by Cari Z
No, there it was again, damn it! Too fast to see more than the vaguest silhouette, but it was him. It had to be. Gods curse him, how had the creature managed it? Rafael wasted a few more seconds mentally swearing before he pulled himself together. He’d been surprised. It didn’t matter. If Xian wanted to flit around the cathedral floor like a wraith, he could do that. If he stayed in one place for longer than it took to draw breath, he would be shot. Rafael hoped he could injure him badly enough with the first few shots to slow him down. He’d have to take Xian through the brain stem or the heart to kill him, and even for him that was practically impossible at this range without inflicting some serious damage first.
He positioned the crossbow on the stones and peered down the length of the stock, staring with wide, unfocused vision into the gloom of the old cathedral’s floor. The first hint, the first twitch… There, a fluttering of black, and he loosed the shot instantaneously, then cursed as the bolt skittered in a shower of sparks off the battered marble pillar. His position was compromised now, if it had ever really been secure in the first place. Xian had undoubtedly tracked the shot. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t get up to the alcove without exposing himself long enough for even an untrained man to shoot him. Rafael loaded another bolt and tried to relax.
It quickly became a game of cat and mouse between them, hunter and prey, only Rafael had the sinking feeling that his prey was toying with him. There weren’t that many pillars down there, not that many places to hide. Once a section of ground collapsed, but even as his pulse quickened with excitement, he saw the shadow of his master flutter effortlessly away from it, and he wasted another bolt venting his frustration at the apparition. Not a hit. Not one single hit, and he’d been trying for nearly fifteen minutes. It was ludicrous. He was an excellent shot and he had all the advantages, surely he should have grazed the bastard by now. He was running low on bolts as well.
There. Finally! Xian moved backward at a diagonal, not as fast as he could have, and Rafael tracked him with the bolt and loosed before his target could change directions. He saw the falter mar the fluid movement and his lips curled in a snarl of satisfaction. Unfortunately his success was fleeting. His target was slowed, but just barely, and before he knew it he had used the last of his bolts.
Fucking hell, what would it take to grind him down? Rafael gritted his teeth and grabbed his blades and dart gun. He’d have to close the distance some if he wanted to get any sort of residual advantage out of that first injury. He resolutely blocked his mind to the idea that his wounded prey was drawing him out of his safe haven and swung down from the ledge, moving cautiously even as his eyes continued to seek out Xian’s movement. He kept the stone between him and his former master as best he could. Rafael knew if Xian had bothered to bring a long-range weapon with him he’d already be dead, but it still didn’t hurt to be wary.
He fired darts from the gun as soon as his feet touched the ground, spraying the silver-tipped needles in a rapid staccato rhythm as he tracked Xian. The darts wouldn’t kill him, not even close, but the silver acted like a magic sink and made the flesh of a High One crawl as it consumed their life force. He was within twenty feet of the creature and at this distance, in the last pale tatters of light, he could make out some details. Xian was covered with dark, glistening fabric that billowed with every move he made. It also, Rafael noted, seemed to do an excellent job of stopping projectiles from reaching his body. The fabric glowed briefly when a needle struck it but held the silver fast. As quickly as he could fire, the fabric moved, swirling in a protective pattern in front of that powerful body. It captivated him at the same time as it frustrated him, and that frustrated Rafael even further. Furiously he worked his way closer, trying to force the elusive figure toward less stable footing, but somehow he found himself being maneuvered in a circle, drawn into a dance he didn’t have control of.
Realizing what was happening, Rafael jerked his eyes away from the mesmerizing figure that kept evading him and tried to regain some control of the situation. He stepped backward, back toward his own shadows and a chance to regroup. He found a flaw in the stonework instead, and the marble, one moment so solid beneath his feet, crumbled to nothingness in the next. Rafael twisted serpentine-like in midair and stretched to catch himself, losing his grip on the forgotten dart gun in his effort to find purchase, but there was nothing, nothing but a hungry emptiness beneath him that would swallow him whole.
