Wolf's-own: Weregild (43 page)

Damn. This was entirely unnecessary. And a brief flash of the very near future told Husao it was also quite dangerous. But then, that would be Kamen's point.

"Kamen,” Husao said evenly, “there is no reason to hurt the boy."

"No, there isn't,” Kamen agreed, still hanging over Xari's shoulders, casual, like an old friend, keeping her in place, but there was nothing casual about the look in his eyes. “Nor was there any reason for him to have to watch his sister die while you just stood there and watched him carry out your vengeance for you. You could have helped, Husao. You didn't."

"I saw to the rabble,” Husao protested mildly, “and that was a gift. Surely you didn't expect more from me.” He leaned forward. “You knew my role in this, Kamen. And you know Dragon's—"

"Don't hide behind your god, Husao, it's beneath you. Dragon issued no decree against saving the lives of a little girl and a young woman who managed in her twenty short years to earn more grace than you've done in centuries."

"You seem, Kamen,” Husao observed dryly, “to have re-found your tender sympathies for mortals.” He slid a slow glance to Jacin-rei before turning it once again on Kamen. “One wonders if it can do anything but harm to those mortals. Even when you try to save them, they just seem to... slip through your fingers."

Unfair and rather cheap, but Husao had to at least try out a tentative defense. Kamen's wrath had been stirred, his Catalyst toyed with. There would be no quarter, not even for those who were just here to watch.

Kamen bared his teeth—a wolf's leer, fitting to his namesake god—and turned to Jacin-rei. “Fen, I'd like you to meet the
Temshiel
who's been posing as my patron, the Mage, though I think you'll be more familiar with the name by which his glamour is known.” He looked at Jacin-rei squarely, no smile now, only an honest compassion that nonetheless managed to manifest sharp and hard. “Fen, this is Vonshi."

It seemed to take far too long for it to sink in. Jacin-rei went blank again, the hand closed over his brother's tightening then relaxing, tightening then relaxing, while his expression slid from stunned-empty to confused to pure and profound wrath. Both hands snapped to the knives at his belts, and he was on his feet and coming for Husao in the time it took for his brother to gasp, “I know that name,” in bewildered surprise.

Kamen didn't move, just watched and kept his hold on Xari as Jacin-rei kicked the tea table out of the way, stumbled a little when his leg almost gave out, but kept his feet and leveled his blades at Husao's throat. “You
knew
.” Breathless and thin, and the hurt inside it was all too plain beneath the rage.

Husao didn't move. And strangely, he wanted to. He couldn't explain it. He wanted to reach out to the boy, set a hand to his shoulder, like he'd done so many times, to calm him, soothe him, reassure him. Damn it, he liked the boy, he'd made him those revolting sweet bean-paste cakes for the gods’ sakes, for
years
, and there was no reason in the world why the new hatred in those gray eyes should bother Husao so much—Catalyst or no, the boy was still only mortal—but it did.

"I knew,” he admitted.

"Did you know where she was?"

Husao cut a look to Kamen, lifted his eyebrow.

"Don't look at
him
,” Jacin-rei snapped. “
Did you know
Yakuli took my mother?"

Husao sighed and very gently lifted a hand and pushed the blade closest to his throat away. Jacin-rei merely whirled it smoothly and resettled it against the blue veins at Husao's wrist, effectively pinning his hand to the arm of the couch, then flicked the other knife beneath Husao's chin. Precise and faster than even Husao could follow. He could feel the fine-honed tips of both blades and yet neither of them even pricked the thin skin where they were set.

"Better tell him the truth,” Kamen warned with an annoying smirk. “I doubt even you can foresee his next move."

Too right. Husao grimaced. The boy was not only Untouchable, but he moved almost entirely on instinct, without thought, which made him almost impossible to foresee. Like Asai, Husao had only ever been able to predict Jacin-rei by concentrating on those around him, and though Husao's sight was fathoms deeper than Asai's, he'd still never been able to see Fen Jacin-rei himself with any real accuracy. He had, however, just witnessed a too-quick vision of quite a lot of blood, so it would be best to tread very carefully. Under other circumstances, death now would be inconvenient, at worst, but Jacin-rei knew how to make it so Husao couldn't come back, and he wasn't altogether sure Kamen wouldn't just stand there and watch the boy do it.

