The Thief Lord's Son (The Eastern Slave Series Book 3)

by Victor Poole

  "Like what?" Delmar demanded. 'They're just books." Ajalia watched the colors in Delmar's soul; she could see several of the rent places healing up; Delmar's skin was beginning to carry a light flush. A sheen of warmth was over his face; he looked fevered.

  "Is it hot inside again?" she asked him. He opened his mouth to reply, and then glowered.

  "That is not the same thing," he said. "I've had a very upsetting day."

  Ajalia wanted to laugh for a long time, but she merely stared at Delmar. Delmar watched her, his face growing darker and angrier.

  "Well," he said, "I have."

  "You're very self-absorbed," she told him finally.

  "Ha!" Delmar said.

  "You kind of are," she said.

  "I fail to see," Delmar said stuffily, "how me protecting what's left of my family is being selfish."

  "You don't like your parents, or you didn't" Ajalia pointed out. "You feared them, and you loved these books. You love these books," she said, correcting herself. "You are not upset about anything to do with your father, or your mother. You don't want to lose these books, because you thought they were your friends. You thought they were real."

  "Well," Delmar said defensively, "they are very old."

  "You told me that Jerome killed his brother," Ajalia said. "You told me that Jerome tried to wipe out every memory of real magic, because he couldn't do any."

  "I never said that," Delmar said. "I didn't tell you that."

  "But you read me that out of the old book," Ajalia said. "You read to me about Bakroth's wife, and she said Jerome would try to destroy everything."

  "Well," Delmar said.

  "Why was this book so hard to find?" Ajalia demanded, pulling the old leather book from her bag. She saw Delmar's eyes go slowly over the black cover. The leather book was slim, and light compared to the other tomes that Delmar had collected. "How do you know your father would have burned these?" she asked.

  "He burned some of them," Delmar said. "But," he added very slowly, and grudgingly, "they looked more like that one."

  "So your father burned the books that were like this, plain, and thin?" Ajalia asked, holding up the black leather book that Bakroth's wife had written. Delmar looked as though it cost him a great deal to do it, but he nodded. "And the other books, the books you rescued," Ajalia went on, "were all like this." She grabbed one of Delmar's books, and held it up beside the slim volume. Delmar's book was heavy and ornate; it was easily four times the size of the slim book, and had thick, expensive paper, and a broad spine.

  "Yes," Delmar said. His eyes went slowly to the books he clutched to his chest. He dropped them slowly down to the forest floor, and opened one of them. "I thought they were real," he said, and tore out a page. Ajalia saw him wince with pain; she looked for the magic lights, and saw a long hole closing up with fire inside of Delmar.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "Help me get it over with," Delmar said, and Ajalia put the slim leather book back into her bag. They ripped through the books slowly. Delmar fell into a kind of rhythm; he opened the pages of the books, and ripped great swaths of the illustrated text out. After a few moments, his face had turned entirely red, and his breath was coming in spurts. They made a pile of ripped paper; when it had grown a little, Ajalia cleared away the earth around the pile, and got her fire-starting things from where she had hidden them in her bag. She arranged the torn-up papers, and began to strike a flame. Delmar stopped what he was doing, and watched her.

  "I don't want to burn them," he said. He watched as the first sparks flew up. Ajalia had made a gentle hillock of paper fluff; when it caught, she began to feed the other pages into the tiny spurts of flame. "I like my books," Delmar added. He looked distinctly uncomfortable; Ajalia was sure that he was burning up inside. His body looked very warm. She did not look at the fiery lights within his body; she hoped he would not fuss too much over how he felt. She had learned for herself that it was better to let such pain pass through her body, and not to linger over whatever she thought or felt about the sensations.

  "I'm sorry," she said again. Delmar shrugged. He began to rip out the pages again, and feed them straight into the licking fire. Ajalia got up, and found a few dry sticks and scraps of wood. She built a careful fire of twigs around the burning paper, watching the sticks carefully until they were aflame. She took one of the emptied covers of the already-torn books, and took up her knife. She cut the thick fabric cover into strips, and let the pieces curl into blackened shards over the fire. Delmar got up, and stretched his legs. He wandered away through the trees, and returned some time later, carrying a few dry pieces of wood. He fed these into the flames, and cleared a larger space around the fire. Ajalia watched him, her hands busy over the books. She tore out the pages, and put them whole into the fire. Delmar made a wide space around the fire, and then got more sticks, and built up a larger flame. He began to tear the books into great chunks. He shoved them deep into the fire, and placed more loose pages above the now-crackling flames. The fire was growing hot; Ajalia moved back, away from the fire, and watched as Delmar fed the rest of his books into the flames.

