by Davis Ashura
Rukh didn’t have an answer. He dropped his Shield and turned away from her anger, cleaning his sword on the fur of a dead Ur-Fel. His movements were mechanical. The reality of what he had done crashed home. What had he been thinking? Jessira was right to be angry with him. And he’d almost fought the final two Chims with no weapon at all. He flinched. The emptiness inside, so seductive a moment before, now filled him with horror. It was a yawning chasm leading nowhere.
When had he become such a coward?
He realized Jessira was still yelling at him, her features blurred. Her voice seemed to come from an immeasurably far distance, distorted and faint.
A hard slap rocked his head to the side. “You want die? Go ahead, but you aren’t taking me with you!” she shouted.
A tear slid down her face, and he reached forward and touched it wonderingly. Why was she crying? Seeing her pain broke a dam in him, and he shuddered. The world snapped into focus. Clarity returned. He could hear and see her again.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, numb now. What a selfish thing he’d almost done.
Jessira stared at him, frustration evident on her face. She breathed out a sigh of disappointment. “I know this isn’t easy,” she said, “but it will get better. Just live until that time. Just fight it!”
“I should have died in the caverns,” Rukh muttered. “At least it would have been a warrior’s death.”
The anger left her face, replaced by dawning understanding and compassion. “Oh, Rukh.” She put her arms around his neck, pulling him close. “Promise me you’ll never do anything like that again,” she whispered into his ear.
Rukh worked to get his dangerously gyrating emotions under control before answering. “I promise,” he whispered before pulling away from her, breaking the circle of Jessira’s embrace.
Her face was filled with concern. “Will you be all right?” she asked.
Rukh felt like laughing. He had thought he was all right. He had no idea something so ugly as despair and tiredness of living had made a home in his heart. He’d been so busy pushing through: the expedition to the caverns, the betrayal of Lieutenant Danslo and the other warriors, the battle, the long hike back to Ashoka with days and nights of endless fatigue. And after it was all done: banishment. During the journey to Stronghold, he’d held in all his feelings, smothered them, let them fester until they came boiling out in a way which could have ended his life.
“I don’t know,” Rukh said. They were the honest truth. He didn’t know if he would be all right. Not now. Maybe not ever. Some vital spark seemed to be gone from his life. His purpose, his reason to exist — it wasn’t there.
“We’ll have to find you a different reason to live,” Jessira said, somehow guessing what he was thinking.
Chapter 4: A Price Paid
Incur the reckoning now or inherit the debt later. A pinprick pain followed by Tranquility or sloth followed by Self-flagellation. Those are the choices we all must face.
-Our Lives Alone by Asias Athandra, AF 331
Hal’El sat still. An open, unread newspaper was held in his hands, but his attention was captured by Varesea. They had spent an afternoon together in an unoccupied building in Stone Cavern, sharing the intoxicating rush of emotions they found only in one another’s arms. Hal’El could have lingered far longer, but duty pressed. It was then, after they had set aside their pleasure and got to work that Varesea had another attack.
He didn’t know how else to describe it. One moment she had been fine, and the next she was pacing back and forth, her movements harsh and jerky. She occasionally clutched her arms, grasping the fabric of her shirt, almost tearing it. She muttered incomprehensibly, but Hal’El knew what she was saying. “You aren’t real. You aren’t real.”
Hal’El watched in obdurate silence, his face wrought with worry.
The attacks had begun several months after the death of her husband, Slathtril, and were becoming more frequent. When gripped in the madness of such an episode, Varesea would imagine that the wife-beating bastard was still alive. In her mind, Slathtril raved at her, accusing her, berating her, and threatening retribution for what she had done. Sometimes Slathtril’s words were apparently so terrifying that Varesea would tear at her hair, screaming silently with eyes empty of thought. It was frightening to witness, and Hal’El wasn’t a man who frightened easily.
