When his door clicked open several hours later, Shursta jerked fully awake. Even in his half-doze, he had expected some kind of retributive challenge from the Blodestone brothers. He wondered if they would try goading him to fight, now that they knew the truth about him. Well—Sharrar’s version of the truth.
The mattress dipped near his ribs. He held his breath and did not speak. And when Hyrryai’s voice came to him in the darkness, his heartbeat skidded and began to hammer in his chest.
“Are you awake, Shursta?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” A disconsolate exhalation. He eased up to a sitting position and propped himself against the carven headboard.
“Did your hunting go amiss, Hyrryai?”
It was the first time he’d had the courage to speak her name aloud.
The sound she made was both hiss and plosive, more resigned than angry. “Oron Onyssix was arrested tonight by the soldiers of the Astrion Council. He will be brought to trial. I don’t know—the crones, I think, got wind of my intentions regarding him. I track rumors; they, it seems, track me. In this case, they made sure to act before I did.” She paused. “In this case, it might have been for the best. I was mistaken.”
“Is he not guilty? With what, then, is he being charged?”
“The unsanctioned mentoring of threshold youths. That’s what they’re calling it.”
She shifted. The mattress dipped again. Beneath the sheets, Shursta brought his hand to his heart and pressed it there, willing it to hush. Hush, Hyrryai is speaking.
“What does that mean?”
“It means Onyssix is not the man I’m hunting for!”
“How do you know?” he asked softly.
“Because…”
Shursta sensed, in that lack of light, Hyrryai making a gesture that cut the darkness into neat halves.
“Well, for one, the youths he prefers are not, after all, girls. A few young men came forward to bear witness. All were on the brink of mesh-readiness. Exploring themselves, each other. Coming-of-age. Usually the Astrion Council will assign such youths an older mentor to usher them into adulthood. One who will make sure the young people know that their duty as adult citizens of the Glennemgarra is to mesh and make children—no matter whom they may favor for pleasure or succor or lifelong companionship. That the privilege of preference is to be earned after meshing. There are rites. There is,” her voice lilted mockingly, “paperwork. Onyssix sidestepped all of this. He will be fined. Watched a little more closely. Nothing else—there is no evidence of abuse. The young men did not speak of him with malice or fear. To them, he was just an older man with experience they wanted. I suppose it was a thrill to sneak around without the crones’ consent. There you have it. Oron Onyssix is a reckless pleasure-seeker who thinks he’s above the law. But hardly a murderer.”
“I am sorry,” Shursta murmured. “I wish it might have ended tonight.”
From the way the mattress moved, he knew she had turned to look at him. Her hand was braced against the blankets. He could feel her wrist against his thigh.
“I wished it, too.” Hyrryai’s voice was harsh. “All week I have anticipated… some conclusion. The closing of this wound. I prepared myself. I was ready. I wanted to look my sister’s killer in the eye and watch him confess. At banquet tonight, I wished it most—when Sharrar told her tale…”
“The Epic of Shursta Sharkbait? You should not believe all you hear. Especially if Sharrar’s talking.”
“I’ve heard tell of it before,” she retorted. “Certainly, when the story reached the Astrion Council, it was bare of the devices Sharrar used to hold our attention. But it has not changed in its particulars. It is, in fact, one measure by which the Astrion Council assessed your reputed stupidity. Intelligent men do not go diving in shark-infested waters.”
The broken knife in his throat was laughter. Shursta choked on it. “No, they don’t. I told you that day we met—I am everything they say.”
“You did not tell me that story. Strange,” Hyrryai observed, “when you mentioned they called you Sharkbait, you left out the reason why.”
Shursta pulled the blankets up around his chin. “You didn’t mention it, either. Maybe it’s not worth mentioning.”
“It is why I chose you.”
All at once, he could not breathe. Hyrryai had leaned over him. One fist was planted on either side of his body, pinning the blankets down. Her forehead touched his. Her breath was on his mouth, sharp and fresh, as though she had been chewing some bitter herb as she stalked Onyssix through the darkness.
“Not because they said you were stupid, or ugly, or poor. How many men in Droon are the same? No, I chose you because they said you were good to your sister. And because you rescued the child.”
“I rescued the child,” Shursta repeated in a voice he could barely recognize.
Of course, he wanted to say. Of course, Hyrryai, that would move you. That would catch you like a bone hook where you bleed.
“Had you not agreed to come to Droon, I would have attended the muster to win you at games, Shursta Sarth.”
He would have shaken his head, but could do nothing of his own volition to break her contact with him. “The moment we met, you sent me away. You said—you said you were mistaken…”
“I was afraid.”
“Of me?” Shursta was shivering. Not with cold or fear but something more terrifying. Something perilously close to joy. “Hyrryai, surely you know by now—surely you can see—I am the last man anyone would fear. Believe Sharrar’s story if you like, but…but consider it an aberration. It does not define me. Did I look like a man who wrestled sharks when your brothers converged on me? When the crones questioned me? When I could not even speak my vows aloud at our meshing? That is who I am. That’s all I am.”
“I know what you are.”
Hyrryai sat back as abruptly as she had leaned in. Stood up from the bed. Walked to the door. “When my hunt is done, we shall return to this discussion. I shall not speak of it again until then. But…Shursta, I did not want you to pass another night believing yourself to be a man whom…whom no wife could love.”
The latch lifted. The door clicked shut. She was gone.
The Blodestones took their breakfast in the courtyard under a stand of milknut trees. When Shursta stepped outside, he saw Laric, Sharrar, and Hyrryai all lounging on the benches, elbows sprawled on the wooden table, heads bent together. They were laughing about something—even Hyrryai—and Shursta stopped dead in the center of the courtyard, wondering if they spoke of him. Sharrar saw him first and grinned.
“Shursta, you must hear this!”
He stepped closer. Hyrryai glanced at him. The tips of her fingers brushed the place beside her. Taking a deep breath, he came forward and sat. She slid him a plate of peeled oranges.
“Your sister,” said Laric Spectrox, with his broad beaming grin, “is amazing.”
“My sister,” Shursta answered, “is a minx. What did you do, Nugget?”
“Nugget?” Laric repeated.
“Shursta!” Sharrar leaned over and snatched his plate away. “Just for that you don’t get breakfast.”
“Nugget?” Laric asked her delightedly. Sharrar took his plate as well. Hyrryai handed Shursta a roll.
“Friends,” she admonished them, “We must not have dissension in the ranks. Not now that we’ve declared open war on my brothers.”
Shursta looked at them all, alarmed. “You declared…What did you do?”
Sharrar clapped her hands and crowed, “We sewed them into their bed sheets!”