Past the privy chamber was a tunnel, and the tunnel led deep into the woods. “The children told me about it,” said Kestrel. “Brioni and her friends.”
Her voice choked a little on her daughter’s name. “They play in every part of the Hold. There’s nothing they don’t know. You can learn a lot if you listen to children.”
It seemed like hours they walked the tunnel before a haze of green light showed where a mass of overgrown vines hid the entrance. Lakini closed her hand, stifling her light, and they shoved past the blockage until they were free.
This was a different part of the woods than the place in which she’d almost died the night before. There were fewer close-growing pines and more birches, so the remaining sunlight dappled the white trunks of the trees.
Lakini breathed in the fresh woodland air.
“You lied to me, Lakini,” said a voice. She whirled, reaching overhead for her sword without a moment’s thought.
Lusk stood a little ways away on a hillock, an arrow to the string of his bow, but he was not aiming it, not yet.
“It appears we’re not in agreement, after all,” he said. “You think I’m an abomination, and I think you’re a fool.”
Chapter Fifteen
JADAREN HOLD
1600 DR-THE YEAR OF UNSEEN ENEMIES
Get behind me, Kestrel,” said Lakini. She pulled her dagger from her belt. At this distance she had a chance of bringing Lusk down with a knife throw before he raised his bow.
He lifted an eyebrow at her. “I’m going to give you one more chance to understand.”
“Try,” she responded.
“Listen, Lakini.” He lowered his bow and removed the arrow from the string.
“Before I met you, during the time when you were Lakini and I was Lusk, I found a family, a family of my own. They took me in, thinking I was merely a beggar. Not a warrior, not a celestial. A dirty, smelly beggar from the road, looking, as they thought, for a meal. It did not occur to them they would benefit from taking me in. They weren’t filled with stories of disguised princes rewarding those who succored them. It was because they were that improbable thing-good people. Farmers, very simple folk. I left them with a blessing, and then when I passed that way again, I had an urge to see them. And they welcomed me in, as before. I never stayed long, and never frequently. But I knew they would always be there. If I had stayed with them longer, I could’ve kept them safe. But no-it’s my nature to wander. You know.”
Lakini, despite her horror, winced at the self-hatred in her fellow deva’s voice. She felt Kestrel shifting in the leaves behind her.
Don’t let him see you, she thought at the woman, although she knew she couldn’t hear. He’ll see the wires beneath your skin and know.
“You can’t know what it was like, Lakini,” continued Lusk, “to know that whatever the time of year, no matter the hour, if it was midwinter or washing day or harvest season, there was always a place for you, a seat at the table. A cup kept especially for you on the shelf. A child, seeing you across the fields, who ran to greet you. In those years, I knew what it was to have a family. My own folk.
“But one spring-it had been a hard winter on the country folk, that one, with frozen crops and flooded fields-I came to them again. I had gifts for the children in my pack, gifts I’d brought from toymakers in the East. Magic things, exotic, unheard of there.”
He was looking past her, not at Kestrel but at the pattern of vines at the mouth of the tunnel, his voice almost dreamy, as if he saw what he narrated.
“I didn’t understand what I saw, at first. The house, half-gone, the rest like a broken eggshell, made of burned timbers. They were still smoking. There was another smell, too-burned meat. I found them all inside the house, what remained of them. The woman was clutching one of the children to her. I couldn’t tell which one. I found the others, the man, the rest of the children. All save one. I found, later, from the neighbors that a band of halfling thieves had been plaguing the district. So far they’d just robbed houses and crofts in the owners’ absence-a quick raid to steal cattle, or supplies, or the coin under the bed. Nothing like this.”
His face hardened, and his voice seemed to come from a long way away. “Those bandits gave me a great gift. They taught me that the gods care nothing for us. In return, I give halflings, when I can find them, another gift-the gift of oblivion. And each time, I rid the rotten world of another maggot that burrows in its flesh.”
He looked back at her.
“That time, when the messenger came, and I was gone two seasons.”
“Yes.” Her throat was dry as sand. “I remember.”
“He brought word of Darla. She was the littlest, a girl no more than eight, the one I couldn’t find. When I found their spoor, I thought, perhaps, they’d taken one away, a child they could sell. I followed them, but the trail went cold. But I left word with folk I knew-folk who owed me their lives-that I wanted any word of her.
“The messenger brought me word that it was four years since a halfling gang took a few children to be sold at market not a hundred leagues from the slaughter. It sounded too alike to be a coincidence. It took a long time, and many false trails, but I found a man who had bought a little girl, just like Darla, as a maid for his wife. The child died a year later from the bloody flux. I also found the name of the slaver who bought Darla from the thieves and sold her to the merchant.”
He spat out the word: “Jadaren.”
“No,” Kestrel whispered behind her. “None of us has ever dealt in slavery.”
Lusk ignored her. His faraway eyes focused on Lakini, and his voice became steely.
“So you tell me, Lakini. Where is your good in any of this?”
They looked deep into each other’s eyes for a long moment before he nocked the arrow back to the bow, lifted it, and loosed it straight at her heart.
She was expecting it and had already begun to fling herself to one side, pulling Kestrel with her. The arrow missed, whispering into the leaves at the mouth of the tunnel.
She had to decide, lightning-quick, whether to throw the dagger or charge with the sword before he got another arrow to the bow. Clasping dagger and sword together, two-handedly, she ran up the hillock. He dropped the bow and drew his own sword, parrying her aside as she struck.
She was still healing. But so was he. She ignored the pain in her shoulder as she bore down, two-handedly, again and again against his one-handed defense. Once he managed to push her off balance and struck with the dagger in his left hand. She dodged aside and, ducking, hit him with the hilt of her sword in the back of the leg.
Lusk staggered and went down on one knee. She forbore to press her attack, and he took advantage of that, striking at her sword from beneath and knocking it out of her hand.
She drew her dagger and crouched. There was no time to retrieve the sword. Lusk launched himself at her, chopping at her left side. She met the blow with the dagger, letting it slide down the length of his sword. With a familiar twirl of her weapon, she circled the hilt and slashed the tip into his wrist, opening the artery.
He dropped the sword and gasped, gripping his damaged wrist. His mad eyes glittered at her. “I can’t believe I fell for that trick,” he said.
He drew his own knife with his left hand and leaped on her, letting his useless right hand dangle. She sliced her weapon up and felt it meet resistance, and then as she thrust with all her strength, it penetrated. At the same time he bore down on her, and the pain in her injured shoulder returned with a vengeance. She could do nothing but push the weapon deeper and deeper into him. Her left side felt numb.
For a moment they were locked together, breast to breast, hip to hip, as they had been when they fell in the cold flame from the Hold. As the last of their strength faded, they relaxed and staggered apart. He stared at her, and the glitter went out of his eyes. She saw the hilt of her blade protruding from beneath his sternum. The tip had pierced his heart.