The gangly youth trotted up to Mya and nodded. “The dead one’s a Blade.”
“You’re the cause of this, Mya,” Lad said as he once again stepped aggressively closer. “It’s all about you!”
Mya waved off Shalla and Birdie, whose hands had dropped to their weapons. She’d never seen Lad like this, so emotional, so threatening. She knew she could defend herself, but if she had to fight Lad in front of her two Hunters, her secret would be out. Besides, she needed to speak to Lad alone. Keeping her eyes on Lad, Mya issued commands over her shoulder.
“Get back to the Cockerel and spread the word; we’re at war with Horice and Youtrin, and probably the rest of the guild. Send secure messages to Pictor, Kara, Simi, and Vic. They’re to drop whatever they’re doing for the other masters and get back to headquarters immediately. Call everyone in; we’ve got to marshal our forces. All senior journeymen are to meet with me at the Cockerel in an hour. And send a clean-up team back with a cart for that body.”
“Yes, Miss Mya!”
The two dashed off. The exchange, however, hadn’t quelled Lad’s temper.
“This is about you, Mya! You and your plots and plans, always grasping for more power to keep yourself safe! Well, what about my family? What did you do to keep them safe?”
“I didn’t know the other masters would do this, Lad.”
“How could you not know? You think like them. Why wouldn’t you think about this, Mya? It’s something you would have done, isn’t it?”
Probably. She shrugged; there was no arguing the point. “A family is a weakness, Lad. I’ve told you that a hundred times.”
“You’re wrong, Mya. They’re my life, my strength!” He glanced over his shoulder at them, then turned back to glare at her. “Is that what this is about? Were you so jealous of my happiness that you let someone destroy it?”
“Jealous?” A bark of laughter escaped her throat before she could stop it. A surge of anger at his accusation dampened her caution. She waved her hand at the group assembled on the porch. “Of them? They don’t make you strong, Lad, they make you vulnerable. You think I should have known what would happen here? What about you? What the hells did you think assassins would do? It’s not my job to keep your family safe. It’s yours.”
His hand shot out.
The move was fast, but not so fast that she couldn’t intervene. Mya’s hand clamped down on his wrist before he could wrap his fingers around her throat. Surprise flashed in his eyes at the speed of her response and the strength of her grip. He twisted free and took a half-step back, scrutinizing her through the curtain of rain between them.
He struck with lightning speed, an open palm blurring through the rain toward her cheek.
Water misted in a halo as, again, she blocked the blow.
Now an expression of disbelief masked his face. His hands balled into fists at his sides, and his mouth hardened into a grim line.
“Lad, don’t.”
His attack came like an explosion, full-speed, full-force strikes that would have crushed the skull, snapped the spine, smashed the ribs, and pulped the heart of any normal human.
But Mya wasn’t normal.
Magic flushed through her with a wave of heat, her runes igniting every nerve and muscle into action. The world cleared as if she had previously viewed it from behind a translucent veil. Mya could pick out every raindrop, every pore in Lad’s skin, every drop of moisture on his lashes, and she reacted as her years of training had taught her.
Mya met each of Lad’s attacks reflexively. She knew his fighting style, his dance of death, better than any other living soul. He’d taught it to her five years ago, and she had practiced it every day since.
A kick lashed out at her throat like a stroke of lighting, but she blocked, whirled, and swept aside the next blow, a clawing sweep of his fingers that would have raked through her ribs like a scythe through wheat. She bent back to dodge a fist that buzzed through the raindrops like a swarm of hornets, and spun away from his next attack, sweeping his lashing foot aside. Lad spun also, her mirror, her shadow, and she knew his next move before it came. Her open palm met the strike with a report like a hammer on stone, a nimbus of misted water radiating out from the point of impact in a shockwave. Three more lighting punches, and she met each the same, her timing flawless. She glimpsed a fleeting opening in his defenses, feint or real, she didn’t know, but she let it pass, pivoting and sliding out of his reach.
