Wolf's-own: Weregild (18 page)

He'd forgotten how to think like a normal person, that must be it, and every thought brought corresponding emotion with it. He poked and nudged suspiciously at the edges of it all, tried to find focal points inside it, but his mind wouldn't stop running away from him. It was too much.

"You're luckier than you know,” he whispered to the husk of the moth, and he rolled his eyes at himself. No wonder Shig accused him of attempted suicide.

"It isn't suicide,” he told the moth. It wasn't. Not that he had any real attachment to life, but his family did, and there were things he needed to do to make sure they kept hold of it. He
couldn't
die. He wasn't done yet. And if he died before he'd kept up his end of Malick's bargain, who knew what would happen to them?
Temshiel
weren't exactly known for their concern for mortals. He believed Malick would ensure their safety—he'd told Jacin tonight that their passage out of Ada was already arranged, thank every god—but if Jacin didn't do what he'd promised, he had no illusions that the bargain would hold. They'd see that his mother was found and her spirit put to rest because Jacin had fulfilled his end of that bargain—he'd joined them, and even thrown in sex as a dubious bonus—but he hadn't fulfilled his end of this one yet. He couldn't die yet. Shig was right about at least that, though he was loath to admit it: dying would be a failure right now, and the worst kind of failure for Joori and Morin and Caidi.

Living is your sacrifice
. He remembered that from... somewhere. Probably because it felt so true. It made him tired all over again. He'd do it, though. Like everything else, there was very little choice.

He didn't think he was terribly grieved anymore about Asai. He wasn't even terribly appalled by the fact that he'd rested the fates of everyone he loved on his beishin's death by his own hand, but he couldn't help the fear and doubt. He'd
known
Asai was responsible from the very beginning. From the moment he'd witnessed him handing over amulets and snarling about “the spirit-bound” and “the earth-bound"—like they weren't even really
people.
And still, his knives had stayed sheathed when he'd run out into the night, and then again when he'd gone to Asai's with every intention of finally getting a confession out of him—torturing it out of him, if he had to. He was capable, he knew he was capable—he'd gotten Yakuli's name out of Sonji-onna, hadn't he, and he hadn't even really noticed the screams until after, when they wouldn't stop resonating inside his head—and yet,
still
, he'd twice walked out of Asai's house with no blood on his hands.

He wished he could talk himself into believing it was all the result of maijin magic—he'd never really loved Asai, Asai had just enspelled him, made it so his Ghost was incapable of lifting a hand against him—but magic didn't work on him, he was a void for it, and he had nothing on which to blame his failures but his own weakness.

Your emotions make you weak and foolish, little Ghost.

"Yes,” he whispered to the moth, “I know."

If he could take his knives to them, cut them ruthlessly from his heart, kill them, he would have done it a long time ago.

When have you ever failed at anything

Joori's voice, and Jacin clenched his teeth, hands fisting. He must have tensed because Malick's arm tightened around him for a second before relaxing again, his sleep undisturbed.

Every time you say something like that is another failure
, Jacin thought bleakly.
Fuck, how have you managed to stay so innocent?

And when had innocence become something to both resent and envy?

The rain lashed against the window. For some reason, it stirred a memory-scent of cherry blossoms, and he imagined them swirling on the wind, making abstract patterns of pink-tinged white, settling over everything like a warm, silent blanket. It comforted him, though he had a vague idea it shouldn't, but he'd apparently just recently become a person who took any comfort that was offered to him, regardless of price, so he ignored the puzzlement and unease.

A creak of floorboards just outside his door made him squint through the gloom, watching as the knob turned silently, and a sliver of slightly brighter light spilled in around the small figure peering in through the crack of the door. He'd been expecting Umeia, though he hadn't yet seen her since he'd woken, which he thought vaguely strange but not enough to spend thought on. He thought he'd have been fractionally happier to see her than he was to see Caidi.

"Jacin?” Caidi whispered, her small, high voice pitched to a low whisper in the dark. “Are you awake?"

