Broken Mirrors

by A. F. Dery

  “I won’t do it, Kes...I won’t have any part of this...I swear I didn’t know I was making you suffer, that I was doing this to you...” his voice had broken, his shoulders heaving silently a moment before he added in a low, hoarse tone, “You have to stop. Now.”

  “I can’t!” she’d blurted, the room suddenly blurring as her eyes filled with tears. Panic tightened its fist around her chest. “I can’t, Thane, I told you...you don’t know what it’ll do to me now, please...”

  “I would never have consented if I’d known, woman! Perhaps it is not too late. Whatever bond you think is forming, perhaps it can yet be broken. You must stop, you will stop,” Lord Eladria said sharply, for Lord Eladria he again was. His body had gone rigid and his voice was cold. There was nothing left of the Thane who had spoken to her so casually over dinner. She’d stared at him in shock as he added in a barely audible tone, “Perhaps there is still time to find someone else.”

  “I told you, there can be no one else now,” she whispered. She felt as though the floor was giving out under her feet and she’d fall through into some abyss she’d never find her way out of. She wanted to cry, to beg, to plead for him to see reason, but she could not seem to form the words. She felt frozen solid, even her lips were numb.

  Lord Eladria appeared to take a deep breath- it was difficult to tell with the way the entire room was now swimming. “You came here intending to die here, if all you say is true. I would not damn you to a hell of bearing what is meant for me until this body of mine finally gives out. If that is your only choice other than death, then perhaps your first choice was the correct one. You have to stop, Kes. Whatever remains to you must be yours alone. I will not have you suffering on my behalf for whatever time you have left. That is my choice. Stop.”

  The words were so cold, so flat, so hollow. He could have been discussing the weather or the state of his floors. She knew in the back of her mind that he was donning the authoritative tones of a man who commanded troops, many times to their deaths, and that she should not take it personally. His first reaction to finally understanding what she was had certainly been sufficient to put the lie to any suggestion that he simply didn’t care.

  But fear was not a rational creature, and at the moment, in its grasp, neither was she. She felt exactly as though she’d been stabbed in the gut, a sensation she was unfortunately familiar with from her apprenticeship days, and she couldn’t even force any sound out of herself to acknowledge what he’d said. She just stared numbly while the world fell apart.

  “You are able to stop, I trust,” he added evenly, but his eyes, where they looked no further upward than her chin, narrowed slightly, whether in worry or suspicion, she couldn’t say.

  She had felt the almost unbearable lure of temptation to lie through her teeth. No, of course not, she could say. I am powerless now. I must continue. Things are too far gone. So sorry to disappoint you, my lord.

  But instead she somehow found herself focusing on the link between them, a faint trembling presence in the back of her mind. She shoved at it with the force of her fear and panic and the inexplicable agony that was knifing its way through her (through her, not him, an intimate violation, a purely private torment) and felt it snap. She drew in a sharp breath, but before she could release it, he’d turned and strode from the room. It had come back out of her lips as a guttural scream, and the last thing she noticed before she fell to the floor was the back of his head as he didn’t look back.

  When she’d come to herself, she was back on her bed, the one in the converted room by the tower, not the one inside the tower that she had recovered in. She had no memory of getting there and no idea of how long it had been since she’d been conscious. The aches and pains of the other Keep inhabitants had hammered against her senses even in this comparative isolation, far more than they had before Lord Eladria had become part of her life. She’d known then how near she really was to the end, and though everything in her life should have prepared her for that, she was nevertheless afraid. Without the presence of the temporary bond, she felt more alone than she ever had in her life, even when she’d fled Ytar over a year ago. It made no sense at all, she could not explain it, but even the room she was in felt huge to her now and she felt impossibly small and frail. Her own bones ached more than she thought possible and she had wondered with curious detachment if she’d been beaten before being dropped into the bed. Not that it mattered. Suddenly, so very little did.