Don’t kill him! the voice of her heart screamed to her mind. She could heal her wounds, but Lad could not. The force of his blows told her that he was truly trying to kill her. But try as he might, she would not—could not—kill him.
Mya fought defensively, blocking, twisting, and spinning out of reach time and time again, but little by little, his superiority showed. He was every bit as fast as she, and while she had trained for years, he had trained his entire lifetime. Fighting was as innate as breathing for Lad. She might have learned the dance, but he had choreographed it, and what he had made, he could change.
The pattern suddenly shifted, and Lad’s next strike caught her off guard. Mya flung back her head to avoid the blow, but his fist brushed her cheek, the shockwave of compressed rain lashing across her face to blind her for an instant. She blocked the subsequent kick with her forearm and heard a bone crack with the impact. Spinning low, she swept his feet, but he used the momentum to flip in an impossible twisting flurry of kicks. Rain sprayed from him in a cloud, a fog of blurred motion.
Mya blocked two of the kicks with one arm, then spun to block his sweeping fist. It was only then that she realized it had been her bone she heard cracking. Her broken forearm met Lad’s blow before she could pull back. Bone splintered and lanced through her flesh, shredding her wrappings and her shirt in a spray of blood. She gaped for an instant at the shards of bone, the torn meat—her bones, her flesh—but no pain.
In her split-second of inattention, the edge of Lad’s foot caught her cheekbone, and she felt the orbit of her eye disintegrate. Her vision went dark on one side.
A fleeting moment of panic surged through her. She was hurt! She should feel pain, should feel something! He’s going to kill me, and I’m not going to feel a thing!
Yet even through the haze of panic, her training held true. Mya caught Lad’s next kick in the crook of her unbroken arm and twisted inside his guard, slamming her elbow into his midriff.
Don’t kill him!
At the last instant, she pulled most of the force of the blow. Her elbow met with his solar plexus, but didn’t rupture any organs or snap his spine. The impact was, however, hard enough to stun someone not inured to pain. She spun away.
Lad crouched, gasping but poised, his piercing eyes fixed on her.
Mya glanced down with her good eye at the bloody bone sticking out through her torn sleeve, and her stomach flipped. She should be screaming in pain, but she felt nothing, and the lack of sensation made her want to retch. Unlike Lad, who had grown up with the magic blocking his pain and healing every wound, she had not. She knew pain, had felt bones break, had watched her own flesh part under a knife like water before the prow of a ship, and felt the searing agony in its wake.
This isn’t right…
She gritted her teeth against the imagined agony and straightened her arm, pulling hard to realign the bones. They snapped into place, and she watched as the cracked bone smoothed and the bloody muscles writhed together. Her skin pulled closed and puckered into a rapidly fading scar. Her runic tattoos glittered across her skin before the enchanted wrappings sealed themselves, enveloping her once again in her secretive cocoon.
Mya heard Lad’s gasp, and knew he’d seen her secret, but she couldn’t pay attention to him right now. She felt the bones of her cheek realigning, and reached up to feel something dangling from the void of her shattered eye socket. Round and wet, she knew what it was. Swallowing a surge of nausea, a visceral swell of wrongness—Not human… Monster…—she popped her eye back into the healing soc
ket. By the time she blinked twice, she could see again.
“What have you done?” Lad’s tone mirrored her horror.
“What?” Mya squared her shoulders and met his scorn with her own. “Don’t you dare judge me! All I did was protect myself.”
“You’ve made yourself into him! You’ve made yourself into the Grandfather!”
“I saw a weapon to wield and I took it.” She felt a stab of conscience. This was why she hadn’t told him. He didn’t understand. He was right, but he was also wrong about her. He didn’t know her. Not really.
“You murdered Vonlith,” he breathed, “just to protect your secret.”
Mya glanced over her shoulder toward the figures huddled on the inn’s porch. She and Lad were far enough away for the rain to obscure their voices. Noticing her glance, Lad rose from his crouch and circled until he stood between her and his family.
“Vonlith was a threat to me. He could suspend my magic, just like he did when you killed the Grandfather. I ended that threat.”