"I saw,” Husao admitted, tightening his mouth a little when the brother hissed a string of foul invective behind Jacin-rei, but Husao kept his attention on the knives and the hard gray stare boring into him. “You must understand, Jacin-rei: one mortal life carries no weight within the Balance. You would not have moved against Asai without cause, and you were the only one who could remove him with neither damnation from the gods nor the forewarning of his own sight. It only made it more... poetic that he was the one who taught you how to bring about his own end.” Husao shrugged, careful not to shift those parts of himself still veritably pinned at knifepoint. “You have lost very little, in truth. As Xari says, you could very well leave Ada now with your brothers and your sanity, and you would still be leagues ahead of any other Untouchable in the last century or so."

"You....” Stricken. Disbelieving. Enraged.

Husao frowned. The boy had to have known, but it seemed that actually hearing it out loud still shocked him. His eyes had gone glassy, and his skin was going to ash.

"Fen?” Kamen put in, and when the boy didn't acknowledge him, he shot a furious glare at Husao that really should have at least set his eyebrows on fire. “Fen, are you—?"

"My father, dead,” Jacin-rei breathed. “My mother... taken. My brother almost taken, my... my sister....” He swallowed, mouth quivering. “And you knew. All your teachings, all your kindnesses."

"Fucking hell,” the brother hissed behind him. “And I thought you were bad, Malick."

Kamen's smirk widened. “Oh, I am. Just in a different way.” He tightened his arm about Xari, jostled her, as though in affection. “Right, love?"

Husao ignored them. “They were meant truly, lad,” he told Jacin-rei kindly. “I wanted you—"

"You wanted me to do your wet work for you.” Jacin-rei's voice was still hoarse, but the shakiness of only a second ago was morphing into something harder, colder. “And a mad Untouchable would have been worthless."

It would likely be a mistake to smile and pat the boy approvingly for his deductions, so Husao remained still and silent.

"That night.” Jacin-rei's eyes went a little foggy, and both knives relaxed their pinions very slightly. “The door opened. It was locked, I
know
it was locked, but it opened. I heard....” He shook his head, betrayal and deep, dark wrath curling together in his gaze, sending it nearly half-wild. “You knew even before he did."

Husao recognized this look, breathed a little easier, because he knew the boy very well, and Jacin-rei was nothing if not ever-anxious for stern direction when his mind began to wander into places he didn't really want to see. “Look at it with your head, boy, and not with your heart. Your emotions make you addled, they always have done.” Husao was gratified when the gray eyes snapped into focus, a little less so when they narrowed, sharpened. “Of course I knew. It was I who veiled your brothers and your sister as they huddled in Asai's wilderness.” Jacin-rei flinched, ever so slightly, and Husao took it as progress. “Had I not, Asai would have had them before that first night was through. I protected them to the very limits of my laws—for
you
."

"Because you needed me sane. Because you needed the threat. Because my emotions make me addled and weak, and you needed me just sane enough to obey when you pointed the Catalyst at his beishin."

"Of course not.” Husao breathed an impatient sigh, almost shook his head, but the blade was still far too constricting. “I needed you strong. I needed you ready. I needed you to draw Kamen into your scope, to give you the proof that would incite you and the strength that would enable you."

"He told me you'd come,” Kamen put in, maliciously helpful, his light-brown eyes near sparking with dark amusement and scorn.

And how did all of this get to be a veritable trial for Husao, when it was Xari who'd been attempting to take Kamen's Untouchable away? It wasn't fair.

"And told you to kill me if I didn't,” Jacin-rei agreed softly, then he paused, head atilt. “And my family?"

Husao didn't answer. Without Jacin-rei to dangle them over as impetus, his family had no value, but for possibly to the Adan. Husao
might
have alerted Kamen to their existence, left it to him, but then... he might just as easily have simply forgotten about them altogether, left them to starve or survive as Fate decided. Looking into Jacin-rei's eyes, Husao did not need to be told that admitting as much would be... unhealthy. And yet, he somehow couldn't make himself speak a lie.

He needn't have done either—Jacin-rei knew. Husao could see it in the wrathful cant to his expression, the pain beneath it. “I... see,” Jacin-rei wheezed, windless, then he jolted enough to make Husao flinch as sharp blades pressed his skin. Jacin-rei gasped and growled, “Shut up,
shut up
!"

