Master (Book 5) (66 page)

“I believe you,” the companion said, nodding sagely. “I watched you argue your case, plead before my brethren for that non-existent mercy that they claim to hold dear,” he guffawed, “watched them buy into your line of thought. Watched them play into your hand, spare the life of Cyrus Davidon … and I rejoiced, Alaric. In this, after all, we have common cause.”

“I killed Mortus,” Alaric said. “It was right that I should ultimately suffer for it.”

“Far be it from me to argue when it suits my purposes so perfectly.” The companion laughed again, the booming sound an affront to the senses. “You protected my investment, and for this I am grateful.” The companion paused before a tray of shiny metal implements and picked one of them up, a piercing thing that looked oblong and sharp in several very wrong places. “Perhaps I’ll have Boreagann not use this one today. It looks painful.”

Alaric would never give him the satisfaction of knowing that so much as one of the implements was anything but a sunny day by the shore. “Whatever you wish.”

“I like that phrase,” the companion said. “I should like it to be spoken more.” He honed his red eyes in on Alaric. “You kept him alive for so long, against so many odds that they strewed against him. I don’t even know if they have any idea how much the two of us unwittingly conspired to keep him from dying. You to make him do things to your purpose, and I to make him do things for mine.”

“Cyrus Davidon is his own man,” Alaric said, keeping himself even again. The temptation was to lash out furiously, but that would only spike the bastard with malice, knowing he’d gotten under Alaric’s skin. No, cool indifference was the order of the day, pronouncements delivered with all the feeling one might give to speaking about the year’s harvest.

“Yes, his own man,” the companion guffawed once more. “Did you know that he just led an expedition into the heart of Saekaj? Killed poor Yartraak.” The companion mimed sticking the sharp implement into his heart, and Alaric wished—oh, how he wished—that he had done it truly. He leaned in toward Alaric and lowered his voice a hair. “What was it you made him promise not to do before he left the shores of Arkaria? I forget.” A loud laugh split the air. “And apparently he has as well!”

Alaric waited until the laughter came to a halt. “Will he be punished for this transgression?”

“You needn’t worry about him joining you anytime soon.” This came with the wave of a steel gauntlet. “Vidara, in her infinite silliness, is protecting him, spinning a story about how Yartraak abducted her out of her own realm. It has the others in such a state they have yet to question why they should let someone who has had a hand in killing two gods continue to walk the face of Arkaria.”

“Some of them must suspect that you are involved,” Alaric watched the red eyes for reaction.

“They are fools who would scarcely know that I move against them even as I twist and pull at their very flesh,” the companion answered. “There are a thousand carrion birds swirling them right now, you should know better than anyone. So many distractions, so many things to consume their time. The pantheon is divided.” Alaric could hear the grin even though he could not see it. “And I will continue to use Cyrus as a wedge to divide them further.”

“He will not follow your path, Mathurin—” Alaric began.

“Do not call me that,” the companion said with more than a little ire. “You do not … call me that. No one calls me that.”

“No,” Alaric agreed, “they do not. At least not anymore.”

“But he will follow my path,” the companion swept quickly back to that point. “And as Cyrus goes, so goes the Army of Sanctuary.” The armored figured paused, his back turned to Alaric. The satisfaction brimmed out of him. “
My
army.”

“You will try to turn him your way,” Alaric said, causing the helm with the red eyes to swivel his way, “and you will fail. You will throw manipulative tricks at him and he will resist. Try as you may, he will not bend to become your flawless servant, not yours, Mathurin—”

“Do not call me—!”

“Bellarum, then,” Alaric said, and the red eyes glowed nearly to burst with flame. “He is not yours.”

Bellarum—Alaric hated to think of him that way—strolled back to the table of implements. They were all of them sharp, at least on this tray. “Use all of them today, Boreagann. Twice.” Bellarum turned to leave, but before he did, he leaned in close to Alaric’s ear, and Alaric could smell the breath of the God of War. “You can’t save him, Ghost of Sanctuary. That’s what you call yourself now, isn’t it? It’s what you are; invisible to the world, unable to grasp or affect it.” There was nothing but malice in the words. “You can’t save him, you can’t sway him from here. He is mine.” Bellarum straightened up, looking down with those red eyes, those merciless eyes. “My servant.”

