Blood Ties (27 page)

“Hilarity is the last thing on my mind. And . . . thank you.” He tipped his head slightly to me, and I turned back to William. I'd never seen anyone with such a look of utter hopelessness in his eyes. “Hang on, William. This is all going to work out.”

“Benny, listen to me: They haven't given us our treatments in a while. I think they want us boosted to the highest level of . . . of animal fury. Talking to you now . . . it's taking all I have left . . .”

“Then save it for the arena.”

“You don't understand. I . . .” He trembled, put his hand to his forehead and visibly concentrated to pull himself back to rationality. “I'm not going to be able to go easy on you this time. If you challenge me . . . challenge any of us . . . I may not be able to hold back.”

“So you know that you're not supposed to attack me unless I strike first?”

“Yes.”

“How? How in the world do you know this?”

“We . . . we just do,” he said in frustration. “The thoughts are right there in our minds. I don't know how or why—”

“All right, that's enough,” said the guardsman sharply as he came toward me. “We don't need the two of you plotting strategy.”

That was when William reached between the bars, grabbed my forearm, and managed to whisper, “Do what you have to, Benny. Do what you need to do to survive. Promise me that. Promise me.”

“I promise,” I said. But I didn't really mean it.

Because I'd had a life.

I'd had a life of adventuring and being my own master. Of embarking on great quests and fighting beside Heroes in the defense of Albion from forces so darksome that the average human mind could scarcely conceive of it. I'd had a good run.

William had been cheated of everything. He'd been a slave for years and was in the process of being robbed of even his most fundamental humanity. I couldn't leave matters that way; I just couldn't.

So what I had to do was find a way to protect Page from the onslaught of the Half-breeds without actually making offensive moves against them. Because whatever else Reaver might be, he was still—as crazy as it sounds—a man of his word. If I managed to adhere to the letter of the bet rather than the spirit of it, I might yet have a chance.

And that was when the answer occurred to me, an answer so simple that I was actually embarrassed that I hadn't thought of it earlier.

Of course, the entire plan hinged on my being correct in my assessment of Reaver as a man of his word. If not, and if Reaver brushed aside my attempts to save both Page and my brother as breaking the rules rather than simply bending them a bit, I wasn't going to have a chance. Neither would Page, and neither would William.

The guardsmen pushed me farther down the hall toward the door that I knew entered out onto the arena. I passed by the cage toward the end and saw the man in the hood and cloak from earlier, the alchemist who had brewed up the vile spells that had trapped my brother and countless others in this form. Even beneath his metal mask I could tell that he was sneering at me, obviously looking forward to the prospect of my being torn limb from limb by his pets. I tossed off a mocking salute to him, and added, “I'll be coming back for you when this is over.”

“If you do, it'll be as a bodiless ghost.” He chuckled.

“Or a hollow man,” I countered. “They're animated by restless spirits, after all. And I assure you that I'm going to be the most restless spirit you've ever encountered. And when I'm a hollow man, trust me, mage: I
will
find you. There won't be a point in Albion remote enough to hide you from my vengeance.”

The chuckling died in his throat. This provided me some small bit of solace; if I did indeed die, this bastard would be having plenty of sleepless nights and jumping at every noise. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he would dismiss my threats as the last-minute, empty words of a desperate man. I chose to embrace the former, though, because I wanted to hold on to whatever solace I could find.

A guardsman stood to one side and unbolted the door. I walked through, and the door slammed shut heavily behind me. The bolt on the outside slid shut; obviously, it could be controlled from the inside as well. When the time came, the guards inside would unbolt it, and there would be nothing to deter the Half-breeds from charging into the arena and trying to make short work of me.

Sure enough, there was Page, with one foot shackled to a very wide, very sturdy post. She had been yanking on it with all her might and turned around and looked quite surprised to see that it was I who had entered. She dropped the chain in frustration and, putting her hands on her hips, said, “I wasn't expecting to see you here.”

“I have a nasty habit of turning up in the damnedest places.”

“That would certainly describe this particular location.”

There was no one in the viewing seats overhead yet, which told me we had a little time. Quickly, I explained the details of the situation, the circumstances of the bet, and what I was planning to do in order to counter it and maybe even win it. Page listened to it with an expressionless face and, when I'd finished talking, said, “That is quite possibly the most harebrained scheme I've ever heard.”

“Well, do you have anything better?” I said testily.

“No, not a thing. So I guess it's your harebrained scheme or nothing. Although I'm not entirely sure that you didn't come up with it so that you could spend your last moments rubbing up against me.”

“That wasn't the thinking behind it. I think of that more as just one of the perks.”

A door that led into the viewing section opened above us. Reaver entered first, which certainly didn't surprise me all that much. Droogan came in right behind him, still wobbling a bit from the punch I'd hammered into his nerve cluster. What I did find surprising, though, was that a number of people I didn't recognize filed in behind Droogan. They were elegantly dressed, clearly upperechelon nobility, and they were talking excitedly about how wonderful it was that “Reaver was having another of his games.”

“Apparently, Reaver likes a big audience for his pleasures,” I said, making no attempt to keep the disgust out of my voice.

“Yes, he does.”

She wasn't looking at Reaver, though. Instead, she was looking at me, studying me as if I were some sort of specimen. She said nothing for a time; just stared. It seemed to me that she had something on her mind but wasn't permitting herself to speak.

“What is it?” I finally said.

Her voice very low, so low that no one in the viewing stand could possibly hear it no matter how acute their hearing, Page said, “I was a monk.”

If she had suddenly produced a plank of wood and slapped me across the face with it, I could not have been more bewildered. Actually, the face slapping would have made more sense. “Excuse me?”

