Wolf's-own: Weregild

by Carole Cummings

  "Fen.” Malick reached a hand out but slowly drew it back without touching. “Fen, let me—"

  "Say you love me.” Thin and raspy this time.

  Malick jolted a little, unsure whether Fen was talking to him or Asai's corpse. And downright thrown. “What?” was all he could think to say.

  "You promised.” Fen kept staring down at Asai's still face. “Everything's a trade,” he whispered hoarsely. “I kill Asai, you keep my family safe.” His gaze lifted, skimmed right over Malick and farther up the alley to where his sister lay and his younger brother mourned.

  "I tried, Fen.” Even as Malick said it, he knew it wasn't enough. He would have traded himself for Caidi, but he'd been too late—his timing was always shit—hadn't gotten the words out in time, and he didn't expect any of it to make a gnat's wing's amount of difference to Fen. His little sister was dead, and telling Fen that her soul was intact, they'd meet again in another lifetime, wasn't going to make the hurt he appeared to refuse to feel any less.

  "You said you'd pretend,” Fen whispered, desolation somehow leaking through, even though the tone was so dull it was almost hollow. “You promised. Say it so I can... so I...."

  Malick's throat closed up. Joori was right, even though he'd never actually said the precise words—Malick wasn't good enough for Fen; he hadn't done right by him. Umeia had kept telling Malick his heart was what had made him Wolf's, and she'd been right, but Malick had still spent far too much time pretending he didn't have one. He'd remembered in his head what it was like for mortals to love, to lose someone they loved, but his heart had rejected the memories, rejected the pain that came with them. He'd remembered just enough to see the value of love as leverage, so he'd risked more than he should have done, things that weren't his to risk. And, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, wasn't going to be enough.

  Wolf chose those who wouldn't lose their mortality in immortality, those who never forgot the pain of being crushed by Fate, who sought balance to the Balance and always remembered there were millions of smaller pictures inside the bigger one. Malick was Wolf's-own, but he hadn't been Wolf's-own since Skel, since... since almost the beginning.

  If he'd known then... if he could get back there and start again....

  "Make me this trade.” Fen's voice was low, and his eyes were back on Asai's face again. “A broken life for a few words. You don't have to mean it. You can lie.” He lifted his head, but his eyes slipped shut before Malick could get a look at what was in them. “Just say it so I can pretend for a little while. Say it so I can pretend it's worth it."

  This morning, Malick might have said it was all worth it, regardless of how much it cost, how much it hurt, because it served the Balance. He couldn't make himself say it now. “Fuck, Fen, this is no trade! I think maybe I....” He trailed off, couldn't make himself actually say it—I think I do love you—so, he settled for, “I think I do, but it's been too long, I'm not sure I remember how to do it right. You can pretend having that from me is worth something, but you don't have to pretend it's there."

  Fen only nodded slowly, dipping his head once again. “Fly as I fall,” he whispered.

  Hollow eyes in a dirty face, spattered and smeared with blood, tears tracking pale swathes down his cheeks. Tone measured, calm, and expression flat, and yet still, those tears flowed unbroken and unchecked.

  ...he fucking wept, Malick.... And he didn't even know it.

  Malick's chest tightened.

  "I want to fly for a little while.” Fen's eyes opened slowly, focused down on Asai as his fingers—tacky with blood—traced a sticky line over Asai's cheekbone, gentle and so reverent it almost made Malick want to look away.

  "He can just come back, can't he?” Flatter than before, but still soft.

  Malick took a long, deep breath. “Yeah. Not right away, but yeah, he can come back."

  Fen nodded again, still blank-faced, but maybe a little harder now. “But not if I take his heart, right?"

  Malick winced—he couldn't help it. It didn't necessarily matter that it was exactly what Asai had wanted Fen to do to him. The very idea of it repulsed him, simply because he was as vulnerable to it as Asai was. Take the heart of either Temshiel or maijin, bury it instead of burning it, and bind them to the earth, along with all the other hungry ghosts. A cruel fate that made Malick shudder just thinking about it, but if anyone deserved it, it was Asai.

  And they'd made a deal. After all, Fen had been trained for it. Malick wanted to smirk at the irony, but didn't have it in him.