Varesea came to a stop by the cheap, pine table where Hal’El sat. She dug her fingernails into the surface, gouging out a small splinter. It stabbed her finger, raising a blot of blood, but she didn’t notice. Again, she paced.
In times past, Hal’El had tried to hold her, comfort her, soothe her, but it only seemed to make things worse. Varesea would scream gutturally at him, fight him, scratching, clawing, and biting. It was better to let her work it out on her own. And he certainly couldn’t take her to a physician. How? Hal’El wasn’t her relative, nor was he even of Varesea’s Caste. What excuses could he offer to accompany her? There were none. Varesea would have to seek help on her own, but so far she had refused to do so.
She was afraid she might have a delusional episode while seeing a physician. What if she spoke of her relationship with Hal’El or of the Sil Lor Kum? It was her greatest fear, and Hal’El was shamefaced enough to admit that it was his as well. On a selfish level, he was glad Varesea hadn’t yet decided to consult a physician.
So instead, he had to watch as the woman he loved struggled to maintain her sanity, all the while afraid she might kill them both during a fleeting slip of sanity. And he could do nothing to prevent such an occurrence. Whatever evil Hal’El might have committed in his life, killing Varesea Apter was one thing of which he was incapable. He loved her too much to see her dead by his hand.
The situation left him feeling helpless, another emotion to which he was unaccustomed.
And on an equally worrying note, Hal’El had concerns for his own sanity. Sometimes he heard whispers on the wind, sounds sensed rather than heard, gone before he could decipher the muffled words. What he knew was that they were voices, a man and a woman.
He could taste their hate.
Hal’El feared who they might be — Felt Barnel and the Cherid woman, Aqua Oilhue. He’d murdered them both, and the possibility that a part of their essences might have stained his mind left him cold with fear. What if Varesea’s fate was to be his own? The Knife stole Jivatma — of this, he was certain — but what if those who were killed by the black blade never truly died? What if they lived on in the minds of their killers, slowly poisoning them until they broke and lost their reason? It was a terrifying thought, but it also went a long way toward explaining why knowledge of the Withering Knife was so limited. Prior wielders of the Knife must have all died, killed by their own burgeoning insanity.
If so, could Hal’El ever risk using it again? He wasn’t sure. And even though the Queen had demanded he kill once more with the Knife, Hal’El was reluctant to do so. He feared what might happen if he did.
Varesea had finally stopped pacing — thank Devesh! — and flopped into the plush couch, the only other furnishing in the room other than the table and chairs. “Slathtril vows to feast on your flesh,” she said before collapsing into a faint.
*****
Rector Bryce studied the ledgers laid out upon the desk. The books were a record of all the materials stored and eventually shipped out from the warehouse in the Moon Quarter of which he had titular oversight. At first, he had been unable to make any sense of the accounts. The records were kept in an indecipherable language, and for a time, Rector had been sure his accountants had played a trick on him, passing on ledgers written in gibberish.
It hadn’t been the case, and perhaps Rector would have realized it sooner if he had actually tried to understand the accountant’s code when first confronted with it. Instead, since he had deemed such work to be beneath him, he had wasted weeks staring resentfully at the books and their notations, unwilling and unable to comprehend their contents. As time passed, Rector finall
y got out of his own way and began the process of deciphering the confusing mass of columns, rows, numbers, and shorthand scribbling. The logic of the accounting books slowly became apparent, and, to his surprise, the work became enjoyable. It was like solving a puzzle.
Materials were inventoried, both for when they were first placed in the warehouse and for when they were removed. Items were logged on arrival based on quantity, cost, and location and logged out when it came time to ship them. The information was updated daily by the warehouse manager and confirmed on the same day by one of the accountants. It was a simple, but efficient system of record-keeping.
Errors still crept in, but once a quarter, the warehouse underwent an audit of all the materials present within it. On that day, the ledgers were also updated, and any discrepancies were either cleared up or the missing items were deleted from the records. From what Rector had seen, such mistakes were few and far between. The men and women working for House Wrestiva were good at what they did, and per Rector’s inspection of the warehouse, rarely did even a single nail go unaccounted for.
