Shadows and Light (3 page)

“My pleasure, as always,” Feysal replied as he ran a soft washcloth down Rafael’s arm. “You clearly needed it. You should come by more often, my friend, rather than let it build.”

“I was doing fine,” Rafael protested. “I was doing fine until him. You know me.”

“I do,” Feysal agreed. “That’s why I was worried.” He paused for a moment then went on. “It’s been five years since I found you propped up in that alley. Blood fell like rain from your fingertips, and I was amazed you had survived as long as you had, given those wounds. You don’t hurt yourself by halves, Rafael.”

“That was almost a week after I had been forsaken,” Rafael mused. “It wasn’t the first time I’d tried to kill myself. Honestly, I don’t know how I survived that long.”

“The will of the gods.”

“Then the gods must hate me.” He laughed, softly but bitterly. “Or perhaps I just don’t understand their sense of humor.”

“Are you still sorry to be alive, then?” Feysal moved the cloth across his shoulders, soothing and cleansing him.

He considered it for a moment, genuinely wondering. “No. Not anymore. I was for the first year or so, though.”

“Fortunately you found something to give you purpose.”

“Purpose in killing.” Rafael sighed. “My life’s purpose is to end the lives of others. How is that a just exchange?”

“I find it generally less irritating when I don’t try to make sense of the senseless,” Feysal said, and Rafael could hear the smile in his voice. “You live. Others die. But you’re not an excessive or cruel man, and that gives you more right to claim your actions are guided by justice than many others.”

“Damning me with faint praise, I think.”

“Calling you a saint would be lying. Perhaps an angel of death.”

“Feysal, you know I despise obtuse analogy.”

“Poetry is the food of love,” Feysal blithely informed him before dunking his head beneath the warm water. Rafael came up spluttering and rounded on his friend, who looked at him with an unrepentant grin. “You should consider eating at that table sometime,” he suggested. “It might win you some admirers.”

Rafael snorted. “Not my poetry.”

“Poetry is more than words. Poetry is grace in movement, speed and purpose in action. Poetry is implacable will burning in the soul. You are living poetry, Rafael.” Feysal grinned again. “A short sonnet, perhaps.”

“Not an epic?”

“You’re not old enough to merit quite that much ink. Live for another thirty years and ask me again.”

“That’s asking a lot,” Rafael suggested with a devilish gleam in his eyes as he shifted his weight forward onto Feysal’s thighs, bringing their torsos into close contact again. “Thirty years is a long time to put up with you. What will you do to make it worth my while?” He ground his resurging hardness against his friend’s, comfortably past needing the pain to bring him release now.

Feysal closed his eyes and groaned, fingers playing gently across Rafael’s back and waist. “You suggest I haven’t done enough for you yet, voracious boy?”

“You made a good start,” Rafael encouraged.

“Mmm, then we should see to it that there is a good finish as well, shouldn’t we?” Feysal shifted Rafael forward and eased him back onto his cock, a more comfortable fit now after their first round. Rafael settled into a rhythm with a contented sigh, lifting himself up and down on Feysal. He brought him deep into his body and moved slowly, taking the time to enjoy the feeling of pure, simple pleasure. He slipped his arms around Feysal’s shoulders and pressed their bodies together, trapping his cock in between them and teasing it with faint, delicious friction as he moved.

Feysal kissed his collarbone and up the length of his neck, hands roaming across slick, oiled flesh that was already nearly healed from the stings of the whip. The faint trace of the High One’s blood that still rested in his veins after the assassination gave Rafael’s body a delightful resiliency, and he had been more than willing to make use of it to bring both of them release, but he was also glad it meant that he could continue the day without needing to rest after his session with Feysal.

Feysal slipped his hand between them to his length, and Rafael moaned with the sudden, rushing sense of his impending orgasm. Maybe he
would
need to rest, if Feysal kept manipulating him like this. “Not yet,” he whispered futilely.

“Together,” Feysal murmured, and joined their lips in a kiss even as his grip tightened and his hips bucked. Rafael clenched and groaned as he came fast, spilling over his friend’s hand and into the warm, sweet-scented water. He felt Feysal’s breath hitch as he came as well, filling him again. They stilled and held each other for a long moment, catching their breath, before Rafael sat back and grinned.

