“Put your dagger away,” Choson said.
She held the blade, white-knuckled. A vein pulsed across her forehead as her eyes, narrowed to slits, fixed on Gillis.
“Amelia,” Choson said. He kept a steadying hand on Gillis’ shoulder, and moved slightly in front of him, shielding him from Amelia.
“Traitor,” she hissed.
“It is you who is the traitor,” Choson said. His tone was light, dispassionate.
Amelia flicked her eyes to Choson, then stared at him, wide-eyed. “No,” she said.
“Gillis has ever been my faithful ally,” he said.
“No,” she said, a plea.
“The time has come,” he said.
“Where is the real Choson?” Amelia breathed.
“Your Gweidorian ally is far from this place. He fled.”
Gillis’ stomach swooped. Choson’s form dappled and shifted, as points of blue light traced around his body. The black hair melted away, the steel armor became a robe of cloth, and the face blurred and paled and shifted into vagueness. His hand was still on Gillis’ shoulder as the transformation ended, and before them stood Verandert.
Chapter 19
They stood unmoving in the wet gravel in the depression where Wilhelmina’s tree and garden had stood minutes ago. There was now only the three who stared at one another, none speaking. There was now only the creaking of trees and the wind pulling on cloth. Verandert stared at Amelia, ignoring Gillis and the whole world around him, a triumphant fox that had at last cornered the hare. Amelia stared back, her face calm save for the hard set of her jaw and the glinting of her eyes. Gillis stood behind Verandert’s shoulder, willing Amelia to look his way. She needed to see his expression now. He had played some role his whole life, and now that his eyes finally held the truth she would not look. Gone was the long-practiced mask and its subtle adjustments. He was, for the first time, utterly sincere. His eyes, and the sorrow they held, would be the only apology she would have from him before she died.
“The chase is over,” Verandert said. “Will you come forward and meet your end with dignity?”
She shook her head.
“Struggle will achieve nothing.”
“And yet I find I can’t help but resist,” Amelia said, trembling.
“Very well.”
Verandert drew his own dagger, its blade as black as charred bones.
“Your death is auspicious, Amelia. By virtue of his work, Gillis is to be the next High Monk.”
Amelia shot a look of disgust at Gillis, and he caught her eyes and shook his head. Her eyes lingered on him for a time, and a shock ran through his stomach. Her mouth twitched and she fixed her gaze on Verandert once more. Please, he thought, please let her have understood.
“You are not faster than I, nor are you stronger. None can be stronger. I am born of the flow of Momaentum itself, and its light bathes me every moment. I cannot perish,” Verandert said.
“Perish, perhaps not. But I can make you sting.”
“Pain passes.”
Verandert took a step toward her. Amelia did not move. Gillis felt as if a heavy fist struck his gut, and he felt another pang with each step Verandert took. When he drew close to her, Amelia backed away. Gillis was rooted to the spot, watching helplessly, pathetically. Amelia looked at him again, their eyes met, and there was a moment of shared fear and anguish between them. Gillis felt as though he left his body. The world narrowed and quieted; there was only Verandert and his soft rasping footsteps on the gravel. Almost unaware of himself, Gillis drew his dagger, his eyes still on Amelia. The flow of Momaentum rippled around him, growing every moment until it felt like a wave crashing to shore, and he felt like a vessel borne on the wash. Amelia met his eyes once more, and Gillis nodded. She nodded back.
Gillis surged forward and plunged the blade into Verandert’s back. Verandert screamed, twisted, and struck Gillis’ chest with an open hand, and Gillis sailed ten feet through the air before crashing to the gravel. Gillis scrambled upright to see Amelia hastily drinking a small, black potion while Verandert was distracted. The blue tattoos flared on his skin. There came a cry from behind them, and there was Choson in his shining plate, skidding down the bank and running toward Verandert. Gillis shot to his feet. The dagger fell from Verandert’s back, and the wound closed. The fight began.