  They watched the fire lick away at the paper, and Ajalia breathed in the smell of musty knowledge. She wanted to apologize again, and she wasn't sure why. She looked at Delmar, and saw that he had gotten a twisted look in his eyes; he looked miserable. She drew up a cord of red light from beneath the earth, and put one end of it into the fire. The sparks in the flames flew up, as though they had been blown from beneath, and the fire turned bright gold. Delmar cried out; she looked at him, and saw a set of fresh rents, leaking color like blood, within his body. She dropped the red cord of light, and went to Delmar.

  "What are you doing?" she asked. He shook his head.

  "I'm not doing anything," he said, his eyes fixed on the fire. "You said it would burn inside."

  "You are hurting yourself again," Ajalia said. She shook Delmar hard by the shoulder. "Stop it," she said.

  "I'm not doing anything," Delmar muttered. Ajalia wanted to smack him. She looked in the lights within his body, and she saw great, horribly cruel cuts, like the deep slashes of a knife, within him.

  "Why are you cutting yourself?" she demanded. His eyes went to her for a moment, and then flicked away.

  "I'm not," he said. "I'm not doing anything."

  "Stop," Ajalia said. She took Delmar's face, and made him look at her. "You're hurting yourself," she said. "It isn't helping. Stop it."

  "I'm not," Delmar insisted. "I'm doing what you said."

  "I never said to hurt yourself. Stop," Ajalia said. She watched Delmar's soul; he watched her warily. "Are you trying to cut out the pain?" she asked slowly. Delmar watched her. He nodded. Ajalia wanted to laugh; she saw now what some of the tears and holes in Delmar were; she saw that he had tried to purge his parents out of his body, and that he had maimed himself. She saw that she had been right; he was weak, and he would need her. She felt reassured of her power, and of her position in Delmar's life. She turned back to the fire, and pushed the fragments of books deeper into the flames.

  "What?" Delmar asked sharply. She looked around at him. "You were all intense, and telling me to stop hurting myself, and then you stopped," Delmar said. "What happened?"

  "I see what you're doing now," Ajalia explained. Delmar waited.

  "Well?" he said. "What am I doing?" Ajalia shook her head.

  "You wouldn't listen if I told you," she said. She prodded the last large chunk of book into the base of the fire, and poked at the flickering, licking flames. Delmar looked at her with his mouth half-open.

  "Are you serious?" he demanded. "We're out here in the forest, and I just exploded some piece of magic or something from my mother, and now you're telling me that you won't explain things, because I'm not ready to hear it?"

  "Yes," Ajalia said. She went to the nearest tree, and pulled some drying bark away from an old branch. The trees here were old, and some were decaying rapidly. "Do you often have forest fir
es out here?" Ajalia asked, as she fed the pieces of shredding bark into the fire, and watched them curl. The flames were licking merrily; she got a long stick, and began to lift up the chunks of pages within the flame, so that the individual leaves were exposed to the fire. She stood up, and watched the flames. "Do you?" she asked again.

  "We don't have forest fires here," Delmar said.

  "Why aren't there forest fires?" Ajalia asked. She watched the scraps of cloth covers burn, the yellow flames licking at the twigs and broken branches.

  "Why don't you believe in me?" Delmar asked moodily. He took Ajalia's stick, and dug at a smoldering book.

  "I wouldn't be out here," Ajalia told him, "if I didn't believe in you."

  "You don't think I can do anything," Delmar said. "You think Ocher is better than me." Ajalia fed the last pieces of bark into the fire. She was sure there was enough wood now, to burn up the remnants of the books.

  "Here," she said, and took Delmar's stick from him. She maneuvered the last pieces of books so that their flammable pages were exposed to the hottest part of the flames.