For a moment, Husao thought the half-crazed command had been directed at him, and the awareness of the knives overrode the indignant annoyance at the impudence. But then Kamen stilled, said, “Fen?” in such a way that it made Husao take a sharper look at Jacin-rei.

Anger. Confusion. Betrayal. And very little clarity.

"You told him to kill me,” the boy said.

Husao should perhaps tread a little more carefully. “I did not want you dead, lad. Understand.” Husao paused and took a moment to think about what he should say, because he'd seen that vagueness in Jacin-rei's eyes before, but he'd never seen it mixed with such hatred. “If you didn't join them, yes, you would have been got out of the way. Your Samin would have done the deed, because even that first night, Kamen was too besotted and would have balked. I couldn't have you going back to Asai, Jacin-rei. Nor could I have you running about loose. And I knew that you would... appeal to Kamen."

Kamen snorted, snarked, “Perfect, Husao, that'll calm him down,” then he snorted again at the brother's low, indecipherable mutterings, but Husao was almost certain he made out the word
pimp
hissed out on a sneer. He scowled.

"So, you used me to gain his complicity.” Jacin-rei's head tilted to the side, a listening posture Husao had seen too many times, but now... it just didn't seem right. The boy had Kamen's ring, after all. “Why?” Jacin-rei whispered.

"He was using
my son's Blood
!” Husao burst out, then he sucked in a quick breath and made his heart slow its rhythm, made his breathing even out. “Control—that was all Skel ever wanted. To level the ground, arm both sides equally.
Balance
. He never would have used the amulets and spells the way Asai has done—he would have killed Asai himself and damn the suns, if he'd known. But he was in love, just as you—"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up,
enough
!"

Jacin-rei's voice was low and rust-raspy, and again, Husao wasn't even sure it was directed at him, but it stopped him, nonetheless.

Not Xari, though. “You see now, lad,” she said—quite bravely, Husao thought, considering Kamen's arm was still locked around her, and his jaw was set in cold anger. Then again, Kamen couldn't kill her, and though he could be maliciously creative in the ways of hurting a person, still, one could recover from hurt. “The machinations are too large and far-reaching. They began before you were even born. Husao saw you before Asai did—he attached himself to Asai the night Asai bargained for you with your father.
He
showed Asai the vision, pushed it into his mind as though it were Asai's own."

Husao's mouth pinched in tight.
Thank you, Xari
. He wasn't surprised, but he was annoyed. He'd only come to observe, after all. He'd had no intention of making things more difficult for Xari, but it seemed she had no compunction about making things more difficult for him. And the damnable flashes of splattered blood would
not
stop lurking just at the edges of his sight.

"I needed you,” Husao said, calm and frank. “I needed Kamen. Neither of us could kill Asai ourselves, and he was more powerful than any maijin, even his own mother. He was virtually invulnerable, except to the one person he could not foresee. Planning was his mistake. I could see his ripples in Fate and work them against him, but he couldn't see yours. It's why your presence was imperative. No one knows what you'll do—not even you. It makes the future harder to predict, even for me. You're already a blank spot in Fate. Your effect on it is colored ever in gray. But put you with Kamen, the one who craved vengeance almost as deeply as I, the one who would gladly help you find yours...."

He trailed off, let Jacin-rei fill in the rest, because the boy wanted to see it, wanted it all to have a purpose he could understand and take for his own. A directionless paladin looking for a lord to lead him, give him aim, and Husao had given him Kamen, had virtually handed them both Asai—what more could they want from him?

"What d'you want to do, Fen?” Kamen asked—no concern, only mild curiosity.

Husao nearly rolled his eyes. He respected Kamen, truly was grateful for the role he'd played in Husao's own vengeance, but sometimes he couldn't help but feel that all that power was wasted on one who was still too close to mortal.

Jacin-rei was still glaring at Husao, cold and maybe slightly less deranged than before, but with no less hatred. It still twisted foolish regret in Husao's chest. He truly did like the boy, after all.

"I don't know,” Jacin-rei rasped. “Do you want him dead?"

Kamen shot Husao a look that was both snide and appraising. Husao's lip curled. How very... sweet—offering to kill him for his lover. Husao wondered if this was their idea of romance.