Weapon of Flesh (43 page)

“Love hurts,” she whispered under her breath, remembering the words that had almost seemed funny at the time.  Her hand unconsciously rose to her face, her fingertips tracing the scar that ran from her temple to her chin.  It was so familiar, such a part of her now, that she really didn’t mind it so much.  The pain of it had left her, finally.

She wondered if the other pain would ever leave her.

She closed her eyes as tears welled into them with the memory of what they had done to her, of what they had done to Tam.  The memories hurt much less now, and never invaded her sleep or her conscious thoughts as they had before Lad taught her to calm her mind.  Now she remembered only when she wanted to, and now the pain was bearable, like the cleansing of a wound so it would heal properly.  She wondered if she was really beginning to heal all that had been done to her.

“Love hurts, and love heals.”  She truly didn’t know where the thought had come from, or why she had said it aloud.  She opened her eyes, hoping that she hadn’t disturbed Lad’s meditation, and was instantly delighted to see him smiling at her.

“Good morning,” he said, reaching out to brush her damp cheek with the back of his fingers.  “I did not mean to wake you, and I
certainly
did not mean to make you cry.”

 “You
have
changed,” she said, leaning into his caress.   His smile had given his words a certain humor, something she would never have expected of him before last night.  “There are good tears and bad tears.  These are good tears.  Healing tears.”

“You were injured?”  His smile vanished like a snowflake on a hot skillet, his hand dropping away from her face.  “I didn’t see --”

“No, Lad.  The old hurt; the one you helped me with before, when you taught me how to meditate.  I’m still healing.  Sometimes tears help.”

“How?” he asked, his alarm melting into that honest, open curiosity she’d fallen in love with.

“How do tears help?”  At his nod she shrugged.  “I don’t really know.  It’s like some of the bad feelings escape with the tears.  When you cry, you release some of the pain, and after, sometimes, you feel better.”

“Can you teach me?”

Now it was her turn to look curiously at him.  “Teach you how to cry?”

“Teach me how to heal,” he said, and she could hear the pain in his words.  His gaze dropped to his lap, his features sagging, adding years he had not lived.  “You were right, Wiggen.  About me, I mean.  You were right about why I was made.”

“I know.”  His eyes rose to meet hers, and the pain in his words was mirrored there. “All the nobles who were killed.  We thought it was you.”

“I killed them.”

“I know, Lad,” she said, reaching out to grasp his hand, pleased that he did not shy from her touch as he had so many times before.  “It’s not your fault.  You didn’t want to kill those people.”

“It was the magic, Wiggen.  I don’t know...”  He took a deep breath, and she could see him reining in the anguish.  “I was made to kill, Wiggen.  The magic, the training, the things they made me not feel, it was all just so they could tell me to kill people and I would do it.”

“I know.”

“And
I
know now, how
you
feel.”  The anguish in his eyes gripped her heart in talons of steel.  “Memories plague my thoughts every moment, Wiggen.  It is hard to meditate, and harder to sleep.”  His eyes closed as he took another deep calming breath, grasping for control, but she knew that kind of control was just an illusion.  “I see their faces every time I close my eyes.”

“Then let it out, Lad.”  She squeezed his hand harder, commanding his attention.  “Let yourself grieve, not for what you’ve done, but for those poor people your
master
killed!”

“My master?”

“Yes, Lad.  Your master killed those people, not you.  Like you told me, you were made to be a weapon, and a weapon you were.  Is a sword to blame if an evil hand takes it up and kills an innocent person?”

“But I...”  He tried again to hold his feelings in with a deep breath, but she grabbed his other hand and jerked both of them hard.

“No!  Stop it!  Don’t do that!  Don’t hold it in!”  She didn’t know how to make him understand that if he didn’t let his feelings out, they would drive him mad.  She watched his face transform from incomprehension to recognition.  Then, in one horrible rush, the terrible anguish surfaced.

“I killed them, Wiggen!” he cried, his face contorting with pain.  “Every one of them!  I killed them all!  They were afraid, and they died by my hand, and their blood is never going to wash away!  All their friends and families, everyone who loved them will hate me.  They’ll want me dead, and they’ll be
right
to want me dead.”

“No, Lad,” she said, pulling him closer, forcing him to look at her.  “You were just the weapon.  It wasn’t you!”

“I’m
not
a weapon, Wiggen,” he wailed, his voice cracking, his grip painful and urgent, “I’m a
murderer
!”

“No, Lad!  You’re not!”  She pulled him close, wrapping him in a protective embrace, wanting only to take his pain away.  “It wasn’t you!  It wasn’t!”

“How could they make me do those things, Wiggen?  How
could
they?”  She felt his shoulders shudder with a wracking sob, and felt his arms envelop her.

“I don’t know, Lad.  I don’t know.” 

He cried into the blanket wrapping her shoulders, his tears wetting the nape of her neck, one wracking sob after another, until he finally calmed.  His arms slackened their embrace and his head ducked away.  She let him go, wanting nothing more than to keep holding him close a little longer.

“I’m sorry, Wiggen,” he said, sniffing back the tears.  “All these feelings...”

“Don’t be.  It’s all new for you.  I can’t imagine what you’re feeling.”

