Drawn Blades (5 page)

“Shang wedged himself into this tank for me?” A dragon five times the size of the container?

“Of course not. He did it for me.” Faran rolled her eyes. “Silly old man.” Then she grinned. “Have I ever mentioned how much fun it is to make the legendary Aral Kingslayer gape like an idiot?”

Was that a joke?
Triss said into my mind.
I think it was actually a joke. She’s come such a very long way from the place where we found her.

She has indeed,
I silently replied.

When I’d first encountered Faran she was not yet sixteen and making her living as an eavesman—or private spy—listening at windows for the highest bidder along with lifting state secrets and the occasional precious bauble. It was a job that suited her talents and the training she’d received at Namara’s temple before the fall, and she had grown quite wealthy doing it. But it hadn’t leant itself to trust or humor, or any of the softer emotions.

In the first days after the fall she’d spent so much of herself on simply surviving when every hand had turned against all of our kind, that most of the light had been squeezed out of her soul. Seeing it come back, and—more—helping with that process, made it much easier to deal with the aggravations inherent in dealing with a girl who’d had to mostly raise herself as she tried to figure out how to become a woman. Not easy by any measure, but easier.

“No, my young monster,” I said to Faran, “you hadn’t mentioned that. But I figured it must give you some pleasure considering how very often you do it.”

Faran laughed quietly. “And that’s a point to you. Now, shall we retrieve your swords and get on our way?”

I nodded. Slipping past the Elite and a contingent of Crown Guard is no easy thing, even for a pair of fully shrouded Blades. Not under normal circumstances, at any rate. But Shang would make for a most excellent distraction.

“Why don’t you circle around to the northeast corner, while I go down the southeast,” I said.

“Or you could stay right where you are for five minutes and I’ll bring the swords to you.” The voice that spoke on the breeze was female, gruff, and brim full of vinegar.

It belonged to Kaelin Fei, Tien’s chief of police corruption, and the city’s main interface between shadowside and sunside. As head of the watch’s silent branch, it was her job to make sure that crime happened quietly and with a minimum of unnecessary bloodshed.

Back in my shadow jack days I’d worked for her from time to time. In the years since, we had become friends, which is why I barely blinked at her voice speaking out of thin air. Well, thick air, really. The message came via her familiar, Scheroc, an air-spirit. Faran and I were among the tiny number of people who knew Fei was an unfaced mage—the only kind Tien had in its city watch.

Historically, the Zhani aristocracy were very suspicious of mages holding any kind of authority, a fact that had greatly complicated my efforts to help Maylien to her rightful place on the throne. To say nothing of how much it was going to complicate her tenure now that she’d taken possession of that royal chair. Fei’s familiar spirit brushed invisibly across my cheek by way of greeting, then flitted off to tell her that it had achieved its mission. The creature was sweet, if nowhere near as smart as one of the higher elementals like Triss or Shang.

A few minutes later Fei’s scarred face popped up over the edge of the tank. “You really don’t need to go all dramatic and skulky for this one, Aral.”

Faran laughed aloud. “But it’s so funny when he does. You should have seen the look on his face when Scheroc gave us the whisper. His whole plan to outsmart and outsneak that crowd over there went up in smoke.” She poked me in the ribs. “I half think you were disappointed at losing a chance to add another caper to the Kingslayer legend.”

“That does sound like our Aral,” Fei said as she finished her climb. “All dark and drama all the time.”

“If there was no need for drama,” I grumbled, “why did you send for Faran to come rescue me earlier?”

Fei snorted. “Because this is Tien and nothing is simple. There’s no question that the Elite would cheerfully kick you off a ledge into a fire if they thought word of it wouldn’t get back to Her Royal Majesty. ‘And died of his wounds while being treated’ describes the end of any number of Elite enemies. I figured that until you were able to fend for yourself it was best to remove the temptation. But now that you’re self-mobile . . . you could have just walked over and demanded they let you retrieve these.” She tossed me a long slender bag—it clanked as I caught it out of the air.

“Somehow, I don’t think it would have been quite that easy,” I said.

Fei shrugged. “I suppose it depends on how you feel about answering four or five hours’ worth of pointed questions about that fire. Speaking of which: care to share anything on the subject? I
am
going to have to file a report . . . and it would be nice to know what I ought to leave out.”

I grinned. “When you put it like that, how can I resist? There’s not much to tell, really. I was using the place as a fallback. I stopped in to pick up some supplies on my way out of town. A horrendous and, to me, wholly new sort of carnivorous beasty showed up and tried to use me for a chew toy. I objected. Strenuously. The rest is collateral damage.”

“Tell me about the monster.”

“Triss?”

At my prompting, he shifted out of my shadow, taking on the shape of the monster.

