Fallen Blade 04 - Blade Reforged (4 page)

Aral?
Triss spoke into my mind, and I realized it was the second time he had done so in
as many minutes.

I blinked and mentally stepped back into the moment, refocusing my attention from
the Marchon estate of the past to the one of the present. I stood on the third floor
balcony
that opened off the baronial sitting rooms. Below me, a few lonely flowers bloomed
here and there, testament to the mild winters of Tien and the dedication of the gardeners.

Sorry, old friend,
I sent.
I was far away.

And long ago,
he added.
I could see you wandering the streets of the past, and didn’t want to interrupt, but
I think Maylien will be joining us shortly, and we have things to talk about before
that happens.

I grinned.
Not
while
it’s happening?

Our ability to speak mind-to-mind was a relatively recent development and, as far
as we knew, unique in the history of Shade/human pairings, though I too often took
it for granted. The living shadows had provided my order with familiars and companions
since our very inception, and when I remembered to think about our special relationship
I rather enjoyed being the first of my kind to share such a deep bond with his partner.

I felt Triss’s answering smile.
Not if you don’t want Maylien to spend the evening giving you hard looks because you’re
distracted. I would have thought that when Faran caught us speaking mind-to-mind,
that would have been enough for you to want to be more cautious about when and where
we do so.

Before I could respond, the balcony doors opened and a pair of servants brought out
a tablecloth and tea service. I noted that they only set two places, which meant that
Maylien had won her argument with Heyin about this first conversation since my return
from Darkwater Island. There were two pots as well as two cups, plus assorted plates
and all the other paraphernalia that the nobility dragged into the simple act of having
a cup of tea. Because I really didn’t much like the stuff, my pot was both cooler
and much milder than the rich smoky green that Maylien and most of her fellow Zhani
preferred.

She commented on it as she came out and took a seat at the table, placing Bontrang
on a perch beside her. “Really, Aral, are you sure you wouldn’t prefer tea, instead
of that lukewarm water you favor?”

I dropped into the chair across from her. “I don’t actually favor it. It’s just that
it’s better for me than the whiskey I’d prefer, and the less I can taste it, the better.
I’d prefer plain water or fruit juice, but the latter’s out of season, and drinking
city water without tea in it’s a sure recipe for spending the next three days in the
privy.” Though, to be honest, I agreed with those who thought it was the act of heating
the water rather than adding in the tea that prevented disease.

Maylien shook her head, but poured for me anyway, an action that would have given
her footmen palpitations if she hadn’t already sent them back into the house—her past
as a Rover showing again. “At least, stir it properly, so I can pretend I’m not serving
you slop.”

I sighed, but picked up the little brush and mixed the powdered tea at the bottom
with my lukewarm water, giving it just the faintest yellow green tinge. The action
made my teeth itch because it always reminded me of making a hot cup of efik. Efik!
The taste, the smell, the way it smoothed the harshest mood without the jangling of
the nerves that accompanied strong tea, everything about it was superior. Mostly these
days I didn’t crave it anymore, except when I had tea, or wanted a drink and couldn’t
have one, or the muscles in my back knotted up over a mission, or…well, leave it there.
I couldn’t have it, not if I wanted to end my days as something other than a sleepwalker
slicing his arms so he could rub powdered efik into the wounds for a faster effect.

I had just taken my first sip of tea when Maylien leaned forward and touched her fingers
to my cheek. “I think I liked your old face better, though this one’s more handsome.
I understand why you had to make the change after you were exposed to the world in
that business with the Durkoth, but I wish you hadn’t erased all the old lines when
you did it. They gave you character.”

“An assassin doesn’t want character,” I replied. “Character makes people remember
you. That’s a good way to get caught and killed. Once the wanted posters with my old
face went up, it became a potentially terminal liability.”

“I didn’t think you liked that word ‘assassin’ either, and I’m sure I don’t. I still
think of you as the ‘last Blade of fallen Namara.’”

