“I…”
“Shush,” she said, whispering in my ear. “I know. I know what they did to you. That vile old man and his witch doctor, and the whore too. We’ll make them all pay, brother.”
I tried to shake my head, but she was holding me tightly. She’s half a head shorter than me and weighs as much as a summer breeze, but still she held me tight. I found myself crying. “If you knew what they were doing, why didn’t you stop them? Or warn me?”
She pulled my head back from her shoulder, and I saw tears in her eyes. I knew she was a liar and a manipulator. Even as a child she could switch those tears on and off for the price of a piece of candy. But part of me always believed her. “I couldn’t,” she said. “I know it’s hard to believe, but there’s so much at stake here, more than you can know. I just couldn’t.”
I started to say something, but she put a finger on my lips. “No, brother, you need to listen now. The time for games and manoeuvring is almost past. You must do exactly as I say.” She paused as if she was waiting for me to protest. When I didn’t, she continued. “Events move quickly now. You will go back to your rooms and wait until I summon you to complete the next part of our mis—”
I shook my head. “Sha’maat, I have to leave. Now. I can’t take a chance that—”
“They’ll kill you,” she said. “Your enemies are waiting for you to resign your post so they can kill you.”
“Colfax wants me out of here. He’s not going to waste time murdering me.”
“Colfax isn’t the only one who has plans for you, brother.”
Anger and bile worked their way up my throat. “Don’t you get it? You stupid, conniving child. That’s the whole point. Now that they can do this to me, if I stay here any longer they might use me on the queen. She—”
Sha’maat’s voice was as calm and controlled as ever. “The little queen has set her own course. She has no choice now but to follow where it leads. No, you must go to your rooms. Sit there with your pet and wait until I call for you. I’ve worked a set of warding spells on your chambers. No one will be able to get to you there, not even the white binder.” She put her palm on my cheek. “If you love any part of your life, brother, do not leave that room, no matter who summons you.”
I tried to make sense of her veiled warnings and discern beneath them her true motivations. But there was nothing solid to hang on to. Why was it so important for me to stay out of the way? Did she want me to sit quietly while she and her lackeys…“I won’t let you kill the queen, Sha’maat. I won’t betray her.”
Sha’maat’s eyes narrowed and her mouth tightened. “Why must you always be so naive? I know you’re not stupid. Who is this Daroman queen to you? A silly girl with pretensions of grandeur.”
“Seems there’s a lot of that going around these days.”
To my surprise, my sister slapped me. I don’t think she’s ever done that before. “I am trying to look after you, brother. It’s all I’ve ever tried to do, and yet still, even now, even after the mess you’ve gotten yourself into, still you treat me as if I’m the child.” She grabbed my hands in hers and squeezed. “Who is this Daroman queen to you? What can she possibly have promised that would make you so beholden to her?”
If Shalla’s little tirade was meant to make me question my choices of late, then it worked. Why should I care about the queen of Darome? Because she’d saved my life? No—all that had done was allow her to put me in even worse situations. Because she’d offered to help me find a cure for the shadowblack? Only there’s no cure for a broken soul. With that thought, the truth came crashing down on me. Sha’maat was right—the queen’s promise of a cure was a bluff she’d played to keep me around.
“The queen isn’t the one who can save you from the shadowblack,” Sha’maat said, as if she were reading my thoughts. Who knows? Maybe she was.
I pulled her hands from the side of my face. “Don’t play with me, Sha’maat. Not after—”
She grabbed at my arms. “I’m not saying I can take away the shadowblack from you, brother. But I can keep you from being controlled by the binders.”
“How?”
“An artefact,” she said. “It’s old and it’s expensive, but Father has secured one.”
Like a fool, like a dog who sniffs at food he’ll never be allowed to eat, I looked around the room, concentrating on Sha’maat to see if she reacted to the places where I was looking.
“It’s not here, brother.”
“Then where?”
She shook her head. “No. Not yet.”
“Why not? If you have it, why not give it to me?”
“Because if I gave it to you now, you’d do something stupid. Better you stay fearful of what the binder might do to you. Better you do as you’ve been told and stay in your room until the business is completed. Then, after it’s done, I’ll come for you and give it to you.”
There was a knock at the door and a voice on the other side called out. “Carreva, it’s time.”
Sha’maat kissed me on the cheek. “Go with Kae’taius and Jax’ered, brother. They’ll see you safely to your rooms. Then you must keep everyone out until it’s done.” I started to say something but she stopped me. “If you can find no other reason to do as I say, then do it for this one: the white binder is here, in the palace.”
The cold fist that grabbed onto my heart felt so real I had to remind myself to breathe.
47
The Word
The two Jan’Tep agents escorted me back to my room and left me at the door.
“Kellen!” The squirrel cat barrelled into me as I entered the room and grabbed my leg in an oddly affectionate gesture.
“You all right, partner?” I asked, unsure how to deal with this uncharacteristic lack of him growling at me and blaming me for everything.
