“And what, exactly?” she demanded, turning back to the Speaker, her eyes flashing with fury. “That’s supposed to somehow make up for a lifetime of suffering the cruelties, large and small, that he could have prevented?”
Leomin swallowed hard and rose. “Seline, I confess that I don’t know what this is about, but perhaps if we were to talk ab—”
“Stay out of this, Leomin,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. Nothing is going to keep me from giving this bastard what he deserves.”
The Speaker stared at her, and there was no fear in his gaze, only a deep, abiding sadness. “I am truly sorry, daughter, for how I have wronged you.”
“You’re sorry?” she asked in a voice that was half a scream. “You’re sorry? And stop looking at me like that! Do you think it will somehow save you?” She shook her head. “No. Nothing will save you now—for years, I have been hunting you, following any rumor, any sign, and no matter what happens to me after, you will die for what you’ve done.”
“You will not be harmed, Daughter,” the Speaker said. “Come what may.”
“Stop that, damn you!” she screeched, her hand shaking in earnest now where it gripped the blade. “Do you think I won’t do it? That I don’t have it in me? I have killed before, Father,” she spat. “Men who deserved it much less than you.”
“I know,” the Speaker said. “For the truth of it is in your eyes. It is no easy thing to take a man’s life.” He studied her, his face full of compassion. “I am so very sorry, Daughter, for what has been done to you—for what you have had to do.”
“I don’t need your damned apologies,” she said. “I needed a father.”
“Yes,” the Speaker said. “Yet I am Akalian, young one. We are no one’s family—we are merely shadows, not part of the world and its cities, and could not be even if we wished it. Kill me, if you must. If you believe it will heal that which is broken inside you—I will not resist.”
It’s as if the bastard wants to die, Aaron thought, frustrated. He saw the woman’s hesitation and, through his bond with Co, felt it the moment she decided. “Wait!” he yelled, and she froze, turning her head to look at him.
“This is none of your concern.” Seline said through gritted teeth.
Aaron met the Speaker’s eyes and saw the pleading there, saw him begging him, without words, to keep secret the words that had passed between them. He grunted, suddenly angry. “Look,” he said, turning to the girl. “The world’s treated you bad. Well, what of it? You’re young, lady, so maybe you haven’t figured it out yet, but that’s what the world does. It allows us to be born, so it might come up with new ways to torture us, new ways to use us. What, you think you’re the only person here that life’s fucked over?” He snorted. “Woman, you’re not the exception—you’re the rule. There’s thousands of assholes just like you, millions, each with their own sob story, each nursing some grudge, blaming someone else for the shit hand life’s dealt them.”
Her eyes snapped wide at that, as if he’d struck her. “You…how dare you—”
“Because I’m just one more asshole,” he said. “That’s how.” He glanced at Adina and the others, strangers only a year gone, yet now he would have given his life for any of them. “Only,” he said, meeting the woman’s eyes once more. “The difference is that I was a bigger prick than you’ve ever thought of being. I walked around each day with my grudges stacked high on my shoulders, so high I could sometimes barely move for the weight of them. I turned my life into a quest to wrong not just those who had wronged me, but everyone, everything, that I came into contact with.”
“Let me guess,” she sneered, “you met some friends, maybe a woman, and decided that the world wasn’t such a bad place after all, is that it?”
Aaron laughed. “Lady, the world is a shithole. It always has been, and it’ll continue to be long after you and I are dust in our graves. But you’re not far wrong. I did meet people. A woman. Friends. And they showed me that though the world might be cruel, that didn’t mean I had to be. They showed me that there’s another way. A better way. That there are people in the world just like me, doing what they can to survive and that, what’s more, many of those people are good people, the kind who reach down to help a stranger to his feet, if he falls.” He turned and met Adina’s gaze. “The kind who treat a man like a person, no matter how much he acts like a monster.”
“Nice speech, but that doesn’t change what he did,” Seline said, the knife shaking in her hand once more.
