanity ever again. And he didn't know what to do with himself, now that even that had been denied him.
...it only hurts because you don't know how to be anything but damaged...
Did it hurt? He couldn't tell. It didn't feel like much of anything, except... not right. And how did one go about learning to be “not damaged” anymore, anyway? Was it like scabs and scars over one's soul, and eventually, one just... stopped seeing them? And how long did it take?
He wasn't supposed to love you, was he, Jacin-rei
"No one was.” It trickled out on a thin thread of breath, like he couldn't help himself.
What was he supposed to do with it? What did he know about any of this? He was trapped in reality, snared in a life he didn't know how to live, and it was fucking cold. A shiver rippled through him, as if he'd called it, and he admitted the wish for a wide stripe of heat at his back, warm whispers at the crown of his head.
He was supposed to use you and leave you, and instead he handed you his heart, offered you his soul, and now you have to figure out what to do with it
Could he just... skip ahead to the not-damaged-anymore part? If he spoke it aloud, gave the words power, could he make them real?
Because love isn't a safe thing for you, is it... Ghost?
"Not a Ghost.” He whispered it. Tried it out. And waited.
Nothing. Still. Nothing but the chill and... that was it.
He'd spent a lot of time lately feeling numb and cold, or just nothing at all. There were days at a stretch that passed him by and he didn't even notice. He liked Malick's warmth. It had taken a while for it to leak through the cold, the numb nothing, but it was one of the few things he knew now, and he liked it. It placated... something down deep he couldn't define.
He was biding in some odd limbo, a place where he could see life, touch it, but he couldn't feel it. Malick made him feel. Made him.
Forced him to acknowledge that he was sick of the cold. Sick of himself.
A living ghost.
Malick's relentless presence was a persistent, bizarre comfort, and Jacin had allowed it to prod him into staying here when he really didn't want to. Last night, Shig's voice haunting him, the taste of cherry smoke burning his tongue, he'd allowed it to prod him into turning to Malick when he'd finally entered the cabin quietly, climbed in, and wrapped himself around Jacin. Allowed it to guide his hands, watched Malick's expressions change as
Jacin allowed his fingers to roam and explore. Allowed himself to feel every detail beneath his fingertips—time the pulse, map the dips between muscles, trace bone and sinew, stalk the thump of blood through vein—until Malick met his eyes, asking.
Jacin answered. Slowly and with all his attention.
No bargains this time, nothing to trade but mutual want.
Malick had made it all go away for him before. Maybe he could make it come back.
Sayitsayitsayit—
"Do you love him?” Joori had asked Jacin only a few days ago, leaning against the railing as Jacin sat, otherwise alone on the deck, staring out to where the bruised line of the horizon smudged from sea to sky. No anger that Jacin could detect. No derision. Only curiosity, with perhaps a touch of worry.
Jacin had snorted a little, pushed his hair out of his eyes, and sighed. He hadn't answered, but he figured Joori knew what he meant, even if he wasn't sure himself.
He thought he might be getting used to Malick, but that might have just been because he was there, wouldn't let up, and Malick had at least believed it when he'd told Jacin he loved him. He seemed to be acting like it, but then, how would Jacin know, really?
"Don't lie to me,” Jacin had told Malick last night, afterward, when they were both still flushed and sweaty, skin sticking to skin, and the smell of sex down deep in their pores. “Don't manipulate me. Don't manipulate them."
A warning of sorts, and Malick seemed to get it, even if the threat was minimal—he was Temshiel, after all; what could Jacin really do to him besides walk away?—but Malick hadn't smiled or smirked, or even rolled his eyes. He'd only nodded, his expression this close to grave, and sincere, as far as Jacin could tell. “I won't,” was all he'd said.
"You really want this?” Jacin had to ask it, had to know. You really want me? Why? What's to want?
There was no hesitation from Malick, no apparent equivocation. Only a simple, and apparently sincere, “Yes. I do."
Touch the Untouchable. Love the unlovable.
In that moment, peering into tarnished bronze, looking for prevarication and finding only somber confession, Jacin thought maybe he could love Malick, if Jacin were a different person.
Wolf's-own: Weregild Page 44
