Right.
And was it possible that Asai was actually weaving between the two gods? Covering his steps in his intricate dance to appear as though he were adhering to the wishes of both, and all the while plotting for his own ascent to a status that rivaled them all?
The Adan would find the will to stand against magic. They'd done it before, when they'd marched on the Jin. They didn't hate the Jin—the tribes had blended too much; there were too many among them who had Jin blood in them for that—they feared them. They feared the magic that ran through Jin veins. The people of Ada didn't want the extermination of the Jin, or they wouldn't have bothered with camps. They wanted the extermination of magic. And if they knew that the elite who governed them—those who condemned and punished magic; those who made them fear even the smallest hint of it in themselves or their children—had all the while been torturing full-Bloods and using their magic themselves....
"Revolution” would be putting it mildly.
The government of Ada would be lynched wholesale. The people would be leaderless, directionless, ripe for subjugation. A repeat of the pattern that had been the doom of the Jin when they'd lost their Ancestors.
A raid on the camps would be the first step, Malick supposed. That was what Yakuli was for, though Yakuli likely had no idea he would be saving the Jin, rather than destroying them. In fact, he likely had no idea he was to be a mere captain to Asai and not a leader in his own right. Malick had no doubt Yakuli had very different objectives, and they were very probably implanted by Asai himself, or at least seized and encouraged. Because Xari was right—Asai didn't want rule, Asai wanted power. And what better way to get it than to have it handed to him willingly by those who'd been persecuted for it for a century and a half?
Free the Jin from their imprisonment, subtly guide them toward vengeance, because Asai was a subtle man. And while the Adan were distracted by the upheaval of their government, their beliefs, their lives, the Jin would walk back into their city and take back what had been theirs. Asai would not march at the front of the mob, but behind it somewhere, lending little pushes where necessary, using his talisman of Heart's Blood to “guide” them all, keeping his influence oh so subtle, because Asai was an oh so subtle man.
"Bloody damn,” Malick murmured. He looked up and caught Yori's eye, ignoring the droning of Husao as he continued to speculate with Xari.
It wasn't a bad plan, really. Malick even grudgingly approved of some of it. If it hadn't been Asai, who perverted everything in which he had a hand, and if it hadn't been for the fact that it happened to require Blood—any Blood; the Heart's Blood had become more and more academic as Malick thought the plan through—he might just sit back and watch it all happen. He was no longer just incensed by the fact that Asai had “purchased” Fen, made him a killer, manipulated him and used him, and all to crack open Malick's chest and siphon off his Blood. He was incensed that Asai thought he had the right to wield the power of gods. He was incensed that Asai had enabled Yakuli to build himself a full-Blood “farm” for the purpose, and he was profoundly offended that Asai could very well walk away from it all with ostensibly clean hands and everything he wanted.
"You've got it, Yori,” Malick went on slowly. “I think you—"
Pain first, driving right between his eyes, hitting him like a spike, then an overwhelming awareness of wrongwrongwrong.
"Shig,” Malick gasped, because it felt like her, and then it was gone, all at once, winked out, like a shout cut off. He snapped his glance back to Yori, saw that she'd felt it too; her face had gone pale, and her eyes had sprung wide and worried.
"Not dead,” Malick told her, because it felt wrong, but not that wrong. He yanked Yori out of her seat and snapped, “Let's go.” Because wrong was wrong, and speed felt very necessary. He didn't need to drag Yori after him, she was already on her feet and headed to the curtain that hung at the doorway, but he latched on anyway, told Husao, “We've got trouble,” and he yanked Yori out.
Yori, more than any of them, appreciated the experience of being one place one second and another the next. Malick had always brushed off her inquiries about the hows of it all with vague explanations of altering perceptions and sleight of hand, because it was a lot easier than trying to really explain it. Anyway, it fit with her reality of Malick as a lazy reprobate who happened to be good at killing the people she wanted dead—a lazy reprobate who had a little magic she couldn't quite classify. It worked for both of them, but it wasn't that simple.
