She tore her hand away, raised her head to stare. A moment of panic: Would I do that? Yes, I would. In shock. His eyes were serious. I trust you, they said. And myself.
“It’s only my own hands my fate would be in,” he said. “I’d have none but myself to blame.”
What she should say came easily enough. “Kill you, and fight my way out through your army, leaving what’s left of my family to the mercy of those who loved you?” She heard her voice, dry, cynical. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
He slid out from her arms, picked a sheet of paper and an Arkan pen out of the cupboard. Crouching in the circle of lamplight, he wrote three lines in his quick firm hand, Yeoli and Enchian, signed, sealed it with a daub of seal-wax and the semanakraseye’s signet, and handed it to her.
I, Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, semanakraseye na chakrachaseye, absolve Megan Whitlock of my own death this seventh night in the moon of the Corn. There was reason; she knows.
The words, as she read them, four times, seemed to shift and swim; the dark air had currents, like water, that moved her, became hard to breathe, the cart-floor rippling. No. Shake it off, but without motion. You should feel just amazement.
His eyes gazed at her, black reflecting two tiny dark flames, one gold tooth reflecting a brighter one. “They’d truth-drug you, you’d tell the truth, and they’d know it as the sort of thing I’d do. If they even caught you.” He shrugged, naked shoulders lifting. “Who would say anything to Megan Whitlock strolling by night, with her adopted daughter?”
Don’t show him the world’s spinning. She kept the impassive merchant’s face, with a mask of lesser surprise. I know what I’d say now. “How can you trust me so? I was truth-drugged three months ago, you don’t know I haven’t been compromised since then, somehow.” Subtle, witch.
He lay back on the bedding, tucking his hands behind his head, shrugged again, smiling. “I know who to trust.”
You idiot. You fish-gutted over-reckless, Gold-bottomed idiot.
She laid the note on the cabinet, and he reached for her hand again, guided it to his throat, throwing his head back slightly. “You’re mad,” she said.
He just chuckled, the muscle under her fingers vibrating with it. “I suppose so, if it’s madness to do what one believes in kyan mon ... entirely, that means. Wholly.”
She made herself steel again, except for what she carefully chose to let through the screen. Emotions: cards to play. He closed his eyes, as if savoring her touch with its sword-keen threat, not knowing his true danger lay on his hip, her left hand. She lowered her head, took him in her mouth. He’d softened in the pause; now he surged hard again, with a gasp, and threw his head further back, trembling to her touch like a leaf to the wind’s.
His hand, its warmth, naZak big, was comforting on her shoulder; then it tenderly stroked her hair and flung her into the past. Huge callused naZak man-hands, holding her head in place, pressing on the hinges of her jaws to make sure she wouldn’t bite, fear and bile and the taste of semen—She bit her scream into a choking squeak at the back of her throat, pulled away, remembered, clenched her hand on his neck. He froze, stone-still. The quiet voice was like a healer’s over the operating table. “What did I do?”
She knelt panting, heart hammer-banging. I don’t need to be afraid. She struggled, mouth working, for words, glanced at his hip. No blood. I didn’t. I didn’t. Shit, why didn’t I? Both hands at once, spasming, he wouldn’t even have noticed! Shit, shit, shit, Shkai’ra, Lixand, next time, next time ...
“Your hand. Your hand on my head. Don’t—” Unreality: she was commanding the Invincible. “Don’t do that.”
He drew his hand away, spread his arms wide, far from her. She forced her breathing and her thoughts steady. I killed Sarngeld. He’s dead and no one will ever do that to me again. I’m here to kill another. I don’t need to fear him. She won’t die in vain, akribhan, Lixand-mi ...
On his throat lay three drops of red, almost black in the dim light, growing; there, she’d done it properly. But his eyes were closed and his head back again; his member still stood, his passion unbroken.
Koru, she thought, he isn’t even afraid. In her mind came a sound like the slamming of a great iron gate. This, I cannot kill.
Noooooooo ... A scream from within, echoing through her bones. Lixaaaaaaaand!
“Megan?” She tore her hand away, both hands, her head, choking not on him, on herself. “Megan.” Bile pushed up onto the back of her tongue, made her cough. “Megan!” His command-voice cut through the spinning of the world. She blinked, found his face, many images blurring. He was sitting up, bedclothes hiding him from the waist down. Carefully and clearly, as if to a madwoman: “Can you hear me?” She wasn’t sure whether she was crying or not, couldn’t feel it, didn’t care.