“Bastard marshals! They came in wearing chain mail from head to toe. I nearly wore my claws out trying to get at them.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. We’ll probably need your claws soon enough.”
“Damned straight. Fill up your holsters and let’s go kill that rat bastard Colfax.”
“No.”
He looked up at me quizzically. “You want to go to the queen with this?”
“No. We’re done with the queen. We’re done with all of it.”
Reichis’s little nose twitched. He ran over to the window and hopped up on the sill. “Kellen, something’s going down in this skinbag hellhole. There are fires and riots in the city. When Colfax’s men had me I heard one of his commanders sending most of the marshals out of the palace to try to help the city guard keep the peace.”
“Something bad’s going down all right. That’s precisely why we’re going to stay here and keep the door shut until it’s over.”
“What? What about the queen?”
“She’ll have to find someone else to protect her.”
Reichis jumped down from the window and ambled back to where I stood. Then he bit me in the calf. Hard.
“What the hells is wrong with you?” I shouted, trying to kick him away.
“Me? You’re the one who’s running, again. Not twelve hours ago you promised that human runt you’d stay and protect her!”
“Since when do I ever keep my promises?” I asked, my voice thick in my throat.
“What happened, Kellen? What did Colfax do to you?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Reichis bit me again. I felt blood well up on my ankle. I lashed out with my foot, but he jumped aside and sprang back in to scratch a strip off my leg.
“Stop it!” I shouted.
The little bastard reared up on his hind legs. “That’s not how this works, Kellen. We have a deal. We’re business partners. We tell each other everything. Everything. Now tell me what they did to you or I swear on the fur of every squirrel cat who ever lived, I’m gonna claw the skin off your bones!”
I believed him too. Reichis and me, well, I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand what our deal is. Bu
t he was right. He deserved to know.
“Colfax had a white binder with him,” I said, sitting down heavily on the bed. “A guy who can take use my shadowblack to control me any way he wants.”
“Did he…? Was he able to…?”
I nodded. “He had me. Every part of me belonged to him.”
The squirrel cat’s own shadowblack markings started to swirl as his outrage grew. “We’re gonna kill him, Kellen. You and me. Right now. We can’t have no white binders or whatever you called him running around.”
“And just how am I supposed to kill him, Reichis? He can make me do anything he wants.”
“Did you fight back?”
I slammed my fist uselessly against the soft bedding. “Of course I fought, you idiot! I fought with everything I had and it didn’t make a difference. He didn’t even crack a sweat. Can you understand that? I put everything I had into resisting him and he still used me like… like… ah, hells.”
I let my hands fall into my holsters. If I forced myself to scoop up the biggest handfuls of powder, I could drop them myself and end all this. But Reichis would never let that happen. He’d try to save me and the little fool would set himself on fire.
“What did he make you do, Kellen?”
I shook my head, unable to speak. As hard as it is to have a squirrel cat business partner who usually just snarls at you and steals your stuff, this—him trying to be caring towards me—it was worse. It reminded me that as worthless as my life was, I still had a responsibility, that there was one promise I’d made in my life that I was not going to break. Reichis’s mother, Chitra, in her dying moments had told me how things would work between us. “You must be his caution, as he will be your courage. You will teach him when to flee and he will teach you when to fight.” This was definitely the time for fleeing, which meant it was my job to get us out of here.
“We’re going to wait until whatever damnation has come to the Daroman palace to do its work,” I told him. “Then you and me are getting the hells out of here.” Once we were out of this city… once Reichis was safe… then I’d find a way to end myself before I could hurt anyone else.
“Tell me,” he growled. “What did the binder make you do?”
Ignoring the question wouldn’t do any good. Reichis doesn’t care about propriety or privacy or even looking ridiculous by sitting there asking the same thing over and over again. Besides, he was right to keep asking, even if he didn’t know why. My people have a word for those who do what I nearly did to that girl. I had to make myself say it now. Everything after this moment would be driven by cowardice and self-interest. Speaking the truth might be the only real act of freedom left to me. “I’m a defiler, Reichis.”
48
The Plea
Either from exhaustion or the lingering effects of the binder’s influence, the last threads that held me together finally snapped and I passed out on the bed. My dreams were full of helpless cries for help, of the girl at the restaurant and of the queen herself, begging for someone to save them. Save them from me.
I would wake for snatches at a time, gasping for air, terrified that the binder had forgotten to make me breathe. I would open my eyes and see Reichis sitting there, his face concerned and confused as he watched over me. Then I would lapse back into fevered sleep.
A few hours later though, awareness grabbed at my thoughts and forced me into wakefulness.
“Someone’s knocking at the door,” Reichis said.
“What time is it?”
“Late. Nearly eleven.”
Groggy and nauseous, I hauled myself off the bed and walked to the door. “Nobody’s home,” I said.
“The queen wants to see you.” It was Arex.
I felt my heart stop in my chest. Did she already know? The queen of Darome surely had plenty of spies. Had one of them already gotten word to her?
“Open the gods-damned door, Kellen, or I’ll kick it in.”