Even as Malick stalked through the Stallion, dragging Yori behind him, Husao and Xari following after with a mix of annoyance and worry between them, Malick was already dismantling their physicality, breaking it down and dissipating it through the winds. Sternly, he called the captive ghosts of the earth, drawing in the life force of the air, blurring the reality all around them, and warning the spirits against laying claim to Yori's soul while he heaved her through their bounds. Still, they reached for her as Malick yanked her through. He could feel their euphoria at once again touching a living soul, a beacon of corporeal strength and the physical existence they either couldn't or wouldn't leave behind. Hungry ghosts, bound to the earth for so many reasons Malick had stopped caring, craving the flesh they could see but not have so fervently that it scattered their reason like the seeds that fed them but never satisfied.
Their whispers and pleas crowded in, but Malick didn't hear them as well as he did when Shig was with him. Yori might love it when he did this, but Shig hated it, and Malick couldn't blame her—for Shig it was like living for a second's-worth of eternity inside Fen's head, except Fen's spirits shrieked, where these only sighed and muttered longingly. It wasn't nearly as intrusive for Malick or Yori as it was for those two, and not for the first time, Malick was thankful he didn't have to hear it all the time.
He bulled through them all, ignored their shadowy grasping. Tightening his hold on Yori, Malick launched them both through the periphery of reality and took them home.
He guided them to the roof of the Girou, because he might be in a hurry and more alarmed than he could remember having been in a very long time, but he wouldn't help anything by blundering into an ambush. “All right?” he asked Yori as he let go of her hand and pushed her to lean against the door of the stair.
Yori's knees seemed a bit wobbly, and she was somewhat shaky, but the dreamy little grin she usually got when they did this was notably absent. She made a visible effort to clear the exhilaration from her mind and channel it into the job at hand.
"Yeah,” she said. She nodded sharply, took a long, cleansing breath, and straightened from her slight slouch. “Ready."
Good girl. More clearheaded and dedicated to her job than even Samin. Malick wanted to give her a quick hug, but she was working so hard at gaining all of her concentration, and he didn't want to break it. He could already hear the alarming sounds that were coming up from the back alley, and he felt Yori tense as she heard them too.
"I'm going down,” he told her. He patted her shoulder and made his careful way to the edge of the roof that overlooked the street first, noting a black carriage—horse-drawn, of all things—that was collecting a bit of attention from a few curious children and their mothers. It was past midday, and those who'd broken for lunch and crowded the streets for a few hours had already returned to their occupations, but the presence of an actual horse and the rich-looking carriage to which it was harnessed was drawing everyone that happened by. Good. Malick had no doubt whatsoever to whom it belonged and why it was here, and he might need every distraction he could get.
Mouth tightening, Malick stepped carefully over to the edge that overlooked the alley, saw Asai as expected, saw Fen, head bowed, defeated, held between two thugs—maijin, Malick could tell, and if he wasn't mistaken, two of those who'd been with Leu the other night. Saw Caidi clinging to her brother and saw the two maijin alternately trying to pry her off and work around her. Malick couldn't see Morin or Joori, but he heard Joori—"I won't let you t
ake him, not this time. Jacin! Jacin!"—wondered vaguely where the fuck Umeia was, because whatever happened, she wouldn't have left her charges so open to ambush like this. But she'd been veiling against Malick since that day outside her door, and he couldn't tell.
He saw Caidi go flying, saw the flash of metal as her cloak flapped and tangled around her. Saw, even from four stories up, the look of knowing dismay on Asai's face and the abrupt focus in Fen's eyes.
Watched as Fen came alive and began to do what Fen did.
Damn, but those sparring sessions with Samin in hand to hand had done more than Malick could have hoped. He'd have to give Samin a raise. Even as the maijin got Fen down and ostensibly pinned, Malick didn't worry.
"Give me a count of ten, then go check on Shig and bring her up here if you can,” he told Yori, gaze locked onto the fray below. “Make yourself a little sniper's nest,” he said. “Double pay if you get Asai between the eyes. Triple."