The world needs you. As Imperator of Arko, as whatever you will become, in your life. How many other people have died, to put you there? Whose deaths would be in vain?
“I’ll be back.” Her voice clanged to her own ears like a coin rolling around an iron pot. Still acting. Still subtle. Crazed laughter, death-laughter. Oh, subtle Zak! She staggered past, took the stairs in one leap. “Don’t follow me! Just a moment, please, let me have just a moment, alone.” Yes, she was crying; she felt tear-streaks on cheek and side of nose turn cold in the night wind.
You do know who to trust, Chevenga. It’s I who is the idiot. She plunged her left hand into the bucket of water next to the wheel, drove her claws into the earth, scrubbed with the sandy mud, rinsed in the water again, tipped the bucket out so no one could drink from it. She staggered back into the cart, where he knelt, waiting, eyes utterly gentle. She seized his note from the cabinet, burned it in the lamp, down to the last blank corner in her left-hand claws.
“I will finish you, your pleasure,” she whispered. “Just hold me, for now, please ...”
His arms were tender at first, then, as the sobs strengthened, and began to feel as if they’d tear her in two like paper, his embrace gently tightened, as if to hold her together.
“Never mind finishing me. That would be too much. You’ve gone through enough tonight. Agh, Megan, poor Megan, strength, there’ll be an end to your pain, there will ...” She curled her hands into fists so that the claws rested on the pads of callus, and wept harder.
Night broke off chips of dark, rained crashing on her head like broken glass, thoughts dropping dully from her mind into her heart. Lixand-mi. His baby curls under her hand, his toothless smile as he grabbed for the rattle; baby trust, entire. Lixand. Someone else killed Shkai’ra, but I have killed you. You will never know it was me. You’ll just die. I am worse than slough-kin: kin-killer.
I should have clawed myself, the thought came, dead and cold as an assassin’s thoughts. I still can.
“Zhymata?” Sova’s whisper out of the dark, from inside the tent.
Koru—no. She’d be orphaned, twice-orphaned, by my hand.
“What’s wrong? Are you all right? Zhymata?” The Thane-girl unhooded the small kraumak, the light-stone.
“I’ve lied to you, Sova.” The words came out, unthinking. What am I saying? She heard her own voice, dull, deadened, tell the whole story, as her hands mindlessly stripped off her clothes again, her body crawled under the covers, lay curled tight around her pain. Let there be only truth between us. I won’t be slough-kin with her, too. “I can’t kill him. The world needs him too much. I’ve thrown away my son’s life, Shkai’ra’s death.” She was finished telling; the pain loosened enough to let her cry again, open, unrestrained, wailing like a child.
For a long time Sova stared, her mouth slightly open. Then she snapped it closed, and blinked, playing back the words in her mind, several times.
“Zhymata ... No. You didn’t throw away anyone’s life, or death. You did what you had to.” The girl’s strong arms wrapped around Megan, hugged crushing tight. “Zhymata. Zhymata. You don’t know for sure Shkai ra’s dead, you still don’t know absolutely for sure! Oh, Zhymata
, poor Zhymata, it’s all right, you had to lie to me, don’t worry, you did what you had to, Zhymata, you threw nothing away, you did what you had to. You did what you had to. You did what you had to.”
* * *
XXIII
The silence was absolute but for the pounding of his heart and the hissing of his breath, which slowed and quieted. The swinging of the lamp faded to nothing, stilling the shadows, filling the lower room with stillness. All that moved was blood, dripping everywhere, on the walls, even on the ceiling; the air was warm with fresh butcher-shop stinks. Rasas was alone, in a falling-apart house full of corpses and new-made ghosts.
“Tikas.” His voice in the dark seemed unreal, insect-small. “Ardas.” Tears sprang to his eyes, left over from the fight, the death-screams, louder than he would have believed out of men who usually moved so slowly, the blood. Clutching the chair-leg, he let the tears run, and splash on his knees.
After a while his whimpering sounded stupid and weak to him; calmer, his inner voice sounded pleasingly sensible. I’ve got to do something.