I turned the handle and then stood back and pulled powder. Arex opened it and looked at me with surprise. “Is something the matter?” he asked. “You look like hell.”
“I’m fine. No, wait. I’m not fine. I’m sick.”
“Well, let’s go see what the queen wants with you, and then I can get you to a physician.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“No? No… what?”
“No, I’m not going to see the queen.”
“Yesterday you were ready to square off with me just to get inside the throne room, and now she asks for you and you decline?”
“I’m an enigma, I guess.”
“What you are is out of your mind, Kellen! You don’t refuse the queen! On your death bed, with a dozen Zhuban Elites holding you down, you don’t refuse a royal summons.”
“Get out, Arex,” I said.
Arex glanced at the powders in my hands. “Look, just see her for a minute. Things are tense, Kellen. There’ve been a dozen fires in the city, most of the nobles and their personal guards haven’t returned from the northern border, and half of the rest didn’t show up for court today. She needs a friend, Kellen.”
“Then you be a friend to her, Arex. You’re related to her, aren’t you? Leave me out of it.”
“She asked for you, not me.”
When I didn’t reply, he just stood there and looked at me, probably wondering if he should just drag me there. Then he shook his head and said, “I don’t get you, kid. For all that nonsense outlaw spellslinger act of yours, I thought underneath it you…Oh to hell with you, card player. I’m done.” He turned and left, and I slammed the door and locked it after him.
“Time to start packing,” I told Reichis. “As soon as all this is done, we leave.”
“And go where?” he asked.
“Anywhere. We don’t owe these people anything. If the Daroman nobility wants to bring down their gods-damned monarchy, what the hells does it have to do with us?”
I heard Reichis chitter something, but I couldn’t make out what it was.
“What?” I asked.
He wandered back over to the window and climbed up to the sill. “Nothing,” he said, staring out at the fires in the distance.
I was interrupted twice more before things went to hells. The first one surprised me most of all. There wasn’t even a knock at the door, just a woman’s voice. “Kellen, it’s me.”
It was Mariadne. My hand reached for the door but I stopped myself. I remembered the look on her face in the alley. I started to say something and then realised there was no point.
“Kellen, please. Let me in. We need to talk.”
“You’ll have to talk to someone else, your ladyship,” I said, the words sounding snide and vile to my ears.
“‘Your ladyship’?” Her voice was full of confusion and anger. “Is that who I am to you?”
“I’m sorry, Mariadne,” I said. “Please, for your own good, just go away.”
“Kellen, let me in.”
I stood there quietly, my head slumped against the door that stood between us.
“Kellen, I need to see you. We need to talk about—”
My fist slammed against the door. “How can you want to see me? How can you possibly want anything to do with me after what you saw me do? What the hells is wrong with you?”
There was silence on the other side of the door for a moment, and then she said, “Kellen, I don’t understand what I saw. I don’t know why you would do what you did. The marshal, Colfax—one of his men made me come. There had to have been a reason. Did they threaten you?”
“I did it,” I said. “That’s what matters, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She was sobbing now. “I don’t understand what’s happening, but I can’t believe you would…I know that’s not who you are. Kellen, I swear I’ll listen…I’ll believe you whatever you tell me, but just open the door and talk to me. Whatever this is between us, I know it’s real. I know it’s good. I just need to understand…”
I felt my han
d on the lock of the door, ready to slide it aside. I wanted her then more than I’ve wanted anything in my entire life. The thought that she might listen, might let me explain, that she might believe me—when you’ve spent as much time in the desert as I have, you learn not to trust a mirage. “Go away, Countess Mariadne,” I said. “There’s nothing in this world or the next that’s going to make me let you in here with me.”
For a long time I heard her in the hallway. Sometimes she wept, or became angry and pounded on the door. Mostly she just repeated my name, over and over. I stood there through it all, forcing myself to feel a tiny fraction of the suffering I was causing her, as if it made any difference to the world. It was only later, after I finally heard her leave, that the last piece of what had once been my heart broke in half and I started sobbing like a child, because it turns out that even a man with nothing but black in his soul can feel pain.
49
Midnight
I was still standing at the door to my rooms as the clock struck midnight. Part of me wished Mariadne would return and give me another chance to let her in, to talk to her, to confess my every failure and hope that somehow she would accept me nonetheless. The other part, of course, knew that this was never going to happen. So when I heard the tentative knock, so quiet I thought I’d imagined it, I actually stumbled back a step. The second knock was a fraction louder. “Kellen, let me in.” It was the queen. Her voice was barely a whisper through the thick door.
I reached out and put my hand on the doorknob. I swear I could feel the binder again—as if he was standing on the other side, his hand touching the same brass handle as mine, waiting for me to open the door and give myself to him again. When I closed my eyes I still saw the serving girl at the restaurant, her face full of terror as I…“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” I said. “I’m indisposed.” I didn’t know if the white binder was in the palace or not. Maybe Sha’maat had said that to give me an excuse to stay in my room, but the fear in my gut overpowered any self-loathing my soul could muster.
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