“More worth your while, then?” Feysal asked dryly as he leaned his head back against the edge of the tub, his eyelids drifting closed.

“Perhaps worth another few years of my time,” Rafael replied offhandedly. “No doubt we’ll get to the full thirty eventually.”

Feysal’s eyes opened again. “That sounds suspiciously like a challenge.”

“Would that it were.” Rafael sighed and separated himself from Feysal, missing the contact as soon as it was gone. He grabbed the soap and began to scrub himself briskly. “Unfortunately, now I have to go and deal with Daeva, who won’t be happy that I didn’t bring any pieces of the kill home to him.”

“That man is a vulture,” Feysal said flatly, distaste evident in his face. “He preys on people’s fears and takes advantage of their ignorance to set himself up as a savior, then behind their backs uses the very things he purports to abhor for his own personal gain. I still don’t understand why you have to collaborate with him, Rafael.”

“His spies in the Upper Half give me an edge when it comes to targets. I don’t care for him myself,” Rafael admitted, “but he has his uses. I make a convenient symbol for him to exploit and he helps me get my job done.”

“I would recommend finding another way to get your job done, and soon.” Feysal looked troubled. “Enough of my people associate with his organization that I have a fairly good feel for what he’s doing, and I have to say it seems as though Daeva is escalating, Rafael. He won’t be content to use you as a mere symbol for long. He’ll be setting assassinations up for you, targets of his choosing, and I doubt he’ll take kindly to you refusing to follow his directives. Not to mention any of his personally unsavory characteristics, like his predilection for cannibalism. Not just blood, but
flesh
.”

“How did you even find out about that?” Rafael asked. “I only know because he wants me to bring him souvenirs from the High Ones I kill—not that I ever do.”

“It’s amazing what people say in their sleep,” Feysal replied blandly. “My people pass on anything that might be of interest to me, and when one of my girls brought that to my attention, I knew it merited concern.”

“It does.” Rafael’s brow furrowed for a moment, then cleared as he brushed the worry aside. “I’ll stay vigilant. Daeva won’t be getting a single drop of blood through me, and any power he wields as a result of my work is of secondary concern to me. If he starts to get desperate, I’ll just switch my target to him.”

Feysal shook his head. “I doubt he hasn’t considered that, Rafael. Whatever else he may be, Daeva is clever, and he took to his lessons as well as you did to yours while he was in the care of a High One. Don’t underestimate him.”

“Not if I can help it.” Rafael got out of the bath and rinsed himself with a carafe of fresh water, then looked around for his clothes. They were clean, folded and sitting on a nearby chair. The sabers and their leather sheaths had been cleaned as well. Only the athame was as it was before, crusted with blood that no hand but his could cleanse without pain. “Thank you.”

“My daughter was very careful with them,” Feysal assured him.

“Mina is a gem.”

“True. Very true.”

“This is for her.” Rafael took a gold coin out of his money bag and laid it on the chair. “What can I give you?”

“Nothing but your assurance that you’ll take care of yourself. I mean it, Rafael.” Feysal’s expression was genuinely concerned. “You’re walking a fine line. See to it that you don’t fall to either side.”

“Fortunately I have you to pull me back if I do,” Rafael replied. “I’ll be careful.” He dressed quickly, reattached his weapons and gave Feysal a last, brief kiss. “Am I more trouble than I’m worth to you, my friend?”

“I don’t know,” Feysal confessed. “Ask me in thirty years, when I finish your sonnet.”

“My short sonnet.” Rafael grinned.

“Exceedingly short.”

Rafael let himself out the back and set off down the street, in a much more cheerful frame of mind. Feysal was an invaluable friend, he reflected as he walked along, unimpeded despite the noontime traffic. Nothing about Rafael screamed his purpose yet everyone in his path moved aside, most probably not even realizing they were doing it.

Five years ago, when his life had seemingly come to an end, it had been Feysal who helped him realize that he still lived. That breathing was possible without his master, that existence was his no matter how wrong it felt that he still existed. Everything should have stopped when he was forsaken. Feysal had helped him realize that life could go on. It was a different life, a stunted life, without the hopes he had cherished and the consuming, obsessive love he had held for fifteen years, but it was still a life.

