Drawn Blades (16 page)

Another punch in the gut. “I wish I could say that surprised me. I don’t want to interrupt the flow of this but, remind me to tell you about the Kitsune and what I learned from her about Kelos and the Son of Heaven.”

“So, you really did meet the Kitsune?” asked Siri.

“I did, and she’s dead now, but we can talk about that later.”

“Right. Kelos told me the Son was putting together an expedition to recover the key for him, though he wouldn’t tell me how he knew that or what the Son thought he could use it for. Kelos said that he was doing what he could to slow the Son down, but that he couldn’t delay things more than a couple of months at the most.”

“It sounds like he still has connections within Heaven’s Shadow,” said Triss. He turned to Siri. “That’s what the Son calls Blades that went over to him after the fall.”

She nodded. “It was obvious there was a lot more going on under the surface than some mad scheme to get Namara back. That more than anything is why I let Kelos walk away. Whatever he’s plotting I was afraid it wouldn’t die with him. That’s part of the reason I reached out to you. He told me something about your last meeting in Heaven’s Reach. He loves you like a son, Aral. If there’s anyone who can get him to open up, it’s you.”

I rubbed my forehead. “Things would be simpler if you’d killed him. You know that, right?”

“Could
you
have killed him?” asked Siri. When I didn’t answer she added, “He was
my
master, too—the father I found when the temple took me away from my parents.”

“I know.” I found myself with a sudden and terrible desire to ask Siri if she had any efik, or, failing that, to simply call down the stairs for that bottle of house red I’d turned down earlier. It had been a while since the cravings hit me so hard, and I bit my cheek by way of distraction.

“Aral.” Faran touched me on the shoulder—I hadn’t even noticed her moving. “You’re shaking. Are you all right?”

“It’s nothing.”

There was no disguising how I felt from Triss, though, and he suddenly blurted out, “Faran, you mentioned the Goodvelyn. And, Siri, you called this Kayla, Darkvelyn. Is there some relationship?”

It was a clumsy attempt at changing the subject, but I appreciated it and sent a silent wave of love and gratitude flowing down the link between us once the first shock of need faded.

Siri looked at me worriedly, but nodded to Triss. “Yes, there is. ‘Velyn’ is a Sylvani word that describes the First. We don’t have anything quite like it for ourselves, though ‘human’ probably comes closest.”

“I see where you’d get Goodvelyn,” said Faran. “But Darkvelyn sounds kind of negative.”

“It is,” replied Siri. “The Kreyn still live in the ancient forests like the ancestors of the First, making their homes in giant trees or natural caverns. The Kreyn
hate
Sylvani-style cities, and most of them won’t use steel or farm with plows that break the earth. In turn, the Sylvani think of the Kreyn as primitive and uncivilized, barbaric even—hence darkvelyn. They used to want to force them into the empire proper.”

“Used to?” As the craving eased a bit, I forced myself to look for more distraction. “What happened?”

“The Sylvani lost three or four wars in a row and gave it up as a bad job. The Kreyn are deadly fighters and some of the best mages among the First.”

“So, how did this Kayla end up with Ashkent, then?” Faran asked. “I thought you said he was a High Lord of the Sylvani. . . .”

Siri grinned. “I asked her that myself once.”

“And?” demanded Faran.

“She smiled, and said, ‘Love is passing strange.’ Then she went back to working on a tricky little death spell she’d been composing. I’ve never gotten another word out of her on the subject. But, I’ve talked enough for a while. It’s your turn.”

Siri looked at me. “Aral, I want to hear about the Kitsune at some point. And, Faran, I definitely want to learn about what you’ve done since the fall of the temple. Especially, how you came into Aral’s care. But first, Jax, Devin, Malora, Kaman, Loris . . . what can you tell me about the order?”

“What do you know already?” I asked. “You’ve clearly got some good sources.”

“Pretend I don’t know anything. News of the human lands is hard to come by here, and I know that a good deal of what I hear is lies. Until very recently I thought Devin and Kelos had died with the goddess. Oh, and I heard that you’d killed Kaman, but that can’t be right.”