That was what Maylien had called me in the letter where she asked me to help her kill
her corrupt sister so she could assume the baronial seat.

“I don’t like it,” I replied. “Not really, but it’s more honest than the other. I’m
no Blade anymore, and, truth be told, what was any Blade other than an assassin in
Justice’s name?”

She dropped her hand away from my face and leaned back in her chair. “You’ve changed
since the last time I saw you, and far more than your face.”

“I have that, and I think I’m not the only one.” It’d been over a year since the last
time I’d seen Maylien, and she hadn’t looked half so comfortable with the trappings
of her high state then. “But talking about what once was and is no more is not why
I asked to see you today.”

Maylien nodded and her expression lost its wistfulness as she put on the face of a
peer of the realm. It was…instructive, and for me, more than a touch off-putting.
Maylien the Rover, whose bed I’d shared more than once, vanished underneath the surface
of the Baroness Marchon, my natural prey.

She picked up her tea and took a careful sip. “You have the floor. Tell me about Darkwater.”

“I was wrong and you were right. It’s impossible. Staging an assassination is nothing
like breaking someone out of prison. Getting into Darkwater was actually much simpler
than most of my old assignments for the goddess. I was able to get in close enough
that I could have easily killed Jerik without ever being in any real danger of getting
caught. But there’s simply no way I can get him out, especially not as weak and sick
as he looks.”

Maylien nodded. “I told you as much.”

“You did. The prisoners are too closely watched. I wouldn’t have ten minutes from
the time I cracked the wall and broke his chains to the alarm being sounded, and that
assumes I kill the guard that’s in charge of the eyespy watching the cell and the
one that’s stationed outside his door beforehand. Then I’d have to get him down to
the water and out across the reef to a waiting boat.”

“Which wouldn’t set off nine and ninety alarms why?”

“Exactly,” I said. Besides, he’d never make it in the state he was in, and I ached
for the beatings he’d taken in my name.

“We could probably come up with a way of concealing the boat,” said Triss, shifting
out of my shadow and into dragon shape to insert himself in the conversation. “Tie
it to a landmark in the coral and leave it sunk till we get there, or something, but
there’d be no way of hiding it that wouldn’t involve significant time to undo.”

“I’d be willing to support you with money and men,” said Maylien. “I still have ties
to the underworld from the years I spent hiding from my sister. But I don’t see that
they’d help enough to make this work.”

I shook my head. “They wouldn’t, and I could put together my own team if I thought
it would do any good. I may have changed my face since my jack days, but I know who
to talk to if I need hard things done shadowside. But there’s really no way to get
Jerik out of there short of a major assault on the prison, and the chances are pretty
good the main result of that would be getting him and a bunch of the others killed.
All of the important prisoners have death wards inscribed on their manacles. Any guard
can snuff out any of their lives with very little effort. More important guards, like
the fellow watching the eyespys, can murder whole cell blocks with the touch of a
ward. No, there’s only one sure way to get Jerik out.”

Maylien canted her head to one side. “That’s one more way than I can see.”

“It’ll need your full cooperation.”

She straightened her shoulders, and inclined her head ever so slightly. “I owe you
my life and my honor, not to mention my coronet, and I pay my debts. If it’s in my
power to give, you shall have what you need from me.”

“Don’t agree to this blind, Maylien. It speaks well of you that you feel that way,
but you’re a baroness now. You have obligations that outweigh anything you owe me.”

For the first time since she’d found me in the boarded-up remnants of the Gryphon,
Maylien looked something other than confident, but only for a moment. “I don’t think
you’d ask anything of me that would compromise what I owe my people, Aral.”

“I guess that depends on how you see things.”

“Do get on with it,” she said, more than a little exasperated.

“All right. I’m going to kill your uncle and, if you agree, I’m going to help put
you on the throne of Zhan in his place. Then, you will release Jerik as well as most
of the other prisoners. You will also shut down the office of agony and all the other
abominations your uncle has slowly been reviving from the reign of the last king of
Zhan I had to assassinate.”

“You’re going to what?” demanded Maylien.

