Shadows and Light (27 page)

“We can keep that,” Xian promised. “We just have to relearn our limits. Both of us. For my part, I’ve had all the pain I can stomach lately, but I’m more than willing to give that to you.”

“Thank you.” They lay together until Rafael gave in and got something to clean them up, then slept longer and deeper together than either of them had since their ordeal began.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Xian reacquainted himself with the sun on a rainy day, almost at twilight, when it was least likely to injure him. He stood beneath the canopy of trees and watched the desultory, inglorious spring sunset, and Rafael wished it had been more magnificent, more colorful, more anything before he got a look at his lover’s face. They were both damp from the rain, but the water shining in Xian’s eyes had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the sky. He turned to Rafael and said, “That was perfect.”

And Rafael replied, “Yes,” because it suddenly was.

By early summer Xian was nearly well, and entirely human, it seemed. He walked with a limp, a lasting reminder of their disastrous arrival. He bled when he was cut, he got blisters when he chopped wood and he cursed very colorfully as he relearned how to cut and shape leather. It was an old skill, an ancient skill, one he hadn’t really utilized since his first period of humanity, but there was a need for a leatherworker in their tiny mountain community and, as Nailah had said, no call for assassins.

In the summer travelers began to return to the Severed Sisters, passing around the mountains or, for the very bold, over them. The wayfarers carried more tales of the fall of Clare, of the gruesome fates of High Ones in distant cities and the torments that everyone connected to them endured. They told of the High Ones’ madness, their dark magic, and how they had become twisted creatures, less and less humanlike as time and their addiction drove them. Rafael listened to Malcolm’s enthusiastic recounting tensely, always wondering if this would be the day that he’d learn of Myrtea, the day that the shadow of her psychotic drive would fall over them again, even if only through stories. No names were ever mentioned though, and none of the tales originated in any place even close to their range of mountains.

The travelers who came through sometimes brought letters from distant family, and after considering the possible ramifications, Rafael finally decided he had to know what happened to Feysal and Mina. He composed a note, to be sent to the same safe, impersonal third party that Xian had directed Feysal to originally, and tried not to wonder and worry about whether it had reached them for the next three months. A reply came in autumn, just as the high passes were becoming too treacherous to attempt.

The lengthy missive, written in Feysal’s distinctive hand, told of escaping the city the same night Rafael and Xian had left. He and his daughter had found their way to Tarsam, received an obscene amount of money set aside in their name from the factor Xian had directed them to, and settled into their new lives. Feysal had opened another brothel, staffed largely by fellow refugees from Clare, but for the most part the conflict touched had them very lightly. He insisted that Rafael come to see him when he could, and ended the letter with words of gratitude and affection. The sense of relief that Rafael felt on reading it was almost overwhelming. Finally, everything was all right. Finally, he could relax.

In a perfect world, which Rafael had naïvely come to believe he might exist in, that might have been the end of all mention of Clare and the ghosts of the past. In the real world, naturally, it wasn’t. It was fortunate that on the night one of those ghosts descended upon them, more than a year after their arrival, most of the inhabitants of the valley of the Severed Sisters were attending a wedding lower down the mountain. It took those people out of the way of evil and probably saved several lives. It was also unfortunate, because the three of them had declined Malcolm’s invitation and left their uninvited visitor with no choice but to choose her victim from among them. She chose Rafael.

He should have felt it, or seen it. Seen something. One instant he was coming back from tending to Sled for the night, stumbling slightly in the dark, and the next instant he was rigidly upright as talon-like fingers gripped his throat and the point of a knife dug into his side. At least, it felt like a knife. It took another several frantic moments for Rafael to realize that it was actually a hand, a grossly misshapen hand, the nails grown together into the semblance of a blade.

“Pet,” Myrtea whispered, and the sweet stench of Erran’s blood was heavy on her breath. Rafael felt lightheaded inhaling the fume of it. “Xian’s little pet. Where is your master, dog?”