I looked away from Siri. “It is. He was close to dying already and more than half-mad from torture—they’d crucified him and staked Ussiriss out in the sun. I offered to try to free them, but he begged for death instead. If it happened now, I don’t know what my answer would be, but at the time I more than half wanted to die myself. I gave him what he asked for.”

“Oh, Aral, I’m sorry.” Siri put her hand on my cheek, but I didn’t look at her.

“Jax and Loris started a school for the novices and journeymen among the survivors,” said Triss. “Those they could find, anyway. Loris has since gone to the lords of judgment—he died in a battle we fought with the Son of Heaven’s forces—but Jax continues the work. Faran can tell you more about that. She studied at the school for a while.”

“Only because I was too badly injured to do anything about it when you ditched me there,” she grumbled. “Well, really it wasn’t so bad. But after years of taking care of myself it felt like getting sent back to train with the children.”

“And Devin . . .” Siri trailed off.

“Is working for the Son of Heaven,” I said. “But you must know that if you know he’s alive. His name was put up among the fallen, as were all who went over to the Shadow.”

“Tell me about that.”

So I did, and many more things as well. Faran left us by the fire after an hour. I could tell by the way she rubbed at her scars as she walked away that she had one of her headaches coming on, though she didn’t speak of it.

Later, after we had talked ourselves out, Siri followed me up the second set of stairs to my room. She went through the door first, slipping her shirt off as she did so. As usual when the possibility of human sexual activity came up, Triss slid deep down into my shadow and pretended to ignore me. Whether that was for my privacy’s sake or simply because the act bored him, I couldn’t say.

Siri wasn’t wearing anything under her shirt, and she was as lovely as ever, but I found myself hesitating on the threshold. Unless I’d lost all facility at reading her, she’d given no signals nor slightest intimation that she wanted to bed me.

“It’s been a long time,” I said. “And, you haven’t exactly been flirty tonight. Are you sure you want to do this?”

She smiled and stepped in close, putting her hands on my hips. “Very.”

“But . . .”

“Ah, and there’s the new Aral again. I don’t think you ever hesitated for so much as an instant when I offered to take you to my bed back in our temple days. Well, except for that year when you and Jax were engaged. You went all boring and monogamous there for a while.”

I couldn’t help but grin at her tone and the memories of times we’d shared a bed in the past. But I still didn’t cross the threshold. “True enough, but you always seemed more interested then.”

“That’s a lie, and we both know it. Yes, I’ve been focused tonight, but I’ve
always
focused when there was work to be done. Think back to the training grounds. When we were fencing did I ever once let it slip that I was going to tumble you after a match?”

“Well, no, but that’s different. You were always serious when you had to be, but tonight we were just talking, and . . .” She raised a sardonic eyebrow at me and I ground to a halt. “Oh. Right. Tonight we were sharing information on the eve of a war, weren’t we?”

“Exactly,” said Siri. “From now until this thing with the Key of Sylvaras is resolved, we are on a mission. Of course that’s going to be my focus.”

“So, why this?” I ran my hands up her ribs to cup her breasts. “Normally you’ve no interest in mixing pleasure with business.”

“Aral, I love you. Not in a husband and wife sort of way. That’s never going to be my thing, despite our present circumstance. But you are one of my oldest and dearest friends in all the world, and I enjoy bedding you. Isn’t that enough?”

I shook my head. “That’s not all there is to this. If it was, you wouldn’t be mucking around with sex at the opening of a mission.”

“I think I liked the old Aral better, at least where it came to getting you into bed. It was sooo much simpler.” She sighed. “All right. No, it’s
not
all there is to it.” She reached out and touched the smoke ring on my finger. “That’s a wedding ring.”

“Yeah, I got that part.”

“You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”

“Which part? Getting me into bed? Or explaining why?” I winked at her and she growled low in her throat, but then she laughed.

“Fine. Marriage is one of the deep magics.” She touched the ring again and then raised her hand to show me the matching one there. “These bind us together in a way that simultaneously allows me special access to you while giving you certain protections from the buried god that has become a part of me. For the moment, with the god still in his tomb, those protections don’t matter all that much, while the access does. But, if things change suddenly, your ring may be the only thing that can save you from him . . . or . . . me.”

“Are you saying you’re not fully in control of yourself?”