“It looked like that, and it acted, well, stupid for starters, but it made up for dumb with all kinds of tough.”

I gave Fei a thorough rundown of my encounter, at the end of which she shook her head. “That’s a new one on me, too. I don’t like that one little bit. But you said something about leaving town. . . .”

I nodded. “We have business in the south.”

“‘We’ meaning just you and Triss? Or, are you taking little miss floods and fires with you?” She nodded at Faran, who grinned back—their first meeting had been . . . fraught, and very nearly involved Faran starting a three-sided war between Zhan, Kodamia, and the Durkoth.

“I’m going, too,” said Faran.

“Oh good.” Fei nodded. “I’m always a bit less on edge when I don’t have to worry about what new hell you might visit on my city.” She pointed at the bag. “So, I’m going to step aside and you can take those and her and get out of my jurisdiction soonest.”

“No curiosity about where we’re going or what we’re up to?” I asked.

Fei shook her head. “Not in the least. You are an absolute lodestone for trouble. And, from what I’ve seen, she makes the effect about ten times worse. The idea of you taking whatever horror you’re up to this time on the road fills me with nothing but a sense of peace and joy. I just hope it’s
far
south.”

I laughed. “It is that. Thanks for retrieving these for me.” I pulled the first of my swords from the bag and froze as the rich blue of the lapis-inlaid guard seemed to stare at me with the eye of a goddess long dead.

It was only a momentary thing, and I quickly moved on to sheathing it and its mate, but I knew that Fei had caught my hesitation, that Triss couldn’t have missed it, and that Faran had probably noticed as well.

Only Triss was willing to broach the subject, and that silently:
Aral?

Not right now, please.
Aloud, I said, “If you’ll excuse us, Fei, it’s time we were gone. Faran?”

“I was ready hours ago.” She vaulted over the side of the water tank and vanished.

I started to follow, but Fei held up a hand and I saw real concern in her eyes. “I don’t know what that little start was about, but the last time I saw that look on your face you’d just kicked back a glass of efik liquor complete with a couple of beans as garnish.”

“And it very nearly destroyed me, yes.” Though I would never have told her anything, Fei knew about my efik problem by simple dint of having been there when I’d gotten my first dose since the fall of the temple. Cold fire ran through my veins at the mere memory of it, like a jolt of triple-distilled need. I could feel sweat start at my temples, but I didn’t let it touch my expression or take the flatness out of my voice “Your point?”

“I care about what happens to you, Aral. You saved my life and more. If you need anything . . .”

“There’s nothing you can do about this, Fei, but I do appreciate the concern.” Again I started to turn away, but this time I stopped myself. “I notice that you haven’t let your hair grow back beyond the barest minimum needed to pad out a helmet.”

When I’d first met Fei, and for most of the years since, she’d worn a long thick braid. It had always been her one concession to vanity. She’d cut it all off during the same mess that had resulted in my getting a damned big hit of a drug that was about a hundred times worse for me than the alcohol I’d nearly destroyed myself with.

Now she ran a hand through the inch-long stubble on her head and smiled a sad little smile. “No, I haven’t.”

“Why not?”

“It hurt too much to slice it off. I’m not willing to risk the pain again.”

“Then we have something in common.”

And with that, I followed Faran.

T
he
eyes of the dead do not judge. That’s what I kept telling myself, but somehow, as I stared into the deep lapis blue eyes made by the paired guards of my swords, I couldn’t believe it.

I had surrendered those very same blades back to the goddess once upon a time, leaving them in the hand of her idol on the floor of the sacred lake. I was away on a mission at the time of the fall, and I had survived when so many others had not. By failing to die in defense of my goddess, I believed that I had failed her, that I had rendered myself unfit to wield her weapons or to serve the cause of justice any longer.

Later events had forced me to rethink my responsibilities, if not my failures, and so, I had returned to the lake and recovered my swords. I would do what I could for justice once again even if Justice herself had gone beyond service. But I had wanted . . . no,
needed
some way to acknowledge that while I might still try to follow the path of my goddess, I would never own her clarity of sight. So, I had painted over the oval guards of my swords, and with that painted over the Unblinking Eye of Justice that they had been made to represent.

Now . . . I turned the swords again, using the light of our small campfire to look for . . . something, though I didn’t know what.

I don’t see the problem,
Triss sent.
The swords are indestructible. The paint was not. Why does it worry you so?

I thought about that.
It’s the soot.

What soot?

Exactly! The fire didn’t leave any behind.

All you have ever needed to do to clean anything from the swords is to flick them. It’s part of their magic. Nothing clings to them.

Not even black paint?

I don’t . . . Oh. Yes, the paint ought to have come off sooner, oughtn’t it? Why didn’t that occur to either of us before now?