“He is his own man,” Alaric said back, in a voice that scratched its way out of a dry throat.

The God of War hesitated, and Alaric could see the desire to strike warring with the need to not stoop to such things; his haughtiness won out and Bellarum strolled from the room, armor clanking in time with his steps as surely as if he were still a raw soldier.

Boreagann started his work shortly thereafter. Alaric imagined Bellarum—he still hated that name—lurking outside the door, waiting to hear screams. He kept them to himself for what felt like hours, years, maybe centuries. Every time the pain would rise, he pictured them in his head, the vision he had seen of them in the tower.

She is with him … Vara is with him … they are together … she will save him now … now that I cannot …

When he finally broke for the day, the screams tearing through the chamber of Alaric’s torture, it was the knowledge that this last thing would remain secret that allowed him to go on.

But this was the very last thing. The secret he kept to himself. The one thing that Bellarum did not know.

The thing he could not take away.

The screams came in a torrent, flowing like a river past his ears. It was another day of torment for Alaric Garaunt.

The Ghost of Sanctuary.

Cyrus stirred from his place by the window. The diary was heavy in his hand, the weight of all of Vara’s words pulling him down. The fire still crackled, the torches still burned, but the odd warmth that Cyrus felt was unrelated to the flames.

“What are you going to do?” Vaste asked, and Cyrus turned to look at him.

“I might read for a bit,” Cyrus said, thumbing through the journal. “If that’s all right?”

Vaste made an impassive face, a gesture that indicated he gave little care. He had a journal of his own—Alaric’s—and seemed to be making steady progress. Cyrus turned back to Vara’s clean, swooping letters and paused on a passage that he knew came in the wake of their dive to the Mler temple, where he had drowned in the dark water, alone …

I watched him, dead, flopping about without a hint of life as they pulled his corpse from the water, and I felt things. Annoying things. Emotional things. I had seen him die before, of course, but it bothered me on such a level to watch him dragged up from the depths below, thrown upon the deck of that infernal ship, waterlogged and near-naked. I was forced to stand back, to watch as they ministered to him in all the terrible ways it took to bring him back to life.

I stood and I watched. And my eyes caught the thief’s.

The horror was not quite it should be, in my estimation. I knew how I felt, of course, and not being his intimate—whatever—my concern should have been different from hers, yes?

I am completely convinced that I felt it on a much deeper level than she did. Of course, I did not show this to anyone. But neither did she; her appearance was like that of someone stricken, someone who has watched something unfortunate. Part of me wanted to cross the empty space between us, slap her cheek so the salt air burned it, and tell her to feel something—anything.

It is anyone’s guess whether I really wanted to do that to her … or to myself.

He blinked. The signs had been there, hadn’t they? All along? He’d missed them, every one. Aisling had seemed so … interested. He felt the ache of his bones now, but remembered the hot blood and how it had called to him. He turned his eyes down and found another passage, this one about hot blood of a different kind.

I do so try to avoid a catfight where possible. At least the sort that do not involve swords.

This one most certainly did not involve a sword, though only because my restraint was so great as to keep myself from bringing it into the proceedings. I had plenty of cause. Justification, really. If the dark elven harlot had lost her head to my blade, I am assured that few would have wept. Or been surprised.

But he might weep, and that keeps her head firmly attached to her shoulders.

For now.

It was an innocuous start to a conversation; I was meandering about the grounds, which is something I do from time to time. She saw me, doing some meandering herself, presumably, or else she came actively seeking me.

I would actually lay my odds on the latter, at least in this instance.

For you see, her verbal tirade came in the morning hours after I left her and the object of her intentions—good or ill, I have yet to determine—in the Waking Woods, in the dark, ghouls still about. Not exactly in near proximity, but they were certainly still there, and with the noise that those two make while rutting, it was not a stretch of my imagination to think they might be devoured by the boney weaklings.