  "Untouchable,” he heard someone mutter a few feet away. “Lord Asai,” and, “murdered.” Too close, too curious. They had to get whatever Fen needed to do here to keep his tenuous hold on the odd, quiet sanity done, so Malick could begin the business of mopping up this particular mess.

  Malick sighed, said, “That was the deal,” and that was all.

  He merely watched as Fen nodded again, still calm, leaned down and ran his fingertips lightly over Asai's bloody lips, laid a kiss to them. “I loved you once, you treacherous fuck. It never had to be like this.” Then he snapped his back straight and plunged his long knife into Asai's chest with a nauseating force that broke through the breastbone on the first strike. Malick honestly hadn't thought Fen would have the physical strength left for it. The sick crunch of bone breaking and ribs parting was nothing compared to the sounds of Yori and Caidi plunging to their deaths. Those sounds would haunt Malick for a long time to come. This was merely... anticlimactic. Justice by proxy wasn't nearly as gratifying as Malick had hoped it would be. “I wanted to make you watch it,” Fen whispered, small and reedy, staring down at Asai, utterly blank-faced.

  Malick had no idea what to make of the remark. And he didn't see the point in trying.

  "Bloody... hell,” came a soft, breathy voice from behind him. Fen didn't even seem to notice it, but Malick turned and saw one of the men with the hunters’ colors staring down in apparent horror at Fen's gruesome task, which was a bit of a laugh, Malick thought. Considering all the butchery for which this man was likely responsible, a little blood and soft tissue couldn't be that bad. “Is that...?” The man wrenched his gaze away, fixed it on Malick, narrowed it. “What in the name of—"

  "I'll have you release your captives now."

  Fen's flat voice surprised Malick just as much as it seemed to surprise the man in front of him. Grimacing a little, Fen slid flinty gray eyes upward and shook the worst of the blood from his left hand, looking for all the world like he didn't have a man's heart sitting in the palm of his right. He fixed his gaze on the hunter, swung his head a little so that at least the top half of the braid slithered over his shoulder; the bottom half seemed to have been tangled beneath him.

  "I said,” Fen repeated calmly, a steady thread of menace beneath it, “I'll have you release your captives now.” He tilted his head to the side, eyes narrow slits. “Or have you been purchased, as well?"

  The man's eyes had widened at the braid, widened further at the seemingly coherent orders coming from the mouth of an Untouchable who sat in the middle of rather startling carnage with Lord Asai's heart in his hand. “You are—"

  "Obviously,” Fen cut in, jerking his chin to indicate the men of the Doujou trying to restore order. “And I expect those men back there know the law. Are you interfering, seyh?"

  The man looked at Malick like he really thought Malick was going to step in and save him from the bizarre situation. Malick was just pleased that someone other than him was on the receiving end of that glare. He didn't think he'd ever seen Fen so cold, so... distant. He'd never really worried about Fen before, not even when he perhaps should have done—for all his problems, Fen could take care of himself extraordinarily well—but Malick was worried now. The man's sister was splattered across the alley, his brother paralyzed by these men who wanted to take him away to the Courts, and he'd just killed the man he'd loved through years of adolescent fixation and dug his heart from his chest—and he didn't seem to have the ring, was wading thro
ugh all this with the Ancestors shrieking steadily in his head. So, why was he looking saner than Malick had ever seen him look before?

  "Fen,” Malick put in quietly, “what exactly are you doing?"

  Fen looked up at Malick, that unsettling gray stare seeming to bore right through to bone. Malick had been wrong—it wasn't flat and it wasn't cold; it was the deepest pit of smoldering grief and rage he'd ever seen, so deep Fen was burning inside it. A star blazing too brightly until it tripped itself into supernova before collapsing in on itself.

  You're going to break him, Umeia had warned. Malick didn't think so. Malick thought perhaps breaking wasn't the danger here. Malick thought the real danger was implosion. And the real problem with implosion was that it sucked everyone else down into the deep, dense void too. Strangely, Malick didn't find himself flinching from that perilous orbit.

