Bared Blade (17 page)

Vala nodded and her new red curls tumbled down around her shoulders. “That’s going to get really old, really fast.” She swept her hair up back off her face, twisting it into a knot on the back of her head for about the fifth time. “I may have to find a pair of scissors before the day gets too much older.”

“What if you want to go back to looking like the old you later?” I asked. Triss kept sliding back and forth along the ceiling to get a better look at both Stel and Vala. He’d just slipped around behind them when I asked my question.

Vala took a careful sip of the Kyle’s, holding it in her mouth for a couple of beats before swallowing, then passed
the bottle over to me. I imagined what it would be like to kiss her then, with the whiskey fresh and sweet on her tongue.

“The bonewright’s really not that precise,” said Vala. “Between the vagaries of memory and the lack of fine control on the spell, about the best you can hope for is to get to a place where you look like a sister to the old you.”

“Some of the older eavesmen probably don’t even
remember
what they originally looked like anymore,” said Stel. “They’ve changed their face so many times. Names, too. It’s a strange sort of life. Why didn’t you change your name, Aral? I’d think here of all places that would have been the easy thing to do.”

I took a long pull on the bottle while I thought about how to answer that. It wasn’t my first drink, and the bottle was already looking a lot emptier than it had when we opened it. It had been a while since I’d had this much alcohol this fast, and it was hitting me hard. I brought the bottle away from my lips and started to roll it between my palms, just under my nose, letting the rough peaty smell waft over me. It wasn’t an easy question, and all the answers I had were hard ones. Triss had frozen when Stel asked it, and now he was peering worriedly my way from behind Vala’s back.

It was him I addressed when I spoke next. “I’d like to say it was stupid or habit or some other mistake on my part, but that’d be a lie. I guess the honest answer is that I
wanted
to die. I was away on a mission when the other gods decided to destroy Namara. When I came home, I found my goddess murdered, my friends dead or taken, the temple that was my home pulled down, the grounds sown with salt.…” I could feel tears burning down my cheeks and my will breaking, so I took another drink—this had needed saying for a long time, though I hadn’t realized it until then.

Triss slid down from the ceiling, and came to curl around my ankles.

“At that moment I thought that everything I’d cared about or believed in had failed, that there was no point in going on. I wanted more than anything to have died in defense of my goddess. At least then I would have been with my
friends …no, my family. It was almost worse that I’d been successful in my assignment, because it seemed like such a pointless victory. There I’d been, in Gat, satisfied at having performed my duty to my goddess, happy even, when I should have been in Varya fighting to save her. If not for Triss I’d have probably opened my veins beside the sacred pool, a last offering to a dead goddess.”

Vala leaned forward and touched my knee. “I’m sorry we asked, Aral. I’m sure Stel had no idea.…”

Stel turned around so that both of them were facing me, a very rare occurrence. “I’m sorry, too.” Her voice was small and quiet, contrite. “I guess if I thought about it at all, it seemed kind of romantic. Aral Kingslayer, last Blade of Namara, still fighting for justice and the right, refusing to hide his identity even in the heart of enemy territory. What I should have been thinking about was what I’d feel like if I came home to find the Citadel a smoking ruin and all my friends and family dead. I’m a fucking idiot.”

I shook my head. “It’s all right. It wouldn’t have been even a year ago, but it’s all right now.” And it was, a fact that surprised me. The wound was still there, but it was no longer actively bleeding. “It’s a reasonable question. It’s not your fault that it doesn’t have a reasonable answer. I did it because I wanted to die but couldn’t just kill myself because of what that would mean to Triss. I couldn’t even admit to myself that was what I wanted without betraying our bond.”

I shrugged. “Maybe lying to myself like that is part of why it took me so long to crawl out of the bottle. Speaking of which—” I handed the Kyle’s to Vala and dusted my hands together. “You can have the rest. I want it too much to dare drink any more.”

I did, too. I could feel the ache in my chest at letting the bottle go. It cost me. The only thing I wanted more was a nice hot cup of efik, but I knew if I started down
that
road again, I’d never get off.

Vala sighed. “It’s not very nice of you to go all responsible like that. It sets a terrible example. Fortunately, I’m immune.” She lifted the bottle to her lips then froze.