Suddenly he was flying in the opposite direction. It happened so fast that he barely had time to register the change in his circumstances and the pain of whiplash in his neck before he crashed into a stone pillar. This one held, but he had barely regained his feet before the apparition he had been chasing suddenly became all too real. The heavy cloak was gone, and in its place Rafael could clearly distinguish the long limbs and broad torso of his former master. He was still swathed from head to foot with the black fabric, but within the folds he could discern the pearlescent glitter of white eyes. It was like a knife to the heart. His master was looking at him, seeing him for the first time in five years, and it filled Rafael with an inexplicable rage. Why now? Why like this, when the circumstances couldn’t have been any worse? Why only when he forced him to violence did his master care enough to come for him?
Driven by demons that had been festering inside him for a lifetime, Rafael launched off the pillar, drawing his sabers and attacking with a speed that surprised even him. The ferocity of his attack caught Xian off guard, and now it was he who was forced backward, driven to defensiveness under the insane onslaught. Rafael was beyond caring about the contract, who he had killed, why they were here or whether he lived or died. His pain was given life in the form of his blades, and it sliced deep. He cut and was rewarded with a pale flash of flesh opening up over Xian’s left arm. He cut again, was parried, and traded blows that nearly numbed his arm before he forced another opening. The slash was high on his opponent’s chest this time, and he barely saw skin before the wound welled with that thick, precious magical blood. He could smell it, like something out of his dreams, and the scent of something he’d been denied for so long just incensed him further.
Rafael pressed the attack, oblivious to where they were headed or whether the ground was safe or not. He didn’t actively block or protect himself. Every movement was aggressive, every strike an attempt to cut. He left openings, he had to, but his master didn’t capitalize on them. Rafael attacked and Xian defended, block for strike and parry for thrust, until a flicker-fast edge cut his opponent high across the forehead. Thick cloth parted, hair tumbled down like a silver wave and Rafael was suddenly staring into the pale, blood-streaked face of his master.
The cut was small, hardly more than a scratch. The blood ran in a slender rivulet down the inside of Xian’s brow, past his right eye and onto his cheek. His face was so similar to the one Rafael had seen two nights ago, but it was so different too. It wasn’t just any High One’s face, it was his master’s face. The hideous reality of what he was doing suddenly seeped back into Rafael’s consciousness, and the sheer wrongness of it made what was left of his soul shriek with pain. This wasn’t his place. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t. Fifteen years of conditioning couldn’t be undone by five years of neglect.
Before he could do more than hesitate, though, Xian was on him. His feet flew out from under him and Rafael was thrown to his back, the breath driven from his lungs as he impacted the floor. He barely had time to register the negligible, pricking pain in his side and the appearance of his master’s face, his hair shielding their locked gaze like a curtain, before it dissolved into silver mist along with everything else as his consciousness faltered. Past the rush of blood in his ears and his own harsh gasping for breath, he vaguely heard the words, “Welcome back, pet,” before the darkness flooded in and mercifully drowned him.
Chapter Five
Revival was excruciating.
Rafael regained consciousness much more slowly than he’d lost it, but apart from that the
circumstances were very similar. He could tell he was strung up in a large chamber, nearly as large and open as the floor of the ruined cathedral where he had so spectacularly failed his last assignment. He was in pain, a fiery ache spreading from his wrists down his shoulders and radiating out from his much-abused back. He heard slow footsteps move across the cold stone floor, but he didn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t bear to see yet, not yet. His memories were bad enough, and he had plenty of memories of this particular room.
They were alone. Rafael could tell that much without looking, but it wasn’t reassuring in the slightest. He shouldn’t be alive. Xian had taken a contract out on him, and an assassin’s contract, with very few exceptions, was a death sentence. They didn’t usually toy with their prey, although Rafael bitterly admitted to himself that their fight might well have qualified as playing for all the effectiveness he’d had against his former master. A failure. That was what he was, that was all he had ever been and he had proved that quite spectacularly. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t ever want to wake up again. Why hadn’t Xian killed him?