  "I'm a Catalyst.” Gritty. Like chewing on broken glass. “I'm tired of shit happening to me.” Fen held up his bloody left hand and waited until Malick held out his own and helped him to his feet. Teeth set grimly, Fen pulled the braid so it dangled plainly over his shoulder, leaning on Malick and favoring his bad leg as he dropped Asai's heart to the stones and crushed it under his boot. Several times. “I'm interfering,” he said, then angled away from Malick and limped toward his brother.

  Malick only turned his head, watched him go.

  You don't have to mean it. You can lie.

  He nodded a little, breathed, “Yeah,” as Fen hobbled slowly away from him.

  Malick didn't think any of the things churning about in his chest had a single thing to do with lying.

  Scrubbing a hand over his face, Malick turned to the man still gaping, shrugged with an I'm just following orders look, then smirked evilly down at Asai's corpse. Gave it a swift kick. “Bet you didn't see that one coming, did you?” he snarked then gave the other man a dark little glare and followed Fen.

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  Chapter Seven

  Failure—peerless and profound. He had, in a sick, convoluted way, finally achieved perfection.

  You did this, little Ghost. Jasmine all over him, and a whisper amidst latent ruin, only a whisper, ringing, out-shouting the Ancestors in a voice that curled everything inside him to a hard, cluttered little knot. Your lessons always came to you too hard and too late.

  Fuck you, Beishin, then a scream, but not his, because he was choking on the end of everything. Cool-metal-smooth-wood in his hand, and if he could just move fast enough, be good enough, live for a second in that impossible state of perfection, he could call it all back, and maybe.... Maybe then the hard thud of impact wouldn't somehow twine with Beishin's voice in accusation. No blood in gold hair, no blank hazel eyes staring, staring—I'm Wolf's creature too, Jacin. We're all made for sacrifice. Didn't you know?—gazing blank-eyed out into broken reality. Wrong, wrong, it was all so wrong, too loud, too true, too real, and hot blood on his hands didn't make it go back to the way it should be, because that broken little body was not meant for reality, wrongwrongwrong, and he couldn't feel. Couldn't call any of it back, couldn't batten back the voices with pain, because the agony inside shoved everything else down a sharded void. Down and down and down until there was nothing left but the shrieking and the deep-clawed rawness in his chest, in his mind, my fault, my fault, and he could hear but he couldn't listen, he'd refused to listen, failed, failed, and now....

  It had to go away. All of it, it had to go away.

  So, he flew. Cast himself over the precipice and spread tattered black-webbed wings. Waited for the ground to rise up and mangle him like it had done to her. Two down, three to go, because he'd have to watch them all die in front of him, one by one, that was the way true punishment worked, and he'd refused to listenlistenlisten, our boy, only say it once, and he'd missed it. Whatever it was, whatever could have called it all back before a spray of blood and bone over dirty gray stone, before the sick squelch of flesh beneath his boot. He'd missed it, and he'd pay, but only after he watched them pay first, two down, three to go, and fuck, he was so tired. Tired of listening, tired of talking, tired of trying to catch his balance in the sweeping winds of the hurricane, tired of being buffeted from one side to the other, the tugging, the twisting.

  The first amulet broke easily. Lapis ripped from its chain around the neck of a hunter who just stood there and let him take it—let him—just watched as Jacin dropped it to the bloody stone—her blood, standing in a lake of her blood, wrong, so wrong, and why wouldn't it drown him?—and crushed it under the heel of his boot. And then he merely held out his hand, just held it out, didn't say a word, and two others were dropped into his palm. Cut amethyst, both of them, and they wouldn't shatter, and he hadn't even realized he'd been stomping for so long until Malick's hand laid itself to his arm, and he flinched away like he'd been burnt, because that he felt. Silence, fleeting and dead-cold, and the painshockgrief all rose up at once inside it, and he couldn't... couldn't....

  He yanked himself away, watched the sympathy in Malick's tea-colored eyes, the helplessness, and hissed, because fuck him, too, fuck them all with their sad eyes that only watched her fall as they'd watched the Jin fall for decades. He snarled, let his good leg give beneath him and sank to the bloody cobbles, sat next to his sister's ruined little body and dropped the amulets into the blooming puddle of her blood. Took his long knife by the hilt and crushed them.