“A monk. But before I was a monk, I grew up dirt poor in Bowerstone Industrial. In those days”—and I could practically see her mind wandering away to times gone by—“the smoke of the factories was just starting to blacken the air, the detritus of trade ships just beginning to pollute the waters. I'd sit on the edges of the dock sometimes and watch what was just beginning to happen, and, of course, it never occurred to me that that was just the start of it. I couldn't dream what it would turn into. A child dreams of things getting better, not worse.

“My father took off when I was eight, and my mother fell ill when I was barely eleven. I wound up working in the factories next to my older brother, Cedric. He watched out for me at first, but within a year, he died in a machinery accident.”

“And you had to fend for yourself. I know what that's like,” I said.

Slowly, she nodded. “My mother died a short time later, and I wound up living in the factory. Nobody knew at first. They found me hiding under floorboards or behind steam-powered engines, reading by candlelight. Reading was my only escape from the hell that I was living in. Not that I had books, you understand. They were pages from discarded books that would wash up on the docks. I'd dry them out and treasure them, and that's why the workers called me Page.

“I wanted to go to where the books lived. I escaped the factory and wound up finding an order of monks on the outskirts of Bowerstone because I was told they were very learned and very loving of books. It was so true. Their library was amazing, and they even told me it was but a pale reflection of other, grander libraries. They took me in. They made me one of their own. They taught me to think. They taught me to fight.”

“Fight? Monks fight?”

“Oh yes. They can be devastating. But they are also the gentlest souls in the world. They fight to protect themselves only, or to offer protection to the helpless.

“And when King Logan's reign of tyranny assumed full force, the monks were among his first targets. He had no interest in any group that supported the needs of the helpless and poor. He ordered us out of Bowerstone. We refused to go. And then one night we awoke from our slumbers to discover our sanctuary ablaze. Some of us never made it out, and those of us who did ran straight into the guns and arrows of Logan's men.

“I was the only survivor.

“And so I returned to Bowerstone Industrial even though every instinct told me I should head in the other direction. But I wasn't going to let others suffer under Logan's reign the way that I had. I formed the Resistance, dedicated to bringing him down. And I succeeded. By the gods, if I accomplish nothing else in my life, I accomplished that.”

“Yet when Logan stood trial, yours was the only voice speaking out in favor of not executing him,” I said. “I'd have thought, if he did all that to you and yours, that you would be the first one shouting for his head on a spike.”

She smiled cruelly. “Logan lived for power. It was everything to him. I want him to live a long life with no power, no authority, no rank or title, no nothing. My fondest hope is that someday he winds up in one of the very factories that I managed to escape from. Killing him doesn't allow for the possibility of his continuing to suffer.”

“But it does allow for the possibility of his regaining power,” I pointed out.

“If that happens, then I'll take it away from him again.”

“Assuming we get out of here.”

“Yes, assuming that,” she said grimly.

“Why did you tell me all this now?” I couldn't fathom it.

“Because,” she said, “I thought you should know who it was you might be dying for.”

“Okay, so . . . they gave you the name ‘Page.' So that's not your real name. What is your real name?”

“Come now, Finn: I should be allowed to take at least one secret to my grave, yes?”

“Well,” I said with determination, “that's not going to be anytime soon.”

“I like your confidence.”

“It's more bravado than confidence, but thanks.”

Reaver loudly cleared his throat, which naturally drew our attention to him. All of his guests were seated. Droogan was leering down at us, obviously excited to see what the outcome of the wager would be.

“My apologies,” said Reaver, and he actually sounded regretful. “Am I interrupting you? You seem to be having something of a heart-to-heart.”

“Just arguing over what means we're going to be picking of killing you,” I said cheerfully.

“Better than you have tried, but by all means, I wish you the best of luck.” Then Reaver called out, “Captain of the guards! Unleash the Half-breeds!”

Immediately, as we had worked out, I unslung my rifle so that my back was unencumbered. Page flattened herself against the stake, then I stepped directly in front of her, pushing my body back against hers firmly. However I didn't touch my sword; nor did I draw my pistol. The rifle lay impotently on the floor. Then I braced myself, awaiting the charge.

“What is he doing?” demanded Droogan of Reaver.

“I'm not quite sure I know. Oh, Finn,” Reaver called down conversationally, as if he were a professor hoping to hear an answer from a student. “What are you doing?”

“Winning the bet,” I said.

“How do you figure that? Obviously you're going to defend her . . .”

“You said your creatures were instructed to leave me alone unless I attacked them. I'm not planning to attack. I'm simply going to stand here between them and Page. The only way they're going to get to her is to tear through me . . . but your instructions prevent them from doing so. I'm going to resist them passively, not actively.”

“I could simply give them different instructions,” said Reaver casually.

“But then you'd be changing the terms of the wager,” I shot back. “We had a bargain, you and I. Are you going to be revealed, in front of all these people, as a man whose word cannot be trusted?”

Reaver had been standing, but now he sank back into his chair. His face was absolutely inscrutable. I hoped never to find myself playing poker against the man because he had no “tells” whatsoever.

Droogan looked at him angrily, apparently upset that Reaver hadn't simply dismissed my strategy out of hand. “You're not going to let him get away with this, are you?”

“The parameters were established,” Reaver said. “You were standing right there when they were. I didn't hear you objecting.”

“That's because I—”

“Be quiet.” Reaver seemed to have moved on to something else in his mind entirely. For the first time, genuine concern flickered on his face. “Do you hear that?”

“I don't hear anything!”

“Yes, that's the point. We should be hearing . . .” He called out once more, “Captain of the guards! Report!”