Diablo 3: The Reaper of Souls (16 page)

"Careful," was all he said before he swung her toward the wall. She clung to it a moment, face against the cold stone, finding her breath.

"No," she finally managed. "We're at war with Liang's city watch. They hate each other."

"Passion is certainly involved," Shen said, moving again. Either the subject or the near fall had drained the easy humor from his voice.

The window was only five feet above now.

"You're wrong! The Broken Man wouldn't betray us." She heard the desperation in her words, and hated herself for it.

"He was loyal to her first," Shen said kindly. "And the Tenth is a distant third."

"Third? Then what's the second?"

"I am glad you asked!" Shen said brightly. "That is the secret I brought you here to discover."

And with one sinewy arm, he hauled her by the back of her armor to the ledge of the window.

A blade of moonlight pierced the advisor's bedchamber, illuminating a lush carpet, a firepit, and a bed. Jagged Liang faced the wall, drawing a robe over her bare back and pale shoulders.

Naked to the waist, the Broken Man stepped out of the darkness behind her, more scars than skin. Two killer's hands slipped around her throat, pulling her chin up gently, gently, to kiss her…

It was the rooftop all over again. Jia was through the window with her dagger drawn before her brain had time to catch up.

Jagged Liang jerked out of the Broken Man's arms. Her mouth opened…

… and the Broken Man covered it, holding the advisor back. He stared at Jia, his face unreadable, and she knew that he couldn't let her leave alive. Neither of them could.

She wasn't going to escape the way she had come. Jia lunged over the ledge and held a hand out for Covetous Shen… who wasn't there. The wall down to the courtyard was completely devoid of any lunatics with delusions of godhood. Cursing, she spun around just in time to see the Broken Man reaching for her…

She slashed his wrist with her dagger, ducked beneath his arm when he recoiled, and sprinted for the last exit left to her—

"Guards!" Liang roared from behind. Two watchmen burst through the door, her only hope for escape, swords drawn. Without thinking, Jia pulled Shen's bottle from her armor and flung it at the nearest one's head. It rang him like a bell, and he staggered sideways. She darted outside the silver arc of the other guard's slash, plunged her dagger into his forearm, and caught the sword as it fell.

She wheeled about, ignoring the guard's shrieks, and just barely deflected—oh gods—Liang's blade. The woman had killed dozens of the Tenth's assassins. Jia's family. And the Broken Man, its protector, was in love with her…

Blood trailing from his wounded wrist, the Broken Man charged across the bedchamber. Liang swung once, twice, and Jia, hissing with rage, moved with the momentum of the strikes, parrying along the edges of the advisor's blades, spinning…

… and, piling her heartsick fury into a single scream, Jia hurled both dagger and sword at the Broken Man's chest.

He slapped them out of the air and kept coming.

She turned and ran from the bedchamber, down the hallway, to a winding staircase. Armored boots rang on the steps below. Up was the only choice.

Up was death, she knew. She was going to die, and her family would go on suffering for the Broken Man's lies…

She reached the moonlit top of the tower. It was oddly calm. It was also, of course, a dead end.

Jia ran to the edge of the roof, panting, just in case someone had been thoughtful enough to install a ladder since her ascent. No. A straight fall all the way to the courtyard far below. She could make it back down to the advisor's window and the handholds, but not in a hurry. And by the shouts, the guards were almost here.

Jia closed her eyes. There was a story. A story about Zei...

Chased by the Lords of Fire, clever Zei climbed to the very top of the sky. And when they mocked him, Zei planted a kiss on the blushing cheek of the dawn, and leapt…

Jia opened her eyes. Steel scraped on stone behind her as the guards advanced. She might never travel to the horizon as she wanted to, but she could fly one more time…

She turned away from the drop, her heel against the edge of oblivion. At least twenty smirking guards held her in a half ring of spears and fine blades. Twenty soldiers who might go on to hurt her family.

She sighed, and charged.

A sword cut at her throat, and she wasn't there. A spear thrust at her back, and she let it pass behind her before grabbing the haft and tearing it out of the guard's hands.

Oak rang on steel as she bashed the spear's handle into helmets, and a guard fell to the roof, screaming, when she plunged the tip neatly through a gap in his legplates, into his thigh. Jia fought on, knowing she was going to lose. They herded her to the yawning edge, and a lucky slash cut her spear in half. One of them grabbed her from behind, and, snarling, she sank the spear into the top of his foot, whirled out of his arms, and buried the point in his chest.

The haft splintered. She snatched the sword out of the guard's hand before he fell from the tower, and leapt into the thick of the men who would be her killers. Each sweep of her blade deflected multiple blows; each strike found flesh. Laughing, she danced and spun and fought on, and on…

When nine guards remained, one knocked her down with a gauntleted fist, and another kicked the sword from her hand.

