Forgotten (18 page)

Tonight, he amended with a glance at the darkening sky. Under normal circumstances, it would only be another hour or so before Gregor got home.
If the Rit wasn’t back already.
It seemed wise to consider his time more than used up and head back. He climbed out a little further, to reach the stone and pull it back. As he did, a hooded figure stepped into the courtyard. Kaie froze.

The stooped man walked right up to him, staring from the depths with light brown eyes ringed by an eerie, unnatural purple. “You’re here.”

Kaie looked up, taking note of the unhealthy skin color and scarred face, suddenly wrapped up in the memory of his dream but unsure why. He opened his mouth to answer the observation, but no words came out.

“Of course you’re here. You can’t be haunting me unless you’re here, can you?”

The voice, thick and gravely, like two stones scraping against each other, sent a shiver down his spine. “I don’t know.”

The man staggered backward like Kaie hit him. He took several gasping breaths, which led to a fit of wet sounding coughs. “You’re real!”

“Uh,” Kaie could actually taste the sweetness on his tongue, like in the dream. But this was not the old man, not the red-haired man, not even the bad man who was nothing more than a voice. “I’ve always thought so.”

“No!” The man bellowed, throwing his arms up over his head. “No! You won’t bring Sojun back! He’s gone! Dead, dead, dead! He has to stay that way!”

Kaie almost reached forward, wanting to comfort the man even more than he wanted to run.
“Alright.
I won’t?”

The man eyed Kaie, the purple rings catching the light of the setting sun and reflecting it in a way that made them seem like something out of a nightmare. His hands dropped slowly, and a sly smile replaced the look of panic. “I’m going to tell my love about you, you know. Even if I didn’t want to, I would tell her. But I want to. You’re supposed to be dead. It’s better when you are. Sojun is quiet then, dead too.”

Kaie didn’t know how to react to that. He didn’t even know if the guy actually knew who he was, or if it was all just the mutterings of a madman. The latter was far more likely, but instinct screamed at him to be concerned, maybe even frightened. “Who is your love?”

“My love?
My nightmare.
My Mistress.”

“That doesn’t sound like someone I’d like knowing anything about me,” Kaie said carefully.

“She’s all that matters.
My love, her goddess, and her empire.
Not you. Not anymore. She told me to take care of the empty thing, so I did. She told me to remind the boy what he promised to do for her, so I did. She told me to learn the dirty city, so that’s what I’m doing. She didn’t tell me to find you. No one’s supposed to find you. You’re supposed to be dead.”

“I’m not. Dead, I mean.
Or supposed to be.
I think you’re confused.”

“No, no, no, no. I know how to focus now. I know what I am now. You’re not going to confuse me. You’re not going to bring the fog back.” The man took several steps backward. He hesitated on the cusp of the alley, where a crowd of people were having a conversation that kept their attention away from the drama behind them. “I’m going to tell her, and she’s going to set it right. Then Sojun will stay dead, and it will just be her voice in my head again. The way it’s supposed to be.”

Kaie bit down on his tongue to keep from calling out, from demanding the lunatic stay just a moment longer. He didn’t know why he wanted that. It wasn’t because he thought he could stop the man from telling that love of his about him. For all he knew, she was just a fantasy. But whatever reason he was so reluctant to let this man vanish into the crowds of Hudukul, it was a bad idea.

Maybe the man felt it too, because he stopped. Just for a second. Long enough to flash a crooked smile that was so unlike than everything else he witnessed in the man, it might as well
be
a different person looking at him. “My Mistress isn’t in the city, and the ship going back to Lindel won’t arrive for three months. It will take a while to get back. She wouldn’t want me telling anyone else. So I guess you have some time before anyone knows.
Before they’ll come hunting you.”

“Uh… thanks.”

“Goodbye Rosy.” And then he was gone.
Just another hooded figure swallowed by the great city.

On his way back through the pass, Kaie brushed past a few handfuls of people. They were always to the left, and they were always running. The only acknowledgement that they even saw him was a tiny tip of their heads as they fluttered past in the gossamer white gowns of the servant caste. But, in the manse itself, there was no one. Judah and Tovan were both gone. The dining table was flipped upside-down, and the door to the bedroom was slightly ajar. Kaie could only think of one likely scenario that would account for those things. But, if the other men did tell Gregor, the Rit was gone now too. He couldn’t even find a servant.

