Crossed Blades (7 page)

“And all were taken?” demanded Triss.

“No. The attack came in the city of Tavan, during a mission, not at the school. They got Loris and four of our eldest journeymen—they’d be masters by now if Namara had lived to name them so, Maryam, Leyan, Javan, and Roric.”

That hurt. I didn’t remember Javan or Maryam very well, but Leyan was a wonderful girl, and very good with the garrote. Too young for me to have spent much time with her, but I very much liked what I’d seen of her. Roric, too, a huge bearlike boy who still managed to move with a cat’s grace.

“What were they doing in the Magelands?”

“We’d heard of a daring young thief and spy working out of Tavan, and it sounded like it might be one of our last four lost apprentices. Loris and the others went to see if they could find out more, but ran into a cohort of the Hand instead of the missing apprentice.”

“Ugly,” I said. “When did this happen?”

“A few weeks ago. I’d been considering trying to break Loris free with the help of our three remaining older journeymen, but I couldn’t make the odds work no matter how much I wanted to. This is the Hand, the force that destroyed the temple and more than a hundred Blades. My students aren’t ready to face that. They simply haven’t had the real-world experience in dealing with the problems that kind of raid would encounter. That’s why, when I heard about your presence here in Tien, it seemed like a sign sent by a kindly fate.”

“Do you know where they’re being held?” asked Triss.

“When I left to come find you and Aral they were in a large abbey in the plains east of Tavan.” She spoke a brief spell and then drew a quick glowing map in the air between us.

“About here.” She touched a spot. “There’s a good chance they’re still there. I’m sure the Hand wants them in Heaven’s Reach, but moving religious prisoners around the Magelands is going to be damn tricky.”

I nodded, though she couldn’t see me. The council of Magearchs may pay lip service to the High Church and the Son of Heaven, but they’re a nation founded by, and for, magical refugees from various sorts of persecution.

Sshayar spoke now: “Outside of the abbeys and their temple-cum-embassies in the cities, the forces of the Son of Heaven are probably weaker in the Magelands than anywhere in the eleven kingdoms, save only Kanjuri. Tavan is particularly tough, squeezed up against the border with the Sylvani Empire like it is. The Others hate our gods with an immortal passion, and would cheerfully skin any of the Hand they could get their hands on.”

I looked at Jax’s map. “I think you’re right. There’s no good way for the Hand to get them out. Tavan’s on a river, but the outflow goes right past the Sylvani capital. Upstream runs into the mountains and ultimately Dalridia.”

“The Son’s greatest strength is all in the north,” said Triss. “In Zhan and Kadesh on this side of the mountains and Aven, Osë, and the Kvanas to the west. The Hand’s only reasonable option is to get the prisoners on a ship, send them north to Kadesh, and then over Hurn’s Gate and down through Aven. That’s going to take some doing.”

“Huh,” I said as a thought hit me.

“What is it?” asked Triss.

“I just realized something. The current Son of Heaven has really expanded the power of the church, but he’s strongest in the kingdoms where mages are weakest. Zhan, where the rules and customs make it very hard for mages to hold a title of nobility. Kadesh and the Kvanas, where the mage gift will automatically get you disinherited. Aven and Osë don’t have any formal antimage rules that I know of, but I can’t think of a single major noble house that’s headed by a mage in either.”

“I never thought of that before,” said Jax, “but you’re right. My brother is a mage, if a minor one, and so was my uncle. Varya’s nobility is lousy with them. So are Radewald’s and Dan Eyre’s. In the Magelands and Kodamia you have to have magic to hold a title at all. Kanjuri’s the only odd one out. They have no true mages, but the High Church is all but disbarred from the islands.”

“Maybe it’s got more to do with familiars than magery,” said Triss. “Any Kanjurese peasant who exhibits the familiar gift is automatically raised to the peerage, and they disbar those nobles who are born without it. But none of that will get Loris or the others free. We need to focus on the task at hand.”

“Not at hand,” said Jax. “Not yet anyway. We’ve got to get off this ship. Then we have to get to the Magelands, and none of that’s happening in the next couple of hours.”

“First, we have to get back to Tien,” I added. “I have things I need to take care of before I can leave.” For reasons I couldn’t really articulate, I didn’t want to talk to Jax about Faran yet.

“Ah, your hidden Blade,” said Jax. “Who was that at the cemetery with you?”

Before I could even start to dissemble, Sshayar spoke, “It was Ssithra and Faran. I spoke to them while you were unconscious.”

