Halun was sobbing as Felaras had never seen him weep in her life. "I promise. Oh, gods, Zorsha, I swear it, I swear—"
The lips almost seemed to smile. "I—love—you—all," he said, clearly, and carefully. Then, just as clearly, but cracking with anguish, "Help—me—go."
Boitan caught her eyes again; his face was wet, but the hands holding the long, thin mercy-blade were steady.
She looked briefly down—and as if he had sensed her eyes on him, Zorsha whispered. One word. "Please."
She choked, and nodded. Boitan moved so quickly she almost didn't see it happen. Zorsha surely was in such pain he never felt the keen-edged blade slip between his ribs and find his heart.
He just sighed once—then—he was gone.
Halun flung himself across the body and broke into hysterical, punishing sobs of grief.
Felaras unashamedly did the same.
The potion Boitan had given her had numbed her physical pain, and had put some distance between her and her sorrow. But the grief was still there, a constant that filled her throat with tears and would not let her sleep. She gave up tossing on her bed after too many hours of staring at the ceiling, and lit a candle to stare at instead.
Now the candle was guttering out, and birds were hailing the dawn just outside the window. And the air still stank of ashes and burning.
Kasha and Teo . . . gods. She watched out her window at the bloody sunrise, not really seeing it. Boitan had kept pouring drugs into them until he'd knocked them out. They'd been out of their young minds with grief. Kasha had gone catatonic, and Teo had begun tearing out his own hair in clumps.
She wasn't sure which had been worse; Kasha's dead eyes, or Teo's near-madness.
Boitan said it was hysteria; that they'd be mourning more normally when they woke up. She damned well hoped so; she'd only lost one damned fine lad and her successor and . . . someone who had begun to be a treasured friend. They'd lost a third of themselves.
She remembered only too well how that felt.
She'd dreaded telling Yuchai, but Jegrai had broken the news to the boy—with a gentle lie. So far as Yuchai was concerned, Zorsha had been working on something for Felaras, not the Sabirn-fire. The child had enough to bear without that on his conscience.
The candle gave a last flare, and went out.
She wasn't sure what had happened to Halun; things had been very confused after Boitan had peeled her off the body.
The thought could have been a summons; someone tapped briefly at her door, and then opened it and slipped inside like a ghost.
Halun. He looked like a ghost.
"I thought you'd still be awake," he croaked, voice ruined from weeping. He'd cleaned himself up, but there were black circles all around his bloodshot eyes, and he was as pale as bleached parchment. "Felaras, I have to talk to you."
She pulled herself up into a sitting position and waved at the bedside chair, wearily. "So talk."
He did not take the offered seat, although he moved closer to the bed. "It was my fault—" he began.
She cut him off, angrily. "Dammit, Halun, do I have to hear that from you, too? I've heard it from everybody else—"
He interrupted. "Felaras, you don't understand!" he cried tightly, his face twisted with grief. "I caused what happened! I was the one ill-wishing you."
Not what she had expected to hear. She froze, her backbone turned to a column of ice. It took her a moment to recover enough to gasp out an answer. "You? But . . . why?"
"Ambition," he said, angrily, brokenly. "Stupid, selfish ambition. You had the chair. I wanted it. I convinced myself I only wanted it for the good of the Order, but I lied to myself, I wanted it because I wanted the power. I corrupted myself and persuaded myself I was doing the right thing—I was trying to undermine you at first, and then you and Jegrai. I was trying to get you to make the mistakes that would let us depose you both." He paused for breath, and twisted his hands together so hard the knuckles cracked. "You were protected; so I trained some with the power, and went after you tonight in concert with them. Only I added a little codicil. You probably don't understand—"
"Only too well, you bastard," she snarled. "I was the one protecting myself."
He goggled at her a moment. "I—I—" He got control of himself just enough to take up where he'd left off. "I set the wish so that if you were shielded and it bounced off you, it wouldn't go -randomly—I set it to strike whoever was the one nearest you—"
"You damned fool!" She surged up out of bed and seized him by the throat. Her abused knee shot fire up her leg, pain that she ignored. "You gods-bedamned fool! What have you been doing down there? Sleeping? I just made Zorsha my official successor! Who in the hell else would it take?"
Halun paled down to near-transparent and shut his eyes, not struggling in her hands at all. "I didn't know . . ." he whispered. "I've been so busy with all those stupid little plots that I didn't know . . . I thought it would get Kasha, Teo—"
"I ought to break your damned neck with my own two hands!"
He opened his eyes again and looked directly into hers. His eyes were full of such pain that they nearly burned her soul. There was hell in those eyes, and self-condemnation that was worse than anything she could do to him. "I wish you would," he whispered miserably. "He was—my son in everything but the flesh."
She looked at her hands, clenched white-knuckled in the fabric of his robe, and back up into his face. It hadn't changed.
She shoved him away with such force that he staggered and came close to falling over backward. "What the hell am I going to do with you?" she asked, sagging back onto her bed, sick to the bones, and weary past all belief.
"I don't know," he replied, in profound desolation. "Just . . . I gave him my word to help you. Tell me how, and I will."
She considered him for a moment, as he stood there, waiting.
For what? Gods. Help me, he says. How in—
Then she knew, and rang the bell beside her bed for a novice. "Is there anyone else in the Order working with you?" she asked harshly, as she waited for the youngster to put in an appearance.
He shook his head. "No. Not even Zetren. All my co-conspirators are down in the valley."
The novice arrived, slipping in the still-open door; a thin, dark girl-child of about fourteen. Memory put name to her; Daisa, another of Ardun's endless brood of daughters, and older than she looked, about to get full Sword status. Another Kasha-in-the-making, for which she was grateful. It'll be a long time before I can see a blond lad without crying. . . .
"Get me Thaydore and Kitri," she said, "And Boitan, if he's still awake."
The child vanished. "Get me pen and paper out of that drawer over there," she said, pointing to the little writing-desk in the corner of her room.
Halun did so, as docile to her orders as the novice. She pulled the lap desk out from under the bed and set it up.
Then she glared at him; still in a rage, but no longer a white-hot one—and a rage that was fast being cooled by his very real guilt and sorrow.
"Sit down," she ordered. "You're going to be here a while."
He took the chair, obediently.
"Now," she said, pen poised. "Let's have all this from the beginning."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Halun lit his lamp and hung it from the centerpole of his tent, and wished with all his heart that this farce was over.
The Khene's brother had come to Halun's tent as soon as he had returned from the Fortress; more than a week after he'd gone pounding wildly back up the road. Iridai brought word that the meeting they'd scheduled before all this happened was assembled and waiting for him.