“You make it sound so simple! So easy! Logical even!” He wiped blood from the back of his hand, and she saw the wound where her broken bones had lacerated him. “He saved your life, both our lives, and you thanked him by putting a dagger in his brain!”
“How can you feel compassion for the man who was ready to make you a slave for the Grandfather?” She pointed to the tattoos they both knew marked his torso. “He would have made you a murderer again. He only saved us to keep my dagger out of his heart.”
“So you murdered an innocent man.”
“Innocent?” She laughed a ragged peal at his naïveté. “Nobody’s innocent, Lad. We’re all guilty of something. I’m an assassin; murder is my business. But you! Telling yourself you’re a husband and father is just foolish! It only makes you vulnerable and puts them in danger. Don’t deny what you truly are!”
“I am not like you, Mya.” The pain in his voice told her she’d struck a telling blow.
“You’re more like me than you are like them!” She shot another glance at the cowering people on the porch, reveled in the fear on their faces. Damn right, you should fear me! “You tell yourself you love them, but all that does is put you and them at risk. You blame assassins for taking your daughter, when it’s you who’s to blame!”
“You’re wrong, Mya!” His tone changed. His voice was fuller now, more confident, stronger. “You think my family makes me weak, but you’re wrong. They make me strong. They make me human. Without them, I’m nothing but a weapon. Without them, I’m like you.”
He’s more human than I am. The thought staggered Mya, blinded her for an instant, but she denied it. “I’m not a weapon, Lad. I wield the weapons.”
“Tell yourself the truth for once, Mya. Has not loving anyone made you safe? Has it made you whole?” His scornful gaze raked her from head to foot, hurting her like no blow or blade ever could. “Has betraying me made you feel like a real person?”
“I didn’t betray you, Lad.” He didn’t understand her. Or wouldn’t. “Why would I? I need you.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “Like you said, you’ve got your weapons. You’re safe now. You don’t need me.”
“I…” Love him? Do I? Can I?
Mya knew the answer, but clenched her teeth against the words she couldn’t say, and thanked the rain for hiding her tears. Glancing over his shoulder, she saw his family watching Lad with fear, pain…and love, plain on their faces. He had more in them than she would ever have from anyone. That’s what I want. That’s what I need. But she couldn’t tell him, not now. “I need someone I can trust, Lad. A friend.”
“You’ve already lost that, Mya.”
“Have I?” Mya looked into his eyes, those eyes like chips of mica framed in white, and her soul shuddered. He was right; she had lost his friendship. But there might be a way she could get it back, get him back. “I may have lost your trust, Lad, but you’ve lost something, too. And if you want her back, you need my help.”
Lad sneered at her and flexed his hands, as if imagining them around her throat. “You offer to help me get my daughter back? Why should you care about my family?”
She flinched as his words struck her. Family…
Mya recalled the day she walked out of her mother’s home for the last time. She looked down at her hands. The blood was still there. There wasn’t enough rain in the world to wash it away.
Murderer!
She deserved it.
She was your mother! Your family!
She hurt me…too much. What was I supposed to do, die for her?
Yes.
NO. She didn’t love me!
But you loved her!
Mya looked at the pain and loss in Lad’s eyes and she realized what she had done. She should have known—had known—that they would go after his family, and she’d done nothing. She’d allowed her enemies to destroy his family because she couldn’t have one. Unconsciously perhaps, but that was no excuse. He was right.
“Why should I care? Because you’re right about me, Lad,” she whispered. “You’re right about what matters. Family. Love. Things I’ve never had and never will.”
There it was. The truth. She nodded again over his shoulder at the people who loved him, the people who hated her, feared her. A pit of longing opened up in her heart, and for once, she didn’t deny it.
“I thought strength and speed would protect me, but they haven’t. Not from what’s important, from what really matters. Not from what can really hurt me.” She reached down and ripped the wrappings away from her forearm, displaying the black runes etched into her flesh, bearing her soul to the weeping sky. “Power is a lie, Lad. It makes you feel safe, but it doesn’t make you safe.” She let the torn wrappings fall, and they slithered back into place like dark serpents. “It only makes you a slave to the power. That’s why I burned the Grandmaster’s letter. That’s why I want to help you get your daughter back.”