Rafael’s masochistic side forced his mind to replay the fight. It was so clear, in retrospect. Xian had played him beautifully, enticing him into wasting his crossbow bolts with his game of hide-and-seek, pretending injury to coerce Rafael into abandoning the high ground to try to capitalize on the wound before Xian was healed. The cloth, that magnificent gleaming black cloak had protected his former master from the wrath of the sun as well as the rain of silver needles Rafael had shot at him. And when they’d closed… Shame burned through Rafael’s chest, making him squeeze his eyes shut, trying to deny it. He had tried. He truly had tried to kill Xian, at first. He had made a supreme effort, especially after he’d nearly fallen to death when the floor crumbled to a yawning pit beneath his feet. He should have died then, but now he knew Xian had pulled him back and saved him from that dark, solitary end. Why? So he could revel in his former apprentice’s inadequacies and watch him shatter beneath the realization that even after five years of living a life of vengeful sorrow and anger, in the end he couldn’t move to kill his master? Did Xian sense the hopelessness in Rafael as he had realized that, the futile frustration and self-loathing? He could have run Rafael through right then.
Instead he had saved him. Saved him from falling, then spared his life when by all rights he should have killed him immediately. He had saved him for what, then? To gloat? That wasn’t Xian’s style. To impress Rafael’s worthlessness upon him? Perhaps, especially if he still resented the death of his other apprentice, the one Rafael had killed only…two nights ago? Three? How long had it been? Rafael wasn’t sure, although from the feel of his arms he hadn’t been hanging for more than an hour. His shoulders hadn’t separated from the sockets yet, despite barely being able to touch the ground with his toes. So, not long. Two nights then. Why was he alive?
Politics. The answer came to Rafael in a rush and he released his breath with a tired, strained sigh. Of course. He had insulted the ruling council of Clare with his last kill, a high-ranking human servant of theirs. They wanted him taken alive so they could make his punishment last, so they could make an example out of him to any others who might have delusions of stealing their grandeur. His end would be neither fast nor clean. Rafael remembered from his own years in the Upper City the punishment for those who threatened the High Ones’ sovereignty. No merciful end for an audacious mouse.
The footsteps circled closer, a spiral path of pain closing on Rafael’s position. He kept his eyes resolutely shut. He wouldn’t look. It might be cowardly, but cowardice was better than the other emotions he felt hammering behind his eyelids. At least he could be a silent coward.
“Awake at last.” Xian’s smooth, warm voice flowed into the empty spaces of the room, filling it instantly with his presence. The words were like a caress and Rafael couldn’t stop from turning toward them as a flower turned its face toward the sun. As soon as he realized what he was doing, he snapped back to neutral, raging at himself internally but keeping his expression blank. “Ah, pet. Still so responsive. I missed that.”
Missed it? He’d missed it? Fury at Xian drowned out his anger at himself. He let it build, let it block out all the other emotions striving for supremacy. Fury felt good. Right. It blossomed and filled his chest, purifying his mind and easing the tension in his throat with its perfect simplicity.
“Very good, Rafael. You’ve remembered a great deal of what I taught you.” He was close now, very close. He moved behind Rafael and stopped for a long moment. Rafael felt the cold metal handle of one of Xian’s instruments touch the nape of his neck then slide slowly down the length of his spine. He almost cried with relief. He couldn’t have taken the touch of skin. Metal allowed him to maintain his rage, to hold his edge. Just metal. Just a whip or a quirt of some kind. It could have been anyone’s hands on it.
“Skin and bones,” Xian murmured. “Your new master runs you ragged, pet.”
What a hideous misconception. Even knowing it might be a ploy on Xian’s part, Rafael felt compelled to answer. It was all right, his rage still protected him. “I have no master.” His voice sounded like ground glass, almost as rough as it had been when he’d tried to kill himself after being banished from the Upper City.