  "You think that," Delmar insisted, "don't you." It was not a question. Ajalia looked at Delmar, and saw that he was scared, and tired, and weak. She saw that he was not ready to believe what she could tell him. She looked at the fire, and thought of what to say. "And now you aren't even talking to me," Delmar said acidly. "Great. I might as well have stayed in Slaveith."

  "Yes," Ajalia said. "You should have."

  Delmar looked up at her, as though she had wounded him deeply.

  "You should have stayed," she said. "I had to negotiate without you. It was very complicated and ticklish, and I needed you there." She prodded the fire. "Rane would have killed me, after you left," she said. "I talked him out of it."

  "Why?" Delmar asked. He looked numb and surprised.

  "You left," she said. "Rane and Ocher are very motivated, for different reasons, to have a new Thief Lord in place. You left, and I had to talk them down from killing me, and pinning me with your father's death."

  "They wouldn't have done that," Delmar said easily. "They both saw me kill him." Ajalia looked at Delmar again, and once again she felt herself unable to think of anything to say. She did not know how to respond to Delmar's willful ignorance of power, of deception, or of human nature.

  "How can you say things like that?" she asked him. "How do you know what Rane would or wouldn't do?"

  "Because they saw me kill my father," Delmar said. "They watched me. They even helped. They couldn't say it was really you."

  Ajalia felt as though a white, foamy film of stupidity was passing down over her skull. She felt as if she couldn't breathe. If Delmar had been a slave, she would have beaten him for being so stupid. She stared at him, and she tried to think of how he had managed to live to the age that he was.

  "How old are you?" Ajalia asked Delmar. Delmar turned red. "You cannot seriously tell me," Ajalia said slowly, "that you don't know."

  "But I don't," Delmar muttered.

  "No," Ajalia said. "You know enough to get wild bandits to babysit me in the middle of the night in the mountains. You know enough to sneak me out of the city without anyone knowing."

  Delmar opened his mouth to protest; Ajalia held up a hand for silence, and pressed on. The books at her feet snapped and crackled in the fire.

  "You know enough to fight me off, and to lie to me about your grandfather in Talbos," Ajalia said. "You know enough to be fully aware of Philas, and of what Philas wants from me. You are not an idiot. You cannot tell me that you seriously think Ocher or Rane would go out into the street and admit that they held the Thief Lord down while you cut through his neck."

  Delmar's face had turned a funny shade of purple; his lips curled to the side, and his nose seemed to rise up in a great, indignant twitch.

  "Those things are different," Delmar said finally.

  "And I had your father send assassins," Ajalia said. She was beginning to grow angry. "You sent them away laughing. And that's not including the two men we met on our way to the poison tree," she added.

  "Those weren't really assassins," Delmar said in a muffled voice.

  "Let me guess," Ajalia said, "they only kill witches." Delmar looked up at her, startled.

  "Well, yes," he said. "Someone has to." Ajalia could not stop herself from laughing this time. She kicked at the flames, which were flickering over the final scraps of paper. The covers of the books were curling violently into black shards. Ajalia kicked at the dirt so that it sprayed into the fire, which spat angrily.

  "So do you admit now," she asked, "that your mother is a witch?" Delmar started in shock.

  "My mother is not a witch!" Delmar exclaimed.

  "Does she have the white brand?" Ajalia demanded. Delmar's face puckered.

  "No," he said.

  "She's dead now," Ajalia added. "I should have asked if she had a white brand."

  "Well, she didn't," Delmar said.

  "Then how did she do magic?" Ajalia asked. She felt as though she were pressing Delmar back against a wall; she could see him trying to think of a way out of her questions. She could see that there was still a fragment of the real Delmar within him somewhere; she thought that he was still suffering from the effect his father had always seemed to have on him. "How did your mother manage to do magic?" Ajalia asked again.

  "She couldn't do any magic," Delmar said, but Ajalia saw his eyebrows quiver a little.

  "Then how do you explain Bain?" Ajalia asked. She was calmer, now that she knew Delmar was trapped by his own admission. Delmar lying purposefully was one thing that Ajalia felt perfectly capable of handling; it was the mysterious blankness that came into his eyes when he was haunted by his father that frightened her.