Time stretch on without interruption, and the place grew dark. Pacing the grounds quickly lost his interest, so with nothing else to do, Kaie took a long soak in the pool. The water felt amazing, as always. No matter how long the sun beat down on it – almost directly, by midday – the pool was always several degrees cooler than the air. Gregor was convinced it was some magic in the water, but Kaie suspected a more mundane process. Whatever the source, Kaie was grateful for sensation of refreshment that spread through his body as he relaxed.

He tried to focus on Kissa, tried to come up with somewhere they could take her that would be safe. He tried to wrap his mind around the reality that she was no longer the girl who helped to steal who he was, and not to feel cheated of his revenge. He even tried to come up with something he could say to Gregor, to explain how sorry he felt and make everything a little better. But no matter how hard he worked to stop it, Kaie’s thoughts kept turning back to the madman with the purple rings in his eyes.

There was no reason to believe the man knew him. More than likely, it was nothing more than a coincidence. The lunatic probably said the same thing to everyone. But Kaie couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to it. And he couldn’t explain why the man brought his strange dream to mind so strongly that, for a moment, he almost believed he was back in the middle of it. There was something going on between them, something important, and he was missing it.

“I suppose I should be surprised to find you out here.”

Kaie jumped, nearly dunking his head under the water in his surprised scramble to keep his balance. Gregor stepped out of the shadows cast by the few trees in the full moon. There was no blank mask on the Rit’s face. There was something else there, something dark and furious.

“My sister is
Hollow
, maybe getting used by every officer in the Twelfth, and my friend Kaie is taking a bath.”

“Tovan told you then.” Kaie felt stupid, saying that. Of course Tovan told him. But faced with the Rit’s anger for the first time, he was finding it difficult to keep hold of any of the things he thought to say. “Gregor, I’m –”

“Don’t you tell me you’re
sorry.
Not you.”

He snapped his mouth closed on the words. Kaie didn’t understand why he seemed to be the focus of Gregor’s anger. But if that was what his friend needed, he could take it.
“Alright.
How about if I tell you what I’ve found…”

A large, ugly man stepped into the garden behind Gregor. The man’s skin, as dark as any native of Hudukul, was a tapestry of scars. One brown eye stared at Kaie with a gleeful malevolence that sent a shiver down his spine. The other was little more than a slit, yet another scar holding it closed.

Kaie knew who the man was. Everyone knew who this man was.
Silvertongue.
“What is he doing here?”

“Do you still want to know what the letter Kissa sent you with said?”

Kaie glanced back and forth between the men, straining to figure out what was going on. Silvertongue was one of the only members of the Twelfth Gregor didn’t trust. He was a hero of sorts, at least among those loyal to Urazin. He was captured by some enemy in one of the endless wars Urazin fought. The stories all said that he was tortured for almost a year, and that the last thing his captors did was cut out his tongue. It was also said that he earned each and every scar by refusing to betray his battalion. He was rewarded by a promotion to major, though the title was strictly honorary. He couldn’t speak, read or write. He wasn’t fit for any real command. No one even knew his real name.

Gregor said, more than once, that Silvertongue’s loyalty was to
whomever
was paying him. In money and, it seemed more importantly, an endless supply of Hollows. What he did to those was talked about at least as often as what was done to him. And the Ninth Rit wasn’t about to let that continue. So it didn’t seem likely Silvertongue would back his play for freedom.

It made less sense for him to be here, now, witnessing this conversation. He wasn’t going to tell anyone, obviously, but Kaie couldn’t think of any scenario where Silvertongue would be offering any sort of comfort to Gregor.

Without knowing what was happening, there was no way Kaie could plan for it. The only thing he could do was play along until he figured out what Gregor was looking for.
“Yeah.”

Gregor smiled. It wasn’t a smile that belonged to the man he knew. It was dangerous. “She said I needed to help you find some way to be free. She said she
was trusting
me to look out for you, because she was risking everything to help you. Hear that?
Risking everything
.”

“Oh.” Because what else could he say to that? Kaie didn’t even know how to feel about it.

“Do you know what I learned today? Aside from the fact that my sister is a Hollow, I mean.”

“No,” Kaie said cautiously, climbing out of the pool and wrapping one of the towels around his waist. He wanted his clothes, especially with Silvertongue’s eyes on him, but they were on the bench next to Gregor. He got the distinct sense that he didn’t want to be any closer to the Rit when the man was in this mood.

“I learned
why
my sister is a Hollow. It wasn’t as hard as you’d think. All I had to do was ask Tovan. It seems all Lindel is buzzing with the story. Want to hear it?”