“I don’t trust you, Mya.”
“Then don’t, but I’m the only one who can do this for you, Lad.” Mya smiled then, the whole situation striking a chord of irony in her cynical mind. “You said it yourself. I think like them. I know them. I know what they’ll do.”
“How do you know?”
She laughed derisively. “Because I know what I would do.”
“I don’t need your help, Mya. I don’t want it.” Turning his back on her, he walked away.
His denial struck her yet another blow.
“You can’t do it alone, Lad!” she shouted at his back, wiping the tears and rain from her face. “You need me!”
Still he walked away, climbing the steps to his family, his loved ones.
“Godsdamnit, I’m going to help you whether you want me to or not!” she vowed, but all she got in response was the slam of the door.
Chapter XXI
This is all Mya’s fault and she says she wants to help!” Wiggen paced in front of the fireplace, her anger growing with every turn she made. “Why didn’t you kill her, Lad?”
Lad couldn’t believe Wiggen’s venomous question. His sweet wife, the woman who taught him that killing was wrong, was now out for blood. Startled, he jerked his hand as Josie finished stitching his wound. Josie flinched and shied away, and he sighed inwardly. She had been fearful of him since witnessing his fight with Mya, and he couldn’t blame her.
He considered Wiggen’s question. In fact, in his rage he had been trying to kill Mya, and only her elbow to his midriff had stopped him. That blow could have killed him, would have killed him if she had wanted it to. Then the shock of seeing the dark tattoos etched on Mya’s pale skin… In hindsight, he should have suspected—her evasions about Vonlith’s death, the ease with which she killed the two assassins, her feeble excuse of training—but this was Mya. She had reviled the Grandfather, and now she was following in his path. Is that why she fought tooth and nail to avoid becoming the next guildmaster? Was she afraid that putting a guildmaster’s ring on her finger would
complete the transformation? But as wrong as Mya might have been in her actions, she was right about one thing.
“I couldn’t kill her, Wiggen,” he said. “We might need her help.”
Wiggen stopped pacing and stared at Lad, a look of utter shock on her face. “You want to ask her for help?”
“It’s not a matter of what I want, Wiggen, it’s a matter of what we might have to do to get Lissa back. I didn’t anticipate this. I didn’t anticipate a lot of things. But Mya knows how the other masters think. She might be the only—”
“It’s her fault they took Lissa!” she protested. “If you didn’t work for Mya, this wouldn’t have happened. If Mya hadn’t angered the other masters, this wouldn’t have happened. You told me that, Lad! She brought this on herself, and we’re the ones paying for her mistakes.”
The accusation in Wiggen’s tone lashed him, though he knew it was directed toward Mya. This is my fault. I’ve got to make it right.
“Supper!” Forbish announced, backing through the swinging kitchen door with a huge tray in his hands. The food had been intended for the guests, but after the attack, the innkeeper had refunded their money and urged them to find other lodgings. Needless to say, all had been eager to go.
“I swear to all the Gods of Light, all he ever thinks about is food!” Josie finished wrapping Lad’s hand and gathered up her supplies.
“We’ve all got our jobs. Mine is making sure everyone stays fed.” Forbish placed the heavy tray on the table, then lifted a huge pitcher and started filling tankards. “I thought everyone could use a spot of ale, too. I drew a pot for us.” He held one out to Wiggen.
“No, thank you, Father.” She crossed her arms, her face hard. “And I’m not hungry.”
The front door opened, and Tika and Ponce entered, dripping and dour.
“Two codgers with a cart came and took the dead assassin,” Tika said.
“We locked and barred the gate behind them,” Ponce added.
Tika reached for a tankard and passed it to his brother, then took one for himself. The twins had been uncharacteristically quiet since Lad’s fight with Mya, obeying the orders given them without their usual banter.
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