  In the days that followed, people came and people went. Kesara did not know who they were, or whether they were one or many. She didn’t care. She didn’t think about it at all. She only knew they weren’t Thane. She didn’t cry any longer. She felt as though her tears had all dried up, leaving her eyes gritty no matter how many hours or days went by. She just laid where she was, waiting to die, wanting it to be over, as the Eladrians who lived and worked beyond the stone walls that surrounded her pulled muscles, broke bones, lost teeth. A woman, possibly Cook, gave birth. The soldiers training in the outer courtyard endured each other’s blows. She didn’t try to fight it anymore. She just let it wash over her, hoping it would drown out the ache in her chest, the stinging of her now tearless eyes. It would be over soon.

  Every now and then, breaking through the torrent of pain like the rocks the waves broke against on dimly recalled Ytaren shores, she thought of him, and when she did, she worried. He was right that she had come here expecting to die. If she had gotten a reprieve, it was just that, a reprieve, time borrowed or perhaps stolen that she had never planned on having. But what of him? What would he do without her now? How was he punishing himself for his earlier ignorance, that had clearly horrified him past what she ever could have expected? For she knew him now, not everything about him by far, but him...him, she knew. She had carried his pain. She knew what it had done to him, morning and night. She knew what kind of man would prefer to carry it himself, even if she couldn’t bring herself to agree with that decision.

  Thane, I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. It goes against everything I am. I wanted to help you. If I’d known it would affect you this way, I never would have tried. I’m so sorry. Please come back, just for a little while. I will not touch your pain. I just want you to know, this is what I chose for myself. It’s not your fault. I’m so sorry I hurt you. The thought broke through her malaise with startling clarity and for the first time since he’d left her alone, she wished she could remember how to speak. She wanted to actually say these words so perhaps whoever kept coming in and out would repeat them. She wanted to write them down with hands she could no longer quite feel, so he would know.

  Then the next wave came, and she could think of nothing else.

  “I do not wish to see you now, Graunt.” The words were cold and clipped. Thane would never think to have another turn her aside, his respect for her was too great; but he would not bear her company now. He knew why she had not told him about Kesara, he knew she’d thought it for his own good. He didn’t agree and he didn’t care. And now, he just wanted to be left alone.

  And for the past week, he had been. He had gone through all the motions of his usual routines. He woke in the morning, put on his clothes, trained with his men, signed the omnipresent paperwork, heard the remaining petitioners and rendered judgments that all seemed to find satisfactory. He forced himself to eat, tasting nothing, and to work on the High Lord’s project, enjoying nothing. He laid himself down far too late every night and stared at his ceiling until he had no choice but to succumb to slumber, and when he finally slept, it was so deeply and briefly that he did not dream. However he felt, however his world seemed to be splitting apart at the seams all over again, his people still needed him. Duty came first, always.

  He could not even begin to describe how truly sick he felt, to the very core of his being, that he had passed on his own pain for someone else to bear. An innocent someone else. A someone else he had somehow inexplicably come to care for. He couldn’t understand for even a moment why she ha
d allowed it, or how she ever could have thought he would have known what he was doing and done it anyway. He arranged for a servant to do nothing but look after her at all times and to give her whatever she wanted, and sent word asking Graunt to continue to oversee her recovery. He had her moved back to her old room, outside his tower. He feared if he kept her where she had been, if she were so close, he would break down and go to her, and if she did indeed suffer without him, how could he live with that knowledge? He certainly didn’t feel like he could live with the alternative. What kind of filth gave his pain to an innocent woman so he could live without it? Graegun’s leering, piggy face flashed through his mind and made his stomach churn anew. It took every fiber of his being not to run to her when he finally laid down at night, just to make certain she was all right, but he forced himself to remain frozen in place. He had forbidden the other servants from mentioning her in his presence, and he kept his face firmly averted from the direction of her room when he left his tower each morning. He did his best to push all thoughts of her to the back of his mind, and though, to his surprise, no headache appeared forthcoming, the pain of his much-abused joints and bad knee seemed far keener than he remembered, and he relished it as just punishment for he’d done to her. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t known, and he didn’t blame her for not telling him sooner. He did not doubt that she hadn’t known of his ignorance.

