Wolf's-own: Weregild (36 page)

The first amulet broke easily. Lapis ripped from its chain around the neck of a hunter who just stood there and let him take it—
let him
—just watched as Jacin dropped it to the bloody stone—
her blood, standing in a lake of her blood, wrong, so wrong, and why wouldn't it drown him?
—and crushed it under the heel of his boot. And then he merely held out his hand, just held it out, didn't say a word, and two others were dropped into his palm. Cut amethyst, both of them, and they wouldn't shatter, and he hadn't even realized he'd been stomping for so long until Malick's hand laid itself to his arm, and he flinched away like he'd been burnt, because
that
he felt. Silence, fleeting and dead-cold, and the
painshockgrief
all rose up at once inside it, and he couldn't...
couldn't
....

He yanked himself away, watched the sympathy in Malick's tea-colored eyes, the helplessness, and hissed, because fuck him, too, fuck them all with their sad eyes that only watched her fall as they'd watched the Jin fall for decades. He snarled, let his good leg give beneath him and sank to the bloody cobbles, sat next to his sister's ruined little body and dropped the amulets into the blooming puddle of her blood. Took his long knife by the hilt and crushed them.

A shrilling shriek slammed into him, and it took him a second to understand it came from outside his head and not inside. Shig was a vague shape in his periphery as she wended her unsteady way down the alley toward Yori, grief too apparent in everything about her. Joori's voice came to him, as though from miles away, hollow and calling his name, then Morin's, and good, alive, both of them—at least for now—but Jacin couldn't hear it now, that was it, all he could take, had to go away, didn't want any of it, blocked it from his consciousness. He concentrated instead on the shrieking inside, because it was louder now than it had ever been before, cacophonous, but it was also more garbled because all the voices were his, with no sanity left inside them, and so safer than what was happening outside his head.

"The Girou is mine,” he said flatly, shattered, bloody amethyst cutting into the tips of his fingers, then he looked up, narrowed his eyes at the Adan man who thought it was all right to hunt Jin and take their Blood. “The Girou and everyone in it. We have dead to mourn. Leave us now."

He didn't know what happened after that. He had vague recollections of Malick speaking to the men of the Doujou, making up explanations on the fly and leveling threats—
He's already said the Girou is his. You would interfere with the Untouchable? Leave him to tend to his dead
—and ah fuck,
his dead
, and Jacin reached over, setting his fingers into sticky gold. “Need to... need to wash her hair.” Would he be able to without her skull falling away in pieces? He hadn't had the courage to actually look at her yet, only quick glimpses out of the corner of his eye of gold hair trailing in a puddle of scarlet, a little hand curled into a loose fist palm-up on the stones. He didn't know if he could wash her body, paint the prayers on her brow, say the rites, wrap the linens, light the pyre. He didn't even know if he could look at her all at once, see the damage, without losing his grip.

He couldn't see Yori, because he'd have to look past Caidi, and he couldn't, just
couldn't
. Couldn't make himself face these splinters of skewed reality, because if he looked, if he accepted, it would
be
reality.

Refused to look at Beishin, because his dead eye—the one without a knife jutting from it—kept going tea-colored, and he didn't want to know why.

Say you love me, say it,
because... because.... He didn't know. A trade, and for what? Someone who couldn't truly die? Someone who would fight dirty, lie, cheat, and steal his way out of it, and never leave Jacin with this hollow nothing burning him up from inside?

Reality broken into tiny little pieces, like a shattered mirror, and he could see himself deep-deep down in each one, and he was screaming inside them. Bashing himself into oblivion as broken as this reality where little girls fell silently from the sky, and sharded reflections caught the not-sun and blinded him.

And then Samin was there, stooping down right beside him, staring into Jacin's eyes with stark grief and genuine sympathy that sliced into Jacin's gut like a knife. Samin didn't reach out, like Malick kept doing, and he didn't try to say things that would do no good. He merely looked, let Jacin see, let him watch the tears that leaked from a face that looked like it couldn't support them—water from stone—and tipped him a small, slow nod. Then he just turned, slid his arms beneath Caidi's small, broken body, lifted her and hugged her gently to his chest. He stood, eyes hard and cold now as he turned them on the hunters and the doujoun all around him, his big body vibrating for want of blood and vengeance, but his heart too obviously wrapped around the small bundle in his arms.