“I honestly don’t know. I think it’s all me in here.” She touched the side of her head. “But with the smoke braided through my very soul, I can’t
know
that. That ring on your finger is one of my insurance policies.”

“And taking me to bed?”

“The deep magics don’t just happen. If a ring is going to mean anything, should the time come, we actually have to
be
married.”

“So, tonight is by way of completing the ritual.”
That
definitely took some of the shine off the idea.

Siri rolled her eyes. “No.”

“No?” I was confused.

“There is no
completing
the ritual. It’s not one and done. It’s a marriage. Both symbolically.” She touched her ring to mine. “And, more . . . practically.” Her voice dropped huskily as she reached down and slid her pants over her hips. Stepping out of them, she stood completely naked before me.

I couldn’t help but notice a change. “Uh . . .”

“I shaved. Wherever I have hair, the smoke is. I didn’t want that coming between us. Now, are you going to come in here and take me to bed like a gentleman? Or am I going to have to resort to wicked enticements?” She gave a whole-body shimmy that made my heart jump into my throat.

I swallowed hard. “Now, that sounded a lot more like the Siri who used to take me to bed. Less ritual magic, more lust.”

“All right, enticements it is.” She pressed herself tight to my chest and then slowly slid down my body. “Oh, there’s a magic to this, all right, but never doubt the lust. I didn’t have to choose
this
way to tie us together. But it’s a lot more fun than any of the alternatives.” She did something creative then, and I felt my knees go spongy. “Don’t you think?”

“I do.”

“It’s about damn time you said that.”

T
here
is no word for returning from that place that lies beyond longing, the place your heart goes when it finally understands that you can never go home again.

I have spent my entire adult life a hunted man. The very first thing I did on becoming a Blade in full was to kill a king. Since that moment there has never not been a price on my head. The only place in the whole world that didn’t hold true was the Temple of Namara. It was the only place I could feel entirely safe and at home. When the temple fell, I entered a land beyond homesick, a place where the very idea of home could never be anything more than a dream. At least, that’s what I had believed for eight long years.

But then I woke up in Siri’s arms, and for the first time since the fall of the temple, I knew I was home.

It hurt.

It hurt like having an arrow pulled out of your heart might hurt if it were possible to live through such a thing.

It hurt like only healing can.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to sing. I wanted the pain to last a thousand years. But even as I clutched at the joyous ache of homecoming and tried to draw it tighter to me, it started to slip away. I might be at home in my heart, but I was still a-sea in my head.

Let me take a step back. I woke in a feather bed, with Siri’s head pillowed on my chest. I had been here before. Not in this bed perhaps, but in this position with this woman whom I loved as a friend and honored as my sword-sworn sister in the service of Namara. That was familiar, and I treasured it, but that wasn’t where the feeling of homecoming originated. This wasn’t a thing of memory. It lay deeper than that, in the blood, and the bone, and the soul.

The moment didn’t create the feeling. The feeling informed the moment. I could sense the awareness of home somewhere deep inside me, like a spring of clear water bubbling invisibly away at the bottom of the lake it feeds. It was wonderful, and I wanted nothing more than to let it fill me with peace and contentment, but I
couldn’t
. Not without questioning the source.

When you spend your whole life training to kill by stealth, you spend your whole life learning all the ways that stealth can kill you. The blade in the back, the poison in the chalice, the spell striking from shadows. You learn that the easiest time to kill someone is when they are happiest. Happy people inhabit the moment. They don’t want to question what lies beneath or beyond, and that makes them vulnerable. I had been taught to
always
question those things. Instead of simply lying back and savoring my happiness I started digging away at the place inside me where I felt the happiest. I couldn’t not.

I didn’t have much luck at first. How do you search inside your own heart? But then I started thinking about where I was and what had happened in the last few hours. I ran through each and every moment in my head. That’s where I found it. In a single, simple word.
Married.
Thinking it made my heart thrum like the strings of a harp.

That’s when I knew what the feeling meant and where it originated. It was that deep magic Siri had talked about the night before. I
wanted
it to be a thing of hearth and home and heart. I wanted it desperately. How could I not? But I recognized that wanting didn’t make it true. I loved Siri. Always had, always would, but never in that truly-madly-deeply way of the joyously wedded. I might not have recognized the strangeness of this sudden absolute sense that Siri represented home if I hadn’t almost married Jax.

