And it had all been a bluff.
If Tlad had held firm and refused to go up into the fortress, Jon knew he would have had no choice but to place the bomb as he’d originally promised. But his intransigent posture, fueled by his genuine craving for revenge, had fooled Tlad.
As he watched the sky darken through the grate, he became increasingly apprehensive. He was about to promise himself that if Tlad returned unharmed he would abandon all plans to kill Ghentren and forget restoring the balance in exchange for Tlad's well-being, when he heard footsteps approaching. Tlad's voice whispered above him.
"Open up! Quick!"
Bursting with relief, Jon strained and pushed the grate upward until Tlad could slip under it, then let it down. For a few heartbeats both huddled in silence in the damp drainage pipe, then returned to the ventilation shaft and descended to the observation corridor.
"You found him?"
Jon’s resolution of a moment before was a quickly-fading memory. Knowledge that the debt incurred by the slaughter of the two beings in the world he had loved most was soon to be settled vibrated through his body, blotting out all other considerations.
Tlad nodded in the dim glow that washed through the wall from the Hole.
"Found him. But I'm warning you — don't do it. You won't be the same man when you come back."
"Tell me where he is." The tery's mind was on a single course now.
With obvious reluctance, Tlad knelt and drew a map in the dust on the floor, showing Jon which way to best travel without being seen.
"He's in a red building here. Just where in that particular building he'll be, I don't know." He looked up and caught the tery's eyes. "It's too risky for you, Jon. Don't go."
"I won't be long."
He turned away from Tlad's troubled face and glided smoothly up the ladder into the growing darkness above. He waited in the storm drain until dusk faded into night, then slipped up into the alley.
A terrible urgency consumed Jon as he moved from shadow to shadow along the narrow, ill-lit streets. He had to find the captain. The end of Ghentren consumed him, obsessed him, inflamed him. Everything would be put right when that man was dead — the sun would move more smoothly across the sky, the breeze would blow cleaner, the world would have brighter days. Ghentren had become a blot on all Creation, a defect that had to be removed.
Then…only then would everything again be as it should be.
He spotted the red building dead ahead, but it lay across a wide courtyard lined with off-duty troopers. Jon had to detour through three back alleys to reach the building from the side. Once there he stole from window to window, listening for a voice, looking for a face when he dared.
He found the captain in a corner room. He was seated on his cot. A woman stood before him.
"Pay me first," she said, giggling as she lifted the hem of her skirt. "That was our agreement."
"I could have you arrested for being within the walls after dark, you little sow," Ghentren said with a playful smile as he reached into the coin pouch at his belt.
"My sisters and I have been an exception to that rule, long before you ever came here."
A table with a lamp and a low wooden stool completed the furnishings of the room. The door to the left was closed and bolted.
Jon was through the window and standing in the middle of the tiny room before either of them noticed him. Ghentren shot to his feet as the girl began to scream but the tery was faster than either of them. With a single motion he shoved the girl back into the corner of the room where she huddled stunned and gasping for breath, then he ripped the captain's reaching arm away from the hilt of his sword. Wrapping the fingers of his right hand around the man's throat, he lifted him clear of the floor and held him there.
"Look at me," Jon said in a low growl, his face a hand's breadth from the captain's.
Ghentren's eyes, already wide with fear, widened further with shock at the sound of coherent speech from the tery's throat.
Jon stared at him. A bloody haze closed in on him, narrowing the world's population to two individuals, the captain and himself. Nothing else existed at this moment, nothing else mattered. He could feel within his body the arrows that had killed his father, feel across his throat the bite of the blade that had cut off his mother's life. How he’d hungered for this moment.
"Do you remember me?" he hissed into the captain's terrified face.
Ghentren's mouth worked but no words passed the lips. He shook his head: No, he absolutely did not remember the beast that held him by the throat.
"Remember the two teries you killed near a cave when you were working for Kitru?"
He wanted Ghentren to remember. He must know why he was dying.
The captain shook his head again.
"Your archers killed the male and your swordsman nearly beheaded the female — remember?"
Still no light of recognition in the eyes.
Jon was appalled. Did it mean so little to this man? He had forever changed Jon's world, made it a dark, lonely and fearful place by killing the two people he had loved most, and Ghentren didn't even remember it! What sort of creature was this?
"And the son, the young tery who charged you with a club — remember what you did to him? Remember how you chased him and sliced him and left him for dead?"
Jon caught an impression of movement out of the corner of his right eye. The girl, still cringing in he corner, was rising slowly to her feet. He ignored her, and brought Ghentren's face closer to his own until their noses almost touched.
"He did not die!"
Ghentren remembered something now. It showed in his eyes along with a kind of disbelief that this could really be happening, that this beastial creature could actually be in his own quarters, speaking to him, threatening him. Jon acted to erase all doubt by tightening the pressure on Ghentren's windpipe.
"And what is more, I am not the dumb animal you thought. I am a man! And I have come to collect on a debt — in kind!"
Horror and mortal fear of a slow, agonizing death accentuated the terror already distorting the captain's features. Jon hoped he was feeling what his mother felt as she saw Ghentren and his men charge into her home with drawn swords.
More movement to Jon's right — the girl was edging the wall toward the door. He was about to reach for her, to thrust her back into the corner, when the man in his grasp did something that took the tery completely by surprise.
The captain began to cry.
Tears rolled from his eyes as his body jerked with deep, pitiful sobs. Jon released him and watched as he sank to his knees and tried to beg in his choked voice for mercy. His pants were soaked with urine down both legs and he shook with unconcealed terror.
Feeling as if he had been doused with icy water, Jon took a backward step and regarded his nemesis. The red haze had melted away, as had the rage. He was aware of the woman somewhere in the room behind him, bending toward the floor, but his mind was filled with wonder at his own stupidity.
Was this the man whose death was to restore the balance? Was this blubbering, groveling creature even worth slaying?
What a fool he had been. Risking Tlad's life and bartering with the lives of all the Talents just to put an end to the days of one man. Tlad had been right — Ghentren wasn't worth it. He was scum. Jon's right hand felt unclean now after touching him…
Turning to go, he caught a blur of movement behind him. Before he could react, the back of his head seemed to explode. His knees gave, and as he fell he saw the girl standing there with the heavy wooden stool in her hand. He tried to rise but Ghentren was up and had grabbed the stool from the girl. Jon saw him raise it, saw it descend, felt a crushing blow to his head, then saw nothing…but he could still hear the captain's voice.