That
, Jacin remembered. The look in Samin's eyes, the sounds of grief coming from Shig, her warbling voice whispering, whispering—
you're all right, Yori-love, Umeia will see to you, she'll take you to Wolf
—and Joori, pleading,
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Hands on Jacin's shoulders, his arms, stroking his cheek, but he kept snarling and knocking them off, because he'd taken the silence before, and they'd punished him for it. Except the hands wouldn't
let up
, wouldn't
stop
, just kept pushing gentle comfort down his throat ‘til he thought he'd choke on it.
C'mon, Fen, you can't see to your sister like this
, and he wanted to ask,
Like what?
because what difference could it make, really, but it didn't matter enough to spend the thought and strength on forming the words.

Husao, I need you to see to these people—we can't let them remember all this, and especially not the Doujou.

It made sense somewhere, but Jacin didn't even reach for it. It didn't matter, he didn't care. Just went along and let the hands lead him... somewhere. Heard the steady
thwip-thwip-thwip
of a moth's battered wings, smelled jasmine twined with sage and pine, reached instead for the scent of cherry blossoms, but couldn't find it.

Faces going by, staring at him, and he stared back, wondering at the tears and the looks of pain and sympathy on the faces of strangers. Or maybe they weren't strangers, maybe he knew them and had forgotten. Maybe none of this was really happening, just another fever dream, more broken reality, and Caidi would wander in any second now to wake him from it and climb in next to him—
Pleeeeeease
,
Jacin
—and curl a warm swath against his chest with Malick at his back. Safe, safe, reality whole and unbroken, no dead sisters, no stolen mothers, no voices in his head throttling reason with madness, no dark, lying eyes or knives red with his beishin's blood, and, “
Fuck
,” he breathed. Hunched in, curling into the pain he couldn't feel that shattered all through him—inside and out—and those hands on him again, still, and he let them guide him, take him, show him.

Never loved me, never loved me
, so blind, he'd been so blind, and,
Shit, Fen, no wonder you're so easy to use
. He shut his eyes and tried not to pretend the hands on him were long-fingered and demanding, and not callused and almost tender.

Didn't kill him soon enough, failed, refused the chance—twice—because I didn't want to see, didn't want to know

Hands, more hands, the same hands, they wouldn't go away, wouldn't leave him be. Peeling away layers and layers of blood,
sayitsayitsayit
, layers and layers of cloth, layers and layers of self,
please just
say
it
, like a snake sloughing skin, except nothing new grew back to take its place. Just raw, all over raw, and he wanted to roll in broken glass, grind it, because he could feel pain, but he couldn't
feel pain
, and surely it wasn't real punishment unless he could
feel
it, writhe inside it, scream in its extremity. Only numb and cold and nothing and more nothing. Voices riding over him, except they all sounded like his,
screaming
, and hands
pushpulldragging
him away from blissful ruination.

Malick's voice, overriding all the others—
Damn it, Fen, don't let go now, not after all this
—and he wished for a knife, because he knew what he was when he had a knife in his hand. Muscle and bone and sinew melding with steel and turning him into something
other
. Something that moved with
almost
-perfection, that didn't need any voice to drive it, any touch to silence it. And always,
always
the sweet potential of oblivion in the turn of the blade, rounding on him like a faithful dog turning on its master, except
he
was the dog, no one's master, not even his own. No reprieve, not even in that, no cool-metal-smooth-wood in his hand, someone had taken them all away,
not your blood to spill
, replaced his weapons—his last grasp at hope—with a ring shoved onto his finger that gave him silence he shouldn't have but couldn't refuse. Soft voices and soothing touches, blunting the sharp edges of his mind so he couldn't even turn that on himself, rip and tear and gnash and scream.

No, I'll take care of this, you see to the others. Get Ragi to help you with Joori and Morin, but stay close to Shig.

It echoed strangely, too resonant, like his skull had just opened up and everything was falling into his brain,
everything
. Too fucking loud,
our boy, our boy, clinging to corpses
. It wasn't there but he tried to listen anyway, he
tried
, but it all blurred together.
Nothing, you're nothing
, his father's voice, accusing—
Abomination
. He thought maybe he cried out at that one, but he couldn't hear through the pain and the echoes of pain.
Thwip-thwip-thwip,
and yet there was silence, hands on him, guiding him, so why could he still
hear
?