He put down the chair-leg and lowered himself onto the spiral stairs. No, wait—I don’t want to be down there. But he’d have to, eventually, to get out of there. Tomorrow, when it’s light. I’ll stay up here till then.
Then out the corner of his eye he saw the witch-demon move. His heart froze.
I didn’t hit hard enough. Celestialis, I didn’t hit hard enough and now she’ll wake up and kill me. Sprawled with one leg still trailing up the bottom-most stairs, the creature moaned, turned her head, moaned louder. He groped for the chair-leg. I’ve got to hit her again, keep hitting her until she stops breathing. But the slit grey eyes were looking at him, watching even if the long limbs weren’t moving.
Then the lips worked, and in a croaking whisper said a magic word out of his ancient stories, his mythic memories, a word he thought only he knew, a word he’d thought no one in the world would ever speak.
“Lixand.”
A feeble bloodied hand fumbled at the red-stained shirt, groped a pouch inside, over the witch-demon’s heart, fished out something lone and black and white. Suddenly he remembered something out of the lore of witch-demons: they didn’t bleed. “Chi mata, Lixand.” Hair: a lock of the hair of the fairy-mother of his dreams, black except for one white streak.
The chair-leg slipped out of his hand, rolled. “You’re ... you’re my rescuer?” Those eyes, inhuman with blood-meaness before, held only pain now; and recognition. Witch-demons don’t cry ... a tear streaked down one hawk-thin cheek.
“Oops,” he said; the largest, most sincere, most moved, most moving “oops” possible. Witch-demons, he remembered, didn’t smile, either.
Then her grey eyes closed again, and her head sank back. Dead? He scrabbled down the stairs, trying to remember everything about healing he’d ever been taught. Her heart was still beating, he could feel; but barely and she was hot, much too hot. Little Humble God, he prayed. Help me save her.
This is the last time, Matthas thought, waiting. The meeting place was dark, even in the moonlight, down—wind of the Yeoli picket lines. Thirty-two days. I will tell her she will never see me again; just if he isn’t dead in another four, I’ll send the order ...
There: the familiar child-sized silhouette moved among the black trunks of the trees, still limping a little, slow and careful to not trip in the dark.
“Stop there, Zak.” No dry wit now; he didn’t have it in him. He was tired. She froze. He couldn’t see her face, just a feathering of moonlight through shadows of branches, catching the lock of silver in her hair. She turned to face him.
“What is it now—you’ve poisoned him and it has yet to take effect? Is that it?” Underneath the demand in his voice, he heard his own desperate hope. Shit ... maybe I just gave away the whole game. She just stood still, three paces in front of him. Wind touched the trees, momentarily shone a patch of moonlight on her face.
She was smiling, moon-glint on teeth and eyes giving them a dull cruel sheen, like sword-steel. Slowly he realized he could see a lighter patch of meadow between two tree-trunks, through her. Then she vanished.
Oh shit. Almost imperceptible from such a small person, the sense of warmth, of presence, behind him to his left, close ... He whirled, his face turning straight into the dark flash of a small arm reaching up, a blow, slashing, snagging dully, across his cheek.
“Shen!” The shriek tore out of him, almost breathless; involuntarily he did a standing leap two paces straight backwards, clutching his face. Wet, warm, his blood trickled.
“Some things are more important than kin, Arkan.” The high small female voice was as cold and edged as steel claws. “Like seeing a corrupt Empire die. Ask yourself how long the poison will take to kill you. Then go to Hayel, for failing.” She turned, and was gone into the dark.
Matthas staggered to the stream, thrust his face under, icy cold seizing his skin, knowing he was muddying the water as his hands slipped on the stones, scrubbed his face with one palm trying to drive dirty water into the claw-gouges, draw blood out; better the chance of infection than the certainty of poison. The wounds stung, but perhaps no more than they would anyway; he couldn’t tell.
