Wolf's-own: Weregild (55 page)

Not a dream—a vision. A vision from a
Temshiel
seer.

"The future is such a chancy thing,” Husao went on then lifted an eyebrow, like he thought Joori might be too stupid to understand what he was saying. “Chancy and all too changeable, if we know what to do with it."

Think very carefully, Fen Joori, because you may be called upon to make the same decision for yourself.

Horrible, sickening irony that Umeia's advice would come to Joori now.

And then he was back in Samin's grip, watching blood splash as Yakuli's sword connected with Jacin's chest, and Joori lifted a hand to his own breastbone, felt the mail beneath his palm as Jacin went to his knees. Watching it all happen again, reliving it—Malick charging toward Jacin, Tatsu and Sora stopping him then being shoved away as Jacin fell and Malick shouted and Joori shoved at Samin's hand on his arm.

He'd tried so hard, right from the beginning, to protect Jacin, to love him by keeping him, and everything he'd done had turned out wrong. He'd stepped in where he shouldn't, and Caidi and Yori were dead because of it.
He must be what he must be
their mother had told him, and then Morin, years later, had echoed almost the exact same words, and Joori hadn't understood them, denied them. He wasn't sure he understood them now, but he'd just been shown a future where Malick had given up his soul for Jacin, and Jacin had given up himself to the madness as he watched.

And all because Joori had stepped in again where he shouldn't.

Don't die
. It was the only thing Jacin had asked of him—possibly ever.
I need you to live.

This time, when he shoved loose from Samin, Joori still ran to Jacin, but he didn't step in, didn't try to drag him away like he'd watched himself do before. He only stood there, kept watching as Malick raised his sword on Yakuli, his eyes on fire, that scent of ozone snapping around him like it had done in the alley, and raising the hairs on the back of Joori's neck. Joori wanted to shout out, warn Malick, tell him what he'd seen, but any warning he might have given died and turned to ash in his throat when Jacin rolled up to his feet, shouted, “
Don't
!” then lunged in and angled himself in front of Yakuli, just as Malick's blade plunged.

Time froze again, but Joori didn't think it was only him this time. He stared at the sword in Malick's hand, sunken halfway through Jacin's gut. Malick was just
looking
at it, shock-blank as his eyes slowly rose to Jacin's, his expression horrified and almost betrayed.

"I decided,” Jacin said thickly, that horrible smile gone now, and his eyes clear and lucid, “that I couldn't live with it."

Malick caught him carefully as he went down again, sinking to his knees, staring out around him, vague and distant, until his gaze landed on Joori. Unbelievably, horribly, Jacin smiled, that soft, warm smile that Joori had thought he'd never see on his brother's face again, so sweet, so full of love and... peace.

Joori's paralysis finally broke. He lurched in toward Jacin, helped Malick lower him gently to the ground. Malick was nearly babbling, “You
bastard
, you can't... Fen, I'm sorry, don't do this,” over and over again as he carefully pulled the sword from the wound then covered it with his hand to staunch the bleeding.

Joori shoved Malick away, because he couldn't make himself not do it, and replaced Malick's hand with his own, holding his brother's guts in and feeling his brother's blood spilling out all over his hand. Morin was yelling somewhere back there, hurling curses, presumably at Yakuli, but Yakuli was running away—
running away
!—and Samin was still holding onto Morin, so maybe some of them were for Samin too.

"Wolf will
not
be thwarted,” Jacin wheezed, “the Ghost unlocks the door to our grave the Prime turns the key to rebirth Wolf opens his arms and brings us home the Prime turns the key the key only say it once—"

"Jacin,” Joori pleaded, because he couldn't stand another word, not now. “Stop, just...
stop
."

Except it seemed like Jacin couldn't. “Catalyst and Incendiary light the lamps of the sky cast acid—"

"Incendiary,” Malick breathed—shocked, taken aback. “
Incendiary
.” He turned, looked at Joori, almost-horror. “
Shit
.” Breathless and stunned, then he turned back to Jacin again, shook him. “Fen.
Fen!
You can't do this.
Incendiary
, Fen, you don't know what—"

And then Xari was there, just looking, eyes riveted to Joori, like she was waiting for him to do something, and when he didn't, she turned her stare on Malick.

"Told you, did I not?” Her full mouth was turned down, her beautiful face twisted into regret. “He would not have thanked you for your oath. ‘Tis better that you did not give it."

