Fallen Blade 04 - Blade Reforged (33 page)

Done.

I felt a light drain on my nima, and the bottle exploded in Devin’s hand. He yelped
and swore and I could see blood on his palm where shards of glass had cut him. Good.
Triss snapped his wings and slipped past Devin into the cabin. I heard more bottles
shattering.

“Not strong enough to just turn me down?” Devin’s voice dripped poison as he pulled
shards of glass from his hand. “Had to get Triss to bail you out?”

“Again, fuck you, Devin. Sideways. With an iron-bound battering ram.”

I hated him more in that moment than I had ever hated anyone but the Son of Heaven.
If I’d had the strength for it, I might have killed him, but I didn’t. Despite the
temporary boost from the booze, it felt like someone had wrapped me in a hundred pounds
of thick lead foil.

Devin glared at me. “Even now, when you’re nothing but a dried-up husk of what you
once were, you still think you’re better than me. Don’t you?”

“Simple reason for that. I am.”

“I want to kill you so bad.”

I suddenly realized what would hurt him the most. “You’re a coward, Devin. I don’t
know if you always were, or if it was the fall of the temple that broke you. I don’t
actually care either, because it’s not really important to me.
You’re
not really important to me. And yes, I am better than you. Now. I don’t know about
the old days. I was better at many things than you back then, but as a person…”

I shrugged. “You’d be a better judge of that than me. But now, when I’m a half-broken
thing always a half step away from a slide back into the gutter? Oh yes, I’m the better
man now. My soul may be stained and ragged around the edges,
but it’s still
my
soul. You sold yours to the enemy for cowardice’s sake, and there’s nothing you can
do to win it back. It’s
easy
to be the better man now. You’re not even human anymore, Devin. You’re a bitter thing
in a man’s shape.”

Devin’s unbloodied hand reached back toward his sword and I could see that it was
shaking with rage, but he stopped short of drawing. Instead, he spat out, “When this
is over, you and I are going to settle this thing once and for all.”

“Anyplace, anytime.”

M
oonlight
on the bay beneath a sea of stars. Salt breeze and gently lapping waves. Shadows
speak in whispers, dragon and tayra. Old friends in the dark. Two men who desperately
wanted to kill each other.

It was like something out of a pastoral poem, except for that last part. While Devin
and I spat hate at each, our familiars had once again slipped aside, quietly conversing
in their alien tongue.

I glared back at Devin. “In the interests of getting this whole business over with
so we can get down to killing each other, why don’t you tell me whatever you dragged
me out here to tell me. You could start with why the hell you haven’t been by the
drop to pick up my message. Last time we talked, you told me you needed my help to
take down the Kitsune and you promised that you would be there when I was ready. Mind,
I’m not even a little bit surprised at the lack of reliability from you, but what
happened?”

“I would have thought it obvious,” replied Devin. “The Kitsune happened. Every time
I’ve gotten within fifty feet of the outer walls of the palace, there she’s been,
just
happening by to see how I’m doing. I figured there wasn’t much point in trying to
pick up messages if I got dead in the process. Nuriko hasn’t threatened me outright,
but she doesn’t need to. She’s killed more Blades than any other individual in our
history.”

“Excepting your boss, the Son of Heaven.”

Devin clenched his fists and blood dripped from his injured hand. “Fine. She has personally,
with her own two hands, killed more Blades than anyone else, ever. Does that make
you happier?”

I nodded, but couldn’t resist adding, “Except for the implication that you’re still
a Blade of any kind, but let’s move past that for now.”

“Let’s,” Devin snapped.

“You’ve been too scared of Nuriko to come out and check your mail. Got it. But here
we are, so let’s talk about the details for me saving your ass from the Kitsune, and
by extension the Son of Heaven. When do we hit the palace?”

Devin looked very uncomfortable. “You don’t.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“Thauvik’s decided he likes this whole risen crusade thing, but he’s paranoid and,
I think, a little scared of the Kitsune.”

“Meaning?”

“He’s planning on shifting his operations to the fortress at Kao-li. He was going
to do it later this week, but after what happened between you and Nuriko tonight,
I imagine he’ll move faster.”

I was stunned. Kao-li changed everything. “So, what? The deal’s off, Thauvik spills
blood over half the world, and the Son of Heaven makes you into a wall hanging?”

“No. I am not going to end up hanging on the Son’s wall. I’ll hand you my swords and
bare my neck for the chopping first.” He grimaced as he said that and closed his eyes
for a second in obvious pain—that oath again.

After a moment, he went on, “We’re going to have to make some changes to the plan
is all. I don’t know the
fortress, so it’s going to take me a few days of looking around to figure how to set
things up for your assault force. I don’t think I’ll be able to get loose again after
today, so I’ll have to send you a message somehow and you can take it from there.
Maybe we can use that wind spirit you rescued tonight.”

“No.”

“What do you mean ‘no’?” demanded Devin, with more than a little panic in his voice.

“I mean no. I didn’t trust you beforehand, and that’s doubly true now. I won’t do
this. It smells too much like a setup. Even if I was willing, Maylien hates your guts.
I had to push really hard to get her to agree to risking her people on an attack at
the palace, and Kao-li’s a hundred times nastier. There’s no way she’ll agree to this,
and you said yourself that without an assault force there’s no way this can work.
It’s over. Do you want to settle what’s between you and me now? Or would you rather
let someone else kill you? I’ll make it clean, at least.”

Devin reached for his swords. I went for my remaining blade as well, but my position
hampered me badly and Devin’s points were hovering an inch away from my face before
I could more than half sit up.

“I didn’t want to do this,” said Devin.

“Kill me? I thought you’d been dreaming about this for years.”