Gillis could do nothing but watch as Amelia and Verandert fought in the midst of a frenzied, blue-flashing tempest of Momaentum. Choson struck at Verandert with the huge sword in wild swings, but Verandert repelled him each time with mere flicks of his dagger. Amelia cried out more than once, and was driven back before the onslaught. In brief moments of clarity, between the blinding lights of their magic, Gillis saw Verandert and Amelia swerving and bending like long-practiced dancers, like reeds whipped up by storm winds. Choson darted into the fray, taking Verandert’s focus from Amelia mere moments at a time, but enough that she was not overwhelmed. Scarlet blood burst out from the fight, covering Choson and Gillis in flecks, and Amelia laughed maniacally between gasping breaths. The tempest of the fight slowed, then stopped. Verandert stood before Amelia, who was doubled over and laughing between sickening gurgles as blood dripped from her mouth. She spat a large gob on him, and he sank his dagger into her gut, just below her ribs. Choson cried out in shock. Gillis’ throat closed.
Amelia made no sound, but her eyes were wide with demented madness, and the laughter remained frozen on her face. Blood gushed forth from her belly, and she held both hands on the wound until they were covered, then smeared the blood across Verandert’s face. Amelia fell backwards in a heap in the gravel. Verandert calmly turned to Gillis and Choson and wiped his face with the sleeve of his robe. Amelia had cut him several times, and his tattoos burned nearly white. Gillis watched, but the wounds did not close. Instead, larger and larger streams of blood ran from them. The tattoos faded, turned the color of rust, then disappeared altogether. Verandert held his shaking hands before his eyes.
“How?” he breathed.
Gillis came forward, plucking his dagger from the gravel as Verandert bellowed and tore at his skin. Verandert’s voice rose in a terrible, unearthly wail while he sank to his knees and writhed at the pain of lost eternity. He was Gillis coming, and scrambled for the fallen dagger beside him.
Gillis rushed forward in a flicker of Momaentum and thrust his dagger into Verandert’s chest, between the fourth and fifth ribs and into the heart.
Verandert collapsed inward on the wound like a dying beetle curling its legs. His skin turned the color of a moth’s wing, and he twitched and trembled, shrinking like paper in a fire, until he was little more than twisted bones and tatters of skin. Gillis kicked the corpse from the tip of his dagger, and it fell back with a rattling sound.
Amelia coughed. Gillis ran over and fell beside her, and Choson knelt on the other side.
“You’re a damn half-wit, Gillis,” Amelia panted. She swallowed and wheezed, looking up at him. “And that’s generous by about half.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “This is not what you deserve.”
“We never,” Amelia breathed. “Never set out to kill Verandert. Glad … we did.”
“I knew I could not betray you after Roos died protecting me. But there was nothing … nothing I could do,” Gillis said.
Choson looked up sharply at Gillis, his jaw clenching so hard it looked as though his teeth might crack.
“You meant to betray us this whole time,” Choson said. “You think turning back at the last moment earns you forgiveness?”
“If I could take it all back, I would,” Gillis said.
“You did well enough … at the very end,” Amelia said. “Gillis?”
“Yes?”
She raised a hand feebly, and Gillis took it. She squeezed with the faint strength she had left.
“I am … glad,” she whispered.
Her head lolled to the side. Shallow, gasping breaths came through her mouth for a minute, then two, as they sat over her
, and then she was still. Gillis shuddered, and tears came to his eyes. Choson shifted on the gravel, but Gillis did not look up. The heavy, steel-clad fist struck him across the jaw, and he fell back onto the gravel beside the dead Amelia and the corpse of Verandert, and he remained there. Choson’s footfalls receded in the distance. New, misty rain came and fell on Gillis’ bruising face. Still he lay there. Let the flood come and carry me away and drown me. Let the crows and wolves and maggots come and take me for carrion. Still he lay unmoving. The rain passed, and the clouds fractured with new light, and before long the sun began to set. The clouds above the dead were pink and orange.