You see, I had tried truly-madly-deeply with Jax. It was wonderful and wild and it had shattered into a thousand tiny pieces somewhere along the line. I knew how it felt when a deep love built from within. This was something different.

God-magic,
Triss said into my mind.

What?
I was startled to have him answer a question I hadn’t asked.

It’s been there since you accepted the ring, though I couldn’t feel it as much more than an itching of the soul at the time. It was too tenuous then. When the Durkoth talked about your ring speaking to Siri’s through the deep ways, I knew the connection had to be there, though I couldn’t find anything when I went sniffing after it. But when you and Siri consummated your marriage, it began to build into something I could sense. It’s grown steadily all night. I felt it peak in the moments right after you woke this morning. Then it dropped off a bit. It’s holding more or less steady now.

You’ve been listening to my thoughts?
That was new.

No. I can hear them sometimes when you dream, or occasionally when you’re really focused on figuring something out. But I think that’s mostly because you’re sort of talking to yourself as you do it—thinking in words that spill over into our link.

So how did you know what I was thinking about just now?

I didn’t. Still don’t, for that matter. But I could feel you focusing your attention on the channel of energy that runs between you and Siri now. I’ve been watching it closely ever since I finally identified it last night. When you started to poke at it, too, I figured I’d let you know what I had learned. Which is that it’s god-magic. Well, no. The connection isn’t
only
god-magic, but there’s god-magic all through it. It tastes of smoke and charcoal.

The Fire That Burns Underground,
I sent.

That part of him that is expressed through Siri at any rate. I think that the connection between the two of you would exist even without the god’s presence within her reinforcing it, but the thing would be different. Gentler, quieter, more natural.

“Aral?” Siri raised her head from my chest. “What’s that buzzing sound in my mind?”

“Buzzing sound?” I was confused.

“Yeah, like hearing a faint conversation in another room. Only, when I try to listen in, it sounds like some language I can recognize but don’t actually speak. But the whole thing is happening inside my head. It’s
very
strange.”

Do you think she can she hear us now?
asked Triss.

Kyrissa suddenly lifted up out of Siri’s shadow—a sort of hybrid pool of smoke and darkness that I hadn’t really thought about until it took on the familiar shape of the winged serpent. “It’s Triss.” She twisted her head this way and that, like she was trying to catch a distant sound. “They speak mind-to-mind.”

“They what?!” Siri sat up, spilling the silken sheet that had half covered her into my lap. “Aral, is that true?”

“Uh . . . yeah, it is. I guess I neglected to mention it. Huh.” Our ability was unique among Blade/Shade pairings—a result of actions Triss had taken to save my life when the bonewright spell went horribly wrong.

Siri gave me a very hard look. “Yes. You did. Why is that?”

It was a thing that Triss and I hadn’t shared with anyone, though Faran had guessed it. “I . . . I don’t really know.” Though, a moment’s thought told me it was mostly a matter of a lifetime’s habit of always keeping a knife or two hidden up my sleeves.

“You don’t fully trust me.” Siri’s words came out flat and even—a statement, not a question.

I couldn’t really argue with her. Many familiars could speak mind-to-mind with their mages. Because of that, most people wouldn’t rule out such a thing happening between Triss and me. But Siri was a Blade. Every Blade
knew
that Shades and their Blade partners couldn’t do what we did. If it was a hidden knife, it was one that could best be used against another Blade.

I opened my mouth to try to explain, but Siri cut in before I could start. “Don’t. It’s fine. You
shouldn’t
fully trust me.” She touched a finger to the smoke in her hair. “This means that
I
don’t fully trust me. I’m not mad at you.”

Through the link that we now shared I could feel that she was telling the truth. A painful silence opened up between us even so.

I’m sorry,
sent Triss.
If I’d known they would hear us, I’d have kept quiet.

It’s all right, Triss. I’m not upset.

“Aha,” said Kyrissa. “
There
it is.”

A moment later, I felt an odd sort of buzzing sensation in my head, like someone speaking in another room of my mind. Siri nodded then, and I realized Triss and I were no longer unique in our ability to speak silently.

