Kelven was not easily taken aback, but Reave’s unexpected appearance came as a shock. “Satan’s balls!” he growled shamelessly. “Who in hell are you?”
His visitor replied with a smile which was not at all kindly. “I am grieved,” he admitted, “that you did not believe I would come. I am not as well known as I had thought—or men such as you do not sufficiently credit my reputation. I am Reave the Just.”
If Reave anticipated shock, distress, or alarm in response to this announcement, he was disappointed. Kelven took a moment to consider the situation, as though to assure himself that he had heard rightly. Then he leaned back in his chair and laughed like one of his mastiffs.
“So he spoke the truth. What an amazing thing. But you are slow, Reave the Just. That purported kinsman of yours has been dead for days. I doubt that you will ever find his grave.”
“In point of fact,” Reave replied in an undisturbed voice, “we are not kinsmen. I came to Forebridge to discover why a man of no relation would claim me as he did. Is he truly dead? Then I will not learn the truth from him. That”—in the lamplight, Reave’s eyes glittered like chips of mica—“will displease me greatly, Kelven Divestulata.”
Before Kelven could respond, Reave asked, “How did he die?”
“How?” Kelven mulled the question. “As most men do. He came to the end of himself.” The muscles of his jaw bunched. “You will encounter the same fate yourself—eventually. Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine why you have not done so already. Your precious reputation”—he pursed his lips—“is old enough for death.”
Reave ignored this remark. “You are disingenuous, Kelven. My question was less philosophical. How did Jillet die? Did you kill him?”
“I? Never!” Kelven’s protest was sincere. “I believe he brought it upon himself. He is a fool, and he died of a broken heart.”
“Pining, no doubt,” Reave offered by way of explanation, “for the widow Huchette—”
A flicker of uncertainty crossed Kelven’s gaze. “No doubt.”
“—whom you pretend to have married, but who is in fact your prisoner and your victim in her own house.”
“She is my wife!” Kelven snapped before he could stop himself. “I have claimed her. I do not need public approval, or the petty sanctions of the law, for my desires. I have claimed her, and she is mine.”
The lines of Reave’s mouth and the tightening about his eyes suggested a variety of retorts which he did not utter. Instead, he replied mildly, “I observe that you find no fault with my assertion that this house is hers.”
Kelven spat. “Paugh! Do they call you ‘Reave the Just’ because you are honest, or because you are ‘just a fool’? This house was awarded to me publicly, by a magistrate, in compensation for harm done to my interests by that dead thief, Rudolph Huchette.”
The Divestulata’s intentions against Reave, which he had announced to Jillet, grew clearer with every passing moment. For some years now, upon occasions during the darkest hours of the night, and in the deepest privacy of his heart, he had considered himself to be the natural antagonist of men like Reave—self-righteous meddlers whose notions of virtue cost themselves nothing and their foes everything. In part, this perception of himself arose from his own native and organic malice: in part, it sprang from his awareness that most of his victories over lesser men—men such as Jillet—were too easy, that for his own well-being he required greater challenges.
Nevertheless, this conversation with his natural antagonist was not what he would have wished it to be. His plans did not include any defense of himself: he meant to attack. Seeking to capture the initiative, he countered, “However, my ownership of this house—like my ownership of Rudolph’s relict—is not your concern. If you have any legitimate concern here, it involves Jillet, not me. By what honest right do you sneak into my house and my study at this hour of the night in order to insult me with questions and innuendos?”
Reave permitted himself a rather ominous smile. As though he were ignoring what Kelven had just asked, he replied, “My epithet, ‘the Just,’ derives from coinage. It concerns both the measure and the refinement of gold. When a coin contains the exact weight and purity of gold which it should contain, it is said to be ‘just.’ You may not be aware, Kelven Divestulata, that the honesty of any man is revealed by the coin with which he pays his debts.”
“Debts?” Involuntarily, Kelven sprang to his feet. He could not contain his anger sitting. “Are you here to annoy me with debts?”
“Did you not kill Jillet?” Reave countered.
“I did not! I have done many things to many men, but I did not kill that insufferable clod. You,” he shouted so that Reave would not stop him, “have insulted me enough. Now you will tell me why you are here—how you justify your actions—or I will hurl you to the ground outside my window and let my dogs feed on you, and no one will dare criticize me for doing so to an intruder in my study in the dead of night!”
“You do not need to attack me with threats.” Reave’s self-assurance was maddening. “Honest men have nothing to fear from me, and you are threat enough just as you stand. I will tell you why I am here.
“I am Reave the Just. I have come as I have always come, for blood—the blood of kinship and retribution. Blood is the coin in which I pay my debts, and it is the coin in which I exact restitution.
“I have come for your blood, Kelven Divestulata.”
The certainty of Reave’s manner inspired in Kelven an emotion he did not recognize—and because he did not recognize it, it made him wild. “For what?” he raged at his visitor. “What have I done? Why do you want my blood? I tell you, I did not kill your damnable Jillet!”
“Can you prove that?”
“Yes!”
“How?”
Shaken by the fear he did not recognize, Kelven shouted, “He is still alive!”
Reave’s eyes no longer reflected the lamplight. They were dark now, as deep as wells. Quietly, he asked, “What have you done to him?”
Kelven was confused. One part of him felt that he had gained a victory. Another knew that he was being defeated. “He amuses me,” the Divestulata answered harshly. “I have made him a toy. As long as he continues to amuse me, I will continue to play with him.”
When he heard those words, Reave stepped back from the desk. In a voice as implacable as a sentence of death, he said, “You have confessed to the unlawful imprisonment and torture of an innocent man. I will go now and summon a magistrate. You will repeat your confession to him. Perhaps that act of honesty will inspire you to confess as well the crimes you have committed upon the person of the widow Huchette.
“Do not attempt to escape, Kelven Divestulata. I will hunt you from the vault of Heaven to the pit of Hell, if I must. You have spent blood, and you will pay for it with blood.”
For a moment longer, Reave the Just searched Kelven with his bottomless gaze. Then he turned and strode toward the door.
An inarticulate howl rose in Kelven’s throat. He snatched up the first heavy object he could find, a brass paper-weight thick enough to crush a man’s skull, and hurled it at Reave.
It struck Reave at the base of his neck so hard that he stumbled to his knees.
At once, Kelven flung himself past his desk and attacked his visitor. Catching one fist in Reave’s hair, he jerked Reave upright: with the other, he gave Reave a blow which might have killed any lesser man.
Blood burst from Reave’s mouth. He staggered away on legs that appeared spongy, too weak to hold him. His arms dangled at his sides as though he had no muscle or sinew with which to defend himself.