“Dead,” Rafael choked out. He struggled for a moment more but gave it up when he realized how vastly his attacker outclassed him in strength. “Since the winter.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” she purred. “I don’t think that’s true at all. You wouldn’t still be here if he were dead. You can’t live without him, little pet. You need your master’s heavy hand, don’t you?” She ground the point of her claw deeper into his body, piercing his flesh. “Why don’t we find him together, hmm?” She marched Rafael around the house, her fingers clenched so tightly on his throat that it was all he could do to draw breath, much less shout a warning. Once they got to the front Myrtea kicked the door in, and it shattered under the force of her blow.

Xian and Nailah were both sitting by the fire, Nailah with a basket of sewing and Xian scraping away at a skin. He froze as he saw the two of them, but his reaction was nothing to the one that came from Myrtea. She took one look at him and shrieked, the sound high and resonant and enraged.

“You descended!” Myrtea gasped, and her claw pressed a little deeper into Rafael’s side. “You descended without me! Human again, and you did it without me! You were supposed to wait for me! Why didn’t you wait for me?” Her throaty voice took on a tragic note. “You could not even save your humanity for me, the least of what you owe me… Instead you gave it to your weak-minded sister and your useless pet!” She actually snarled, and Rafael realized that she might truly be insane now, glutted on the last of Erran’s blood and driven by centuries of hatred.

Xian slowly stood up. He held a stitching awl in one hand, but apart from that he was unarmed. With Myrtea as full of magic as she was he had no chance against her, and Rafael wanted to tell him not to risk himself but he couldn’t speak, he could only plead with his eyes.

“Beloved,” Xian said, and his voice was strong and pure like a bell, vaguely familiar for some reason. He looked at both of them, serene and compassionate, and Rafael felt Myrtea’s grip weaken.

“Beloved,” Xian repeated, honesty and desire ringing in the word. It hung in the air between them as they watched each other, unmoving, until suddenly Rafael was thrown aside, thrown so hard that he crashed into the far wall. He slumped to the ground, winded and dazed, and watched the scene with a horror he couldn’t catch his breath to express. Myrtea was wrapped in tattered red velvet and stained with mud and leaves, evidence of rough days under rocks. Her head was tufted with filthy hanks of silver hair, her lips drawn back from abnormally sharp teeth in a painful rictus of hope and fear, and her eyes dripped white smoke down her face like thick, cloying tears. Her gaze was fixed unwaveringly on Xian.

Xian stepped forward slowly, moving carefully so as not to show evidence of his limp. He moved until he was almost within touching range of Myrtea, stretched his hand toward her face and said again, “Beloved.” Myrtea twitched forward, a fraction of an inch, closing the space between them until her skin touched his hand. She sighed with contentment, letting her burning eyes drift closed. For a moment they just stood there, still and silent, unnaturally calm. Then Xian repositioned her ever so slightly to the left, checked his angle, and jammed his long, sharp stitching awl through her stomach and out her back.

Myrtea made a faint noise like a hiccup, but other than that she showed no sign of being impaled. Not just impaled, but stuck to the frame of the ruined door like a red velvet butterfly on a board. A moment later and Nailah was there, thrusting Xian’s forgotten sword into his hand, the sword she had proclaimed useless. Xian leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to his wife’s forehead, then raised the sword and swung it with all his strength.

Myrtea’s head fell gracelessly from her shoulders, her body suddenly slumping against the awl, pulling it free of the doorjamb as her corpse fell to the ground. The scent of flowers was heavy in the air, but Xian left Myrtea’s body without a second glance and came over to Rafael, helping his shaken lover to his feet. “Are you all right?” he demanded, his hands lingering on the wound in the younger man’s side.

“Yes,” Rafael replied dazedly, his voice coming out hoarse. “It’s not that bad, she didn’t go too deep, but… What did you do to her?”

“Killed her, love.” Xian hung his head for a moment, his eyes haunted, darting toward the carcass of his wife. “I’d hoped to never see her again, hoped she’d died already. I didn’t want to do this, but I should have known better.”

“I did warn you,” Nailah said acerbically from where she stood over the body. “I said this would be the way of it. I knew you’d have to finish her. The woman was dogged beyond belief.”

“But how?” Rafael demanded. “I thought you couldn’t do magic.”