It made the missing henna paste and poppy seeds from a year ago all the more unusual. In the long run, it wasn’t much of a loss, but it still had Rector curious. The henna had been logged in as arriving with the Trial from Kush over a year ago and the poppy seeds from Forge. Neither had been logged out. Then, several months ago, the line items indicating their presence had been zeroed out. It must have happened during one of the quarterly audits. While House Wrestiva could easily absorb the lost revenue, nevertheless, it was something that should not have occurred. Henna was too expensive to have simply gone missing like that, and poppy, with its many medicinal uses, was equally costly.
The losses were the only problems Rector had, thus far, discovered in House Wrestiva’s accounts.
Of course, Mira would want to know about them, even though she would be just as likely to toss it off as being unimportant. Rector’s nostrils flared in irritation as he imagined the lofty manner by which she would order him to skulk about for more important information. She could do so because she knew of Rector’s family history and the Sil Lor Kum. It was her trump card, but the fact that she would threaten to destroy his family if he didn’t do as she commanded revealed the truth about her spiteful, arrogant nature.
Karma had a way of dealing with people like her — or at least so Rector hoped She did.
He checked the clock and cursed under his breath. He would have to hustle if he wanted to make it in time for his meeting with Mira. She hated to be kept waiting. Rector darted out of the warehouse and raced through the Moon Quarter. Luckily, traffic wasn’t too heavy, and he was able to make the journey to Trell Rue with plenty of time to spare.
With the final stretch of road ahead of him, Rector caught sight of Mira waiting outside the Duriah café where the two of them had decided to meet for their biweekly debriefings. Mira nodded greeting, and they shared blatantly false smiles.
Before taking a seat, Rector leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “You look as lovely as your soul.” He knew the gesture and words would irritate her.
Mira’s eyes briefly narrowed, but otherwise, she gave no signal to indicate her annoyance. “And you are as handsome as your personality,” she murmured as he sat down.
“Charming,” Rector said. He called over a waiter and placed an order for a beer and parathas filled with dahl and lamb. “Did you want anything?” he asked Mira before the waiter left.
“I’ve already ordered,” she replied. Once the waiter left, Mira leaned forward. “Don’t ever kiss me again,” she hissed.
Rector smiled, not bothering to hide his pleasure at angering her. In all their other meetings, she openly mocked him and his fallen station. It was time to prick her smug sense of superiority and have her feel some sting during their interactions as well.
“Take this seriously, Rector Bryce — ”
“Or what?” Rector interrupted. “Will Dar’El take me to task for being insufficiently obsequious?” He snorted in derision.
“We shouldn’t argue,” Mira warned. “People are watching.”
“Then you should learn to curb your tongue,” Rector said. “I arrived and gave you a kiss on the cheek. For doing so, you glare at me?”
Mira stared into her lap, taking a moment to compose herself before she looked up again, this time wearing a bright smile. She reached for Rector’s hands, holding them in both of her own. “I’m sorry, beloved,” she said. “I love you so much. Let’s not quarrel.”
Rector couldn’t detect a hint of sarcasm in her voice, but her nails dug painfully into his palms, letting him know of her anger. Rector removed his hands from hers. “It’s quite all right.” He refused to shake out his hands and display weakness before her.
“Now,” Mira said, still wearing the bright, stupid smile. “What do you have to tell me?”
“Other than the fact that I don’t like you?” Rector said. “Not much.”
“Your feelings toward me are not what I meant,” Mira said, still grinning. “What of House Wrestiva?”
Rector laughed at her patently false smile. “You know how idiotic you look doing that?” He waved in the general direction of her face. “Do you think anyone is fooled by your grin?”
Mira startled, and the smile slipped.