He really had tried to end it. Tried to kill himself, not once but repeatedly that first week. It must have been the residual magic in his system that had let him heal, although he’d never been given enough blood to make more than a mild difference in his stamina and ability. Rafael had sliced his wrists to ribbons repeatedly, clumsy with incredulous despair but still determined. Blood had flowed, pain had seared him and he’d fallen unconscious. Each time he’d woken up again, skin knotted with scar tissue and heart still resolutely beating, refusing to obey his brain’s desperate commands to stop and let him leave the worthless world behind. The final time he had awoken not in a gutter surrounded by filth but in a bed with clean cotton sheets, and had found a small dark-haired girl watching over him. She had fetched her father immediately upon seeing the stranger wake, and Feysal had entered Rafael’s life.

Chapter Three

His mind occupied with the past, Rafael’s feet still moved surely enough out of Little Heaven and into the commerce district, next to the docks. People didn’t sell sex here, but they sold practically everything else. Daeva’s headquarters were located above a butcher shop, and the sticky-sweet smell of blood and meat and the low drone of flies signaled to Rafael that he was in the right place. The butchers and tanners were kept closest to the docks, where the wind could help draw the scent of death away from the city. Or, on bad days, straight into the heart of Clare, but for the most part the wind swept the stink into the sea.

A goat was screaming. It was amazing to Rafael how closely the sound resembled a human scream, and it piqued his interest. He paused at the door of the butcher shop and watched as the proprietor swiftly cut the animal’s throat and hung the carcass to bleed out, setting a basin below to catch the blood. Blood was always saved. Blood was useful for everything from food to magic, even the blood of a goat. The spells it was useful for were the little sort—better vision at night or an extra half hour of sexual prowess. The blood Rafael had used the night before, had spilled and left to dry on the cobblestones, was another matter entirely. The blood of a High One was rife with power, and it was the most sought-after commodity in the Lower City. A few―a very few
―
High Ones occasionally donated blood to servants who had pleased them. Those servants in turn would sometimes sell it to the highest bidder. The lowest price was more than a laborer would make in their whole life, for no more than a sip.

And Rafael had wasted nearly all of it. Daeva wouldn’t like that.

Daeva didn’t have to like it. He wasn’t the man’s errand boy and he wasn’t beholden to him. He had never cannibalized the dead like Daeva to feed his whims and he didn’t intend to start now. Rafael walked up the stairs in the back and into the dimly lit hallway that served as Daeva’s waiting room. People were there. People were always there, waiting to see him, to speak with him—the one who would help them get their revenge on the High Ones who had used and abused them. Daeva, cast out of their ranks as an apprentice. Like Rafael, he had failed. Unlike Rafael, he knew why he was a failure.

He’d been trained to be a spy, and that knowledge had served him well in his current capacity as a messiah to the disenfranchised. Daeva lied with facility, and could keep track of his lies with equal skill. He remembered everyone’s names, their families, their problems. He remembered everything. He didn’t really need a secretary, but he didn’t have time to greet and organize his supplicants, and so he employed a gullible, bloodthirsty young woman named Jill to do that job. She was writing a name down on a tablet when she saw Rafael at the top of the stairs.

“Rafael!” With a burst of excited energy, she threw herself at him and wrapped jubilant arms around his neck. Rafael accepted this impromptu hug awkwardly, restraining his urge to thrust her away. He didn’t like being touched without permission. “I just got the news! It’s wonderful!”

“What news?” Rafael asked, pushing her back and looking at her face. Plain features and milky blue eyes that glowed with unexpected fervor beamed back at him.

“The news about the contract! Xian’s contract on you! Surely you’ve heard by now, it’s all over the streets.” She looked at him in surprise. “Where have you been?”

“Healing,” Rafael replied stiffly. “When did you hear of this?”

“Oh, he came down and saw the body of the High One you killed himself! Apparently it was a former apprentice of his. The contract was declared on the spot. He’s coming for you, Rafael. Xian is coming for you! You can finally get revenge on him for casting you aside! He’ll have to hunt you down here in the Lower City, and there’s no way he knows it better than you, and…” Jill kept speaking, oblivious to the curious stares of those watching in the hall and the sickening sensation that soaked into Rafael’s body like a creeping, nauseous wave.