“That wasn’t magic,” Xian said, pulling Rafael over to his chair and making him sit. Nailah didn’t speak, for once, just began threading a needle to stitch up his side. “That was a fail-safe, Rafael, and one that would only work if Myrtea were completely focused on me. She and I were together for a long time, even after things began to go badly between us, and I realized then that I would need something to protect myself and my companions if she ever came after me. It was hypnotism, my love, nothing more. Hypnotism reinforced over the years, in whatever ways I could do so. Much like what she worked against Daeva, except she used an instrument to create her focusing tone, and I used my own voice.”

“You called her beloved,” Rafael said, illogically hurt despite knowing that it had probably saved his life.

“At one time, she was,” Xian sighed. “But the word means next to nothing when applied to her now. I only have one beloved, Rafael, and it’s you.” He brushed long black hair away from Rafael’s face and took hold of his shoulders. “Do you believe me?”

He didn’t even need to think about it. “Of course I do.” Xian reached out and Rafael came into his embrace, knowing no matter how disturbed he was by the wreck that was Myrtea, Xian loved him unconditionally. They held each other in silence for a long time.

“What should we do with her?” Rafael asked at last.

“Bury her, witless boy,” Nailah interjected scornfully. “It’s not as if I want her corpse desecrating my house any longer than is absolutely necessary. Bury the bitch, and bury the rest of that vial of blood you have with her, I’m sick of having the stench of it in the air.”

Rafael had been meaning to, he just hadn’t gotten around to getting rid of the rest of the vial yet. There was still some part of him that felt like it was worthwhile to have the blood available in case of emergencies, but one look into Xian’s perceptive eyes told him that his argument wouldn’t hold weight with the other two occupants of the house. “I’ll bury it,” he promised.

“Now,” Nailah said pointedly. “Before she gets any fouler than she already is.”

* * * *

Xian and Rafael buried his wife’s body far away from the main property, in the center of a small, rocky field with no trees growing nearby. “The last thing we need is someone eating crab apples that have been fertilized by that,” Xian said, shoveling a layer of dirt over the body. “But columbines grow here. They’ll be a fitting memorial for her, and for our poor dead god.”

Rafael nodded and uncapped the vial of blood. He tipped it over and poured the shining silver liquid into the shallow grave, dropping the vial in after it. The blood gleamed like a jeweled shroud on Myrtea’s body, and smelled like a sweet, sadistic promise. They buried it all quickly, and stacked a cairn up over the site. Xian piled on rock after rock, determined to keep animals from disturbing the body. Long after Rafael had given in to exhaustion, Xian continued his labor, until finally they lost the light. When Rafael saw the mess Xian had made of his hands, he didn’t say anything, just curled his around them and brought Xian’s bloody knuckles to his lips.

Xian answered his unasked question anyway. “I owe her memory at least a little bit of blood and pain,” he whispered.

Rafael fervently disagreed, but again he held his tongue on the subject and just said, “We should get these cleaned up before Nailah sees them.” She would see them anyway, but hopefully she wouldn’t feel the need to chide her brother any harder than he was already berating himself.

It was harder for Xian to reconcile himself to killing Myrtea than any of them had thought it would be. He never said anything, but Rafael felt the weight of his lover’s guilt in the way Xian would touch him late at night when he thought Rafael was asleep, as though he was something delicate and fragile that Xian feared breaking. He could see the guilt in Xian’s eyes at times as he sat lost in thought before the fire, or when he drove his body to the breaking point under the weak winter sun, as though he was trying to punish himself. On those days Rafael would do as much as he could with words and soothing caresses, and when it wasn’t enough, the firm clasp of steel and the edge of a knife substituted for Xian’s mental purgatory very well.

Rafael had thought he’d learned everything there was to know about Xian’s body during his illness, but there was a vast difference between treating a sickness of the flesh and a sickness of the mind. Xian communicated his needs as best he could, but Rafael found himself in the position of teacher more often than he’d ever thought he would be, when Xian asked for more than he could take. He argued the point, of course, but Rafael was more than happy to argue it right back.