  "There are other witches, then," Delmar said.

  "Bain said that your mother helped to make him the way he was," Ajalia said. She felt ruthless. She thought that Delmar's father was still in him, hiding somewhere behind his ribs, or lurking in his heart. She was determined to chase down those remnants of the former Thief Lord, and to squelch them out of Delmar forever. She looked at him now, and saw that he could mention his mother without giving vent to the shudders of strange pain that had manifested out of his eyes before the white block had been exploded by his blue lightning. Ajalia began to suspect now that Delmar's father had similarly hidden pieces of himself in Delmar. Ajalia saw Delmar's colors vividly, and saw the deep, cruel scratches and rents where he had torn away at himself.

  "Bain was a liar," Delmar said.

  "Not about that," Ajalia said.

  "How do you know?" Delmar asked. He looked angry.

  "Because I can tell," Ajalia said. "And because I saw your mother and Bain together."

  "I didn't know that," Delmar admitted.

  "He helped me to kill her," Ajalia said.

  "You never told me that," Delmar said. His voice held an accusing tone.

  "You never asked me anything about it," Ajalia shot back, "and anyway, you have to admit she was a witch." She had glimpsed a pair of dark shadows, just behind Delmar's collarbone. She thought that here, at last, were the bits of Delmar's father that drove his odd behavior. She thought of the time she had met Delmar, and how odd he had been then, and she imagined the dark shadows making dank stains beneath Delmar's skin.

  "I don't think my mother was a witch," Delmar said. Ajalia looked speculatively at the sky. The sun was growing hot, and the fire between them was growing smoky. The flames had lessened, and the fragments of the book covers, and bare scraps of blackened pages, lay under the burning wood. Ajalia picked up a stick, and began to separate out the pieces of wood, so that the flames would die out.

  "You don't have to worry about fire out here," Delmar said.

  "And how often do you start fires?" Ajalia snapped. Delmar's mouth closed up tight, and he glared at the black horse, who was scratching his shoulders against a tree.

  "Why did you bring the horse?" he asked.

  "I'm g
oing East," Ajalia said.

  "Wait, what?" Delmar demanded. "Why are you going East?"

  "I'm not really going East," Ajalia said, "but it would look odd if I left my horse." Delmar thought about this for a moment.

  "Oh," he said. Ajalia did not mention that she had not gotten her saddle, and that she was thinking, a little, of going East after all. She did not think Delmar would respond well to such a statement.

  "Wouldn't my father need a saddle?" Delmar asked. "And a horse?" And supplies, and a whole mass of food and water, Ajalia thought to herself, but did not say so.

  "Ocher will manage things," Ajalia said. "Everyone will know that he's dead within a week, but this buys us all some time."

  "What?" Delmar half-shouted. "You told me that there was this whole secret plot!" Delmar told Ajalia. "You said I was bad for leaving the city, and that you had to work out this whole elaborate plot with Rane and Ocher, so they wouldn't kill you, and that I should have stayed, and that now Ocher is going to be the Thief Lord."

  "Yes," Ajalia said, "all of that is true."

  "But that is not what you just said!" Delmar exclaimed. "You just said that everyone will know about him being dead next week. Those are two different things!"

  Ajalia was looking up at the blue sky. She drew up a cord of green light from below the ground, and opened her other palm towards the sky.

  "So which one is it?" Delmar asked. "Is everyone going to know he's dead, or is he supposed to be on some long journey to see your master?"

  "It doesn't matter," Ajalia said. She pictured the sky, and she imagined that the air was full of roiling cords of shimmering blue light. She fixed her eyes on a sparking line of electric light, and closed her fingers around the blue cord.

  "Of course it matters," Delmar blustered. "You have to say one thing or the other! You can't just say things, and trick people!"

  "I can," Ajalia murmured. She twisted the blue light against the green cord of color that she held in her other hand. The mixed lights crackled violently, and then a vivid white burn rose up where the blue and green lines met. Delmar hadn't seemed to notice this light; Ajalia did not know how he couldn't see or hear it. The magic in her palms was crackling like a wildfire. She looked at Delmar, at his indignant eyes, and at the stains of dark shadow below his collarbone.