“No, it doesn’t,” Aaron admitted, reaching out tentatively with the power of his Virtue, more carefully than normal, for the woman was in a high state of stress and, what’s more, had obviously bonded with the Virtue of Speed. He’d learned over the time spent with Leomin and the others that those who’d bonded with a Virtue of their own proved particularly resistant to the influence of the others.
Still, light touch or not, it was enough for him to feel the roiling cloud of emotion within her, like some ever-raging storm threatening to destroy everything in its path. “Listen to me, Seline,” he said, allowing the barest hint of the power of the bond to be carried on his words. “Life isn’t easy—no one ever said it would be. And we can always find someone to blame, if that’s what we’re looking for. A man who trips in the street might blame the cobbler who fashioned his shoes, might blame the city officials for their poor roads, or any of a thousand other people. But what serves the man best is picking himself up and getting back on his way—whatever way that is.”
A portion of the wild rage left her eyes as she listened to his words, as the power of his bond with Co did its work, and her gaze softened a fraction. “I don’t have a way…without this, without him,” she said, gesturing with the blade to her father. “I don’t know where I’m going—I don’t even know who I am.”
“Well, welcome to the world, lady. Few enough of us know who we are, and none of us know where we’re going. What I’ve learned over the last few months, though, is that all we can do is try to hurt as few as we can while getting there, leaving what small good we can behind us when we’ve gone.”
“You sound like a priest or a monk,” she sneered. “Too scared to tread on the grass, lest you accidentally step on some bug and kill it.”
Aaron laughed at that—he couldn’t help it. He laughed long and hard, and it felt good. He’d been called a lot of things in his time—few enough of them good—but he’d never been called a priest or a monk before. “Lady, you’ve got me all wrong.” He sobered slowly, wiping at the tears the laughter had brought to his eyes. “Anyway, I’m not saying you should just roll over and let the world take what it wants, because the world wants everything you’ve got and then some, and the only way to keep any of it to yourself is to hold on tight, to fight when you have to. And sometimes you do have to. For all I said about most people just trying to get along, to survive the best way they know how, there are monsters walking among us—I should know. I’ve met them. And when a reasoning man—or woman—meets one such as that, the only thing he or she can do is fight. But whatever that man is,” he said, gesturing to the Speaker, “and the truth of the matter is I’m not sure myself, I know enough to know he’s no monster.”
She stared at Aaron in silence for several long moments, no one else daring to speak. Then, she seemed to shrink in on herself, to somehow become smaller, become less. The arm holding the blade fell limply to her side, and the knife clattered to the floor. Then, without a word, she turned and walked out.
Leomin made to rise, but Gryle grabbed his hand, stopping him. “Forgive me, Leomin, but perhaps now isn’t the best time to—”
“Let him go,” Aaron said, suddenly very tired. The chamberlain turned a questioning look on him, and the sellsword nodded. “I’d tread lightly, Leomin,” he said to the Parnen. “She won’t want to have anyone around right now.” That he knew for a certainty, for he recognized some bit of himself in her, saw reflected in that broken gaze the same
hopelessness that he had carried for so long. Leomin needed no more permission than that, and in another moment he was hurrying after the woman.
“But,” Gryle said, obviously embarrassed at even coming this close to arguing with Aaron. “If you know she doesn’t want people around…”
“Right now, what she wants and what she needs are two very different things, Chamberlain. Trust me—I’ve visited the dark place she’s in. Shit,” he said, sighing, “I lived there.”
He turned to the Speaker then, meeting the man’s gaze, and he found that he was more than a little angry. The Akalian had stood there willing to die, willing to let his own daughter murder him, to keep his secrets, and for what? “You should have told her,” Aaron said. “Damn you, she could have walked out of here with her head held high, with a father, instead of slinking away like some beaten dog.”
If the Speaker noticed the anger in Aaron’s tone, he did not show it. Instead, he only nodded. “Yes, but it is best this way.”
