The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (111 page)

She eyed his profile.  For all that he wore the appearance of life, she knew how much of an act it must be.  It was difficult enough for her to operate her own stolen bodies naturally, and they were still alive.  Every expression he made, every word he said, was a conscious choice.  So for him to mention that...

It's a warning.  The Emperor knows we're coming.

Shit.  I have to get to Cob.  We can still back out of this.

“Calm yourself, Vedaceirra.  I can't connect your threads when they're wriggling.”

She sucked in air through her teeth but felt no calmer for it.  There was no pain and no real weariness; he had probably infused her with energy, like she did to herself with Serindas, but it left her wide awake, restless, nervous.

Thinking of the blade...  “Serindas.  Did you lose him?”

“No, he's right here.”  Enkhaelen gestured vaguely rightward, and she spotted the akarriden blade in its sheath on a weapon rack, nestled among a variety of sigil-etched swords, crystalline maces, lacquered wooden knives and more esoteric items.  No others were akarriden.

“Fished you both out of the swamp despite my better judgment,” he said.  “You were lucky your opponent didn't care to do the same.  But then, I suppose he lost sight of you.  There was a good inch of sediment on top of you by the time I got there.”

“We kicked up a bit of muck.”

“I had to burn your clothes.  But never fear, I have spares.”

“What am I, your dress-up doll?”

He tilted his head slightly.  “Aren't you?”

Her hands fisted.  “No.  No, you asshole, I am not.  I'm done with you sticking me in whatever body you like, dictating how I look—“

“When have I ever done that?”

“This very body!”

“Yes...well, that's only one time.”

“And the Silverton assignment—“

“Emphasis on assignment.  As in, a specific objective to complete, which required a specific skin.  Are you angry that I fetched it for you instead of letting you get it yourself?  Because I don't see a reason to piss around about that.”

“I was more than competent enough to—“

“Maybe, but it was quicker since I helped.”

“I don't need your help!”

“No?”

“I—“  She hesitated, tamping down on her anger.  “Obviously I do, sometimes, but I'd like the opportunity to ask for it instead of having it forced on me.  This time is fine; I would have called on you if I knew how.  But when you 'rescued' me in the Mist Forest...”

Enkhaelen rolled his eyes.  “The Mist Forest, where you did nothing but lay there still hooked to a corpse.  Oh yes, it certainly looked like you were helping yourself.”

“I would have.  Given time.”

“We don't have the luxury of time, Vedaceirra.  Yes, I was abrupt with you, and yes, I didn't ask what body you would like, but you were moping—“

“I was not.”

“—and I couldn't let that get in my way.”

“Fine, but you could at least have put me in a male body.”

“I was thinking of Cob.  He'd already killed you once, and you never had much chance of fooling the Guardian.  But if you were female, I suspected he'd hesitate before killing you again.”

“You did it to protect me?”

“Isn't that what I just said?”

She thought of the confrontation on the hill outside the caravan-shelter.  She had been near death already, her muscles freezing despite the ichor, but even without that handicap she knew she would have let Cob kill her.  And she had seen the indecision in his eyes, the anger and disappointment.  Had her body's gender tipped the scales?

“We did the same thing when we chose Darilan,” said Enkhaelen.  “To be nonthreatening to the boy.”

“Pike you,” she muttered.

“You're the one who refused a new body.”

“He'd never forgive me.”

“We can forgive terrible things when they're done by those we love.”

“He doesn't love me.  We're not even friends anymore, not really.  Plus he's with that Trifolder bitch.  There's something wrong about her.”

“Oh?”

About to launch into a tirade, Dasira checked herself.  She was speaking to the enemy.  Even if he had come to her rescue, even if he was mending her, the whole point of this excursion was to find his true self and kill him—and Fiora was necessary to that.  Whatever strangeness Dasira saw in the girl's talents, she couldn't reveal them; it would endanger Cob.

“I just...  It feels like she went for him deliberately,” she covered lamely.

Enkhaelen arched a brow but did not comment, and she flushed, realizing how jealous she must sound.  “I just don't want him to get hurt,” she said.

“Of course not.  You think of him as a son.”

Her chest constricted, and she blinked rapidly.

“In a way, I suppose I do too,” continued the necromancer.  “We made him who he is, you and I.  By accident, by force, by example, we shaped that idiot boy, and what he does in the next few days is a reflection of us.  I hope he's learned what we—  What I never managed to understand.  I hope he lives.  But I don't expect it.”

He sounded so subdued that she almost couldn't credit it.  Forty-five years of working together and not once had she seen him sad.  But the expression on his face was dead—not even trying—and his words held the weight of truth.

“You're tired too,” she said.

The brief, sober look he gave her was all the confirmation she needed.

After that, they lapsed into silence, him working and her mulling over what this meant.  She knew little of his life, only what Cob had explained about the manor: a lost daughter, a dead wife, a vendetta against the world.  How that translated into what he was now, she could not fathom, but four hundred years explained some.

For the first time, she wanted to ask.  Not because it would give her some kind of advantage in the upcoming battle, but because he'd always been an enigma—first as a rescuer then as a distant employer, off in his own world.  And she'd been tangled up in her own issues.  Her petty revenge.

Now he was the only one left.  Her family had renounced her—and most of them were gone, the te'Navrin clan now full of strangers.  Her lagalaina 'sisters' were dead and discarded, except for Anniavela who hated her.  Prince Kelturin, she had betrayed.  Cob, she had lost.  Cob's friends...

Out of all of them, maybe Lark would choose her over him.  But she couldn't drag that girl into her sordid life.

Only Enkhaelen was here.  Only Enkhaelen had ever saved her.

She couldn't thank him.

But she could end the pain.