“How much have you two had to drink?” a very muzzy sounding VoS said through Stel’s lips.

Vala, or more likely, VoS corked the bottle and put it on the floor. “I take one little nap and I wake up to find my heads packed full of cobwebs spun by tipsy spiders.”

“We didn’t drink
that
much!” Stel sounded rather like a teenager caught behind the shed with a bottle of cheap sake. “We were going to wake you up soon, weren’t we, Vala?”

VoS turned her Vala head my way and rolled her eyes. “You’d think they’d learn how very silly it is to try to lie to the voice in their heads, but somehow they never do.”

Triss lifted his head off my lap and looked the Dyad over quizzically. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re wondering how I can be asleep when they’re awake?” said VoS. “It’s the bonewright. Nasty, nasty spell.”

“I can feel Stel’s pain,” said Vala.

Stel nodded. “And vice versa. In theory, I could also feel Vala’s pain at feeling my pain, and so on in an infinite recursive loop that would incapacitate both of us. Part of the reason the Meld exists is to act as a coping mechanism to shut those loops down.”

“Now I’m a coping mechanism,” muttered VoS. “I like that.”

Stel gave VoS in Vala a hard look.

“Oh, all right.” VoS shrugged Vala’s shoulders. “It’s true enough as far as it goes, which isn’t even halfway to encompassing all that I am.”

“What that means,” said Stel, as if VoS hadn’t interrupted, “is that VoS sometimes gets a double or even triple dose of what Vala and I are feeling. Because of the level of magical and mental commitment that the bonewright takes, Melds can really get hammered as a side effect.”

“When the spell was finished, so was I,” agreed VoS. “At least for a little while.”

Vala winked at me. “Which is how we came to enjoy a half hour of uninterrupted peace, and a couple of drinks with a handsome Blade.”

Then she snorted, or rather VoS did, and shook her head.
“Motes, can’t live with ’em, can’t Meld without ’em. But downtime is over now. We need to get back to work.” She looked at me. “You’re the expert on Tien, Blade. Where do we go to find the girl, Reyna.”

“It’s ‘Jack’ these days,” I replied, “not Blade. And this is where the legwork starts. If your Reyna really does have the Kothmerk, as seems likely, and she doesn’t want to keep it for her very own, she’s going to need to find a buyer.” Again, I thought of Fei’s corpse, and wondered if she hadn’t already tried—there was only one way to find out. Footwork. “I’ll start by talking to a few of my night market contacts in case I get lucky.” I had my doubts about how much I’d get from them, but I figured I’d give it a go before I brought that up.

VoS nodded both of her heads. “Then, let’s go.” She started putting on her leather vests.

“You’re not going anywhere. Also, I’m going to need some cash to buy drinks and grease palms.”

“You’re wrong you know,” said VoS.

“About what?”

“We are coming with you.”

“One, it’s too risky. You’ve only just changed your appearances and now you want to be seen with me again? Two, I’ll get better information if I’m alone.”

“I’m going with you,” said VoS. “We can always do the bonewright again if we have to.” She sounded absolutely firm and calm, though both Vala and Stel winced at that suggestion. “We can have a huge time-consuming argument about this, but the results are going to be the same either way. I’m coming with you.”

“Give me one good reason.”

“You just told us how much trouble you had giving up this bottle.” She held it up. “Now you want me to hand you a large sum of money to go fishing through the bars of Tien. Don’t you think that would be better done with a little bit of extra backup?”

I thought about her earlier protestations of absolute faith in who and what I was and how this new argument showed
a distinct loss of some of that faith. Then I looked at the bottle, and thought about how much I wanted another drink.

“You might have a point,” I said.

So, the Dyad no longer trusted me completely. That was only fair. I didn’t fully trust her either.

Stel reached under the tail of her shirt and pulled out a heavy purse, tossing it over to me. “Then lead the way.”

“
Look
, Ashelia, I know this isn’t your dodge, but I thought you might be able to tell me who to touch for that kind of thing these days.”

The smuggler leaned in close as she patted me on the cheek. “Aral, you know I love you, right? You’ve been a great runner for me in the past, but right now? You’re pure fucking poison. The Howlers have your picture up on every wall from here to godsdamned Kadesh and the price on your head would buy a house in a good neighborhood.”

“I need this—” I began.