Epilogue
Choson’s Journal, Five Years Later
It was a night of sudden cold, one of a piercing wind that dispelled the warmth of day, when I saw him again. When I had first heard of the inn he ran, one that served a broth with salt-encrusted pebbles, I had set out for it almost immediately. Five years of wandering ended on the doorstep of his inn, five years of loathing still festered. I first expected to arrive in a blaze of rage, perhaps knock him down again, beat him, make him beg. When I arrived at the inn’s threshold and looked inside, though, I lost all certainty of what I might do or say. I might have as easily forgiven the man as throttled him.
The inn was a small, warm place. The ‘Crowned Pheasant,’ it was called. Located within easy journey of a few towns, but standing alone, tucked away in a dale where gentle trees swayed. I came inside, was welcomed and bade to sit by him—he would be with me in a moment, he said. He spared me barely a glance. I was not wearing my armor, but I on my back was Roos’ old, massive sword with the blade cut a foot shorter from the tip. I was filthy, and scarred, and grim-faced, and by all accounts a terror to perceive. Most inns had turned me away, thinking me a slaver or mercenary or some other manner of villain. When I took in the room and the patrons, I saw that my appearance was far from unusual. I sat alone, and I watched.
An old dog slowly wagged its tail and smiled up at the folk sitting around tables, and sometimes got a scrap for his efforts. I was far from the bright-burning hearth, but it warmed the room well, and the chill soon left my fingers and toes. The patrons I judged to be half working folk, farmers and traders and the like, stopping for a meal in their travels. They smiled and spoke loud praises of the food: rabbit pies with gravy, roast game birds, soup in hot stone bowls. Hunger wormed its way into the pit of my belly as I watched silver and gold pieces change hands for the fare. The other half of the folk looked starved, filthy, hollowed-out. Each one of those folk wore a meek smile, and they ate the same fare as the working folk, though not a single coin was paid. In truth, I watched the patrons very little. My entire focus was on the man serving them. He was no longer bald, but his graying hair was cropped short. He wore not robes, but an apron. Gone, too, was the careful mask of his expressions, replaced by a small smile and eyes that twinkled while he served each patron as though he were their brother. They knew him, praised him and his food and his charity, and I heard more than once: “Bless you, Gillis.”
He finally approached me, and as he drew near his eyes fell on my face. His smile dropped. He turned and hurried away, disappearing into the kitchen for a moment, and came out again with a young Gweidorian woman in tow. Gillis sat across from me, and asked me what I wanted. I began to answer, hissing something bitter I would not now repeat, but he stopped me with a gesture. The young woman came to our table-side.
“I meant, what do you want to eat?” he said, motioning for me to answer to the girl.
I turned, stone faced, to the woman and said, “Pie.”
She nodded and hurried away, leaving me with him.
We stared at each other for a long while. I kept my hands on the table, and half-consciously clenched and unclenched them in fists as my hard gaze bore into his once more inscrutable eyes. The dog came up and settled its muzzle on Gillis’ lap.
“Here, Roos,” Gillis muttered to the dog, and he tossed a strip of dried meat to the ground. The dog put its paw on the morsel and gnawed on it.
“I heard of the food they served here and guessed it was you,” I said finally.
Gillis nodded, his eyes still on the dog.
“It does not absolve you.”
He looked at me and sighed. New wrinkles deepened around his eyes with the falling expression, and he said, “No, it doesn’t.”
“Nothing will.”
“You’re right.”
I felt a surge of pity, followed by a stronger wave of disdain. There he sat, ever the snake, disarming me with his defeated eyes. It was all an act, I thought, just as it had always been.
The food came then, and my stomach ached with hunger. I had barely eaten since the day before. I seized the spoon and ate desperately while Gillis watched. A passing thought came to me that there may be poison in the meal, but I found that against my great hunger I did not care.
When I finished, he asked, “What brings you here to me?”
I could not answer for a moment. I watched the slow wagging of the dog’s tail, and it craned its neck to look up at me. The whites of its eyes showed, and as I watched the dog wagged with more vigor. There was a sincerity in the dog’s gaze that I found familiar. It padded over to me and lay its head in my lap.
“The dog it well-named,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “None other was as fitting.”
