Wolf's-own: Weregild (58 page)

It wasn't until just two days ago, when he'd found himself alone on the deck and realized it was for the first time—and that only for perhaps five minutes or so before Joori swung himself up on deck, a bit wild-eyed then too obviously relieved when he spotted Jacin—that it dawned on him why he was so rarely free of company. He'd almost snorted. Almost. The call of the depths might have been enticing, if he could bring himself to bother caring. For the first time, he connected it with the missing knives. He couldn't decide if he was offended or amused.

The water was pleasantly calm today, the breeze light, so the crew had finished whatever it was they did before Jacin had even gotten up here this morning. He'd only seen one or two a few times since, adjusting and checking sails and doing incomprehensible things with ropes. Jacin ignored them, and they never seemed to mind.

Shig sat in one of the chairs, two down from Jacin's right, but she looked tired and drawn, so Jacin pretended not to see her. He wasn't the only one who'd had a shitty time of it, and he probably had it a little better than she did right now. He didn't miss his voices, and he had another on whom to lean, even if he told himself most of the time he'd rather not. Not that it mattered—Malick didn't let up, and he apparently owned more patience than Jacin would have suspected.

Odd. Unfathomable, really. Jacin was extraneous now. He'd done what he'd promised, fulfilled his end, and so had Malick. They were square.

So why was Malick still here?

"Are you that determined to be a ghost?” Shig had asked him just last night as she'd sat in that same spot and held a smoke out to him, eyeing him narrowly as he took it and sucked in a long drag. It had been windy last night, more than usual, and he hadn't been able to see the stream of smoke as he'd blown it back out, but he'd tasted the sharp cherry tang on his tongue, felt the low burn as his lungs compressed and expelled. “You don't have to drive yourself with the pain anymore.” Shig's voice was soft, just loud enough to hear above the wind and waves, and Jacin watched as she flicked her own smoke over the rail. “And it's still all right to snatch the things that take this new pain away. They'd want you to, don't you think?” She leaned back in her chair, turned her head, and looked at him straight, eyes sharp and lucid. “Alone is the only thing that'll truly break you, Fen. I know love's not a safe thing for you, but he loves you. He risked his soul for you because he loves you, and you couldn't let him do it, because....” She paused, tilted her head. “Why d'you think that is?"

She'd asked it like she didn't think she already knew the answer. And Jacin didn't think she'd like it if he gave her the real one. Because it had nothing to do with love or anything else so soppy and dangerous. It had to do with right and wrong, and he'd chosen “right” as what he'd thought to be his end had loomed over him in the perdition of souls Yakuli had created. He hadn't wanted to be responsible for the damnation of one more soul, had thought the gods might let him rest if his last act was one of repentance and sacrifice. And then Malick had snatched that end away from him.

Shig snorted, like he'd said it all aloud. “You're the only one who's ever seen living as a failure, Fen. Maybe you didn't do all the saving, but none would have been saved without you.” She tilted her head, shook it. “You saved their souls, Catalyst, including his. What more did you want?"

Jacin had merely stared, for quite a long time, and Shig had stared back with a small, weary smile. She wouldn't look away, so Jacin did. He'd gotten up, taken one last drag from the smoke, then pitched it over the side and gone to bed.

"You're just a living ghost, Fen,” Shig had called after him. “Did he risk it all for nothing?"

Jacin had found the energy to flip her off as he descended the rickety stair to the sleeping quarters below.

Malick hadn't been in the tiny cabin, hadn't been there to chatter at him and drown out Shig's voice with snarky teasing, or news of Ada and the release of the Jin, or just his presence. Somehow, the emptiness of the cabin stung.

The bunks were hard and small enough that Jacin wondered if mats wouldn't have been better, but he hadn't complained that first night after they'd boarded and Malick squeezed into Jacin's with him, crammed him up against the curve of the hull. He'd gotten used to Malick's shape against him as he slept, had gotten used to the particular level of heat he generated. Always with Jacin's silent permission, his acceptance. He didn't even have the dignity of denial, only the indignity of pathetic, nameless need. Malick never touched him, except to hold him, talk to him softly until he drifted into sleep, and that queer feeling of safety kept hovering at Jacin's edges. It bothered him a little, because he'd never really thought safety was a thing he craved, but he didn't allow it to niggle him enough to turn Malick away.

