Bared Blade (36 page)

Whether Fei wondered about my sudden blush, I would never know, as Qethar chose that moment to reinsert himself into the conversation. “Will you two stop blithering about pointless philosophical piffle and get back to thinking about how we can recover the Kothmerk. Every hour that it remains in human hands is another hour one of our most sacred relics is profaned.”

Since Qethar had pretty much blended into the background for me by then, I just about rolled backward out of my chair when he spoke. Maybe that’s what the still and silent treatment was all about, another little way of dicking with the humans.

We’re just not very good at paying attention to stuff that doesn’t move at all over periods measured in hours. Didn’t matter that he was strikingly beautiful. Didn’t matter that no ordinary house would have an expensive statue of the sort he now resembled more than ever. Didn’t even matter that I’d trusted snakes more than I trusted Qethar. After a while, I simply lost track of him.

I hadn’t yet decided how I was going to respond to Qethar’s comment, when I heard Fei say, “Well, and fuck you, too, Durkoth. As much as I appreciate the rescue, I don’t work for you, and I don’t think Aral does either.” She stepped over and poured another couple of fingers of whiskey into my glass before I could protest.

She pointed the bottle at Qethar now. “So, if you want my help, stone man, you can damn well be polite about it. You can also wait till I’ve had a little bit of time to recover and think. I haven’t had two hours’ solid sleep in the last
three days, and I had the shit beat out of me a couple of times in there, too.” She touched the tip of the bottle to the long slice on her cheek and winced. “You want something from me, ask me nicely when I wake up, and then we’ll see. I’m going to bed.” She headed for the stairs.

That’s when I realized just how tired I was, too, not to mention how much satisfaction watching Fei jerking Qethar’s chain had given me. “You know, that’s got a lot to be said for it.” I raised my glass. “Here’s to sleep.”

Fei turned and looked back at me. “Blankets in the closet at the top of the stairs. Couch is next to the stone asshole.” She jerked a thumb at Qethar. “There’s a second bedroom upstairs. You and the Dyad can wrestle to see who gets that if neither of you wants to bed down next to his marble haughtiness.”

“Or we could just wrestle for the fun of it and then all bed down together,” Vala said as she came out of the bathing room. She was toweling off her hair, and now she threw me a suggestive grin.

But I wasn’t in a mood for banter. “No, it’s all right. I can just sleep on the floor in the upstairs hall. It’ll be more comfortable than my brewery fallback ever was.” I turned to the Durkoth and lifted my drink in a mock salute before draining it. “See you in the morning, Qethar.”

The ugly inhuman thing I’d seen earlier looked back at me out of his face for a few brief heartbeats and I found myself wondering how that inner ugliness could coexist with the outer beauty. Then his face slid back to a neutral expression and I found it hard to believe I was looking at anything living.

At the top of the stairs Vala waited for Stel to go into the bedroom, than gave me a kiss. It made the world spin. Well, spin more.

“When this is all over, if we’re still alive, I want to…” She trailed off and looked suddenly thoughtful and serious. “I’m actually not sure what I want to do. I like you, Aral, maybe more than I ought to considering what you are, and what I am. I’d like to try something more than a quick tumble with you, but I don’t know if that can work.”

I didn’t know how to answer that. I liked her a lot, too, but I had other responsibilities, and the one to a girl named Faran seemed all too likely to come between us, to say nothing of what I owed Fei. Before I could do or say anything though, Vala’s normal mischievous smile came back, and she gave me a wink.

She squeezed my arm. “So, I guess we’ll just have to start with the tumble and see what develops from there.” Then she gave me another kiss, this one rather more serious than the previous one, and followed Stel.

That left me alone on the landing except for Triss. So I sat myself down with my back against the wall in a position that allowed me to keep Qethar’s feet in sight and my head from spinning. I really
wanted
to bed down, but I wanted to have another quiet word with Triss even more.

What do you think?
I sent, before he could take me to task for my drinking.

He snorted grumpily but let it pass without a lecture.
About what? Vala? What you talked about with Fei? Faran and Ssithra?

All that, I guess. I don’t know what our next move should be. I’m having trouble seeing how we can make this all work out without betraying someone, or several someones.

I know. So what’s most important?

My heart says Faran and Ssithra.

We don’t even know them, Aral. What if they’ve gone as bad as Devin?

Why do you always ask the hard questions, Triss? I don’t know. They’re just kids really, and the closest thing we’ve got to family. I don’t want to believe they’re anything like Devin, but then, I didn’t want to believe it about Devin either.

What does your head say?

The Kothmerk. If it doesn’t get back to its rightful owner soon, there’s liable to be a war. No matter how much I want to make the girls my first priority I can’t put them over that.

Good, then we’re on the same page.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back for a moment. The world lurched underneath me. I
needed
sleep.

I’m done for now, Triss. Keep an eye on Qethar, won’t you? I have to let go for a while, but I don’t trust him and I want to know if he moves from that chair.

Sleep. I’ve got it.

I think I managed to actually stretch out before I was gone, but I wouldn’t bet money on it.

“
Aral
, you surprise me again.” Stel set her napkin aside and belched. “I had no idea a person could do so much with a bit of rice, some fresh fish, and a few dried beans and pulses. That was a damn fine meal. I’m impressed. Doubly so, given what you had to work with.”

“Fei’s spice cabinet is almost as well stocked as her liquor cabinet, and that’s a good part of the battle.”

“I would never have imagined they’d teach you to cook like this at assassin school,” said Fei.

I smiled sweetly. “If you don’t know a lot about how to make food taste exactly like you want it to, it’s very hard to slip poison into someone’s dinner. Or their breakfast, for that matter.”

Fei’s eyes went very wide for a moment, then narrowed. “That’s not funny, Kingslayer.”