“Shen shen shen ...” He pulled himself up from the stream, struggled to his feet. The cold flowing on his face went warm again; he pressed his kerchief to it. I need a healer. But if he went to a Haian here, they’d take records of his wounds, he’d be asked how he’d got them, leave a paper trail for them to follow. God, why did Manajas have to get killed? His good contact with the Arkans gone, he had only the replacement, a dour old fart who was suspicious of anything underhanded. How to explain? Shen ... Truth impinged. I’ve failed. Even if I send a note to snuff the little bastard, snuff him slowly, one fikken sinew at a time the little son of a worm and a witch, I’ve still failed. A tread in the underbrush; he froze behind a tree, while the other passed. Urges without reason came, desperately strong, to be in a warm bed, with his mother sitting next to it stroking his brow. That dwarfish bitch calls herself a mother, throwing away her son’s life like that, that’s unnatural.
He’d hired two men to guard his tent, northern mercenaries drawing a little extra pay for a little extra sentry-duty. “Kras FrahhnsssohhndeNuubohhn, you all right?” The bumpkin accent grated on his ears. “Get healer?” He just mumbled a no thank you, the Thanish accent coming naturally. Good thing I kept the habit of thinking in it.
As if it matters now. All that was left was to do what a good Irefas man did before he died: remove himself from where the enemy could get knowledge out of him while he was helpless. He’d go to the old fart, throw himself on flatulent mercy. He can stretch my neck; fine, I’ll have done my duty. Strangely, there was an intoxicating sense of liberation in being doomed.
Failed. He quickly packed his merchant’s papers and seals, a change of clothing—he didn’t even have a pair of gloves—to cross to the Arkan camp. How am I going to word this letter to Patappas and Frenandias? “You risked everything for nothing, my old friends ...” He could kiss his elevation good-bye, his triumph good-bye ... but that was nothing, really, that was just his problem. Because I’ve failed, he thought, the whole fikken great lumbering elephant of an Empire’s fikked.
Liberation brought clarity, and revelation; in a lightning burst, Matthas’s vision extended for a moment across the whole known world, and he understood why Arko would fall. He’d lived with the answer all his career.
Arko’s fall was in Aitzas spy-runners who got assassinated because they hadn’t bothered to learn the ways of a place. In mud-slow bureaucracies that kept back funds needed to maintain a spy office for six months. In blockhead Mahid who didn’t believe two women could exist who took ten strong-arms to bring down, then blamed Matthas-types for the result and sent them off on desperation missions with no support. In Aitzas who cared more about throwing gold and oysters around at their parties than the health of their country, and ... the last thought came, brutal, laughable. A
n Imperator whose head is so far up his butt he isn’t even fikken weaned. Of course it all came from the top; it always did. The seeds of Arko’s fall were in Kurkas’s birth, or his father’s, or his grandfather’s. It wasn’t quite all the fault of Matthas Bennas, fessas.
Who presently threw himself backwards across his pallet, and did what he felt like: laughed, until he cried.
Book III:
Fulfillment
XXIV
Headline on the front page of the Pages, Machine-Scribed News-Chronicle of the City of Arko, 20th Day of the First Month Autumnal, 55th to the Last Year of the Present Age:
STRATEGY OF ATTRITION SUCCEEDING:
BRILLIANT GENERALSHIP LURES
BARBARIANS DEEP INTO TRAP
In the plains of Finpollendias, just above and east of Arko the City Itself, the corn had turned gold; the wood-lots around wore the deep but faintly tattered green of late summer. On a slope a little way above, the alliance army rested.
The next battle would be the last; though the Empire had fielded an army not much smaller, it was made up of the dregs of Arkan manpower, and no one much doubted what the result would be. Poised over Arko like a sword for the grace-stroke, the Alliance waited for the hand that held it to bring it down. Across the fire, Megan watched its light on the planes of his face, as he spoke.
It had been more than a month since she’d decided not to kill him, since Shkai’ra’s—she still couldn’t bring herself to say the word. Death. Her dark-work had been less necessary lately, and she’d avoided him as well. Why am I more afraid of showing something now than when I really did have something to hide?
The days immediately after had been a shapeless blackness. So much practice mourning; she knew its every stage, its every line and crack. I’m still denying. Because I didn’t see her die, I guess, the way I did Mama and Papa. Then she’d realized, what Sova said was true: she couldn’t know for certain Shkai’ra was dead until she saw her corpse. Which meant ... uncertainty, again. I’m practiced at that, too. Maybe forever, I’ll live not knowing. About the two people I love most, instead of one of them. Koru, why did I send her ... She cut that thought off. No. It’s no use. We had to try something. We had to.
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