"I couldn't,” Malick wheezed, his tone flat, distant. “He wouldn't let me, and then it didn't stick anyway.” He lifted his head, peering over his shoulder. “
Tatsu
!"

"So, you tried,” Xari said softly, almost fondly. “Of course you did.” She sighed, shot another look at Joori but quickly looked away again. “I have shown Wolf's key the path, in the end. My lot is cast.” With a half bow of her head, she held out her hands, and amulets dropped from them, one after another, like they were coming from nowhere at all. They piled up impossibly high—dozens and dozens of them—and then she paused, dangling one that perhaps had more significance than the others, because it seemed like she shuddered just from touching it. She tossed it over Malick's head, and Husao was suddenly there to catch it. Husao stared at it and drew in a shaky breath, strangely reverent. Xari just pushed out a long, tired sigh. “My part is done."

Malick didn't look, didn't thank her, didn't try to kill her, didn't even answer. Just turned back to stare down at Jacin as Jacin smirked back up, sucked in a heavy breath, and arched like it hurt him. “Always a fucking trade,” he rasped.

And Joori abruptly
knew
. Whatever it was he'd seen, it had been Xari's doing—she'd shown Joori a possible future and manipulated him into changing it, used his own hard-learned lessons against him, and turned it all into
this
. Maneuvered him into killing his brother. All she'd wanted, from the very beginning, was to save Malick, and apparently, the “trade” had been Jacin, just like it had been with Umeia. And Husao had known, had helped her do it.

How
could Joori have trusted, even for a second, anything that came from the man who'd pretended to be his brother's confidant and caretaker, when all along he'd been setting Jacin up to be Asai's killer?

Fury welled in Joori's chest, all jumbled together with grief and regret. He choked down a sob that seized his throat, strangled him as he pulled his hand away from Jacin's wound, listened to Malick calling for Tatsu, like there was something he could do.

Subie shoved out another heavy rumble, and like it had done before, even as he watched Xari dissolve into shadow, the rage inside Joori reached for it, twined with the spirit that was bound to his own and curled, purring, through his core. Everything rammed up and out with the scream of rage that hurled itself from his chest. The Blood in Joori's veins joined with the fiery blood in the veins of the earth that ran beneath him, pulsing toward the heart that was Subie. The air shimmered, the ground broke and steepled then warped, dirt flying, rocks and pebbles pelting, and Joori didn't see any of it—
you could too easily take yourself out next time
—and Joori didn't care.

What did it matter? Jacin's blood was everywhere, all over him, leaking out and away, and Jacin's eyes were going cloudy, but his smile was still there as he whispered the Ancestors’ nonsense to Malick and reached for Joori with his blood-soaked hand. Men scattered, and screamed, and the earth trembled beneath them all and swallowed indiscriminately.

Joori felt Malick's eyes on him and met the stare, challenging, but Malick was looking at him like he was shocked and grieved and thrilled all at once, like he was exalted in the throes of some sublime epiphany. And still, Joori didn't care.

Grief, fury, betrayal—all of it roiled through Joori and wended itself into the ground around him. Curled in when his fist did, and thumped when he pounded at the ground as he watched Malick lean down, tenderly lay a kiss to Jacin's mouth, breathe, “Key,” and squeeze Jacin's hand then... smile.

How could he fucking
smile
, when Joori was sitting here watching his brother die and the world convulse and collapse around him, echoing the shattering of his heart? But Jacin was smiling, too, as his eyes went half-lidded, and Malick, weeping—fuck, he was
weeping
, Joori hadn't even thought he knew how—reached out a hand covered in Jacin's blood, clamped on to Joori's.

The shaking didn't stop like it had done the last time Malick had touched him—it grew, trebled and quadrupled. And when Malick gently lowered Jacin to his back in the grass, freed his arm then lifted it, snapped it straight with his palm up, everything in Joori followed the shove.

Samin had a good hold on Morin when the first tremor shuddered beneath his boots—he'd had to, because Morin was too intent on getting between his brother and Yakuli—but when everything rippled and erupted beneath him, he lost his grip along with his balance, and Morin slithered loose. He didn't get far; he couldn't. The ground was shaking, caving in around the barracks like it was aimed, uprooting trees. Samin was just thankful that he'd dragged the boy out as far from the fight as he'd done. They'd been too open to attack for his liking at the time, but now, he was just glad there was nothing big enough to collapse on top of them and crush them. That was, if the ground itself didn't do the job.