“She’s alive then!” Jax sounded delighted, which made me feel the worse for doubting her but didn’t remove the doubts. “How is she? How long has she been with you? I don’t remember a second Blade being mentioned in any of the stories that made their way to Dalridia.”

“She only joined me recently, and we’ve gone out of our way to keep her presence a secret.”

There was obviously no point in my trying to conceal her name, not when Sshayar knew it. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that talking about her with Jax was a betrayal of some sort, which made me wonder what my hindbrain wasn’t telling me about Jax.

“That might be harder than you think,” said Jax. “Do you know about the shadow trails?”

“Or the apostate Blades?” Sshayar added with more than a bit of a growl in her voice.

“Apostate Blades?” I asked, though I thought I knew who she was referring to.

Sshayar coughed like the angry tiger she could so easily become, and I couldn’t blame her. Damn, but I needed a drink, and there it was at my side. I pulled the cork and took a sip.

“Bastards and traitors,” said Jax. “When they took us prisoner at the fall of the temple, the Son of Heaven offered us a deal through the senior surviving officer of the Hand. Any Blade, trainee or master, who would agree to serve the will of Heaven from time to time was offered the chance to walk away free and clear. I refused, as did Loris and many others. That’s when the torture started. Every so often they would come by and ask again, though I don’t know how they could have believed we could ever be trusted if we said yes.”

“Spellbound oaths, I assume,” I replied. “That or the Son of Heaven believes that torture works and the switch of allegiance from Namara to Shan can be reliably achieved with coercion.”

Jax made a rude noise. “Was that last a joke? Because if it was, it’s almost funny. If it wasn’t, I have to say that the drink’s starting to affect you. As for spellbound oaths, you know as well as I do that there are a thousand ways and one to twist them around if you’ve got the incentive.”

“Maybe even more than that, but it also depends on the oath, and the Son of Heaven has resources beyond the normal. Do you know how many of our brethren took the deal?”

“It’s hard to say. I only know of one for sure, Kayarin Melkar. She and I were chained together immediately after we were taken. She agreed to the bargain, right there in the yard with a dozen slaughtered journeymen and priests lying within a stone’s throw. If I could have moved I’d have strangled her on the spot, but the enchantments on the manacles barely left me the strength to breathe through the pain.”

“Speaking of which”—Jax let out a sharp little noise. “Does alcohol work as well as efik for pain?”

“Better in some ways. It doesn’t numb things up, but you care a lot less. You’ve got to be more careful about dosage, and the side effects get uglier faster. On the other hand, it’ll help restore your nima, at least temporarily, and that’ll help both of you.”

“Hand it over.” She put a hand on my knee, so I’d know where to pass the bottle.

I did, and I heard her take a long drink that ended in a rough gasp. “Stuff tastes like horse piss, how do you stand it?”

“It grows on you.”

“Not if you’re lucky,” grumbled Triss.

Jax took another drink, shorter this time. “Still piss, but yeah I can already feel it taking the edge off. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” I licked my lips, and managed not to ask for the bottle back, just. Even if she finished it, there was probably more around.

She continued, “Later, I saw Kayarin’s name listed among the dead on that obelisk the Son of Heaven had erected outside the main gates of the temple. I’m not sure if that means she recanted or if the traitors are all listed among the dead or what, though I suspect the latter. I do know that there are at least a half dozen of the apostates running around loose. We’ve encountered their shadow trails a couple of times.”

You have to tell her,
Triss said into my mind.
He was her friend as much as yours. Maybe even more. They were lovers for years after the two of you called it quits.

“I can’t speak to Kayarin specifically,” I finally said. “But I can say for certain that at least some of those listed as dead are alive and well and making a great case for the twisting of spellbound oaths.”

“You’ve encountered some of them, then?” asked Sshayar.

“I have, or one of them anyway. That’s how I learned about the shadow trails. He used ours to set us up for a deathspark.”

“A deathspark?” asked Sshayar. “Why didn’t your sacred blades protect you?”

“For starters, they’re sitting on the bottom of a lake beside the stone corpse of the goddess. I returned them to her when I left her service.”

“What happened after you got ’sparked?” Jax’s voice sounded low and dangerous, angry.

“I ended up on a big wooden glyph thing they called the ‘pillory of light.’ The straps bound me and the glyph bound Triss.”

“They beat him,” said Triss. “They hurt him and I couldn’t stop them. Later, I killed them all, but I couldn’t do anything about it until a friend rescued us.” Even a year later Triss was slurring his sibilants in a barely controlled rage.