It didn't seem fair that he had safety he'd never thought to ask for, never assumed he deserved, when others who deserved it more were gone.

Perhaps Shig was right: perhaps he really was a living ghost. Because whatever this was he was doing, it couldn't possibly be living. Then again, how would he really know? He'd never had an actual life before.

He'd tossed about in the scratchy blankets and wondered—as he'd done when he'd looked through Yakuli's genteel bullshit and seen the monster looking at him from behind leaf-green eyes—what had he been expecting? What had he
really
been expecting?

That he'd somehow go home? That his father would be resurrected and finally love him? That his mother would be restored and somehow stop her steady slide into gentle insanity? That Joori would be safe, and Morin would torment them all, and Caidi would be... Caidi?

What
had
he thought? Had he thought at all?

You thought you'd be dead.

Yes. He had. And then he'd never have to deal with hurt or shock or pain or questionable sanity ever again. And he didn't know what to do with himself, now that even that had been denied him.

...it only hurts because you don't know how to be anything but damaged...

Did it hurt? He couldn't tell. It didn't feel like much of anything, except... not right. And how did one go about learning to be “not damaged” anymore, anyway? Was it like scabs and scars over one's soul, and eventually, one just... stopped seeing them? And how long did it take?

He wasn't supposed to love you, was he, Jacin-rei

"No one was.” It trickled out on a thin thread of breath, like he couldn't help himself.

What was he supposed to
do
with it? What did he know about
any
of this? He was trapped in reality, snared in a life he didn't know how to live, and it was fucking
cold
. A shiver rippled through him, as if he'd called it, and he admitted the wish for a wide stripe of heat at his back, warm whispers at the crown of his head.

He was supposed to use you and leave you, and instead he handed you his heart, offered you his soul, and now you have to figure out what to do with it

Could he just... skip ahead to the not-damaged-anymore part? If he spoke it aloud, gave the words power, could he make them real?

Because love isn't a safe thing for you, is it... Ghost?

"Not a Ghost.” He whispered it. Tried it out. And waited.

Nothing. Still. Nothing but the chill and... that was it.

He'd spent a lot of time lately feeling numb and cold, or just nothing at all. There were days at a stretch that passed him by and he didn't even notice. He liked Malick's warmth. It had taken a while for it to leak through the cold, the numb nothing, but it was one of the few things he knew now, and he liked it. It placated... something down deep he couldn't define.

He was biding in some odd limbo, a place where he could see life, touch it, but he couldn't feel it. Malick made him feel.
Made
him.

Forced him to acknowledge that he was sick of the cold. Sick of himself.

A living ghost.

Malick's relentless presence was a persistent, bizarre comfort, and Jacin had allowed it to prod him into staying
here
when he really didn't want to. Last night, Shig's voice haunting him, the taste of cherry smoke burning his tongue, he'd allowed it to prod him into turning to Malick when he'd finally entered the cabin quietly, climbed in, and wrapped himself around Jacin. Allowed it to guide his hands, watched Malick's expressions change as Jacin allowed his fingers to roam and explore. Allowed himself to
feel
every detail beneath his fingertips—time the pulse, map the dips between muscles, trace bone and sinew, stalk the thump of blood through vein—until Malick met his eyes, asking.

Jacin answered. Slowly and with all his attention.

No bargains this time, nothing to trade but mutual want.

Malick had made it all go away for him before. Maybe he could make it come back.

Sayitsayitsayit—

"Do you love him?” Joori had asked Jacin only a few days ago, leaning against the railing as Jacin sat, otherwise alone on the deck, staring out to where the bruised line of the horizon smudged from sea to sky. No anger that Jacin could detect. No derision. Only curiosity, with perhaps a touch of worry.

Jacin had snorted a little, pushed his hair out of his eyes, and sighed. He hadn't answered, but he figured Joori knew what he meant, even if he wasn't sure himself.

He thought he might be getting used to Malick, but that might have just been because he was
there
, wouldn't let up, and Malick had at least believed it when he'd told Jacin he loved him. He seemed to be acting like it, but then, how would Jacin know, really?