“Deep magic indeed,” I said.

The buzzing continued as Siri nodded at me. “That is . . . unexpected. And . . . lovely.” A tear suddenly appeared at the corner of her eye. “Thank you, Aral.”

She leaned in to give me a kiss. We might well have proceeded to other things from there had we not been interrupted by a harsh metallic pounding somewhere below.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“The gate to the tower, I think.” Siri rolled out of bed and reached for her swords.

A clear inhuman voice yelled, “Open in the name of the empire!” The shout was followed by a tremendous crash, like someone trying to smash the gate open.

I had a moment to worry about Faran, but there wasn’t a hell of a lot I could do about it, so I pushed it aside.

“Oh, hell.” Siri vanished into shadow . . . and smoke.

The strangeness of what happened then caused me to freeze for an instant as I tried to sort out exactly what I was seeing. The smoke of the god had touched Siri’s shroud as deeply as it had the rest of her. Normally, the effect produces a hole in your vision, a place where you simply can’t see
anything
. If you don’t know to look for the place you can’t see, your brain sort of refuses to believe it’s there and jumps over it without registering its existence.

But with Siri, the blind spot had become something fuzzier. If I looked directly at where I knew she had to be, I could dimly see through the hole in my vision to the table on the other side of her, as if she weren’t entirely in our world. I suspected that it would make her much harder to spot than a normal shroud would, especially at night.

Aral!
Triss yelled into my mind.

Right. Worry about it later. Shroud me up.

Darkness enveloped me as I rolled out of bed. I scooped up my sword rig as I went, and I already had my arms through the shoulder loops by the time my feet touched the floor. I landed in a crouch, fastening the harness’s chest strap with one hand while I used the other to check the position of my hilts. It was just like a thousand practice sessions.

I could practically hear Master Kelos running through the drill in the back of my mind.
Shroud first. Then sword rig. Shroud, swords, sheaths! Pants if you have time. Boots even if you don’t. That’ll give you two more knives, and you don’t want to run the rooftops barefoot if you can avoid it. Nor the jungle either, for that matter. Wrist sheaths if you were dumb enough to sleep bare. That’s all your steel. Trick bag should be attached to your sword rig before you go to sleep. If not, grab the bag, idiot! Still have time? Cowl, pack, poncho, and move! Move! MOVE!

Another metallic clang came from the gate below as I pulled on my pants, but it didn’t give. That meant I had time, so I grabbed the lot. I even snagged my shirt off the back of the chair and tucked it into my straps as I heard the gate finally crash open. It
should
have been tucked through the straps holding my trick bag to my rig, but I’d been sloppy last night.

Siri was as well, leaving her clothes where they’d fallen just inside the doorway, and I spared a brief thought to wonder whether she’d had the time to grab everything. It wouldn’t slow her up if she didn’t—like most female Blades she was small breasted. Even if she weren’t, the women’s version of the sword rig supplied a bit of support for those who needed it.

The blind spot that was Siri slid into position on the hinge side of the door. Ours was a small half circle of a room with the morning sun peering in through a high barred window on the northeastern wall. Intense golden light spilled across the lower half of the bed and a big patch of floor. That left me the top of the wardrobe as the only halfway decently shaded spot where someone charging into the room wouldn’t immediately bump into me.

“Fight?” I asked quietly as armored boots came pounding up the stairs from the suite’s sitting room below.

“Not if we don’t have to. They’re the buried god’s enemies, not mine. Will Faran be—”

Before she could finish her question and a bare heartbeat after I’d pulled myself up out of the way, the door burst asunder with a flash that blasted a loose cloud of shattered wood into the room. I tensed, ready to pounce on intruders or to vault over them as circumstance demanded. But whoever was out there, they decided not to rush in blind.

Instead, a cautious voice called, “We’ve got a god-sniffer. We know you’re in there . . . whatever you are. If you surrender gracefully, we won’t have to take drastic acti—urghk!” The words ended in a sudden moist gurgle that told me Faran had run out of patience.

A second voice cried out a split second later, “Mother of—aghhs!”

Then a third. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! I can’t see what—gack!” The distinct sounds of a body falling down a flight of stairs followed. Then silence.