Rocking and shaking, almost in time to Joori's shouts and screams of despair that echoed so disturbingly those of his brother only hours before down in the baths. Only these screams seemed to have a destructive power all their own. The jink and snap of the earth kept their undulating rhythm, until it all shifted, took on a new tone, and altered itself from an all-encompassing shudder to something deeper, something driven, something with purpose.

A little more stable now, Samin found Morin first, crawled over the rocking, broken earth to him and gripped the back of his collar. He peered up cautiously, saw the barracks flattened and smoldering, bodies everywhere, and Fen down on the ground right in the center of it. Malick leaned over Fen, one hand grasping Joori's in a tableau of shared grief and comfort, and the other raised... aimed.

Samin only just had time to understand that the quakes were coming from Joori, that Malick was taking them, directing them, before thunder rolled, lightning streaked, and Subie erupted with a great, spurting roar. Fire vomited from its peak, spewed from its vents. Great chunks of rock broke loose from all sides, hurled up and out, and careened back down its flanks. Lava flowed, beautiful in its lethal indifference to everything in its path. Samin idly wondered if it would reach the city and decided it could only be an improvement.

Gouts of liquid fire gushed from the mountain, Wolf's grinning face watching it all, long arms of flame crawling up the sky, as though reaching for the moons themselves. Clouds of thick smoke and pulverized debris flashed and glittered as ropes of lightning stretched from them to flitter over the falling peak.

The sound was deafening, all-consuming, as Subie pummeled itself. The ground continued to rock and sway beneath Samin as he kept his grip on Morin, watched Joori's face go from grief-stricken to awed to viciously exultant as one hand gripped Malick's, and the other gripped his brother's.

Malick's face stayed the same, focused, but stone-hard and blank as he aimed everything in himself and Joori at the mountain like it had, all by itself, ruined everything that was good in his life. Samin peered down at Fen's still shape, looking smaller than it should, and wondered if it had.

Samin's ears were ringing, his whole body numb but for the deep-set thumping that rattled his ribs and his teeth and jarred all up and down his backbone. And still, Subie kept snarling and crumbling and shaking, spewing out ash and smoke and fire, blotting out the moons as it collapsed in on itself. Gone in only a few timeless minutes, from a mountain that hunched over Ada and what used to be Jejin like a stern sentinel, to a bad-tempered smoking crater the size of the bay itself.

And then it all stopped, just like that, all at once. All that was left were the aftershocks, tiny little tremors that slithered through the ground then shook themselves out. Samin couldn't hear a thing, just a dull ringing behind his teeth, but he pulled himself up to his feet then dragged Morin up after him. He surveyed the chaos.

Everyone had gone flat to the ground. Samin couldn't distinguish the live bodies from the dead ones, so he didn't try. Just searched for Shig's distinctive multicolored head, relieved when he saw her getting to her own feet farther down the hill, shaking her head as if to clear it and then turning her glance his way. Samin tried to ask her if she was all right, but he didn't get an answer, so he waved. Shig waved back as she started up the hill. Samin let Morin do what he'd been wanting to do since he'd started that fire in the barracks—Samin let the boy drag him over to his brothers.

They picked their way over broken earth and crevices wide enough that Samin had to toss Morin over them first then jump after. Men in Yakuli's livery stirred, peering up cautiously from their flattened positions on the ground like gophers poking their heads from their holes. They seemed willing to ignore Samin and Morin as they stepped their way over and around them, so Samin returned the favor.

None of Yakuli's creatures stirred, though. Samin wasn't quite sure what to make of that. He hoped it meant Yakuli was dead, but he'd learned over the years that good luck was for other people, so he didn't count on it. Still, he didn't see the man anywhere, so the hope didn't die.

Husao was standing over Malick, two others Samin didn't know just behind him. They didn't look like they belonged to Yakuli, and the woman was bloody gorgeous with her dark skin and dark eyes, so Samin was willing to hold off on killing them until he found out if he should. Anyway, he was bone-fucking-weary, and the numb, shaky vibrations still working under his skin told him he was going to be sore as hell tomorrow. Cautiously, he scanned around for Xari, but he saw neither her nor Yakuli, and he counted it as a good thing.