"Don't lie to me,” Jacin had told Malick last night, afterward, when they were both still flushed and sweaty, skin sticking to skin, and the smell of sex down deep in their pores. “Don't manipulate me. Don't manipulate them."

A warning of sorts, and Malick seemed to get it, even if the threat was minimal—he was
Temshiel
, after all; what could Jacin
really
do to him besides walk away?—but Malick hadn't smiled or smirked, or even rolled his eyes. He'd only nodded, his expression this close to grave, and sincere, as far as Jacin could tell. “I won't,” was all he'd said.

"You really want this?” Jacin had to ask it, had to know.
You really want me? Why? What's to want?

There was no hesitation from Malick, no apparent equivocation. Only a simple, and apparently sincere, “Yes. I do."

Touch the Untouchable. Love the unlovable.

In that moment, peering into tarnished bronze, looking for prevarication and finding only somber confession, Jacin thought maybe he could love Malick, if Jacin were a different person.

"Well,” Jacin had answered slowly, confused, not quite believing, “all right, I guess.” For as long as it lasted, at least. Until Malick one day looked into Jacin's eyes and realized there was nothing there.

Malick had merely snorted and buried his face in Jacin's hair.

It might be possible for Jacin to be an actual person one day, to love someone. Someday. Maybe. When love stopped feeling like such a terrifying risk. Right now, “love” was, quite simply, beyond him, at least until he figured out what real life was supposed to be, and what he was supposed to do with it. He didn't have Beishin to tell him anymore. No more braid or traditions to label him, no more vengeance to define him, no more fear to cage him, no more knives to show him the hard reflection of a face he didn't know mirrored back at him in their polished blades. He was going to have to define himself, because for all that Malick wouldn't let up on him, wouldn't let him retreat, he still never forced anything on Jacin but the present. He wouldn't tell Jacin what to be, even if Jacin asked him to.

Jacin might be able to love that. Eventually. Maybe.

Maybe that was what “starting again” meant.

"Bloody Fens,” Malick muttered behind him, just as Joori flopped into the chair at Jacin's right, and Morin into the one at his left. Jacin hadn't heard them coming, but Morin and Joori at least were looking awfully smug and pleased with themselves. “Throw the whole lot of you overboard, that's what I'm going to do,” Malick was grousing. “
Then
we'll see how bloody clever you are. Try those smartass remarks when you're choking down sea water.
Ha
!"

Morin unfurled himself over the chair like a particularly satisfied cat, gangly limbs longer than Jacin had noticed before, Morin's gold hair flopping about his face as the salt-wind licked at it. He slid a sly grin at Joori. “Try it,” he said with a wicked flick of his glance over Jacin's shoulder, the grin still stretched wide. “Samin will have your guts.” He pointed the grin at Jacin then flopped back in the chair again, all relaxed confidence and easy snark. “Samin likes me."

"Are you threatening my lads, Mal?"

Even without the comment, Jacin wouldn't have needed to turn to know Samin was trailing the others; his heavy tread was unmistakable, even on the deck of the small ship. Casually, Malick leaned against Jacin's chair, his hands on the back of it, fingers just touching Jacin's shoulders through his light coat. A spark of brilliance caught the corner of Jacin's eye as the sun reflected off the ring on Malick's finger, and then an oblate appeared over Jacin's left shoulder. Jacin took it and didn't even roll his eyes.

I'm Untouchable. Mad. A Ghost.

And yet I'm touching you.

"
Your lads
,” Malick griped, “have taken to torturing me for sport just lately. Do something before I kill them.” Jacin felt the shift in weight as Malick turned toward Shig. “How are you, love?"

Shig shrugged, gave Malick a small smile. “It's nice here,” was all she said.

Samin was smiling when he sidled around the chairs and hitched up against the rail, leaning over to have a look at the foamy curl of the ship's wake. He'd spent most of the first two days below deck, retching his guts out, and the few times he'd ventured up, he'd had a sickly greenish cast to his skin. He looked much better now.

"C'mon, lovie,” he said gruffly, and he gestured over to Shig.