“That’s because I’m not joking.”

It’s been so long since you joked regularly that I’d forgotten how evil your sense of humor could be.
Triss sounded more amused than scolding.

Unlike
this morning when he’d been very unkind about my hangover. An overreaction, I thought, since it was the first time I’d been really hungover since the mess with Marchon had made me take a firm look at my drinking. It was just the once, and now I’d been reminded not to do it again. I was in control of this thing.

I waited a few beats and then threw a broad wink at the table. “But, more seriously, I wish I could have taken the risk to go farther afield and find some fresh vegetables. Unlike my luck with the fish cart there haven’t been any to be had in sight of your front door, Captain.” I started
scooping up plates, then paused before taking them into the kitchen. “Vegetables always make for a better meal. To say nothing of the way adding more color improves the palette of toxins you can use.”

Fei growled. “You’re a bastard, Aral. You know that, right?”

“It’s all in the spicing,” I called over my shoulder. “I don’t normally bother to cook …like that, but you’re special, Fei.”

I heard Vala laugh behind me and felt that I’d been fully rewarded. The interchange made a nice break from the frustrations of the moment. We’d been back and forth all morning—afternoon really, but who’s counting—trying to figure out how to find “Reyna” and the Kothmerk. It wasn’t going very well, and it didn’t help that I hadn’t yet told the rest of them what she was, or that I knew her real name. Which was something I needed to do soon if I was going to do it at all.

How the hell do we find Faran, Triss?

My shadow shrugged his wings.
I don’t know that we can. It’s too bad we can’t make her fulfill that promise and find us.

I froze.
Now there’s a thought.…

“
T
hat’s
insane, Aral!” Triss had placed himself on the wall behind the empty chair at the foot of Fei’s table so he could more fully participate in the discussion. “You nearly killed yourself with the Dyad’s face-changing spell not two days ago, and now you want to risk exposing your new identity to the Elite?”

“Not at all, my friend. I’m talking about spreading a rumor, not putting up fresh wanted posters with my new face on them.”

Triss lashed his tail but didn’t say anything further.

“I think I missed a step in there somewhere,” said Vala. “Why would telling people that Aral Kingslayer had been tracked down to what’s left of the Old Mews neighborhood bring Reyna there? Wouldn’t she want to stay as far away from the manhunt as possible?”

“There’s something Aral hasn’t told us, Vala,” said VoS, choosing, rather disconcertingly, to speak through Vala’s own mouth. “He’s got a secret he’s reluctant to share, though I haven’t figured out what it is yet.”

“Is that true?” Vala asked.

“Yeah, I guess that it is.” There was no good way to do this, so I figured I might as well go for bald and bold. “Her name isn’t Reyna. It’s Faran and she’s …well, not a Blade—as Namara died before she was old enough to confirm—but she is Blade trained and raised. Up to the age of eight or nine.”

Vala jerked in her seat, almost as if she’d been slapped.

“That would explain a lot,” said Stel after a long pause, though she didn’t sound happy about it.

Fei nodded. “That
does
change things. You think that if we can get shadowside buzzing loud enough about where to find the Kingslayer, that’ll make her come running to you for protection and help. Clever.”

“But you
aren’t
going to take her under your protection, are you?” This from VoS, via Stel. “She stole the Kothmerk and it clearly wasn’t to return it to the Archon. She was going to sell it, forever staining the honor of Kodamia.”

“It’s not that simple,” I said and Triss nodded his agreement.

“How is it not?” demanded VoS, this time speaking through Vala. “We took her in and sheltered her, gave her a home, responsibilities. Then, as soon as she got the chance, she betrayed us all.”

For the first time since I’d known her, Vala looked genuinely uncomfortable about what VoS was saying through her mouth. Interesting.

It’s probably
not
the first time Faran did something like this,
Triss sent my way.

Just the first time she got caught.
That thought had occurred to me, too. A girl with Faran’s skills and talents had no need to play at being a groom to earn her keep. If nothing else, she could simply steal everything she needed.
Let’s just hope none of
them
think of that.

They will. In fact, Fei probably already has. Look at the way she’s pretending to be part of the wall.

That made me glance at Qethar as well. He’d moved his stone chair in close at the beginning of the conversation but
had played statue thereafter. Whatever his thoughts were on the matter, I couldn’t read them from his face. And I was growing increasingly inclined to believe that any illusions I’d had earlier about doing so were pure fantasy, that all resemblances between human expressions and his own were deliberate manipulations on his part.

“Do you have any idea what this girl’s been through?” I asked, as much to keep VoS too busy to think about what I was thinking about as for anything. “I do. When the other gods murdered Namara and had their followers tear down the temple, they tore down my life, too. I lost everything and it broke me. Completely. I crawled into a whiskey bottle and damn near drowned there, and I was a full Blade, an adult with five years of field duty. The Kingslayer. It nearly killed me. Faran was eight.”

Nine I think, but close enough.

“Eight years old, VoS, and every single adult in her life was murdered. All of her teachers, her priests, even the servants who cleaned the halls. Most of her friends died, too. Everyone she knew and counted on was murdered along with her goddess. Everyone she cared about. Her family.” I slammed the table with both fists, pushing myself to my feet and realizing as I did so that I was actually shaking with anger. “There were six hundred people living at the temple of Namara at the time of the fall. Over five hundred of them died, probably while Faran watched.

“An eight-year-old. And that’s only what we know about. She showed up on your doorstep, what a year and a half ago? The temple fell more than six years ago. Who knows what happened to her in the interim? A little girl, with no one to protect her, her name on wanted posters in every town and city in the eleven kingdoms. Don’t you dare judge her till you’ve been through half of what she has!” I was bellowing by the time I came to the end of my speech.