Dizzy, she watched the moonlit shadow of the axe rising above her head, and heard someone… someone running up the stairs…

The Broken Man exploded out of the stairwell, seized two guards by the neck, and threw them off the tower. He wheeled around and caught a spear behind his head just as the tip brushed his skin. His backhand crushed the spearman's helmet.

Jia dove for her sword, retrieving it in time to parry a thrust at her chest. His torn knuckles dripping, the Broken Man rose up behind the unlucky guard, took his head in two massive hands, and squeezed.

The remaining five guards backed away, knowing the Broken Man by sight. But Jia knew he wouldn't spare them. Like her, they were witnesses…

… but Jia realized, frowning, that the Broken Man could have let her die.

The man that frail old Covetous Shen had called his son killed three more men in a handful of seconds. The last two he bashed together until they stopped moving, and he tossed them down the stairs.

He turned, blood running from a dozen wounds.

"She's your mother," he said.

Jia stared blankly at him. Shen's secret. Liang and the Broken Man had been in love for decades…

"And you're…"

"Yes."

He hadn't been trying to hurt her. He'd been trying to stop Liang, who didn't recognize her.

She had his eyes, Jia noticed; this was the first time she could remember him ever looking at her.

"I knew he'd bring you here," he said. "No matter the cost."

If this were one of the stories she'd heard as a child, she would have thrown her arms around him. Instead she slapped him, and would have given anything to take it back.

"I'm sorry," the dark-eyed giant said. "I am a target. I couldn't make you one."

Silk brushed stone to her left. Jagged Liang was watching her from the shadows of the stairwell. Now that Jia was aware of what to look for, there was no denying that she and the advisor were nearly identical.

Setting her jaw, Jagged Liang turned without a word and walked back down the stairs.

"She hasn't seen you since you were born," the Broken Man said. "She wouldn't have sent the guards after you if she'd known it was you."

"I'm not sure I believe that," Jia said, remembering the cold fury in her mother's eyes.

"You don't know her," her father said, but the huge man sounded unsure.

"And you do," Jia said flatly.

"Since we were children fighting for food on the streets," he said. "But when I joined the Tenth and made it my family, she set off alone."

Jia felt unwelcome admiration stir in her heart. Her mother, through sheer cunning and will, had worked up from the streets, making the right connections, becoming the advisor, surviving…

... to turn into Jagged Liang, who hunted the assassin children of her lover. Jia could not forgive her, even if she asked.

"We should talk to her," the Broken Man said. "Now that she's seen you…"

Jia checked a sigh as understanding dawned. He's loyal to Liang first, me second, the Tenth third, but he wants to keep all of us…

"We will never be a family," she said. "Understand? She won't stop just because you love her. This ends with her death or the streets red with our blood, and you know it."

"She's your mother," he said.

"No," Jia said, dropping to her haunches at the edge of the roof. "She's your lover. I'm an orphan."

And she climbed down, leaving him standing alone on the tower, surrounded by the dead.

"Shadows disappear in daylight. Holes can be searched. Hide in plain sight, and you will never be found." —Book of Zei

Hours later, Jia sat high atop Tong-Shi's temple again, with her back to Zei's frieze and her feet dangling in open air. Dawn was close. The Council Stronghold glittered with lantern light like a necklace at the throat of the dark Guozhi Mountains. The chimneys of the Buried Forge burned a deep crimson.

She wanted to leave. The Tenth was her family, but her brothers and sisters were—mostly—not children. They enjoyed this life, this constant battle. And she, when it came down to it, did not.

Jia knew she would die fighting a senseless war for the love of her family and the foolish loyalty she still felt for her father. She wanted to leave, but duty would keep her here.

"Hello, Granddaughter," Covetous Shen said, plopping down on the ledge beside her.

"Why did you do it?" Jia said.

"A child should know who her parents are," Shen said, swinging his feet in space. "How else can she know what not to become?"

"More jokes," Jia said, turning away.

"Am I joking?" Shen said sharply. "Your mother wants to rule this city unopposed, and takes steps to eradicate all of the Great Families. Your father knows that she will not stop at nine. Soon, their doomed love will not be enough, and this country will endure yet another civil war. Be wiser than they, Granddaughter."

Jia stared. The easy smiles were gone. In their place was more sorrow than a hundred lifetimes could bear.

"Should I also know who my grandfather is?" she said finally. Shen turned to consider the frieze of laughing Zei fleeing the wrath of the gods. In profile, both faces were exactly the same.

"What a handsome young man," Covetous Shen said, smiling slightly.

"What should I do?" Jia said after a moment's silence told her that Shen wasn't going to say anything else. "Try to make peace between my mother and father? Run and hide?"

"Do whatever you want," he said, brushing her cheek. "Life can be so very short."

"For mortals, you mean."

Shen said nothing at first.

"Look at all of this." He swept a hand across Zhou. "Once, it was grassland spotted with small tribes. There were flowers.