Fallen Blade 04 - Blade Reforged (30 page)

“Siri’s better,” I replied. She was. There was no question.

“A better killer and a better mage. Certainly, that’s how
Kelos painted her, though he said you were at least as smart and could be as good
at the rest if you had the focus she did. But he still called you the better Blade.
He said that you possessed the soul of justice to a degree that none of the others
did, and that’s what makes a true Blade. It’s what made me, it’s what made Kelos,
and it’s what made all of the other legends.”

“
You
are calling yourself a true Blade?” I couldn’t hide my shock.

“There’s none truer, though Kelos comes closest.”

“That’s completely crazy! It’s crazy on the record and it’s doubly crazy given the
current situation.”

The nine-tailed fox laughed beside her. “Little fool, little tool, little child playing
by the pool. Thinks he knows the ways and hows, but barely sees the plays and bows.”

Did that make any sense to you?
I sent Triss.

Not a jot.

Nuriko reached out and scratched the fox behind the ears. In response the fox grew
a second pair, and Nuriko scratched behind those as well. Once she was done, she looked
up at me and shook her head. “You know nothing, child. Neither about me, nor the true
situation, but let’s pretend for a moment that you have an opinion worth expressing.
Tell me what the situation is here and why it makes me no true Blade.”

“You’ve taken control of Thauvik somehow, wrenched it free of the Son of Heaven. You’re
trying to push him into a crusade of the undead that will kill tens of thousands or
more. Namara created us to protect the weak from the mighty and to see that justice
found those that power shielded. You’re driving things exactly the opposite way.”

“Not an uncommon way of seeing what I’m doing,” said Nuriko, “but you miss several
points. First, I’m not controlling Thauvik. Not in the least. I have no interest in
putting any controls on anyone. Quite the contrary. What I have done is free Thauvik
to do whatever he wishes. I have made him a king unchained. No more, no less.”

“He’s risen and blood mad, and what he wants is death
and destruction without end,” said Triss. “He should be destroyed, not freed to wreak
havoc on the world!”

Nuriko smiled a sad smile. “Naïve thing. Death and destruction is what they all want…ultimately.
Oh, they may start out with the best of intentions—many of them do—but the very nature
of the power they wield slowly whittles away at their humanity. Thauvik is undead
and the worst kind of monster. That’s true, but it barely takes him a half step beyond
what any king becomes over time. They all want blood, and every last one will take
it if they think they can get away with it. Every last one. It is what they are, and
why we must destroy them.”

“If he’s such a monster, why haven’t you destroyed Thauvik?” I asked.

“Because he is the perfect example,” replied the Kitsune. “If Thauvik embarks on his
risen crusade, he will soak this kingdom in blood. Kadesh, too, maybe the northern
Magelands. Depends on how far he gets. No one will be able to deny what he did or
the evil of it. No one will be able to pretend that the system that enabled him to
do it isn’t corrupt in its bones. It may not happen right in the instant that he is
stopped, but the evidence will be undeniable, the first stone in the avalanche that
buries the very idea of monarchy, and of government with it.”

“That’s mad,” I said.

“Is it?” asked Nuriko and she didn’t look crazy, she looked unspeakably sad. “Really?
Here’s the most obvious example. What is the single worst thing for the people? Not
the rulers, the people. It’s war. Where does war come from? Governments fighting governments.
Without government, there is no war. There is no one person wielding power over their
fellows and being corrupted by it. Government is the enemy of humanity. Hell, the
enemy of all peoples. It’s done as much harm to the Other races as it has to ours.”

She sighed. “I can see that you don’t understand, though I don’t know whether that’s
because you
can’t
understand
ever
, or if you’re just too shaped by the system to see a world
without it. Do you know why I left the service of the goddess I loved more than I
love my soul?”

I shook my head, unable to answer the pain that suddenly throbbed in her voice.

