Wolf's-own: Weregild (40 page)

Be what you are
, Morin had told him, and Joori had, or at least he'd tried, but it hadn't mattered, hadn't made a single bit of difference, and now Joori wondered if it meant something else altogether. Perhaps it had been an admonishment, a sarcastic prediction of coming failure, because Morin
knew
, Joori knew he knew, even if no one would say it.

Shig's knowledge was too quiet, too composed for someone who had never seemed interested in or able to care about the corporeal life that went on outside of her multicolored head. “Too many are bleeding just as red as you today, angry earth-bound,” she'd told him, her own hands just as covered in murky scarlet as his were as she lovingly bathed her sister's face, dropped soft kisses to Yori's closed eyelids. Joori wished he could do the same, but he hadn't had the nerve to presume Shig would allow him near. “It wasn't yours to die today, and it was never yours to save them.” She'd lifted her head then, looked right at Joori, her jade eyes red-rimmed and far too bright. “You're just not that special."

It had cut, and it shouldn't have. Shig was no one to him, just one more obstacle to saving his brother, and now Joori had to wonder if he'd thought her an obstacle because she—just as much as everyone here, the world in general—was a threat to Jacin, or merely a threat to Joori's place beside him. Because Malick had told him, had accused him, had
warned
him, and now they were dead, gone, dropped from the sky to—

"Brother,
please
."

Jacin's voice was shaky, and the pleading inside it all too real, right on the edge of... something, the bottom of whatever abyss from which he'd been screaming, and it hadn't been Joori who'd pulled him out, brought him back.

"Joori, I can't.... Please, I need you."

Again, it hit him in the heart, drove through him like a spike, and he hadn't realized he'd dropped to his knees, laid his head in Jacin's lap. Weeping, clutching, a long clump of silky-damp hair gripped too tight in his fist, and, “I'm sorry, Jacin, I'm so
sorry
,” leaking from him in weak hisses like a kettle gone to steam.

"Please, Joori. Don't... I can't....” Thin, almost insubstantial, wobbling the edge.

It took more than Joori knew he had to get hold of himself, to breathe again, to lift his head and look into those eyes that were so like his own, and yet so much deeper, with so much more inside them. Dry now, no tears, but swollen and bloodshot, and going hollow with grief. Grief that Joori was forcing on Jacin, making him watch and feel, and trying not to let himself drop back into it, because Malick wasn't here this time to pull him back out, only Joori, and Joori had failed everyone else in his life, but... he
couldn't
fail Jacin.

"Jacin,” Joori whispered. He let go of the comb and pulled Jacin's hands from his hair, where they'd gone to comfort and soothe, when it should be Joori offering those things, padding the edges of the madness that hovered about his brother constantly like a fist inside a glove, ever-ready to start squeezing, throttling. And perhaps Joori didn't know everything he'd thought he did, perhaps Malick was right and Joori didn't know Jacin at all anymore, but he knew who Jacin had been, and he knew that everything inside Joori himself—every whisper of blame, every accusation of failure—was trebled and quadrupled in his brother's precarious mind, in that heart that felt too much, and was too forgiving of everyone but himself. “Jacin, whatever you're thinking, you're wrong.” Joori swallowed when Jacin shut his eyes, jaw clenched, like he was
still
holding back those screams that had pierced Joori so profoundly they still rang inside his head. “It wasn't supposed to be you, it wasn't your fault, you couldn't have stopped any of it."

Somehow, it was the wrong thing to say. Jacin hadn't been shaking a few seconds ago, Joori was sure of it. He was doing this wrong, he had no idea
how
to do this, how to reach the boy Jacin had been back when Joori really had known him, when they'd truly been two halves of the same Self. Back before the world had taken away their shared life, imperfect as it had been, and given them only this unending penury to take its place. And he had no one to ask how to do it right besides Jacin himself.

He curled his hands around Jacin's, ignored the chunky ring and what he knew it meant, and squeezed. “Jacin... tell me what you need. Tell me what to do."

Maybe it was the right thing to say—it took that hollow chasm out of Jacin's eyes, turned his gray gaze so fierce it almost singed Joori's skin. Jacin turned his callused hands in Joori's, gripped so tight Joori almost yipped.