Rector chuckled again, happy to be the one delivering the verbal barbs rather than receive them. Usually, with Mira, it was the other way around. “We have a professional relationship, and I wish we didn’t even have that,” he said, “but neither of us can lie well enough to trick anyone into thinking we’re madly in love.”
“Fair enough,” Mira said. “But my question still stands: did you learn anything about House Wrestiva?”
Rector nodded. “As a matter of fact, I did,” he said, explaining about the missing henna and poppy seeds. “And I’m sure this grand mystery will be the means by which your wonderful ‘El will somehow bring down House Wrestiva.”
Mira flicked a glance his way but otherwise didn’t respond to his sarcasm. She appeared pensive. “First, Dar’El isn’t interested in destroying House Wrestiva; only your ruling ‘El. Second, juniper and sourwain.”
Rector frowned. “What?”
“Two rare spices, and if combined with henna and poppy seeds, you get something highly illicit: snowblood.”
Rector rolled his eyes. “I should have known you Shektans wouldn’t have an ounce of restraint or decency when it comes to trying to bring down Hal’El Wrestiva.”
“Yes, because Hal’El Wrestiva is such a paragon of morality,” Mira said sarcastically. “Remember his son, Suge, the snowblood addict, and what Hal’El tried to do to Jaresh?”
“It doesn’t diminish Hal’El’s accomplishments in the Trials,” Rector replied. “Hal’El is a hero.”
“A hero who made sure that a far greater hero was found Unworthy.”
Rector flinched. Almost four months after the fact, he had grown ever more guilty about his role in Rukh’s banishment. He knew now that he should have never spoken up. It wasn’t simply that it wasn’t his place to have done so, but even more because much of the moral certitude he had held from that happy, innocent time had long since dissipated. The process had begun when Dar’El Shektan had revealed the secret of Rector’s heritage. “If faced with the same situation now, I would have never revealed Rukh’s secrets,” he said after a moment of quiet reflection.
For a wonder, Mira looked genuinely baffled. “Even after all the rumors about him and Jessira?”
Rector smiled half-heartedly. “Given my ancestors, who have done far worse, why should I bother with another’s folly?”
Mira tilted her head in consideration. “You surprise me,” she finally replied. “I never imagined hearing you say something like that.”
Rector shrugged. “I never imagined I would have to,” he said.
“And so you no longer judge others? Even Jaresh, who you are certain harbors immoral feelings toward me?”
/>
“As long as it doesn’t affect me, he can live as he wishes,” Rector clarified.
“Really?”
Rector didn’t answer at first, taking time to form his thoughts. “A few months ago, I mapped out the descendants of my great-grandfather,” he said. “There are over fifty of us, some still learning to walk. I find myself wondering why all of them should be stained because of his actions? It seems arbitrary and unjust.”
Again, Mira appeared surprised. “Some would claim your moral conversion to be merely self-serving,” she challenged.
“And they might be right,” Rector said, “but it also doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
*****
The Society of Rajan consisted of twenty-one men and women, three members from each Caste: a master, journeyman, and an apprentice. As expected the apprentices were the youngest, ranging in age from the middle thirties to early forties, while all the masters were older than sixty. Right now, the members sat about the heptagonal table centered in the third floor ballroom that made up the Society’s Hall.
Night had long since fallen, and heavy curtains were drawn across the tall, narrow windows while the firefly lamps within their wall sconces and chandeliers were turned up, casting the room in bright light. The Society’s Hall was located on the top floor of a small, three-story, building located several blocks north of the Magisterium. The lower levels were given over to various businesses and flats, and most people would have never guessed that such a mythical organization would meet in such a prosaic place.
Of course, what most people knew about the Rajans was mostly hearsay and innuendo. Over the centuries, those rumors had inflated the Society’s reputation past the point of reason. Some believed it had been the First Father who had founded the Rajans; others claimed the Society was the descendant of some long ago Council of the First World. A few fools were certain the Society hoarded knowledge of Jivatma unknown to anyone else or were even composed of some hidden eighth Caste.
