Wolf's-own: Weregild (41 page)

"With your life?"

Jacin held back a snort, because Joori wouldn't understand.
What difference does it make?
he almost asked, but Joori wouldn't understand that, either, and Jacin couldn't muster the strength for an argument. “I suppose,” he said again.

I had hoped that you might trust me enough, dare I think... love me enough, to keep your faith, your belief.

Jacin's mouth tightened, and he clamped his eyes shut harder.

Shut up, Beishin.

"Mm,” Joori hummed, and his hands on Jacin's hair went a little rougher. “Not much reassurance, I think, when you don't give a shit if you live or die."

It was bitter, and it made Jacin sigh. He opened his eyes, sat forward, and tugged the half-woven braid from Joori's hands. “I can finish."

Joori was silent again, brooding, before he gently took back the braid from Jacin. Jacin let him. “I'm sorry,” Joori said quietly. “I don't mean to... I only....” Jacin chanced a look upward, saw tears thicken Joori's gaze, and so looked away again. “She's already gone, Jacin. We've sacrificed Caidi to avenging her, and she's still gone. I don't want... I
can't
lose any more. Neither can you, and you know it."

It wound in Jacin's chest, tightened. How was it that Joori could hurt him like this, when Jacin knew he only ever tried not to?

"I've heard the voices of mad spirits for what feels like thousands of years,” Jacin told his brother, the hoarseness of his voice making it only just audible over the soft patter of rain on the window and roof. “Desperate agony, terrible knowledge, and the excruciating inability to do anything with it, to even understand the knowing, just having it inside you, gnawing at you, and you can never quite catch it, force it into sensible shapes. It's maddening. It's unbearable.” Joori had stopped braiding again, likely horrified, but there could be no mercy in this. “I won't leave her soul to that,” Jacin went on, ruthless, because it was true, and because love was a weapon, and Joori wielded it with too-sharp precision. Jacin didn't want it anymore; it made him weak, it distracted him, it made his heart a soft, dangerous thing, and the howling loss inside him for Caidi only drove that home in ways that could crush him if he let them. He couldn't let them. “I won't allow another to leave her to it, not if I can stop it happening.” The heavy rasp of Jacin's voice scraped his throat, making his eyes tear and blur. “If you can leave the woman who bore you to that fate, you're no brother of mine."

And yet you could doom the man who taught you, who cared for you, who lov—

Shut up, shut up, you didn't, you don't.

Joori went rigid, shocked, and Jacin almost went on, almost drove the knife in deeper, because if he couldn't cut the love out of his own chest, maybe he could cut it from Joori's, kill the weakness inside himself by proxy.

Would you be the doom of your brother? Would you fail your mother?

Shutupshutupshutup—

But Joori only snorted, something bitter and disbelieving. “And you'd sacrifice us for it?"

Your emotions make you weak and foolish, little Ghost. A lesson was necessary.

I'm trying very hard to learn it, Beishin.

"If I had to.” Cold and even, and why was his chest hurting even more than his leg? Why was his throat locked up so tight, making his already hoarse voice into something like gravel screeing down into the depths of perdition?

"Malick said you wouldn't."

"Malick was wrong."

"Yeah?” Joori shifted back behind the chair again, resumed weaving Jacin's hair into its hated braid. “You're a liar, Jacin,” he said, though it wasn't harsh or accusing. “And the lies you tell are telling in themselves. Five minutes ago, you were
begging
me to live, and now you're trying to cut me out, cut Morin out, cut your own
heart
out like you cut out—"

"Believe what you—"

"Oh, don't worry,” Joori said easily. Jacin could hear the smile in his voice, and it was cold and calculating. It made him want to scream. “You'll get what you want out of me,” Joori went on. “I'll live because you've asked it of me, I'll make sure Morin lives because you've asked it of me, and because I know what it would do to you if you had to watch us die too. I'll live and I'll make sure Morin lives because I owe it to Caidi for what I did to her—"

"Joori, it wasn't your—"

"I owe it to Yori too, I even owe it to Umeia."

"You don't owe—"

"We'll live, even though it's profoundly unfair that I don't get to make the same demand of you.” He set both hands to Jacin's shoulders, leaned down, and laid a kiss to the crown of his head. “And you can go and save Mother,” he whispered into Jacin's hair, “knowing that there will be no more bodies for you to prepare, no more pyres to light."