He shut his eyes and pretended he wasn't. He couldn't see her, couldn't face her, couldn't face any of them. Didn't they know what he was? An abomination. Who had told him that? And why couldn't they see it? Why did they keep coming back to be shown again? Surely they'd seen enough by now to have learned to cut their losses while they still could.

"Jacin?” Closer now, and a little bit wobbly. Jacin could hear the throttled tears inside it. “I had a bad dream."

Predictably, his heart gave a little twist, because that was the way it always was with Caidi. He remembered her as a chubby little toddler, all golden curls and sunny smiles, and clinging arms around his calves. Giggles and trilling laughter, and bright hazel eyes that he now couldn't help imagining dull and dead. His mind instinctively shied away from it, curled inward, because perhaps if he stopped loving, he'd stop hurting.

Except he couldn't. She'd hardly changed at all—still bright as the suns and constant smiles, and an adoration in her eyes that made him want to howl, and yet he could never look away from her. He
had
to love her, she wouldn't give him a choice, and there was probably some resentment in there somewhere, but he could never find it.

"Jacin?” she whispered, shaky and small. “Please?"

Jacin sucked in a long breath, braced himself, and opened his eyes. No blood in her hair, no empty eyes that still somehow mocked and accused at the same time. Just a little girl who'd had a bad dream, a doll clutched to her chest and her heart in her eyes.

"Are you all right?” he whispered.

Tears spilled down her full cheeks, and
still
, she smiled—all wobbly and full of trying—as she took a hesitant step closer. “I had a bad dream."

He didn't ask her what it was about. He didn't think he wanted to know. “Why didn't you climb in with Joori?"

She shrugged, picked at the yellow curls on her doll's head. “He's sleeping on the couch down the hall."

"The couch?” Jacin frowned, but it didn't seem worth trying to decipher. “What about Morin?"

A scowl this time that he couldn't help labeling “adorable,” because it pursed her bow lips and crinkled her brow into much older shapes that looked sweetly incongruous on her little face. “He doesn't let me sleep with him, and anyway, he kicks.” She peered at him with wide eyes—blink... blink... blink—with just the right amount of tears collecting at the corners, and dropped her trilling imp's voice down to a pathetic murmur: “
Pleeeeeease
?"

Jacin almost laughed. Because Caidi might be sweet and mostly innocent, but she knew exactly what she was doing. She proved it when she grinned as he sighed and lifted the covers, all hints of tears and trembling lips instantly evaporating as she carefully climbed in. The exaggerated care with which she made sure not to bump any of the too-numerous bandages swathed over leg, arm, and torso touched him all unwilling, and that twist for which he couldn't resent her climbed up into his throat.

Malick stirred again, another unconscious squeeze around Jacin's ribs and a soft indecipherable mutter ghosting into his nape, and the warmth at his back and the warmth at his front did things inside him that felt too much like some heretofore unknown and unthought-of rapture. Unaccountably, his eyes filled, and he had to swallow several times to rid his throat of the accumulating lump.

"Have enough room?” he whispered, mostly for his own distraction.

In answer, Caidi burrowed into his chest, the chill porcelain of the doll between them, and pushed her head beneath his chin, like a cat butting at its owner for a thorough stroking. Jacin couldn't help but oblige: his hand lifted all by itself, laid a caress to her hair, fingers idly toying with the wave and curl of individual strands, the twinging it stirred under the bandage on his arm only a faint nuisance.

"Are you better now?” she whispered into his throat, her breath light and warm. “Joori thought you were going to die, I could tell, and anyway, he
always
worries about
every
thing, but Umeia-onna said you weren't, and Malick-seyh was a little sad this morning, so I worried a little bit, too, but then he said at suppertime that you were getting better really quickly, and he wouldn't let you die, and he's got magic, after all, so I felt better."

All of it said in one breath in a low murmur as her hand crept about until it found his and latched on. Jacin's head was spinning a little, but he found the wit to whisper, “Yes, I'm better now,” even though it felt like a lie, so he amended it with, “I'm not going to die,” and left it there.

"Good,” Caidi breathed, “because I'd miss you, and anyway, who would take care of us then?"

It was like a knife in the chest. “Joori would take care of you.” Said less with soothing assurance for Caidi than desperate shame for himself. Take care of them? Was that what she thought he'd been doing?