Jax put a hand on my knee again. “I’m sorry, Aral. I know a thing or two about being bound to the pillory. If I could have, I’d have come to get you.”

“It wasn’t anything like what you faced. I wasn’t even there that long.”

“Four days, though you
were
unconscious for much of it,” Triss interjected in a voice made icy by anger.

“You said that you knew some of the names on the obelisk belonged to the apostate instead of the dead.” Jax sounded just as hard and cold as Triss. “I assume that means that you know who set you up.”

“I do.”

“But you haven’t said a name yet. I know you, Aral, and I know what that means. But you can’t possibly hurt me anywhere near as much as I’ve already been hurt. Stop trying to protect me and tell me the bad news. Who set you up?”

“Devin.”

“Oh.” I heard the bottle tip back again, for a very long time, then a small cough. “Damn but that’s awful stuff. Did you kill him?”

“No. I could have, but I chose not to. I let him walk away.”

“I wouldn’t have,” said Jax, and there was no give in her tone.

6

L
ove
and hate are two edges of the same sword. The hilt can twist in your hand in an instant, and suddenly the sword cuts the other way. It’s a simple twist, simpler than anyone can imagine until it happens to them, simpler by far than putting the sword aside, or letting it rust away to nothing. All the strong emotions are like that, easier to reverse than to transform or put aside, and every one of them can cut you to the bone.

Jax was bleeding now. I could hear it when she talked about Devin. Quiet and cold, barely audible above the noises of the ship fighting the storm. Again, I was glad that neither of us had chosen to unshutter our thieveslights. I didn’t want to see the pain that went with that voice.

“You should have killed him, Aral.”

“You loved him once,” I said.

“So did you. I got over it long before the temple fell. Why didn’t you? If not in the years before the fall, when he started treating you badly, then later, when he arranged to have you and Triss tied to a rack?”

“Because I looked at him and I saw what he used to be,” I replied. “There was a greatness there once.”

“No, Aral. There never was.” I drew a breath to respond, but Jax preempted me. “Don’t. I knew him better than anyone, I think. Better than you did, certainly.”

Jax took another long drink—I could hear the sweet gurgle of whiskey leaving the bottle. “I
heard
the things that he’d never say to you, the bitter things he whispered in the dark, his angers and his envies, and how very much he resented playing the second sword to ‘the great Aral Kingslayer.’”

That stung. “I know that it was hard for him to have me as a best friend after I killed Ashvik. I can’t blame him for resenting the attention the masters gave me.”

“Not just the masters,” said Jax. “The whole world.”

I felt my face heat. I never much liked the renown that came with killing a king. I was proud of what I’d done, ending the life of a monster in a crown. Proud, too, of my ability. I’d managed an execution that three senior masters had died attempting. For a little while I was the world’s best . . . assassin—I still found that word uncomfortable. It wasn’t what the goddess called us, nor how we’d thought of ourselves, but now, looking back, I had to admit it was what we were. I’d loved the work and knowing I was good at what I did, but I’d never felt comfortable with the adulation.

“He couldn’t stand all the attention you got,” said Jax. “He hated that you were Aral Kingslayer and he was plain old Devin Urslan. He hated you.”

“I can’t believe that. Envied yes, I know that. I’d have to be an idiot not to, but hate? No. He may have said things he didn’t really mean, but that’s all.”

“Why the fuck are you defending him? He betrayed Namara and he betrayed the order. But long before that he betrayed you. He’s a traitor through and through.” Jax shifted and then drew in a harsh pained breath. “He told me how much he hated you, Aral, more than once, and he meant every fucking word of it. That’s what drew us together in the first place.”

“I—”

“No. Let me finish. This needs to be said. Just give me a moment.”

Jax took another drink and I found myself wishing for the bottle again. I started quietly searching around for another and hoping Triss or Sshayar would get involved in the conversation, though I understood why they didn’t. This was a human thing, between me and Jax and Devin.

“It’s true, Aral. The whole damned order thought you walked in the shadow of the goddess. Everybody but Devin and, later, me. After you and I broke up, we both hated you. That’s what put us in bed together. I thought it would hurt you more than sleeping with anyone else would. And Devin . . . well, Devin’s motivations were more complex. I think he wanted to be you as much as hurt you, and he figured fucking me would serve for both.”

“I was happy for the two of you,” I said.