“Why?” Aaron demanded. “Why is it better that your daughter thinks her father has always hated her than for her to know the truth? Why are you so worried about your own fucking secrets that you won’t even spare her the pain she’s feeling? You could have given her her father back, damn you.”
“Yes,” the Akalian said, his voice sad. “But I would give him back to her only to take him away again, and I am not so cruel as that.”
Aaron frowned, caught off-guard. “What are you talking about?”
The Speaker swept the room with his gaze, taking in Aaron and the others, apparently unconcerned with the trickle of blood running down his throat. “You have all decided, together, that the magi must be defeated, and you are right in this, for if left to his own devices, he will not stop until all of Telrear is brought low beneath him. It is for this reason that I and my brothers—” he paused, gesturing to the Akalians in the room, “—have dedicated our lives to stopping him, to ferreting him and his followers out wherever they hide and doing what we must to keep the world safe from the horrors they would visit upon it.”
“Wait a minute,” Adina said, her surprise clear in her voice. “Do you mean that, all along, the purpose of the Akalians—”
“Has been to stand against the magi and his evil. Yes,” the Speaker said. “It is a charge which my people and I have taken upon ourselves since the days of Caltriss, since the magi, in his madness at the loss of his friend and, in his broken vanity at the spell’s failure, cast himself from the castle’s parapet to be shattered upon the ground beneath. To shatter, but not to die, for as I think you know well, he is a difficult man to kill.”
Aaron snorted. “Saying he’s a difficult man to kill is like saying fish have a hard time flying, but I take your point. Still, that doesn’t explain why you left the girl in the dark, and what you meant by saying you would take her father from her.”
The man gave him a small, sad smile. “Because soon, Aaron Envelar, I will die. I and what remains of my brothers will pass from this world into the realm of Shadow, and the Akalians will be no more. For thousands of years we have battled the magi and his twisted creations, the Lifeless, but we will not survive to see another year pass, I think.”
“Your god tell you that, did he?” Aaron demanded, annoyed. It seemed the man had a death wish, and he was bound and determined to see it through. “Or maybe all Akalians are just fortune tellers, is that it? If so, I’ve got a friend who’d love to invite you to accompany him for a game of cards or two.”
Wendell grinned. “That’d put a frown on that bastard swordmaster’s face right enough.”
“We are not fortune tellers,” the Speaker said calmly, as if the sergeant had never spoken. “Nor, has the Dark One forewarned me of my death, for such knowledge is too great for mortals to bear. Now, you would march upon Baresh. You have sought some means of entering the city without bringing death to those innocents who are imprisoned within its walls, have you not?”
Aaron rubbed at his temples where a headache was beginning to form. It seemed that the man couldn’t stay on one topic, and he was reminded of the first time he’d met Leomin. “Yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything,” the Speaker said. “At least, that is, so far as myself and my brothers are concerned. For it is we who will open the gate for you.”
“Oh yeah?” Aaron said. “All two dozen of you, is that it? While you’re at it, how about you just go ahead and defeat Kevlane and his armies, save us all a trip? There’s no way to get the gate open from the outside short of battering it down. It’s reinforced all to shit. We’d be better off trying to break a hole in the outer wall.”
“He’s right,” Caleb said, speaking up for the first time and glancing timidly around at those gathered as if waiting for someone to call him down. When no one did, he went on. “The gate has been reinforced with metal plates, and flanking towers sit on either side. Any man approaching the gate will be forced to endure withering crossbow fire and, I suspect, much worse than that, given what we’ve seen of the force Kevlane can bring to bear.”
“I know well of the gate, and the difficulties it represents,” the Speaker said, bowing his head to the youth. “And I thank you for your input. You carry the Virtue of Intelligence well. Yet, even so, we will open the gate—it has been done before. I myself led the party which opened the gates of Yasidra and razed it to the ground.”
The youth’s face grew pale, and he made a strangled sound in his throat. The chamberlain reacted similarly, his face twisting in confusion. “But…that can’t be right. That…that’s impossible.”