  But Graunt...Graunt was a far different story. She had been trying to see him since the morning after it happened, even appearing in the Great Hall while he was hearing petitioners and seating herself in the very front row. Thane had ignored her stoically and left the hall through the door behind the throne, one rarely used that led into the back passages of the Keep. He similarly ignored her many written summons, tossing them into the fireplace unopened, and managed somehow not to notice her the several different times she contrived to unexpectedly appear in places he never would have thought to see her. The armory, before a training session. The soldiers’ barracks, after one. In the kitchens, when he went to issue the obligatory congratulations to Cook on her new babe. Everywhere she went, she was like some malevolent jack-in-the-box, springing up out of nowhere with her beady little eyes and sharply toothed grin, no one ever quite knowing just when or where she would show up, and disappearing just as suddenly when she failed in her aim to reach Thane.

  By the end of the week, the Keep workers and even his soldiers were visibly uneasy, startling at the slightest sound and looking about with ever more watchful eyes. He knew he ought to say something, put an end to the sudden appearances if only to be merciful to the people who hadn’t betrayed his trust after all, but that necessitated giving her what she wanted, and that, he could not bring himself to do.

  Now, however, Graunt finally had him cornered, quite literally, in the corridor leading to his tower. She seemed to fill the space around him, like a spilled bark-brown pudding, uncomfortably close to him but seeming wholly undisturbed by this herself.

  “I do not care for your wishes, boy,” Graunt mimicked his cold, curt tone. “See me you will. Speak to me, you will. I have been patient with you, more so than you deserve, but I can wait on you no longer. She is fading too quickly.”

  Thane felt his blood run cold, his skin prickling with gooseflesh, but he said tightly, “Perhaps you did not hear the order.”

  Graunt snorted. She was near enough to him that he felt the hot puff of air against his neck. “Oh, I heard. The Dread Lord of Eladria cannot bring himself to hear of what he is doing to his own servant. A servant who has been nothing but faithful, to the point of self sacrifice.”

  “I have done nothing to her,” Thane said tightly. “She was dying whether she kept on doing what she was doing or not. She chose to come here expecting death. It is far more merciful to allow her what she wanted in the first place than to keep subjecting her to-”

  A soldier paused at the mouth of the corridor, noticing them with a slight jump of surprise and wide eyes. The man’s hand went almost mechanically to his weapon, but Thane gave a shake of his head and glanced at him warningly. The man scurried off and Thane finished in a low tone, “You know to what.”

  “No, Thane, why don’t you tell a foolish old woman? What were you subjecting her to?” Graunt’s dark little eyes narrowed into pinpricks. “Pain? It’s what she was made for. She was not, however, made to be alone, or else it wouldn’t be killing her, now would it? Now you just subject her to isolation in her last days or hours, and leave her vulnerable as prey to every toothache and stubbed toe in your entire bloody Keep as she wastes away!”

  Thane frowned, making no effort to suppress it. “What are you saying, Graunt?”

  “I’m saying you’re an idiot,” she hissed. She moved away and waved an arm towards the end of the corridor, but he stood staring at her until she dropped her arm and said in a low, cool voice, “Whatever she had with you, it came at a cost. Now that it’s ended, she is declining more quickly than I believe she would have otherwise. She feels the pain of every person in this Keep, Thane, even yours still, and her...nature, ability, whatever you wish to call it takes what it wants, when it wants. She can’t control it anymore. Whatever time is left, she will suffer, and she will suffer alone. You truly believe that is a better way to die than allowing her to help you, and only you? Cook felt no pain when she birthed that child, Thane. Your chief steward broke his jaw in a drunken brawl and sought me in a panic, not understanding why he couldn’t speak properly and thinking he’d been cursed or some such rubbish! So who do you suppose was feeling all that? Do you think your bad knee is a match for birthing pangs? Do you think she deserves this? If she chose to die, she also chose how to die when she agreed to keep helping you, but you don’t care about her choice, because it puts you out that people like her even exist!”