Finally, the last threads merged and Enkhaelen drew back with a sigh.  “Now we just let it synchronize and start recreating the muscle.  The organs can wait; you'll be lighter this way.”

Dasira eyed him.  “Will I be able to eat?”

“No.”

“Will I still need to eat?”

“Yes.”

“Then why in blazes would you—“

“This is Palace material,” he said sternly.  “The more of it you contain, the more you're bound to its will.”

“I am Palace material!” she said, raising her bracered arm.

He pushed it back down, and again the electric tingle went through her, making her toes twitch.  “I crafted this carefully,” he said.  “It has the minimum number of strands needed to let the Palace recognize you; all the rest are of my own design.  You are far more mine than his.”

“I'm a prototype.  I know.  But—“

“You don't feel his influence like the others do.  My work buffers you.  Kelturin too; when I made him, I gave him the same gift.  Maybe it was a curse instead, but if you take too much of this stuff into you, you'll be as tied to the Palace as the rest of them.”

Her resolve wavered.  To stay with Cob, she needed to keep this body.  But to keep this body, she would risk turning on him...

“I know how you feel,” said Enkhaelen.  “But things change no matter how fiercely we clutch at them.  The world doesn't wait for us.  I've tried to fix what I did—to make something better, brighter, beyond me yet still mine...

“But I failed.  I failed, and I have to let go.  And so do you.”

She swallowed thickly, remembering that day in Kerrindryr.  The crisp Low Country air, the quarry and its ramshackle bunkhouses, the guards.  The bruise-eyed boy.  She'd forgotten she had a heart until then.

“No,” she whispered.

Enkhaelen sighed.  Then he said, “I'll do what I can.”

As he bent back to the task, pulling more threads from the roiling sphere, she let her gaze roam ceilingward.  Pike the Palace.  She would fight it as she'd fought it when it tried to swallow her, and they would survive, and she would walk out at Cob's side.  No doubts.

No other options.

Strands connected faster and faster.  Her legs stung as normal circulation started up, the ichor that preserved them surging back to her bracer.  She focused on wiggling her toes, flexing her feet and ankles and stretching her hamstrings to encourage the stuff to move out.  If it stayed too long in her veins, it became toxic even to her.

And it was better to concentrate on her mending body than to bother Enkhaelen.  He spun separate filaments seemingly from thin air—she could see no other source—and braided them in with the Palace strands, and as he added them, her nerves rekindled.  She bit back a hiss and worked on her fingers, her forearms, her shoulders.

Finally, Enkhaelen gripped her at the nape of the neck, and an electric burst went down her spine, expanding to outline every thread and nerve in her body.  She arched up from the fold-out table, heart stuttering in her chest, then sagged as the energy dissipated.

“Good,” said Enkhaelen, and released her.  “Get up, stretch.  I'll find you some clothes.”

With a grimace, she obeyed.  The floor was ice-cold under her bare feet, the air just as frigid, but she felt a kind of inner warmth, and as she moved through a stretching routine she was pleased to find everything working.  Her balance was better, her limbs achy but not weak, her spine painless and flexible.  The Palace strands on her abdomen looked like a thin layer of papier-mâché, but when she pressed at them, she felt the musculature beneath, and with some concentration, she found she could work them at will.  The whole area felt more solid, like a punching bag, and as she did a few twists she felt the central mass there in her belly, shifting comfortably with her movements.

“I don't keep much women's clothing, but I don't think you'll mind,” said Enkhaelen.  She glanced over to see him rummaging through a trunk full of fabric, black and indigo and cobalt and orange, gold and red.  “And I have a pilgrim's robe if you need one.”

“Might be wise.”

He tossed her a blue tunic and she pulled it on.  It smelled of sulfur and bugbane.  “Why are you working out of this tiny place?” she said as she caught a pair of breeches.

“Well, I blew up Valent, which had most of my space.”

“You did
what?
”

“You didn't see?  It's been smoking for days.”

“There's been a lot of snow.”

He looked up, crestfallen.  “No one saw?  I admit it could have been more impressive; the magma had a very low viscosity so it didn't explode, it flowed.  But nobody knows?  No one's talking about it?”

“I'm sure many people are talking about it and are very impressed, but I didn't see it.”

“Son of a festering fuck.”

“Can I get a breast-wrap, maybe?”

He flailed his hands in frustration, then went back to digging through the trunk.  More articles of clothing flew at her until she was wrapped and belted and moderately armored and pilgrim-robed and tying her hair back with a cord.  In mid-tie, she realized that it was neither damp nor dirty, then promptly pushed the thought from her mind.

“Serindas,” she said finally.

Enkhaelen gestured to it, set midway between them.  “Go ahead.  I won't stop you.”

For all the times in the past that she had tried to kill him, she felt he was sincere.  So she crossed that distance and buckled Serindas back into his proper place.  His hunger simmered beneath her hand, sullen but subdued as if he knew better than to bare his fangs here.

Enkhaelen was already on the move, to the far end of the chamber where a silver portal-frame was set in the stone wall next to a little painting.  “I'll send you to Cob.  Unless you object?”

“Not at all.  But how—“

He gestured to the painting, and she saw that it was actually a still-image of the swamp.  There were dim shapes in the distance, among the trees...

“I set it a few marks ago, so you'll have some catching up to do,” said Enkhaelen, already tapping at the silver frame.  A membrane of arcane light swirled within it, slowly clarifying—then opening.  The vegetal stink of the swamp rolled in, tepid air conflicting with the dry chill of the chamber.

Enkhaelen cast her a sidelong look.  “Do as you must.  No matter what.”

She started to reply, to question, but he gestured sharply at the portal. 
Business as usual
, she thought, and crossed.  Her new boots sank into the soft moss-clad earth on the other side, and by the time she managed to find solid footing, the portal was gone.