A slight smile turning up one corner of his mouth, he gathered the air around him again, recalling the spirits, but a swell of magic that wasn't his own made him pause, half-pleased and half-uneasy. It was too crude, too directionless—dangerous for its untried simplicity—and filled with rage and fear that could only be Joori.
"Shit!” Malick muttered, giving his head a quick shake, then almost fell off the roof altogether when the pain hit him again. Visceral this time, bone-deep and agonizing, striating out through his chest in sharp waves, scattering his concentration and hold on the spirits, and making him gasp and nearly double over. “Umeia,” he breathed, because it didn't just feel like her—it was her. And so much wronger than it had been with Shig's truncated warning. “Fuck.” Veils dropped, protections shattered, and with them, the unmistakable feel of losing a part of himself, an almost physical wrench to his spirit.
Not like when Skel had gone to the suns, Malick told himself. Umeia's soul wasn't crying out, but Malick felt it as it was forced from her body, felt it with a gut-twisting grief as she moved from physical to spirit.
"Mal!” Yori shouted, impatient, like she'd already done it a few times, and he didn't blame her—the roof was shimmying beneath their feet, and he could hear the uneven grumble of the earth shifting beneath the building.
He took in a long breath and gave his head a sharp shake. No time. “Forget about getting Shig,” he barked, throat too tight, and vision far too blurry. “Just give me enough time to set up a gallery for you and start shooting. Get into position now. Move!"
Enraged almost beyond sense, Malick threw himself at the spirits and forced himself to the mouth of the alley below.
* * * *
Joori honestly had no idea if he'd really meant to do it. He supposed he must have done. He was furious enough—the betrayals, the lies, the bloody “protection” she dangled in front of Jacin's nose to turn him compliant—and he supposed he couldn't honestly say he didn't know he had it in him. His wrath was leaking out through his pores, combining with the spirit of the earth throttled inside him, letting it stretch its atrophied limbs and shake them loose, and he really didn't care who might get in the way once he really let them go, so he couldn't say his intentions were to ask nicely. But even as hope had curled bright in his chest when Caidi pushed the smooth handle of the blade into his hand, Joori hadn't really been sure he'd be able to do anything with it but wave it around until someone saw through the bravado and took it away. But it curled in his fist as tightly as the anger in his chest that rumbled out through the earth beneath his feet. And yet still, there hadn't been any real thought—just action.
The blade slid into Umeia's side with a lot more ease than Joori would have suspected. Killing and butchering chickens and rabbits and the occasional boar for their table had shown him that flesh was easy to part, but somehow, he'd thought it should be harder to slide a knife into an actual person. He'd known Temshiel could be hurt, could be killed, that they were almost as vulnerable as mortals when in mortal form. And still, he hadn't really expected the knife to actually do anything when he wielded it.
It sank home with a sick ease. He felt Umeia spasm at first, her grip tightening painfully before it loosened. Still without thought, Joori threw her off him altogether, pulled the knife back as he turned, and sank it into her chest.
The shock on her face made him want to start babbling apologies. The blood that pumped from around the blade and soaked his hand with sticky, wet heat made him want to vomit. He wrenched the knife loose, backed away, watched, dazed, as Umeia's hands fluttered for a half second, as a trickle of blood leaked from the corner of her mouth... as her gaze latched onto his. Confused accusation flared then snuffed like a star sparking out, and Umeia fell gracelessly to the floor at the bottom of the kitchen stairs, a bright puddle bleeding out around her.
"Oh,” Joori breathed. All he could do was back away, knife still clutched tight in a white-knuckled fist as he stumbled out the door and into the alley. “Oh... no.” It wasn't possible. He was only mortal—he couldn't have just killed a Temshiel, and certainly not taken one so utterly by surprise and so easily. But there she was, dead on the floor, and here he was, blood all over him.