“Because despite her love and compassion and divine decency, Namara couldn’t be made
to see. She was herself a form of authority absolute and had, in that one way, been
corrupted by the idea of authority—unable to see its inherent limitations and evils.
I tried to show her that what we were doing in her name wasn’t justice, not really.
It was just another way of propping up the system. For nearly eight hundred years
the order provided the people with a false reassurance. We deceived them into believing
there was a force in the world that could hold the mighty to account, despite the
obvious corruption and inequality of the whole system.”

She rose now and took two long steps closer to me. “But there can be no accounting
for the great, not as a class, and individuals don’t matter. As fast as you can kill
an Ashvik, a Thauvik rises up in his place. If I let you kill Thauvik, how long do
you think it will be before your pretty princess starts to make the tradeoffs of corruption.
A day?” Nuriko came closer to me. “A week? A year? Ten?”

And closer still. “I can’t say. Maybe she will play the exception and hold on to her
integrity for her entire reign, providing one of those rare shining examples of a
just ruler. But even if she does, the ass that follows hers on the throne could be
another Ashvik. Or the one after that. As long as thrones exist there is no end to
them.”

Now she was standing inches away from me. “That’s why I’ve loosed Thauvik, and that’s
why I’ll kill you if you get in the way of what he is about to do. This is the moment
when we finally have the chance to lay the whole system bare for all to see. This
is when we begin to end monarchy, and theoarchy, and all the other forms of enslavement
that we have crafted for ourselves. In breaking Thauvik’s chains, I have created the
tool for breaking all the chains.”

“What would you set up in place of what we have now?” Triss asked over my shoulder,
his voice small and unsure.

“Nothing at all,” she replied. “What possible reason is there for us to set up this
man and call him a king? To give him dominion over his fellows while we call that
one a serf and treat him as little more than a donkey with wit? Why should we raise
up this one and push down that one? Let each rise to what he can achieve without building
on the backs of his neighbors. Justice demands it.”

The scariest thing about the Kitsune at that moment was that she didn’t sound or act
crazy. Not in the slightest. She sounded more than anything like one of my better
teachers trying to show me something that was quite, quite true but which she knew
I wasn’t quite ready to understand. It was terrifyingly convincing on some level,
especially since some of what she said made sense. Why
should
someone be allowed to rule over those around them just because their parents did
before them, or an uncle, or grandmother? Why should the outcome of a duel decide
who got to sleep on a bed in a palace and who was stuck on a pallet in the outbuildings?

I shook my head and pushed that aside for now. The system might well be rife with
the sorts of injustice I had been shaped to end, but the solution Nuriko was proposing
was pure unadulterated horror. I could not let her do what she planned.

“No,” I said, “Justice does
not
demand it. At least, not this way. I’m not at all convinced you’re right, but even
if I were, I would have to oppose you in this. I cannot let you kill tens of thousands
in the hopes that it will
somehow
make the world a better place at some later date.”

“Hundreds of thousands, actually.” She smiled, and once more I saw pain where I expected
madness. “And you can’t stop me. You can get out of the way, or you can die. I wish
I could offer you another choice, but
this
is the moment. I don’t have the time to save you from yourself for long enough for
you to see that. It took Kelos years to start down the path to pursuing true justice
with me, and a hundred years on he’s still not all the way there.”

She backed up then, giving me room. “This is your last chance, child. Step out of
my way or die.”

“I’m not going to do either.”

“You can’t believe how sorry I am to hear that. In deference to the promise I am about
to extinguish and the love I know Kelos bears you, I will allow you to draw your swords
and meet me above.” She leaped to her right, put a foot on the outer wall and bounced
herself back left where she did the same off the barracks, quickly mounting to the
roof.

Her nine-tailed fox of a shadow remained behind for a long beat, looking at me with
a melancholy cant to her head. “Falling down a champion drowns, sinking in darkness
and lies, unable to open his eyes to the nighted skies and what the prophet shows
him.” Again the silent laughing howl, and then she followed her mistress above.

Triss spoke into my mind,
I don’t think Thiussus is half as unwound as she’s trying to make us believe she is.
I feel intention beneath the words and it doesn’t match the nonsense phrasings.

“Come up,” the Kitsune said from above, “or I close my fist on your little friend.”

The shadow cage holding Fei’s familiar contracted briefly, generating an inarticulate
shriek of pain from within.