"
Don't die
,” Jacin hissed, nearly violent in its strange sibilance, this voice that was a ghost of his normal even tones, like perhaps he truly was the ghost of Jacin—he was Fen now, he was Jacin-rei. Jacin was buried too deeply beneath layers and layers of pain and a stratum of cold, hard frost, and his heart along with him: not burned to cinder and his spirit released from the ashes, but pulled from his chest and stomped. His hungry ghost bound to the reality Joori had tried so hard to pretend didn't exist, feeding on rage and grief like others fed on seeds. And Joori just hadn't been able to see it, admit it. “I need you to
live
, Joori. I need Morin to
live
."

His hands were so strong, long fingers that looked so much like Joori's, but Jacin had always been more dexterous. Jacin had always been able to set his hand to a task and pull from it exactly what he wanted. Joori hadn't ever even been able to whittle without clumsy mistakes and mangled fingers. The only thing Joori had ever been able to make his hands do with any alacrity was weave that fucking braid, and he thought the irony of that might just kill him if he let himself think about it too hard.

Jacin snatched his hands away, cupped Joori's face between them, so gentle, so earnest. “Brother,” he rasped,
asking
, “please."

No laws,
their mother had told them. But she'd never said anything about a request from the one person Joori couldn't refuse. And like anything Jacin asked of him, Joori had no choice but to give it to him.

Xari sighed, peering at the motley assembly, mourning their mistress on the floor of a whorehouse, and wondering, as mortals were wont to do, what came next. The man they called Lex had emerged from his grief for his apparent lover—Xari's eyebrows had risen a little when she'd understood what he'd been to the Girou's patroness, but in approval; the man was quite nice to look at—and begun the mundane business of picking up pieces, showing others by calm example how to do the same. Mortals were so alike in the ways they dealt with what they knew but never quite believed was only temporary death, and Xari absorbed the pain and sorrow like another would absorb a good meal.

Kamen would not allow Lex to tend to Umeia's body, and Xari could feel how it rankled, how it hurt, and she pulled that into herself, as well, ignored Husao's curled lip when he looked at her and understood what she was doing. She didn't look away—it was what she was.
Banpair
, she saw it in his eyes, and she merely shrugged. He took his strength from his god; she had no such luxury. Not yet. And it was kinder to bleed off—feed off—misery than take away from any joy mortals could grasp. At least in Xari's opinion. There were maijin who sucked away any emotion they could gather, obsessed by it, who harmed or maimed or even seduced only to incite such passion, and then slurped it like addicts.

Xari took what she needed, and only when she needed. A true
banpair
, after all, could not hope to be claimed by any god. And a godless maijin needed the strength and power to do the deeds required for that divine acceptance. Xari did not intend to remain godless, and she trusted no promises. She would earn her place once again—with Dragon, if she would take her; with Wolf, if she wouldn't—and standing by and watching her son destroyed was simply not enough. The Obelisk had taken Xari's intended penance out of her hands, her own fear had stalled her feet when she'd had a brief flicker of a chance to redeem herself through her son's death, but she'd foreseen her own in the doing, and had hesitated. And the Catalyst had not waited for her to catch up. Kamen had warned her, and still, she hadn't been quick enough. There were no choices left to her now, only one moment left to seize. She would have to find her redemption through the salvation of one who had no intention of being saved.

"There is more to do,” she told Husao, her voice flat but calm.

Husao merely looked at her, sighed. “Kamen will—"

"Kamen sees naught but his Catalyst,” Xari snapped. “Kamen lets it blind him and too many will fall with him.” She shook her head. “You have your vengeance, Husao, and you have your god. You've none left to please, no redemption for which to beg. The Untouchable is Kamen's redemption. Asai was to be
mine
. Kamen will understand."

Husao merely shook his head, giving Xari a sad smile that looked entirely too authentic to be real. “No, Xari, he will not,” he said, but he stood, held out his hand.

Xari took it and allowed him to lead her up the stairs and to the Catalyst.

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What comes after?