Save him, Joori could be even more ruthless, could out-cruel Jacin without even batting an eye.

"Malick wasn't supposed to love you, was he, Jacin-rei?"

The name—
rei
—from Joori's mouth shocked Jacin, stilled him, when he might have pulled away, fled, because this was altogether too close to...
some
thing. Something terrifying, something he couldn't look at, couldn't hear, not when his mind was working, when he could understand.

"
Temshiel
don't know how, do they, and you thought you were safe. 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. Because love isn't a safe thing for you, is it...
Ghost
?"

It was soft, right next to Jacin's ear, warm breath and sonorous accusation. It was only vaguely that Jacin felt the hot splash of tears hit his neck and realized Joori was weeping inside the words that came through a smile Jacin couldn't see.

"Love only means you'll have to watch someone else die. You were down to two and now you're back up to three, and you can't take it, I know you can't take it, and it's all right.” Joori's arms wrapped about Jacin's shoulders from behind, locked his back into the cushions of the chair, and only now did Jacin realize he'd stopped breathing and thin tears were flowing down his cheeks. His heart was battering beneath Joori's palm where it rested over Jacin's breastbone. “You can stop loving us for a while if you need to, Jacin. I won't fight you anymore."

Abruptly, Joori let go, came around to the front of the chair, and leaned in, setting his hands to both sides of Jacin's head, eyes both soft and intense. “Be the Ghost,” he said, fierce and from between clenched teeth. “Give Fen Jacin-rei all the pain and power, because he's the only one who can bring my brother back to me. Because if we have to be alive, then so do you."

It knocked the breath from Jacin, echoes ramming around the empty spaces in his head, feeding off each other and gathering resonance, until it all wound together, deafened him, numbed him. And then, with a calm, soft kiss to his brow, Joori straightened, brushed a tangle of fringe out of Jacin's eyes, and started braiding again.

Jacin didn't know what to say, so he said nothing at all.

Xari had been correct—Husao had gotten his vengeance, had gotten it without risk, had skirted the shifting lines of true interference, and could stand before his god with no need for defense. But for the matter of the amulets bearing his son's Blood, he could walk away, be done with it all, and make no enemies. Xari might be godless, but she was still formidable, and would do whatever she must to change her status. She'd been prepared to kill Asai herself, a hopeful offering to Dragon in reparation for her silence when she'd understood what her son and Skel had been plotting so long ago. She'd hesitated, and the Catalyst had beaten her to her redemption.

And Kamen.... No one wanted to make an enemy of Kamen. Even those
Temshiel
who'd been drawn by the swell of power in the city, the aura of conflict, were hovering the edges, staying close but not venturing into Kamen's sight yet. Husao could feel them, biding and watching, and wondered if any of them would be foolish enough or think themselves strong enough to take a stand against Kamen when his intentions became clear. Because it was not difficult to see that Wolf's aim was very different from that of the other gods, and where Wolf pointed, Kamen led. Even when he didn't think he did. Wolf too obviously intended to save his children, and as far as Husao could tell, none of the other gods had yet ventured to gainsay him openly—or at least, none of them had deigned to guide their
Temshiel
to do so.

To be expected, he supposed. It was Wolf's Cycle, his power at its apex, and Kamen was its conduit, the bloody fist at the end of Wolf's long arm. And none, thus far, not even Kamen, had broken the laws of the gods. Raven and Dragon risked, at the very least, bending them, if they moved against Wolf now. It would be interesting to see if Kamen could manage to achieve his god's goals without crossing the sometimes blurry lines of the others', but Husao thought that if anyone could maneuver around it all, it would be Kamen. Reason enough for Xari to throw her lot in with Wolf's-own, in Husao's considered opinion, but Xari did not trust easily, and had witnessed too often the machinations and duplicity of the gods and their servants to count on Kamen's promise of entreaty to Wolf.

The gods offered no guarantees.