Jasmine, fucking everywhere jasmine, sage and sex leaking through it, drowning him.

Water against his skin, burning and prickling, searing little pinpricks at the lacework of stitches. It shocked him a little, throttled the numb agony in his head and chest and heart downward until he knew he was hunched on the bench of one of the shower-boxes. Water, heavy with the thick scent of minerals, sloughing over him, puddling at his bare feet in an ungodly cloud of pink as blood came loose from skin and hair. Hands on his scalp, the scent of pine soap in his nose, and Malick's voice a steady patter:

"...can't give up, all right? Not now, Fen, you're better than this.” A splash, and the soothing sluice of water runnelling over his head and down his shoulders, and Jacin reflexively shut his eyes against the sting of soap. “Fucking gods and their fucking cryptic fucking orders.” A soft growl this time, and the hands in his hair turned rougher. “I won't stand for it, Fen, y'hear? I don't give a shit anymore what Wolf wants, this all stops now."

...for you, he'll risk his soul.
A mischievous grin beneath too-sharp jade eyes.
Think you can live with that?

"I don't know,” he breathed, because he really didn't. He didn't know anything anymore, except he hurt, and he couldn't feel it, a great ball of agony locked inside his chest like a drop of Blood locked inside cut amethyst, and he wanted it but he feared it, because when it shattered....

"Fen?” Malick's hands had stopped tangling at Jacin's hair, and he took hold of Jacin's shoulders, turning him on the bench. Tea-smoky eyes peered sharply through the wavering lamplight. “Fen?"

And Jacin was naked, sitting on the bench and letting Malick tend him, clean him, wash his hair, and he should have been embarrassed or pissed or... something, but there was nothing there. Nothing but the heat of the water searing him to bone, but still setting shivers all through him, and a throng of emotions he couldn't name. He poked and nudged their periphery, distrustful, wary of setting them loose in a slurry of insanity, but they bunched in tight, curled in on themselves, and it was so new that he couldn't stop himself from worrying at it. Silence howled in his head, and he couldn't figure out why it
hurt
so much more than the noise, and yet it was numb, like a dead limb. He'd never not
felt
before, even when he'd wished he could dig the emotion out of his chest and kill it for good, and the lack of anything now, when it should all be killing him, rending him... it was too much, not enough.

You think I don't know why you stare so at the Gates?
And maybe she did understand his horrified fascination, and maybe it mattered, he thought maybe it did, because it was reality now, his obsession with the near-dead. Watching them waiting to become ghosts, soul-hungry, watching the world around them pretend they weren't there, except he'd never
really
understood the emptiness of true hunger before. Strange and absurd, because he'd been a ghost for years—he really should have gotten it before now.

It wasn't right, it was all too wrong. She was gone and survival was his unforgivable sin, because
he
was the ghost, it should have been him, he was already halfway there,
wrongwrongwrong
—

"Stop it, Fen. You're
not
a ghost, damn it."

Say it, please, just say it, let me pretend I'm flying, unbreak this unbearable reality, wake me, kill me, help me, say it, only don't... don't just
leave
me here, not like this

All of it wrong, everything out of true.

It had to go away. It all had to
go away
.

Punishment without pain was meaningless; grief without heartache was... nothing at all. He owed Caidi more than that.

But
this
—whatever this agony-apathy was writhing through his every thought, his every sense, his every breath... it had to
go away
.

"I need....” He didn't know what he needed—he just.... “I
need
."

He latched onto Beishin's shirt and dragged himself up.

The kiss tasted metal-bitter, like blood, and even as Malick tried to wrench himself back and away, Jacin held on, pushed himself in. His patchwork leg bumped stone as he shoved them both into the wall, and it hurt, but he still couldn't
feel
it, so he drove himself into Beishin harder. Clamped his fingers to the hinges of Malick's jaw and
squeezed
until Beishin opened for him, gave in, let Jacin shove his tongue in his mouth, let him rock them together. Let him keep doing it until he dragged reaction from the both of them, until his breath ran out and he had to pull back.