Someone had asked him that. He could hear the echo of Malick's voice inside it, so maybe it had been him. Jacin hadn't really thought about it before, hadn't had an answer then, but he knew now what had been at the back of his mind, tucked away inside some twisted bit of hope he still had hidden in there: Kill Asai, fix his mother, bring his father back to life and make him love him, stop the screeching in his head so he didn't totter on a perpetual knife-edge of insanity, stop the hurt, stop the pain.... The list went on, foolish and deluded, but it had been there, and it was there still, even though he
knew
none of it was possible.

There was nothing to do but start picking up the pieces of his shattered reality, fit the ragged edges into shapes that didn't make him scream. Keep Malick's ring on his finger because it was already too late, he'd missed... something. Beishin was dead, Caidi was dead, Yori was dead, and the Ancestors might have told him how to save them, but he hadn't been listening. Or maybe they wouldn't have told him at all, maybe they would have merely kept shrieking their agony at him, because what difference did it all make to them? It didn't matter, he hadn't been listening, couldn't bring himself to listen now. He needed the silence, needed to think, wake up the bits of his mind that had gone to sleep inside the Ancestors’ nightmares and use them to save what he had left.

He kept the ring on his finger. Clung to the bits of himself that still felt like sanity.

"What now, Jacin?” Joori asked him softly, his fingers slowly plaiting. It felt nice, it felt like home somehow, so Jacin just let him keep doing it, even though Joori'd had to start over twice for the shaking and the pattering drops of grief that kept rippling at the false calm of his surfaces.

Jacin turned his head to his brother but didn't actually look at him. “Now, we go on,” was all he said. Because it was all he knew.

Joori was silent for a long moment, braiding more carefully than he really needed to, stretching the process into curling silence, and Jacin didn't mind, so he didn't say anything. Joori's hands were still shaking, Jacin could feel the tremors, and his voice quavered a little when he sighed and started, “Malick... I mean Kamen...
damn
it.” That last was soft and heartfelt, and Jacin felt a small tug as Joori unwove a few inches of the braid then started again. “Did he ever tell you how he... how he was made, or...?” Another pause. Jacin could almost see Joori's tightened jaw and fierce glare in his mind, but he still didn't turn to look. “I mean... Jacin, what do you know about him?"

Jacin's mouth turned up at one corner, bitter irony, and he shut his eyes, leaning his head back against the top of the chair's cushion.

"He's
Temshiel
,” he said, almost a whisper, because he couldn't seem to manage anything above. “He was made—turned; whatever they call it—by Wolf in the last Cycle before the Binding Wars. He's apparently young for
Temshiel
, and he thinks he's more jaded than he is, and he had the brass to strike a bargain with Wolf to bring Umeia along with him."

Jacin paused, almost smiled, because it was actually sort of amusing to imagine—Malick, still mortal, offered immortality and power by a god, and still having the audacity to level conditions, because it probably never occurred to him that he shouldn't. Vanity, apparently, did wonders for a person's expectations.

"He fought on the side of the Adan,” Joori put in quietly.

Jacin merely shrugged. “He's
Temshiel
,” was all he said, because it wasn't something he could hold against Malick like perhaps Joori did, because Jacin understood it. War was an ugly thing, impersonal, waged by the minions of jealous gods who seized on the too-personal fears of mortals to sway them to one side or the other. Malick was no different from that Adan doujoun who'd wanted to help Jacin the night he left the camp, and couldn't, bound by the laws and the reprimands of his superior. If you were someone's dog, you did what they told you. Simple.

"He's scary,” Joori ventured.

"Hm.” Jacin opened his eyes to look up at the ceiling, the gray light of the waning day casting goblin shadows through the rain on the window. “He's always felt like a cool, calm wind to me,” he whispered, a little surprised, because he hadn't realized before how true it was, but it still felt strange to think it. He put it away, because he couldn't trust his own perceptions anymore. He never could, really, but now he kept seeing Beishin's eyes, hearing his voice, and he couldn't trust Beishin, so he couldn't trust himself. “He says he loves me."

Joori's hands paused, and he drew in a sharp breath. “And...?"

"And.” Jacin shut his eyes again, Beishin's shark's smile curling behind them. “People lie. But sometimes the lies they tell are telling in themselves."

"But you trust him anyway."

A shrug. “I suppose."