“I know, and damn but it pissed us off. It’s funny really. You were what brought Devin and I together, but you were ultimately what drove us apart as well.”

“How so?”

“I hated you for what you did to me. Devin hated you for what you were. Somewhere along the line I realized that as much as you’d hurt me, you hadn’t done it because you wanted to cause me pain. You did it because you figured out we were never going to work as an us. And, quite simply, you were right. It took me longer to get there than it took you, but if we’d stayed together I’d have come to the same conclusion at some point. Probably a hell of a lot sooner than I did by being with Devin.”

She chuckled ruefully and took another drink. I didn’t remember my reasoning as being anything like that clear-cut, but I wasn’t going to argue with her, I’d done that more than enough when we were together.

“Once I understood why you left me when you did, I fell out of hate with you. Devin noticed and it didn’t sit at all well. We started to fight, a lot. More than you and I did even. And whenever we fought, there you were being sympathetic and trying to help out your friends. It reminded me of why I’d loved you in the first place. Though I was smart enough not to fall
in love
with you a second time, I ended up loving you all over again. That was absolute death to my relationship with Devin.”

Devin had the chance to kill me when I’d encountered him last, more than once. He hadn’t done it. Part of that was clearly self-interest—I was potentially valuable to him in his new enterprise. But there was more to it than that. Even if Jax was right and Devin
had
hated me for years, I think he still loved me, too. We’d been best friends for almost fifteen years before I killed Ashvik and I never had reason for a moment’s doubt of our friendship in all that time. It wasn’t until I became the Kingslayer that I first started to notice a distance growing between us.

No. It wasn’t as simple as Devin hating me for what I had become. But again, I didn’t want to argue with Jax. Hell, that was the main reason I’d left Jax a month before we were to be married—I didn’t want to argue with Jax ever again. Nine years on, and the whole not-arguing-with-Jax thing
still
felt good.

“Damn.” Jax sloshed the whiskey in her bottle. “This stuff is brutal. Here, it’s all yours.” I felt the bottle pressed against my thigh. “I need to take a little nap.”

Jax let go and the bottle tipped, but if anything spilled out I couldn’t tell in the dark and the damp of the smuggler’s compartment—even with the tight seals around the hatch and between the planks there was no avoiding the wet salt air. By the time I’d picked Jax’s whiskey up and wedged it upright between a couple of bolts of cloth, she was snoring. Sleep sounded like a good idea, so I closed my eyes and was gone.

The next time I opened them my head felt like someone had bent a hot iron poker around my skull at eyeball height. I started groping toward the bottle.

“There’s a good idea,” said Triss in his normal sharp, morning-after voice.

Apparently, I’d used up all of my drinking grace with Triss—not that I blamed him. Mostly, these days, I managed to keep the whiskey from dominating my life the way it had a few years ago, but I was a drunk. The murder of my goddess had broken something in me, something that nothing and no one would ever be able to fix. I had a hole in my soul where my faith had once lived.

Sometimes, on a good night, if I poured enough whiskey into that hole, it felt liked I’d filled it up. Like maybe I’d finally stopped losing bits of me down that hole. But it never lasted. I’d go to sleep and the booze would drain away, leaving things exactly the way they were before I started drinking. That’s because there was no bottom to the hole, and all the whiskey ever did was hide that fact for a while. The next morning always came along and shoved the truth in my face so hard it hurt.

Even knowing that, I found myself grabbing Jax’s bottle and drinking off a good solid inch of the whiskey before setting it aside. It didn’t do a damn thing for my hangover.

“It’s a terrible idea, Triss. Nine kinds of stupid and more, but today I needed it, and that’s all I’m having.” That’s when I realized we weren’t moving. Not at all, and we were sitting at a funny angle. “What happened to the boat?”

“We’re aground somewhere east and north of Tien.”

“What! When did that happen?”

“A couple of hours ago. It was surprisingly gentle. I’ve been slipping through into the hold to listen to the common sailors. I’ve only been getting dribs and drabs, but as I understand it we lost the rudder at the height of the storm. They tried to make do after that with something they called sweeps, but it wasn’t really working and they were deathly afraid of running into some bad patch of reefs. So when they hit a lull in the storm, they beached us.”

“What happens now?” I hadn’t the vaguest idea of how they might handle something like that.

“Once the sun’s up, they’re planning on emptying the holds and refloating the ship. Then they’re heading on to Kanjuri.”

“Which means that even if they don’t open up the smuggling compartments, we need to get ashore. I have to get back to Faran. What time is it?”