And as the harsh judgment of Husao's own son had proven, intention meant nothing; only action mattered. Skel had intended to set the Balance back on its fulcrum, empower the Adan to remove the Jin entirely, take magic from mortals who never should have had it. What he'd actually done had sent him to the suns. The laws were not theirs to break. Even in his darkest grief, Husao had known that, had known what his son's fate would be, even though Skel's intent had been to restore order and edict, and bring glory to his god. In the end, it hadn't mattered. Even had Skel achieved what he'd wanted, single-handedly set the Balance, it would not have mattered; not when he'd broken the laws to achieve it. Not even the gods themselves broke the laws they'd made.

Xari would not be judged by her intention to aid Kamen by destroying her own son. She would be judged only by what she accomplished before the end of the Cycle, and so far, that had been little. She had not taken the brief instant of opportunity. Her chances of being forgiven and reclaimed by Dragon were better than her chances of being accepted by Wolf, and pleasing Dragon by ridding the world of the Jin abomination would secure her endorsement.

Husao had no such dilemma. Dragon had not directed her
Temshiel
to take a side, and so he didn't. He'd gotten mostly what he'd wanted. He backed neither Jin nor Adan, and though Xari and he shared a god, they had only very briefly shared goals. They were not allies, not unless Dragon told them to be, and Husao had one last promise to keep, one last task to arrange, if he could, about which he had told Xari nothing. He kept it that way now. If honoring the Mage's promise got him that last thing he needed, he would keep it.

He led Xari up the flights of stairs to the attic floor, following the throb of the earth at the bottom of his spine. The Paradox had allowed his power to unfurl itself, had allowed Kamen to take it and treble it, use it. Husao didn't know how the earth-bound had managed to keep it suffocated all this time, but he didn't think it would willingly go back down to wherever the boy had shoved it before. He was pulsing out power like a beacon, ripe for the hunters, were it not for Kamen's veil. Ripe for a ground-shaking disaster, as well, if provoked. The boy had no real control.

There were reasons most mortals should not have magic. Ironically, the Adan had put themselves in even more danger by taking away the ability of those who had it to learn to use it. The amulets had always been a shaky stop-gap—proven as such through the riots that still sprang from the camps now and then—because Asai had at least been wise enough or manipulative enough not to hand those who used them their full power. If the Jin were a different people, they would have already risen up and crushed the Adan, amulets or no.

They found the Paradox and the Catalyst in a modest set of rooms at the top of the stairs. Jacin-rei was sitting, stiff-backed and blank-eyed, in an ugly overstuffed chair, clean and put together, but Husao still winced at the change in the boy who'd fled Asai's only a little over two months ago. His brother was just tying a leather thong at the end of the long plait, his gaze narrowing as Husao and Xari entered, though Husao didn't miss the subtle touch Jacin-rei laid to his brother's arm, or the young man's quiet acceptance of the silent command. Both sets of gray eyes were wary, though, taking in the sight of beautiful Xari without her glamour, watching both her and Husao himself with hostile curiosity.

Jacin-rei's left hand went behind his back; the other went openly to the hilt of one of the several knives at his belt. Lazy tension wound over him, but he didn't move against them as they entered. Merely stared, asked, “Yes?” quite calmly, and he watched as Husao politely directed Xari to the couch opposite the brothers. They all stared for a long moment over the divide of the tea table.

"Hello, Jacin-rei,” Husao said. He smiled and nodded at Xari. “I am Husao. This is Xari. We are....” He paused, his smile going a bit crooked. “We are old acquaintances of Kamen's. We have—"

"Acquaintances,” Jacin-rei cut in, eyes just a touch narrower than they'd been a moment ago. “Not... friends? Allies?” He paused, one eyebrow lifting in challenge. “Enemies?"

Xari snorted. “Enemies of Kamen's would not live past the doorstop,” she informed him, and slid a warm smile between the brothers with easy charm. Husao had forgotten how lovely and appealing Xari could be when she didn't wear her crone's face. “And our kind do not have friends. Allies?” She shrugged. “When it suits us."

The brother's mouth tightened. “You're
Temshiel
,” was all he said, but he managed to put a curl on the tone that slid it derisive.

"I am maijin,” Xari corrected with a slight lift of her chin. “Husao is
Temshiel
."

Jacin-rei merely blinked at them, unimpressed. “What d'you want?"