But Ashelia cut me off. “I don’t even want to be seen talking to you, much less give you anything that could be traced back to me. I’m sorry, but it’s just not going to happen. In fact, in about two beats I’m going to throw my drink in your face. If you ever want to work with me again, you’re going to play along by swearing at me as I walk away.”

So I closed my eyes and my mouth and breathed out through my nose when she threw the rice-white in my face—you really don’t want that shit in your sinuses—and then I hissed obscenities at her back as she sashayed away. After that, I wiped myself off, picked my drink off the Busted Harp’s bar, and crossed the common room to sit down at a small table that backed the one where Vala was fending off her third proposition in as many minutes.

This time she used a well-placed boot and a flashed knife to get the message across. It seemed to deter the rest of the crowd as well, at least for a little while, because a space opened up around her and stayed open. Stel had taken up a
standing position by the bar so she could back me up if I had any trouble with Ashelia, and there she remained for now. We were doing everything we could to make it look like Vala was with me if she was with anybody and that she and Stel had no relationship to each other.

“That went well,” Vala whispered to me as I leaned back in my chair so that our shoulders were only a few inches apart. “If I’d known you were so popular, I might have picked a different jack.”

“If you’d picked a different jack, I wouldn’t be having these problems.” The Harp was the third tavern we’d hit that night and Ashelia was the fifth shadowside player who’d frozen me out. “It’s the Howlers that are the sticking point. If it was just the Stingers that wanted me, I’d be getting somewhere. Stinger attention’s just part of the price of doing business.”

“Stingers? Howlers?”

“Sorry.” I chuckled. “When I slip on my shadow-jack face for the locals I tend to fall into the argot. Howlers are the Elite, named for their stone dogs and the way they pursue their prey like a hound. And the city watch wears black and gold, like wasps or bees. Hence, ‘Stingers.’”

“All right. So no one will talk to you right now because of the Howlers. Is that going to get any better as we go along, or do we need to try a different approach?”

“Maybe. I thought I might get somewhere with Ashelia, since she’s been a bit sweet on me in the past. But apparently that’s not enough. What I need is to find someone who owes me big for past favors. Clubfoot Tan or Monkeygirl would have to talk to me, but I wouldn’t bet on them knowing what I want. Issa Fivegoats would be perfect since he’s a sellcinders himself.”

Stel gave me a quizzical tilt of her head, so I elaborated. “A sellcinders is someone who deals in hot merchandise. Fivegoats is mostly a low merchant, but he knows people who deal with the serious rarities. He’s definitely my best bet for information.”

“Great,” said Vala. “Where do we find him?”

“At this point? Probably under a rock somewhere. He’ll be hiding from me.”

“He will?”

“Yep. People have seen me out and about. With the size of the price on my head, that’ll get around.” I couldn’t see Vala’s response, but Stel’s head turned my way at that. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m being careful about which dives we visit. Nobody around here’s going to run to the Howlers, because none of ’em want the Howlers to have a reason to remember their faces. But that’s not going to keep the word from getting spread.”

“I thought you said this Fivegoats guy owed you?”

“He does. That’s why he’s hiding. If I can find him I can call in the note, but if I can’t, he’s off the hook. Since I’m poison right now, he’s not going to want to be seen with me. Hell, if he can stay out of my way until the Howlers pinch me, he’s got a good chance of writing off the debt all together. Nobody shadowside owes nothing to the heads hanging above traitors gate.”

“That’s a pretty ugly way of looking at things. And these people are your friends?”

“Not really. In Tien, shadowsiders don’t really have friends, or at least not many. What we have is professional relationships and debts. Even where there’s some genuine affection, business trumps emotion. Take Ashelia. She’s let me know more than once that she’d like to have me as a long-term bunk-mate, and I’ve been more than half tempted from time to time. But the main reason she talked to me tonight was to find out what I want. Then she can sell my questions to anyone who’ll deal for them.”

“So how are we going to get anywhere?” It was VoS speaking this time, and she sounded really disheartened.

“By digging Fivegoats out from under his rock.” I grinned and raised my drink in Stel’s general direction. “One of the reasons I’m not being a whole lot quieter about my questions is exactly so that word gets out and scares people like Issa enough to make ’em pull a fadeout.”