“Judging by the taste of the night, it’s a few hours before dawn.”

“So, thirty hours since the fight in the cemetery, more or less.” I reached out a hand and touched Jax’s ankle. “Time to get up.”

She jerked at my touch, then said, “Ow! Shit, my head feels worse than my side. Is that normal?”

“It is if you drink like Aral,” said Triss.

“Then why does anyone drink like Aral? Aral excepted, of course, because he’s obviously a fool and madman. He’d have to be, to give up efik for this stuff.”

“I have no idea,” replied Triss, sounding entirely too smug.

“The priests were right. Drink is a demon. This is the worst I’ve felt short of actual torture. I’m never doing this again.”

“Entirely sensible,” said Triss.

“Then why in the name of all that’s holy did you tell me it could be a good idea? I’d never have even tried the stuff if it was just Aral saying it.”

“When did I say anything like that?” asked Triss.

“Right after Aral said ‘spirits for the drained spirit.’”

“Oh right. Sorry about that, but it really can help under a very specialized set of circumstances, save your life even.”

“Hmph, I think dying might be less traumatic. Never again. Hey, the boat stopped moving. What’s happening?”

Fifteen minutes later, we were slipping out through the half-flooded ballast tank to the still-open ports. Half an hour after that, we were holed up in a patch of thornbushes on the shore—the best defense against the restless dead we could find there in the middle of nowhere. I was just telling Jax to wait and rest her wounds while I went to see if I could find us some sort of transport back to Tien, when she reached up and touched my cheek.

“Aral, what have you done to yourself? I
thought
you looked a little odd when we were trying to get the hatch open to get into the compartment back there, but I’d assumed it was exhaustion and the hole in my side making me see things. But it’s not, and that’s more than makeup.”

“It is. The last job I took exposed my face to the whole . . . well you know all about that. The stories and wanted posters that came out of that mess are what brought you up here to look for me. Fortunately, the same job also gave me the tools I needed to reshape the bones of my face.”

“I didn’t even think that was possible.” Jax ran a finger down my cheek to my jaw and then back up the other side, pressing at the corner of my mouth and the orbit of my eye before suddenly pulling her hand back as if she’d burned it. “I’m so sorry it came to this. There’s hardly any of the old you left in your face.”

There wasn’t much of the old me left on the inside either, but I didn’t have the heart to say it. “Things are better this way. It gives me a chance at a new start.”

But Jax just shook her head. “I expected you to have taken on some sort of disguise—you’d have to—but I was sure I’d recognize you no matter what you tried. I was wrong. I could have looked you straight in the eye without ever knowing you.”

“You did, at the Gryphon’s Head. I was—”

“Sitting at the table in back by the door into the courtyard. You had your back half exposed to an open window—how could you stand it. I saw you there, marked you as a killer even, but I didn’t see it was you. That’s . . .”

“Remarkable,” said Sshayar, “and potentially very handy.”

“Awful,” said Jax. “It’s awful.”

“You’ll have to tell us the story,” said Sshayar.

“After I see if I can find us a cart or something. You shouldn’t be walking or riding with that side.”

*   *   *

“When
and where should I meet you?” Jax asked as we abandoned the cart on the outskirts of Quarryside.

From here on in, the city got steadily busier and it was going to be easier to walk. The hole in Jax’s side was going to take weeks to heal fully, even with the spells we’d spun to help, but it wasn’t much bigger around than an arrow puncture, and far cleaner. Not much fun for walking but not impossible either.

“I need to pick up my things and attend to a small matter or two before I can leave for the Magelands,” she continued. She didn’t invite me to come with her.

That was fine. I didn’t want her coming with me either. I wasn’t ready to trust her, or anyone else who knew who and what I was, with the location of my current snug. Especially not with Faran there—at least, I sure hoped she was there. I had no intention of exposing the younger Blade to any risks I didn’t have to. Honestly, I suspected courtesy on that front was half of why Jax wanted to split up for the moment.

“How about we meet back down by the docks.” I pointed south. “There’s a tavern called the Spinnerfish in Smuggler’s Rest. It’s as safe a place to meet as any in the city. The owner runs it as neutral ground where sunside and shadowside can meet without any worries about ambush or betrayal. People who bring their outside fights inside end up dead. Also, the fish is as good as you can get in Tien. Say, a few hours before sunset tomorrow? That’ll give us time to find a ship that’s headed for the Magelands with the next morning’s tide.”