  “It isn’t that, Graunt,” Thane protested. His brown eyes were anguished, but Graunt’s answering look was disdainful. “What gives me the right to make someone else suffer in my stead? To have comfort at another living person’s expense?”

  “Not what, boy. Who. If she needs this to live, and she chooses you, then where’s the difficulty?”

  “But don’t you see, Graunt? She didn’t choose me. She didn’t mean for a bond of any kind to form in the first place!”

  “But she did mean to help you, didn’t she? And I find it hard to believe that she’s the one who decided it would be a good idea to kick her to the wayside now.” Graunt’s eyes were hard. Thane felt like he’d been the one kicked.

  “I didn’t ‘kick her’ to any wayside,” he said, but he remembered some of Kesara’s last words to him, breaking through the wall he had tried to build between himself and his memory. You don’t know what it’ll do to me now, please...

  Please. Had he reduced her to begging? Really?

  “Graunt, I can’t, I can’t...” he said hoarsely, clenching his hands in agitation.

  “Then don’t. Keep running,” Graunt said stonily. “But don’t expect old Graunt to pick up the pieces when she’s dead. Her blood is on your hands as surely as if you’d taken your ax to her neck, though the gods know it would have been more merciful if you had when you’d first met her instead of doing this to her now.”

  The words were like dull knives twisting into him. “I..never meant this to happen...”

  “Neither did she.” Graunt shrugged her rounded shoulders now, actually shrugged, the folds of her face softening. “But I have nothing more to say, Thane. I won’t keep arguing on the little rabbit’s behalf. After all, in the end, she’s only a rabbit- a rare breed, to be sure, but we both got on before her and will get on after her. I don’t agree with your foolishness, and I think you’re doing an incredibly stupid thing to throw her away like this, but it’s your choice, not mine. But just so you know, I won’t be going back to see her again. There’s no point. Her injuries from her abduction are the least of her problems now, and there’s nothing I can do for what truly ails her. Even drugging her would only keep her qui
et, she’d still feel everything she’s feeling now, and I don’t particularly care to make her death easier on the rest of you. Now go on, I’m sure you have important lordly things to do, and I certainly have better things to do with my time than argue with these stones.”

  And she strolled off down the corridor without another word, leaving Thane staring after her.

  It took him until midnight, when he undressed down to his trousers and laid himself down in his bed as he had every other night since that one disastrous dinner, exhaustion turning his very bones into lead. He stared up at the ceiling with eyes he forced wide open, but thoughts of Kesara had been breaking into his mind through the cracks that had splintered there from the force of Graunt’s cold words.

  He didn’t want Kesara to suffer, but she was still suffering without him. More so, as it turned out, than it would have if he had heeded her in the first place and allowed her to keep on as she was doing. He kept thinking of Graunt’s words, that Kesara had made her choice when she helped him. Indeed, she had, in her own mind, risked the very freedom that she’d been willing to die for, just to give him a respite from his own agony. He hadn’t been able to understand it then, and he still couldn’t understand it now. He wasn’t sure how much of a choice she really had in the war against whatever it was inside her that demanded this bonding, but he thought of what she’d already given him, and thought of what his own pride was in comparison- a most meager return.

  His mind raced with these thoughts until he thought he’d scream, then he lurched from the bed and strode directly to Kesara’s room, refusing to think about anything but the cold hard slap of stone against his bare feet and the bite of the chilled air in the stairwell leading down against his skin, blocking out the bemused looks of his guard and the litany of self loathing and anxiety that chanted on in the back of his mind.