I don’t know. I badly wanted to acknowledge the closing of the eyes of Justice, and the paint seemed the best way to do that. Maybe, in wanting that as much as I did, I didn’t think it through. But somehow I don’t believe that’s all of it.

The swords have always been amenable to the will of the wielder. Perhaps the paint stayed
because
you wanted it to stay.

Then why did it come off now?

“What are you two discussing so earnestly?” Faran asked from across the fire.

“Is it that obvious?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, not to anyone who didn’t know about your trick, or to anyone who didn’t know
you
quite well for that matter.”

“Good.” Triss and I were unique among Blade/Shade pairings in our ability to speak mind-to-mind—a side effect of a bit of magic that had almost gone horribly wrong. “I’d hate to be so transparent.”

Now she laughed. “I don’t think transparent is a word that’s likely to come up much if anyone ever writes the biography of the Kingslayer. Harad has it right when he calls out the blank stare as your most effective expression. It’s certainly the one you get the most practice with. If I didn’t know you it’d be scary as hell. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

“He does that,” Triss said from his place on the ground beside me—I’d moved a log to provide him a screen from the fire. “Constantly. It’s very aggravating.”

I gave my shadowy partner the hairy eyeball. “I’m getting there.” I shifted my gaze to Faran. “It’s my swords.”

“Really? I’d never have guessed that from the way you keep playing with them.”

The shadow phoenix perched on a branch in the small tree behind her made a disapproving noise. “Aral is still a master and your teacher. You should show him more respect.”

“I
should
do all sorts of things that are never going to happen, Ssithra. I’m sure that Aral will get over it.”

I sighed and nodded. “Aral got over worrying about respect about the same time he crawled into a whiskey bottle to die. Crawling back out again hasn’t changed that.” I flipped one of my swords end for end, catching the flat of the blade between fingers and thumb so that the back faced my palm. “Here.” I extended the sword to Faran.

She took it gently, almost reverently. “These are so beautiful. I wish . . .” After a couple of silent beats, Faran shook her head. “I wish a lot of things.”

Triss slid over to Faran and touched her knee with: “I’m sorry that you were thrust out into the world so young and unprepared. You ought to have had the opportunity to finish your training and take up the swords of the goddess instead of those cane knives you use. You would have made a marvelous Blade.”

“Thanks, Triss.” She reached down and scratched the ridge behind his ear—a favorite spot. “That’s only one wish among many, though it is a big one. Besides, the cane knives aren’t so bad.” She tapped one of the crossed hilts that stuck up over her shoulders—she preferred the older style of back sheath, where I had shifted to hip-draw. “They’re better than most swords for close quarters.”

She was right there; short and forward curved, the cane knives were brutal weapons that shared as much lineage with hatchets as they did with knives. Now she looked at me down the length of the sword I’d handed her. “I don’t see a thing wrong with this darling. What am I missing?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Which is exactly what worries me.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“I painted over my guards.”

“I’d noticed that, though I didn’t want to ask. Neither about that nor about taking them up again. It seemed too personal a thing for me to pry.”

“Thank you.” I didn’t think the Faran of even a year before would have had that delicacy, but I did her the courtesy of not praising her for the change. “I didn’t come to either decision easily.”

A long but not uncomfortable silence grew between us as she twisted my sword this way and that in what looked like a vain attempt to catch the fire’s reflection. They were assassin’s blades, and the goddess had shaped them to drink light as surely as any Shade could. Finally, she turned the sword around—far more carefully than I had—and handed it back to me.

“So, what’s the problem?” she asked.

I quickly explained to her my thinking about the fire and the paint and the distinct lack of soot. When I’d finished she looked very thoughtful. “I suppose you could try painting them over again to see what happens.”

“I’ve considered it, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s a message of some kind. If so, wouldn’t it be disrespectful of me to erase it like that?”

“The dead are gone forever.” Her voice came out flat and hard—the return of the merciless killer who shared a body with the ill-used teenager that was Faran’s other face. “Namara passed through the final gate and went to the lords of judgment, as we all must someday. Don’t fool yourself into thinking otherwise.”

“I know that. None better.”

But, even as I said it, I couldn’t help thinking about the handful of times I had experienced something . . . numinous over the last few years. Not the return of Namara, certainly, but maybe something like the echo of her ghost—a sort of sense of beneficence that . . . Well, whatever it had been, I wasn’t going to share it with anyone. I hadn’t even really talked about it with Triss.

I frowned, reaching for the right words. “I wasn’t thinking of a message from Namara, Faran, so much as . . .”

“As what? Some other deity trying belatedly to apologize for their role in murdering ours?” Her words came out angry but cold. Calculated and deadly. “I spit on every last one of them.”