Well, perhaps I was more hoping for that, at least in her case.

“You’re a bitter, jealous shrew.” That was her opening. Sun shining down from above, brisk breeze out of the west rustling my hair, dark elven whore spitting rage in my face.

“And a fine morning to you as well,” I said.

“You just can’t let him go, can you?” She folded her arms over that leather armor, which she had probably worn during sex on so many occasions as to completely beat the squeaky sounds out of it when she moved.

“If you’re referring to last night,” I said archly, “I tried to discourage him from coming with me—”

“Maybe you’re too old for him,” she said a little haughtily, trying to assure me of my inferior place in the equation. As the last born of the elves, it would take more than a blue-skinned trollop to convince me of any such thing. “I’m twenty-five, after all.”

“And you are a dark elf,” I said, establishing the facts. “I am thirty-two, and an actual elf, which makes me practically a fetus next to you.”

“Maybe that’s it, then.” She seemed to take little interest in my insult, but I suspected she was trying entirely too hard. “He’s looking for a mature woman, someone more confident in herself.”

I refrained from slapping myself upon the forehead then stopped myself from giving her a similar treatment. I was not so successful in holding off my glare of ice. “Your maturity astounds me. Why, I stand astounded in this very moment.”

She headed off at a brisk pace at that. I presumed it was that she could not find a way to land that ever-elusive insult that would crack my facade.

If only she’d known the truth.

Cyrus paused, regarding the neatly written break; the passage that followed was a simple continuation of the same day’s entry.

I entered the foyer after my encounter with the slattern, milling about in a somewhat confused state. It was not long, of course, before Erith—this woman is a monumental pain in my arse on every occasion—approached, begging my help for some task. I accompanied her against my better judgment, and it was there that I was introduced to Administrator Cattrine Tiernan.

I could think of a few things to say about her. Goddess knows I’d heard enough about her before ’ere I laid my eyes upon her face. I would have been prepared to hate the woman.

But I could not.

She was graceful in her introduction where I was not. I thought at first this was simply her high-born manners, but she wore pants, not a dress, which was an immediate mark in her favor. And then we went into the meeting, and she turned out to be intelligent and self-sacrificing, honest about what her community needed and grateful for the help we had provided.

I know, I know. If this sounds like uncharacteristic gushing, I freely admit to it. But she was kind, and she was decent, and she asked me to escort her to the door, to her waiting wizard. I expected something of the sort that Aisling regularly threw my way, those looks when passed, the under-the-breath comments of someone who felt a need to compete for something I wasn’t even fighting for at this point. He’s yours, fool. Take him with some grace.

“You are exactly what I expected,” Cattrine Tiernan said as we made our way down the long hallway toward the foyer. “Tall, beautiful, full of grace and composure—”

“Aren’t you a honey-tongued one?” I replied.

“You’re everything everyone described,” she said, looking me over once more. Then she lowered her voice. “It should have been you.”

I froze, and it took me a few moments to remember that I was supposed to be walking with her. I caught up and forewent any attempt to claim I did not know what she was talking about. “It is just as well,” I said instead.

“No,” she said, “it is not.” She halted me there and looked me in the eyes, and I could tell that whatever she was about to say, it was going to be one of those things I am usually quite uncomfortable with—a ‘just us girls’ comment. “I don’t know what her angle is, but I know what yours was, and I know what mine was.”

“And what was our … ‘angle’?” I wanted to hear her spell it out. Perhaps I didn’t quite believe I was hearing someone be quite so blunt about it.

“We actually cared for him,” she said, and I saw that cleverness that I had admired. “Don’t you tell me you can’t see it? The way she looks at him? The ways she tries just a little too hard? Like she’s not quite sure how to get what she wants, so she overshoots the mark by a mile or two—”

“I have noticed that, yes,” I said. “But there’s precious little I can do—”

“There’s precious little any of us can do,” she said softly. “He’s made his choices. And I’m fine with it, really. I am. But whatever lingering feeling I have … I think it’s mainly regret that I know he didn’t at least pick someone else who genuinely cares for him.”