“On my way.” If only because I hadn’t yet come up with a better option.

I drew my swords, turned and took four running steps up the wall, then kicked off
into a twisting backflip. I landed in a crouch on the edge of the barracks roof facing
up toward the last place I’d seen the Kitsune. She was waiting for me at the roof’s
peak and she gently clapped now.

“Nice,” she said. “Unnecessarily flashy, and it gave me a clean shot at your back
as you kicked free of the wall, but the technique was beautifully executed.”

“Somehow I didn’t think you were going to take me out with a back strike. Not after
all the efforts you’ve made to give me a fair chance.”

“Smart child, and such good form. I’d love to see your Siri sometime if she’s really
your better in the Blade’s arts.”
Nuriko waved me forward. “Come at me now, I don’t want you to die feeling you’ve done
less than your best.” She hadn’t bothered to draw her sword yet.

Be very careful,
sent Triss.
I don’t know how much I can help you, not when Thiussus can put me more than half
out of the game with just a touch as she did before. I wish I understood how she does
that.

Is there anything you can do to prevent her from doing whatever it is?
I moved my swords into a high and low guard and advanced slowly.

Maybe, given time and practice. I don’t think either is likely at this juncture.

Then stick close to me. Don’t give her an easy opening to touch you.

I don’t think it will help, but I don’t have a better idea. Wait…maybe I’m looking
at this the wrong way. Maybe it’s not about her. Maybe it’s about me…worth a try anyway.

The dim shadow of a dragon that the moon had painted around my feet collapsed inward
into a small puddle which flowed up my body, covering me in a cold and silky second
skin.

“Oh, is your partner afraid of Thiussus?” asked Nuriko. “That’s too bad. Smart. But
definitely too bad for you.”

What’s the plan here, Triss?
I sent.

Not a plan so much as an attempt at a sidestep. I want to see what happens when it’s
you in control when Thiussus makes contact.

Then the nine-tailed fox was sliding across the lead panels of the roof toward me,
and Triss vanished from my mind, releasing consciousness as he sank into shadowy dreams.
My senses expanded to encompass Triss’s and I decided that it would be best to get
the experiment over as quickly as possible. I leaped forward, planting one foot firmly
in the center of the advancing shadow at the same time I swung a scissoring pair of
cuts at Nuriko, one at knee height, the other aimed for her throat.

Without seeming to exert any effort, Nuriko twisted
sideways in the air, turning a cartwheel that lifted her legs above my left-hand sword
at the same time that she dropped her head and neck beneath my right hand. I barely
registered her dodge because I was too busy trying to deal with the complete overloading
of my borrowed suite of shadow senses.

Rapture in black.

A couple of years previously, I had been hit with a deathspark—a very powerful sort
of specialized magelightning. It knocked me unconscious and nearly killed me. When
I was first awakening from that blow, my senses had been badly scrambled and I had
tasted the color blue. The effect of one sense bleeding into another was wild and
strange—utterly unlike anything I’d encountered before. This was kind of like that,
only more so.

Take the most intensely hot pepper you can possibly imagine and freeze it so thoroughly
that you could shatter it with the lightest of blows. Now bite into it. As it fragments
into a thousand tiny crystalline shards, each of them melts instantly, releasing an
absolute burning explosion of sensation of impossible heat while simultaneously freezing
your tongue. Got that? Now imagine that each of those tiny points of contact doesn’t
hurt you, but instead creates the most intense sort of pleasure. That’s what I got
secondhand through my link to Triss’s senses, a terrible joyous burst of frozen heat
all rendered in a palette of shadows.

No wonder Triss was so knocked down by the sensation. I was feeling it at secondhand
through senses my mind had never been meant to interpret, and I still had trouble
separating myself from the experience. It wanted all of my attention and all of my
focus. All of me. The man I was even a few months previously would have fallen then,
dropping everything to become one with his enraptured senses—easy meat for the Kitsune.
But I had left that man behind at Darkwater Island, and where thought failed me, the
flow of body and sword did not, continuing my motions in the absence of conscious
will.