I paused then, trying to figure out what I wanted to say to that. “Justice the goddess is dead, but justice the ideal . . . Now, there I’m not so sure.”

Faran snorted. “Somewhere down deep, you’re still an idealist, aren’t you? Even now, after the death of Namara and five years of selling bits of your soul to make the price of a bottle of whiskey and a spot to sleep in the hayloft. You still believe, somehow, that there’s justice in the world, don’t you?”

I held up a hand and said, “No, not—”

But Triss flared his wings angrily at Faran, interrupting me. “What’s wrong with that? The world
needs
justice.”

“I wasn’t finished,” I said quietly before she could respond. “Faran, I agree with Triss that the world needs justice, but no, I don’t believe that it’s just out there waiting to happen or anything like that. What I believe is that someone has to make justice happen—that
I
have to make justice happen when and where I can. I don’t have Namara’s pure vision, which is why I painted over her eyes, but I’ll be damned if I’m ever again going to close mine to what needs doing.”

I jumped to my feet. “When I talk about the ideal of justice living on, I’m not talking about an abstract. I’m talking about these swords and making it happen myself.”

“And your idea of a message?” asked Faran, her voice quieter and more thoughtful, but still cold, a killer’s voice. “Where might that come from?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it comes from here.” I touched a fingertip to the spot over my heart. “The swords have always listened to their wielder. Maybe the eyes of Namara opening once again is me trying to tell myself something. Or maybe it comes from out there.” I spread my swords wide, opening my arms to the world. “Maybe the world needs something from me and used the fire to deliver the message.”

“Or maybe,” said Faran, “whatever nasty thing is going on with Siri is trying to get an entirely different sort of message across. That’s certainly how I read the arrival of the thing you killed in the fire. Who’s to say that peeling the paint off your swords wasn’t simply the dying act of a monster that wanted you dead.”

“Could be,” I agreed with her. “I don’t know the
why
or the
what
, much less if there’s a
who
involved. Which is why I keep staring at my swords and making up theories without any further evidence. Honestly, yours sounds like as good an explanation as any.”

Faran looked baffled. “Well, if you didn’t believe all that stuff about some cosmic message, why did you sound so convincing?”

“Maybe because I wanted to be convinced. Wouldn’t it be marvelous if the world
were
crying out for the return of justice?”

“You’re impossible,” she said, but it was the voice of the confused teenager this time, and not the killer. “And a crazy old man.”

“And you, my dear, are a cynical young monster. Yet here we sit, master and apprentice, or something very like.”

“You want to teach me something? Paint the guards over again and see what happens. Call it a test of faith.”

“Fair enough.”

I reached for my trick bag—which held most of a Blade’s standard tool set. For reasons I hadn’t been able to fully articulate even to myself I’d tucked the little paint pot I’d used for the task into my permanent kit. Maybe it was because I
did
want to be convinced. Though, I had to admit I wasn’t sure of what exactly it was that I wanted to believe. Whatever the reason, I had Namara’s eyes closed again in a relative wink. Then it was time to eat, and to desperately try not to think about how nice a glass of whiskey or a cup of brewed efik would chase it down.

*   *   *

Aral,
wake up.

I did, instantly and fully, but without moving—a faculty I’d recovered since letting go of the booze.
What is it, Triss?

Nothing dangerous, or at least not immediately so. Open your eyes.

All right . . .
I did, and saw Namara’s staring back into my own from the paired hilts of my swords—I always slept with them in easy reach.
Oh.

“Faran,” I said quietly.

“Yes.” She had received the same training I had, and there was no muzziness in her voice as she woke and answered me.

“The swords are clean again.”

“Interesting.” I didn’t hear her move, but she was squatting beside my head a moment later. She reached out a finger and touched the ground. “There’s paint dust under them. It looks like it just fell away by itself. Huh, score one for the something-unusual-is-going-on-here theory, I guess.” Then she shrugged. “Are you cooking breakfast, or am I?”

“I am,” I said quickly—the quality of Faran’s cooking was . . . erratic. “But I want you to help. Poisons are one of your weakest subjects, and the foundation of a good poisoning is a good meal.”

“Hey, I’ve gotten much better. I barely burned the fish yesterday morning.”

“And today you’ll do even better.”

An hour or so later we’d cleaned up the remnants of a very nice meal and repacked all of our gear onto the horses. I’d initially planned to walk, since feet could cover more ground and faster than hooves over the kinds of distances we had to travel. But Faran had talked me around by the simple expedient of buying horses and overpacking before she came to collect me at the burned-out warehouse. I could have insisted, but the thought of sleeping on a thick pad instead of wrapped in my poncho and being able to eat real meals made an excellent argument.

It was late spring in Tien, which meant the day started warm and headed quickly for hot. It also meant Faran and I both wore the lightest of our grays.