"Joori can't kill the monsters like you can,” Caidi told him with a squeeze of her small fingers around his own, rough and callused against the softness of hers.

It was all Jacin could do not to snatch his hand away.

"I wish you could be in my dream,” Caidi went on wistfully. “You could have killed the monsters for me, and then I wouldn't have cried."

She had to shut up. He had to get her to
shut up
.

"It was just a dream.” He only just kept the tremor from his voice, though he'd tensed again and reminded his body that it was torn up and hurting, so he tried to concentrate on the pain, instead of the things coming out his little sister's mouth.

"Mother always said there's no such thing as ‘just dreams',” Caidi informed him sagely. “She dreamed once that Tai-onna died, and she really did, and Mother said she knew because she'd talked to her ghost in a dream, but Father told her she couldn't say things like that out loud. She dreamed about me once, too, but she said she couldn't tell me what it was because it would be like sealing my fate and it wasn't her place to seal anyone's but her own. D'you want to know what she dreamed about you?"

Oh fuck. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.

"Caidi....” He couldn't keep the trembling from his voice this time, couldn't help the vibrations running all the way up his body. Malick's arm tightened again, and his breath hitched a little, but he still slept on. It was the only thing for which Jacin was grateful at the moment. “I don't think—"

"She dreamed that you were walking in cherry blossom petals,” she said, warming to it, almost excited. “She said they were as deep as snow, and you were limping, but you were smiling too. She said there was a big wolf walking with you, and it growled at her until you told it not to, and then you hugged her and told her it didn't hurt anymore."

Bloody hell, his mother must have deteriorated steadily over the years if she'd taken to telling her tiny daughter her dreams.

"Caidi, go to
sleep
.” If his throat wasn't so tight, it would have come out as a bark. This was somehow worse than Shig's rambling accusations.

"But it made her happy, Jacin,” Caidi protested. “And maybe she dreamed about the maijin hurting you, because you were limping, but you told her it didn't hurt anymore, so it must be going to be all—"

"Sleep, Wolf's daughter,” Malick murmured. His hand had come up to rest at Caidi's brow, and Jacin hadn't even noticed, but he didn't chide himself for his lack of attention or his agitation, nor did he snarl at Malick for the liberty. Caidi's chatter abruptly stopped, and her small body sagged into the mattress, rolling slightly into Jacin's chest, limp in deep sleep.

He should be pissed off. He should be outraged, he should be plotting Malick's death for even touching Caidi.

He was relieved. And ashamed because he was relieved, and it all rose again to choke him.
You're going to have to listen
, Malick had told him, like it was that easy, like he wasn't using different words to say,
Your sanity means nothing, not if you want me to keep your family safe
, and Jacin hated him for it, but he couldn't make himself do anything about it. This dangerous
Temshiel
, just like Asai had once done, held Jacin's family's safety in his hands—and more, he held the quiet. And Jacin
needed
it. Wasn't all of that worth the ragged remains of his soul?

"I....” He couldn't get any words out. He couldn't shove Malick away from him and protect his little sister. He couldn't drag his hand from Caidi's. He couldn't do anything at all but lie there and shake.

"Shh,” said Malick, his hand going from Caidi's smooth brow to Jacin's cheek, stroking lightly, then to the crown of his head and on down his arm, over and over again, skimming over the bandage with gentle fingertips. “I know it hurts,” he whispered, slipping a tender, sleepy kiss just below Jacin's ear that somehow stirred a pleasant shiver while it calmed the tremors. “You don't have to say it, if you don't know how. But it only hurts because you don't know how to be anything but damaged, so you run away from the pure things people offer you until they corner you with love and there's no place to run anymore."

Jacin heard it, but couldn't make any real sense of it.
Damaged
. He couldn't argue it, but he also couldn't figure out exactly how Malick meant it—it was too broad a term to nail down everything that was wrong with him.
Pure
? Was Malick trying to say that his own motivations were pure? The
Temshiel
who'd, without excuse or apology, staked the lives of everyone Jacin had left on his ability to turn on the man he... on Asai?