Killing you is not his intent,
sent Triss—which explained why my familiar hadn’t tried to intervene.

“No,” said Devin. “That, I want. This, on the other hand…” With a flourish he spun
his swords into an underhand grip and extended the hilts to me. “This is the last
fucking thing in the world I wanted to do, but I don’t see any other way.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“We both know there’s nothing I can promise or say that will get you to trust me.
I more than half expected that, so Zass and I have been discussing how to salvage
things. He pointed out there was one thing I could
do
that might suffice.
This is it.” He twitched his hands and the swords slid a bit closer to me as his grip
shifted from hilts to the backs of the blades.

“You’re offering me your swords?”

“No, I’m fucking proposing we do a betrothal dance with them!” He rolled his eyes,
visible even in the dark by the flashing whites. “Yes, I’m offering you my swords,
though I damned well intend to get them back. It struck me as the one thing I could
do that you would have to take seriously. And, since you brought it up, I figured
it also might serve to convince your royal bedmate.”

I nodded, though I didn’t yet touch the hilts—this worked for me and it might do it
for Maylien, too. “What are your conditions?”

Last time I had borrowed a sword from Devin we’d done a deal with very specific parameters.
I didn’t know if that had anything to do with my ability to kill risen with his swords
where he could not, but I didn’t want to screw this up over a missed detail.

“I hand over the swords, you rid me of the Kitsune.”

“That’s it?”

“No. If you decide you can’t do it, you give me my swords back as soon as possible
thereafter. If you do manage to eliminate the Kitsune, you have to give them back
afterward.”

“How soon afterward?” I needed them to kill Thauvik, and somehow I didn’t get the
feeling I’d have the chance while Nuriko was still in a position to protect him.

Devin took a deep breath and gritted his teeth, a man bracing for pain. “As soon as
you deem that you have achieved your purpose or—ow! Fuck!” He went to his knees, but
kept his grip on the swords, still holding them out for me to take. Gasping, he continued.
“Or one week after you’ve dealt with the Kitsune. Whichever comes first.”

“Done.” I took the swords.

I took the swords.

For the first time in the seven years since I had returned my own temple blades to
the hand of my dead goddess, I
held a pair of her swords. The exhaustion and pain that had weighed heavier and heavier
on me since our encounter with the Kitsune vanished. I felt light and fit and strong,
almost seventeen again—the year I had first taken up my own swords and gone out to
kill Ashvik. Though Namara was dead, I felt a sort of echo of the purpose that had
once filled me, like an ideal’s ghost blowing her champion one last kiss.

I had no memory of rising, but I found myself standing on the gunwales with Devin
still kneeling before me. He seemed diminished somehow, no longer an object worthy
of my hate, if not quite deserving of my pity either. I held the swords high over
my head, making a triangle with the moon at its apex, and I knew that though my goddess
was gone, this was what I was born to be.

The moment passed, and I fell back down into myself, a broken man reassembled from
pieces, holding another’s swords and wishing I could be what I once was. It was a
very long fall. But I couldn’t find it in me to regret the heights or be downcast
about their loss, and my fatigue had not returned. With a movement as natural as breathing,
I slung the right-hand sword in my sheath, a too-loose fit that I would have to adjust
with a few carefully placed rivets as soon as I had the chance.

Then I flipped the left-hand sword to my right, and drew my own left-hand sword—still
dimly shining, especially along the scars Nuriko had carved in its sides. I touched
it briefly to my forehead in salute to the service it had given me—service that had
all but destroyed it—and consigned it to the deeps of the bay, which seemed a fitting
enough burial. Before its light had entirely vanished into the darkness, I had flipped
the sword of the goddess from hand to hand again and sheathed it as well.

“Aral?” It was Devin, who hadn’t moved so much as a hair through the whole maneuver.

“Yes?”

“If you flip my swords around over water like that ever again, I will kill you on
the spot, deal or no deal. I think my heart stopped.”

For some reason that struck me as one of the funniest things anyone had ever said
to me, and I threw my head back and laughed long and hard. Devin shook his head like
I was mad and backed away to sit atop the low cabin. When I was done, I smiled at
him.

“And that’s your tragedy,” I said. “Because you never will understand. I couldn’t
drop one of Namara’s swords into the sea if I wanted to, but you could, couldn’t you?”

“Did I mention how much I hate you?” asked Devin.

“Once or twice.”

“Well, add another one, because I’m really going to hate what I have to ask you next.”

“What’s that?”

“To beat the living shit out of me.”

I didn’t ask why. It was obvious. He couldn’t return to the Kitsune without his swords,
not unless he had the injuries to show he’d lost a fight badly.

I hopped down into the boat. “Where do you want the apparent knockout blow?”

“Just in front of the temple, I think,” he replied. “And it’s going to have to bleed.”

“Broken nose?”

“You’d probably better. If nothing’s broken, she’ll be suspicious, and that’s the
quickest to heal. You’re going to need to cut me up some, too, probably at least one
solid stab wound.” He pressed a thumb into his thigh. “Here, maybe two or three inches
deep and along the grain of the muscle so it’s not too serious.”

“You want me to do it on the boat, or ashore?”

“I’d love to have some witnesses to the end of the fight and you stripping the swords
from my fallen body, but I’m going to have enough trouble holding still and letting
you do this without trying to play pretend at the same time. Better do it out here
and dump me ashore.”

“Unconscious?”

He nodded. “The sleeping guard spell?”

“I was never any good at it.” It was one of Loris’s favorites. It worked a bit like
a carefully applied sap, but whenever
I
tried it the magical flare was always far bigger than I wanted—too likely to draw
the attention of anyone magesighted.