He was pretty confident he didn’t.

“There might be something we can do. I don’t know… but she might not be all gone. You remember that girl I told you about? The Hollow I gave myself away for on the way here? She, I don’t know, responded to me or something. It was crazy, but I know she did. And back in Lindel, there was another one. I’m pretty sure he smiled, when I was about to kill him.”

“You know,” Gregor said, “your ability to lie really is amazing. You always seem to know exactly what we want to hear, and exactly how to say it so that we’ll believe you. I guess I should be proud, that you learned so well under my care.”

“I’m not lying, gods damn it! I called her name and she reacted!”

“Of course.
Centuries of Hollows have just been waiting for Kaie the Unbroken to call one of them by name to prove they can be reached after all.”

Kaie flinched. Gregor never said that name. He pressed his lips together. Anything he said would be wrong. Silvertongue smiled at him. He tried not to give any sign of how much it unnerved him.

“The story
goes,
my sister was responsible for the care of a prisoner. It was her job to make sure he was in his cell when the two Namers arrived to finally make him a Hollow. Instead, she gave into Lady Autumnsong’s demand that he be returned to his family during the wait. Worse, that freedom led to his very unnecessary death. When the Namers arrived and discovered this, they took her away for years. No one knew where she was or what happened to her, until seven months ago. Then the Namer who first took the slave as a prisoner returned to the Autumnsong estate with her in tow.
Hollowed.”

Gregor stopped, as if expecting some response to that. There were half a dozen resting on the tip of Kaie’s tongue, but he kept them there. Not one of them would make this situation any better. He shifted back on the balls of his feet, tensing to make a run for one of the other doors.

“You see my problem now, don’t you?”

“Not exactly,” Kaie admitted.

“My beautiful sister has been Hollowed to save a man I know hates her. I could stop her from being used any more, I could avenge her loss. But the last thing she said to me, the last thing she’ll ever be able to say me, is to see you free.” The Rit took a step closer. “If I take
the Aulis from you, I could turn you over to the Autumnsongs. I’m sure I could even come up with a great story about how you tricked us all. But then I would be failing Kissa. I could let you go, let you flee the city and hope you manage to survive, but then you would be escaping justice too, and I can’t allow that.”

This was not his friend anymore. It was time to leave.

Kaie spun, lunging toward one of the many doors behind him. He felt Gregor’s fingers grasp for him, brushing past his hair. For a second, he thought he managed to avoid them, that he was going to make it back into the house. Then he felt the jerk on his neck.

His whole body stopped instantly as the fine gold chain buried itself in the skin of his throat. Kaie dropped to his knees, fingers clawing at the Aulis, as he struggled for breath. Gregor took another step, and the pressure eased.
Kaie’s hands smacked against the stone as he gasped and hacked, burning bile rising up in his throat.

“I’m going to do what my sister asked me to. I’m going to make sure you’re free one day. Maybe I’ll have forgiven you, or maybe that will be the day I kill you. But every day until then, every day she’s in that place, you will get the same thing she gets.”

Hot air blasted against his bare shoulder. Understanding slithered through Kaie’s gut, leaving him with a cold terror. He scrambled. He was desperate to get on his feet. Something heavy dropped onto the center of his back. It pressed him down hard. It knocked his chin against the stone. His mouth filled with coppery blood.

“Don’t kill him,” Gregor ordered. A second ago, the Rit was holding the Aulis. Now he sounded far away. Kaie was fighting. It was hard to focus on anything else. But he found Gregor. The man was by the trees. He was leaving.

“This isn’t justice!” Kaie shouted. Panic made his voice loud. Made it crack. His battle wasn’t going well. A hand on his arm pinned it to the ground. He felt hot breath on the back of his neck. He couldn’t get loose. “Don’t do this! This isn’t what you want!”

Gregor looked down at him. The man’s black eyes softened. It was his friend again. He needed to say the right thing. Then it would stop. They would spar again. It would be vicious. At the end, one of them would help the other up. They would still be on the same side.

He opened his mouth. Teeth clamped down on Kaie’s shoulder. It was hard enough to break skin. He screamed. The pressure on his back increased.

The haze cleared. Gregor was gone. Silvertongue caught another arm. He held both wrists with one hand. The other hand ripped away the towel.

Kaie screamed again. He cursed Gregor. He cursed Silvertongue. He cursed Kissa. But mostly he begged.
Begged for forgiveness.
Begged for it to stop.