The ground was seizing up beneath him, he could feel it all the way down through the rock, could almost feel its veins where the molten blood of the earth ran in honeycombed passages fathoms below. A fissure opened up, right between Joori's feet clad in Jacin's borrowed boots, and Joori merely watched as steam billowed out and bathed his face, searing his skin. The rest of the world clamored about him—Jacin fighting with the thugs Asai had brought, Asai shouting something to... someone, Morin doing... something. Joori registered none of it, only the nauseating tackiness of the blood all over his hands and how it at once both slicked and stuck his hand to the grip of the knife, like it was fusing with his skin and becoming a part of him. He wondered if this was how Jacin felt when he killed—just an extension of his weapon, the machine behind the implement that allowed it to do its blood-hungry work.
"Umeia,” someone said, breathless and full of dismay. Joori looked up into the eyes of a mousy little man dressed in loose linen and a stained white apron. Kitchen help, Joori's mind supplied uselessly, and he flinched back some as the man took hold of his arm, barked, “Stop it!” and backhanded Joori so hard his ears rang. He staggered, the wiry man's grip keeping him on his feet, and it was only very vaguely that Joori noted the ground had stopped shaking.
He turned back to the man, said, “What...?” but the man wasn't even looking at him, just holding onto his arm, his quick glance scanning up and down the alley and landing on....
"Oh, fuck,” Joori all but whimpered as he watched Malick stalking down the alley, face like thunder, eyes flat pools of obsidian. The air almost crackled around him as he stepped swiftly but all too surely. A young woman paced steadily behind him, her face murderous but calm, along with a tall man with dark hair that reminded Joori too much of Asai.
A small crowd was gathering at the mouth of the alley, and two more people—another man from the kitchens and a young woman who must be one of the doxies, apparently come from the middle of a bath because her hair was streaming wet and her robe was stuck to damp skin—had come up behind the one who held onto Joori. Joori dismissed all of them, only watched, terrified and awestruck, as Malick strode down the alley like a living storm. The brick walls of the Girou all but rattled in his wake, thunder booming overhead, and tension gathering to him like a curling fist.
He looked right at Joori. There was no pretending that Malick didn't see the bloody knife in Joori's hand, and there was no pretending Malick didn't know exactly what it meant and what Joori had done. The knowledge was all over his face. But Malick didn't come after Joori. His hand came up, slashed through the air, and Asai went flying back into brick and mortar. It came up again, and the two men Asai had brought with him went to join him—one just as bloody and dead as Umeia, but Malick didn't seem like he cared.
"You would dare,” he snarled at Asai, jerked a little an
d took a lurching step back, as though he'd been struck with an invisible mallet. Joori's eyes darted over to Asai, noted his hand up in the air as Malick's had been, felt the crackling of magic all around, raising the hairs on his nape and setting actual weight to his skin. “You've got some balls,” Malick seethed, “using his Blood where I can get my hands on you."
"You never did approve of even odds,” Asai answered coolly. “Kill me and risk the suns, Kamen. And you're just not the sacrificing sort."
Another gesture by Asai, and another blow knocked Malick back a few steps, but he kept coming, all seething rage and murderous intent. And all at once, Joori could almost understand what his brother might see in Malick. He was brilliant in his fury, diamond-hard in his pain, almost beautiful in his extremity of pure and perfect rage. He stopped where he stood, put his hands together in front of his chest, then slowly opened his arms. Joori watched, dumbstruck, as Caidi and Morin were gently pushed out from between Malick and Asai then nudged to relative safety a few feet away from Joori. Kept watching as Jacin stood right where he was, knife in his hand.
"Fen,” said Malick, eyes on Asai, “get out of the way."
Jacin was breathing too heavily, sweating too much, and his arm was bleeding right through the bandages and into the light brown of his duster's sleeve. And still, he stood calmly between maijin and Temshiel, said, “No,” and twirled the knife absently along his fingers.
Asai smirked a little, and Malick's jaw clenched, his hatred and malice almost physical things, swirling with the magic weighting the air.
Samin and Shig came spilling out into the alley directly behind Joori, but he almost didn't notice them. Not until arrows started hailing down from the rooftop. One hit the man Jacin had fought with, the one bleeding from a gory chest wound on the stone of the alley; if he wasn't dead already, the arrow through the eye had certainly finished the job.
Good shot, Yori. Get Asai with the next one, and I'll love you forever.
Wolf's-own: Weregild Page 25