“Do you remember,” I said, “your offer to me five years ago? That we would search for the slaves taken by Min-Yu?”
“I remember.”
“I have done that, alone, these past years.”
“Has it gone well?”
I traced my finger along my largest scar. It ran from my brow, around my eye, and down to the corner of my mouth. My face was left in a permanent snarl. Children fled my approach when I came into towns. The dog on my lap at that moment had been the first to look at me without growling.
“The scar was a slavers’ gift?” he asked.
“Yes. I killed many. But my efforts were in vain that day.”
“And on other days?”
“I found few from Yiseyo’s village,” I said, then swallowed, “and saved none in time.”
“You ask me to make good my offer?” Gillis said.
“I do not know.”
“That’s why you came here, isn’t it?”
“I thought you might make some small atonement by advising me,” I said. “I cannot bear to fail again.”
Gillis then smiled kindly. It was smaller, truer than the smile he’d worn five years ago to mask his betrayal, and it washed some of my anger away.
“Your efforts have not all been in vain, Choson,” Gillis said.
“What do you mean?”
“Before I built this place, I met a man with a young woman on the road near Ghelder. A Gweidorian man. He claimed that she was his daughter. My old instincts told me elsewise. I got the man drunk and killed him. She screamed for so long that I thought I had been mistaken. But she screamed because she thought I meant to possess her myself. I calmed her, and gradually she let me mend her wounds. Her body was all cuts and bruises under her clothes, old unhealed scars crossing under fresh and festering wounds. She told me her master had been traveling north, but had then turned and fled south into the Veldenlands. They were fleeing the rumor of a wild Gweidorian, more beast than man, who came upon slavers and slew them with an enormous magical sword.”
Gillis smiled again, but this time his eyes were touched with something somber that I could not place.
“How did you know she was a slave when you met them?” I asked.
“They had a cart full of wares. It was his cover: a father trading along the roads with his daughter. There were two sets of footprints on the path, male and female. The female tracks showed that, for miles, she had pulled the cart even though she was limping. When I came in sight of them, however, it was he who pulled the cart. She concealed the limp, poorly. I had only to read their faces to confirm my suspicion.”
&
nbsp; “Why do you tell me this? Do you boast?”
Gillis waved the serving girl over, the Gweidorian one that had brought me my food. She came to his side with the air of a soldier standing beside her commander. I saw in her eyes a true loyalty, a loyalty borne of deep gratitude, and it struck me who she must be.
“Tell this man your name,” Gillis said to her gently.
“My name is Yiseyo. I was named for my grandmother.”
“Yiseyo, this man is Choson. Do you remember him?”
“Truly?” she breathed, peering at me. “Captain Choson?”
“I am Captain no longer,” I said. I could not remember ever seeing her face; she would have been a child when I guarded that village. But my heart thudded at the thought that someone had survived—and more than that, that a survivor could stand here before me after all these years.
Tears spilled from her eyes, and she took my hand in hers.
“Thank you,” she said thickly. “Thank you.”
“Do not thank me. I failed you,” I said. I felt on the verge of tears myself. My heart swelled as she stroked my hand. Some of the patrons were looking at us.
“You defended us against Min-Yu’s people, though they were many. Gillis told me how you never stopped searching for us. It is because of you that Gillis found me. Thank you,” she said tearfully.
I could find nothing to say. She left and continued to serve others, but returned to offer me cups of ale, wine, and whiskey. I gave them to people at nearby tables. Gillis and I sat in silence. I felt the anger that had curled up in my gut for so long easing away, like the relaxing of a knot in the muscle. I had not intended to let go of the anger. It had long provided a crazed kind of impetus for my journey, and had sustained me from the moment I set out to avenge Jun. I found that as my rage ebbed, so too did my resolve, and my purpose in the world seemed to crumble. It was good, I told myself, that the younger Yiseyo had survived. It was good, yet I felt only that I had been robbed. I had been carried to this moment on a river of hate, hate for Min-Yu and the Mordenari and Gillis. It now left me washed up on its banks with nowhere to go.
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