“I’m
scared
.”  He met her eyes once more, and she could see the truth in them.  “I’m scared for you, and for Forbish, and for myself.  I’ve never felt this way before, and I don’t
like
it.  I don’t know how I’m going to do anything feeling like this.”  He laughed shortly and pointed to a bundle propped against the bin.  “I could barely get us new clothes and some food.”

“But you did!”  She grasped his chin and forced his eyes to meet hers.  “You were afraid, but you did it.  That’s courage.”

“Courage?”

His eyes told her that this was a word he had never heard before.  At first, she was stunned by the irony—a warrior, an assassin, unfamiliar with the concept of courage—until she realized that Lad was unfamiliar with it simply because he had never needed it.

“Yes, courage,” she said, grasping his hands once again.  “Courage is when you overcome something that scares you because you know what you’re doing is right.  It’s what brought us through that sewer, whether you know it or not.  You have more courage than you know, Lad.”

“Courage...” he said, as if trying on the word for the first time.  “How do you get more of it?”

“Uh... I don’t know.  I never thought of it that way.  I don’t know if you can get more.  Some people have more than others, and some just have it when they really need it, like Father.  He’s not very courageous, but he did what he had to do when you were taken away.”

“And what was that?”

“Oh, he asked some old friends of his if they knew anything about you, and he found out that they were just as afraid as he was.”  She laughed shortly.  “I think that surprised him more than a little.”

“What were they afraid of?”

“The people who took you, I guess.  Father was scared of these old friends of his, but they were even more scared.”

“They were right to be scared, Wiggen.  The man who had me made, they call him The Grandfather.  He is old, and he is evil.  He was using me to put pressure on the Duke for some reason.  He wants something, but I’m not sure what.  I think Mya knows, but she never told me.”

“Mya?”  She felt a tug at her stomach.  “Who’s that?”

“She’s an assassin, a hunter.  She’s the one who caught me.”  He looked at the palm of his hand as if it held some secret, and smiled thinly.  “She’s very treacherous, and very smart.”  He looked back to her.  “She was my keeper.  She gave me orders, made sure I was fed, clothed and healthy enough to keep killing for the Grandfather.”

“She sounds terrible,” she said, not liking the tone of Lad’s voice when he spoke of this woman.

“I don’t think she liked what she was being made to do, but she did it anyway.  She was a slave, like me, but she would not admit it.”  His short bark of laughter caught Wiggen off guard.  “I was trying to convince her to help me kill the Grandfather, but she wouldn’t do it, of course.  She was probably smart not to.  He would have killed her.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she just sat and watched him, trying to imagine all of the things that had happened to him and wondering if she really wanted to know.

“Are you hungry?” he asked suddenly, breaking the silent tension.

“Starving!” she admitted, pushing herself up as he vaulted to his feet and retrieved the bundle.

“Come eat then.”  He began laying out cheese, bread and a link of hard sausage.

She joined him and they ate together, the conversation lagging in favor of much-needed food.  But while she ate, Wiggen wondered.  She wondered at all the terrible things that had befallen Lad, at what they would do now that he was free, and she wondered most of all why he had so suddenly changed the subject.

 Chapter
XXV

M
ya walked unhindered through the gates of the Grandfather’s estate just before the orb of the sun had risen over the high walls.  The guards just nodded, letting her pass without a challenge.  They knew her now; they knew she was the Grandfather’s favorite and, regardless of her diminutive rank, they treated her with respect.  That was one of the few advantages she’d gained with her position.  On the walk from the gate to the estate steps, however, she realized that something was amiss.  The stable boys raked dung and hauled hay, but without their usual banter.  Twice as many guardsmen as usually manned the outer wall now walked in pairs at odd intervals around the lofty perimeter.  They followed her progress across the courtyard, questions unasked hidden behind their narrowed gazes.  The Grandfather’s valet stood at the foyer, his arms folded, his face even more of a scowl than usual.

“What’s wrong?” she asked without preamble.

His eyes flickered to hers with open annoyance before he gave a short shrug and said, “He is gone.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think?”

With all she’d been through in the last few days, the valet’s insolence grated on her like a dull blade on bone.  Without thought, she produced a dagger from the folds of her dress.  One step and a truncated thrust brought the tip of her blade to rest under the point of his chin.

“I asked who had gone missing!  I already know one person is missing, I wish to know if there is another.  If this is too much for your menial little mind to grasp, I’ll ask someone else,” she twitched the tip of the dagger just enough to break the skin, “right after I have your
kidneys
on
toast
for my breakfast!  Now
answer
me!”

“The Grandfather is missing,” he said without moving his jaw in the slightest.  “He has not been seen since you left earlier this morning.”

She withdrew the dagger, wiped its tip on her dress and sheathed it.  “And he didn’t say where he was going?”

“If he said where he was going, he wouldn’t be missing, now would he?”  The valet wiped the blood from his chin with the back of his hand and looked at the red smear disdainfully.

She ignored him and walked away, wondering if insolence to the point of stupidity was a prerequisite for the position of Guildmaster’s Valet.  She had little doubt that he’d looked in all the likely places, so she resigned herself to waiting for the Grandfather’s return.  In the meantime, she could do with a bath and some much-needed sleep.

Another advantage of her position was the use of the estate staff.  Within minutes she had a huge copper tub full of steaming water in her chambers and an attendant waiting with soap, towels and a warmed robe.  In those few minutes she drafted a succinct account of her findings at the barracks and told one of the attendants to see that the Grandfather received it upon his return.