“Perhaps not,” Xian said after a moment. “Perhaps not even yourself.” He tapped the base of Rafael’s spine with the handle, then began to move again. “A pet without a master is dangerous.”
“I’m no one’s pet.”
“But you are certainly dangerous. Wild, unpredictable. They told me I should have gotten rid of you years ago.”
“You did.” That familiar shuddering pain lanced through his chest again, but Rafael buried it under his white-hot fury, fed the blaze so that it wouldn’t go out and desert him when he most needed to maintain his composure. “You abandoned me before I could be tested.”
“The council judged you unfit for ascension, Rafael, not I.”
That knowledge didn’t make it any better. It just made his master a servant, a weakling, another one of the council’s mindless underlings. It lessened him, and that lessening made Rafael even madder. He didn’t speak, unsure what would pour out of his mouth if he opened it now.
“You would have failed their test,” Xian went on. His voice was casual, matter-of-fact. “It would have ruined you.”
“I was ruined anyway.”
“Yet here you are, mostly whole.” The metal handle tapped his straining chest just below the solar plexus. “Functional. Capable. You’ve taken your ruination quite well.”
“You know nothing of it.” If he knew how many times Rafael had tried to die, how he had cursed his body every time it had failed him by living, how terribly hard he had made Feysal’s life for the months of his recovery… Gods, poor Feysal. He’d tried for so many years to make Rafael free of his obsession with the High Ones, free of his need to kill them and make them suffer for his rejection. Feysal had given unceasingly of himself, and all he had asked in return was that Rafael try to live a normal life. Rafael had failed his friend badly.
“Perhaps not,” Xian finally agreed. “I lost interest in most of the Lower City long ago. I go there only when my calling takes me there. I know little of how you’ve lived, whom you’ve killed or in what manner you’ve found solace over the years. I am, however, interested in you. Everyone is interested in you now, pet.”
“If I’d known all it would take to get your attention again was killing one of your apprentices, I’d have done it years ago,” Rafael snarled, his eyes opening as he turned his head to the side, suddenly wanting Xian to look into him and see the furious honesty of his last statement reflect in his eyes. Despite his conflicted emotions over killing his master’s other apprentice, if he’d known it would bring them back together, he probably would have attempted it early into his exile. His longing for Xian had been so encompassing.
The rounded knob at the end of the handle traced over the lines of his shoulde
rs, the coldness of the metal a sharp counterpoint to the growing burn there. Xian finally moved to stand before him, and it was all Rafael could do to keep from screaming with the sudden surge of anger, frustration and desire. He looked…like Xian. Like his master. Like he could have stepped out of Rafael’s memories from five years ago without a pause. His long silver hair was held back in a braid, leaving the angular lines of his face clear. Pale skin stretched taut over sharp cheekbones and a sharper nose, and the chilling whiteness of his eyes was near-total, even the pupils dimmed by centuries of magic consumption. He looked like a hawk, a hunter, long and lean and broader across the shoulders than most High Ones. Black trousers, normal cloth instead of the shining shield he’d used so effectively before, hung loosely on his hips. He wore those and tall black boots and nothing else and the sight of him, so bared before Rafael, felt like a knife in his heart. He reached desperately for the protective pain that would keep him from losing the shreds of his self-control. It was a fight, and one he might have lost if the sudden soft chime of someone seeking entrance hadn’t caused Xian to turn from him. Rafael collapsed in his restraints, breathing raggedly and forcing his screaming shoulders to bear more of his weight and distract his mind.
Moments later a third person joined them in the chamber, without introduction. Rafael felt a brief surge of surprise that the visitor hadn’t waited to be seen in. Privacy was very highly valued among the people of the Upper City, and to intrude upon a master assassin in his own home was unheard of. Then he blearily made out the dark, velvety blood-red robes of the visitor and understood. Simple things like courtesy didn’t apply to members of the council.