  A shrilling shriek slammed into him, and it took him a second to understand it came from outside his head and not inside. Shig was a vague shape in his periphery as she wended her unsteady way down the alley toward Yori, grief too apparent in everything about her. Joori's voice came to him, as though from miles away, hollow and calling his name, then Morin's, and good, alive, both of them—at least for now—but Jacin couldn't hear it now, that was it, all he could take, had to go away, didn't want any of it, blocked it from his consciousness. He concentrated instead on the shrieking inside, because it was louder now than it had ever been before, cacophonous, but it was also more garbled because all the voices were his, with no sanity left inside them, and so safer than what was happening outside his head.

  "The Girou is mine,” he said flatly, shattered, bloody amethyst cutting into the tips of his fingers, then he looked up, narrowed his eyes at the Adan man who thought it was all right to hunt Jin and take their Blood. “The Girou and everyone in it. We have dead to mourn. Leave us now."

  He didn't know what happened after that. He had vague recollections of Malick speaking to the men of the Doujou, making up explanations on the fly and leveling threats—He's already said the Girou is his. You would interfere with the Untouchable? Leave him to tend to his dead—and ah fuck, his dead, and Jacin reached over, setting his fingers into sticky gold. “Need to... need to wash her hair.” Would he be able to without her skull falling away in pieces? He hadn't had the courage to actually look at her yet, only quick glimpses out of the corner of his eye of gold hair trailing in a puddle of scarlet, a little hand curled into a loose fist palm-up on the stones. He didn't know if he could wash her body, paint the prayers on her brow, say the rites, wrap the linens, light the pyre. He didn't even know if he could look at her all at once, see the damage, without losing his grip.

  He couldn't see Yori, because he'd have to look past Caidi, and he couldn't, just couldn't. Couldn't make himself face these splinters of skewed reality, because if he looked, if he accepted, it would be reality.

  Refused to look at Beishin, because his dead eye—the one without a knife jutting from it—kept going tea-colored, and he didn't want to know why.

  Say you love me, say it, because... because.... He didn't know. A trade, and for what? Someone who couldn't truly die? Someone who would fight dirty, lie, cheat, and steal his way out of it, and never leave Jacin with this hollow nothing burning him up from inside?

  Reality broken into tiny little pieces, like a shattered mirror, and he could see himself deep-deep down in each one, and he was screaming inside th
em. Bashing himself into oblivion as broken as this reality where little girls fell silently from the sky, and sharded reflections caught the not-sun and blinded him.

  And then Samin was there, stooping down right beside him, staring into Jacin's eyes with stark grief and genuine sympathy that sliced into Jacin's gut like a knife. Samin didn't reach out, like Malick kept doing, and he didn't try to say things that would do no good. He merely looked, let Jacin see, let him watch the tears that leaked from a face that looked like it couldn't support them—water from stone—and tipped him a small, slow nod. Then he just turned, slid his arms beneath Caidi's small, broken body, lifted her and hugged her gently to his chest. He stood, eyes hard and cold now as he turned them on the hunters and the doujoun all around him, his big body vibrating for want of blood and vengeance, but his heart too obviously wrapped around the small bundle in his arms.

  That, Jacin remembered. The look in Samin's eyes, the sounds of grief coming from Shig, her warbling voice whispering, whispering—you're all right, Yori-love, Umeia will see to you, she'll take you to Wolf—and Joori, pleading, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Hands on Jacin's shoulders, his arms, stroking his cheek, but he kept snarling and knocking them off, because he'd taken the silence before, and they'd punished him for it. Except the hands wouldn't let up, wouldn't stop, just kept pushing gentle comfort down his throat ‘til he thought he'd choke on it. C'mon, Fen, you can't see to your sister like this, and he wanted to ask, Like what? because what difference could it make, really, but it didn't matter enough to spend the thought and strength on forming the words.

  Husao, I need you to see to these people—we can't let them remember all this, and especially not the Doujou.

  It made sense somewhere, but Jacin didn't even reach for it. It didn't matter, he didn't care. Just went along and let the hands lead him... somewhere. Heard the steady thwip-thwip-thwip of a moth's battered wings, smelled jasmine twined with sage and pine, reached instead for the scent of cherry blossoms, but couldn't find it.