I didn't answer. He reached out to me. Without thinking I moved away, my head full of the vision of his hands covered in blood.
"As you will," he said, his voice a blend of disgust, hurt and weariness. "Mount up, we've three miles yet to go before we rest." . .
He told the lads only that there was no room for us here and we'd have to keep going. We did not speak on the road, though my mind never stilled. I kept trying to understand how the quick, merciless killer in the stable could be the loving friend of my childhood.
We reached the town and woke the innkeeper. Jamie's only words to me were that I might sleep late if I liked, we' d not set out until the day after the morrow. I fell exhausted into bed and dreamt horrors.
Come morning the girl came knocking to call me for breakfast. I sent her down with orders for a hot bath and breakfast brought up. She had to wake me again when the bath was ready.
I emerged about ten. Despite my weariness of heart it was wonderful to be clean, my new-washed hair in a loose braid down my back, my filthy tunic and leggings scrubbed. I carried them down to dry before the great tire in the public room. I'd have used the windowsill in my room had there been any chance of sun, but it was a cold, grey day, with the certain promise of dreary rain morning to night. Somehow that fit.
Jamie was waiting for me at a table near the fire. There were no others in the room save for an older couple in a corner, and they paid us no heed.
My terrible night visions were largely dispelled by the sight of him. He had found the wherewithal to bathe as well. He sat waiting, at first glance looking much as he always had, neat and clean and utterly himself.
Though he didn't usually start drinking this early.
When I had draped my wet clothes over a bench I joined him. Without speaking he pushed an empty tankard over to me and filled it from the jug on the table. I drained it in moments, refilled it and ordered another jug.
"How did you sleep?" he asked. His voice was rough.
"Terribly. You?"
"About that well," he said. Now I was closer I saw that he looked years older this morning, dark circles under his eyes, his face scored with lines I had never noticed, the silver in his hair more pronounced than before. He lowered his voice. "I haven't killed anything but chickens for longer than you've been alive, Lanen. I assure you I take no pleasure in it, if that's what you thought. But our lives were over if he had lived."
"I know. Truly, I do know that I owe you my life. But—"
"But?"
I was still having trouble speaking, and I stared at my drink. "Jamie—you terrified me. Your voice—I never imagined you could—damn, I don't know how to say this." I glanced over at him. There he sat, his eyes as kind as they had ever been, his face full of sadness but still the face of my dearest friend. I started to look down again when I realised I had to say this to his face. I owed him that.
I spoke barely above a whisper but I looked straight in his eyes. "Jamie, you knew exactly how to kill him. Swift and sure. He dropped in the midst of a word, he was dead before he knew he was in trouble. I was—sickened at seeing that in you. I always thought you the kindest man alive. I've seen you walk away from any number of fights, but you killed him like one born to the deed."
He sighed, only the slightest sound of regret. "Very well, Lanen. If you wish to know, I will tell you. Be warned, this concerns you as much as it does me." The shadow of a smile crossed his lips. "I’ve meant to tell you for a while now, though I had hoped for a time of my own choosing." He emptied his tankard and refilled it, drinking deep. "There is much to tell, but now you've asked you shall know all of it. At the very least it will help you to see past last night."
Then he began to talk.
"I was born in the North Kingdom in the village of Arinoc, near Eynhallow at the foot of the mountains, hard by the border with the East Mountain Kingdom. I spent most of my youth there, getting into fights like most young men and doing badly at learning my father's trade. My parents died when I was fifteen, old enough to do without them but young enough to miss them. I found myself working in my father's stead for a while, but I was the worst cobbler the world has ever seen." A corner of his mouth lifted. "A lot like you and horses. I could do it if I forced myself, but I never liked it."
"A few years later came a series of battles along the eastern border. Seems one of the richer and bolder nobles from the mountains wanted a bit more fertile land to farm, so he sent raiders. When that didn't work he sent soldiers; and our King started recruiting his own. I joined up. I was out of money, and l'd have done anything that took me away from the cobbler's trade."
"I learned fast, what little they took the time to teach us. We managed to keep the raiders off, and it was all over in a year and a half. But by then I was changed. When our captain asked us to follow him to fight another rebel in the western half of the Kingdom; I was the first in line. I was nineteen and immortal and I hadn't the brains of a cabbage."
Jamie paused to wet his throat. I sat consciously holding my mouth shut for fear I'd let flies in, I had pestered Jamie about his past for most of my youth and finally given up; it was as if you had spent years battering your head against a wall, finally turned away, and heard behind you the soft sound of it crumbling into dust.
"Well, that battle led to another, and another, and in a few years I found that I was a mercenary. A good one, mind. By then we had fought together for a long time. l'd been trained by the best and I enjoyed it. We went wherever the battle was—and there are always battles, these little lordlings are always after more land and none of the Four Kings are strong enough to stop them without help." He sighed. "They were the closest I had to friends, those men. We fought together eight years, sometimes on land for petty barons, twice on the sea—once with the corsairs and once against them. But I grew weary of seeing my comrades killed, one here, two there and finally I was badly wounded myself." His eyes were a thousand miles away. "It was the first time I had faced my own death, and I didn't like the sight of it. The Captain realised it and decided to send me on a very particular mission to shake me out of it. We'd been paid to stop the Baron of Benin, in the southern half of the East Kingdom. He was a particularly vicious bugger, the kind that kills women for the fun of it. "
And there it was again. Jamie's voice had gone hard and cold, unforgiving, strong as a mountain's root and distant as forever. I shivered in the warm tavern.
"If ever a man deserved death, he was the one. He had a bunch of louts fighting for him, the Captain said it was cruel to kill the poor bastards. He decided to send in a small force to kill the Baron as a way to end it. He chose me. We went in at midnight, me and two of my comrades to watch my back."
Jamie closed his eyes and fell silent. I knew sure as I breathed that he was reliving that night, step by step, thought by thought. He opened his eyes slowly and looked straight at me, and his eyes were the eyes of one who has lost forever some part of his soul. "I killed him, Lanen. It was so simple. I slit his throat as he slept. No noise, you see, with a cut throat." His voice was full of loathing, and I knew it wasn't for the Baron. "We slipped out the window and past the guards, and the battle was over. No sense working for a dead man. We'd won."
He drained his tankard, filled it and drank it half down again before he went on. "When word got out—a careful word here or there, you understand, nothing in the open—we began to be hired to do it again. And again. There's quite a call for paid killers, if they're good at what they do."