“See?” Aaron said, turning back to the Speaker. “Look, I’ve seen your men fight, and if it was a matter of skill with the sword, I wouldn’t doubt you for an instant. But the gate will not be broken, and the city walls are fifty feet high or more, and I don’t doubt that the battlements will be crawling with Kevlane’s—”
“Yasidra?” Gryle breathed, staring at the Speaker with an awe-filled expression on his face, apparently unaware that Aaron had been speaking at all. “Did I hear you wrong?”
“No, strong one,” the Speaker said, turning to the chamberlain. “You did not.”
“What difference does it make what castle it was?” Aaron asked, frowning as he looked between the two men. “That doesn’t change anything about Baresh. It’s still impossible.”
“You…forgive me, Mr. Envelar,” Gryle said in a voice little more than a whisper, “but you don’t understand. Yasidra and its razing are famous—or, perhaps, infamous is a better word. You see,” he said, glancing at Caleb who nodded, looking as if he might be sick, “the lord and lady of the castle were minor noblemen at the time with no fortune or powerful army to speak of. Yet they were rarely ever accosted and, for the most part, they were left to their own devices. This because their castle was believed impregnable. It was also, as it happens, the reason why its lord and lady had no fortune, for what fortune they had—a significant one, I assure you—they spent on the fortress’s creation and maintenance, and it boasted walls higher and thicker than any fortress before or since. Still, for all its reputation of being unconquerable, the castle itself sat in a particularly infertile part of the land, surrounded by scant woods and bogs which made growing any crops or raising livestock difficult.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate the history lesson, Gryle,” Aaron said, turning to look at the Speaker, “and not that I’m not impressed, but no matter how defensible the castle was, it wasn’t filled with creatures that can run faster than a horse can gallop, or others that could throw the same horse the way a child might throw a pebble, if they had a mind.”
The Speaker nodded his head to Aaron as if to concede a point, but Gryle wasn’t finished. “You are right, of course, Mr. Envelar. There is no proof.” He glanced at the Speaker as if seeing if the man would correct him before going on, “nor is there any indication that such creatures as Kevlane’s succored behind its walls. But those that did were crue
l enough.” He cleared his throat, his face taking on a greenish tinge. “You see, Mr. Envelar, as I’ve said, food was scarce in that region, and at some time—nobody knows exactly when—the lord and lady of the house began to…supplement what the farms and livestock of the villagers were able to provide.”
“Supplement?” Aaron asked. “What in the name of the gods are you talking about, Gryle? Supplement how?”
But the chamberlain’s hand was held to his mouth as if he might be sick. “With the villagers themselves,” the Speaker said, and this time there was a hardness in his tone that spoke of an old burning anger, one that had not yet been extinguished by the passing of time.
Gryle nodded, clearing his throat and seeming to master himself. “Perhaps, the lord and lady of the house first started…” He paused, taking a slow breath before continuing. “…Partaking of the villagers out of what they deemed necessity. Some theorize that in such an infertile region, they would have had little choice. Still, no one knows for sure—all we know is that the people of Yasidra soon became livestock themselves, and though the city’s army was not formidable, it was enough to keep any man, woman, or child from escaping its walls. Regardless of their reasons, it is agreed that the lord and lady of the house became quite mad, glutting themselves daily on the flesh of those subjects they were meant to protect.”
He shook his head sadly. “Yet their atrocities remained hidden for many months until, finally, a guardsman fled from the city, bringing news of the terrors being visited upon its people to the outside world. At first, the king doubted the man’s claims, and why not? For though Lord Wayren, the ruler of Yasidra, was not often seen at court and did not rank high on the king’s list of favored noblemen, Lady Wayren was his cousin, and it is said he had many fond memories of her from when they were children. In any event, letters were promptly sent to inquire after the veracity of the guardsman’s tale. It would have been an easy enough thing, I suspect, for the lord and lady to put on airs, to disguise those terrible crimes which had been committed within the city’s walls, but they were too far taken by the madness by then, and no response—nor the messengers themselves—ever returned.”
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