Have you thought this one through, Aral?
Triss asked into my mind.

“I’m going to assassinate your uncle Thauvik. If we do this right, you will be the
one to assume the throne when he dies. That’s going to take more than a little risk
on your part, and, if we fail, your head is going to get nailed up over traitor’s
gate right next to mine.”

Maylien set her tea down and growled at me. “You are the single most difficult man
I’ve ever known. You do know that, right? Because, as I recall, the last time we had
a conversation about putting me on the throne, I came within about two inches of begging
you to help make me queen so that I could put a stop to the horrors Thauvik’s been
committing in my family’s name. Then, you told me that you simply couldn’t do it.
What’s changed?”

“As you noted earlier,
I
have.”

Triss spoke into my mind.
That’s how I remember things going, too, and I agreed with you then. A little warning
before
you jump off a big cliff like this one would be appreciated next time.

Sorry, Triss. I didn’t want to have to explain myself twice.

To Maylien I said, “I turned you down before because if I’d killed Thauvik then, I
would have been doing it for you, and, as much as I care about you, love you even,
that’s not the right reason.”

“Then what is?” She was hiding it well, but I’d hurt her there.

I was sorry for that, and I felt I owed her the full explanation. “When I met you,
I was at my low point, broken, bleeding inside, drunk, a wreck. I’d lost my goddess
and, with her, my purpose. I was pretty much waiting to die. When you came along,
you gave me something to believe in for a while, a purpose outside myself. I’d forgotten
what that felt like. It was exactly what I needed and you probably saved my life by
doing it.”

Where are you going, Aral?

Just follow along and you’ll see.

“I’ll be forever grateful to you for that, but it would have been so easy to substitute
your needs and orders for the ones I lost when my goddess died. When we met, I was
a tool without an owner. If I’d killed Thauvik for you, I’d have remained that, a
tool for another’s hand, and honestly, I wanted that. I wanted to give myself up,
to become nothing more than an expression of someone else’s will once again. I wanted
it more than I want a drink or a cup of efik on my worst nights. I wanted to give
up on being me so bad it was scorching my soul.”

I got up and began to pace. “But the life of a tool isn’t really living at all. I’m
not entirely sure how I figured that out. Maybe it was all those years as a jack.
I got to see some awful people and some pretty good ones, and I learned that the difference
between the two isn’t in who they are, it’s in what they do and why. Only you can
be responsible for what you become. Whatever the reason, I could see something then
that I hadn’t as a Blade; even if I did become a tool
again, the responsibility for what that tool did would still be mine. At some point
we all have to take ownership of ourselves.”

“I never wanted to reduce you to an instrument of my will, Aral,” said Maylien, her
voice low and throaty.

I shrugged. “What we want and what we do aren’t always the same things. I don’t blame
you for it, and I don’t think you had any idea that was what you were asking for,
but that doesn’t change what it would have done to me.”

“Why is it different now?”

“Because I’m going to kill Thauvik no matter what you decide. I hope that you will
agree to work with me to take advantage of the opportunity, but if you don’t, it’s
not going to change my decision one whit. I’m not doing it for you, but I might be
doing it
with
you.”

“What about me?” Triss asked angrily. “When exactly were you going to bring me into
your decision? What if
I
don’t want to kill Thauvik? Would
that
change your mind?”

I looked at the shadow of a dragon and I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m sorry, Triss.
You’re normally the one pushing me to do the right thing. It never occurred to me
that, knowing what we know about his rule, you might not want to kill Thauvik. Are
you against it?”

He flicked his wings rather sheepishly. “No. He’s very nearly as bad as his half brother
was. It’s just…”

“Just what?” I asked, keeping my tone as deadpan as I could manage. “Thauvik is a
murderer and a torturer, and the only way he’ll ever see justice is if we deliver
it. It’s that simple.”

“Well, yes, but…Wait a second,” he said, suspiciously, “are you pulling my tail? Because
that sounds a lot more like something I’d say than something you normally would.”